The Archive

The Archive
for
Archaeology of the Mediterranean World
Volume 1 (2007-2010)
William R. Caraher
University of North Dakota
The Archive
This document represents an archive of the posts prepared
for the Archaeology of the Mediterranean World Blog. There
are no images and links to other sites and embedded content
no longer functions. This is a static archive. The original
context for these posts was the web which is a dynamic
space. As a result, I have made no effort to reproduce or
capture the network that these blog posts relied upon for
significance or meaning. The links preserved in the posts,
however, may provide a kind of breadcrumbs from a future
researcher. The Internet Archive captured three images of
my blog in 2007 (October 16, November 12, December 24).
There are no images in the archive of the blog.
The blog began in the spring of 2007 and continued until
the end of 2010. It consists of 857 posts and 455
comments. During its time live at typepad.com, it received
well over 110,000 views and had an average of over 80 page
views a day. These are miniscule numbers in the broader
world of the internet, but they do show that the blog had a
consistent audience and grew steadily over its life.
As of this writing, an online version of this archive
exists (http://mediterraneanworldarchive.wordpress.com/)
but I am not active curating this web site. There are
broken links that will remain broken and links to media
that the current hosting service will not support.
Archaeology of the Mediterranean World Archive: Volume 1 by

William R. Caraher is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Archaeology of the Mediterranean World Archive: Volume 1 by William R. Caraher is licensed
under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
AUTHOR: William Caraher

TITLE: Varia and Quick Hits
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DATE: 12/17/2010 06:22:26 AM

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Here are some varia and quick hits on a cold Friday morning (with just a
threat of flurries)!
<ul>
<li><a href="http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Generations-
2010/Overview/Findings.aspx">More interesting internet observations from
Pew</a>. ¬†Apparently no one blogs reads blog anymore (and no one told me?).
¬†As always Pew gives us some food for thought on generational differences in
web usage. </li>
<li>As I think about ways to re-imagine this blog, I keep coming across the idea
of "mindcasting". ¬†<a
href="http://jayrosen.tumblr.com/post/110043432/mindcasting-defining-the-form-
spreading-the-meme">Here is a very useful definition</a>. ¬†Typically, the term
describes how academics or professionals use Twitter, but I think that it adapts
well to a blog use.</li>
<li>Some Corinthian-American friends have set up a company to sell Corinthian
Olive Oil in the US. ¬†<a href="http://www.agrosoliveoil.net/">Check it out</a>!
</li>
<li>I haven't read <a href="http://mediactive.com/introduction/">Mediactive
yet</a>, but it is on my genuinely overwhelming Christmas break reading
list.</li>
<li><a href="http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/13/scan-it-yourself-and-
other-thoughts-about-the-google-digitizing-settlement/">More DIY Book
Scanning</a>, Dan Reetz, former(?) NDSU student and renegade book scanner, has
garnered more press coverage this past week. ¬†He's a real bright guy with a
firm grasp on common sense. ¬†It's good to see people talking about his ideas.
¬†<a href="http://www.danreetz.com/blog/2010/12/06/the-why-in-diy-book-scanning-
in-nyls-review/">More here too</a>.</li>
<li><a href="http://chronicle.com/article/The-Pleasure-of-Seeing-
the/125381">This tongue-in-cheek post at the</a><a
href="http://chronicle.com/article/The-Pleasure-of-Seeing-the/125381">
Chronicle</a> about celebrating student failure has caused a bit of a fuss.
¬†<a href="http://castingoutnines.wordpress.com/2010/12/13/student-failure-and-
student-humanity/">And it lead to this response</a>. </li>
<li><a href="http://nowviskie.org/2010/digital-humanities-down-under-state-of-
play-why-you-care/">Some thoughts on Digital Humanities in Australia and New
Zealand</a> with a shoutout to the University of Sydney's Archaeological
Computing Lab. ¬†I worked with some exceedingly competent folks from the lab on
the island of Kythera (where I met my lovely wife)!</li>
<li><a href="http://www.personal.psu.edu/bxb11/blogs/brett_bixler_e-
portfolio/2010/12/the-gamification-of-america.html">Some interesting thoughts on
the gamification of learning</a>.</li>
<li><a href="http://mashupbreakdown.com/">The actual mashups are just ok, but
the visualizations are really amazing</a> (via Crystal Alberts).</li>
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<li><a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40664462/ns/business-going_green/">When
you don't make your sales figures, you get sent to Fargo</a>. ¬†This is post-
ironic.</li>
<li><a href="http://projects.nytimes.com/census/2010/explorer?hp">This is a
fantastic way to visualize the census</a>.</li>
<li><a href="http://teachingthursday.org/">If you haven't stopped by Teaching
Thursday, you should</a>! We're celebrating out 100th post!</li>
<li>What I'm reading: P. Sarris, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/economy-and-society-in-the-age-of-
justinian/oclc/72519630">Economy and Society in the Age of Justinian</a>.
(Cambridge 2006). R. H. McGuire and R. Paynter, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/archaeology-of-inequality/oclc/22347782">The
Archaeology of Inequality</a>. (Blackwell 1991).</li>
<li>What I'm listening to: Alvin Youngbood Hart, Big Mama's Door.</li>
</ul>
One more thing! ¬†If you are going to be any where in South Florida in
January, you owe it yourself to head up to Ft. Myers and check out the 3rd
Annual Surf & Sound Festival. ¬†It's going to be huge and it's produced by
Fritz Caraher!
<img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"
title="NewImage.jpg"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20147e0ca0569970b
-pi" border="0" alt="NewImage.jpg" width="450" height="578" />
<ul>
</ul>
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TITLE: Teaching Thursday: More on Student Resistance
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BASENAME: teaching-thursday-more-on-student-resistance
CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 12/16/2010 07:20:27 AM

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I continue to think a bit about new models for understanding student
engagement with the learning environment. ¬†Over the last few weeks, I have been
reading more on everyday forms of resistance, and this has added a different
perspective to my notes on resistance and teaching as articulated <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2010/03/te
aching-thursday-grading-and-resistance.html">here </a>and <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2010/05/gr
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ading-detroit-and-student-resistence.html">here</a>. These forms of resistance

typically lack articulated political or social goals, often rely upon anonymity,
deception or ambiguity, and tend to be deeply embedded in everyday life. ¬†At
the same time, they are the products of power differences and mark out clear
efforts on the part of less powerful to establish a identity and agency in
relation to the dominant group. Classic examples of this kind of behavior are
slow work, gossip, poor communication, and other actions that tread the fine
line between outright defiance and actions easily confused with laziness.
Anyone who has taught recognizes some resistance in students. ¬†My previous
musings on using historical and anthropological definitions of resistance to
understand student behavior tended to see student behavior in a far more
systematic way. Models of resistance that suggest behavior rooted in practice
may have a better applicability for describing, predicting, and (gasp!) maybe
even validating student behavior.
These models may also point to some root causes of resistance. ¬†Many of the
scholars who study resistance in everyday life tend to see resistance as a key
component to class struggle. While it is difficult to understand the student-
teacher relationship in terms of traditional definitions of class, it would be
profoundly naive to deny the role that class plays in the structure of the
American university. ¬†With the post-war boom in enrollments the student body
has become more diverse in terms of race, ethnicity, religion, gender, and,
indeed, class. The traditional humanities had strong ties to traditions of elite
education and values that have not entirely translated to a more diverse student
body with more diverse goals and expectations.
Resistance in the classroom, particularly the subtle forms, may well
represent the long conflict between democratized higher education and the core
elite values that continues to guide many aspects of the humanities.
My post today is intentionally short to encourage you to head over to<a
href="http://teachingthursday.org/"> Teaching Thursday</a> and celebrate with us
our 100th post at that blog!
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TITLE: More in Inequality in Justinian's Corinth
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CATEGORY: Korinthian Matters
CATEGORY: Late Antiquity
DATE: 12/15/2010 06:58:23 AM

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I've begun work on revising <a

href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2010/09/am
bivalent-landscapes-of-the-6th-century-at-corinth-in-contrast.html">my Corinth
in Contrast paper</a> which I delivered in Austin in the fall at a conference of
the same name (for a nice overview of the conference check out David
Pettegrew's Corinthian Matters blog posts <a
href="http://corinthianmatters.com/2010/10/04/inequalities-in-corinth/">here
</a>and <a href="http://corinthianmatters.com/2010/10/07/more-corinth-in-
contrast/">here</a> and <a href="http://corinthianmatters.com/2010/10/13/pauls-
corinthians-in-contrast-and-context/">here</a>). The conference focused
on inequality among the Corinthians, and <a
bivalent-landscapes-of-the-6th-century-at-corinth-in-contrast.html">my paper</a>
emphasized the role that political and ecclesiastical tensions may have played
in creating regimes of power in the region. To do so, I focused on
various methods of asserting political and ecclesiastical power in the landscape
and then sought to establish spaces of resistances within these methods.
In particular, I focused on the differences between subtle, non-
monumental, and "marginal" activities, and dominant forms of political
and religious power. I tried to emphasize that various less structured
forms of expression many not have conformed to a narrow view of
"resistance" typified by violence and concerted political actions, but
rather to a kind of resistance rooted in the concept of practice. In other
words, I am looking for archaeological evidence that represents far more subtle
forms of agency than traditional definitions of resistance. Good examples
of forms of resistance rooted in practice are graffiti, systematic tax evasion,
feigned ignorance, gossip, and other techniques that are difficult to punish,
protected by a degree of anonymity, and accessible to almost any group within
society.!
While most of these practices are unlikely to leave an archaeological trace
(although an archaeology of gossip is interesting!), it is notable that the 6th
century Corinthia witnessed a systematic and monumental campaign to impose
imperial authority across the region. The goals of this effort are
difficult to imagine outside of a pattern of resistance. The
ecclesiastical tensions between the Emperor and various bishops of the province
of Achaia who may have resisted imperial authority by remaining loyal to the
papacy in Rome, provides a potential geopolitical justification of resistance.
Moreover, we know that such political and theological conflicts could
manifest themselves in popular resistance. Most famously:!
<blockquote>!
"If you ask for your change, someone philosophizes to you in the
Begotten and the Unbegotten. If you ask for the price of bread, you are told,
"The Father is greater and the Son inferior." If you ask, "Is the
bath ready?" someone answers, "The Sone was created from
nothing."!
Gregory of Nyssa, De Deitate Filii et Spiritus Sancti (trans. T.E.
Gregory, <a
href="http://books.google.com/books?id=jJU40HJKeDoC&lpg=PP1&ots=0B94xLkT
OA&dq=Gregory%20Vox%20Populi&pg=PA3#v=onepage&q&f=false">Vox
Populi</a> (Columbus 1979), 3.Ôªø!
</blockquote>!
While the popular violence associated with theological disputes is well
known, it suggests that seeming technicalities in theological language could
evoke deep passions among everyday denizens of the Late Roman world. Such
5
passion could, of course, manifest itself in more subtle ways as well as the
better documented episodes of riotous violence. Some of the everyday
practices of resistance during the era of iconoclasm are suggestive.!
This is a long introduction to some rather more mundane observations!!
One of the least satisfactory sections of my paper had to deal with the role
of imperial power on the bodies of Corinthians. In the first draft of
this paper, I imagined the impact of the imperial building policies on the
Corinthian labor force. Workers from the local area would have undoubtedly
contributed to the construction of the Lechaion Basilica (as well as the other
6th century churches in the area), the repairs to the Hexamilion wall and city
wall of Corinth, and various other construction projects datable to the 6th
century. I suggested that some sense of identity for these workers
derives from the presence of informally inscribed fish in the exterior wall
plaster of many of these buildings. It may be that this sign marked out
the work of a local guild or as smaller work team and allowed the laborers to
locate themselves amidst the monumental space of the 6th century Corinthia.!
Over the past few weeks, I have the distinct pleasure of re-reading parts of
Michael Given's 2004, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/archaeology-of-the-
colonized/oclc/53846484">The Archaeology of the Colonized</a> (Routledge).
Chapter six of this book is entitled "The Dominated Body" and Given
makes several interesting observations about the place of the body is broadly
construed "colonial regimes". In particular, Given draws a case
study from Roman Egypt where a "highly elaborate tax system"
contributed to practices designed to dominate the body of Egyptian famers.
The center piece of his argument is a vivid fictional narrative of a
visit by a family to local granary where their tax in kind was measured and
certified.!
This narrative reminded me of the famous(ish) passage in Procopius's
Buildings 4.2.14 which describes the building of granaries throughout
Greece. These granaries served to provision the soldiers that the emperor
stationed there. This passages finds a complement in the Secret
Histories 26.31-33 where Procopius tells us that the Emperor Justinian
required the cities of Greece to fund the newly stationed soldiers in Greece,
and this contingency deprived even Athens of public buildings and
entertainments. There is no reason to take these passages at face value,
but, on the other hand, it is clear that Justinian had an active interest in
reorganizing the logistical infrastructure of the empire with an eye toward
providing supplies for his soldiers. The presence of granaries in Greece
would have visibly linked imperial policy with the collection of agricultural
taxes from the local residents. Some residents, then, would have to
experience the act of delivering their crops into the imperial hands; in short,
individual labor became imperial policy.!
Another observation that Given offered regarding the impact of imperial
policy on the body was the effect of walls on movement throughout the Egyptian
countryside. He argued that many of the walls were not formal fortifications
necessary, but sand fences (at best) or, in other cases, just informal markers.
Both Procopius' text and archaeological evidence from the Corinthia have
noted Justinian's interest in wall construction and repair.
Specifically, Justinian appears to have repaired the massive Hexamilion
wall and probably the wall of the city of Corinth itself. These two walls
would have dominated passage across the Isthmus. The individual would
have had to pass through spaced marked out and defined by the non-local presence
of the Emperor.!
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Making this all the more conspicuous is Justinian's used inscriptions

tinged with ritually-charged utterances at gates to make political or
theological statements. So as Corinthian (and other) bodies passed
through spaces marked out by imperial power, the walls themselves literally
shouted out politically charged religious sentiments. We know from other
sites in the Mediterranean that roads, walls, and gates were common places for
inscribed acclamations; in other words, places where bodies regularly passed
were excellent places to commemorate other kinds of ritualized activities.
Ritual acclamations whether spontaneous or staged, then, further imbued
these spaces with embodied knowledge.!
As I work to revise my initially clumsy study of power differences across the
Corinthian landscape, I am focusing more attention on the way in which imperial
power sought to project authority into the landscape. By critiquing the
methods of projecting power, I think I am getting closer to understanding the
conditions with create the kind of power differences that produce various kinds
of inequality.
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TITLE: Academic Organizations and the Web: 10 Suggestions
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CATEGORY: Byzantium
CATEGORY: Web/Tech
DATE: 12/14/2010 06:35:15 AM

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This past week, I offered to prepare a short advisory document to an academic
organization that was planning to increase its web presence. ¬†I think that
academic organizations do well to model their sites and the people who are asked
to maintain them along the lines of established academic institutions and
develop "officers", missions statements, and policies. ¬†I think that we should
also follow the basic academic method of being collaborative and deliberate,
results will be better as well. ¬†Even a single author blog is in some way
collaborative as it relies on colleagues and collaborators to link to or to
twitter posts. ¬†Being deliberate is deeply ingrained in the most conservative
traditions of academic life.
With some slight modifications to protect the innocent, here it is:
1. Audience. The most important thing
about any website it to have a clear idea of an audience. ¬†For example, my
Archaeological of the Mediterranean World site appeals generally to academics
interested in Mediterranean archaeology, ancient and Byzantine history, and
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technology. So while most of the content (see below) on my site counts as a kind
of ‚Äú<a href="http://jayrosen.tumblr.com/post/110043432/mindcasting-defining-
the-form-spreading-the-meme">mindcasting</a>‚Äù, I do try to mindcast on things
of interest to a notional audience.
2. "Content is King". For a website to
‚Äúwork‚Äù people have to work it into their everyday life. To do this, the site
needs to be updated regularly (at least weekly) ¬†with new content so people
want to come back and check it out. The best way to keep a site updated
regularly is to develop a group of dedicated contributors. ¬†The era of the
static website full of "resources" is over.
3. Contributors. If the website is
going to thrive it has to have some regularly updated content. This does not
have to be daily, but it needs in some way to be regular. To maintain a regular
flow of content, you need to have multiple contributors. ¬†A good editor can
drum up contributors and provide content when needed, but it is essential to
have a core group of people willing to work to produce significant web content.
¬†(I think that there is a small, but rather a committed community already
producing good quality content for the web, and we should be able to leverage
this community). ¬†My general feeling is that no section of the website will
remain up-to-date and interesting without at least a few contributors.
¬†Moreover, having a few contributors will prevent a section of the site from
becoming a single editors soapbox.
4. An Editor. ¬†The best websites have
an editor or a group of designated editors who are responsible for content in
particular areas of the site. The editors responsibilities might include
soliciting new content, maintaining basic information on their section of the
site, and establishing policies. ¬†Also naming some an ‚Äúeditor‚Äù confers a
certain amount of academic and intellectual prestige to these positions (and
makes it easier for a mid-career faculty member to claim this work as ¬†part of
‚Äúnational service‚Äù or whatever.). ¬† We might also consider bringing in,
say, one or two other editors (a ‚ÄúBlog Editor,‚Äù perhaps, or even a
‚ÄúFeatures Editor‚Äù). ¬†The advantage of giving these individuals real
editorial control over their sections is that they can be gatekeepers for the
content coming onto the web, ensure its quality, maintain the content, publicize
the content, et c. ¬†Moreover, multiple contributors are also more likely to
invoke some positive discussion.
5. Mission statement. ¬†Since this
will be something of an official site, we should probably come up with some kind
of simple, broad mission statement that will help us create policies for the
kind of material that we include on our site. For example, do we intend the site
to be a scholarly resource or do we want to try to cater to a academic
interests? ¬†Or do we want to do both. In any event, a mission statement will
help us think about our audience and the types of things that we value.
6. Policies. I know that this will
seem overwrought, but as someone with a public web presence, I have been
overwhelmed by a range of strange propositions that I get to feature material on
my little blog. ¬†Having a policy of what kinds of material you will or won‚Äôt
allow will make the editors‚Äô jobs much easier. ¬†For example, will you let
people post advertisements for their book on the site? ¬†Will we let people
submit job ads? ¬†Will we advertise summer programs? ¬†You can imagine.
7. Design. The nicest website sites
have some common design elements. ¬†If the plan is to use an institutional
server (rather than a commercial service) to host the site as the central hub
for a web site that would then would push traffic to various externally hosted
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pages, then it would be great to have some kind of common design for these
external pages (and include cues on the Princeton page).
8. Software. Blogs are great. ¬†This
is not just because I am a blogger, but the ease of updating a blog makes them
great for regularly updated content. ¬†Moreover, many of the good blog services
(e.g. wordpress.com hosts Wordpress software on their servers) or software (e.g.
Wordpress is free to download and relatively easy to set up on an institution's
servers) allow you to create static pages as well as blog pages. ¬†They are also
equipped with an RSS feed et c. making them really easy to update and edit by
people with almost no technical knowledge.
9. Social Media. If we are serious
about developing a web presence for our organization we need to consider having
an integrated social media component. ¬†Social media sites like Twitter and
Facebook work well to connect potential readers to the web site and serve as a
key method for pushing content to a wider audience. In general, social media
services are fairly easy to maintain and manage. ¬†That being said, like the
website itself, content drives traffic. ¬†If we don‚Äôt maintain social media,
then we won‚Äôt reap its benefits.
10. Take our time. One thing I‚Äôve
seen other places do is to rush out a web presence before they have developed
content, policies, or even a kind of editorial or institutional support. The
results have been pretty dodgy and have not held up well. ¬†Taking time to
develop how a website will work and who will be responsible for what parts of
the site will produce the best quality results.
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TITLE: Some New Thoughts on the Roman Economy
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BASENAME: some-new-thoughts-on-the-roman-economy
CATEGORY: Archaeology
CATEGORY: Books
DATE: 12/13/2010 07:35:29 AM

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Over the weekend, I finally found a few hours to sit down with the relatively
recent edited volume <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/quantifying-the-
roman-economy-methods-and-problems/oclc/316430292">Quantifying the Roman
Economy: Methods and Problems</a> edited by A. Bowman and A. Wilson (Oxford
2009). ¬†The book brings together a number of different perspectives on the
Roman economy in a broad response to later chapters of the Scheidel, Morris, and
Saller edited <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/cambridge-economic-
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history-of-the-greco-roman-world/oclc/144219734">Cambridge Economic History of

the Greco-Roman World</a> (Cambridge 2007). ¬†In my reading, the books
stands in contrast to a recent work edited by M. Mundell Mango on Byzantine
Trade (which<a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2010/12/mo
re-byzantine-archaeology-byzantine-trade.html"> I discuss here</a>). ¬†Whereas
Mundell Mango theorizes that it is possible to understand trade in the Byzantine
world without necessarily appealing to wider considerations of the ancient
economy, the authors in Quantifying the Roman Economy take the opposite
approach and embed trade of all kinds within a theoretical and material critique
of the Roman economy.
While I won't review the entire book, I did want to point out some of its
highlight to my loyal readers.
1. Bowman and Wilson's introduction is among the best short summaries of the
state of research in the Roman economy. ¬†Their considerations range from
discussions of economic integration to survey of the potential of ancient
economic growth and decline. They conclude their survey by focusing attention on
four vital areas for analysis: demography and settlement, the agrarian economy,
production and trade, and mining and metals. They argue that at present there
exists sufficient evidence to support sustained analysis of these issues and
that these issues can form the basis for an integrated view of the Roman
economy.
2. Field Survey and Demography. Intensive pedestrian survey represents an
important approach for establishing Roman settlement patterns, and these
settlement patterns play a vital role in the organization of the Roman economy.
In particular, the relationship between rural producers and urban dwellers
structures the relationship between the primary production of food and
centralized administrative, political, and population centers across the Roman
Empire. ¬†As Jongman, Fentress, Mattingly, and Lo Cascio point out, the
percentage of people living in both cities and in the countryside remains hotly
contested. ¬†As a result, it is difficult to evaluate even the minimum and
maximum productivity of the countryside required to sustain an urban population
who is not engaged in primary agricultural production.
3. Peopling the Countryside. Elizabeth Fentress and David Mattingly provide
valuable defenses of survey archaeology and its ability to shed light not only
the structure of ancient settlement but ancient demography. Fentress argues on
the basis of her intensive survey work on the island of Jerba and in the Albenga
Valley that careful sampling of the landscape can provide a rough estimate of
both the kinds and the distribution of sites in the countryside during the Roman
period. The types of sites, ranging from urban areas to small villages and
isolated farms, could then form the basis for basic demography. To summarize
complex and nuanced study, Fentress argues that far fewer people lived in the
countryside on Jerba than we might expect considering the potential density of
urban settlement: 11% in single farms, 20% in villages, 20% in villas, and an
impressive 49% in towns. ¬†She was then able to argue that the urban centers on
Jerba (which is not a particularly fertile place) relied on imported grain.
In his response to the Fentress article, David Mattingly rightly offers a bit
of caution by cleverly invoking Donald Rumsfeld's category of "unknown unknowns"
in intensive survey. ¬†For Mattingly, the unknown unknowns are those sites that
do not manifest themselves in survey but may have a significant impact on how we
understand ancient demography and settlement structure. ¬†Of course, Jerba with
its light soils and relative geomorphological stability was less likely to
produce the kinds of unknown unknowns than the more dynamic landscape of, say,
the Rhone valley, but nevertheless, Mattingly is correct in reminding us that
survey is better at demonstrating presence than absence.
10
4. Trade. Andrew Wilson's summary of pressing issues with regard to Roman
trade is another very useful contribution to any discussion of trade in the
Mediterranean. He offers valuable critiques of evidence for trade ranging from
shipwrecks to amphora and marble. ¬†In his study of shipwrecks, he uses <a
re-lakka-skoutara.html">aoristic analysis</a> to create a more nuanced reading
of Parker's classic summary of shipwrecks by century. ¬†He shows that by
plotting the possible date of "long-dated" Roman period (150 BC - AD 400)
shipwreck by decade rather than by midpoint, it becomes possible to argue for a
later peak in maritime commerce than Parker had estimated. ¬†In short,
distributing the possible dates for long-dated shipwrecks helps to mitigate
against a chronological pattern of trade biased by certain standard dating
conventions.
Later in the same article, Wilson provides another useful model for
understanding Roman period trade when he compares the production of certain
classes of pottery (e.g. African Red Slip) to its frequency elsewhere in the
Mediterranean. While such analysis is not particularly novel or innovative, he
establishes quite clearly how the relationship between production and
distribution is not fixed. ¬†Pottery supply represents only one aspect of the
distribution of ceramics in the Mediterranean, and the quantitative gap between
patterns of supply and distribution provide a useful basis for considerations of
trading patterns as well as the vagaries of taste across the Mediterranean
basin.
William Harris and Michael Fulford offer responses to Wilson's contribution
that expand the variables under consideration in his article to include the
relationship between settlements in the Roman world and how the differences
between overland and maritime trade and urban and ex-urban settlement types can
significantly influence the distribution of material.
_______
As my brief summary of this books probably makes clear, I liked this book and
think it is the best single volume summary of the pressing issues and potential
for using quantitative data to understand the Roman economy. ¬†As the
availability of quantitative data from survey projects, excavations, and summary
publications increases, scholars will need more robust models and approaches for
producing synthetic analyses of trade, settlement structure, demography, and
economic growth or decline. ¬†Despite the typical caveats surrounding the use of
any quantitative data from antiquity, this volume has continued the optimistic
trend begun with the Cambridge Economic History.
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It's a cold and clear winter day for some quick hits and varia.
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/zeitgeist2010/">This is a
pretty cool way to see how the world used Google</a>.</li>
<li><a href="http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Twitter-Update-
2010.aspx">This looks to be a pretty interesting report on who uses
Twitter</a>.</li>
<li>Along similar lines, <a href="http://www.poynter.org/how-tos/newsgathering-
storytelling/writing-tools/109176/why-no-dumping-is-a-good-motto-for-writing-on-
social-networks/">this is an interesting little blog post on how to write on
Twitter</a>.</li>
<li>And <a
href="http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/314
9/2718">here is a</a><a
9/2718"> First Monday</a><a
9/2718"> article on learning and social media technologie</a>s, and here is a
<a href="http://chronicle.com/article/New-Social-Software-Tries-
to/125542/">Chronicle</a><a href="http://chronicle.com/article/New-Social-
Software-Tries-to/125542/"> article in another company trying to integrate
social media software and teaching</a>.</li>
<li>At <a
9/2718">Teaching Thursday, we had a not tech related blog post on the
ethics of test making and cheating</a>.</li>
<li>Tuesday was December 7th. ¬†Pearl Harbor Day. ¬†And <a
href="http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5166/">here is FDR's famous
speech</a>.</li>
<li>What I am listening to: Jay-Z, The Black Album.</li>
<li>What I am reading: James C. Scott, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/weapons-of-the-weak-everyday-forms-of-
peasant-resistance/oclc/13557344">Weapons of the Weak: Everyday forms of Peasant
Resistance</a>. (Yale 1985).</li>
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TITLE: Teaching Thursday: Test Writing and Cheating
STATUS: Publish
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CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 12/09/2010 06:18:03 AM

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I could try to put together some kind of blog for today (and rest assured,
good reader, that a blog post is brewing), but <a
href="http://teachingthursday.org/2010/12/09/test-banks-cheating-and-the-moral-
responsibility-of-instructors/">Mick Beltz has already put together a far more
interesting blog post </a>than I could muster. ¬†He responds to recent
discussions of cheating at the University of Central Florida, and without
getting into detail, sets out three basic lessons to keep in mind while
preparing your end of the semester exams:
<blockquote>
1. There is an optimal level of cheating on every assignment (and it isn't
zero).
2. Grades and assignments have only instrumental value, not inherent
value.
3. Cheating is not (just) a student problem, it is also an instructor
problem.
</blockquote>
The post is really smart, thoughtful, and thought provoking. ¬†In fact, it's
so good, <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/2010/12/09/test-banks-cheating-
and-the-moral-responsibility-of-instructors/">I'm going to link to it
again</a>.
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TITLE: More Indigenous Archaeology and Cyprus
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BASENAME: more-indigenous-archaeology-and-cyprus
CATEGORY: Cyprus
DATE: 12/08/2010 07:11:35 AM

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Over the past few years, I've been musing about the relationship between
indigenous archaeological practices and nationalism in the Greece. ¬†Recently,
13
however, I have begun to think a bit more seriously about these practices in
Cyprus. ¬†This past weekend, I read over parts of the <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/hagiographica-
cypria/oclc/185472022">Laudatio Barnabae </a>inspired in part by Paul
Dilly's recent article in the Journal of Roman Archaeology (<a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2010/11/ic
ons-and-space-and-dreams-in-late-antiquity.html">which I discuss here</a>).
The great thing about this short, apparently 6th century text, is that it
explicitly located the discovery of St. Barnabas' body (Barnabas was the
companion of St. Paul) with the tensions between Cyprus and the episcopal see of
Antioch in the time between the Church of Cyprus received independence at the
Council of Ephesus and the rule of Peter the Fuller at Antioch. ¬†Peter the
Fuller was markedly anti-Chalcedonian and have friends in imperial places.
¬†According to the Laudatio he also coveted regaining control over
Cyprus. St. Barnabas intervened to avert this by appearing to the Bishop
Anthemius in several visions the last of which directed the Bishop to the
Saint's body, in a cave near Salamis holding an autograph of the Gospel of
Matthew. ¬†The authority of this discovery and the gift of the Gospel book to
the Emperor Zeno ensured the continued independence of the Church of Cyprus. We
know that Zeno also¬†elevated the bishop of the island to Metropolitan
status.
The role of inventio, or the discovery of a lost sacred object, in
this text is important. ¬†The tie between a discovered object and sanctity would
have echoed with stories surrounding the foundation of the monastery on
Stavrovouni which overlooks the city of Larnaka. ¬†By the 15th century, this
monastery was associated with a fragment of the True Cross delivered by
Contanstine's mother, St. Helen, on her return to Constantinople from the Holy
Land where she had excavated (quite literally) the remains of Christ's
cross.
In <a href="http://www.jstor.org/pss/1259503">a famous article (for
some!)</a>, David Reese describes how Cypriots and some early travelers saw the
bones of the extinct pygmy hippopotami and other mega fauna as the bones of
saints (or even dragons!). ¬†The discovery of large animal bones in caves seems
to have led to their association with saints presumably on the basis of various
inventio accounts like the Laudatio Barnabae. This phenomena
was recorded (with varying degrees of condescension) throughout the late 19th
and<a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-
7998.1902.tb08223.x/abstract"> early 20th centuries</a>.
In more recent times, as I have noted on <a
re-archaeolog.html">this blog a few years back</a>, both Peter Megaw and Vassos
Karageorghis have encountered similar kinds of archaeological practices.
¬†According to <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/626538">Megaw (</a><a
href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/626538">JHS</a><a
href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/626538"> 66 (1946), 52)</a>, local farmers
praying for rain excavated parts of the ruined Panayia Skyra church to appease
the Virgin. Karageorghis, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/153885421">in
his autobiography</a>, recounts a story of a priest who approached him while
director of the Department of Antiquties and asked for help locating the tomb of
St. Auxibius.
The practice of looking for origins in an archaeological context and using
these origins to define the community is not particularly remarkable and almost
to be expected in a place like Cyprus where in the modern era nationalism has
had such tragic consequences. What is notable, to me at least, is the possible
roots of these practices in the 6th century where the archaeological practices
14
of the Bishop Anthemius played a role in a prominent narrative of the island's

autonomy. ¬†In recent times, objects associated with the arrival of the Greeks
(mostly during the Late Bronze Age) have taken on the same kind of sacred status
as the objects discovered by their earlier predecessors. ¬†The discovery of
these objects is grounded, of course, in a faith in scientific archaeology
rather than divine revelation, but it is hard to imagine that the basic impulse
driving these practices and the narratives that they produce is different.
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TITLE: Hellenistic Fortifications on Vayia: A Working Paper
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BASENAME: hellenistic-fortifications-on-vayia-a-working-paper
CATEGORY: Cyprus
CATEGORY: Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project
DATE: 12/07/2010 06:12:04 AM

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I have long advocated for an increase use of working papers in the field of
Mediterranean archaeology. ¬†Circulating pre-publication drafts of articles is
already a common practice and the presentation of sites and finds in an
efficient and prompt way has long stood as an ethical obligation for
archaeologists.
In that spirit, I am presenting as a working paper my preliminary analysis of
the fortifications from the site of Vigla on Cyprus. ¬†This is a working draft
so the research, analysis, and interpretation should be regarded as provisional.
¬†The basic description of the fortification on the hill of Vigla is accurate
and should not undergo significant modification.
The analysis presented below is the work of the <a
href="http://www.pkap.org/">Pyla-</a><a
href="http://www.pkap.org/">Koutsopetria</a><a href="http://www.pkap.org/">
Archaeological Project</a>, but at present, all issues are the product of my
analysis of their hard work.
<a style="margin: 12px auto 6px auto; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,Sans-
serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size:
14px; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal;
display: block; text-decoration: underline;" title="View Vigla Description and
Analysis December Working 2010 on Scribd"
href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/44826683/Vigla-Description-and-Analysis-
December-Working-2010">Vigla Description and Analysis December Working 2010</a>
15
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TITLE: Clothes make the Professional: Archaeological Boots
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BASENAME: clothes-make-the-professional-archaeological-boots
CATEGORY: Academia
DATE: 12/06/2010 06:47:47 AM

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This past week, I've been preparing to teach P. Novick's <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/that-noble-dream-the-objectivity-question-
and-the-american-historical-profession/oclc/17441827">That Noble Dream</a>
(Cambridge 1988) and P. Menand's <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/marketplace-of-ideas/oclc/286488147">The
Marketplace of Ideas</a> (New York 2010). ¬†Both these books foreground the
process of professionalization in a university context. ¬†In a recent spat over
the character of academic offices, <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2009/08/ma
king-the-professional-office.html">I argued that </a>we ought to model our
offices on the creative space of highly flexible technology start up companies
rather than the antiseptic space of anonymous, highly bureaucratized companies
(some of which are now faltering). ¬†This idea did not meet with much acceptance
16
especially as the link between university culture and corporate culture is well-
known.
This brings me to what academics should wear. Over my time as ¬†teacher I've
found myself increasingly adopting a more and more professional dress code
especially on the days that I teach in the classroom. ¬†When I am writing in my
office, I tend to dress more casually and comfortably. ¬†In this way, I publicly
divide creative time (writing) from corporate time (teaching). ¬†(This is not to
suggest that these two do not overlap).
I also have another professional persona and that is as a field
archaeologist. ¬†In the media, at least, archaeologists are known for
distinctive clothing, but even Indiana Jones dressed in a more professional
"corporate" way when in the classroom (bow tie and the requisite tweed). ¬†C.
Holtorf has written on this very topic in some interesting ways <a
href="http://books.google.com/books?id=J7PXgXuVXOgC&lpg=PA7&ots=X9ZASdiT
_w&dq=David%20Webb%20archaeologist&pg=PA69#v=onepage&q=David%20Webb%
20archaeologist&f=false">here </a>and <a
href="http://traumwerk.stanford.edu:3455/populararchaeology/49">here</a>.
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20148c67461be970c
I prefer to "rock the neck beard" in the field to mark out my departure from
"corporate" world of classroom. I typically imagine my rather unkempt appearance
as an reference to the archaeologist as artisan. ¬†The neck beard represents the
both a layer of additional protection against the sun, the unpleasant nature of
shaving and then sweating, and distracted air of someone deeply engaged in their
work.
title="Neckbeard.jpg"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20148c67461cc970c
-pi" border="0" alt="Neckbeard.jpg" width="450" height="337" />
The boundaries between my various professional identities or avatars (casual
creative writer, stuffy company man teacher, and archaeologist as artisan) can
be fairly rigid. I will occasionally wear a NASCAR hat while walking across
campus in my teaching attire, but never in the classroom. ¬†I will also
sometimes wear my teaching clothes on days when I have a series of "important"
committee meetings or other responsibilities. ¬†The one thing that I almost
always wear (at least from October to April) are my boots.
Boots are the most vital component of an archaeologist wardrobe. ¬†Without a
rugged pair of boots, an archaeologist is, at best, another weekend warrior
whose engagement with the realities of the out-of-doors stops at the well-
groomed trail or the end of a manicured lawn. ¬†Boots make the archaeology.
My wife introduced my to Blundstone boots almost 10 years ago and since then,
I have never been without a pair. ¬†I wear them on campus, in teaching clothes,
in my creative clothes, while walking home and while doing anything outdoors.
¬†(Ironically, I don't always wear them while doing actual archaeology. I prefer
low-top boots and nylon to the traditional Blundstone, hightop, leather.) ¬†I
have found that my boots last about 3 years, but I don't care for them properly.
¬†The walks home through the freezing snow and the super dry environment in
campus buildings tend to make the leather dry out. ¬†I shuffle my feet and walk
incautiously scuffing the tips on obstacles. ¬†I have a pronation in one of my
feet and that stretches the leather in an unnatural way usually resulting in it
pulling a bit away from the sole. ¬†A few times a year, after considerable
harassment, I will polish the boots and put some leather treatment on them. ¬†If
I pass through the Minneapolis airport, I'll stop at the shoe shine place, but
17
that's mostly to banter about the Timberwolves and, as they say, to pass the
time. ¬†(The men at the shoeshine stand can always identify the Blundstone's and
usually chide me for not taking better care of them!).
This past week, I got my new pair of Blundstone's! ¬†They replace my old pair
as the link between my professional avatar as a teacher and my professional
avatar as an archaeologist. ¬†The old boots get retired into more rugged duty
and less high profile tasks (shoveling snow, mowing the lawn, et c.) and the new
boots make their debut this morning on a casual writing day. ¬†The old boots are
inscribed with three years of activities from long walks with the wife through
our small town to cold winter mornings spent shoveling out the car. ¬†They also
preserve the marks of innumerable professional lectures, classroom successes and
failures, and afternoons in the library, archives, or hunched over my lap top.
Coats of water, snow, polish, and conditioner have changed their color. ¬†My
idiosyncratic stride has etched deep wrinkles across the soft leather.
title="RetiringBoots.jpg"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20147e06b0b3f970b
-pi" border="0" alt="RetiringBoots.jpg" width="450" height="301" />
The new boots are stiff and unforgiving at present undoubtedly aware of the
fate of their predecessors and hoping to hold off the inevitable.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Amalia
EMAIL: amalia.stankavage@gmail.com
IP: 75.42.158.81
URL: http://blog.amaliadillin.com
DATE: 12/06/2010 11:49:12 AM
Ha!
This was a great post, Bill!
I am wishing your boots all the best in their struggle against time and wear.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Susan Caraher
EMAIL:
IP: 134.129.205.189
URL: http://profile.typepad.com/susancaraher
DATE: 12/06/2010 03:34:51 PM
These boots are made for walkin', and teachin', and committee meetings, and a
little archaeology, and mowing and .... well you get the idea. They're Blunnies!
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Kostis Kourelis
EMAIL: kkourelis@gmail.com
IP: 98.111.177.94
18
URL:
DATE: 12/06/2010 07:21:19 PM
Oh man. I'm now totally worries: are we doubles? Although we never discussed
this, I'm a Blundstone guy, in fact, so committed I might have to tell some
stories on my blog. Question: Do your Blundstones ever start making a creaking
sound? usually one of the two? And I've been thinking of Fred Astaire's tap
dancing shoes, having intense conversations with a colleague about Zizek and
pyschoanalysis!!! I must also send you this amazing chapter by Fredrick Jameson
about modernism to postmodernism based on the analysis of shoes, from Heidegger
and van Gogh to Andy Warhol.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: R. H. Cline
EMAIL: rangar.cline@ou.edu
IP: 209.30.230.206
URL:
DATE: 12/07/2010 03:24:03 PM
Interesting topics. On professional and corporate attire in academia, I would
add that there are a number of subtle differences between what is acceptable
formal wear for academics, and what is acceptable as formal wear in the world of
finance, say. Take the image of Indiana Jones' suit, for example. The earth
tones, striped shirt, and subdued tie distinguish him from the G-men who wear
more "corporate" looking suits early in the film. The film reflects some of the
distinctions that continue to exist in academic formal wear. For example, few
academics teach in blue suits (although they often wear them for interviews),
whereas the blue suit is a standard uniform in the world of banking and finance.
Academic formal(for men, at least) often consists of non-matching pants and
blazer, or suits in gray or earth-tones. Or, any of the above mixed with denim
(just to show that you are not too corporate). In other words, academic formal
wear takes elements of the corporate wardrobe in order to communicate
professionalism but presents them in a way that is intended to look un-
corporate. I think the origins of this aesthetic may be rooted in the class
biases of the past, when professors did not wish to be associated with those who
had to earn their money (i.e. the corporate world) but rather those who had the
leisure to pursue their careers because of family wealth. And, I think, even
today crossing the line into what could be taken for actual corporate attire can
be a faux-pas in some academic settings -- revealing that one is not
authentically academic, or something. For instance, I apparently crossed this
line one day and was told (with a sneer) by a colleague in the natural sciences
that I looked like a banker. Ouch!
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As we wait for the snow to arrive, a little gaggle of quick hits and varia to
keep you entertained for the weekend:
<ul>
<li><a href="http://wordswithoutborders.org/article/from-dream-diary/">My friend
and colleague Elizabeth Harris's translation of part of her friend and colleague
Marco Candida's </a><a href="http://wordswithoutborders.org/article/from-
dream-diary/">Dream Diary</a>. ¬†Allusions to dreams and excavations.</li>
<li>A great new post on <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/">Teaching
Thursday</a>.</li>
<li><a href="http://mercury6.spacelog.org/page/-00:00:00:20/">A play by ply of
the Mercury 6 mission</a>.</li>
<li>Two great blog posts from Duke University's HASTAC (Humanities, Arts,
Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory) website: <a
href="http://www.hastac.org/blogs/cathy-davidson/why-doesnt-anyone-pay-
attention-anymore">Why Doesn't Anyone Pay Attention Anymore?</a> and <a
href="http://www.hastac.org/blogs/ernesto-priego/your-brain-computers-some-
notes-twitter-open-research-community">Your Brain on Computers: Some Notes on
Twitter as an Open Research Community</a>.</li>
<li><a href="http://www.complex.com/CELEBRITIES/Cover-Story/kanye-west-project-
runaway">Kanye West's creative process</a>.</li>
<li><a href="http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/tcooa.htm">The text of Alfie
Kohn's "The Costs of Overemphasizing Achievement"</a>.</li>
<li><a href="http://www.handmaps.org/connect.php">The Hand Drawn Map
Association</a> (via Kostis Kourelis). ¬†This group must be an affiliate of the
Village Green Preservation Society.</li>
<li><a href="http://chronicle.com/blogs/innovations/wired-to-read/27928">Did
learning to read really mess us up</a>?</li>
<li>A "conversation" between <a href="http://phdiva.blogspot.com/2010/11/blogs-
and-cultural-property-propaganda.html">Dorothy King </a>and <a
href="http://lootingmatters.blogspot.com/2010/11/rss-subscriptions-and-cultural-
property.html">David Gill</a>.</li>
<li><a href="http://tenured-radical.blogspot.com/2010/11/why-job-market-is-lot-
like-pbs-newshour.html">Your graduate students should learn to Skype</a>.</li>
<li>Two more blogs from Kostis: Dry Light (and this post on <a
href="http://stathatos.blogspot.com/2010/11/washing-clothes-in-kastalian-
spring.html">Washing Clothes in the Kastalian Spring</a> at Delphi) and <a
href="http://fieldnotesphilly.wordpress.com/">Field Notes from the Preservation
Alliance for Greater Philadelphia</a>.</li>
<li><a href="http://publishingperspectives.com/2010/11/neal-stephensons-
mongoliad-revolutionizing-storytelling/">This is a pretty interesting idea for
story telling</a>. ¬†I wonder how it would translate to an academic work?</li>
<li>How important is the name of your Twitter feed? ¬†<a
href="http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/digital-life/digital-life-
news/australiabound-ashes-twitter-mixup-sees-babysitter-hit-for-six-20101129-
18dkf.html">Just ask TheAshes</a>!</li>
<li>Two nice arguments for liberal arts eduction: <a
href="http://collegenews.org/x10611.xml">One here</a> (which might be expected)
and <a href="http://genomebiology.com/2010/11/10/138">one here</a> (which might
not be).</li>
<li>Transcripts from the <a
href="http://www.undwritersconference.org/WCVirtual_Library.html">UND Writers
Conference Virtual Reading Room</a>.</li>
<li><a href="http://www.simetric.co.uk/si_materials.htm">Mass of material
chart</a>.</li>
20
<li>What I am reading: G. Hall, <a

href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/digitize-this-book-the-politics-of-new-
media-or-why-we-need-open-access-now/oclc/222249169">Digitize This
Book!</a> (Minneapolis 2008) and A. Bowman and A. Wilson, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/quantifying-the-roman-economy-methods-and-
problems/oclc/316430292">Quantifying the Roman Economy</a>. (Oxford
2009).</li>
<li>What I am listening to: Kanye West, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
and The Go Team, Thunder, Lightening, Strike.</li>
</ul>
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TITLE: Teaching Thursday: Propositions for the Study of History
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DATE: 12/02/2010 07:07:24 AM

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A series of Parisian park-bench, NoDak hipster, propositions for the study of
history. ¬†These were prepared for an introduction to my Graduate Historiography
class next semester. ¬†They are meant to be points of departure for broader
discussions into the links between historical epistemology, social
responsibility, method, and practice.
Propositions for the Study of History
1. History is a form of social
activism.
2. Reading, writing, presenting, and
teaching history requires thought.
3. Historical thinking is both the
product of the texts (of various kinds) and how we read texts (of various
kinds).
4. Texts (sources) are socially
constructed.
5. The historian uses various tools to
interpret sources.
6. These tools are socially
constructed. ¬†Some would say that they have a kind of agency. ¬†Most would say
that tools exert an influence on the work that they do.
7. One of the historians‚Äô tools is
method (which we sometimes call theory).
21
8. Theory is not a single thing: it is

a blanket term for method, methodology, epistemology, historiography, ideology,
and even procedure that makes historical thinking possible.
9. Many theoretical positions require
a historian to make clear how they approach a text or a historical problem.
10. By making obvious the relationship
between texts and the act of ‚Äúdoing history‚Äù we make our work as historians
visible and open to critique.
11. To many people, the more that
history is critiqued (as a method), the more it appears to be either common
sense or wrong headed.
12. Skepticism of the historical
methods undermines the basic disciplinary structure of the field.
13. Most people in the world do not
value the work of historians even though they should. ¬†This is our fault.
14. Skepticism toward the historical
method may lead to the end of history as a discipline.
15. People will continue to study the
past.
For the real<a href="http://teachingthursday.org/"> Teaching Thursday post,
go here</a>.
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TITLE: More Byzantine Archaeology: Byzantine Trade
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CATEGORY: Byzantium
DATE: 12/01/2010 07:09:59 AM

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As the end of the semester approaches, I forced myself to find time to peruse
the new (2009) volume entitled <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/byzantine-trade-4th-12th-centuries-the-
archaeology-of-local-regional-and-international-exchange-papers-of-the-thirty-
eighth-spring-symposium-of-byzantine-studies-st-johns-college-university-of-
oxford-march-2004/oclc/244293201">Byzantine Trade, 4th-12th centuries
</a>edited by M. Mundell Mango. ¬†It is a pretty neat and diverse
collection of papers that touch on trade from the beginning of Late Antiquity to
4th Crusade. ¬†The papers range from discussions of amphoras, shipwrecks, and
pottery to studies on the location and organization of manufacturing. ¬†I'll
22
admit upfront that I did not read all the papers in the volume so I hardly feel
qualified to give a comprehensive review, but the articles that I did read were
good.
Perhaps the most interesting part of the volume is the editors effort to
locate the papers in relation to other recent scholarly works on trade and the
economy in the Late Antique and Byzantine Mediterranean. ¬†She takes particular
aim at the recent A. Laiou edited<a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/economic-history-of-byzantium-from-the-
seventh-through-the-fifteenth-century/oclc/47050456"> Economic History of
Byzantium</a> which Mundell Mango points out continued problematic
periodization schemes by beginning its analysis at the 7th century and thereby
"failing to analyze at the same level the preceding period of formation that
links Byzantium to the ancient world." (4).
More importantly, perhaps, she noted that this volume sought to separate
trade from discussions of the economy. ¬†When I first read this, it blew my
mind, but as I thought more carefully about it, I began to understand her point.
¬†On some level, our theorizing about the ancient economy has dictated the kinds
of questions that we have asked from our material and the kinds of analyses that
we have conducted. ¬†For example, most rural survey projects take as a point of
departure M. Finley's ideas of the relationship between the (consumer) city and
the (producer) countryside. ¬†Our work at Pyla-Koutsopetria, for example, is
explicitly informed by the ideas advanced in Horden and Purcell's <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/corrupting-sea-a-study-of-mediterranean-
history/oclc/42692026">Corrupting Sea </a>and their idea that the ancient
Mediterranean economy was dominated by semi-autonomous micro-regions. By
separating trade from larger economic theorizing, there is a chance that we can
produce a far less structured body of data that has the potential to reveal new
patterns or organization that do more than challenge or confirm the growing body
of economic theorizing. ¬†In fact, Sean Kingsley's unstructured datasets (that
is to say, a data set made of individual records without any methodological
relationship to one another) of Late Antique and Byzantine shipwrecks could
present just the kind of evidence necessary to create new models of how trade
actually occurred in the ancient and Medieval Mediterranean (31-36). ¬†Of
course, this kind of optimistic empiricism is difficult to come by in practice
(and even more difficult to fund!), although one can imagine a time soon when
the results of the various survey projects in the Eastern Mediterranean could
offer a similar kind of unstructured data for analysis. It is interesting to
observe, however, that most of the papers in this volume fall quickly back on
longstanding
P. Armstrong's article, "Trade in the east Mediterranean in the 8th century",
for example, continues the work of pushing the date of Cypriot Red Slip pottery
later demonstrating that trade in this common Eastern Mediterranean table ware
continued into the 8th century (157-178). ¬†(Moreover, she reminds us that
despite its name, CRS (or perhaps better Late Roman D Ware) may not all
originate on the island of Cyprus!). ¬†Armstrong's article complements a shorter
piece by I. Dimopoulos which looks at the trade in Byzantine red wares in the
11th and 13th century. ¬†Both of these articles provide (as well as O.
Karagiorgou's ¬†short offering on "Mapping trade by the amphora" (37-58))
continue the discussion of the relationship between the Late Roman and Byzantine
economy on archaeological grounds. To my mind, these discussions are rooted in
certain basic expectations regarding the economy, specifically, the notion that
the Late Roman economy faltered over the course of the 7th-9th century. This
basic assumption suggests that the economy is tied to administrative structures
and practices like the annona trade and the political control of the
Mediterranean basin. ¬†Demonstrating the certain kinds of trade continued even
23
as the political power of the Roman state abated does little to separate the
idea of trade from larger questions of economic integration or administrative
and political control.
I was drawn to this book while thinking about <a
href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/2010/06/theory-and-method-in-
byzantine.html">my own venture into the study of Byzantine archaeology</a> and
it struck me that the approach advocated here is explicitly anti-theoretical (if
one understands the economy as a more intensively theorized version of the
practice of trade). ¬†The results are interesting and useful, but it barely
scratches the surface of what Byzantine archaeologists are currently doing in
the field.
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TITLE: What to do with a blog, when you're done using it
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BASENAME: what-to-do-with-a-blog-when-youre-done-using-it
CATEGORY: The New Media
DATE: 11/30/2010 06:56:51 AM

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Over the past month or so, I've decided to shutter this blog. I don't think
that I'll stop blogging, but I'll probably move to another platform or try to
find better way to integrate social media into my daily observations. ¬†My
reasons for shuttering this blog are not entirely clear to me, but I guess they
reflect a combination of things:
1. Now that my tenure portfolio is in the pipeline, I've lost the visceral
feeling of risk that comes with blogging while an untenured, assistant
professor.
2. This blog is unattractive and I do not have the energy to redesign it.
3. I have this vague feeling that a blog should have a life span. ¬†I feel
like blogs should come to an end at some point or to have some form of
organization dictated by time. ¬†After all, a blog is a time driven genre or
medium. ¬†Posts are organized chronologically like its early predecessor "the
log". ¬†One of my favorite blogs on the web, <a
href="http://digitalhistoryhacks.blogspot.com/">Digital History Hacks sits on
the web in archive form</a>.
4. I want a new challenge. ¬†I think my readership on this blog has pretty
much leveled off at a bit more than 100 page views a day. ¬†I run close to 1000
page views a week. ¬†This far exceeded my original goals for my blog and now
that I have reached these goals, I just have this feeling that I should change
up what I'm doing, go somewhere new.
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5. My other blogs run on Wordpress. ¬†As dedicated readers of this blog know,
I have a few other online projects that generally run on Wordpress (<a
href="http://teachingthursday.org/">Teaching Thursday</a>, <a
href="http://punkarchaeology.wordpress.com/">Punk Archaeology</a>) and I have
come to like the Wordpress interface. ¬†So maybe I'll start up this blog again
in some fashion on Wordpress.
This is not to say that I'm going to stop blogging today or that this is some
kind of dramatic farewell post. ¬†I'll keep blogging here until the end of the
year.
The bigger issue is what to do with the content here. ¬†This blog runs on
Typepad. ¬†I chose this years ago without much critical thought. It's a paid
blogging service and the service and uptime has been great. ¬†The downside is
that, when I stop paying, they stop hosting. ¬†I am not sure that it's viable to
pull everything on this blog down (images, links, text) and even if I did do
this, I am sure that there are dead links throughout that would do very little
good. ¬†Moreover, I was pretty careless with regard to organizing where
supporting files live scattering them over a range of locations on the web with
different lifespans and maintenance parameters.
Another alternative is just to grab all the text and put it into a single
text file. ¬†Typepad does this more or less automatically. ¬†With all the mark
up, this file runs to about 900 pages of text with full mark up. While this text
based archive would obviously lose the actual hyperlinks ¬†between posts and to
the wider web, it would preserve the mark up for these links making it possible
for someone to reconstruct parts of the blog. ¬†We have an excellent <a
href="http://library.und.edu/Collections/UA/home.php">University Archive
</a>here on campus. ¬†I think I'll offer them the text of my blog for their
collection. ¬†The <a href="http://www.archive.org/">Internet Archive </a>has
captured several snap shots of my blog (<a
href="http://web.archive.org/web/20080113225544/http://mediterraneanworld.typepa
d.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/">January 13, 2008</a>; <a
d.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/">December 12, 2007</a>; <a
d.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/">November 10, 2007</a>; <a
d.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/">October 28, 2007</a>). ¬†It's pretty cool to
know that some of my work is in the Internet Archive. ¬†Just to be clear, it's
not that I think that my blog is so revolutionary or brilliant that it deserves
a place in the history of the internet, but I am enough of a historian to
realize that preservation of historical artifacts of all kinds is a voluntary
process.
I guess I could also make an effort to import relevant posts to Wordpress or
whatever service I plan to use in the future, but this seems like a time
consuming and painful process.
So, I have a month to figure out what to do. ¬†As per usual, any tips,
insights, advice, suggestions, and insults are welcome in the comments.
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EMAIL:
IP: 134.129.205.189
DATE: 11/30/2010 09:56:21 AM
I'd hate to see it disappear. There is too much work, too many ideas and lots of
great feedback from readers. While I understand all the points you make, I feel
rather nostalgic about it. And besides, the design is now old skool.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Daniel Sauerwein
EMAIL: daniel.sauerwein@und.edu
IP: 134.129.205.185
URL: http://civilwarhistory.wordpress.com
DATE: 11/30/2010 01:05:39 PM
With Wordpress, you should be able to import your posts into a new blog that
could serve as an "archive" of this blog. I would suggest that route, though I
do wish you luck in your decision, which actually gives me some thoughts. Have
you given any thought to setting up a group blog on our department? That could
give you the new direction you are looking for, as well as introduce more of us
to blogging and the world to what we do as a department. Just a thought. Hope to
see you around the next couple days.
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COMMENT:
IP: 76.99.56.171
URL:
DATE: 11/30/2010 02:29:40 PM
Oh man!!! Since you got me started on blogging, now I'm terrified. Looking
forward to see where you go (so that I might follow...)
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TITLE: Local Knowledge and Universal Goals
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CATEGORY: Academia
DATE: 11/29/2010 06:51:13 AM

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My wife works in marketing and external relations at <a
href="http://www.und.edu/dept/grad/">The Graduate School</a> here at the
University of North Dakota, and we regularly discuss the ways that universities
sell themselves both to a local and global community. This happens to
coincide with some of my own research interests which explore the tension
26
between institutions with universalizing aspirations (the emperor or, better

still, the church) and local practices and traditions. A local saint for example
represents a hyper local manifestation of the power of the universal church.
For a university, a local class or tradition is the manifestation of
global expectations of what a "university" education means.
Schools have always sought to maintain an identity that made them both
access to longstanding "stakeholders" and, at the same time, appealing
to people who will only acquire familiarity with the place and its traditions
when they arrive there.!
With the expansion of online and distance teaching the relationship between
local (and spatial) sense of community and the wider world becomes even more
attenuated. <a href="http://www.phoenix.edu/about_us/uopx-on-
television.html">A recent group of University of Phoenix commercials</a>, for
example, students show students in the most generic of locations (non-spaces, in
fact) airports, on trains, at home, or in commuter traffic rather than
surrounded by iconic buildings (the intensely local and ubiquitous "old
main"), the stadium or other campus scenes.!
All this is a long introduction of a billboard that I walk by almost every
day on my way home:!
<img alt="PARKULocalKnowledge.jpg" border="0" height="269"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2013489987615970c
-pi" style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"
title="PARKULocalKnowledge.jpg" width="450" />!
The billboard advertises <a href="http://www.park.edu/">Park University</a>,
which has a "campus" at the Grand Forks Air Force Base. From
what I can gather Park has an agreement with the Air Force to provide college
courses on base which they also open to the wider community. Other than
Park being competition for local tuition dollars, I don't know of anything
wrong with them and they certainly do not have the reputation of a for-profit
university like the University of Phoenix. In fact, I am pretty sure that Park
is non-profit university.!
Back to local knowledge, Park clearly endeavored to show its
"local" nature by featuring in a prominent way what would appear to be
a local phone number on its billboard. The number looks local because it
does not have an area code or the dreaded 1-800 in front of it (which every
American knows to be the area code for "outsourced to India").
Unfortunately, local numbers here in the Grand Cities (like other major
metropolitan areas (e.g. New York City)) always feature an area code.
Since we are on the North Dakota - Minnesota border local numbers
typically are typically proceeded by a 701 or 218 area code. A
"local" will almost always starts their number with their area
code.!
Non-local universities are not a particularly jarring feature of the American
higher education landscape these days, they only become jarring when they try to
be local and fail.!
UPDATE: By the way, I corresponded a bit with the Park
University folks and one of them kindly pointed out that John Gillette of our
Gillette Hall (and widely regarded as one of the founders of rural sociology)
was a Park University graduate in 1895.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: BrianB
EMAIL: elucidarian@gmail.com
IP: 134.129.193.245
URL:
DATE: 11/29/2010 11:32:38 AM
What a coincidence. I just noticed that billboard for the first time this
morning, and also took a moment afterward to consider the marketing involved. I
got caught up contemplating the temporal question of how a woman is visualized
in a given time period and whether this particular image was meant to represent
the modern, education-seeking female.
Building on your own observations, is this a good sign for Grand Forks' vitality
that outside enterprises see us as a market valuable enough to invest? Is it
resultant of North Dakota's status as a state that has weathered the economic
storm?
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COMMENT:
IP: 98.111.177.94
URL:
DATE: 11/29/2010 10:50:52 PM
Fabulous ruminations and documentation of ephemera.
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TITLE: Archaeology of Thanksgiving Dinner
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DATE: 11/26/2010 07:09:25 AM

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Two green ceramic baking dishes. One white ceramic backing dish with
handles. Two metal "baking pans". Ceramic leaf-shaped serving dish
with ceramic, acorn-shaped, bowl with lid. One silver salad bowl. One
pie pan. One small, ceramic bowl with lid.
3 stainless steel and 2 silver serving spoons. ¬†Two brass candle stick
holders. 1 bottle glass Prosecco bottle.
Two ceramic plates. 4 forks, 2 knives, 2 spoons. 2 inexpensive glass
champagne flutes. 2 glass drinking "glasses".
Four chairs and table (probably pine). ¬†White fabric table cloth.
<img style="float: left;" title="Thanksgiving.jpg"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201348987ad15970c
-pi" border="0" alt="Thanksgiving.jpg" width="401" height="600" />
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TITLE: George Walsh and the Founding of UND
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BASENAME: george-walsh-and-the-founding-of-und
CATEGORY: Grand Forks Notes
CATEGORY: North Dakotiana
DATE: 11/24/2010 06:56:09 AM

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Despite the inclement weather the University of North Dakota is scheduled to
unveil a strange kind of monument today: a bust of George Walsh (<a
href="http://www2.und.nodak.edu/our/news/story.php?id=3296">here's the genuinely
bizarre press release</a>). ¬†Walsh is one of the "founding fathers" of eastern
North Dakota and was responsible for the siting of the University of North
Dakota in Grand Forks. ¬†His interest in the locating of the University was
largely economic, and he used his political power (and audacity) in the
provincial legislature to beat out Jamestown and other competing sites for the
location of the school.¬†Walsh was a relative of Captian Alexander Griggs who
ran the local steamboat line and himself owned the local paper, the
Plainsdealer, and served as the president of the town council when
Grand Forks was founded in 1878. ¬†<a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walsh_County,_North_Dakota">Walsh county
</a>is named in his honor.
Once the university was founded, Walsh ensured that the school continued to
receive appropriations from the state legislature throughout the late 19th
century. ¬†Moreover, he served as the first secretary of the board of regents
for UND. (It is fun to imagine that he recorded the minutes of the first
meetings <a
href="http://www.library.und.edu/Collections/BoardofRegents/Images/Volume1/p3.jp
g">in his elegant hand</a>). More importantly, perhaps, he penned the first
history of the founding of the University which President Webster Merrifield
incorporated into the first "Founder's Day" celebration at the University's 21st
birthday in 1904 (<a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/university-of-the-
northern-plains-a-history-of-the-university-of-north-dakota-1883-
1958/oclc/1107281">Geiger</a>, 178).
From a historical standpoint, then, Walsh followed the tradition of writing
himself into the history of the university at the moment where the young school
was most intent on creating new "invented traditions". ¬†This is not to
discredit Walsh's contribution to the founding of the university, but to place
the creating myth of the school within its proper context.
29
Here is <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/university-of-the-northern-

plains-a-history-of-the-university-of-north-dakota-1883-1958/oclc/1107281">Louis
Geiger's definitive description</a> (followed in <a
href="http://www.grandforksherald.com/event/article/id/184384/">this recent op-
ed in the </a><a
href="http://www.grandforksherald.com/event/article/id/184384/">Grand Forks
Herald</a> (the rival newspaper to George Walsh's long defunct
Plaindealer):
<blockquote>
"... Walsh was deeply involved in the complicated intrigues and politics of
the crucial legislative session of 1883 at Yankton where so much of the present
educational and institutional pattern of both Dakotas was set. ¬†Ordway had
fired the opening gun in his annual message, in which he recommended the
establishment of territorial institutions in the north. The next step, which had
been prearranged, was to split the southern dedication, which was in
overwhelming majoring in both houses - ten to three in the Council. With the
approval of Ordway and the northern crowd, J.O.B. Scobey of Brookings was
quickly elected president of the Council. ¬†The South Dakota break was further
exploited when Walsh after some talk of removing the capital to an entirely new
town site on the open prairie, introduced a bill to move it from Yankton to
Huron, also in the south.
In late January, while Walsh was held up by a blizzard in St. Paul, where he
had gone on a short business trip, the South Dakota group attempted to re-form
their lines by making overturns to S. G. Roberts and Jonston Nickeus, the
representative from Fargo and Jamestown, who were not satisfied with the plans
for the north. ¬†They introduced their own set of bills appropriating a half a
million dollars for institutions, most of them in the south. ¬†Walsh hastily
returned and pulled together his wavering northern colleagues, apparently by
accepting a proposal that they draw lots for the university, agricultural
college, and the insane asylum and penitentiary. (He wrote years later: "I took
the University, Jamestown the insane asylum and Fargo took the agricultural
college. ¬†The penitentiary went to Bismarck."). ¬†He then counterattacked by
promising the north's support for establishment of an agricultural college at
Brookings, Scobey's town, and for appropriations to launch the Dakota University
established at Vermillion in 1862 and the normals established by the 1881
Assembly at Spearfish and Madison.
With his lines partially re-formed, Walsh managed to bury the South Dakota
institutional bills in the appropriations committee, of which he was chairman.
¬†Fearing that his still restive northern colleagues might yet walk off with the
prize, he hastily introduced into the legislative hopper some blank sheets of
paper inscribed "a bill for an Act Locating the University of North Dakota at
Grand Forks, N.D., and Providing Government thereto." ¬†In the two days required
for first and second readings, which were by title only, Walsh prepared the bill
modeled on the University of Wisconsin act and substituted it for the dummy when
it was routinely referred to his appropriations committee. As he put it: "No one
would be any wiser, and no harm would be done by anyone, and I would get my bill
ahead of Fargo or Jamestown, which I succeeded in doing. The Jamestown member
was very much disappointed."
<a
href="http://www.grandforksherald.com/event/article/id/184384/">Geiger</a>, 18-
19.
</blockquote>
What is interesting to me is that Walsh's bust - situated outside of the
administrative building - will be one of the few monuments to a specific
individual on campus here (aside from names on buildings). ¬†On historical
30
grounds, it is curious that he'd be chosen. While there is no doubt that his
energies helped the university survive its formative years, one could easily
argue that personalities like President's Webster Merrifield or Frank McVey or
even John C. West had a more transformative influence on the institution as a
place of higher learning.
In contrast, Walsh's unique contribution seems to have been acts of arguably
rather self-serving political cunning, and the opportunity to write himself into
the history of a university at the moment when it was looking to establish a set
of traditions around which to forge an identity. ¬†It is perhaps not
coincidental that Walsh's lonely bust is being dedicated at a time when the
University continues to seek an identity and forge distinct traditions in the
competitive world of higher education. ¬†In fact, it's hard not to think that
the decision to commemorate this little known founder of the University suggests
a gentle touch of irony from that least ironic of institutions: the University
administration.
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TITLE: Teaching Tuesday: More Teaching with Twitter
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BASENAME: teaching-tuesday-more-teaching-with-twitter
CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 11/23/2010 07:48:07 AM

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Readers of this blog know that I've been experimenting with Twitter in the
classroom both online and as live backchannel while I am lecturing live. ¬†<a
href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-
2729.2010.00387.x/abstract">The </a><a
2729.2010.00387.x/abstract">Journal of Computer Assisted Learning</a><a
2729.2010.00387.x/abstract"> has recently published one of the first academic
articles on using Twitter in the classroom: R. Junco, G. Heiberger, and E. Loken
"The effect of Twitter on college engagement and grades"</a>. ¬† The article
argues basically, that Twitter improves student engagement (following the
definition for engagement developed by the National Survey of Student
Engagement) and, in turn, improves grades. ¬†Their data comes from a large (125
student) group of students enrolled in seven sections of a introductory level
seminar for a pre-health professional program. ¬†The class met one day a week
for an hour, focused in part on T. Kidder's Mountains beyond Mountains,
31
and centered, apparently, on discussion. They also established a control group

who did not use Twitter but the customizable social network service Ning to
communicate. ¬†Twitter used in a number of ways including prompting students to
consider discussion questions before class, organizing study groups, and
engaging a panel of upperclassmen, public health majors. It appears that the
faculty leaders prompted all uses of Twitter, although they do say that
subsequent use of Twitter occurred without prompting.
They gird their argument with relatively careful controls and statistics.
They also record qualitative data including several sample conversations between
the faculty moderator of the Twitter feed and the students. These examples
demonstrated how the faculty member prompted participation in Twitter
discussion. ¬†The article shows that students not only were significantly (from
a statistical viewpoint) more engaged (and there were no pre-existing variations
in engagement between the groups). ¬†They also showed that the semester GPA for
students who used Twitter was significantly higher (.5!!) than among those in
the control group. ¬†Even accounting for the relatively small size of the
sample, these differences are remarkable.
While the experiments did attempt to control for basic variables and appear
to have a sufficient degree of internal rigor, one variable did not appear in
their discussion. ¬†Nowhere do they discuss how the students access
Twitter. In my (completely unscientific) experience, students require a
significant level of technological engagement in their everyday life (smart
phones, laptops, active engagement in existing social media and online
communities) to grasp the potential benefits of a service like Twitter. ¬†While
the authors do cite a recent report that 94% of students use social networking
site and, at one school, as many as 85% use Facebook, they offer little in the
way of explanation for how students use these services. ¬†My expectation would
be that students do not see all social media in the same way (and this tends to
be backed up by the work of social media researchers like <a
href="http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/">danah boyd</a>), and have markedly
different patterns of engagement with a service like Twitter when compared to
Facebook, email, or the informal networks produced through sms messages.
While I do not have quantitative (or even systematic qualitative) data to
back my point, I can offer some informal observations derived from experiences.
¬†I made an effort to use Twitter in a class that met one a week similar to the
class studied in the survey. ¬†My class was a lecture class with 140+ students
rather than the more intimate discussion sections, but I actually think this
would be a more fertile environment for a social media service like Twitter to
produce functioning sub-communities within the larger and relatively impersonal
lecture. ¬†I reckoned that this class would require students to check their
Twitter account and participate in various activities at least twice a week.
¬†To do this, since Twitter is a stand alone site, it would require the student
to log into Twitter as a separate place from Facebook, Blackboard, or other
course management software. ¬†This is something that many of us do as part of
our daily routine at our desks, on our laptops, or on our smart phones, but for
many of my students, the deep and regular engagement with technology is not
really part of their world. ¬†Moreover, there was a significant investment in
becoming comfortable with the technical language of Twitter, which, while not
difficult, is unfamiliar and intimidating to students who only follow well-trod
paths on the internet (from Facebook to email to Blackboard and to content
driven sites like ESPN, CNN, or (for most students) Wikipedia). ¬†In other
words, Twitter is unfamiliar in part because most of the web is unfamiliar to
students whose use of the internet is largely passive or limited. ¬†As a result,
many students simply lurked on Twitter; those who participated regularly only
engaged when explicitly prompted with points (and then only in a very
32
superficial way). ¬†In short, students struggled to understand the advantages to

Twitter for keeping them in touch with their classmates and faculty when not in
class.
The notion of students are digital natives and that Twitter provides a
familiar way to extend the classroom into the space occupied by students in
their everyday lives rests upon problematic assumptions. ¬†Students' engagement
with the internet and with technology tends to occur in a much more limited or
particular way than many of these studies imagine. ¬†The assumption that "social
media" represents a cohesive body of technology and applications for most
students appears to me to be problematic. ¬†Twitter for an undergraduate is
foreign while Facebook is familiar.
Despite these difficulties, this study provides a good foundation for future
study on how to leverage common technology to improve student engagement.
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DATE: 11/22/2010 07:18:35 AM

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This weekend I spent a little time with the Liz James edited <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/companion-to-byzantium/oclc/226356116">A
Companion to Byzantium</a>. (Blackwell 2010). ¬†The scope of the book and
the quality of articles (and contributors) is pretty impressive. ¬†The focus on
the range of Byzantine literature is both gratifying since so much of the
discussion of Byzantine literature has tended to occur in languages other than
English and timely since there seems to be growing interest in Byzantine texts
other than hagiography. ¬†The bibliography runs to over 70 pages and this alone
warrants the perusing of this volume.
The section on Byzantine archaeology, however, is disappointing. ¬†First, it
is less than 10 pages and one page is half-blank and other other features a
photograph of a conserved amphora. So, in all Byzantine archaeology received 8
pages of text in a 400+ page volume. The discussion focuses briefly on villages,
towns, fortifications, and churches with short discussions of nationalism and a
superficial presentation of different "archaeological approaches." ¬†For their
length, the sections are decent, but the decisions to focus on this little
handful of areas is difficult to understand. ¬†For example, the chapter left out
any sustained discussion of ceramic typologies and chronologies (a favorite of
33
many of Byzantine archaeologist colleagues), scientific approaches (e.g.

dendrochronology, physical anthropology, et c.) which have made such a
significant impact on the field, intensive pedestrian survey on the regional
level (which in Greece has begun to produce significant changes in how we
understand Byzantine settlement), the archaeology of ethnicity (which is
obviously central to discussions of ethnic change, modern nation building, and
historical perceptions of Byzantium in the West), and the relationship of
Byzantine archaeology to careful work on the Medieval, typically Crusader,
eastern Mediterranean. ¬†Some of these oversights can be attributed to the
"late" date for the start of Byzantium; the author chose to begin the Byzantine
period in archaeology in the second half of the 6th century. ¬†While this dating
falls within the conventional periodization for the start of the Byzantine
period, it is not explained in terms of archaeological evidence. ¬†In fact, it
is increasingly clear that many of the trends that characterize Byzantine
material culture (for example, ceramic types, construction styles, and
settlement) tend in many parts of the Eastern Mediterranean to persist from the
4th to even the early 7th century (depending on local economic, religious, and
political contingencies).
To be fair, the chapter on Byzantine archaeology is complemented by a nice
chapter by Peter Sarris on "Economics, Trade, and 'Feudalism'" which pays
particular attention to the circulation of currency and the practical
significance of identifying Byzantine coins in archaeological contexts.
¬†Despite this contribution, the neglect of archaeology in this volume is
remarkable. ¬†Of course, it is always easy to say that no volume can even
contain everything that every scholar deems central to the study of a particular
period. But, on the other hand, the argument for including a robust discussion
of Byzantine archaeology in a volume of this scope is hardly a reach.
Few areas of Byzantine studies have seen the vitality of Byzantine
archaeology over the past several decades especially when it is considered under
the wider banner of Medieval and Post-Medieval archaeology in the Eastern
Mediterranean. ¬†As a little advertisement for myself (this is my blog!), it
just so happens that Kostis Kourelis and I are working on<a
href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/2010/06/theory-and-method-in-byzantine.html">
an edited volume right now </a>that will bring together some of the most recent
contributions to the archaeological study of Byzantium, and we hope that it will
contribute to the archaeology of Byzantium taking a more prominent place in the
future of Byzantine studies.
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TITLE: First Snow Winter 2010
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DATE: 11/21/2010 11:58:19 AM

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In keeping with an irregularly held Archaeology of the Mediterranean World
tradition, here are pictures from the first significant snow of the year. ¬†The
pictures are courtesy of my lovely wife:
title="Snow1.JPG"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201348968808d970c
-pi" border="0" alt="Snow1.JPG" width="450" height="301" />
title="Snow2.JPG"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201348968809c970c
title="Snow3.JPG"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20134896880a3970c
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DATE: 11/19/2010 09:24:04 AM

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It's not the cold, it's the wind. ¬†Some quick hits and varia on a windy
Friday:
<ul>
<li><a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/17/arts/17digital.html?_r=2&hpw">The
New York Times on digital humanities</a>.</li>
<li><a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/16/education/16clickers.html?_r=3&src=m
e&ref=general">The New York Times on clickers and other digital tools in the
traditional classroom</a>.</li>
<li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cj6ho1-G6tw">Danny MacAskill's
newest video is incredible</a>. First, it approaches Scotland from a vaguely
35
historical perspective and, then, the riding and stunts and skills are
amazing.</li>
<li>The video of abandoned and soon to be demolished Six Flags Amusement park
outside of New Orleans is pretty much viral. ¬†<a
href="http://savageminds.org/2010/11/15/collage-for-nola-ruin/">A blog post over
at Savage Minds puts in an a provocative context</a>. </li>
<li><a href="http://www.placehacking.co.uk/2010/10/05/urban-explorers-video-
article/">The Place Hacking blog has an interesting video and article on the
culture of urban explorers</a>. ¬†It's brilliant that Geography Compass allows
video articles.</li>
<li><a href="http://bloggingpompeii.blogspot.com/2010/11/dealing-with-decay-
2.html">Eric Poehler responded to these thoughts from an ancient perspective on
the Blogging Pompeii blog</a>.</li>
<li><a href="http://aal.au.dk/en/klasark/studies/summerschool2011">Late Antique
Summer School in Constantinople</a>.</li>
<li><a href="http://www.samothrace.emory.edu/">Emory University's Samothrace
project </a>website is nice. </li>
<li><a href="http://www.fubiz.net/2010/11/15/apple-destroyed-products/">Smashed
Apple products</a>.</li>
<li>What I'm reading: R. Bagnall, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/administration-of-the-ptolemaic-possessions-
outside-egypt/oclc/2663313">The Administration of the Ptolemaic Possessions
Outside Egypt</a>. (Leiden 1976). ¬†M. M. Mango ed., <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/byzantine-trade-4th-12th-centuries-the-
archaeology-of-local-regional-and-international-exchange-papers-of-the-thirty-
eighth-spring-symposium-of-byzantine-studies-st-johns-college-university-of-
oxford-march-2004/oclc/244293201">Byzantine Trade, 4th-12th Centuries</a>.
(Burlington 2009).</li>
<li>What I'm listening to: Scott H. Biram, Graveyard Shift and John
Legend and the Roots, Wake Up! </li>
</ul>
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Diana Wright
EMAIL: dianagwright@comcast.net
IP: 76.104.194.177
URL: http://surprisedbytime.blogspot.com
DATE: 11/19/2010 10:45:00 AM
Hi, Bill -- check the Eric Poehler link.
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TITLE: Icons and Space (and Dreams) in Late Antiquity
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CATEGORY: Byzantium
DATE: 11/18/2010 07:10:05 AM

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This week I received my annual copy of the Journal of Roman
Archaeology. ¬†It always arrives in the mid-fall when the weather has just
begun to turn, and it gives me a good excuse to curl up in a comfortable chair
and review the archaeology of the Roman world. ¬†This year's volume included a
nice article by Paul Dilley entitled "Christian icon practice in apocryphal
literature: the consecration and the conversion of synagogues into churches" JRA
23 (2010), 285-302 (notice no hyperlink!).
The article focuses less on the conversion of synagogues to churches and more
on the role of icons in creating sacred space. Dilley draws his evidence from
the oft-neglected body of apocyphal literature from Late Antiquity. These texts
are typically ascribed to a Biblical figure or major bishop, but tend to be
later, and generally speaking popular texts that often sought to give a
contemporary tradition an august pedigree. ¬†So when the use of icons to
sanctify places begins to appear in these texts, there is real reason to think
that this represents a shift in practice in the era in which they were written.
¬†A classic example of the role of these apocryphal texts in legitimizing
practices is the 6th century¬†Laudatio Barnabae from Cyprus. ¬†This
text describes the discovery of Paul's companion, Barnabas's body, on Cyprus
about a century earlier. ¬†The story features the Bishop Anthemius of Salamais
who has a series of dreams that lead him to the place where Barnabas was buried.
¬†When he exhumes the body, he finds it clutching a copy of the Gospel of
Matthew. ¬†Ultimately this text comes to explain the construction of the church
dedicated to St. Barnabas in Salamis, as well as explain the special privileges
that the church of Cyprus held which emerged over the course of the later 5th
century. Barnabas's apostolic pedigree, the timely appearance of his body, and
the presence of an autograph of the Gospel of Matthew, all helped to legitimize
the church of Cyprus as an autonomous apostolic foundation.
Dilley highlights a series of similar stories which place relics or icons at
the center of the founding of churches. ¬†He also stresses that these foundation
stories often include important liturgical elements which suggests that the
stories do more than simply legitimize the founding of the church as a building,
but link the founding of a church to annual rites celebrated to commemorate the
event. ¬†So the stories of the¬†inventio (the discovery)¬†of a relic,
icon, or the body of a saint, has key liturgical elements that are reinforced
through the rituals of commemoration in which the text plays a key role.
¬†Processions, acclamations (kyrie eleison!), and the key role of the
clergy all mark these texts as liturgical as well as simply devotional or
"historical" texts.
The role of liturgy in the discovery of icons or relics is something that
scholars have not necessarily fully realized. ¬†In fact, some scholars have
followed <a
href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CBcQFjAA&a
mp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fdis.fatih.edu.tr%2Fstore%2Fdocs%2F741256Fxb9ksyF.pdf&rct
=j&q=Dark%20Age%20Controversy%20Brown&ei=cCLlTLrjIJHtngeo-
czEDQ&usg=AFQjCNHSEJCFQU6ObwIHUbzpOQ29J_Cl6Q&sig2=I5TWxixTV9IfPzGC03Rsjg
">Peter Brown's lead (.pdf)</a> and seen icons as almost anti-clerical in that
they allow for access to holiness outside of the control of the institutional
37
church and the clergy. ¬†In other words, there are ways that the veneration of
icons and relics represent paths to holiness that end-run the clergy. ¬†Dilley,
however, has argued that stories in seemingly popular apocryphal literature not
only commemorate the key role of icons and relics in creating sacred, liturgical
space, but also embed this tradition within liturgical practices that tie the
deeply personal holiness of the icon to the institutional holiness of the
church.
As for the conversion of synagogues, I'll admit to being less compelled by
the final pages of Dilley's article where he offers a very basic typology for
the archaeological evidence relating to the conversion of synagogues to
churches, but does not really bring it back to his far more provocative and
exciting arguments about icons, liturgy, and the creation of Christian sacred
space. ¬†That being said, he makes a good point that the presence of icons in
buildings newly converted to Churches - like the synagogue at Cagliara on
Sardinia, the synagogue at Lydda, and the Pantheon in Rome - seems to be a key
aspect in their consecration for Christian use by the 7th century. ¬†This
reminds me of a Coptic church I visited for Easter Vigil in Columbus, Ohio. The
church had been converted from a Jehovah's Witness Kingdom Hall to a Coptic
church. While the unabashedly Protestant architecture of the building remained,
the presence of Coptic icons on almost every flat surface marked out the
repurposing of the space.
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TITLE: Peer Review, Scholarship, and Blogs
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DATE: 11/17/2010 07:33:26 AM

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The conversation continues on the relationship between blogging and published
scholarship. Increasingly, the central issue tends to be peer review. ¬†Blogs
are not peer reviewed; academic publications are. This dichotomy is important
and represents the core generic difference between working papers and the final
publications of result. ¬†Unfortunately, these ideas have been twisted somehow
(and I fear that scholars in the humanities have been responsible for this) to
mean that only peer reviewed works have value and blogs and other informal types
of "correspondence" (in the broadest sense) are not valuable, a waste of
precious academic time and creativity, and, at very worst, a contribution of the
glut of uncritical opinion that clutters the internet and threatens to crowd out
38
careful, reasoned, thought. ¬†(<a

re-on-academic-blogging.html">For more on these perspectives see here</a>.)
Just this week, Michael O'Malley wrote a provocative blog post on the value
of peer review entitled <a href="http://theaporetic.com/?p=896">Googling Peer
Review, Part Two</a> on his <a href="http://theaporetic.com/">Aporetic Blog</a>.
¬†He suggests that good or unorthodox work does not necessarily benefit from
peer review and, in some case, might be good and unorthodox despite the
peer review process.
I am not sufficiently brilliant to write good and unorthodox works. ¬†At the
same time, I am not completely sold in the universal value of peer review. While
I'll be the first to admit that peer review has significantly helped several of
my published articles, I'll also concede that most of the central ideas in my
articles were unaffected by peer review (well, except those ideas that died in
the peer review process, never to be heard from again!). ¬†Most of the critiques
offered by various peer reviewers focused on the clarity of our argument,
provided references that we had overlooked, or identified different implications
for our conclusions. ¬†These were all helpful and meaningful contributions to
our work, but ultimately none of these reviews changed the basic content of our
contributions.
I'll admit that the argument that I am making here comes on the heels of a
particularly pleasant and uncontroversial peer review process for an article
that, at its core, is little more than a glorified archaeological site report.
¬†But it may be that this kind of article is the least deserving of peer review.
¬†The formal publication of the article slowed down the circulation of
information to colleagues and added little significant academic value to the
basic results of our field work. ¬†In fact, peer review strengthened our
interpretative conclusions, but hardly made them unassailable.
So at least some of the issue is not peer review per se, but the nature of
genre in academic writing. ¬†As O'Malley's post points out many of the most
significant works of scholarship in the last 70 years were not peer reviewed in
a traditional sense (and the same could also be said of ¬†many of the least
significant works as well). ¬†The works identified by O'Malley tend to occupy
unconventional academic genres which are least likely to benefit from
traditional peer review; even today works like M. Foucault's Discipline and
Punish upset traditional disciplinary critiques, and E. P. Thompson's
Making of the English Working Class stands apart from nearly any work
of history writing up until that time (or since). ¬†In a more modest way, data
driven archaeological reports fit into this category as well. ¬†There is little
that a peer review can provide a scholar aside from reminders of archaeological
conventions and advanced copy editing.
To prove my point, I can offer as a case study a recent publication of mine.
¬†Over the past two years, I blogged most of the content that appeared
ultimately in our peer reviewed publication that appeared this past week. ¬†I've
appended a copy of our final article at end of this blogpost.¬†¬†Of course, some
of the final product reflects the hard work of the Hesperia editorial
team who in many ways serve as another level of peer review because nearly all
of them are practicing archaeologists with advanced graduate training the field.
So, I am fudging a bit with this example.
Here are links to my various blog posts, conference papers, and working
papers that led up to the final publication our work. ¬†These received no formal
peer review:
July 20, 2008:¬†<a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2008/07/th
e-corinthian.html">The Corinthian Countryside: The Site of Ano Vayia</a> July 23, 2008:¬†<a

href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2008/07/ne
w-research-on.html">New Research on the Corinthian Countryside: Vayia
MicroregionÔªø </a>August 5, 2008:¬†<a
e-corinthian.html">The Corinthian Countryside: Distributional Data from the Site
of Ano Vayia</a> August 12, 2008:¬†<a
e-corinthia-1.html">The Corinthian Countryside: The Lychnari Tower</a> ÔªøAugust 19, 2008:¬†<a
e-corinthia-2.html">The Corinthian Countryside: The Passes of the Eastern
Corinthia</a> August 25, 2008:¬†<a
e-corinthia-3.html">The Corinthian Countryside: Classical Vayia</a> ÔªøSeptember 1, 2008:¬†<a
e-corinthian.html">The Corinthian Countryside: History and Archaeology</a> September 8, 2008:¬†<a
e-corinthia-1.html">The Corinthian Countryside: Some More Contemporary
Thoughts</a> January 12, 2009:¬†<a
ree-new-sites-in-the-eastern-corinthia.html">Three New Sites in the Eastern
Corinthia</a> (W. Caraher and D. Pettegrew) July 27, 2009: <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2009/07/vi
ewsheds-in-the-eastern-corinthia.html">Viewsheds in the Eastern Corinthia</a> August 10, 2009:¬†<a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/WorkingPapers/Caraher_Pettegrew
_Towers_Fortifications_Working.pdf">ÔªøWorking Paper: Towers and Foritfication
at Vayia in the Southeast Corinthia (Caraher, Pettegrew, S. James)</a>
The final publication:
<a title="View Caraher Pettegrew James VayiaOffprint 2010 on Scribd"
href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/42994192/Caraher-Pettegrew-James-VayiaOffprint-
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14px; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; -x-
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name="doc_936682604688997" height="450" width="100%" type="application/x-
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width="100%" wmode="opaque" bgcolor="#ffffff"></embed> </object>
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Over the last year I have become more and more committed to various social
media applications, and over the last six months, I am completely obsessed with
Twitter. (Facebook, not so much, but not for any ideological or practical
reasons; I just prefer Twitter run through Hootsuite). ¬†Recently I have been
enamored with the spate of historical figures on Twitter. ¬†The first that I
recognized was the brilliant <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/CryForByzantium">Cry
for Byzantium </a>which sent out creative Tweets in the name of various
Byzantine Emperors who have particular interests in politics, military
campaigns, diplomacy, and palace intrigue. ¬†The blog is run by the author Sean
Munger who explains the set up for <a
href="http://cryforbyzantium.blog.com/">Cry for Byzantium on his blog</a>. At
present he has over 550 followers and has sent out over 2000 Tweets!
Since then I've also begun to follow <a
href="http://twitter.com/#!/iTweetus">iTweetus</a>, who is a Roman soldier on
campaign in England during the winter of 72/73 AD. ¬†His feed is curated by <a
href="http://www.tulliehouse.co.uk/roman-frontier-gallery">the Roman Frontier
Gallery at Tullie House in Carlisle</a>. ¬†Tweetus is poetic and has a keen eye
for the rugged landscape and the worsening weather. ¬†I hope he survives the
winter. At present iTweetus has made 53 tweets (he's on campaign for heaven sake
and who knows what the Roman mobile phone coverage is like at the borders of
empire!) and has 495 followers.
Finally, <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/iherodotus">iHerodotus</a> has begun
to push out tweets from his great work on the Persian Wars. ¬†He has 172
followers and has pushed out 95 tweets. ¬†<a
href="http://bestlatin.blogspot.com/2009/06/twitter-ivlivscaesar.html">Laura
Gibbs has been tweeting </a><a
href="http://twitter.com/#!/IVLIVSCAESAR">Plutarch's </a><a
href="http://twitter.com/#!/IVLIVSCAESAR">Life of Julius Caesar</a> since
the summer. She has over 100 followers and has made over 1000 tweets. Various
authors whose works are being tweet are aggregated into several lists like <a
href="http://twitter.com/#!/MarkKohut/classic-writers-words">Classic Writer's
Words</a>.
The idea that these real or fictional ancient figures are part of my "social
network" certainly stretches the notion of a social network and its virtual
41
existence to a new place. ¬†To be sure, Herodotus or even the Byzantine

Emperor's do not respond to my Tweets as a colleague might, but at the same time
their stories and personalities emerge over the course of their twitter feeds.
¬†Like college classmates or rarely seen acquaintances, the names of historical
figures and the text of classic literature roll out across my twitter feed
sharing space with various automated tweets from tech-bloggers, various
companies, CNN, athletic teams, et c.
My social media space, then, extends the notions of the social to include a
wide range of products, services, individuals, and texts. Or, to see it another
way, my social media space represents the commodification of personal
relationships as much as the personalization of products and services. I am not
sure how historical figures fit into a network of commodified social relations,
except by observing that historical figures have always contributed to the
production of social capital. ¬†If Twitter, Facebook, and other social media
services provide new ways to visualize and deploy the diverse range of social
capital, then there is no reason why historical figures, texts, and other works
of so-called "high culture" should not appear.
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TITLE: Christians in Roman Space
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CATEGORY: Religion
DATE: 11/15/2010 07:22:31 AM

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On the strength of a <a href="http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2010/2010-10-
65.html">BMCR</a><a href="http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2010/2010-10-65.html">
review</a>, I spent the last few days reading Laura Salah Nasrallah's <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/christian-responses-to-roman-art-and-
architecture-the-second-century-church-amid-the-spaces-of-
empire/oclc/417444878">Christian Responses to Roman Art and
Architecture</a>. (Cambridge 2010). ¬†The book juxtaposes the works of
several 2nd c. Christian "apologists" (Tatian, Justin, Athenagoras, and Clement
of Alexandria) and the space of the Roman empire. ¬†To do this, she parallels
the texts with specific places within the Roman world (e.g. the Sebasteion at
Aphrodisias or the Trajans forum) or specific works of art (e.g. statues of
Commodus as Herakles or the Aphrodite of Knidos). ¬†Both the texts, the space,
42
and the works of art themselves fall significantly outside my area of expertise.
¬†The approach, on the other hand, which assumes that texts are no more or nor
less products of the same culture that produced understandable spaces and
statues within the Roman world represents a significant interest to me.
In particular, I was intrigued by how Nasrallah used these texts as evidence
for Christian response to the built environment of the Roman world. ¬†Of course,
this response was, to a certain extent, constructed by the author's decision to
juxtapose particular texts with particular environments (see the BMCR review for
this observation), but, at the same time, the move to compare texts and
monuments in a way that shed light on critical readings of built space was, to
me at least, novel. ¬†The alienated (or at least conflicted) posture of figures
like Tatian when positioned opposite the imperial rhetoric of the Sebasteion is
particular striking and reminds me of John Clarke's more speculative approach to
the reading of Trajan's column in his <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/art-in-the-lives-of-ordinary-romans-visual-
representation-and-non-elite-viewers-in-italy-100-bc-ad-315/oclc/51172352">Art
in the lives of Ordinary Romans</a> (Berkeley 2003) or some of the essays
in J. Elsner's <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/roman-eyes-visuality-
subjectivity-in-art-text/oclc/71266643">Roman Eyes</a> (Princeton
2007).
My impression is that Nasrallah's use of texts was a convenient concession to
traditional practices in art and architectural history and archaeology of the
Classical World that continues to imagine texts as the point of departure for
rigorous analysis of meaning and space. ¬†When pushed a step further to deal
exclusively with built environments in places uninformed by robust textual
sources, the assumption that spaces can accommodate a wide range of viewers
(including those bent on resisting, subverting, or even co-opting "intended
messages") becomes decidedly more foggy. ¬†As the <a
href="http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2010/2010-10-65.html">BMCR review</a>
noted, even Nasrallah moves cautiously in many cases when she enters into
relationship between the act of reading a text and the act of reading a space or
monument; the author is more willing to leave the texts juxtaposed than to bring
out opportunities for mutual critique.
In <a
bivalent-landscapes-of-the-6th-century-at-corinth-in-contrast.html">my recent
work on the monumental spaces of Justinianic Corinth</a> (it is, on my blog, all
about me, of course), I've had to confront a similar tension not between texts,
but between monuments. ¬†I shared¬†Nasrallah's¬†Ôªøassumption that it is
possible to recover the resistance and critique of the built environment through
juxtaposing different types of texts; for Corinth, however, these texts are not
the literary (or even really epigraphical kind), but other roughly contemporary
monuments. ¬†Like Nasrallah and her authors, I have done what I can to
understand the act of building as a response to particular (and maybe
recoverable) activities within the physical environment. But this reading of the
relationship between buildings captures only one response within a
monumentalized discourse in the landscape. The ongoing dialog between
experiences across the landscape continuously reinscribed monumental places with
meanings and presented opportunities for resistance. The decision whether to
resist, to critique, or to accept the meanings produced through the productive
juxtaposition of places in the landscape returns agency to the viewer and
undermines the power traditionally located in imperialist policies.
Nasrallah's book provides a model for discerning the act of viewing within
the Roman empire by expanding the notion of place to include texts which she
demonstrates function according to a similar logic as monuments in the
43
landscape. ¬†By resisting the urge to offer definitive or rigid relationships

between various more or less contemporary spaces within the ancient world, she
resists the temptation to extend a valuable analysis of ways of viewing to
specific acts of viewing. ¬†In doing so, she both unpacks the act of viewing
(and responding to) ancient art and architecture, and allows it to persist as an
essentially ambiguous phenomenon resistant to even our most deeply positivist
desire to essentialize.
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It's cold today, but sunny. ¬†In other words, it's a perfect fall day for
quick hits and varia:
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/11/i-am-a-blogger-
no-longer/66223/">Marc Ambinder on why he no longer blogs</a>.</li>
<li><a href="http://twitter.com/#!/iHerodotus">Herodotus is now tweeting
here</a>. <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/itweetus">A Roman soldier invading
Britain tweets here</a>.</li>
<li>Yale published its 900+ page<a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/anthology-of-rap/oclc/601348010"> Anthology
of Rap</a> this week. ¬†<a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2272926/">Check
out the Slate review</a> and <a
href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/2010/11/04/131063935/listening-to-the-
anthology-of-rap">what NPR has to say</a>.</li>
<li><a href="http://chronicle.com/article/Audio-Tech-Therapy-
Wired/125229/">Universities and technologies according Kevin Kelly of </a><a
href="http://chronicle.com/article/Audio-Tech-Therapy-Wired/125229/">Wired
</a><a href="http://chronicle.com/article/Audio-Tech-Therapy-
Wired/125229/">fame</a>.</li>
<li><a href="http://app.mobilehistorycleveland.org/">Cleveland Historical now
has a App complements</a> of <a href="http://csudigitalhumanities.org/">The
Center for Public History and Digital Humanities at Cleveland State
University</a>. ¬†How cool is that?</li>
<li><a href="http://www.ucl.ac.uk/dh/courses/mamsc">University College, London
now has a one year MA/MSc in Digital Humanities</a>.</li>
44
<li><a href="http://jobs.uiowa.edu/faculty/view/58610">Classics, Religion, and

Digital Humanities job at Iowa</a>.</li>
<li>I used <a href="http://www.zamzar.com/">Zamzar </a>to convert a paper that a
student submitted as a .wps file to something that a computer made in the 21st
century could read. ¬†It worked just as advertised.</li>
<li><a href="http://www.life.com/image/ugc1142761/in-gallery/51881/jfk-
unpublished-never-seen-photos">Some unpublished photos of JFK, now
published</a>.</li>
<li>I was on the front page of the <a href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/">American
School of Classical Studies</a> webpage this past week thanks to my friends at
<a href="http://www.atypon-link.com/ASCS/loi/hesp">Hesperia</a>.</li>
</ul>
title="ASCSAHomePage.jpg"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20133f5cb44f7970b
-pi" border="0" alt="ASCSAHomePage.jpg" width="400" height="235" />
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2010/11/the-times-paywall-and-
newsletter-economics/">Clay Shirky's rather unfavorable assessment of the Times
of London's pay¬†wall experiment</a>.</li>
<li><a href="http://www.formula1.com/">The last Formula 1¬†race of the year is
this weekend. Let's see if Mark Weber can pull it off</a>.</li>
<li>What I'm listening to: Scott H. Biram, Lo-Fi Mojo.</li>
<li>What I'm reading: David Harvey,<a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/spaces-of-hope/oclc/43755292"> Spaces of
Hope</a>. (Berkeley 2000).</li>
</ul>
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TITLE: Archaeology and QR Codes
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My wife recently attended a conference on marketing and higher education
hosted in part by Google. There as a low buzz about QR codes at the conference.
For those who don't know, QR codes are funny-looking, square bar codes, and QR
stands for "quick read". They are designed to be read by little applications on
a mobile phone that use the phone's camera like a bar code reader. ¬†QR codes
45
are most frequently used to display a URL (a web address), but they can contain
a number, a v-card, or even instruction to send a tweet to a twitter account.
¬†Over the past year, QR codes have moved into mainstream marketing, appeared in
popular culture (e.g. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frv6FOt1BNI">a
Kyle Minogue video</a>!), and have even attracted <a
href="http://www.rcet.org/geohistorian/">the interest of academics</a>.
I've been thinking about QR codes for<a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2010/07/fr
iday-varia-and-quick-hits-2.html"> six months now</a>. Yesterday, I¬†had a great
chat yesterday with a colleague from our Working Group in Digital and New Media,
and we began bandying about ways to use QR codes on campus to install art,
historical information, subversive (in a polite North Dakota way) messages, and
challenges to the barrier between the internet and real space on campus.
<img style="display: block; margin-left: auto;
margin-right: auto; border: 0px initial initial;" title="QR_Code.jpg"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20133f5c3027e970b
-pi" border="0" alt="QR_Code.jpg" width="450" height="450" />
After the conversation, I struggled a bit to understand what made using QR
codes unique or interesting. ¬†On the one hand, I understood that they are a
gimmick and fad, but that didn't bother me. ¬†I like gimmicks and fads. (After
all, I love the interwebs!). Finally, after I mulled over this¬†discussion ever
more, I realized that I like QR codes because they are archaeological. ¬†Here's
how I am thinking about them:
1. They are mysterious and demand action. ¬†Like an archaeological artifact
(imagine a sherd of pottery), QR codes beg to be understood or contextualized.
¬†They demand action on the part of the viewer or, at least, the viewer who
recognizes a QR code as something to be deciphered. ¬†Just as an archaeologist
is almost compelled to figure out the context for an artifact (and anyone who
has ever walked across an archaeological site or any complex landscape with an
archaeologist knows how powerful disciplinary training can be!), people "in the
know" feel compelled to scan and understand a QR code. ¬†In fact, if you don't
read the code, the QR code is meaningless.
2. Codes are objects. The form of a QR code communicates meaning. Like most
archaeological objects, a QR code does not communicate in an explicitly textual
way (except in the sense that all objects can be read as types of texts).
¬†Within the discourse of archaeology and, presumably, QR code-ology, the form
of the object prompts the action required to understand it. Archaeologists are
obsessed with the materiality of objects - shape, texture, size, weight - ¬†and
recognize that to produce meaning, it is necessary to compare one object to
another to create a context for archaeological material and, ultimately, to
create meaning. QR codes have the same material character. Codes are things
which must be understood in a non-textual way and placed within a particular
context to produce meaning. ¬†Only people familiar with the code and who
recognize the action required will understand the message.
margin-right: auto;" title="ArchObject.jpg"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20133f5c3028b970b
-pi" border="0" alt="ArchObject.jpg" width="450" height="300" />
3. The are mobile. ¬†Like many artifacts in an archaeological context, a QR
code is mobile meaning that there is tension between its present physical
context and its the meaning embedded (by the code's creator) in its form.¬†¬†In
archaeology we like to think about formation processes; these are the processes
that led to an object being discovered by an archaeologist in a particular place
or condition. ¬†Formation processes recognize our environment as constantly
changing and almost infinitely mutable. A QR code printed on a sheet of paper,
46
or a sticker, or t-shirt can travel from one place to the next while still
retaining a formal link to another context. ¬†Even if a QR code is designed for
a particular place and time, because they are material and mobile, they will
travel and endure.
4. Codes provide a link between the real and the virtual. ¬†As a historian I
spend much of my time in a "virtual" environment girded about by the rules of my
discipline and embedded deep within my imagination. The past is something that
obeys particular rules and, in a particular sense, does not exist except within
my imagination. ¬†At the same time, as an archaeologist, I am constantly
challenged to recognize the past as real by the physical nature of
archaeological artifacts. ¬†QR¬†Codes can bridge this same gap between the
virtual world of the internet and the physical world of the code itself. ¬†The
real world context of the code creates a physical point of departure into the
virtual world of the internet. ¬†In short, the code locates the internet in
physical space.
QR codes are easy to generate through any number of sites on the internet.
(<a href="http://2d-code.co.uk/qr-code-generators/">Here's a basic list</a>.)
¬†And most mobile phones have QR code reader applications available for them.
¬†Phones with better browsers, of course, provide access to far more robust
content.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Shawn
EMAIL: shawn_graham@carleton.ca
IP: 134.117.115.102
URL: http://electricarchaeologist.wordpress.com
DATE: 11/11/2010 12:10:32 PM
Hi Bill,
They are quite cool, aren't they? They are like a portal point between worlds -
your point 4. They could link between material culture and the virtual reality
created by archaeologists and historians as they 'create' the past...
I'm introducing them to my digital history students in the next few weeks... a
few years ago, I tried imagining how I might use them in teaching practice; so
an opportunity to put into practice!
<a href="http://electricarchaeologist.wordpress.com/2007/11/20/the-past-present-
augmented-historical-reality-a-lesson-plan-
sketch/">http://electricarchaeologist.wordpress.com/2007/11/20/the-past-present-
augmented-historical-reality-a-lesson-plan-sketch/</a>
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Vincent
EMAIL: vincent@talkingpyramids.com
IP: 118.210.229.150
47
URL: http://www.talkingpyramids.com
DATE: 11/11/2010 03:25:04 PM
What ever happened to Sema codes? It seems there's been a battle between Sema
and QR codes over the past couple of years, much like in the old days of
Betacord vs VHS.
Many companies were using Sema codes a few years ago and it seems they were
going to be huge. Then along came QR codes and as they gained in popularity Sema
codes seem to have fallen by the wayside.
Are Sema codes the betacord of our day?

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DATE: 11/10/2010 07:33:20 AM

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This past week, I've started to write up a formal description and analysis of
the fortification on Vigla at the site of Pyla-Koutsopetria on Cyprus. ¬†While
we were not able to date the walls precisely, despite excavating several
sections, it seems most likely that fortifications date to the Hellenistic
period. ¬†The settlement at the site appears to date earlier with Iron Age and
Classical material present. ¬†Moreover, excavations in 2008 revealed that the
fortification wall cut through an earlier building at the site.
The site itself does not appear in any textual sources for the island, and it
clearly lacked any documented civic status. ¬†As a result, Vigla represents
another example of a rural fortified site that stands outside the main narrative
of the island's history. ¬†From the start, we have speculated that the¬†site at
Vigla could be a mercenary garrison camp, built quickly for a particular group
of Ptolemeic mercenaries stationed on the island during the 3rd or 4th century
BC. ¬†The site could also represent a refuge for a local population whose
position so near the coast would have exposed them to possible attach during the
unsettled Hellenistic period. Scholars have offered similar explanations for
similar rural fortifications from Greece.
margin-right: auto;" title="NewImage.jpg"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2013488dbc1da970c
The body of rural fortifications in Cyprus is far smaller. ¬†Claire Balandier
in her dissertation (and a series of articles in the¬†RDAC in 2000,
2002, and 2003 and <a
href="http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/dha_0755-
7256_2002_num_28_1_2501">elsewhere</a>) has collected evidence for just a
handful of rural fortification on the same scale of the fortifications at Vigla.
¬†The most notable among these rural fortified sites is Paleocastro on the
Kormakiti peninsula in Kyrenia district (in the North). ¬†The Italians
documented the site over several campaigns in the late 1960s and early 1970s as
48
part of a project focusing on the landscape of the Kormakiti peninsula near Ayia
Irini (the fortification at Paleocastro might be associated with the ancient
anchorage of <a
href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0006:ent
ry=melabron&highlight=melabron">Melabron</a>). ¬†Work was interrupted by the
invasion of 1974, but preliminary results were published, including a good plan,
is RIASA 19/20 (1972/73), 7-120.
title="Paleocastro.jpg"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20133f5bbbcaf970b
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The site is ¬†larger than the fortified area of
Vigla, but situated in a similar way. ¬†The fortified settlement stands on a
slight rise over the coast and has a gate on its inland side protected by
towers. ¬†Vigla stands on a more prominent height (<a
href="http://www.gigapan.org/gigapans/59224/">check out Vigla in gigapan</a>),
overlooks a likely ancient harbor, and is accessed through its more highly
fortified inland side. ¬†The settlement at Paleocastro shows signs of Archaic or
Classical origins and then disappears by the 2nd century AD. ¬†The fortification
wall appear to be Hellenistic.
Stay tuned for more work to document,
contextualize, and understand Vigla.
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CATEGORY: Byzantium
CATEGORY: Survey Archaeology
DATE: 11/09/2010 07:31:08 AM

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I was pretty surprise to see an article entitled "<a href="http://www.atypon-
link.com/ASCS/doi/abs/10.2972/hesp.79.3.423">Middle-Late Byzantine Pottery from
Sagalassos: Typo-Chronology and Sociocultural Interpretation</a>" in the very
recent Hesperia (A.K. Vionis, J. Poblome, B. De Cupere, M. Waelkens,
Hesperia 79 (2010), 423-464). ¬†It's not so much that the subject
matter is late, but that the site of Sagalassos is a Belgian project in Turkey
rather than an American project in Greece. ¬†As some of my more observant
friends pointed out, Hesperia has published the results of project from Albania,
49
so maybe this should not have caught be so off guard. ¬†But it did and it
indicates to me that Hesperia is continuing to expand its purview to
include the wider world of Mediterranean archaeology. Hooray!
The article on the Middle-Late Byzantine material from Sagalassos is pretty
cool as well. ¬†The main focus of the article is on a series of 12th-13th
century layers from the Alexander Hill at the site of Sagalassos. ¬†Over three
seasons of excavation, the excavators uncovered the remains of a "heavily
burned" destruction layer containing the remains of a short-lived occupation
containing a significant and robust quantity of 12th-13th century Byzantine
pottery. ¬†This layer appears to represent the final phase of activity on this
dramatic hill overlooking the ancient site of Sagalassos. ¬†Early occupation on
the hill included a 5th-6th century basilica that was almost completely removed
and a later "refuge" of some description with a fortification wall and a
substantial cistern. ¬†Apparently the church was almost completely dismantled
for the construction of the later refuge. The final destruction layer, which
seems to represent the final layer of occupation, may represent an effort to
dismantle the refuge to prevent it from being used again.
While the site history of the Alexander Hill is pretty interesting
(particularly the dismantling of the church), the real meat of the article is in
the analysis of the ceramic assemblage from the final layer. ¬†While I would
like to have understood the sampling method the produced the assemblage, the
authors nevertheless conduct a rigorous and thorough examination of the material
and take into account both "common ware" (which we would call medium coarse,
coarse, and kitchen/cooking ware in chronotype terminology) and glazed table
wares (fine and and semi-fine wares in our terminology). ¬†Some of the glazed
wares were repaired indicating that the objects had significant value to their
owners. ¬†The presence of repaired pots in an assemblage associated with the
destruction of the site, however, suggests (to me at least) that these vessels
were either discarded by the last occupants of the refuge or brought to the site
by work crews commissioned to destroy or salvage the remains of the site. I wish
the article had made considered more thoroughly the formation processes at play
in the creation of the assemblage from the burned layer including the possible
nature of activities at the final occupation phase of the site. ¬†If these
materials were left by work crews (like the material associated with the final
phase of <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2008/08/ko
urion-and-aba.html">activity at Kourion</a>), then the diet, ceramics used, and
social standing of the individuals could suggest a different assemblage from
that left behind by a family.
Despite the origin of the pottery in a layer associated with the site's
destruction and short term occupation, they regard the material as sufficient
diverse to qualify as a use assemblage and, therefore, suitable for making
larger arguments for the nature of Byzantine cooking practices, diet, and the
circulation of Byzantine glazed pottery and utility ware forms. ¬†This was all
supported by residue analysis of individual vessels and the quantitative
analysis of the entire assemblage. ¬†Apparently the individuals at Sagalassos
ate more beef and game than their Late Roman predecessors (who preferred lamb
and goat). ¬†Pretty neat stuff.
The article places the material from the assemblage at Sagalassos in the
context of the Byzantine Eastern Mediterranean and it will be really useful as
we look to document a site with a similar history at Polis in Cyprus. ¬†The
material present at Sagalassos has comparanda both on Cyprus and,
unsurprisingly, at Corinth in Greece where the study of Byzantine pottery has
long held pride of place. ¬†The careful publication of an assemblage from a site
like Sagalassos expands the base of evidence for the further study of Byzantine
50
pottery. ¬†The appearance of an article like this in Hesperia should

show scholars that there are high-quality journals prepared and willing to
publish similar papers.
P.S. Lest you think that I'm just a blogger, you'll notice that David
Pettegrew, Sarah James, and I also have an article in this volume: "<a
href="http://www.atypon-link.com/ASCS/doi/abs/10.2972/hesp.79.3.385">Towers and
Fortifications at Vayia in the Southeast Corinthia</a>," Hesperia 79
(2010), 385-415. 
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Over the last few weeks, I've been working with <a
href="http://corinthianmatters.com/">David Pettegrew</a> to finish writing the
analysis of the survey data from the <a href="http://www.pkap.org/">Pyla-
Koutsopetria Archaeological Project</a> (PKAP). ¬†Followers of this blog know
that this work is a long a term project and involves challenges both on the
level of analysis but also organization and description. ¬†In other words, we've
been working to figure out both how to interpret our survey results, but also
how do we organize and describe this data in way that is useful to scholars who
are likely to ask different questions from the one's that our survey set out to
consider.
The biggest challenge is moving from the highly granular, artifact level
analysis of individual groups of pot sherds to the level of historical time and
space. ¬†After all, very few important things happened in the space of a pot
sherd or in a time framed absolutely by the life-span or production cycle of an
individual vessel. ¬†It is essential to aggregate sherds, space, and time in
order to produce historical arguments. ¬†The chronological ranges for artifacts
through time depend, in particular, on our understanding of ceramic typologies
based on the fabric, shape, and in some cases decoration. ¬†These the chronology
assigned to these various typologies are not necessarily meaningful in a
historical sense and can be quite individualize to particular objects.
51
In other words, artifact level analysis is separate from the process of
interpreting artifacts across the survey area as chronologically and
historically meaningful groups. ¬†Part of the interpretive process involves
grouping artifacts together into more or less contemporary groups of object.
¬†This process involves judgement on our part and cannot be applied in the same
way across the entire assemblage.
As an example, our analysis of material representing activity across our site
from the Classical to Hellenistic (BC 475 to BC 100) periods involves artifacts
dated to at least 8 different, overlapping chronological ranges: ÔªøArchaic-
Classical, Archaic-Hellenistic, Classical, Classical-Hellenistic, Classical-
Roman, Hellenistic, Hellenistic-Early Roman, and Protogeometric-Hellenistic.
¬†In contrast, our analysis of activities on our site from the Roman period
involves artifacts dated to three chronological ranges: Roman, Early Roman, and
Late Roman. ¬†Our ceramicist established the date ranges for individual
artifacts¬†Ôªølargely based upon dates established through stratigraphic
excavation and completely¬†independent from our interpretation of the site as a
whole. ¬†It is common for individual classes of artifacts to receive have
different chronological ranges. A sherd from a cooking ware pot might represent
a vessel-type produced over a 500 year periods (say, any time during the
Classical-Hellenistic period), whereas a fragment of fine ware might derive from
a vessel produced during a 4 or 5 decade span of time (say, the early 4th
century). ¬†Each of the objects receives a different date and chronological
range when documented in the survey area.¬†As a very general rule, utility wares
tend to be produced over longer spans of time than fine and table wares, but
this has no necessary impact on how and when they were used.
The process of interpreting the artifacts documented by our ceramicist
involves us aggregating these objects into chronologically, functionally, and
spatially meaningful groups. ¬†Past human activities took place in particular
spaces and made use of object produced at different times and for different
functions. To produce a picture of what happened in the past at our site that
has meaning within these human terms, it is necessary to group together material
with different date ranges into assemblages that have meaning in human
terms.
For example, here are various maps showing some of the periods aggregated to
produce our analysis of the Classical to Hellenistic period at our site:
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2013488cdb24f970c
-pi" border="0" alt="NewImage.jpg" width="400" height="400" />Archaic-Classical
Period
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2013488cdb25d970c
-pi" border="0" alt="NewImage.jpg" width="400" height="400" />Classical
Period
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20133f5ad9dbb970b
-pi" border="0" alt="NewImage.jpg" width="400" height="400" />Classical-
Hellenistic Period
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20133f5ad9ddc970b
-pi" border="0" alt="NewImage.jpg" width="400" height="400" />Classical-Roman
Period
52

src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2013488cdb27f970c
-pi" border="0" alt="NewImage.jpg" width="400" height="400" />Hellenistic
Period
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20133f5ad9df1970b
-pi" border="0" alt="NewImage.jpg" width="400" height="400" />Hellenistic-Early
Roman Period
To understand trends at our site from Classical to
Hellenistic period, the data contained in each of these maps must be analyzed
together. ¬†Occupants at our site may have used coarse ware datable only to the
Classical-Roman period alongside table wares dated more narrowly to the
Classical period. ¬†The Classical period table ware may have represented a
households investment in public display, the same household may have stored
their agricultural wealth in a series of amphoras that have forms and fabrics
used for over 500 years. ¬†To establish the potential spatial relationship
between these two activities in an archaeological setting, it is necessary to
plot artifacts assigned to different chronological ranges across our site in
order to produce assemblages that reflect historical activities.
This task is central to the analysis of artifact
level survey data and is the key interpretive move in mediating between the
results of archaeological work and historical events in the past. ¬†Our goal as
we work to prepare this kind of analysis for publication is to keep this
interpretative move as transparent as possible. ¬†Transparency, while sometimes
tedious for the reader, opens our analysis for critique on both evidentiary and
methodological grounds and reinforced the idea that archaeologists
produce the landscape that they interpret.
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TITLE: Friday Varia and Quick Hits
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: friday-varia-and-quick-hits
DATE: 11/05/2010 09:24:02 AM

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A lovely fall day here in Grand Forks, so here are a little gaggle of quick
hits and varia:
<ul>
53
<li>This is <a href="http://chronicle.com/article/Advising-the-

Struggling/125198/">a pretty nice little piece about advising graduate
students</a>.</li>
<li>This is <a href="http://interactive.nfb.ca/#/outmywindow/">a great
interactive video project on life in the Global Highrise</a>.</li>
<li>The <a href="http://nsse.iub.edu/html/annual_results.cfm">2010 National
Survey of Student Engagement is out</a>.</li>
<li>A <a href="http://projectinfolit.org/">nice report on how students evaluate
research information</a>.</li>
<li>The <a
href="http://case.typepad.com/case_social_media/2010/10/northdakota.html">Univer
sity of North Dakota and social media: A Soft Yes</a>.</li>
<li>More<a
href="http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/technology_and_learning/social_media_a
nd_the_department"> social media at the departmental level</a>.</li>
<li><a
href="http://www.educause.edu/EDUCAUSE+Review/EDUCAUSEReviewMagazineVolume45/Str
eamsofContentLimitedAttenti/213923">Even more on social media</a>.</li>
<li>This is <a href="http://www.cricinfo.com/australia-v-sri-lanka-
2010/engine/current/match/446958.html">pretty depressing cricket</a> (at least
from an Australian standpoint).</li>
<li>What I'm reading: Laura Salah Nasrallah, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/christian-responses-to-roman-art-and-
architecture-the-second-century-church-amid-the-spaces-of-
empire/oclc/417444878">Christian Responses to Roman Art and
Culture</a>. Cambridge 2010 (via Dimitri Nakassis)</li>
<li>What I'm listening to: Clinic, Bubblegum (via Kostis Kourelis)</li>
</ul>
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TITLE: Teaching Thursday: The (Teaching) Revolution will not be Blogged
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: the-teaching-revolution-will-not-be-blogged
CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 11/04/2010 07:29:11 AM

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X-posted to <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/">Teaching
Thursday</a>.
54
This blog post is an effort to understand the fairly lackadaisical

interest in participating in the Teaching Thursday blog among my colleagues at
the University of North Dakota. ¬†It got me thinking about the nature of
teaching conversations and whether they are suitable to a blog.
Anyone who follows the happenings on the internets is probably familiar with
Malcolm Gladwell's recent article in the October 4¬†New Yorker: "<a
href="http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/10/04/101004fa_fact_gladwell?curre
ntPage=1">Small Changer: Why the Revolution will not be Tweeted</a>". ¬†In this
article, he argued that the connections produced by such social media sites like
Twitter and Facebook are "weak ties" which are unlikely to hold up to the kind
of social pressures that real revolutionary action will both require and endure.
¬†He begins his article with the students who participated in the revolutionary
Greenboro sit-in of 1960 and noted that the four participants had deep social
connections as roommates at North Carolina A & T or as friends from high-
school. These social connections, characterized by regular physical proximity to
one another and a significant body of shared experiences, enabled these four
brave students to have the confidence to imagine radical ideas and to maintain
their resolve in the face of adversity.
Other pundits, like Clay Shirky, have challenged the idea that such
dedication is necessary to generate revolutionary change. ¬†Shirky, particularly
in his most recent book <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/cognitive-
surplus-creativity-and-generosity-in-a-connected-age/oclc/466335766">Cognitive
Surplus</a>, has argued that the internet and social media sites become
conduits funneling myriad rivulets of surplus energies together making the great
deluge of internet knowledge possible (manifest in sites like Wikipedia and The
YouTubes).
These two positions intersect with the mission of this blog. ¬†The idea for
this blog was to capture the hundreds of short (and long!), thoughtful,
creative, conversations about teaching that go on weekly across campus into a
central place. ¬†The hope was that the blog could become an alternative source
for stimulation for busy colleagues who missed <a
href="http://webapp.und.edu/dept/oid/programsEvents/onTeachingLunchSeminars.php"
>a great program offered by our Office of Instructional Development</a> or were
not in the hallway at the second two colleagues were unpacking a tricky issue or
did not have a moment to read the newest book that presents a new solution to
the latest problem. Over the last three months, I extended this effort to
Twitter once again trying to funnel energy and ideas from across campus into a
single conduit.
Follow us on Twitter at <a
href="http://twitter.com/#!/OIDatUND">OIDatUND</a>!
So far, the blog has had its moments, but they have been few and far between.
¬†Over the last three months, I've been promised many, many blog posts, but
always "in the spring semester" when, of course, the songbirds return, the snow
melts, and other obligations drift away on the first warm, scented breeze. ¬†I
expect that some of these posts will come to enliven our blog, but even these
contributions (which I know will be excellent), do not really represent even a
fraction of the exciting conversations I have had about teaching. ¬†Of course,
we are all busy, all of the time, and finding time to write is a challenge.
Having read Gladwell's article, I began to wonder whether the experiences of
teaching actually resist blogging as a medium for communication. Perhaps this is
because so much teaching on campus represents spontaneous responses to
spontaneous issues. ¬†Could it be that our day-to-day teaching activities - a
troubled student, a particularly bad classroom experience, or a brilliantly
successful assignment - all exist within such a complex matrix of variables that
communicating how something succeeded or failed in writing would be either a
55
monumental task unsuited to the limited medium of blogging or somehow impossible

to articulate in a useful, generalized way?
In saying this, I do not mean to suggest that understanding how to become a
better teacher is impossible through public reflection -- obviously the research
conducted by various academic departments in teaching and learning have both
real practical value and a robust disciplinary tradition -- but to wonder
whether many of us on campus do not think about teaching in a way that lends
itself to even the modest structure of a blog post. ¬†Teaching is an emotional
experience full of frustration and excitement as we join the struggle to achieve
goals that, in most case, are very difficult to articulate. ¬†Of course, we can
all enumerate formal learning objectives, classroom goals, content expectations,
and the like, but I wonder whether these are the things that really motivate us
as teachers. ¬†For me, teaching is about realizing goals that extend far beyond
the classroom. ¬†These goals are resistant to clear quantitative or even
qualitative evaluation and they often exist at the fringes of my ability of
articulate them in a rational way at all.
In short, maybe this blogging experiment reveals the limitations of media
dependent on the kinds of "weak ties" that Gladwell assigns to Facebook friends
and Twitter colleagues. ¬†Face-to-face meetings, intimate seminars,
conversations over strong beverages, and hallway insights depend upon the strong
ties of shared experience to have value. ¬†Extracted from that context,
everything seems mundane and hardly stuff that matters. ¬†The teaching
revolution will not be blogged.
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TITLE: Book Reviews and the Blog: A Case Study
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: book-reviews-and-the-blog-a-case-study
CATEGORY: Books
DATE: 11/03/2010 06:31:10 AM

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About 10 months ago, I blogged about Ann Marie Yasin's new(ish) book, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/saints-and-church-spaces-in-the-late-
antique-mediterranean-architecture-cult-and-
community/oclc/422764940&referer=brief_results">Saints and Church Spaces in
the Late Antique Mediterranean</a>. ¬†I offered a quick review of it,
mostly centered on a series of hastily composed observations.!
56
<a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2010/02/sa
ints-and-church-spaces.html">Here's a link to that quick review</a>.!
This summer, I was asked to review the book for real, in a print journal, one
that appears in paper, and goes to libraries. ¬†This is the first time that I
was asked to review for real something I had already reviewed in the old
blog.!
Here's that review:!
display: block; text-decoration: underline;" title="View Yasin Review Oct2010 on
Scribd" href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/40841124/Yasin-Review-Oct2010">Yasin
Review Oct2010</a> !
data="http://d1.scribdassets.com/ScribdViewer.swf" width="100%" height="600">!
<param name="movie" value="http://d1.scribdassets.com/ScribdViewer.swf" />!
<param name="wmode" value="opaque" />!
<param name="bgcolor" value="#ffffff" />!
<param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" />!
<param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always" />!
217qla75xbrm3huuol9r&page=1&viewMode=list" /> <embed
height="600"
_key=key-217qla75xbrm3huuol9r&page=1&viewMode=list"
wmode="opaque" bgcolor="#ffffff"></embed>!
</object>!
!
For people who struggle to wrap their minds around the difference between a
blog and a formal print publication, perhaps these two reviews will shine some
light on the issue. ¬†I think that there are subtle changes in style, content,
and tone. ¬†As I was writing my blog post, I considered my audience to be
someone who might read the book one day. ¬†When I wrote the print review, my
audience became someone who was unlikely to read the book ever.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: David
EMAIL: dpettegrew@messiah.edu
IP: 153.42.40.246
URL:
DATE: 11/04/2010 09:50:58 AM
I was curious about your concluding comment here: "As I was writing my blog
post, I considered my audience to be someone who might read the book one day.
57
When I wrote the print review, my audience became someone who was unlikely to
read the book ever." Why do you think your printed blog would not encourage
anyone to read the book?
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COMMENT:
IP: 155.68.29.254
URL: http://kourelis.blogspot.com/
DATE: 11/04/2010 01:50:13 PM
Somehow, I totally agree with the last statement. The printed book review genre
has, in many ways, become the cheat sheet. I do this all the time. Blogging, on
the other, hand has a different optimism. There is always an imagined next
click. As a personal choice, blogging a book review gives it emotional credence.
The print review, on the other hand, enters a different cultural medium.
-----
COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Bill Caraher
EMAIL: billcaraher@gmail.com
IP: 134.129.192.180
URL: http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/
DATE: 11/04/2010 03:27:53 PM
David,!
!
I think what I mean is that if I bother to write about a book on my blog, I am
implying that the book has interested or excited me in some way. A review for a
journal is part of a larger scholarly project. I review books for academic
journals with the assumption that my interest and excitement is personal and
does not represent a universal attitude toward a work of scholarship.!
!
Bill!
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Curt Emanuel
EMAIL: cemanuel@purdue.edu
IP: 75.205.132.11
URL: http://medievalhistorygeek.blogspot.com/
DATE: 11/06/2010 09:39:27 PM
Academic reviews are pretty important to me when I'm considering whether to buy
a book or not. In the case of Yasin, your blog comments interested me enough to
recently seriously consider buying it (as you are an Academic in the field I
felt this qualified as sufficient endorsement from someone qualified to make
it). I have a pretty detailed method of determining what to buy - there are
always more than I have reading time or money for. Academic reviews are an
essential piece of that.
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TITLE: A Comparison Between a Survey Assemblage and an Excavation Assemblage
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: a-comparison-between-a-survey-assemblage-and-an-excavation-assemblage
58
DATE: 11/02/2010 07:14:04 AM

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BODY:
 For the past few months, <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2010/07/ev
en-more-experiments-in-intensive-pedestrian-survey.html">David Pettegrew and I
have been "publishing" the preliminary results of some experimental analysis
conducted over the past year</a> at the <a href="http://www.pkap.org/">Pyla-
Koutsopetria Archaeological Project on Cyprus</a>. As part of the
experimental component to our project we were interested in documenting the
relationship between the surface assemblage and the assemblage of material
produced by excxavation The archaeological fieldwork conducted on the
elevated height of Vigla provided us with an opportunity to compare assemblages
produced by intensive pedestrian survey and the excavation of a trench in the
survey area. Longstanding critiques of survey have suggested that the
relationship between the surface assemblage and the subsurface material is too
problematic for survey to be a technique used to produce a comprehensive view of
the landscape. While it is true that there are more variables in the formation
processes that impact the creation of a surface assemblage, we should be aware
of the potential for a false dichotomy. Excavated assemblages are every bit as
much a product of formation processes as those on the surface and as a result,
we always have to temper our interpretation of past events with the
understanding of the archaeological record as the product of a whole range of
physical and cultural transformations. The goal of this comparison then is not
to test the surface assemblage against the subsurface material, but rather to
suggest that their correspondence indicates that the area may have endured
similar archaeological processes. As with all of our experimental units, the
comparison is influenced by significant differences in the spatial comparison
between the two sample areas. The surface area of our trench EU 8 represented
only 6 sq meters; The two survey units 500 and 500.1 combined to covere over
6000 sq m. Any comparison of area, however, is problematic; the trench had
volume and the relatively two-dimensional surface of the survey area did not.
<a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2013488a6ae55970
c-pi"><img style="border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; border-top: 0px; border-
right: 0px" border="0" alt="SurveyAndExcavation"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2013488a6ae5b970c
-pi" width="420" height="462"></a> The excavation unit
produced significantly more ceramic material. The excavation unit produced over
4000 artifacts. By comparison, we counted anywhere from 366 to close to 1000
artifacts from our survey of various areas on the top of Vigla (depending on
surface conditions and the number of walkers available), and these samples
allowed us to estimate an overall artifact density of between 15,000 ‚Äì 11,000
artifacts per ha. These are astronomical densities by any reckoning. While
we counted every artifact visible in our 20% sample of the surface, we collected
artifacts using the chronotype sampling strategy which required us only to
collect each unique type of sherd from each swath. Using this technique in
two campaigns of field walking on Vigla, we collected 963 artifacts with a
weight of 27.6 kg. In contrast, we collected and analyzed every artifact
from the excavation area and this resulted in over 4000 artifacts, but this
assemblage weighed less than 10 kgs more (37.0 kg) than the assemblage collected
59
from survey. The nature of the chronotype sampling method used in the survey
makes it difficult to find a metric to compare the quantity of material
collected from the survey against the quantity of material collected from
excavated contexts. The key point for evaluating the correspondence between the
two assemblages is not necessarily the quantities of material but rather the
presence or absence of material indicating particular activity, periods, or
material types present in the area. Comparing the period date between the
two collection strategies reveals that the survey collection produced more
chronotype period categories (16 compared to 14) and nine of the periods
represented in the survey assemblage were also represented in the excavation
assemblage. In general, the survey material represented a longer chronological
range with material from later periods present on the surface including material
from the Late Roman, Medieval-Modern, and Modern periods. The excavated area, in
contrast, produced more material from narrower periods and at least one object
from a period earlier than those represented in the survey, a sherd potentially
dating to the Bronze Age (<a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2010/10/br
oad-period-artifacts-and-survey-analysis-quantifying-what-you-dont-
know.html">for more on broad and narrow periods, see here</a>). This artifact
appears to pre-date the earliest phases of architecture present in our trenches
and may not represent a past activity on the site. In general, the material from
both the survey and the excavation overlap, but the excavation material offered
slightly more chronological resolution than the material from the survey.
The diversity of chronological periods in the survey material would appear to
extend to the chronotypes represented in each unit. The excavation produced 54
chronotypes, while the survey unit produced 57. There are 30 overlapping
chronotypes between the two collection methods. While the different sampling
techniques make it difficult to compare the assemblages in a meaningful way, the
quantity of material from each area nevertheless provides a very basic matrix
for comparing the relative quantity of various types of material from each unit.
The survey and excavation both produce a significant number of artifacts from
the three rather general chronotypes: 'Coarse ware, ancient historic', 'medium
coarse ware ancient historic', 'kitchen ware ancient historic'. The
excavation also produced a significant proportion of material from two
additional chronotype that were poorly represented in the surface assemblage:
'animal bone' and 'fineware, Hellenistic-Roman, Early' which made up 6.6% and
5.5% of the excavated material respectively, but less than 1% of the material
from the survey. The absence of animal bone on the surface of the ground could
be an issue with visibility (white and tan bones do not stand out as well
against the buff colored soil) and certainly preservation. It is
notably harder to compare the potential range of activities present in the area.
The chronotype method of collection privileges larger, better preserved sherds
(walkers will often discard small or poorly preserved sherds if they find larger
examples of the same chronotype). It also tends to under represent very common
chronotypes in proportion to the total assemblage. In other words, there are
fewer examples of chronotypes such as ‚Äúmedium coarse body sherd, ancient
historic‚Äù in the survey sample in part because field walkers were instructed
not collect multiple examples of this very common type of artifact. In the
excavation, excavators collected every example of a ‚Äúmedium coarse body sherd
ancient-historic‚Äù causing sherds of this type to make up a larger proportion
of the total assemblage. This tendency can be seen in the relative size of
artifacts collected from the survey and excavation. From the survey, the
collected artifacts were much larger and this probably reflects both our field
walkers‚Äô tendency to select larger sherds more frequently than smaller sherds
for collection and the difficulty seeing the smallest sherds on the ground from
60
a standing posture. These two tendencies combined to produce an average survey

artifact weight almost 30 g as compared to the average size of an excavation
sherd that was under 9 g. The fabric groups present show some significant
differences in the assemblage that we can largely trace to different sampling
strategies. The survey unit preserved more coarse ware (47%) whereas the
majority of material from the excavated unit was medium coarse ware. The weight
of the two fabric groups as a percent of the total assemblage sheds more light
on the situation. Medium Coarse wares from the excavation represented 53% by
volume, but only 22% of the assemblage by weight. In fact, the average weight of
a medium coarse ware sherd is less than 4 grams. In other words, many of the
medium coarse fragments of pottery from the excavation are quite small, and
these sherds are the most likely to be overlooked during survey. Cooking/kitchen
ware, coarse ware, and amphora represented the other significant parts of the
excavation assemblage. As the chart below indicates the percentage of weight is
significantly different from the proportions determined by counts. In weight
amphora and coarse wares combine to make up the majority of material. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2013488a6ae6b970
c-pi"><img style="border-right-width: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-bottom-
width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px" border="0" alt="image"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20133f5865739970b
-pi" width="400" height="180"></a> The material from survey shows
different proportion, but these proportions are significantly biased by our
sampling technique that suppressed the collection of redundant artifacts. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20133f5865748970
b-pi"><img style="border-right-width: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-bottom-
-pi" width="400" height="170"></a> Coarse ware is the most common fabric
group by quantity and makes up the majority of material by weight. Amphora
sherds, which tended to be handles or very large body sherds, represent a
massive quantity by weight, but significantly lower percentage by quantity. The
opposite is true of medium coarse ware and kitchen/cooking ware. Similar
tendencies are visible from rim-base-handle-sherd analysis (<a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2010/09/so
me-notes-on-rbhs-analysis-of-the-pyla-koutsopetria-survey-data.html">for more on
R-B-H-S Analysis, see here</a>). <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2013488a6ae87970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2013488a6ae95970c
-pi" width="400" height="265"></a> The results of this
comparison suggest that for the height of Vigla the most major differences
between the assemblage produced by survey and that produced by excavation are
tied to the different sampling strategies used in these different contexts. At
the same time, the basic patterns present in the survey assemblage were also
present in the assemblage from the excavation. The presence of material
from the Classical and Hellenistic period, the presence of fine ware,
kitchen/cooking ware, and utility wares, and the almost complete absence of
earlier material allows us to argue that the site was first occupied in the
Archaic to Classical period, saw domestic activities, and then was used less
intensively in later periods. This close correlation of survey and
excavation assemblages reflects, in part, the stability of the soils on Vigla
and the relative lack of erosion, on the one hand, and the lack of intensive
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activity during later periods, on the other. In other words, the surface
assemblage and excavation assemblage enjoyed similar sets of formation processes
which produced similar assemblages. 
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TITLE: Brief Review of CLIR and Tufts: Rome Wasn't Digitized in a Day: Building
a Cyberinfrastructure for Digital Classics
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This weekend, I finally made it through t<a
href="http://www.clir.org/activities/details/infrastructure.html">he most recent
report on cyberinfrastructure and digital Classics</a>. ¬†As the title of this
post indicates, it was produced by the Council on Library and Information
Resources and Tufts University, a longtime leader in the field of digital
Classics. ¬†The report is massive, running to over 250 pages, and gives a
feeling of exhaustiveness. ¬†The bulk of the report consists of a series of
case-studies organized into the various allied- and sub-disiplines of Classics
(Philology, Archaeology, Papyrology, Epigraphy, Prosopography, et c.). ¬†For
most case-studies there is abundant technical detail as well as some information
on the guiding principals of the project, intended end-users, funding sources,
and institutional affiliation. There is a pronounced emphasis on the core area
of Classics and the analysis of texts of various kinds (inscribed, on papyrus,
in edition, et c.), and with this emphasis on texts comes a corresponding
emphasis on mark-up technology, collaborative editing, and various image-to-text
initiatives like Greek and Latin OCR. ¬†The¬†report's¬†scope, detail,
organization and bibliography make it a must read for anyone interested in the
work of digital humanities, digital Classics, or the future of the discipline
Classics. ¬†It is the type of report that any graduate student going on the job
market should at least skim to become familiar with the basic terms, programs,
and projects in the field of digital Classics.
While I am hardly qualified to comment on the content of the report, a few
things struck me as worth pointing out:
1. New models of collaboration for new kinds of texts. ¬†The most exciting
thing about this report are the new perspectives on scholarly collaboration. At
the center of these new perspectives are a set of new tools and collaborative
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environments which are designed to produce new kinds of texts. ¬†In general,
these texts are dynamic, multilayered, and designed to take into account both
the work of numerous contributors. The next generation of scholarly editions,
for example, will be increasingly transparent allow the end user to understand
the processes that produced certain editorial decisions and, if necessary,
filter the various editorial decisions to produce new versions of a text in
keeping with new analytical, interpretative, or methodological positions. The
same collaborative environment extends to epigraphy, papyrology, and even
archaeology (in some way) where scholars have developed ways to work together to
pool resources from around the world and to create new groups of texts. These
new collections of texts are born digital, making specialized bodies of material
(like epigraphical and papyrological corpora) more widely available, and more
susceptible to re-analysis and re-interpretation. ¬†The scalability of digital
technology allows multiple scholars, a wide-range range of end-users, and
diverse digital objects (texts, images, and interpretative methods) to all exist
in the same place at the same time. These are new, transparent, and productive
scholarly environments.
2. Human infrastructure. ¬†There is no doubt that the projects described in
this report are exciting, but I felt that the report took the notion of cyber-
infrastructure a bit too literally at times. ¬†In places the projects described
by the CRIL and Tufts teams stood strangely disembodied from larger social,
institutional, and professional pressures and incentives. While the report made
an obligatory mention of studies of scholarly collaboration, professional
pressures, and potential end-users, I was not as easily able to grasp the
creative environments from which these innovative programs sprung. ¬†In
particular, I struggled to identify the research questions or, more broadly, the
scholarly discourse that inspired these new approaches to age old problems. ¬†I
recognize, of course, that large-scale digital initiatives often take into
account a wide range of initiatives, research questions, and stake holders, but
at the same time, scholarly collaborative while sometimes altruistic, rarely
exists without some common research objectives. Moreover, these research
objectives must exist in an environment where administrators, technical staff,
and colleagues have the interests and the resources to promote and encourage
innovation. The human infrastructure necessary to support cyber-infrastructure
projects, to my mind, is far more crucial to their long-term health than the
relatively ephemeral character of technical detail. ¬†And this human
infrastructure extends to how we teach students and the nature of academic and
scholarly expectations. With more dynamic and robust tool available, it is
curious that the willingness to avail oneself to these tools remains, to some
extent, optional within the academic discourse. In other words, the eventual
success of a digital infrastructure project will depend on the willingness of an
editor, a peer reviewer, or a conference panel to expect a scholar to use a
particular corpus of material. ¬†The human infrastructure, then, represents a
dense and complex web of knowledge, traditional practices, and support
infrastructure that, to my mind, is far more important than the tools and vision
at the root of a cyberinfrastructure project.
3. The Social and New Media. ¬†Another slight oversight in this comprehensive
report is the absence of any real discussion of the role of the public
backchannel in Classics cyberinfrastructure. ¬†By digital backchannel I mean
both blogs and the growing role of social media in stimulating discussion among
scholars of the ancient world on topics both digital and traditional. ¬†I am not
one of those people who think that blogs are the new academic journals or who
even press for new media spaces to carry substantial weight in tenure,
promotion, or professional development decisions. On the other hand, I have
argued that blogs occupy a novel and useful place in the expanding digital
63
information ecosystem of Classics. ¬†And bloggers and their blogs, like many
other larger, more integrative digital infrastructure projects, have not come to
terms with the tricky task of curating and preserving the huge quantity of
analysis, discussion, and even knowledge produced through these new media.
¬†With the growth of Twitter, Facebook, and other even more ephemeral social
media portals the issue of curation has become even more tricky. If we imagine
social and new media applications as playing a role in our digital future as
scholars, then these outlets have to become part of the conversation of the
digital future of the discipline.
4. Mobile Futures. ¬†Finally, I was surprised that mobil computing did not
occupy a more significant place in this report. ¬†If I understand the global
trends in computing, the future is in mobile devices and applications. In fact,
I read the report on my iPad. I do realize, of course, that some of the mobile
computing "revolution" will involve us just doing on a mobile device what we've
always done on a laptop or a desktop, but there is also a trend toward re-
imagining how we work and how we disseminate data over mobile devices. ¬†As we
look ahead, it seems clear to me that mobile devices, the cloud, and even
greater degrees of integration and communication will produce new challenges for
curation and new opportunities of realtime collaboration.
As I said at the top, this report is a roadmap for anyone interested in the
state-of-the-art in digital Classics and presents a brilliant case study for the
impact of humanities computing in one field. ¬†Any gaps or oversights, are
incidental and tied more to the goals of the project than any shortcomings of
the authors.
¬†
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It finally feels like fall here. ¬†Cold. ¬†So some various varia and quick
hits for a cool and cloudy Friday:
<ul>
<li><a
href="http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science/archaeology/gigapan/niaux/?s
ource=link_fb20101026caveart">A cool GigaPan of the Cave Art of Niaux</a>.
¬†While you're GigaPaning, be sure to check out Scott "The GigaPanda" Moore's <a
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href="http://www.pkap.org/gigapan.html">GigaPans from the Pyla-

Koutsopetria</a>.</li>
<li>The good folks at the <a href="http://chnm.gmu.edu/">Center for History and
the New Media</a> rolled out <a href="http://omeka.org/blog/2010/10/28/omeka-
net-beta-launches/">the beta test of Omeka.net yesterday</a>. ¬†<a
href="http://omeka.net/">Here's the page</a>. ¬†<a
href="http://sebastianheath.omeka.net/items">Sebastian Heath already has a
page</a>. ¬†We await his review!</li>
<li>From the November 2010 issue of the American Historical Association's
Perspectives on History: <a
href="http://www.historians.org/Perspectives/issues/2010/1011/1011pro2.cfm">How
is New Media Reshaping the Work of Historians?</a>. ¬†And more on a similar
theme with <a href="http://www.dancohen.org/2010/10/25/digital-history-at-the-
2011-aha-meeting/">the list of Digital History panels at the AHA Meeting in
2012</a>.</li>
<li>Some pretty clever posts on a brand new blog called <a
href="http://theaporetic.com/">The Aporetic</a>: <a
href="http://theaporetic.com/?p=446">Googling Peer Review</a> and <a
href="http://theaporetic.com/?p=701">Peer Review and the Public Sphere</a>.</li>
<li><a href="http://www.rcet.org/geohistorian/">The Geohistorian</a> is a really
cool place based history project. ¬†Their really straight forward presentation
"Using QR codes and mobile phones for learning" is the best of its kind that
I've seen (<a
href="http://www.rcet.org/research/presentations/eTech_2010_mcneal_qr.ppt">here'
s a link to their powerpointer (.ppt)</a>)</li>
<li><a href="http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/7451115/?ref=nf">This little video
has gone viral (in certain circles)</a>. ¬†It's not my favorite thing ever, but
its a pretty clever take on the challenges facing anyone interested in getting a
PhD in the humanities (although the people who seem to find it funniest, mostly
have jobs).</li>
<li><a href="http://www.acmi.net.au/AIC/TELSTRA_CONNECT.html">This is a pretty
cool little article-like thing on early telecommunications in
Australia</a>.</li>
<li><a
href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304741404575564092478617462.
html">Jay-Z in the </a><a
html">Wall Street Journal</a>: the very fine line between "blowing up" and
selling out. </li>
<li><a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/25/business/media/25carr.html?_r=4&adxn
nl=1&adxnnlx=1288177551-c0e4+bbluT15BLIbqGpWrA">The Awl in the </a><a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/25/business/media/25carr.html?_r=4&adxn
nl=1&adxnnlx=1288177551-c0e4+bbluT15BLIbqGpWrA">New York Times</a>.
¬†See previous bullet point.</li>
<li><a href="http://blog.xplana.com/2010/10/recognize-the-inevitable-student-
technology-use-e-books-and-apps/">More and more on student's use of eBooks and
Apps</a>. </li>
<li>This is pretty cool: <a href="http://bygdebok.library.und.edu/">Arne G.
Breke Bygdebok Collection</a> (if you don't know what that means, it's not for
you!)</li>
<li>The American School of Classical Studies is <a
href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/index.php/news/newsDetails/videocast-graphic-
greeks/">(1) videocasting their lecture series this year and (2) inviting
cartoonists to speak</a>. ¬†When I recorded a couple of presentations at the
65
School for podcasting, there was interest, but some skepticism. ¬†Now they have
embraced the technology. ¬†Imagine how much better a world we'll live in if
scholars can't just give the same lecture over and over again, because they'll
know it will be recorded and available for the public. </li>
<li>What I'm listening to: The Clinic, Internal Wrangler and, in memory
of Ari Up, The Slits, Cut. (both via my music consultant, Kostis
Kourelis)</li>
<li>What I'm reading: David Forgacs ed., <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/gramsci-reader-selected-writings-1916-
1935/oclc/42953050">The Antonio Gramsci Reader</a>. (New York 2000).</li>
</ul>
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Assignments
EMAIL: jennifer.park82@googlemail.com
IP: 116.71.47.196
URL: http://www.mastersdissertation.co.uk/assignments_writing.htm
DATE: 11/10/2010 04:10:33 AM
I liked this post very much as it has helped me a lot in my research and is
quite interesting as well. Thank you for sharing this information with us.
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BASENAME: a-defense-of-asynchronous-teaching
CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 10/28/2010 06:29:38 AM

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x-posted to <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/">Teaching Thursday</a>.
Recently, I've been talking a good deal with one of my favorite interlocutors
on teaching matters, <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/category/bret-
weber/">Bret Weber</a>. ¬†He and I approach online teaching in different ways.
¬†While I hesitate to speak for him, it seems to me that his online teaching
emphasizes more cohort building, realtime interaction, and incremental
assignments with set due dates. ¬†This approach has suited his students, his
teaching goals, and his program (<a
href="http://www.und.edu/dept/socialwo/index.html">Social Work</a>) well.
My approach to online teaching is almost the complete opposite. ¬†When I
first developed my idea for online teaching I wanted it be as experientially
66
different from the classroom as possible. ¬†I was probably overly strident in my
efforts to establish this difference and romanced by change for the sake of
change. Whatever the cause, I developed a radically asynchronous model for
teaching my History 101: Western Civilization class.
The class has 2 deadlines, and one of those deadlines is optional. ¬†All work
must be done by a date toward the end of the class so that I have some some time
left to grade the inevitable onslaught of papers and assignments. ¬†All the
course material is available from the start of the class. ¬†The only optional
deadline is an optional midterm paper that, if the student decides to write it,
is due at the mid point of the semester. ¬†If a student opts out of this midterm
paper, he or she must write a final exam paper that brings together all the
content of the class.
The lessons in the class are organized into 15 folders numbered for each
week. ¬†So students are guided to engage a body of material and assignments each
week. ¬†Each weekly folder includes readings, a quiz, a discussion board post,
and, in many cases, one or two potential paper topics. ¬†Along with the
cumulative paper, students must write two other 3-5 page papers analyzing
historical documents from the class. All the work from the all the weeks is due
at the end of the semester. ¬†In general, I grade two or three weeks at a time
as assignments come in. ¬†Assignments that come much later than two or three
weeks behind the weekly folder inevitably get less attention, but the students
know that I grade on schedule and give greater attention to work submitted in a
regular and consistent way. ¬†I use a Twitter feed and announcements to remind
the students to keep up with the course and to let them know where I am in terms
of grading material.
This system has certain risks. ¬†For example, I regularly write off the last
two weeks of the semester to grade the papers from all the students who leave
the work in the class to the last minute. These assignments tend to be,
generally, of a lower quality, but the average grades for all assignments are
not significantly lower than in my classroom classes where I tend to have more
regimented deadlines. ¬†It appears to be the case that this system probably
leads some students to do more poorly on their papers which they leave to the
last minute. On the other hand, it also appears that some some students do
better than they would in a traditional synchronous course, and the students
with better outcomes tend of offset the students who perform less
consistently.
Aside from the assessed results of the class, his system does offers some
additional benefits as well:
1. Flexibility for Students. ¬†Teachers have always bemoaned the absence of
face-to-face contact with students in an online environment. ¬†My online classes
have attracted students from around the world and across the country. ¬†Face-to-
face time would be impossible with these students even leveraging all the
technology available to maximize realtime communication in an online
environment. ¬†Moreover, many of my online students have lives that make regular
schedules difficult. ¬†Online teaching gives a student who works on oil
pipelines and needs to be far from civilization for weeks on end, a way to begin
a university education. To me this is a good thing, and an asynchronous course,
particularly at the introductory level cultivates diversity in our classes and
expands the democratizing aspects so close to the heart of higher-education.
2. Flexible Engagement. One of the most challenging parts of creating a class
schedule is attempting to address how different students will engage course
material over the course of the semester. ¬†For every assignment that some
students master easily, other students, particularly in an introductory level
course, will find challenging. ¬†An asynchronous course allows students to
engage material at their own pace and, moreover, allows different paces to exist
67
in the class at the same time. It is interesting to see the natural divisions
among students as small cohorts of students form and engage course materials at
similar paces over the course of the semester. In a course of 70, about 10
students stay precisely on the weekly schedule, another 10 or so may fall the
occasional week behind, and a third cohort of 10-15 students are never more than
2 weeks behind over the course of the semester.
2. Flexible Assessment. One of the best things from a faculty standpoint of
asynchronous teaching is that it restricts the bulk grading experience to one
occasion at the end of the semester. ¬†During the semester there is a constant
trickle of two or three assignments a day. ¬†I tend to assess assignments on a
weekly basis and contribute to the online discussion board slightly more often.
I find that grading the slow trickle of assignments over the course of the
semester gives me far more time to make substantial comments on student work.
¬†Moreover, it gives an advantage to students who can make reasonably consistent
progress through the course. ¬†I've found that even students with the most
complex schedules rarely fall more than a couple weeks behind if they attend to
the course in a serious way. ¬†The half of the class that maintains a good
schedule of engagement over the course of the semester tends to get the kind of
substantial comments that allow their work to improve over the course of the
semester. ¬†Students who turn in all their work at the end of the semester do
not get the same benefits as students who approach the course in a regular way.
¬†They not only tend to get less sustained comments on their work, but also have
less time to develop skills and improve on the skills introduced over the course
of class.
Asynchronous teaching is not a perfect system for all classes. ¬†I might
suggest that that it works best in larger, introductory level courses. It does
little to accommodate ¬†unmotivated or undisciplined student who can easily
leave their work to the end of the semester or to set deadlines. My experiences
has been, however, that these students tend to struggle in any learning
environment and ¬†the asynchronous system only exacerbates these issues.
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TITLE: Working Group in Digital and New Media Annual Report and Open House
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On Thursday, the <a href="http://digitalgateway.und.edu/">Working Group in

Digital and New Media</a> at the University of North Dakota will host its first
open house and release to its various stake holders its first Annual Report.
¬†The open house will run from 12-1 pm in the Working Group Lab 203 O'Kelly
Hall. The open house and report seek to highlight the activities of the Working
Group over their first year. ¬†There is still a bunch of work to maximize the
potential of this group, but there is momentum and opportunities for
collaboration abound!
Since readers of this blog participated in some way in the development of the
Working Group (loyal readers probably remember these posts: <a
e-potential-and-role-of-digital-humanities-at-the-university-of-north-
dakota.html">Potential for Digital Humanities at UND</a>, <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2009/01/di
gital-humanities-white-paper-at-the-university-of-north-dakota.html">A Digital
Humanities White Paper</a>, and <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2009/10/se
lling-the-working-group-in-digital-and-new-media.html">Selling the Working Group
in Digital and New Media</a>), I thought it was fair to leak a version of our
Annual Report on my blog. ¬†The various members of the Working Group contributed
to the Annual Report, I edited it, and <a href="http://joeljonientz.com/">Joel
Jonientz</a> designed it.
Here's the executive summary from the Annual Report:
<blockquote>
ÔªøThe Working Group in Digital and New Media emerged as the result of
funding awarded from the President‚Äôs call for collaborative and
transdisciplinary white papers in his New Initiative funding program. The
Working Group is dedicated to the support and development of digital and new
media projects across the disciplines on campus. Beginning in the spring of
2009, the Working Group has created a laboratory space uniquely suited to
collaborative digital and new projects developed across campus. To date these
projects have brought together contributors from the departments of Art and
Design, Music, History, English, and Computer Science, as well as the Chester
Fritz Library and the ITSS High Performance Computing Cluster. Faculty and
students have produced a dynamic and diverse group of projects ranging from
video shorts, musical compositions, to online and gallery museum exhibitions and
collections, and blogs. Statistically, the Working Group projects accounted for
over 2500 person/hours of work, over 15 faculty and student collaborators, and
close to 20 major creative and research projects. The Working Group created the
intellectual and technological infrastructure necessary for over $35,000 of
internal and external grants in its first year alone. In the hyper-competitive
realm of non-STEM funding, the collaborative infrastructure Working Group in
Digital and New Media gives faculty in the arts and humanities a significant
edge. The transdisciplinary research, creative activities, and teaching of the
Working Group‚Äôs members will continue to leverage the common space of the
Working Group Laboratory to expand collaborative research and creative
activities on campus.
</blockquote>
And here is the Annual Report:
display: block; text-decoration: underline;" title="View WGDNM Annual Report on
Scribd" href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/40227454/WGDNM-Annual-Report">WGDNM
Annual Report</a>
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2lixczx02gfz8g1mqdlz&page=1&viewMode=list" /> <embed
height="600"
_key=key-2lixczx02gfz8g1mqdlz&page=1&viewMode=list"
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TITLE: Hesperia, Offprints, and the American School
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BASENAME: hesperia-offprints-and-the-american-school
CATEGORY: Notes From Athens
DATE: 10/26/2010 07:07:07 AM

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Yesterday I had one of those little thought-provoking coincidences that make
you wonder about how things could be done better.
At 11:44 am I got an email from the American School of Classical Studies
publication office concerning our soon-to-be-published article on fortification
around Ano Vayia. ¬†Our article will appear in the next issue of the <a
href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/index.php/publications/hesperia">American School's
journal, </a><a
href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/index.php/publications/hesperia">Hesperia</a>.
The email asked us where we would like our 50 complimentary offprints sent
and whether we wanted to purchase 50 more for $150. Hesperia offprints are
really lovely things. They are stapled, on high quality paper, impeccably
edited, stylish in design, and include a nice, glossy cover. ¬†In short, the
$150 price for 50 does not seem unreasonable.
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At 1:45 pm that same day I received a form-email from Jack Davis, the
Director of the<a href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/"> American School of Classical
Studies</a>. It was their annual fund-raising email. ¬†The American School of
Classical Studies at Athens is one of my favorite things in the world. ¬†The
institution played a key role in anything that is good about my professional
development and no matter how long I am away, still has the feeling of a home-
away-from-home. I have benefited three times over from their generous
fellowships and these fellowships have led to my dissertation and numerous
publications. I have come to appreciation the American School for its awkward
and paradoxical blend of things traditional and things contemporary and
"modern". By not shying away from some of the most traditional aspects of a
classical education (e.g. the flavor of the Grand Tour that pervades the <a
href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/index.php/programs/academic">Regular Program</a>),
the School encourages students to reflect on the practices and institutions that
have created the disciplines of Classics, Classical Archaeology, Ancient
History, et c. ¬†Because of these things, I am in the habit of giving money to
the American School. ¬†I can't give much as an Assistant Professor at a state
school in North Dakota, but I give my proverbial widow's mite.
Back to the coincidence: In the same day, within hours, the same institution
that was asking for money also offered me that very day something for free.
¬†This got me to think: what if we as contributors to Hesperia just
turned down our offprints? ¬†Now, I recognize that the circulation of offprints
continues to play a small role in the "academic gift economy". ¬†But, as I began
to try to make a mental list of people to whom I'd like to send offprints, I was
counting far fewer than 50 individuals. ¬†Moreover, many of the people on that
list would probably just as soon have a digital offprint (a handsomely formatted
.pdf file) suitably disgraced with some personal note of thanks. The digital
offprints of Hesperia are every bit as high quality as the print offprints with
good resolution on photographs and searchable text. ¬†Moreover, of the handful
of people to whom I'd send offprints, almost all of them have access to
Hesperia. ¬†Less than a month ago I had a conversation with a
resolutely "olde skool" American School type and offered to send him an offprint
of my forthcoming article. He smiled, thanked me, and said, that he subscribes
to Hesperia. (I knew this, of course, but apparently even among the
"olde skool" the ritual component of offprint exchange had fallen into
disuse.)
All the same, I can anticipate some people saying that some individuals still
keep paper offprint files and some of our European colleagues take the
circulation of paper offprints quite seriously and some offprints serve as
valuable contributions to small, highly specialized and underfunded libraries
(say at the local office of the archaeological service). ¬†The high quality of a
Hesperia offprint makes them almost something of intrinsic value.
On the other hand, I am pretty sure (although I won't admit to doing this)
that we can still print out a copy of a Hesperia article, scrawl some
heartfelt note of thanks of the first page, and present it to a colleague as a
token of thanks. ¬†Maybe this violates copyright? ¬†I'm really not sure, but I
can hardly imagine this to be the kind of practice that the International
Copyright Police would enforce, and it would guess that it would be possible for
Hesperia to give authors permission to reproduce a certain number of
copies of their own articles. (Although it would be awesome to be approached by
a neatly dressed Nigerian man outside the Agora in Athens with a stack of
slightly blurry photocopied Hesperia offprints...).
One more thing, Hesperia offers to let us purchase another 50
offprints for $150. Since Hesperia articles tend toward the long side,
I assume that this price represents the average cost of printing 50 offprints,
71
perhaps with some small compensation of watering down the copyright (in other
words, perhaps they factor in that some people will receive an offprint and will
decide not to purchase the journal, but I can't imagine that this represents a
very large group). ¬†Last year, Hesperia published 17 articles and if $150 is
the average cost of a run of offprints, then they spent about $2550 on
offprints.
If every contributor over a year just said, politely, no thank you to
offprints from Hesperia, we could, in effect, give the American School
Publication Office a gift of $2500. I suspect that each of us would have to turn
down all of our offprints because printing enjoys really significant economies
of scale, and it seems fair to assume that these economies are realized at 50
copies of each article. I know some contributors will still want to "kick it
olde skool" and will want to have their shinny Hesperia offprints, but
I also suspect that, if given the option explicitly, a percentage of hipper, new
skool contributors would turn ours down. ¬†And I'd like to think
that¬†Hesperia and the American School¬†would appreciate this little
gift.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Chuck Jones
EMAIL: chuck.jones@nyu.edu
IP: 128.122.167.92
URL: http://ancientworldonline.blogspot.com
DATE: 10/26/2010 08:41:48 AM
Hmmm. Take it one step further Bill. What if each author was offered the
opportunity to donate the $150 per offprint batch to a fund to subsidize the
distribution of subscriptions (or e-access) to/in underfunded libraries (say at
the local office of the archaeological service) - that would be 51 more copies
of complete issues in the hands of people who need and use the journal on a
continuing basis.
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EMAIL:
IP: 134.129.192.180
URL: http://profile.typepad.com/billcaraher
DATE: 10/26/2010 08:54:06 AM
Chuck,
I love the idea! I remember an old program on an airline (which probably went
under) where you could donate your free upgrade to someone who was critically
ill and needed to travel. Same kind of thing.
Bill
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72
AUTHOR: Andrew Reinhard

EMAIL: areinhard@ascsa.org
IP: 71.168.218.10
URL:
DATE: 10/26/2010 11:09:49 AM
Hi, Bill,
Thanks for a great post today. I am circulating it around the Publications

office here in Princeton for comment.
Chuck, that's also a good idea. Let me talk to Jack and to PubComm about this.
Keep those ideas coming! I appreciate them.
Andrew Reinhard
ASCSA Director of Publications
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COMMENT:
EMAIL:
IP: 134.129.192.180
DATE: 10/26/2010 11:11:30 AM
Andrew,
Thanks for the note!
Bill
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Tracey Cullen
EMAIL: tcullen@ascsa.org
IP: 71.168.218.10
URL:
DATE: 10/26/2010 03:34:56 PM
Bill (and Chuck),
Thanks very much for these good ideas (and Bill especially for saying such nice
things about the journal). I've always been a big believer in printed offprints-
-for advertising not only the author's work, but ours as well--hoping to attract
more submissions this way. But saving (or donating) money, and sending out PDF
offprints only--both good ideas.
I just talked to our press, and they report that offprint orders overall have
declined over the past year--and I have noticed that many fewer authors want the
extra 50 Hesperia offprints (but no one--other than Bill!--has yet declined the
free 50). The printed offprint with the shiny cover is still probably nice to
give to "the authorities" when working overseas--but otherwise, a PDF would
surely suffice. And save some trees as well.
Anyway, thank you both.
Tracey
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73
AUTHOR: David
IP: 74.99.148.10
URL:
DATE: 10/26/2010 08:19:58 PM
Excellent post, Bill.
Tracey and Andrew, what about a box asking authors how many offprints they would
like?
Our department uses offprints for the display cases and the 'author day' at the
end of the year. But I don't often send them out to people anymore when I have
PDFs available.
If I had the option of 5 offprints, that would probably be enough for my

purposes.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Tracey
EMAIL: tcullen@ascsa.org
IP: 71.168.218.10
URL:
DATE: 10/27/2010 03:38:05 PM
This is a good idea, and easily enough done. The offprints are created by the
press overrunning the print run -- so if you wanted 5, David, and others in the
issue wanted 50, the press would still run 50 extra copies, chop off the spines,
and throw out the ones not requested. So this approach wouldn't save many trees.
But it would definitely save us the cost of labor in assembling and stapling
offprints.
Jane Carter just wrote to say she thought nice glossy offprints with covers like
we produce have become akin to white gloves in church.
Maybe not the cutting-edge image we want!
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TITLE: David Pettegrew's Setting Stage for St. Paul's Corinth Available as
Podcast or Streaming Video
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DATE: 10/25/2010 07:02:42 AM
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For those of you who could not make it to the David Pettegrew's 2nd Annual
Cyprus Research Fund Lecture, fear not! ¬†We have made David's lecture available
as both a downloadable podcast and as a streaming video.
<a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/CyprusResearchFund/Pettegrew
Setting the Stage.mp3">Here's the podcast</a>.
<a href="http://conted.breeze.und.nodak.edu/p11229350/">Here's the
video</a>.
David's two days on campus were really exciting. ¬†Not only did he speak to
over 50 faculty,undergraduates, graduate students, and members of the community
on the Thursday afternoon talk, but he also contributed to the history
department's "brown bag" lecture series on Friday. ¬†At his Friday talk, he
presented a great primer to intensive survey archaeology and discussed the ideas
of "source criticism" as applied to ancient material culture. ¬†Finally, David
took a couple of hours and read Latin with some of our graduate students and
undergraduates at our weekly "Latin Friday Morning" reading group.
It is always gratifying to see how much interest there is in the Ancient
Mediterranean at the University of North Dakota. ¬†So, if you enjoyed the
lecture with here at UND, thanks for coming out! And if you enjoy the lecture
via the streaming video or podcast, thanks for listening! ¬†I also should thank
Chad Bushy and Caleb Holthusen from UND's <a
href="http://cilt.und.edu/index.html">Center for Instructional and Learning
Technologies </a>office for not only preparing the video and podcasts, but
trouble shooting during the live webcast.
And, finally, thanks to David Pettegrew for agreeing to spend his fall break
with us at the University of North Dakota. For more on his research and the
Roman and Late Roman Corinthia, check out his blog <a
href="http://corinthianmatters.com/">Corinthian Matters</a>.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Archaeology Excavations
EMAIL: archaeologyexcavations@gmail.com
IP: 122.164.139.213
URL: http://archaeologyexcavations.blogspot.com
DATE: 10/26/2010 02:45:45 AM
Respected Bill Caraher,
I found your great archaeology resource <a

href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com">http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.c
om</a>
Great Work excellent presentations. I like very much very much.
I have more interesting in archaeology. i have two archaeology resource site.
75
Please Welcome Our archaeology site
1) <a href="http://www.greatarchaeology.com">http://www.greatarchaeology.com</a>
2) <a
href="http://archaeologyexcavations.blogspot.com">http://archaeologyexcavations.
blogspot.com</a>
If you link our site please enter your comments and please provide our site
url from your great archaeology site resource.
Thank You,
Regards,
archaeology excavations
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TITLE: Local Wildlife
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: local-wildlife
DATE: 10/24/2010 12:21:56 PM

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A cute little woodpecker feasting on whatever he was finding in the trees in
our windbreak. ¬†My wife took the photos.
title="Woodpeckler1.jpg"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20133f54f63de970b
-pi" border="0" alt="Woodpeckler1.jpg" width="600" height="600" />
title="Woodpeckler2.jpg"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20133f54f63f6970b
-pi" border="0" alt="Woodpeckler2.jpg" width="600" height="600" />
¬†
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TITLE: Some Friday Quick Hits and Varia

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DATE: 10/22/2010 09:55:13 AM

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Just a quick gaggle of quick hits and varia on a sunny Friday morning:
<ul>
<li>Yesterday's Cyprus Research Fund talk was well attended. ¬†Over 50
interested students, colleagues, and members of the community showed up for
David Pettegrew's talk: Setting the Stage for St. Paul's Corinth: How an Isthmus
determined the maritime character of an ancient landscape. ¬†If you missed it,
<a href="http://conted.breeze.und.nodak.edu/p11229350/">you can watch the
presentation here</a>. ¬†And before too long we'll have the lecture up as an mp3
podcast.</li>
<li>David directed to me his colleague, <a
href="http://www.philipvickersfithian.com/">John Fea's blog: The Way of
Improvement Leads Home</a>.</li>
<li><a href="http://www.functionalfate.org/archives/2010/08/18/reasonable-
violence/">Dimitri Nakassis got some blog-press</a> a while back venting his
wrath while modifying the function of a plastic chair.</li>
<li>I know this poem has made the rounds for years, but <a
href="http://www.loc.gov/poetry/180/013.html">it's worth linking to
again</a>.</li>
<li><a href="http://nowviskie.org/2010/eternal-september-of-the-digital-
humanities/">Some interesting thoughts on Digital Humanities</a>.</li>
<li>The Council on Library and Information Resources and Tufts has produced an
impressive report on the state of Digital classics:¬†Ôªø <a
href="http://networkedblogs.com/9srkS">Rome Wasn't Digitized in a Day: Building
a Cyberinfrastructure for Digital Classicists</a>. ¬†I haven't processed it, but
it looks like an amazing compendium of digital humanities projects and
initiatives. ¬†<a href="http://ancientworldonline.blogspot.com/2010/10/request-
for-comment-rome-wasnt.html">They are looking for comments apparently</a>.</li>
<li><a href="http://chronicle.com/article/4-Very-Different-Futures-
Are/125011/">Some different views </a>of the research library of the
future.</li>
<li>And<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/17/magazine/17FOB-medium-t.html">
some more thoughts on E-readers</a>.</li>
<li><a href="http://www.paphostheatre.com/paphos-theatre-education-
blog.html">Another interesting archaeology blog from the University of Sydney's
Excavations at the Paphos Theatre, Cyprus</a>. </li>
<li>There is something profound about the <a
href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4o-TeMHys0">Rent is Too Damn High
Party</a>.</li>
<li>What I'm reading: George Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of
George Jackson. (New York 1970).</li>
</ul>
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TITLE: David Pettegrew on Corinth! Live on the Interwebs!
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: david-pettegrew-on-corinth-live-on-the-interwebs
DATE: 10/21/2010 08:09:46 AM

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Join us today for the 2010 Cyprus Research Fund Lecture: David Pettegrew's
"Setting the Stage for St. Paul's Corinth: How the Isthmus Determined the
Character of a Roman City." ¬†The talk is at 4 pm today in the East Asia Room of
the Chester Fritz Library.
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20133f53d0586970b
If you're not from Grand Forks, FEAR NOT! ¬†We'll also stream David's talk
for free on the interwebs! ¬†<a
href="http://conted.breeze.und.nodak.edu/cyprus/">Here's the link</a>. ¬†Just
log in a guest. ¬†If you're watching remotely and have a question for David,
just Tweet it to me. ¬†<a href="http://twitter.com/billcaraher">Here's my
Twitter account</a> (@billcaraher) and use the hashtag: #CRF2010 at the end of
your post.
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DATE: 10/20/2010 07:12:24 AM

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Yesterday my History 240 class spent the afternoon at the <a
href="http://www.library.und.edu/Collections/">Elywn B. Robinson Department of
Special Collections</a>. ¬†This is always a good time for me because not only do
I get to enjoy the University Archivist, <a
href="http://teachingthursday.org/2010/09/09/a-note-from-the-archives-planning-
an-archival-field-trip/">Curt Hanson's, sense of humor</a>, but I also get to
root around in special collections. ¬†Yesterday, I decided to read <a
href="http://www.library.und.edu/dept/library/Collections/og1289.html">a
Merrifield Award Winning Essay</a> by a former Department of History Doctor of
the Arts student, <a
href="http://www.trinitybiblecollege.edu/directory/faculty/smith/ken">Ken
Smith</a> who now teaches at <a
href="http://www.trinitybiblecollege.edu/">Trinity Bible College</a> in
Ellendale, ND. ¬†I had a chance to meet Ken at the Northern Great Plains History
Conference last week, and our brief chat reminded me to check out his essay.
The essay is entitled: "UND's Joseph Kennedy and the Allure of Psychical
Research", and it provides a fascinating (and creepy!) insight into the early
20th century interest in psychic and paranormal research. <a
href="http://www.library.und.edu/Collections/og28.html">Kennedy</a> was a member
of the "second Merrifield Faculty" who was hired during Webster Merrifield's
term as university president in 1892. He followed Horace B. Woodworth as the
main faculty member responsible for teaching philosophy and education and in
1901 he became the Dean of the Normal College. He remained in this position
until his retirement in 1928. ¬†While his primary area of expertise was
education - particularly secondary and rural education, he was influenced
heavily by the psychological and philosophical works of William James.
According to Smith's work, Kennedy's interest in James paved the way for his
critical interest in psychical research. ¬†This interest culminated with a visit
to Dr. James H. Hyslop in Boston. ¬†Hyslop was the director of the American
Society of Psychical Research which was a group founded by Richard Hodgson who
was a colleague and correspondent of William James. ¬†During Kennedy's visit to
Boston, Hyslop arranged for him to meet with a medium named "Mrs. Chenowith" who
apparently sought to contact Kennedy's family and friends who had passed to the
other side. Unlike many mediums of her day, Mrs. Chenowith wrote out the
messages that she received from the other side.
Apparently the messages that Mrs. Chenowith communicated to Kennedy exist in
the UND archives, although I have not yet had a chance to find them. ¬†Kennedy
struggled to understand and interpret the messages and initiated an almost two
decade correspondence with Hyslop in the process. ¬†As Smith points out, the
correspondence, while always cordial, were not without tension. ¬†Kennedy found
the work of the medium unconvincing and Hyslop was not necessary amendable to
that interpretation.
Kennedy remained critically agnostic about the possibilities of
parapsychological and spiritual phenomena his entire life. ¬†He was open to the
ideas enough to conduct his own research, but critical enough to probe ideas and
occurrences quite deeply. Smith, for example, recounts an episode when Raymond
Hitchcock, a professor of Mathematics, sought Kennedy out to analyze a lucid
dream. ¬†In the dream, Hitchcock saw a home that he then encountered in real
life some time later. Kennedy resisted the temptation to attribute the <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2010/10/st
-augustine-and-dreams.html">dream</a> to psychical phenomena attributing it
79
instead to the power of the unconscious mind (although he stopped short of

seeing the dream as an expression of an unfulfilled wish in a Freudian
sense).
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DATE: 10/19/2010 06:56:15 AM

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Long-time readers of this blog know that I have an interest in dreams and
their role in archaeology, although that interest might not be very evident
lately. ¬†So after spending the better part of two weeks pouring over survey
data from the <a href="http://www.pkap.org/">Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological
Project</a>, I took about an hour to follow up on a citation that I culled from
Ann Marie Yasin's recent book to St. Augustine's De cura pro mortuis
gerenda (On the Care of the Dead). ¬†The text is a letter that St.
Augustine wrote to St. Paulinus of Nola about whether there was any benefit to
be buried near the body or memorial of a saint. ¬†Augustine takes this
opportunity to articulate a criticism of ad sanctus burials (burials near the
graves of holy people, particularly martyrs) which he then expands to a general
critique of claims that the dead influence the world of the living.
This is where dreams come in. ¬†Augustine shows some concern for the stories
in which dead people appear to the living particularly when their bodies are not
buried properly. ¬†Augustine, of course, knows that by challenging the authority
of these kinds of visions, he runs the risk of criticizing widely held beliefs
promulgated in the "writings of certain faithful men" (12). ¬†Augustine makes
clear later in the text that, among many possible episodes in Early Christian
writing, he is referring here to St. Ambrose's claim (Epist. 20.1-2)
that visions (or dreams) prompted him to discover the bodies of Sts. Gervasius
and Protasius in Milan (21).
The crux of St. Augustine's argument is not whether saints or the dead appear
to people, but whether they are aware that they are appearing to people or
appear to people in their sleep voluntarily. He argues that the dead do not have
any knowledge of this in the same way that the living are unaware when they
appear in someone's dream. ¬†Augustine further proves his point by arguing that
pious men sometimes appear in dreams and do bad things. ¬†At the same time,
pious people, like his own late mother, would certainly appear to the living
80
when they were troubled or upset, if they could, indeed, influence the world of
the living.
It seems that this text dates to the early 420s and continues a North African
inclination against the authority of visions and dreams directing the faithful
to the locations of buried saints. ¬†As early as the Council of Carthage in 401
the church rejected the practice of inventio per somnia (discovery
through sleep).
For more on this text, see:
A. M. Yasin, Saints and Church Spaces in the Late Antique
Mediterranean. (Cambridge 2009), 212-222. D. Trout, Paulinus of
Nola. (Berkeley 1999), 244-247. H. Kotila, Memoria Mortuorum:
Commemoration of the Departed in Augustine. (Rome 1992). Y.
Duval,¬†ÔªøÔªøAupr√®s des saints corps et √¢me. L'inhumation ¬´ ad sanctos
¬ª dans la chr√©tient√© d'Orient et d'Occident du IIIe si√®cle au VIIe
si√®cle. (Paris 1988).

For more on Dream Archaeology without leaving the comfortable informality of
the blog, see below:
<a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2010/04/an
other-better-attempt-at-dream-archaeology.html">Another, Better Attempt at Dream
Archaeology</a><a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2010/04/dr
eams-in-ravenna.htm"> Dreams in Ravenna </a><a
eam-archaeology-in-the-early-christian-west.html">Dream Archaeology in the Early
Christian West </a><a
re-dreams-rel.html">Blindness, Dreams, and Relics </a><a
re-dreams-rel.html">More Dreams, Religion, and Archaeology </a><a
re-byzantine.html">More Byzantine Dreams... </a><a
eams-pausania.html">Dreams, Pausanias, and Archaeology </a><a
eams-inventio.html">Dreams, Inventio, and Archaeology </a><a
zani.html">Kozani</a>

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AUTHOR: David Pettegrew
IP: 153.42.40.246
URL:
81
DATE: 12/06/2010 01:48:55 PM

Fun post, Bill. Doesn't Augustine distinguish in this essay the role of saints
vs. the role of the ordinary Christian dead? (I may be misremembering).
He discusses some very interesting cases involving dreams.

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TITLE: Broad Period Artifacts and Survey Analysis: Quantifying what you don't
know
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BASENAME: broad-period-artifacts-and-survey-analysis-quantifying-what-you-dont-
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DATE: 10/18/2010 07:14:23 AM

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By far the most vexing issues facing most survey projects is the analysis of
artifacts datable only to very broad periods of time (<a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2010/10/st
ones-that-speak-and-some-other-data-from-the-pyla-koutsopetria-archaeological-
project.html">a point I brought up in my blog post from last week</a>). In
the work of the Pyla-Koustopetria Archaeological Project, these artifacts are
the equivalent to objects of "unknown date" from other survey projects.
The chronotype identification system required our ceramicist to date each
artifact even if these dates are exceedingly broad. As a result, we have
significant quantities of artifacts dated to periods that exceed 1000 years in
length. These broad periods tend to represent two types of artifacts. 
<ol> <li>Artifacts that do not fit into any known typology such as body sherds
without particularly characteristic marks, fabrics, or shapes.</li> <li>Artifact
types that remained in use for long periods of time. This is most often
the case with various kinds of coarse and medium coarse utilities wares probably
produced from local fabrics.</li></ol> In some cases, the fabrics or shapes
can tell use enough to allow us to group the artifact into a relatively well-
defined, yet still exceedingly broad, date range. For example, the most
common period for an artifact dated to a broad period is "Ancient
Historic". This is a date range that extends across the entire period of
historical antiquity on the island of Cyprus: 750 BC - AD 750. Almost all
of these sherds (89%) are body sherds. The artifacts datable to this period
appear over 77% of the total area of our survey and in 84% of the units where
artifacts occur. Statistically, the distribution of "Ancient Historic"
artifacts correlates more closely to the overall artifact densities across the
entire study area than any other period, broad or narrow (the correlation is
.674). This is particularly significant because artifact counts and the
number of artifacts assigned to a particular period are independent variables:
our artifact counts are based on the total number of artifacts visible on the
ground according to clicker counts and the number artifacts dated to a
particular period is a subset of the number of artifacts sampled from the
units. Finally, the fabric types present in Ancient-Historic period more
82
or less parallel the fabric groups present in narrower, better-known, or at

least more clearly defined periods (e.g. Classical or Classical-Hellenistic).
For the Koutsopetria plain, for example, "Ancient Historic" material appears as
coarse ware, medium coarse ware, and kitchen/cooking ware which finds rough
parallels with the groups of material present from other periods and the general
functional character of the area (<a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2009/10/pr
eliminary-analysis-of-pyla-koustopetria-archaeological-data-or-thinking-out-
loud-3.html">for those of you keeping track at home, we call the Koutsopetria
plain Zone 1</a>) <a
b-pi"><img style="border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; border-top: 0px; border-
right: 0px" border="0" alt="Ancient_Historic_Material"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20133f528865e970b
-pi" width="454" height="502"></a> Other broad periods from our site
represent small quantities of obscure material that stands outside traditional
typologies. For example, there are only two sherds assigned to two
chronotypes dated to the Ceramic Age (a Red Micaceous Pithos and coarse ware).
Only four sherds assigned to four chronotypes received the generic Ancient date
(Ancient Lekane, fineware, kitchen ware, medium coarse ware). Only one
chronotype, amphoras, receive the designation Post-Prehistoric. In old
days of survey, sherds dated to broad periods tended to be neglected either at
the analysis phase, or more commonly at the sampling and collection phase.
The vast majority of broad period sherds are body sherds (85%) and most of these
would not appear to be diagnostic. As a result many traditional collection
strategies that privileged diagnostic sherds (feature sherds with distinct
marks, rims, handles, bases) would have overlooked broad period material. More
recent work has at least assigned the designation of "unknown date" to these
broad period artifacts, but rarely do they appear documented in the survey
publication. This material is difficult to correlate with past human
activities. At best, it reinforces the notion that certain types of productive
practices may have endured for long periods of time without much in the way of
visible changing. It suggests that certain vessel shapes, fabrics, and
pottery categories may have continued to serve basic functions within the
community, the household, and the economy for long periods of time as well. In
Braudelian terms, the apparently long, slow, and relatively unchanging character
of such a large part of our ceramic assemblage represents the slow swells of the
sea. The more closely dated and rapidly changing character of fine wares
or even the more diagnostic parts of the vessel , for example, which tend to
allow us to produce our narrow period assemblages, show the more fickle and
rapidly changing nature of ancient ceramic habits. The value then of our
effort to understand the distribution and character of artifacts datable to
broad periods from PKAP is that they give us a real measure of how much we do
not know about material from our survey area. And at the same time, reveal
that much of the most basic practices typical of the ancient world likewise
continues to elude our grasp.
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It right around freezing this morning, so fall must really have arrived after
positively balmy temperatures earlier in the week. So, some quick hits
and varia on a crisp Friday morning:!
<ul>!
<li>If you have some time today be sure to check out the <a
href="http://www.und.edu/org/greatplains/">Northern Great Plains History
Conference</a> taking place here in Grand Forks and hosted the University of
North Dakota.</li>!
<li>And next week, if you're in the community here, I urge you to come and
hear the incomparable David Pettegrew speak on <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2010/09/20
10-cyprus-research-fund-lecture-setting-the-stage-for-st-pauls-
corinth.html">Setting the Stage for St. Paul's Corinth: How an Isthmus
Determined the Character of a Roman City</a>. David will be the 2nd
Annual Cyprus Research Fund lecturer.</li>!
<li>Two new blogs: First, <a href="http://mybyzantine.wordpress.com/">a new
popular blog on Byzantium</a> subtitled: "making Byzantium alive for people
today" continues the remarkable new trend in pop-Byzantine history.
It's a great blog that is far more informative and careful than sensational.
The same author also has <a
href="http://patrickleighfermor.wordpress.com/">a nice blog on life, work, and
friends of Patrick Leigh Fermor</a> whom the author asserts as the
"Greatest Living Englishman". For those who don't know,
Fermor is an influential 20th century travel writer, observer, and in many ways
participant in Greek history.</li>!
<li>The Oxford Centre for Late Antquity will have a colloquium next month on
"<a href="http://researchnewsinla.blogspot.com/2010/10/carnival-and-cult-
from-caesar-to.html">Carnival and Cult from Caesar to Chrysostom</a>".
When I was working on my dissertation, I was dismayed to find how little
there was on festivals associated with Early Christian holy days, sacred spots,
and architecture. So it's great to a see a colloquium taking up this
topic.</li>!
<li>Does anyone use<a href="http://mailplaneapp.com/"> Mailplane</a>? Is
it worth the $25? </li>!
<li>On Monday, I offered a response to a post by Edward Blum: Ôªø"<a
href="http://usreligion.blogspot.com/2010/09/academic-blogging-some-
reservations-and.html">Academic Blogging: Some Reservations and
Lessons</a>". I wasn't the only one. <a
href="http://mcconeghy.wordpress.com/2010/09/28/should-i-blog/">Here's a
nice response</a> by David McConeghy at his blog, A Lively Experiment. He
makes the great observation that with many graduate students today this
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isn't the case of academics becoming bloggers, it is sometimes the case of

bloggers becoming academics. </li>!
<li>More Liberal Arts 2.0 stuff (which is a phrase coined Jason Kottke's
iconic blog <a href="http://www.kottke.org/"> kottke.org</a>) Wired
has put together a short piece called "<a
href="http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/09/ff_wiredu/all/1">7 Essential Skills
You Didn't Learn in College</a>" and grouped them around a Liberal Arts
2.0 theme. I loved the little book called <a
href="http://www.snarkmarket.com/nla/">New Liberal Arts</a> which grew out
of a series of<a href="http://snarkmarket.com/"> Snarkmarket</a> posts a couple
years back and this post carries along the same theme.</li>!
<li>There is a great project called: <a
href="http://writinghistory.wp.trincoll.edu/">Writing History: How Historians
Research, Write, and Publish in the Digital Age</a>. From what I can
understand, it is going to be crowd-sourced book on on Digital History which
will also be collectively edited and reviewed. I'm excited to see how
it will develop, and I wonder whether this might be a cool model for an
archaeology and the new media volume and <a
href="http://www.thefee.net/delirium/">Sam Fee</a> and I have bandied about over
the last few weeks: Archaeology 2.0</li>!
<li>What I'm listening to: Harlem, Hippies (2010)</li>!
<li>What I'm (re)reading: Ann Marie Yasin, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/saints-and-church-spaces-in-the-late-
antique-mediterranean-architecture-cult-and-community/oclc/422764940">Saints and
Church Spaces in the Late Antique Mediterranean</a> (2009); A. D'Ambrosio, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/let-fury-have-the-hour-the-punk-rock-
politics-of-joe-strummer/oclc/56988650">Let Fury Have the Hour: The Punk Rock
Politics of Joe Strummer</a>. (2004) - I was drawn to this mostly because
of <a
href="http://books.google.com/books?id=UKMBtint9LwC&lpg=PP1&dq=Let%20the
%20Fury%20Have%20the%20Hour&pg=PR19#v=onepage&q&f=false">Chuck
D's brief comments on Strummer</a> and the Clash.</li>!
</ul>
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TITLE: What is the Future of the Textbook?
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CATEGORY: Teaching
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DATE: 10/14/2010 07:39:52 AM

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Crossposted to <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/">Teaching
Thursday</a>.
A recent short notice in the Chronicle of Higher Education asked the
question: "<a href="http://chronicle.com/article/As-Textbooks-Go-Digital-
Will/124881/">As Textbooks Go Digital, Will Professors Build Their Own
Books?</a>". ¬†The short article goes on the discuss the various a la carte
options offered by traditional textbook publishes that allow a faculty member to
create unique combinations of material in an online textbook. ¬†Such a modular
approach to textbook content is not new, of course. ¬†In fact, I wrote a module
on the "Historical Jesus" for a modular textbook and source reader called <a
href="http://custom.cengage.com/etep/">Exploring the European Past</a>
coordinated by Ohio State and published by Thompson almost 10 years ago.
The more interesting idea from the short Chronicle note is the idea that
textbook publishers could become distributors of a wide range of content for
increasingly customizable course packets. ¬†In short, textbook publishers could
become more like iTunes which produces almost no content, but provides an easy
interface to access content produced by others.
With the growing amount of content available on the web, a central hub for
certain kinds of content would certainly make the creating of custom textbooks
easier, but, many of us, I expect, have already taken the plunge into both
aggregating content from across the web for our textbook, as well as creating on
own content. ¬†In other words, the model has probably begun to shift aware from
the usefulness of the textbook as a single, authoritative entity and toward a
far more fragmented, user-generated, and maybe less profit driven "marketplace"
for course content.
For example, instead of a formal textbook, my rather low-tech History 101:
Western Civilization I class combines podcast lectures with a short, inexpensive
monograph, and a gaggle of historical documents available in the public domain.
For maps, I created a bunch of "places" that students can view in Google Earth.
¬†For basic reference material, I provide comprehensive indexes with links to
useful website or to Wikipedia. ¬†In the end, I have created a custom textbook
for free.
Other contributors here to Teaching Thursday have taken some of these basic
techniques even further by integrating <a
href="http://teachingthursday.org/2010/08/04/teaching-with-interviews/">custom
made interviews</a>, <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/2010/05/06/first-year-
reflections-my-classroom-my-goals/">student generated content</a>, and other
techniques to produce sophisticated and dynamic bodies of content. ¬†With more
and more content becoming available online, it is not difficult at all to
imagine a custom textbook that draws exclusively from free material without
sacrificing content, scope, or authority. ¬†Perhaps this is more the case in a
discipline like history where a blurry line has always existed between high-
quality, professional, specialized content and content generated for a popular
audience, but I could imagine it being the case for other disciplines as
well.
What makes this scenario so compelling is that textbooks are becoming
increasingly expensive. ¬†Moreover, most textbooks are pretty mediocre in terms
of content coverage, readability, and even accuracy. ¬†One of my longstanding
justifications for using Wikipedia entries in place of a traditional textbook is
that they are no less accurate than collectively produced textbooks where little
errors tend to creep in between editors and authors and unlike Wikipedia they
can't be easily fixed, on the fly, by a critical reader. ¬†At the same time, the
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pervasive (if somewhat shallow) criticism of Wikipedia creates an environment

where students are prone to read entries critically and recognize the contested
nature of even basic "facts". ¬†And the increasingly robust online teaching
tools make it easy to incorporate into the classroom a dynamic and growing body
of good quality online video, audio, and massive quantity of public domain
documents, works of literature, and data.
All this being said, there is a convenience factor with textbooks that may
for the short-term outweigh its flaws. ¬†But what do you think? Are the days of
textbooks numbered?
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TITLE: Horace B. Woodworth at the Northern Great Plains History Conference
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DATE: 10/13/2010 08:34:55 AM

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Horace B. Woodworth will make an appearance at tomorrow's <a
Conference</a> in a panel called History of and History at the University of
North Dakota. He'll be joined by Orin G. Libby (via Gordon Iseminger) and
a historical cast from the Department of Social Work (via Bret Weber).
They'll all gather at the Ramada here in Grand Forks at 9 am tomorrow
(Thursday, October 14, 2010).!
Bret's paper and mine come from our efforts to document the history of the
University for the 125th-aversary last year. Gordon Iseminger's paper will come
from his book project on the life and times of Orin G. Libby.!
It's nice to have papers representing the history of the University because
the Northern Great Plains conference was founded by members of the Department at
UND. Here's the text from my<a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/DHChapter_Intro.html"> history
of the department</a> (it doesn't add much):!
<blockquote>!
ÔªøThere are several other
development of note during the 1960s that demonstrate the position of the
department both at the university and in the greater intellectual
community. First, in 1966 the Department developed the Northern
Great Plains History Conference. This conference, initially a
cooperative venture with the University of Manitoba, sought to provide a venue
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for scholars based in the Northern Plains to present their work as it was often
prohibitively expensive to attend national meetings. The initial
conference in 1966 was held in the Memorial Union and attracted over 150
scholars. In subsequent years attendance grew further. While many
of the papers focused on the history of the Northern Plains, it included panels
on other topics as well. This conference also improved the
department‚Äôs visibility in a regional context as the conference frequently
attracted scholars from more prominent universities like Wisconsin and
Minnesota. Over the next decade, the responsibilities for the conference were
shared between the faculty of the department and other schools in the
area. The conference continues to be a viable academic conference
to this day.!
</blockquote>!
And here's my paper:!
display: block; text-decoration: underline;" title="View Caraher History Before
Libby on Scribd" href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/39250250/Caraher-History-
Before-Libby">Caraher History Before Libby</a> !
<object id="doc_629552822599770" width="100%" height="600"
data="http://d1.scribdassets.com/ScribdViewer.swf" type="application/x-
shockwave-flash">!
<param name="data" value="http://d1.scribdassets.com/ScribdViewer.swf" />!
<param name="wmode" value="opaque" />!
<param name="bgcolor" value="#ffffff" />!
<param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always" />!
1k8v9gtq82uhzbozfx0j&page=1&viewMode=list" />!
<param name="src" value="http://d1.scribdassets.com/ScribdViewer.swf" />!
<param name="name" value="doc_629552822599770" />!
<param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" />!
</object>!
!
Here's <a
href="http://www.und.edu/org/greatplains/documents/programfinal.pdf">a link
(.pdf) to the full program of the conference</a>.
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TITLE: Stones that Speak and some other data from the Pyla-Koutsopetria
Archaeological Project
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BASENAME: stones-that-speak-and-some-other-data-from-the-pyla-koutsopetria-
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DATE: 10/12/2010 07:09:42 AM

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Over the last few weeks I've been running what will hopefully be the final
set of unique queries on the data from the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological
Project's survey of the site of Pyla-Koutsopetria and its environs. These
queries are mostly following little hunches or the comments that my co-director
David Pettegrew made in the margins. It is re-assuring in some ways to
find that I have not overlooked much (and I hope to circulate a working paper of
my distributional analysis by the end of this calendar year), and its always fun
to find little patterns. So here are two small PKAP patterns. For
some reason on the edges of comprehension our ceramicist, Scott Moore,
documented unworked stones collected in the bags of ceramics collected by our
field teams. Unworked stones collected from the fields are not
traditionally regarded as archaeological material (except that their presence in
a bag of ceramics has associated them with the archaeological method). But
Scott's unworked stones do show a pattern. In the last few years, archaeologists
have suggested that "background disturbance" or the presence of stones or other
materials that look like ceramic objects has a clear correlation with our
ability to recover artifacts from the field (the best discussion of this is in
Knapp and Given, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/sydney-cyprus-
survey-project-social-approaches-to-regional-archaeological-
survey/oclc/51460580">Sydney Cyprus Survey Project</a> volume).
Presumably our field walker's tendency to collect stones from the field might
reflect a similar pattern. The map below shows the distribution of unworked
stones. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20133f501b467970
right: 0px" border="0" alt="Unworked_Stone"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20134882170f8970c
-pi" width="470" height="518"></a> And as you can see, a pattern does
emerge. Most of our unworked stone comes from units with high or modern
background disturbance and this suggests two things. First, it confirms
that the unworked stones are most likely unworked (in some cases Scott
documented unworked stone because he was not entirely sure that they were
unworked and wanted Nick Kardulias our lithics expert to check them out).
Next, it suggests that background disturbance does influence our field walkers
ability to recognize artifacts. It is encouraging to note, albeit in a tentative
way, that our field walkers collected objects that they thought might be
ceramics and this might give us enough confidence to at least suggest that
they did not overlook objects that might be stones. The second
little analysis I ran was on the distribution of faunal remains across the
site. David Reese examined the faunal remains from our excavations in 2008
and 2009 and at the same time looked over a small quantity of faunal remains
collected from the survey. I've added to the map the major roads in the
area (rather inelegantly displayed unfortunately). Most of the faunal
remains are near the major roads suggesting that at least some of them -
particularly the chicken bones - were discarded by passing traffic. The
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remains of sheep or goat bones appear cluster in the lowest lying area of the
Pyla-Koutsopetria plain. This area is pretty marshy despite efforts to
keep it drained and as a result not generally under cultivation. This kind
of marginal land seems likely to have served as pasture for local flocks. 
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20133f501b46e970
right: 0px" border="0" alt="Faunal_Remans"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20133f501b484970b
-pi" width="470" height="518"></a> The final analysis run over the last
few days was on some very broad chronological periods into which we grouped
material from the survey. Among the broadest is the "Ancient Historic"
period which stretches from around 750 BC to the end of antiquity in AD 749. The
transparent dots on the map below show the distribution of artifacts datable
only to this long period in the past. Their distribution more or less follows
over all artifact densities (with the exception of Kokkinokremos where the
ceramicist who read our Iron Age to Bronze Age material used a slightly
different designation). This suggests that artifacts grouped into this
broad period are not likely to represent a single class of difficult to identify
material, but rather a whole group of artifacts from multiple periods that
remains outside of traditional ceramic typologies and chronologies. It is never
heartening to see how much material from a survey goes unidentified (or
identified in only the broadest possible way), but it is encouraging to see that
it does not cluster in suggestive ways. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2013488217134970
right: 0px" border="0" alt="Ancient_Historic_Sherds"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20133f501b4d3970b
-pi" width="470" height="518"></a>
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Dimitri Nakassis
EMAIL: nakassis@gmail.com
IP: 99.232.120.148
URL:
DATE: 10/12/2010 07:44:02 AM
It's also interesting that only one unworked stone was found at Kokkinokremos,
when we had a team of experienced fieldwalkers doing the survey.
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DATE: 10/11/2010 07:09:34 AM

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There is still a slow simmer of resistance to the idea of academic blogging.
¬†Most of it represents a kind of knee-jerk conservatism from individuals who
refuse to accept blogging as anything more than a medium for middle-class "kids"
to vocalize middle-class angst. ¬†This most common form of this argument is the
well-known: "why should I care about what you ate for breakfast?"!
Every now and then, a scholar offers a more substantial response to the idea
and while I typically find these responses every bit as wrongheaded, I do think
that they deserve some careful consideration. ¬†Recently Edward Blum published a
short post (on his blog <a href="http://usreligion.blogspot.com/">Religion in
American History</a>) entitled "<a
href="http://usreligion.blogspot.com/2010/09/academic-blogging-some-
reservations-and.html">Academic Blogging: Some Reservations and Lessons</a>".
¬†The post is clear and coherent and should be considered carefully. ¬†It stems
from his conversations with a group of recent Ph.D.s and graduate students who
are excited about blogging as a medium as well as the author's personal
experience as a blogger.!
He established six main points:!
<blockquote>!
1. "Why would you give away for free the primary commodity you create?"!
</blockquote>!
I suppose that I must respond to this in the name of being systematic. First,
being a blogger doesn't mean that you have to publish every idea on your blog
indiscriminately! ¬†Even today scholars can be reluctant to give a paper or
commit to an article a brilliant book-worthy idea. ¬†The bigger issue, however,
is one already faced by the recording industry. Some circulation of free music -
that is the primary commodity produced by the recording industry - actually
benefits record sales. Most band have MySpace pages, websites, blogs with free
downloads, or even "leak" new music to fans. ¬†If they're smart, they do not
leak the entire album, but a few select singles. ¬†In some sections of the
recording industry mix-tapes and bootlegs are a primary means for unsigned
artists to be discovered. Again, if all that musician has to offer is on a 36
minute mix tape, then there are likely to be problems down the line, but if a
musician is smart and good, the mix tape works as a teaser that draws attention
to their work.!
(And it goes without saying that in a business where our rewards for
scholarly production are modest, it may be that some day soon, blogging an idea
and allowing to enjoy widespread, attributed circulation, could have as much
currency as publishing in a very expensive book with limited access.)!
<blockquote>!
2. "Peer review matters.¬†ÔªøAcademic disciplines will lose all credibility
without peer review; it is essential to what we do ‚Äì as protection for the
author and publisher, and as a way to get the best out of your work."!
</blockquote>!
Of course peer review matters! ¬†But let's not reduce all academic production
to a kind of zero sum game. ¬†A blog does not preclude writing for peer review
and taking the peer review process seriously. After all, any scholars would be
naive to think that all academic production receives the same level and kind of
peer review. ¬†Giving a paper at an academic conference, for example, is a
different level of peer review than submitting an article to major academic
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journal. ¬†Blogs fit into the academic ecosystem by allowing ideas to circulate
in early forms. Scholars outside the humanities have already embraced the idea
of "working papers" that circulate widely prior to formal peer review and
publication, but as part of a parallel and less formal (but no less important)
peer review process. ¬† While most academic blogs do not reached the level of a
"working paper" they nevertheless offer a medium ideal for scholarly
conversation and critique. ¬†If scholars are too busy or disengaged to
participate in this discussion, then their perspectives will be ignored in the
development of new knowledge.!
<blockquote>!
3. "ÔªøPost-publication review matters. Blog posts don‚Äôt get reviewed in
the Journal of American History or the Journal of Southern
History ‚Äì books do."!
</blockquote>!
Again, writing is not a zero sum game. Articles do not (usually) get reviewed
in the JAH or JSH, nor do conference papers, but these
contributions to the academic, scholarly conversation are nevertheless represent
an important place for academic correspondences. ¬†Blog fit into the existing
academic ecosystem and expand it. Ironically, blogs are beginning to represent
an important venue for post-publication review. A blogger can publish a quick
review of a book at a much faster than a traditional journal. ¬†In fact, some
venues, like the Bryn Mawr Classical Review have taken on an increasingly blog-
like interface and represent the first word on many academic publications in the
field of Classics and Ancient history.!
<blockquote>!
4. "ÔªøBlog posts could hurt your reputation just as much (if not more) than
help it. Fascinating blog posts probably won‚Äôt get you an interview or a job,
although they may make your name noteworthy enough so the committee looks at
your application (although I doubt this for most positions). Articles will,
solid dissertations will, fantastic conference papers will."!
</blockquote>!
Again, academic writing is not a zero sum game. Writing a blog post does not
preclude writing an article, giving a conference paper, writing a book.
Circulating ideas on a blog, however, gets them to a wider public. Of course, a
hastily composed blog post could hurt an individual's career, but the same could
be said of a hastily composed conference paper or a poorly-considered book
review. There is nothing intrinsic to the blog medium that causes an individual
to say outlandish things or attack other authors. ¬†Of course, the ease with
which a blog post can be circulated (via, for example, social media) and the
wide audience that a blog post can have, should encourage bloggers to be
sensitive to their academic reputation and the feelings of other scholars. ¬†But
I'd suggest that these are good things! ¬†Blogs can accelerate certain aspects
of professional development by allowing a junior scholar access to an academic
conversation with certain rules of behavior and expectations.!
(And I should say that I personally know some scholars whose careers have
been helped by their blogs. It showed them to be far more dynamic and engaged
than their slow to appear scholarly publications would suggest.)!
<blockquote>!
5. "Blogs often function like the current American media: extreme, partisan,
and amnesiac."!
</blockquote>!
None of these things are intrinsic to the medium of blogging except, perhaps,
the seemingly ephemeral nature of most forms of digital communication. ¬†I
actually like the ephemeral nature of my blog and have little inclination to
make it an enduring venue for scholarly communication.!
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<blockquote>!
6. "ÔªøFinally, and this is most apropos for our blog ‚Äì this is a blog
about religion and religions, the most powerful ideas, rituals, concepts, and
communities that exist. As I understand the spiritual, it is the deepest core
of people, ideas, organizations, and communities. Writing about it flippantly
or without review or without consideration can be extremely damaging."!
</blockquote>!
This point is a good one, but I think my argument throughout this post should
now be clear. Blogs have a context that dictates to some extent the rules in
which the blog operates. This context is set at the intersection of a broad and
ill-defined public conversation about the topic on the blog and long-standing
professional and social traditions of academy. This puts the blogger in a
powerful position to communicate academic ideas to an audience that is often
unfamiliar with the terms of the debate and the languages and customs of the
academic discourse. This position is also fraught with certain risks.!
Professor Blum's post highlights many of the risks associated with blogging
(and overlooks, for rhetorical purposes I am sure) many of its benefits. It is
useful to have these reminders periodically, if for no other reason than it
forces those of us committed to the medium of blogging to articulate the place
of the blog and blogger in the academic community.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Mcconeghy.wordpress.com
EMAIL:
IP: 174.47.231.87
URL: http://profile.typepad.com/mcconeghywordpresscom
DATE: 10/11/2010 10:44:22 PM
Well said! I had a similar set of responses when I first saw Blum's post. I was
particularly concerned about his resistance to expanding the areas open to
different kinds of scholarly products.
<a href="http://mcconeghy.wordpress.com/2010/09/28/should-i-
blog/">http://mcconeghy.wordpress.com/2010/09/28/should-i-blog/</a>
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Jan Husdal
EMAIL: husdal.com@gmail.com
IP: 158.38.156.54
URL: http://www.husdal.com
DATE: 11/04/2010 09:40:52 AM
Thank you for a great post. I just read the post you are referring to, and I am
glad someone else did too, and feels the way I do.
As an academic blogger myself, mostly literature reviewer, going on for 3 years

now, it has taken me a while to find my own style and reasons for blogging. The
by far biggest reason is the interaction with other scholars.
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Why would I give away for free the primary commodity I create? Why not? Agreed,
it is my intellectual property, but knowledge kept to myself isn't going to help
anybody, not even me. That said, I'm quite selective as to what is published on
my blog.
Peer review matters. Yes, it does. And frankly, in line with what I just said,
very little of what hasn't been peer-reviewed yet ever makes it to my blog. But
most of what has made it through, will. Besides, leaking a few bits and pieces
may attract the attention of other scholars interested in the same topic, and
maybe willing to cooperate in a fruitful exchange of ideas. Not everybody is
just out to steal my work.
Conference papers don't get reviewed. Don't they? I see them appear often enough
in the reference list of journal articles. Conference papers sometimes contain a
lot more valuable information than the actual paper that it later turns into,
and conference papers are the hardest papers to find, even with the help of my
good friend Google. That's why I want my conference papers known.
Blog posts could hurt your reputation. Possibly, but I always try to strike a
balance between the good, the bad and the ugly in my reviews...and it has to be
really bad for me to say something bad. It's all about constructive criticism.
The biggest big upside to academic blogging is that I get publicly known to a
worldwide audience, to the point that I am on occasion contacted ‚Äúas an expert
in the field‚Äù (which I'm not, not always) by other true experts in the field
(who I consider to be way more expert than I am). In my opinion that is the
biggest compliment an academic blogger can get.
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It's supposed to touch 80 degrees today here in beautiful and tropical Grand
Forks. ¬†So a few quick hit and varia on a sunny Friday:
<ul>
<li>Another <a href="http://histsociety.blogspot.com/2010/10/blogging-in-
academy.html">blog post on blogging in the academy</a>. ¬†Good grief.</li>
<li><a href="http://nymag.com/print/?/news/features/establishments/68506/">New
York Magazine profile of Nick Denton of Gawker</a>.</li>
<li>Sam Fee has some good thoughts on<a
href="http://nymag.com/print/?/news/features/establishments/68506/"> Archaeology
and the New Media over at Arranged Delirium</a>.</li>
<li><a href="http://corinthianmatters.com/2010/10/07/more-corinth-in-
contrast/">David Pettegrew's Corinthian Matters reports more on the Corinth in
Contrast conference</a>.</li>
94
<li>Make plans now to come to the <a

Conference</a>. ¬†My paper is at 9 am on Thursday.</li>
<li>Remember David Pettegrew will present the 2nd Annual Cyprus Research Fund
Lecture at 4 pm on October 21 in the East Asia Room of the Chester Fritz
Library. ¬†<a
10-cyprus-research-fund-lecture-setting-the-stage-for-st-pauls-
corinth.html">Here's an abstract of his talk</a>. </li>
<li>The second test of India vs. Australia<a
href="http://www.cricinfo.com/india-v-australia-2010/engine/match/464525.html">
cannot be more exciting than the first</a>.</li>
<li>Big news today, apparently, from the University of North Dakota. ¬†I have no
idea what it is, but I hope they use the word "game changer".</li>
<li>What I'm listening to: Lee "Scratch" Perry, Roast Fish, Collie Weed, and
Corn Bread and with the Upsetters, Super Ape.</li>
<li>What I'm reading:Ôªø¬†¬†Ôªø<a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/how-
professors-think-inside-the-curious-world-of-academic-
judgment/oclc/237048345">Mich√®le Lamont, How Professors think: inside the
curious world of academic judgement</a>. (Cambridge, MA 2009).</li>
</ul>
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Thursday</a>
This week the Senate Continuing Education Committee hosted its regular Online
Teaching Showcase. ¬†Each semester the showcase brings together faculty who
teach online and asks them to share some the techniques and technologies that
they use to make their online classes more successful. ¬†In some ways, this
regular gathering of online teaching faculty is a great way to get a sense for
future directions in online teaching.
Many of the most common (and intriguing) applications that faculty used to
reach their online and distant students sought to facilitate realtime
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interaction between faculty and student. ¬†The old stalwarts, <a

href="http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobatconnectpro/">Adobe Connect </a>and
the various <a href="http://www.wimba.com/">Wimba Applications</a> (which are
conveniently bundled into Blackboard), made an appearance. ¬†Their reliable and
familiar interfaces allow faculty to stream a lecture to a group of students in
real time, record the lecture for an archive, and share screens with students.
¬†<a href="http://www.tegrity.com/home">Tegrity Lecture Capture</a> joined these
two applications as another option for faculty who are interested recording
lectures live. Tegrity is a server (or as they say now "cloud") based
application that allows students to view lectures either in real time or
recorded without downloading software to their computer. ¬†To watch a recorded
lecture, the student downloads a relatively small executable file which they
then run on their computer. Based on the demonstration that I saw at the
Showcase, Tegrity allows for the faculty member to track students who stream the
lectures from the cloud. ¬†Faculty could not only see how long a student viewed
a recorded lecture, but also isolate parts of the lecture that a student re-
watched in order to identify problem concepts or explanations.
I also saw a demonstration of <a
href="http://www.tidebreak.com/">Tidebreak</a> which is an application that
creates a dynamic, shared environment where students and faculty can share
screens, swap files, and even take control of a central, shared workstation to
demonstrate a procedure or execute a task. ¬†I could imagine that software like
Tidebreak could be used alongside Adobe Connect or Wemba to create a far more
interactive online classroom, but with this advance comes greater
complexity.
Cloud based computing also was on display with products like Citrix. ¬†Citrix
allows students to access applications run "in the cloud". ¬†The applications
range from Adobe products like Photoshop to the standard suite of Microsoft
offerings (Excel, Word, Access) and even more specialized applications like the
statistics application SPSS. ¬†From what I can tell, the goal of this kind of
service is allow students access to software without the expense and
complications individual licensing. It will eventually allow a faculty member to
create an online computer lab where they could work with a group of students
using virtualized software (again, from the cloud) without making them each buy
the applications or worrying about the hardware that remote students are
running.
The applicability of these new applications and services is immediately
apparent to the part of me that wants to create a richer, more dynamic online
classroom. ¬†Another part of me observes that the complexity of these
applications will certainly increase the learning curve for a student engaging
in online learning (even while services like Tegrity and Citrix could lower the
point of entry from the stand point of hardware and software). ¬†Much of the
collaborative technology on display also privileged a live teaching environment.
¬†Most of my online teaching, however, and I imagine this is true for many
faculty members, is done asynchronously. ¬†That is to say, we are not
interacting with students live; instead students are viewing course material at
their own pace and interacting with the instructor or their fellow students at
far less regular interval than they would in a classroom environment. ¬†While I
am sure the users of each of these technologies would stress that they could
also work asynchronously, it still seemed clear to me that the goal was to
reproduce the classroom experience in a virtual or online way, rather than to
imagine the online classroom as something fundamentally different.
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Over the last 6 months, the University of North Dakota has been working to
release an updated and upgraded website. ¬†As part of this process, every
department has been asked to reconsider its web site. ¬†The <a
href="http://www.und.edu/dept/histdept/">Department of History's website</a> is,
frankly, horrible, but, at the same time, it is clear that the website
functioned successfully as the main point of contact for prospective graduate
students. In some sense, the site is horribly broken, but it still gets the job
done.
The challenge now is to re-design the content and the organization of the
department's website without undermining its basic functionality.
First, we've been experimenting with some new text for the home page. ¬†This
is where we are at present (nothing is finer than a text created by a
committee!):
<blockquote>

ÔªøFrom the earliest days of the University of North Dakota, history faculty
have played an important part in preparing students to be engaged citizens of
their communities, the state, and the world. ¬†Today the department remains
committed to teaching the past and developing in our students the reading,
writing, and critical thinking skills necessary to take their place in an
increasingly global world. Each faculty member is an active researcher in their
respective fields, and brings fresh perspectives on different cultures and ideas
into the classes they teach.
The department offers the B.A., M.A., Ph.D. as well as a D.A. program.
¬†These programs are supported by a diverse faculty whose active research
interests span every period in American history as well as in West Africa, the
Atlantic world, Ancient, Medieval, Early Modern, and Modern European history.
¬†Faculty approach these periods with from diverse perspectives ranging from
biography to the study of military, diplomatic, social and intellectual history
and an emphasis on race, gender, and women as categories of historical analysis.
¬†Faculty and student research draw upon textual analysis, the study of material
culture, quantitative and data driven methods, and oral history to bring the
past alive.
97
The department supports both undergraduate and graduate student engagement in

the discipline through a strong regional archive with collections of national
significance, the largest library between Minneapolis and Seattle, the history
honor society Phi Alpha Theta, several annual lectures, and editorship of the
Oral History Review.

</blockquote>

We also hope to include pages devoted the faculty bios and a page with plain
text descriptions of our undergraduate and graduate programs.

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Next week is the 45th Annual <a
Conference</a>. ¬†Since the mid-1960s when a group of faculty at the University
of North Dakota founded the conference, it has roamed universities across
Northern Plains and assembled scholars from across the region. ¬†My paper for
this years conference will look at the career of Horace B. Woodworth. ¬†He
featured prominently in the first chapter of my history of the Department of
History here at UND and is the topic of an article that I submitted to North
Dakota History (but have strangely heard nothing about for the past two years; I
am confident that this means that publication is imminent.)
<a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2008/02/ho
race-b-woodwo.html">I've blogged on Mr. Woodworth before</a>, but today, I want
to suggest that his career might have something to offer the academy today.
¬†Over the past few years there has been a flurry of books suggesting that the
organization of the modern American University is somehow broken. ¬†Louis
Menand's recent book, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/marketplace-of-
ideas/oclc/286488147">The Marketplace of Ideas: Reform and Resistance in the
American University</a> (<a
98
oughts-on-the-end-of-disciplines.html">blogged here</a>)¬†and Mark Taylor's,

<a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/crisis-on-campus-a-bold-plan-for-
reforming-our-colleges-and-universities/oclc/501320939">Crisis on Campus: A Bold
Plan for Reforming our Colleges and Universities</a> have both rooted the
current (and typically ill-defined) problems with the university in growth of
professionalization of the disciplines and the self-serving and exclusionary
rhetoric that come to ossify the departmental/disciplinary mode of university
organization. ¬†Both book (and numerous others) also saw fundamental changes in
the American university as tied to changes in the organization of institutions;
the traditional link between departments and disciplines must be weakened and
replaced with a more integrated structure that better represents the dynamic
realities of the modern workplace. In fact, as recently as last week, <a
href="http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storyco
de=413700&c=1">the president of the University of Chicago offered a similar
argument</a> noting the tensions between the need for individuals to fill highly
specialized entry level positions and the need to produce people who can thrive
in the higher reaches of the modern economy through their ability to manipulate
and integrate abstract ideas.
What can Horace B. Woodworth teach us about these critiques? ¬†When he came
to the University of North Dakota in 1885, he had degrees from Dartmouth and
Hartford Theological Seminary and had worked as a teacher, headmaster of private
schools, a preacher and a farmer. ¬†His first post was as Professor of
Mathematics, Physics, and Astronomy. ¬† By 1888, Woodworth was the Chair of
Didactics, Mental and Moral Sciences, and the Principal of the Normal
Department. In 1890, he left the Normal Department and assumed the title
Professor of Mental and Moral Science and History. By the time he retired from
the University in 1904, his title was simply Professor of History.
Such a dynamic career would be impossible today, of course, as the barriers
between disciplines (particularly the sciences and the humanities) are virtually
insurmountable. ¬†At the same time, Woodworth's career path reflects a response
to pressures produced both within and outside of the institution. ¬†The
emergence of professional disciplines with more clearly defined professional
standards guided Woodworth to a great specialization in teaching and in his
research. ¬†This ultimately culminated in the publication of his book, <a
href="http://books.google.com/books?id=aVM6AAAAMAAJ&ots=TaXoVz-
FMQ&dq=The%20Government%20of%20the%20People%20of%20the%20State%20of%20North%
20Dakota&pg=PP2#v=onepage&q&f=false">The Government of the People of
the State of North Dakota</a> in 1895.
<iframe
src="http://books.google.com/books?id=aVM6AAAAMAAJ&ots=TaXoVz-
FMQ&dq=The%20Government%20of%20the%20People%20of%20the%20State%20of%20North%
20Dakota&pg=PP1&output=embed" style="border: 0px;" width="450"
height="700" scrolling="no" frameborder="0"></iframe>
While I understand that today universities are far more complex institutions
than they were in the time of Woodworth and the pressures of tenure,
increasingly narrow disciplinary training, and bureaucratic ossification
constrain career paths for most academics, it is nevertheless true that our 19th
century predecessors were capable of dynamic changes over the course of their
academic careers. ¬†As another example was someone like William F. Allen at the
University of Wisconsin where he served as the Professor of Latin and Roman
History; Allen was another New Englander trained as a Classicist at Harvard,
Berlin, and¬†G√∂ttingen, but his most important contribution to academic life
was his work editing<a
href="http://books.google.com/books?id=LHktAAAAMAAJ&dq=slave%20songs%20of%20
99
the%20united%20states&client=safari&pg=PP7#v=onepage&q&f=false">
Slave Songs in the United States</a>.
The careers of individuals like Allen and Woodworth do not provide a template
for a modern scholar to follow, but certainly demonstrate that the disciplinary
organization in which we now reside (quite comfortably) is not immutable. ¬†In
fact, the response of these early faculty to tensions from outside and within
their institutions offers a dynamic model for university faculty today.
¬†University faculty should be engaged in their environment and our training
offers us unique opportunities to act in dynamic ways that not only can improve
the educational life of our institution, but also carve out and form the basis
for new disciplines, fields of study, and knowledge. ¬†Change is not only
possible, but good.
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TITLE: Corinth in Contrast: Some Reflective Notes
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DATE: 10/04/2010 07:27:29 AM

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I was fortunate enough to spend the last four days in Austin, Texas at the <a
href="https://webspace.utexas.edu/sjf365/CC3/Intro.html">Corinth in Contrast
conference</a>. ¬†The conference sought to bring together archaeologists working
in Corinth and scholars interested in New Testament studies, particularly the
work of Paul and his correspondents in Corinth. ¬†The hope was to produce more
informed scholars on both sides of the discussion: archaeologists, on the one
hand, who have a better idea of the impact of their work on the field of New
Testament studies, and, on the other hand, New Testament scholars who have a
more solid grasp significant, ongoing work at Corinth. ¬†As I've blogged here in
the run up to the conference, the theme was "studies in inequality" and
generally speaking the papers presented showed a real willingness to attempt to
understand inequality in Hellenistic and Roman Corinth.
So, here are a few of my notes on what was a pretty illuminating four
days:
1. While it comes as no surprise, the folks who studied the New Testament
were generally more engaged with archaeology than the archaeologists were with
New Testament texts. In fact, many of the New Testament scholars had significant
experience doing field work or were directing their own projects. ¬†This almost
certainly followed the age old precedent of ¬†Biblical archaeology, which one
100
could argue dates to Late Antiquity and the excavations of St. Helena. ¬†I
couldn't help think that archaeologists will probably benefit by the sustained
interested in their field by New Testament scholars especially as resources to
Classical studies continue to decline.
2. Mechanisms of inequality. ¬†The scholars working in New Testament studies
had much clearer ideas about how individuals or groups in Corinth produced
inequality. ¬†Steve Friesen and James Walters, for example, both argued that
ritual forms of interaction served to reinforce and challenge (at different
times) unequal relationships in the Pauline community. ¬†Among the
archaeologists, Guy Sanders identified share-cropping as a method for
maintaining economic inequality and a cycle of dependency; Sarah James saw the
political arrangements following the sack of Corinth in 146 as crucial context
for a hitherto overlooked group of Corinthians who probably struggled for an
economic and political place within Greek society as much as they have within
the dominant historical narrative of the city. ¬†Pettegrew suggested that
inequality may have been a product of Corinth's place as an emporium in the
ancient world and seemed to suggest that market forced created a kind of
inequality in a way that our image of a state sponsored diolkos would not. (The
diolkos was the supposed road across the Isthmus of Corinth ostensibly designed
to facilitate dragging ships between the Corinthian and Saronic gulf).
3. Inequality and Marx. ¬†One thing that really struck me as a historian was
the almost complete absence of Marx from the conference. Marx, to my mind, was
the foremost theorist of inequality in the academic world today. ¬†In fact, it
would be fair to suggest that Marx's critique of social inequality was central
to our imagining of a future where social, economic, and political inequality
did not exist. ¬†While it is always easy to say that Marx lurked in the
background of many of these papers (and to be fair Guy Sanders did mention Marx
and James Walters referenced Althusser), it really amazed me that Marx's
interest in the material conditions of inequality and his later use by so many
literary theorists did not form a central axis around which New Testament
scholars and archaeologists could find common methodological ground.
4. Religion and Inequality. ¬†It's hardly surprising, of course, that a
conference that combines New Testament scholars and archaeologists would
understand religion to be a major mechanism for producing (and challenging)
inequality in the ancient world, but at the same time, it was remarkable to see
the difficulty archaeology has in penetrating the dense intersection of cult,
economy, and society. ¬†Ron Stroud's paper on Corinthian Magic and Ritual did
the best at this by looking at the archaeological evidence for the activities
surrounding the use of curse tablets at the sanctuary of Demeter and Kore at
Corinth during the Roman period. ¬†He was successful in suggesting that the
rituals surrounding the use of curse tablets represented the activities of a
group who were alienated from access to more highly structured and regulated
types of religious power. ¬†In the case of the curse tablets from Demeter and
Kore at Corinth, these individuals appeared to be women who sought recourse to
both personal and social grievances by appeals to black magic.
5. Historical Inequality. One thing that wanted to hear more about at the
conference is the historiography (if you will) of inequality. ¬†In other words,
I wanted to understand a bit more about how our expectations and understanding
of (in)equality have shaped our reading of the ancient world. Steve Fiesen's
opening remarks prompted me to consider the crucial link between teaching about
inequality in the past and producing a better future. ¬†Michael White's closing
remarks returned to some of these point by pointing out how different
expectations of equality were in the ancient world and how the elaborately
dendridic systems of patronage the created social cohesion, in fact, relied upon
certain expectations of inequality to function. If nothing else the relationship
101
between the patron and client (in its simplest form) implied a difference in
power between the two parts of the dyad. A couple of papers suggested that the
inequality of the ancient world depended, at least in part, on our approach to
the past, how we have organized our evidence from the past, and what we think it
means. ¬†Sarah Lepinski for example, pointed out that the lack of interest in
Roman wall painting and the social and cultural networks involved in its
production stemmed in part from the way tendency in the modern nation of Greece
to overlook a "colonial" period in its own history. ¬†By overlooking the Roman
period we have consigned Roman Greeks to an unequal status both to the dominant
Roman power and to earlier "free" Greeks of the Classical period.
The opportunity to contemplate these ideas was the product of a brilliantly
organized conference with plenty of time for informal discussions, engaging
plenary sessions, and fantastic logistical coordination. The conference
experience easily ranks among the best that I've encountered. ¬†Thanks to
everyone involved from the organizers, Steve Friesen, Daniel Schowalkter, and
Sarah James to the graduate assistant Ann Morgan!
One more thing, David Pettegrew has promised some comments of his own on the
conference over at his new <a href="http://corinthianmatters.com/">Corinthian
Matters blog</a>. ¬†They aren't posted yet, but keep your eyes peeled!
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src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2013487dc5c29970c
I'm at <a href="https://webspace.utexas.edu/sjf365/CC3/Intro.html">Corinth in
Contrast</a> in Austin, Texas today. ¬†I'll post an update this afternoon.
¬†Meanwhile, please stay tuned. ¬†If there is good internet access, I'll drop
some Tweets on y'all (Ôªøhttp://twitter.com/billcaraher) with the hashtag
#CIC.
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TITLE: 2010 Cyprus Research Fund Lecture: Setting the Stage for St. Paul's
Corinth
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This year's Cyprus Research Fund Lecture will feature Prof. David K.
Pettegrew of Messiah College. ¬†David is not only a long time collaborator with
my in both Greece and Cyprus, but also regarded as one of the foremost scholars
on Late Roman Corinth. ¬†His talk will focus on over a decade of archaeological
and historical research on the Isthmus of Corinth. ¬†We hope he'll let us
podcast his talk so that anyone, anywhere can listen to him!
Here's a description of his talk:
<blockquote>

ÔªøCorinth has come down in history as the quintessential maritime city that
became powerful and wealthy by capitalizing on the movement of commercial goods
and peoples across a narrow isthmus at the center of Greece. ¬†The connecting
isthmus also allegedly made Corinth politically unstable, corrupt in morals, and
exceptionally depraved. ¬†As St. Paul‚Äôs letters show, Corinth was a Christian
community with problems.
Why was Corinth so consistently associated with travel, trade, and wealth in
ancient thought? ¬†And how did a land bridge facilitate commerce and traffic and
contribute to the city‚Äôs development in the Roman era?
In this lecture, David Pettegrew considers what the ancient texts and
material evidence suggest about travel and commerce across the Isthmus and its
effects on the maritime character of the city in the first and second centuries
AD.

</blockquote>
The talk is Thursday, October 21st in the East Asia Room of the Chester Fritz
Library. ¬†There'll be a small reception after the talk.
title="Pettegrew.jpg"
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TITLE: Ambivalent Landscapes of the 6th century at Corinth in Contrast
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As readers of this blog know (<a
re-contrasting-corinth.html">here</a> and <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2010/09/ev
en-more-contrasting-corinth.html">here</a>), I've been working on a conference
paper for the Corinth in Contrast Conference at the end of this week. ¬†This
paper is, in effect, an archaeological and architectural argument for the impact
of Justinian on the Corinthian Isthmus. ¬†(These ideas developed, more or less,
from <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2007/12/ep
igraphy-litur.html">my analysis of a pair of texts that reference Justinian from
the Isthmus</a>).
You've read the drafts, so here's the paper:
display: block; text-decoration: underline;" title="View Caraher Ambivalent
Landscape 2010 on Scribd" href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/38304843/Caraher-
Ambivalent-Landscape-2010">Caraher Ambivalent Landscape 2010</a>
29s5z4gyidaj9o4ldpu0&page=1&viewMode=list" /> <embed
height="600"
_key=key-29s5z4gyidaj9o4ldpu0&page=1&viewMode=list"
104

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CATEGORY: Web/Tech
DATE: 09/27/2010 08:27:11 AM

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As you might imagine, I am pretty excited that <a
href="http://www.uc.edu/pompeii/">Steven Ellis's team's</a> <a
href="http://www.apple.com/ipad/pompeii/">use of the iPad as their primary,field
data recording device</a> is getting some attention lately. I imagined
this kind of digital workflow when I began working with Scott Moore to design
the digital recording components of our project in Cyprus. Scott and I,
from what I recall, always assumed a paper stage. This is what that stage
looks like now: <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20133f49f8a57970
right: 0px" border="0" alt="PKAPPaperStage"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2013487c00a95970c
-pi" width="404" height="242"></a> I think that we fell back on the old
archaeological wisdom that a paper stage somehow serves as a more dependable
back up that digital copies. This led us to copying the entire archive each year
and carrying it home (and still managing sometimes to lose copies of the
original or not have them where we needed them). With a fully digital workflow,
it is, of course, much easier to make copies of every stage of the documentation
process and store them multiple places, and, provided that a good version
control system is in place, manage these copies. I know that I also
subscribed to the idea that paper copies preserve more fully the archaeological
thought process. We insisted that our trench supervisors not keep
separate, personal, notebooks (they did anyway) and write directly onto our
recording sheets as they excavate. The hope was that the image of the
stratigraphic unit form provided the best record of the process of excavation.
In fact, as much as was possible, we have sought to associate digital images of
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these sheets (and the trench plans of each stratigraphic unit) with the digital
copies of this data. This remains a time consuming process of keying the
data from each sheet and digitizing each days trench plans. Having supervised
the keying of most of our field data, I can attest to the hours of time and
concentration that went into producing our digital versions. It's mostly
done now, but it was a onerous process and we haven't quite produced data with
the kind of immediate transparency that we had hoped for (although it is all
still possible). Using the iPad to record directly into digital form the
basic data from the trench would pay immediate dividends by streamlining the
data collection process. On the other hand, I do wonder whether some of
the data associated with the archaeological process might be lost. I was
thinking about the faint evidence for revision that appears on our paper
recording sheets - typically under various forms of erasure (usually a
<s>strikethrough</s>) - that preserves irregular fragments of the archaeological
through processes. If Wikipedia has taught us anything, digital recording
makes it possible to record this same data by recording each change to the data
set and each earlier version. In effect, the digital data collection could
preserve a kind of digital palimpsest of each key stroke, deletion, adjustment,
mistaken measurement. I am fascinated by this kind of micro-history and
its potential to reveal patterns of behavior across an entire project and
capture a more intimate look at how the archaeological method is performed.
Just for fun, I used The Archivist to capture some of the buzz about the
Apple story on Ellis's use of the iPad. <a
href="http://visitmix.com/labs/archivist-desktop/">The Archivist</a> lets you
download all the Tweets associated with any search criteria. For my little
experiment, I captured all the Tweets that used the word "Pompeii" and
"iPad". As of 6 am this morning when I staggered into my office, I
captured 520+ Tweets. I then plotted them by hour over the last few
days. Here's the chart. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2013487c00aa7970
right: 0px" border="0" alt="image"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20133f49f8a80970b
-pi" width="400" height="252"></a> They have averaged about 5 tweets an
hour over the last 100 hours or so. The peek was 95 tweets per hour
between 12:20 pm and 12:20 pm on September 23rd. Thus surge continued over
the next hour where they had over 80 tweets and subsided to under 40 tweets
later by 3:30 or so. The great thing about The Archivist is that it lets you
download your Tweets so that you can data mine them using an application like <a
href="http://rapid-i.com/">RapidMiner</a>. I didn't do that, but I did do
some simple mining. For example, Ellis's name is mentioned in 131 of the
tweets (or about 25% of the time) and about 16% of the Tweets are obvious "RT-
style" re-tweets. In Tweets with both Pompeii and iPad in them Ellis's
university, University of Cincinnati, was never once mentioned nor was his
project's name, the Porta Stabia project (even in two Tweets that appear to come
from "official" University of Cincinnati channels!). In the hyper
economical world of Twitter, there are good reasons not to include long word
like Cincinnati or relatively obscure project names. In contrast, the most
common phrases is "Discovering ancient Pompeii with iPad" which was the title of
the Apple article and it appeared in 62% of the Tweets (suggesting the far
larger number of retweets happen than had the traditional "RT"
designation). For the record, my Tweet, which occurred very early in the
Tweet cycle led to only three retweets. This is the kind of micro-
historical analysis that could be possible by mining the minutia preserved in a
fully digital workflow. By the way, it's a double blog day! I thought
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that I needed to do something to mark my 800th post and in the tradition of the
National Register of Historic Places, I thought I'd just put up <a
is-is-my-800th-post.html">a marker</a> (with a few links, it is a blog after
all).
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AUTHOR: Fee
EMAIL: samfee@gmail.com
IP: 209.131.80.228
URL: http://www.samfee.net/
DATE: 10/01/2010 10:49:37 AM
I agree, and I'm struck by how valuable tracking that change in archaeological
thought over time might be. There are a whole host of ways we could do it
electronically. I'd suggest we could chronicle much more of that thought process
by digital means than through a paper trail.
Of course, it still comes down to the user actually recording those changing
interpretations in the field. So any tool that gets implemented needs to be so
easy to use that it isn't inconvenient for keeping track of our changing ideas.
Otherwise, those changes will fall between the cracks.
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DATE: 09/27/2010 07:21:25 AM

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This is my 800th post. Here's what I said at my: <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2010/04/me
tadata-monday-700-posts.html"> </a><a
tadata-monday-700-posts.html">700th post</a> <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2009/11/bl
ogging-at-70000.html">ca. 600th post</a> <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2009/07/re
flecting-on-academic-blogging-at-500-posts.html">500th post</a> <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2009/02/ha
ppy-400th-post-from-history-240.html">400th post was my favorite and the most
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delicious</a> <a
tadata-monday.html">ca. 300th post</a> I missed my 200th <a
0-posts.html">100th post</a>. Thanks for reading!!
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DATE: 09/24/2010 09:59:24 AM

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Some quick hits for a cool and raining and busy Fall Friday:!
<ul>!
<li>The most exciting thing this week is <a
href="http://www.uc.edu/pompeii/">Steven Ellis' Pompeii project</a> being
featured on <a href="http://www.apple.com/ipad/pompeii/">the Apple website
</a>for its creative use of iPads. I had a chance to work with many of
these people at Isthmia and I can attest that their use of the iPad at Pompeii
was more than just a gadget exercise. The technologies actually made
excavation more efficient and appears to have made it easier to document their
trenches more thoroughly.</li>!
<li>A new and really useful <a
href="http://teachingthursday.org/2010/09/23/what-i-wish-i-had-know-before-
teaching-my-first-online-course/">Teaching Thursday this week</a> featuring
25 some starter tips for online course design and teaching.</li>!
<li>I'm beginning to like covers of "Smells Like Teen Spirit"
better than the original. <a
href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KZjnFZvCNc">Check this out</a>. (inspired
by Chuck Jones who<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFoS9bho2Ww"> posted a
link to this</a>)</li>!
<li>Big announcements from <a href="http://www.zotero.org/">Zotero</a>.
My Zotero use had declined since I started using Chrome more often.
The recent announcement that Zotero was going to be cross platform and
even create a free-standing version is great to hear. And <a
href="http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Zotero-Everywhere-How-Will-it/27037/">this
post from ProfHacker</a> sets out some of the most exciting aspects of these
developments. </li>!
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<li><a href="http://mediacaffeine.com/perspectives/environmental/put-cameras-on-
a-peregrine-falcon-and-a-goshawk-prepare-to-be-amazed/">These videos of
Peregrine Falcon and Goshawk with cameras</a> on them are crazy. I wonder
how the cameras effect the birds aerodynamics?</li>!
<li>The Atlantic put together <a
href="http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/09/the-atlantic-tech-
canon-1-10/62818/">a canon of major works on technology</a>. There are
some omissions but over all, it's pretty good.</li>!
<li>I need to finish up my paper for the <a
href="https://webspace.utexas.edu/sjf365/CC3/Intro.html">Corinth in Contrast</a>
conference next week.</li>!
<li>I received a vote for tenure from my department this week. Thank for
all the encouragement and support!</li>!
<li>What I'm listening to: Crocodiles, Sleep Forever and <a
href="http://www.fatpossum.com/news/83">this free EP from the fantastic Fat
Possum</a>.</li>!
</ul>
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TITLE: Some Notes on RBHS Analysis of the Pyla-Koutsopetria Survey Data
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BASENAME: some-notes-on-rbhs-analysis-of-the-pyla-koutsopetria-survey-data
CATEGORY: Cyprus
DATE: 09/23/2010 07:45:55 AM

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No RBHS is not a local high-school to whom I've outsourced PKAP data
analysis, nor is it a new type of digital hi-def television. Those letters
stand for Rim, base, handle, sherd and represent the basic parts of a ceramic
vessel. Since most of the vessels one finds in survey and even excavation
are not whole or are broken and mangled, documenting the rim, base, handle, and
sherds from each vessel is an important way to understand how we as
archaeologists are able to identify an particular object and assign it to a
date, function, and even, sometimes, place of manufacture. It is also helpful in
secure, stratigraphic contexts (that not in an unstratified survey context) for
identifying the minimum number of possible vessels of a particular type because
we know that some kinds of vessels on have, say, one-handle, then a four handles
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would represent at least four vessels of this type. <a

href="http://www.atypon-link.com/ASCS/doi/abs/10.2972/hesp.76.4.743">David
Pettegrew's research</a> has really set the stage for applying this kind of
analysis to the PKAP survey data. He has argued that certainly highly diagnostic
artifact types (for example Late Roman 1 amphora handles or Late Roman "combed
ware" body sherds) can distort the chronological distribution of material at a
site. Periods characterized by less diagnostic artifact types tend to be
less easily associated with a narrow chronology or function and under
represented in relation to period defined by more easily identified vessels
types. So isolating the way in which particular periods become visible
using our Rim/Base/Handle/Sherd analysis becomes an important to critique our
survey data. Fortunately, the basic system that we use to document our
ceramics, the chronotype system, took into account rbhs. The chronotype system
required the ceramicist to separate and document as a group, called a batch,
according the extant part of each type of vessel present . In other words, we
counted in one batch all of the rims from, say, a Roman Amphora and in another
batch all the handles from the same kind of amphora. This has allowed us to
parse quite finely the character of our assemblages and its relationship to our
ability to identify particular types of artifacts based on their individual
parts. So here are some basic observations: <ul> <li>Of the 19 periods with
more than 20 sherds collected using our standard survey procedure, 13 counted
the majority of artifacts as body sherds. In other words, for most periods, body
sherds represent both the most common and the most chronologically diagnostic
type of material.</li> <li>Only for the Archaic period were the majority of
artifacts identified by one part of a vessel, and these almost all came from one
type of vessel, so-called Archaic basket handled storage jars.</li> <li>Of the
258 chronotype (that is discrete types of artifacts) that produced extant parts
(some chronotypes, like shells or wall plaster fragments, do not produce extant
parts that we can easily record), 138 of 55% of these chronotypes were
identifiable based on only one extant part. 76% are recognized by only two
extant parts and 90% by three. 99% by four extant parts (mainly RBHS). In
other words, most artifacts are only recognizable by one part of the
vessel.</li> <li>It is interesting to note that the number of chronotypes
associated with a particular period has almost no influence on the average
number of extant parts by which a vessel is identified. Large number of
chronotypes identifiable by a large number of extant parts (4+) come from Roman
(40), Late Bronze Age-Hellenistic (18), Ancient Historic (39), Hellenistic-Early
Roman (24) vessels. At the same time 4 or more extant parts also appeared for
periods with fewer chronotypes, like Classical-Roman (6), Late-Cypriot II-Late
Cypriot III (4), and Post-Prehistoric (4). This means that while the
majority of sherds from each period are body sherds, they nevertheless have
vessels that are identifiable based on other parts of the artifact. In
other words, our ability to date artifacts to a particular period is independent
from the number of vessels with identifiable extent parts. Some periods have
three or four chronotypes with lots of identifiable fragments; others have 25
different chronotypes with a mix more and less easily identifiable artifact
types. There does not seem to be a pattern.</li> <li>Far more central to
the number of parts of the vessel that we can identify is the kind of vessel and
their function. Kitchen/Cooking ware produce the most possible extant parts (4+)
followed by coarse ware and amphora chronotypes (3.8). Medium coarse ware
produced 3.5, while pithos, semi-fine, and fine all produced 2.4 or fewer extant
parts per chronotype. This likely has more to do with the shapes of the vessel
than the size of the vessel.</li></ul> This kind of analysis may seem tedious
and complicated, but it is important to understand how bias in our ability to
identify a particular type of artifact can influence the kinds of chronological
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and functional landscapes that we create from survey data. In examining

our data in this way, we can really see the point of contact between what our
ceramicist does in placing artifacts in particular classes and our historical
reconstructions of the landscape. The entire world of Pyla-Koutsopetria is
literally born from the data gleaned from individual artifacts.
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TITLE: More on Open Learning
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: more-on-open-learning
CATEGORY: Academia
CATEGORY: Public History
DATE: 09/22/2010 06:37:08 AM

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A couple of weeks ago I sketched out a proposal for an "institute of open
learning" at the University of North Dakota. ¬†I pitched it to some of the
"power-that-be", and I think that I have some basic start up funds to make it
happen.
Now the proposal has to make its way through the administrative hierarchy
here on campus. ¬†In the meantime, I'll make a draft of the proposal available
here. ¬†Everything included in the proposal is tentative right now including
prospects for funding and collaborative relationships on campus, and I expect
this might all change if and when we get down to brass tacks (e.g. cost of
implementation, et c.).
But for now, here it is:
display: block; text-decoration: underline;" title="View Proposal for the
Development of Open Learning Courses on Scribd"
href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/37922545/Proposal-for-the-Development-of-Open-
Learning-Courses">Proposal for the Development of Open Learning Courses</a>
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vp8vo3vzdp4m6o12n4f&page=1&viewMode=list" /> <embed
height="600"
_key=key-vp8vo3vzdp4m6o12n4f&page=1&viewMode=list"
</object>

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TITLE: Plotting Cut Blocks Across Pyla-Koutsopetria
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BASENAME: plotting-cut-blocks-across-pyla-koutsopetria
DATE: 09/21/2010 07:12:19 AM

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Between 2005 and 2006, the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project
documented over 500 features from the Koutsopetria plain. Most of these
features were cut blocks of various sizes, material and descriptions as well as
a handful of features associated with ancient agricultural installations (bit of
an olive press, some andesite mill fragments, et c.). Over the past couple
of days, I finally got to analyzing this data beyond simply observing that we
have lots of cut blocks. <a href="http://www.pkap.org/staff.html">The
field team</a> in 2005 and 2006 recorded detailed information regarding the
location, size, and in many cases generally descriptions of each block and keyed
them into a database that we could integrate with our GIS. Most of the
architectural fragments including cut limestone and gypsum blocks, are
concentrated in the immediate Koutsopetria plain where farmers have moved them
to stone piles on the edges of the fields. Check out our newest additions
(partially edited) to our Omeka Collection: <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.und.edu/items/browse?collection=9">Pyla-
Koutsopetria from the Air</a> to get an idea of what these stone piles look
like. <img
alt="http://mediterraneanworld.und.edu/archive/fullsize/koutsopetria_north_2007_
4944fb9f0e.jpg"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.und.edu/archive/fullsize/koutsopetria_north_2007_
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4944fb9f0e.jpg" width="450" height="300"> <img

alt="http://mediterraneanworld.und.edu/archive/fullsize/koutsopetriawest9_2010_7
156214481.jpg"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.und.edu/archive/fullsize/koutsopetriawest9_2010_7
156214481.jpg" width="450" height="338"> The most
common type of cut block is made of local limestone and probably quarried on
site. The majority of the blocks fall between 0.3 and 0.7 m in length and 0.3
and 0.5 in width. For the blocks where all three dimensions are visible, their
volume falls between 0.06 and 0.03 cubic meters. This produced blocks of between
75 kg and 140 kg which would be relatively easily moved for construction. Some
blocks, of course, could be much larger exceeding 1 m in length and weighing
close to 500 kg. With blocks of this size, there is almost no doubt that some
large scale, monumental architecture once stood in the immediate area.
Here's a distribution map. The grey grid in the background is our survey
grid and the color of the dots relates to the volume of the stone. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20134878c0755970
right: 0px" border="0" alt="CutBlocks"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20133f46c6330970b
-pi" width="454" height="338"></a> We also documented a
significant quantity of cut gypsum block. Since marble did not naturally
occur on the island, Cypriots often used gypsum as a substitute in more
elaborate buildings. These blocks are generally similar in size to the cut
limestone blocks with lengths of around a half a meter and widths of 0.3 meters.
The average volume of blocks was similar to that of the cut blocks with only a
few blocks exceeding 0.1 cubic meters. There were slightly more smaller blocks
owing most likely to the more friable character of gypsum. Most blocks fell
between 0.01 and 0.06 cubic meters. Gypsum has a lower density than limestone
and the blocks had correspondingly lower weight usually between 25 kg and 140
kg. Many, much smaller fragments of gypsum were scattered across the fields and
several very large blocks appeared clustered together. Here's a map: <a
right: 0px" border="0" alt="GypsumBlocks"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20134878c076f970c
-pi" width="454" height="338"></a> Finally, we also
discovered a small quantity of marble from across the site. Most of these
came from the central area of the Koutsopetria plain embedded in rock piles at
the edges of cultivated tracks of land. The marble fragments are small < .30
m in maximum length and relatively thin <.04 m suggesting that all but one
marble fragment was revetment or floor slabs. The wide distribution of material
perhaps indicates that there were several marble clad buildings on the plain of
Koutsopetria even though so little marble survives. Here's a map:<a
c-pi"></a> <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20133f46c6347970
right: 0px" border="0" alt="MarbleBlocks"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20133f46c634d970b
-pi" width="454" height="338"></a> The next step in
analyzing this material is considering its relationship to the re-used blocks
found in the excavations at Koutsopetria and the construction techniques used in
the fortification wall surrounding Vigla. It certainly seems possible that
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the majority of cut stone blocks scattered around the Koutsopetria plain came
from the easily quarried fortifications at Vigla and perhaps also the extensive
walls surrounding the Bronze Age site of Kokkinokremos. Gypsum blocks had
fairly limited uses architecturally owing to their lack of strength and value as
prestige materials. The gypsum fragments from around the site probably
served in specific places in buildings and comparing their sizes to in situ
blocks from elsewhere on the island might give us some idea of how they were
used. </a>
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TITLE: Romanization and Christianization
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BASENAME: romanization-and-christianization
DATE: 09/20/2010 08:02:38 AM

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Over the last few weeks, I've been reading some basic, recent works on
Romanization or the expansion of "Roman culture" across the area of either
direct Roman political control or strong Roman influence. ¬†Most of these works
dealt with Western Europe and considered the relationship between the
archaeological remains clearly identified as being Roman with those typically
seen as "pre-Roman" or local. ¬†Most works consider cultural change as a process
and see the interaction between Roman and non-Roman representing both resistance
and accommodation. ¬†Moreover, most of these works see the term "Romanization"
as problematic. ¬†In particular, the notion of Romanization as a cohesive
phenomenon functioning in similar ways across the entire area of Roman influence
has done more harm than good and papered over variation in the process of
cultural exchange rooted in social status, economic organization, traditions of
elite display, and even Roman policies across the Empire.
The basic critique of Romanization (for lack, at present, of a better or more
compact term), has clear and obvious parallels with critiques of
Christianization over the past 20+ years. ¬†In fact, the conversations about the
two concepts are so parallel that it is a wonder that more obvious (than I have
seen) cross-pollination between these two scholarly approaches to cultural
exchange have not appeared. ¬†I've come away from studying this material with
the following little gaggle of observations:
1. The Viewer. Since John Clarke and Jas Elsner introduced me to the Roman
viewer, I have become convinced that the act of viewing is central to the
understanding the process of cultural engagement. ¬†While it is almost old-hat
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now to observe that content producers (to use a nice, new media term) do not
have exclusive control over how endusers view their content, actualizing this
understanding in scholarship is a difficult task, especially if the enduser
represents a group that has not left behind the kind of cultural material that
scholars are apt to interpret (e.g. texts, monumental buildings, ceramics,
sculpture, et c.).
2. Hybrids. Post-colonial critiques have seemingly cast long shadow over the
process of Roman political and cultural expansion. A hybridized elite worked to
bridge the gap between the political core and periphery and hybrid cultural
places created space for that could accommodate both local and non-local
interests. ¬†Within the study of Christianization, the notion of the hybrid has
not seen the same interest from scholars, although it seems clear that the
spread of Christianity can be at least partly associated with the religious,
ritual, and political interest of the political center. ¬†The rarity of any
discussion of hybridity within the discourse Christianization is, in part, a
matter of terminology. Certainly scholars have understood the emergence of
Christianity as a process that produced myriad hybrids through, for example,
processes like syncretism. ¬†Our relative lack of interest in the notion of
hybridity may stem from a reluctance to see the process of religious change as
one of imperialism or colonization.
3. Resistance. Hybrids form just one point on an increasingly nuanced ranged
of potential cultural interaction in the ancient world. ¬†The extremes, of
course, are typically of greater interest to the scholar, if for no other reason
than they are more likely to leave evidence. ¬†The more pressing question, to my
mind at least, ishow do we recalibrate our analytical lens to see more subtle
forms of resistance to aggressive or openly hostile projects to promote social,
political, or religious change. The process of Christianization took place over
long spans of time and through the independent actions of multiple groups and
agents; finding resistance in this context is far more than documenting the
obvious occasions when Christian buildings were torched by hostile non-Christian
groups.
4. Plurality. Just as being Roman accommodates many different, sometimes
incompatible, forms of cultural expression, being Christian can hardly be
reduced to a fixed set of characteristics. The plurality of Roman culture and
Christianity both require that we expand our understanding of how these two
phenomena manifest themselves in a social, political, and cultural context. ¬†In
some cases, this might involve simply qualifying what we mean when we say Roman
or Christian: for example, direct Roman political control or imperial or
ecclesiastical Christianity. ¬†In other cases, we might have to reconsider the
relationship between hybrid identities and forms of Roman-ness and Christianity
and the way in which such identities appeared to various groups of viewers.
5. Erasure and Process. The creation of a Roman space or a Christian space in
the ancient world was part of a process that involved, in part, the overwriting
of earlier forms of cultural, economic, political, and social relationships.
¬†In short, the process of Romanizing and Christianizing not only involves
present forms of cultural expression, but projects these back into the past
making it much more difficult for the historian and archaeologist to discover
the traces of the process itself.
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BASENAME: friday-varia-and-quick-hits-1
DATE: 09/17/2010 10:09:49 AM

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It's a beautiful but chilly fall morning, ideal for a little gaggle of quick
hits:
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.vanityfair.com/business/features/2010/10/greeks-bearing-
bonds-201010">There is an interesting article in </a><a
href="http://www.vanityfair.com/business/features/2010/10/greeks-bearing-bonds-
201010">Vanity Fair</a> that looks at the role of Athonite monks in Greek
financial crisis. ¬†The economic power of monastic communities in both Greece
and Cyprus evokes the role of monasteries in Byzantium.</li>
<li><a href="http://news.stanford.edu/news/2010/september/morris-west-rules-
091410.html">An Ian Morris interview </a>offers a few gems: "The past sucked"
and "ÔªøThe ancient distinctions between East and West will be irrelevant to
robots". (via <a
href="http://classics.chass.utoronto.ca/index.php/faculty/faculty-
list/42">Dimitri Nakassis</a>)</li>
<li><a href="http://www.niemanlab.org/2010/09/twitter-queen-susan-orlean-on-the-
mini-medium-the-interactive-narrative-and-the-writing-persona/">Twitter as
narrative and as mind-streaming</a>.</li>
<li>A new <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/">Teaching Thursday yesterday</a>
reminds me of some of the challenges from teaching my first class as a grad
student years ago. (And if you don't, follow us at <a
href="http://twitter.com/OIDatUND">OIDatUND on Twitter</a>)</li>
<li>It's great to see Kostis Kourelis blogging again and his post on the<a
href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/2010/09/masons-of-morea.html"> Masons of the
Morea</a> is great piece of mini-scholarship (also inspired by¬†<a
href="http://classics.chass.utoronto.ca/index.php/faculty/faculty-
list/42">Dimitri Nakassis</a>). </li>
<li>What I'm reading: R. Hingley, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/globalizing-roman-culture-unity-diversity-
and-empire/oclc/56051095">Globalizing Roman Culture: unity, diversity and
empire</a>. Routledge 2005.</li>
<li>What I'm listening to: Saccharine Trust, We Became Snakes; Busta
Rhymes, When Disaster Strikes; The Walkmen, Lisbon.</li>
</ul>
Have a great fall weekend!
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After a phone chat with an old friend yesterday, I got to wondering what an
edited volume on archaeology and the new media would look like. ¬†Here are my
random thoughts:
1. Dynamic. If we've learned anything from the New Media moment, it's that
static media is old media. The New Media - whatever that really is - is dynamic,
adaptive, conversational, and unstable. It is a bit difficult to understand how
a traditional edited volume that recognizes the value of the New Media in
archaeology would bridge the gap between a static book form (and I would
certainly count most ebooks as static, electronic versions of the Old Media) and
the dynamic forms of expression that have characterized new media concepts. I
could, perhaps, imagine a publication as a application for the iPad or coming
wave of Android tablets that would fully embrace the nascent ability of e-
readers, like the Kindle, to allow people to read collectively by providing
access to other readers annotations.
2. Historical. At the same time, I'd want a volume to reflect and capture a
specific historical moment in the development of archaeology as a discipline.
¬†As archaeologists, we know that excavation and documentation are both
productive and destructive processes. ¬†The creation of a volume on archaeology
and the New Media could embrace this destruction/production dichotomy both by
preserving in some way our thinking about the role of web 2.0 technologies in
our work and by destroying the web 2.0-ness of these technologies (and ways of
thinking) in a static, profoundly archaeological volume. ¬†The archival tendency
in archaeology could presumably accept the loss of the New Media experience for
the sake of its historical description and preservation in another medium.
What do these first two points mean? An application or web site and an
archive (a printed volume)?
3. Sampling Strategy. ¬†The one thing about New Media engagement with
archaeological work is that range of applications and goals. ¬†Some projects see
New Media as a means of publicizing their work to an established group of
"stakeholders" or even working to expand the group of stakeholders by leveraging
the webs infinite reach (and this is the point of departure that my project took
when first experimenting with blogging). ¬†Other projects developed New Media
technologies in their core project goals viewing the text-blogging or photo-
blogging or video-blogging or pod-casting or whatever as central to the way
archaeological research functions as story telling. ¬†The use of new media also
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extends from the New World archaeological practices to the deepest bastions of
Old World archaeology and from the most highly restricted research oriented
projects to field schools. ¬†Sampling a range of project's that have used New
Media would be necessary to document New Media in both practice and theory.
4. Definitions. The sampling strategy proposed above would help create a
definition for the New Media in an archaeological context that would capture a
moment in time and a discrete range of relationships between archaeological
methods and media technologies. The production of an archives forms the basis
for this kind of disciplinary definition that can serve as a measuring stick of
effectiveness, innovation, and mark out more clearly conceptual boundaries.
5. Best Practices. ¬†There are practical concerns for using New Media
technologies in archaeology. ¬†Some of them have to do with control over
archaeological data and various national policies for the dissemination of
sensitive archaeological information. ¬†As New Media technologies are
increasingly used to record various aspects of archaeological research, there
should be a set of ¬†best practices to ensure that the output of even the most
ephemeral outputs are not lost. ¬†While a single set of best practices is
unlikely to emerge, principles of curation would certainly provide a framework
around which more practical approaches could cohere.
What are your thoughts on the design, scope, and content of a volume on
Archaeology and the New Media?
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AUTHOR: Fee
EMAIL: samfee@gmail.com
IP: 209.131.80.228
URL: http://www.samfee.net/
DATE: 10/01/2010 11:05:49 AM
For the first two points, I think it is indeed both an archive and a web app. (A
web app will run both online and natively - once compiled - for both iOS and
Android). This would let us hit the broadest audience: users of text, the web,
and mobile devices. It could also help form a community around the work.
What I continue to struggle with though is how to collect and organize the ideas
we have for content. I think you've got some good ideas here - the best
practices section could essentially be a collection of case studies for the use
of new media in archaeological research and education. I think the definitions
ideas works as well, although I might broaden it...
I guess I better get to work! I'll write up my ideas and post to my blog. We'll
have a prospectus in no time : )
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Every once and a while, I get in the mood to post some metadata about my
blog. ¬†I last did this at the end of April <a
tadata-monday-700-posts.html">when I hit my 700th post</a>. ¬†I was thinking
about waiting until 800 to do it again, but here I am at 792 and I got just a
bit impatient.
So, here's some new metadata.
First, the summer is always a slow time for the blog. ¬†Over the last 150
days, I received 7008 ¬†visits or about 47 hits a day according to Google
Analytics. ¬†These unique visits accounted for 10,047 page views or about 67
page views per day (or 1.43 views per visit). ¬†The analytics provided by
TypePad claim about 1,800 more page views (11, 903), so as per usual, web
analytics is a precise, but rather in exact science. ¬†The numbers reflect the
summer lull, for the previous 5 months, I recorded 9,139 unique visitors and
14,559 views. ¬†Overall, I am still hanging just under 80 page views a day.
Here's the traditional map of Archaeology of the Mediterranean World
visitors:
title="MetaDataSept10.jpg"
-pi" border="0" alt="MetaDataSept10.jpg" width="450" height="174" />
The top 10 countries: US, Greece, UK, Canada, Italy, Australia, France,
Germany, India, and Cyprus. ¬†In the US, the top 10 states were North Dakota,
California, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, Florida, Texas, Washington, Illinois,
and Michigan.
More interesting, perhaps, to my readers interested in technology is the
browser data:
Firefox: 46% Internet Explorer: 28% Chrome: 11% Safari: 10% Opera: 3%
<a href="http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/02/chrome-firefox-techcrunc/">As a
number of observers have noted</a>, Chrome is digging into Firefox's share.
¬†Last time I ran numbers (from October 2009 - April 2010), Firefox accounted
for 53% of the browser share and Chrome was 6%. ¬†It's interesting that since
that time Internet Explorer and Safari has more or less held steady and Opera
has more than doubled it share.
Over the same span of time, the different operating systems of the computers
accessing my blog have not shifted much:
Windows: 72% Mac: 23% Linux: 2.5%
iPhone: 0.8% iPad: 0.7% iPod: 0.2% Android: 0.2% Blackberry: 0.1%
Linux has grown, and there have been notable shifts in the number of people
accessing my blog from mobile devices with iPhone, iPod, and iPad showing marked
increases as well as Android (but the overall number of views on these devices
has remained small).
So that's where my blog is in the metadata university. ¬†It's a far cry from
the first few times I reported on metadata at <a
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0-posts.html">100 posts</a> and<a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2007/09/tr
affic-report.html"> at 2500 (!!) hits</a>.
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<a
re-contrasting-corinth.html">Yesterday I promised more inequality, resistance,
and contrast in the Corinthia</a>, and here at the Archaeology of the
Mediterranean World, I mostly deliver on what I promise.
Over the last few days I've been thinking about these small texts:
title="LechGraffiti.jpg"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20133f432ee67970b
-pi" border="0" alt="LechGraffiti.jpg" width="450" height="168" />
This is the text of two graffiti discovered on a wall fragment from the
octagonal baptistery at Lechaion. ¬†Both texts are rather fragmentary. ¬†The
first text seems to ask for someone to remember a woman named Eudokia, and the
second text is a plea to help the deacon Loukianos, his wife (?), and children.
¬†Both texts conform to the long standing practice of inscribed prayers. ¬†The
texts were scratched into what appears to be the mortar of the wall. ¬†The
photograph is poorly reproduced in my photocopy of the publication and Pallas'
description of the location of the text is unclear.
These texts represent a very personal plea for aid set up in a sacred place.
¬†This practice was a long-standing Christian tradition and similar calls for
help appear in mosaic floors and inscribed on columns, liturgical silver, and
ceramics from across the Mediterranean basin.¬†¬†At the same time, their rather
humble mode of execution contrasts dramatically with the lavish decoration
present in the Lechaion basilica. ¬†These texts were not carved into marble and
positioned where an audience could experience the proximity of the individuals
to the sources of ecclesiastical, ritual, and religious power. ¬†These modest
letters were scratched into a wall of the baptistery which is an unusual place
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for such imprecations. ¬†The most obvious explanation for the disjunction
between these texts and their surroundings may be that these texts date from the
time that the octagonal baptistery appears to have functioned as a church,
perhaps after the collapse of the enormous basilica to its south. ¬†Like the
graffiti documented by Orlandos on the columns of the Parthenon, the modest
character of these texts represents more an eagerness to locate one's prayers in
the existing physical fabric of the building rather than a lack of resources or
access to official sanction. ¬†After all, Loukianos was a deacon who presumably
could have arranged for a more official venue for his call for help.
At the same time these texts present a vivid contrast to another, better-
known inscribed prayer from the Corinthia: the request for protection found at
Isthmia. Unlike the modest texts incribed on the wall of the Lechaion
baptistery, this text which asks God to protect Justinian, Victorinus, and
everyone living according to God in Greece
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20133f432ee72970b
As readers of this blog are probably tired of hearing, this text should
probably be associated with the refortification of the Hexamilion wall by the
emperor Justinian, and I have argued (as have others) that the Lechaion basilica
is probably another example of imperial activities in the region.
I am not sure that I'd argue too forcefully that contrasting character of
these two texts represent some kind of inequality or resistance in the
Corinthian landscape, but on the other hand, the graffiti text from Lechaion is
far more likely to represent an authentic local voice. ¬†And this local voice
surely did not share the same access to resources as the emperor, and this local
voice may not have had the same ability to endure the the challenging years of
the Early Byzantine period in Greece.
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As some of you may know, I am toiling away on a paper that I will give at the
Corinth in Contrast conference in Austin at the end of the month. ¬†I've been
121
looking at the way in which the 6th century, likely Justinianic, building boom
in the Corinthia represented a monumentalized discourse of authority (both local
and imperial, political, military, and religious) in the region. ¬†This is a
version of a paper I gave some years ago at a conference celebrating <a
igraphy-litur.html">50 years of field work at Isthmia</a>. ¬†In that paper, I
focused on two Justinianic inscriptions; in my paper for Corinth in Contrast, I
planned to focus on archaeology and architecture.
I produced a decent draft of my paper entitled "ÔªøThe Ambivalent Landscape
of Christian Corinth: The Archaeology of Place, Theology, and Politics in a Late
Antique City", but realized that the paper had very little to do with the theme
of the conference:
<blockquote>
This conference explores the stratified
nature of social, political, economic, and religious spheres at Corinth, and
how the resulting inequalities are reflected in literary texts and material
remains. ¬†The analysis focuses on a specific population center (the Corinthia)
over a given period of time (Hellenistic to Late Antique).
</blockquote>
In particular, my paper had almost nothing to do with "inequality". ¬†This
bothered me.
Over the weekend, I read Louise Revell's <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/roman-imperialism-and-local-
identities/oclc/476883783">Roman Imperialism and Local Identity</a>
(Cambridge 2009) with the idea models of Romanization might give me some way to
access the relationship between a monumentalized discourse and social, economic,
and even political inequality in Corinth. ¬†Revell's introduction does a nice
job at summarizing recent problemizations of Romanization, and emphasizes the
performative aspects of Romanization as central to way in which imperialism
manifests on the local level and local practices manifest as resistance,
accommodation, and ambivalence.
Despite my initial interest in performance in the way that I originally
interpreted the Justinianic inscriptions, I had abandoned using this approach
for a reason that I now forget (it might have to do with a particularly summary
rejection of an article, but it might have just been time to move on). ¬†After
reading Revell, I began to see contrasts across the Corinthian countryside that
hint at just the kind of inequality - whether manufactured as an ideological
position or "real" - that would make my paper fit better to the theme of the
conference and give it a more potent theoretical edge.
First, and most generally, the act of producing monumental architecture is a
kind of performance. ¬†I argue that the Lechaion basilica (and related
buildings) and the renovated Hexamillion wall are buildings with projected
imperial power onto the Corinthian landscape. ¬†Corinthians themselves not only
saw these buildings as intrusions of 6th century imperial theology into local
ecclesiastical affairs (<a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/28019578/Epigraphy-
Liturgy-Justinianic-Isthmus-Caraher">for more on this read over this still
unpublished paper</a>), but also contributed to the various ways that these
buildings produced meaning. ¬†Local Corinthians, irrespective of theological
(or, frankly, religious predilections) surely contributed to the physical
construction of the great church and the repairs to the various monumental walls
Procopius reports Justinian to have funded in the Corinthia. ¬†Building made
their bodies physically complicit in the production of imperial ideology on the
Isthmus. ¬†Moreover, individuals involved in manual labor would have surrendered
their bodies - if, in fact, working on imperial projects had an ideological or
122
theological aspect - more readily than elites who could have held their bodies
apart from the actual performance of imperial power.
The bodies of the work crews who labored physically to construct imperial
authority on the Isthmus do leave traces. Sanders has reported that similar
graffiti in the wet mortar of both the Lechaion basilica and the Panayia bath in
the city of Corinth proper (and perhaps the Hexamillion wall as well) suggest
that the same work crews or the same organization provided labor for both
buildings. ¬†The simple inscribed fish in the mortar of both buildings would
have been probably been covered with a layer of finer stucco when the building
was completed and not visible. ¬†At the same time, the symbol of the fish seems
likely to have had religious significance. ¬†The fish had been one of the
earliest symbols associated with Christianity. ¬†While we have no idea whether
these symbols were set to mark out these buildings as "Christian" (as if this
was necessary for the Lechaion basilica church!) or to mark the work of a
particular crew of laborers or some kind of apotropaic function that suggested
either resistance or accommodation, it is clear that the laborers had agency in
the act of constructing these monumental buildings and hence were capable of
seeing their labor as a ideological action.
At the opposite end of the spectrum, the second largest basilica in the
Corinthia is the Kraneion basilica. ¬†Roughly contemporary with Lechaion
basilica, it has clear similarities in form. Both churches have numerous annex
rooms, a nartex and atria (albeit Kraneion appears to have a second atria
extending to the south), water features in the western atria, and a baptistery
arranged to the northwest of the church. ¬†The most striking difference between
these buildings is that the naves are separated from the aisles at Kraneion by
means of a series of narrow piers supporting arches. ¬†Lechaion follows a more
traditional pattern by separating the nave from the aisles by a series of
columns supporting arches that spring from ornate ionic impost capitals. ¬†At
least some of the columns in this nave colonnade were imperially controlled
Proconnesian marble and the ionic impost capitals are sufficiently regular in
design to suggest an imperial work crew. ¬†The absence, then, of a marble
colonnade at Kraneion would have made this church stand out. ¬†If we assume that
the nave colonnade at Lechaion worked to communicate the building's imperial
funded status, then the absence of such a colonnade at Kraneion may have
positioned this church as a conspicuously non-imperial foundation. ¬†While it is
impossible to do more than suggest this argument, it is striking that Kraneion
is one of the few churches in the Late Roman province of Achaia that used piers
in the place of the colonnade. This becomes more significant, if we assume (as
<a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/church-society-and-the-sacred-in-early-
christian-greece/oclc/59019454">I have argued elsewhere</a>) that the colonnade
in Late Roman Greece served to frame the perspective of the congregation as they
watched the liturgical proceedings performed by the clergy in an otherwise empty
nave. ¬†The contrasting arrangement between these two buildings would hardly be
lost on even the most casual observer especially as the Lechaion basilica
demonstrates that the colonnade is a feature suited to display of wealth and
control over lavish resources. ¬†Like the fish in the mortar, the absence of a
nave colonnade could represent a local response, perhaps even resistance, to the
wealth and authority vested in display.
Neither of these examples explicitly suggest inequality in a modern sense
fueled by a post-Enlightenment understanding of the rights of human agents as
individuals. ¬†On the other hand, these two examples (and the careful reader
will observe that I do have one more, but it'll have to wait until I get into my
office this morning to check a citation), demonstrate that despite different the
differing economic and social position of the actors within Corinthian society,
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there was nevertheless ample opportunity to participate in both acts of

resistance and accommodation.
Stay tuned for more...
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AUTHOR: David
IP: 74.99.148.10
URL:
DATE: 09/13/2010 09:01:38 PM
Look forward to reading it. I too need to retune my paper (almost finished)
according to angle of inequality.
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It's a rainy and dreary Friday. ¬†So just a modest list of quick hits:
<ul>
<li>I put in my tenure application yesterday. ¬†<a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/dept/artsci/faculty-
staff/forms/_docs/T&P_Checklist_2010.pdf">This is the first page of it</a>
to give you an idea of the number forms, and forms about forms, and forms
summarizing the work summarized on other forms. I found it too difficult to
include my blog in the official paperwork for tenure, but I think it will lurk
in the background to some extent.</li>
<li><a href="http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/09/the-future-of-reading-
2/">The future of reading</a>.</li>
<li><a href="http://mith.umd.edu/vintage-computers/">This is a pretty fantastic
site that considers computers as historical objects</a>.</li>
<li>A little press for my <a
href="http://www.grandforksherald.com/event/article/id/175010/">Fall of the
Roman Empire class</a>.</li>
<li>There will be some announcement regarding <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2010/09/a-
proposal.html">this post in the next few weeks</a>. </li>
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<li>There are two people who I follow on Facebook whose posts are so amazing to
me that I want to collect them and create a Tumblr of them. ¬†They're models of
what not to say as an academic in a new job or searching for a job. ¬†But
they're also a kind of poetry of frustration and professional unawareness that
make them somehow more wholesome and honest.</li>
<li>This is a great weekend for sports: Formula One, NASCAR at Richmond, great
college football, first weekend of the NFL, and some great baseball pennant
races.</li>
<li>What I'm reading: L. Revell, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/roman-imperialism-and-local-
identities/oclc/476883783">Roman Imperialisms and Local Identities</a>.
(Cambridge 2009)</li>
<li>What I'm listening to: The Urinals, Negative Capability... Check it
Out!, The Minutemen, <a href="http://www.corndogs.org/">Acoustic
Blowout</a>.</li>
</ul>
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CATEGORY: Academia
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So, my tenure application is almost done. ¬†And this is more or less what it
looks like. ¬†In other words, my career in its most radically material
form.!
title="MyLifeinPaper.jpg"
-pi" border="0" alt="MyLifeinPaper.jpg" width="450" height="450" />!
It hardly looks impressive. I've seen some tenure files spill over three
large binders. ¬†But this is what it is.
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AUTHOR: Evan Nelson
EMAIL: evannelson@mail.und.edu
IP: 134.129.203.235
URL: http://www.gradschool.und.edu
DATE: 09/09/2010 10:30:11 AM
I do see a bit of sag in the desk, which is impressive.
Also, it never hurts to include an 8x10 glossy head shot. With a subtle spray of
cologne.
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COMMENT:
EMAIL:
IP: 134.129.205.189
DATE: 09/10/2010 07:25:48 AM
I happen to know there is a lot more to it. You should have put the big diesel
in the photo too.
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CATEGORY: Academia
CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 09/08/2010 07:33:07 AM

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As readers of this blog know, I get pretty excited about various projects
that seek to open up research and teaching to the general public. ¬†I have a
naive faith that the public is interested in what we as scholars do and a
commitment to trying to meet them half-way in explaining my research, interests,
and discipline. ¬†I am not always sure that I succeed in making my research
accessible, but, as I hope this blog testifies, I certainly try.
As part of this commitment, I've been mulling over a way to offer my classes
to the public for free. ¬†It's easy enough to make content available; I post my
podcasts and usually syllabi here, list the books and topics of my classes, and
even report on my pedagogical successes and failures. These efforts, however,
are a one way window into my courses. ¬†With the exception of the occasional
blog post from loyal readers or past students, I don't get much feedback from
students because the media that I have used to communicate my course material is
not designed to foster the kind of dynamic interaction that a full-featured
online course, for example, or a classroom discussion requires.
A recent notice in the <a href="http://chronicle.com/article/Open-
Teaching-When-the/124170/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en">Chronicle
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of Higher Education</a> and a quick read of Mark Taylor's new book, <a
href="http://www.amazon.com/Crisis-Campus-Reforming-Colleges-
Universities/dp/0307593290">Crisis on Campus: A Bold Plan for Reforming Our
Colleges and Universities</a> (New York 2010), once again rekindled my
interest in imagining a different way to teach. In a moment of excitement, I
sent an email to one of the "powers-that-be" on campus and pitched an idea that
the University of North Dakota offer some free classes on-line, open to anyone
who signs up (for no credit) as well as paying students (for credit). I pitched
the idea to some of my trusted interlocutors here and got some good responses,
and now have a meeting set up with some folks on the technical side of
developing this idea as well as folks on the administrative side.
I even have imagined a name for this venture: The Institute for Open Learning
at the University of North Dakota.
The programs would look for intellectual and technical support from folks
with existing expertise on campus and seek to build alliances that encourage the
development of contemporary, sophisticated, and varied course material for large
scale online teaching opportunities on the web. ¬†As I have argued in <a
href="http://www.amazon.com/Crisis-Campus-Reforming-Colleges-
Universities/dp/0307593290">an earlier blog post</a>, teaching an open online
class with for-credit students enrolled will offer unique opportunities for
students to simultaneously experience life within and outside the university
classroom. ¬†As Taylor and others have suggested, bridging the gap between the
life within the academy and life outside the academy is a vital way to keep what
we do here relevant and, at the same time, communicate and reinforce core
academic values to a broader audience. ¬†I remain optimistic that if more people
saw what goes on in a university classroom, they would be more able to
understand the value in a university education.
And, unlike most of flights of fancy, I even have something of a funding
model: At present the university splits funds collected from an online
instruction fee with the college who then usually passes some of these funds
onto individual departments. ¬†In effect, departments have a financial incentive
to teach online classes. ¬†What I'd want to do is to capture a sliver of the
funding that the University collects from these online classes and use that to
offer incentives to faculty to develop and teach open classes.
Ok. That's not a great plan, but there's more. ¬†My idea of an Institute for
Open Learning is mostly altruistic, but part of it imagines that these open
classes can serve as marketing vehicles for both various programs as well as the
university's efforts at online teaching in general. ¬†In fact, I'd go so far to
say that these classes could come to represent the University's commitment to
the local and global community as well as showcase the truly exceptional
teachers on campus. ¬†In order to make the link between the universities
outreach and marketing goals and the course content clear, the courses would be
available for advertising. ¬†These advertisement would have to adhere to certain
standards of taste and would have to come from approved sources (mostly, I
suspect in house, but it could extend to various approved groups like the local
art museum or the local visitor bureau). ¬†For example, each page might have a
banner type advertisement for the Graduate School or for The College of Business
and Public Administration. ¬†In addition, there could be simple introductions to
each podcast or video lecture which feature a brief advertisement much in the
same way that NPR introduces segments of its programing with a plug for the
title sponsor. ¬†These advertisement could be relatively inexpensive since our
overhead would be relatively low. ¬†And a significant percentage of the revenue
could go toward course development, faculty recruitment, and advertising for the
Institute.
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Over time, I could imagine offering 4-6 class a year over the spring, fall,
and summer semesters. ¬†If the Institute is successful, these course could
develop a following and a significant group of engaged and interested learners.
¬†This group of learners could also be an audience for various other programs at
the university - some of them, like local and visiting lectures, conferences and
colloquia (like the Writers Conference), and events would be free - while others
like new certificate programs or distance programs in allied fields would be for
credit and involve a fee.
I have a meeting tomorrow the begin the process of pitching this idea. Like
most of my great ideas (ahem), I suspect that my excitement has led me to
overlook some kind of fatal flaw in my plan, but until then I am going to just
enjoy the excitement of a new idea.
¬†
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Shawn
IP: 134.117.115.238
URL: http://www.electricarchaeologist.wordpress.com
DATE: 09/08/2010 10:24:00 AM
I think it's a great idea! The phrase 'long-tale education' keeps popping into
my mind as I read your proposal... have you seen what the Open University offers
by way of 'free' using their Moodle platform?
In my former life in the for-profit edu world, I floated the idea of free
courses in order to habituate potential students to our platform, and as a
marketing tool, but I didn't have the high-level contacts to get very far. The
idea of 'giving away' learning was a bit of a lead balloon there, strangely
enough (and I think of that Simpson's episode where the class visits Fort
Springfield and are chased away 'cuz they're lernin' fer free!').
I will follow this project with interest! Good luck!

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AUTHOR: Shawn
IP: 134.117.115.238
URL: http://www.electricarchaeologist.wordpress.com
DATE: 09/08/2010 10:25:00 AM
...er, make that 'tail'. Long-tail.
Darned homonyms.
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TITLE: Some Places in History
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CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 09/07/2010 07:41:10 AM

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I know that it's not Thursday yet, but I want to talk about teaching anyway.
¬†I was perhaps one of the last people on earth to use overhead projectors. ¬†I
loved the packets of maps that textbook publishers used to circulate with their
"instructor issues". ¬†I put them carefully into three-ring binders and carried
them around with me for years after I stopped using the textbooks. I finally
stopped using them when our local teaching technology folks removed (mercifully)
the last of the clunk overhead projectors from our classroom and replaced them
with ELMO document camera projectors. ¬†The shiny, plastic overheads did not
appear very effectively on the ELMO's camera and I had to find alternatives.
In class, I usually call up Google Maps, and there is usually the
embarrassing moment where I search for the location of some well-known
historical site. ¬†For example, I can never find the Rubicon river quickly. ¬†I
end up fumbling around and pointing to the Po or some other eastern Italian
river until figuring out my mistake.
In any event, to help manage my geographic lapses, I started to put together
.kmz files of the sites that I am going to refer to in each lecture. ¬†When I
open this file in Google Earth, bring yellow pushpins appear at the site that I
plan to talk about in lecture. ¬†This is not a revolution.
As I moved my class online, I preferred to use Wikipedia for basic geographic
information and provided the students with indexes of major names, events, and
places and, generally, link them to Wikipedia entries, which I have found are as
good anyplace (and generally as good as any textbook). ¬†For some reason I
didn't include my little .kmz files.
But now I have, and here are the first three; I'll add more as I find them
and tweak them to fit the newest iterations of my lectures. ¬†All these files
should open in Google Earth.
<a href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/GEPlaces/Ancient
Greece.kmz">Ancient Greece</a> <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/GEPlaces/Hellenistic
World.kmz">The Hellenistic World</a> <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/GEPlaces/Rome 1.kmz">Rome
1</a>
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TITLE: A new class to new students: The Fall of the Roman Empire
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DATE: 09/06/2010 07:46:37 AM

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Tomorrow I begin to teach 6 week class on the Fall of the Roman Empire to the
local, <a href="http://olli.und.edu/">University of North Dakota, branch of the
Osher Life Long Learning Institute</a>. This Institute focuses mainly on
teaching community members - primarily "seasoned adults" and
"life long learners" - and does not offer courses for credit.
The expense is minimal and the goals of my class will be to entertain as
much as educate. I'll have to balance my tendency to go into great
detail about minute events of the Late Antique world (although it is hard to
understand how anyone could not care deeply about the machinations leading up
the Three Chapters Controversy!). On the other hand, I am pretty excited
to offer a class to the greater community. My grandmother took classes at
a similar institution at the University of Delaware after my grandfather had
died, and she seemed to really enjoy them. It will feel good to share some of my
knowledge, see how my approach plays to an audience not worried about getting a
good grade, and to hear what my "students" think about the end of the
ancient world.!
That all being said, this is the first time that I'll teach a course in
my particular area of specialty on campus at UND. It seems hard to
believe that I've been here for 8 years and have yet to teach a course on
the Late Antique world. Another reason to be excited.!
<img alt="NewImage.jpg" border="0" height="366"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20133f3ddc05a970b
-pi" style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"
title="NewImage.jpg" width="300" />!
I have conceived of the class in 6, more or less autonomous units:!
1. Introduction to the Fall of Rome 2. Politics, Popes, Emperors, and
Invaders 3. Christians and Pagans 4. Cities, Buildings, and the End of
the Empire 5. Archaeology and the End of the Empire 6. Rome After
Rome: The Long Shadow of Late Antiquity!
The course is a blatant bait-and-switch. My focus will be less on the
"Fall of Rome" as discrete political event and much more on the period
of Late Antiquity. My goal will be to convince the class that the legacy
of Rome refracted through political, religious, social, and economic changes of
the 4th to 8th centuries is far more important than the sacking of a city or the
death of an Emperor (well, except, I suppose to the folks who lived in Rome or
the family of the Emperor). In fact, I want them all to understand that
the most of the basic tensions that define modern political and religious
discourse have roots in Late Antiquity. So the Fall of Rome is less about
the death of some romanticized (I couldn't resist!) ancient world and much
more about the birth of a society that has strangely familiar echoes.!
Wish me luck!
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AUTHOR: Amalia T
IP: 75.15.28.82
URL: http://amaliadillin.blogspot.com
DATE: 09/06/2010 10:00:30 AM
Good luck! It sounds like a great course!
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COMMENT:
IP: 76.104.197.147
DATE: 09/06/2010 10:56:05 AM
Bait and switch.
Fun course.
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COMMENT:
IP: 208.107.115.6
URL: http://doctoralbliss.wordpress.com
DATE: 09/06/2010 01:36:39 PM
Darn, if it didn't conflict with my class with Dr. Reese, I would love to sit in
on it. I may have to look into this, as I would love to teach a class on the
Civil War.
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Lots of little things on a sunny but windy Friday before a holiday
weekend.
<ul>
<li>An interesting, if a bit peculiar article, on the <a
href="http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/4/1/000080/000080.html">Landscape
of Digital Humanities</a> (via <a
href="http://mediterraneanceramics.blogspot.com/2010/08/numbered-paragraphs-in-
digital.html">Sebastian Heath who offers some technical notes</a>)</li>
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<li>An interesting and FREE book about <a href="http://digital.designing-

obama.com/">the design aspects of Obama's Presidential campaign in
2008</a>.</li>
<li><a href="http://www.thewildernessdowntown.com/">This is a supercool
customizing video based on a good Arcade Fire song</a>. ¬†The power of the
intertubes!</li>
<li>Have you checked out this week's <a
href="http://teachingthursday.org/">Teaching Thursday</a> (an advertisement for
myself!)? ¬†<a href="http://twitter.com/OIDatUND">You absolutely MUST follow us
on Twitter</a>. ¬†Do it!</li>
<li>My wife's awesome new content-driven marketing site "<a
href="http://gradstories.omeka.net/">Grad Stories</a>" is now up. </li>
<li>The tech blog <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/02/chrome-firefox-
techcrunc/">Techcrunch claims that 31% of its traffic yesterday </a>was from
people using Google's Chrome browser. ¬†For the past month at this blog, Chrome
only represents 10% of my traffic. ¬†Firefox produces 37%, IE runs 35% of my
visitors, and Safari runs about 12%, Chrome comes in at 4th, with Opera holding
strong at just under 4%. ¬†I might need to do a meta data Monday to
contextualize these result. </li>
<li>The blog for the <a href="http://lateantiqueostia.wordpress.com/">Kent-
Berlin Ostia Excavations </a>is one of my favorites. ¬†Their recent post on
using <a href="http://lateantiqueostia.wordpress.com/2010/09/01/thunderbirds-
are-go/">remote controlled helicopters to photograph the site from the air</a>
should have <a href="http://www.chss.iup.edu/rsmoore/">Scott Moore</a> reaching
for the nearest tech grant application especially in <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/pylakoutsopetria_season_s/2010/06/th
e-voyage-of-pkap-airship-1.html">light of our less than successful Kite-o-blimp
experiment this summer</a>. </li>
<li>This Esquire article from 1971 on the "<a
href="http://www.lospadres.info/thorg/lbb.html">Secrets of the Little Blue
Box</a>" is really great (via <a href="http://kottke.org/10/09/phone-phreaking-
1971">kottke.org</a>). ¬†The language of using blue boxes to hack the phone
system reminds me of William Gibson's descriptions of the "jacking in" to his
imagined internet. </li>
<li>If you're a reader in South Florida, you should be excited for the <a
href="http://www.surfandsongfestival.com/">3rd Annual Surf and Song Festival in
Fort Myers</a>. ¬†<a href="http://twitter.com/SurfandSongFest">You can even
follow them on Twitter</a>.</li>
<li>I'm totally bummed that Mohammed Amir, the great young Pakistani bowler, has
been caught up in the recent spot fixing scandal and <a
href="http://www.cricinfo.com/pakistan/content/current/story/475695.html">now
struck from the ICC awards list</a>. ¬†This is a cat from Taliban controlled
areas of Pakistan who was a thing of beauty to watch bowl (even as he was
dismantling Australia and being cocky about it!). ¬†I hope that his career and
reputation survive. </li>
<li>What I'm reading: Mark Taylor, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/crisis-on-campus-a-bold-plan-for-reforming-
our-colleges-and-universities/oclc/501320939">Crisis on Campus: A Bold Plan for
Reforming out Colleges and Universities</a> (Knopf 2010).</li>
<li>What I'm listening to: Dinosaur Jr.,¬†You're Living All Over Me and
Dinosaur. </li>
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TITLE: Teaching the World for Free
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DATE: 09/02/2010 08:33:27 AM

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Thursday</a>.
This week the <a href="http://chronicle.com/article/Open-Teaching-When-
the/124170/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en">Chronicle of Higher
Education</a><a href="http://chronicle.com/article/Open-Teaching-When-
the/124170/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en">'s technology blog
featured</a> a short article on two faculty members who offered a course to the
public for free and attracted over 2,000 non-credit earning students. ¬†The
article argues that, for some classes, opening the course to the public created
a more diverse and dynamic classroom environment only really possible through
online teaching. ¬†In Profs. Downes' and Siemen's class, non-credit students and
paying, for-credit students mingled in discussion forums, witnesses the same
lectures, and engaged the same readings, but unlike efforts pioneered by places
like MIT where the lectures and syllabi are made public, these non-credit
students were invited to participate fully in the educational process as well by
engaging with their fellow students and, presumably, the faculty member. ¬†In
short, their class emphasizes the interactive potential of online teaching over
and above the internet's well-known ability to disseminate prepared content.
I couldn't help but also see this as an opportunity to democratize the
university experience in a fairly radical way. ¬†Not only would students have to
consider how a particular class or material or problem solving exercise helps
them to navigate the unpredictable shoals of a distant, abstract "real world",
but they will be forced to confront the "real world", right there, in the
classroom. ¬†In other words, such a public course might help students overcome
the separation between what happens in the classroom where students sometimes
regard skills, methods, and knowledge as simply "course objectives" or tools to
get an "A", and what happens in the real world where these skills, methods, and
knowledge function in a far more ambiguous way and the rules followed to get an
"A" rarely apply neatly. ¬†Expanding the conversation by bringing the real world
into the foyer of the Ivory Tower could have a revolutionary effect on how
students understand the application of classroom skills.
I've just begun to discuss the possibility of running some classes like this
at the University of North Dakota. ¬†As part of my sounding out processes, I
talked to my good buddy, online teacher extraordinaire, and frequent Teaching
Thursday contributor, <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/category/michael-
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beltz/">Mick Beltz</a>, and he and I came up with some issues that will have to
be considered before developing and deploying a class to the general public.
¬†Both of us bring the perspective of teachers in the humanities with some
online teaching experience.
So, five observations.
1. Technology. The first thing I thought of is how do we run a course like
this. ¬†It seems that the classes described in the Chronicle article ran through
<a href="http://moodle.org/">Moodle </a>which is open source and, presumably,
more flexible (or at least developable) than Blackboard in some ways. ¬†The
course will also have to be able to function with almost no live technical
support. ¬†I can't imagine any university who would want to commit large scale
technical support to a class full of non-credit, non-paying students. So every
aspect of online delivery would have to be iron-clad to work and very straight
forward to access.
2. Scaleable content and exercises. Once one had assurances of a solid
platform, then the content would have to be scaled in some way. For example, a
course that relied on a $400 textbook would not be a very appealing class to
open to the public because few public, non-credit students will be interested
(it seems to me) in purchasing a $400 textbook. ¬†Open source content and public
domain texts would work better. ¬†Multiple-guess type questions are more easily
scaleable than essay tests and papers. ¬†Currently I teach my online History 101
class as asynchronous - meaning all the content is available from the first day.
¬†This may not scale well for a massive online course where a less-engaged
public might not be inclined to complete weekly assignments in order and prefer
to skip around defeating any pedagogical goals dependent upon the sequential
engagement with content.
3. Access and Control. One key to managing the relationship between paying,
for-credit students, and non-credit students is creating levels of access that,
for example, prevent open discussion boards from turning into the worst kind of
comment sections on a blog. ¬†I initially thought that limiting the length of
time a discussion board was accessible would limit the opportunities for crazy
comments or spam. ¬†Mick offered a better solution. ¬†He suggested that
discussion boards be controlled through "adaptive release" exercises. ¬†In other
words, to get access to a discussion, you have to score above a particular grade
on a quiz based on the readings. ¬†Of course, a clever instructor could develop
a whole series of adaptive release access points; with achievement would come
ever more intimate levels of access much in the same way that video games
release bonus features at certain levels. ¬†This adaptive release model would
not only limit access to people with malicious intent (to some extent), but also
create incentives to non-credit students to engage the material in the
class.
4. Goals and Objectives. A public course - like any course - will need a
clear sets of goals and objectives. There is no escaping that any course like
this would have to be experimental at first. ¬†And like any experiment, we would
have to establish certain metrics to determine whether the class was successful
or not. ¬†The simple statistics, like number of students and length of time on-
site (as a metric for engagement) would be useful, but we would also want to see
if we could gather data on student engagement more broadly. ¬†The goal, to my
mind, would be to draw people into the subject matter. ¬†Following the model of
many video game creators, we'd want our course to create an immersive space, and
we would have to monitor certain clear criteria to determine whether this was
successful. ¬†We might also borrow from are colleagues in marketing to
understand better the various metrics used to determine the success or failure
of a website or a viral or web-based marketing campaign.
134
5. Resources. ¬†The biggest hurdle to implementing a class like this would be
to determine whether the benefits of the course are worth the commitment of
resources. ¬†A public access course has the potential to break down barriers
between "the academy" and the public, engage types of learners who might not be
inclined to enroll for credit at a university, and expose students to ways of
thinking, priorities, and experiences rare or impossible in the classroom. ¬†On
the other hand, how many hours per week does managing a potentially massive
online class take, how robust of a cyber-infrastructure, and, even, what is
necessarily to publicize the course and actually get non-credit students to
"enroll". ¬†As much as we'd like to say that we're teaching the world "for free"
there is always some cost in time and resources.
Those are just my preliminary thoughts on the potential issues and rewards of
teaching the world for free.
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AUTHOR: Sean McMullin
EMAIL: grondhammar@gmail.com
IP: 144.92.40.77
URL:
DATE: 09/02/2010 10:48:45 AM
Great post. I like the clarity of the five hurdles you've set out here. #5 is a
huge issue unless you manage public expectations well, and set up some pretty
strong barriers to personnel access.
You may wish to check out David Wiley's work (davidwiley.org) He's a professor
who's been practicing with and researching open educational content for several
years, and has some interesting insights & examples.
One of his ideas relating to your #3 (Access and Control)... He set up one of
his courses like a role-playing game. Students could "level up" by completing
assignments and doing well on assessments. Those with greater levels could then
"multi-class" and gain broader access to resources.
It worked because the course was 1) asynchronous and 2) taught to 18-25 yr olds
for whom the role-playing mechanics were well-known. Not sure if it would
generalise very well to an internet-wide audience.
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DATE: 09/01/2010 07:45:39 AM

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Almost a year ago this month, the Great Move occurred as the administration
rooted the Department of History from its long-standing and exceedingly-
comfortable space in Merrifield hall and moved us across the quad to O'Kelly.
¬†We are now settled into what I think most of us regard as equivalent, if not
superior space, at least in the case of my office.
As I was reflecting on the events surrounding our move, I stumbled on a very
recent article by John Schofield (whose work I am really coming to appreciate
and notice) in the journal Archaeologies called "<a
href="http://www.springerlink.com/content/c734302760t35647/">Office Cultures and
Corporate Memory: Some Archaeological Perspectives</a>". ¬†He describes the
archaeology of office culture and corporate memory through a study a move made
by English Heritage in 2006. ¬†The English Heritage office moved from a
prestigious Savile Row address in London to a new "more modern" office space
further from the city center.
The paper itself is a vivid - but not exceedingly detailed - account of the
things left behind in the office of the English Heritage as well was the spaces,
behaviors, and memories embedded for him the spaces so recently occupied by co-
workers. ¬†At the end of his article, he comments on the feelings associated
with abandoned and empty places:
<blockquote>
As an archaeologist I am fascinated by empty buildings and by the material
culture of abandonment. One of my earliest lessons in archaeology concerned
Skara Brae, a story of hurried desertion with precious objects left where they
fell. ¬†More recently I have studied and inspected military buildings forsaken
at the end of the Cold War... In Malta I have studies former bars that closed
abruptly with the Navy's withdrawal in the mid to late 1960s, bars that have
remained firmly locked ever since. I like these empty places and do sometimes
feel something as I wander about.
</blockquote>
As I look back <a
e-merrifield-move.html">on some of my blog posts</a> from the days of the move,
I think the final line of the quote captures the experience of wandering through
the abandoned offices in Merrifield. ¬†I felt something even though I did not
have a particularly long history history associated with Merrifield Hall, nor
did I enjoy a particular luxurious or historically rich accommodation there.
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Over the course of the intensive pedestrian survey at <a
href="http://www.pkap.org/">Pyla-Koutsopetria</a> we collected a sample of the
faunal material present on the surface of the ground (that is to say the animal
bones visible in each unit). ¬†Over the past month, David Reese, one of the
leading specialists in faunal remains in an archaeological context examined the
material from both our survey and excavation.
While I won't present all Dr. Reese's finds here on the blog (that will have
to wait for the full, final report), I will give a brief preview of his finds.
¬†The majority of the material from the site was Ovis/Capra
(sheep/goat). ¬†My understanding is that the bones of the two animals are
basically indistinguishable (in fact, if one could distinguish the two, I am
sure Dr. Reese would have!). ¬†The goat and sheep bones likely reflect the more
recent past activity at the site which almost certainly involved grazing. ¬†At
present the site is under cultivation with cereals - mostly for feed - but this
might be the result of the region's appropriation by the British after
independence in the 1950s. ¬†At present our site has relatively restricted
access because of the activities at various live-fire ranges in the area. ¬†It
is also possible that some grazing continues in the early spring, fall, or
winter months when we are not present on the site. ¬†A few of the bones show
signs of being butchered and cooked, but it is difficult to know whether this
occurred on site - in a possible domestic context - or if these bones represent
lunches taken in the fields, rubbish thrown from passing travelers, or even bits
of household trash carried out into the fields at some earlier time as composted
fertilizer. ¬†The presence of a few worn chicken bones from the fields almost
certainly represents meals taken in the field or domestic rubbish.
More evidence for grazing comes from the presence of numerous bones from dogs
(canis familiaris). ¬†While we regularly see packs of hunting dogs
training across the coastal ridges in the evening hours, the link between dogs
and herds of sheep or goats is too close to ignore.
Aside from the dog and sheep/goat bones, there are two objects that really
stood out. ¬†First, Dr. Reese identified an eroded part of a bos taurus
(cow!) bone on the site. ¬†Since cattle have somewhat different grazing patterns
than goats and sheep, this bone suggests that at some point our site may have
seen grazing cattle and possible pasture land.
Finally (and most exciting!), Dr. Reese identified a fragment of human skull
from one of survey units near the western most extent of our site. ¬†As readers
of this blog know, we've been <a
loud-4.html">struggling to identify the location of a cemetery that served the
inhabitants of our diachronic settlements at Vigla and Pyla-Koutsopetria</a>.
Cesnola spent some time in the general vicinity of a site that could be ours
(relating his description of the place to our side has proven to be almost
impossible; for the description of Cesnola see the link below), as he passed
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back and forth to his summer home at Ormidhia. ¬†<a

href="http://books.google.com/books?id=Um_PAAAAMAAJ&dq=Cesnola%20Cyprus%20It
s%20ancient%20cities&pg=PA178#v=onepage&q=Ormidia&f=false">His
description of a place called Palaeocastro (which is one of the names for our
site) included graves which he appears to have excavated</a>. ¬†The fragment of
skull identified from our survey was not particularly close to the area that
Cesnola appears to be describing. ¬†So, the mystery of the Pyla-Koutsopetria
burials continues with any tiny fragment of evidence suggesting that graves or
even tombs are present near our site, but lie undiscovered.
¬†
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IP: 99.232.120.148
URL:
DATE: 08/31/2010 08:54:25 AM
Bill, when Michael and I went to the Pyla Œ∫Œ±œÜŒµŒΩŒµŒØŒø an old guy told us
that they used to take flocks out to the coastal ridges before the British base
appropriated the land.
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COMMENT:
EMAIL:
IP: 134.129.192.180
DATE: 08/31/2010 09:27:21 AM
Dimitri,
Thanks, man! I assumed as much. That must account for the goat/sheep bones in
the survey.
Bill
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DATE: 08/29/2010 04:50:09 PM

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My wife has recently stripped the doors in our house and has begun to repaint
them. ¬†Like most turn of the century homes in the area, they have wooden doors.
¬†These doors are substantial, hang poorly (in most cases) and preserve the
history of the house in through the marks in the door.
The archaeology of the house is preserved in the house itself.
This door shows at least four different lock and works on the door preserved
under multiple coats of paint.
title="Door1.jpg"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20134868b0e27970c
-pi" border="0" alt="Door1.jpg" width="420" height="281" />
The evidence for an earlier latch: <img style="display: block; margin-
left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="Door2.jpg"
title="Door3.jpg"
In this detail you can see the outline of the earlier doorplate, cylinder,
and lock.
title="Door3_Detail.jpg"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20133f366e54b970b
-pi" border="0" alt="Door3_Detail.jpg" width="420" height="420" />
An upstairs door show another set of interesting marks preserving tiny bits
of the houses history. The elegant doorplate and crystal doorknob probably date
to the earliest years of the house. While the floors upstairs in our house are
fir as opposed to the floors downstairs which are a more luxurious maple, the
doorknob and plate show certain concessions to display in the more private
quarters of the house. ¬†Of course, a nice doorknob and plate is an easy
addition to a house at some later date, but the floors on the second floor are
more or less permanent.
title="Door4.jpg"
Evidence for the use of a simple latch on the inside of the door. ¬†The door
must have been pushed open a few times because it's clear that someone forced
the door open, striping the simply threaded latch, and causing someone to drive
the latch back into the door again in a slightly different place.
title="Door5.jpg"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20133f366e56a970b
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IP: 155.68.29.254
DATE: 09/01/2010 08:54:45 AM
Here's what I find interesting in the transition of locks. 1) The separation of
the lock and handle, held in one piece into two different mechanisms and
locations, 2) The shift from the presumably ornate composite to the "security"
aesthetics of the newer bolt. Most likely what happened is that the original
mechanism was too complicated to service and it had to be replaced, but no
composites were available. The technology of the new pieces is 1950s. The
1950s/60s in-situ locks I've seen tend to have the color of the actual material,
brushed aluminum. The fact that these have been faux-plated to look like bronze
makes me think that the switch occurred after the 1980s, probably 1990s. Now if
you're really crazy, you can start hunting for the original 19th c. fixture.
There are some crazy antique stores in Pennyslvania where you walk in and see
literally thousands of locks. But I wouldn't go there. KOSTIS
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Some quick hits on a windy, but sunny Friday morning:
<ul>
<li>Some really cool imaginings of what a new American currency could look like
<a href="http://richardsmith.posterous.com/tag/dollarredeign">here</a>.</li>
<li>Tim Caromody is both really smart and increasingly ubiquitous. ¬†<a
href="http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2010/08/10-reading-revolutions-
before-e-books/62004/">Here are his thoughts on reading revolutions</a> and here
are his thoughts on the <a href="http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/08/five-
myths-about-philadelphias-blogging-tax/all/1">so-called Philadelphia blogging
tax</a>.</li>
<li>This is <a href="http://24flinching.com/word/headline/subway-lifeblood/">a
perfect page </a>to look at while listening to the punk rock. ¬†Great
photos.</li>
<li><a
href="http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2962/25
80">Some thoughtful and careful research</a> on why academics blog.</li>
<li><a href="http://www.technologyreview.com/web/25997/">4Chan is pretty
wild</a>.</li>
140
<li>Go and check out<a href="http://teachingthursday.org/"> Teaching

Thursday</a> this week to find what OID will be to next year. ¬†And while you're
at it <a href="http://twitter.com/OIDatUND">follow us on Twitter.</a></li>
<li>What I am listening to: X, Los Angeles.</li>
<li>What I am reading:¬†ÔªøMichael Azarrad, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/our-band-could-be-your-life-scenes-from-the-
american-rock-underground-1981-1991/oclc/45804603&referer=brief_results">Our
Band Could be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie
Underground</a>.</li>
</ul>
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IP: 76.104.197.147
DATE: 08/31/2010 10:13:33 AM
Love this. When my DC 1905 apartment was repainted in 2004, my daughter
photographed four layers of wallpaper under several more layers of paint.
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CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 08/26/2010 07:46:31 AM

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It's the first week of class and I already feel like I am behind! Since some
of my students have discovered this blog (it's inevitable, right?), I thought I
was post up my five tips for success in my classes. ¬†I think that these things
are generalizable:
1. Come to class. ¬†I seem to inspire students to skip class. ¬†This used to
frustrate me, but now I view this as a kind of formal resistance, which I admire
enough to take on the role of "the man". ¬†I've blogged on this before <a
aching-thursday-grading-and-resistance.html">here</a> and <a
ading-detroit-and-student-resistence.html">here</a>.
2. Take notes. ¬†I have had students tell me that they don't need to take
notes because they can remember everything. ¬†This is impossible and a cover for
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laziness. ¬†Note taking is the first step in learning because it forces us to

interpret and condense what we are hearing in class.
3. Do the readings. My classes depend on the careful reading of primary
sources. ¬†These form the basis for in-class discussions, writing assignments,
and exams. ¬†If you don't do the reading, you won't get it.
4. Work with your fellow students. ¬†If you can't figure out how to work
together in the classroom, the library, or the quad, then do it online; social
media applications provide a great platform for collaboration between students.
¬†For all its faults, Blackboard has baked in an increasingly robust set of
collaborative tools that I am more than willing to deploy to allow the students
to work together.
5. Talk to me. ¬†If you are struggling or if you feel like you are beginning
to struggle, talk to me. ¬†Despite recent reviews which rank University of North
Dakota faculty among the least accessible in the country, my door is almost
always open. ¬†So come and talk about how you can do better in class.
I leave off this list obvious things like doing assignments, turning them on
time, and taking test seriously, because most of our students understand this
kind of thing. It's the more mundane and unstructured expectations (attendance,
note taking, reading) that students struggle to prioritize.
Good luck in the new semester!
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TITLE: Peer Review and the New Media
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DATE: 08/25/2010 08:33:08 AM

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A bunch of people have sent me Monday's New York Times article: "<a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/24/arts/24peer.html?_r=2&scp=3&sq=s
hakespeare&st=cse">Scholars Test Web Alternative to Peer Review</a>". ¬†This
article describes a recent trial at Shakespeare Quarterly where they eschewed
traditional peer review and instead opened the review process to a panel of
experts and others on the web. ¬†The process garnered over 350 comments from 41
people which the editors evaluated. ¬†Ultimately they selected the four articles
for publication in a special edition of the journal on Shakespeare and the new
media.
Whenever a journal attempts a project like this it attracts attention and
almost inevitably provoked headlines heralding the impending end of the
traditional practice of academic peer review. ¬†Most articles envision
142
traditional peer review to involve a journal circulating an article to an

anonymous pair of experts who evaluate the article's suitability for publication
in the particular journal and, in most cases, offer comments. This description
of the peer review process is, of course, idealized. ¬†In reality, journals -
particularly in Europe - have widely varying standards and practices for peer
review with widely varying degrees of transparency. So the introduction of a new
method of peer review which takes advantage of the increasing degree of
connectivity on the web does not so much represent radical novelty amidst
stodgy, ossified, practices of peer review, but another point along a continuum
of practice.
Despite this reality, I know that any modifications to the traditional peer
review practices are likely to create waves. I generally consider my colleagues
across the disciplines to be fairly liberal minded folks, but it never ceases to
amaze me how limited our perspectives become on matters like scholarly
publishing. ¬†In fact, it befuddles me why academia struggles so mightily with
the idea that "in the future" we could acknowledge the value of academic and
intellectual work produced through a wide range of publishing paradigms ranging
from the un-edited and un-reviewed blog to the highly polished peer reviewed
journals. ¬†Of course, I can anticipate one response: with the explosion of new
publications and formats, the "average scholar" struggles to keep abreast of
developments in his or her field. ¬†Moreover, introducing a new layer of less
rigorously reviewed material to the mix contributes to the massive quantity of
material that scholars are expect to understand.
On the other hand, the rise of highly integrated and sophisticated social
networking applications is making it easier to filter scholarship through a
layer a kind of secondary review by colleagues. ¬†My friends and colleagues
serve, in effect, as another layer of peer review ensuring the we as a group
have access to "important" scholarly contributions even from obscure journals.
¬†While there is no guarantee that good scholarship will find its way through
our social network, the economies of numerous eyes scanning the growing body of
scholarly literature gives us a better chance of seeing things important to our
common research interests.
The other traditional complaint against adjusting the peer review process is
that it will ultimately undermine the quality of scholarship produced. ¬†It is
as if the practice of circulating working papers, archaeological reports, pre-
pubication drafts, informal reviews, has not existed for as long a peer-reviewed
publications. ¬†For centuries scholars circulated manuscripts to colleagues and
friends without the benefit of anonymous, exterior reviews. The major shift now
is that we can democratize the process of circulating working papers by using
the web rather than informal and private avenues of scholarly communication.
¬†In fact, the newly democratized practice of pre-publication circulation offers
the potential to uphold the¬†Ôªøhighest¬†standards of peer review. ¬†The
pressure will be on the peer review process to demonstrate the superiority of
its product in relation to non-peer reviewed work. ¬†Such competition should
make any benefit inherent to the traditional method of peer reviewed scholarship
all the more visible.
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TITLE: Archaeology and Sound
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BASENAME: archaeology-and-sound
CATEGORY: Punk Archaeology
DATE: 08/24/2010 09:10:21 AM

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During my recent travels I was able to read over the series of articles
published in the most recent <a
href="http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=g925690055">World
Archaeology</a>. ¬†These articles were dedicated to exploring the place of
archaeology in the world today. They considered the place of archaeology in the
production of compelling narratives, campus life, the new media, and in pressing
problems like homelessness, environmental sustainability, and even transparency
in government. ¬†The articles blended methodological sophistication with
practical real life applications to show how the tools and approaches that
archaeologists have developed over the history of the discipline can contribute
to documenting and analyzing problems in the recent past. ¬†If anything, these
articles, to generalize, were too practical in their approaches to problems
perhaps assuming that for something to be relevant in todays culture, it had to
have a direct practical application rather than a more long term
theoretical or methodological benefit. ¬†On the other hand, these articles did
reflect the increasingly permeable disciplinary boundaries of archaeological
research as they drew upon techniques, methods, and approaches developed by
disciplinary neighbors like sociology, anthropology, communications, and
philology and literature.
One striking omission from this wide ranging group of articles was anything
on the archaeology of sound. There have been some intriguing recent work on the
sounds of archaeology and they key role that hearing materiality plays in our
ability to identify objects, spaces, and materials. ¬†In fact, heavily damped
spaces create a kind of sensory deprivation that obscures the materiality and
social "reality" of a space. ¬†(At the same time, noise pollution and the
saturation of our environment with a range of mechanical sounds is generally
recognized as a problem to be dealt with in a architectural - in other words
material - way.) ¬†It is worth noting that I am not the first to think about
this kind of thing. The sound of archaeology has contributed to the idea of
archaeology as performance and sensory as well as contributed to our idea of how
past monuments sounded.
Over the past year, I've been thinking about music as a place where
archaeological methods could be deployed productively through an exploration of
punk rock music. ¬†Punk rock, in particular, sought to celebrate a highly
materialized kind of music, through their preference for live recordings in
particular places (particularly iconic venues like CBGBs or Max's Kansas City)
and their conscious efforts to emphasize the low-fi, diy character of their
recording spaces. ¬†(One of my favorite moments in a punk rock recording is when
you can hear a bottle fall and hit the ground (and seemingly not break) during a
Replacement's song). ¬†The term garage band made clear the link between music, a
144
particular sound, and a space. ¬†This all stands in contrast to the increasingly
over-produced character of modern pop music which goes to great lengths to
create spatially and materially impossible sound which could never be produced
in a way that someone could witness and experience. (For a remarkable critique
of this check out <a href="http://snarkmarket.com/2009/3683">this article on
Pompamoose</a>, a band that tries to make every sound on their remakes of pop
songs visible in some way.
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IP: 76.104.197.147
DATE: 08/24/2010 09:43:43 AM
A bit of study was done on this at Chartres 20+ years ago. You should see the
recent book by Deborah Howard & Laura Moretti: Sound Space in Renaissance Venice
with sound tracks at
<a
href="http://www.stjohnscollegecambridge.co.uk/soundandspace/">http://www.stjohn
scollegecambridge.co.uk/soundandspace/</a>
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Richard Patterson
EMAIL: kingricheast@aim.com
IP: 65.191.38.214
URL:
DATE: 12/04/2010 12:57:11 AM
Hey! I hope all is well with you! I was just browsing and saw the interview! It
was a privilege to hang out with you and to be able to produce the canvas for
your office. I am a better man for having met you. I am doing well. I am
currently in my second year of teaching in the North Carolina Public School
System. I am looking for ways to earn my doctorate in Early childhood education
and be able to influence those who come from similar backgrounds as myself.
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BASENAME: lechaion-after-the-basilica
DATE: 08/23/2010 07:55:45 AM

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Readers of my blog know about my near obsession with the Mighty Lechaion
Basilica. ¬†I return to it as often as I can on my increasingly infrequent and
short visits to Greece and every visit to the great church reveals another
interesting aspect of its history.
This last visit got my thinking about the later history of the church. ¬†At
some point in the 7th century or later, the building collapsed. At some point, a
small chapel appears in the baptistery of the church and this seems to have
required the movement of the baptismal font from the center of the octagonal
space to the southeastern wall. It may be that this space served the community
who continued to venerate at the site in the immediate aftermath of the damage
to the main church.
Once the main church had collapsed, much of the rubble of the superstructure
was stripped away and at least some of the marble sculpture likely vanished at
this point. ¬†In the apse of the church, the community constructed a small
chapel. ¬†At present we don't know enough about the chronology of the building -
and its attendant ceramics - to assign a date to this small building. ¬†The
position of the foundations of the later church below the level of the earlier
basilica's floor indicates that the builders had removed the majority of the
collapse from the main basilica prior to its construction. ¬†Ôªø
<img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; border:
0px initial initial;" title="LechLate3.JPG"
-pi" border="0" alt="LechLate3.JPG" width="420" height="315" />
Considering the massive size of the collapsed masonry from the churches half-
domed apse, this must have been a massive job. ¬†The absence of large quantities
of collapse around the site, however, suggests that the quarrying activity at
the church after its collapse may have been systematic. ¬†There is similar
evidence for such systematic quarrying activities across the Mediterranean (<a
urion-and-aba.html">I've even blogged about it before!</a>) and the quantity of
prestige materials used in the building must have made it an appealing source
for building material.
title="LechLate1.JPG"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20133f3435bf5970b
In fact, the builders of the later church used spolia heavily (and
predictably) in the foundations of the little church including parts of
Proconnesian marble columns, various bits of architectural sculpture, and what
appears to be "<a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-
0092.2008.00313.x/full">verde antico</a>" engaged columns. ¬†In fact, the
buildings seem to have tried to use the verde antico columns symmetrically in
the foundations suggesting that the use of spolia, even in structural parts of
this building, was not random or completely opportunistic, but systematic.
Reused bricks appear in the foundation courses of the mostly destroyed semi-
circular eastern apse and the buildings used large, ashlar blocks - probably
146
spolia originally used in the basilica itself and now in tertiary use in the
smaller late church - at the architecturally sensitive join between the apse and
the nave. ¬†In short, this building while modest in size, has indications of
careful construction.
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201348667a66b970c
From what I can tell, there is no plan of this building and very limited
discussion of it in the preliminary reports on the Lechaion church. ¬†Moreover,
this building does not appear on the plans of the basilica even though it
clearly represents an important, late chapter to the life of this important site
on the Gulf of Corinth.
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TITLE: Lechaion Basilica and Lechaion Fountain House
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One of my side projects this summer was to check out the architectural
sculpture from the Lechaion basilica and a nearby fountain house. In
particular, I wanted to compare the ionic impost capitals present at both
sites. The capitals are in fancy Proconnesian marble and look like they
were produced by masons with ties across the Mediterranean. <a
me-thoughts-on-st-leonidas-and-baptism-at-lechaion-in-greece.html">I've blogged
about this before</a>. These are from the basilica: <a
right: 0px" border="0" alt=""
-pi" width="124" height="94"></a> <a
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20133f3320a0c970b
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href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20133f3320ad6970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20133f3320add970b
-pi" width="124" height="94"></a> These are from the fountain house:
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20133f3320b7b970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2013486559a9f970c
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2013486559b71970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2013486559b82970c
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20133f3320cfa970
-pi" width="124" height="94"></a> The impost capitals from the fountain
house are particularly significant because it is one of the few occasions where
this kind of architectural sculpture appears in a building other than a church.
And the relationship to the column capitals from Lechaion should be pretty
clear.
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IP: 98.111.157.223
DATE: 08/20/2010 04:16:59 PM
If I remember correctly, some of these blocks have masonry numbers and even
dedicatory inscriptions?
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src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20134864e8c69970c
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TITLE: Telling Stories with Archaeology
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DATE: 08/17/2010 12:45:53 PM

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One of the great things that I've learned from working with <a
href="http://classics.uc.edu/index.php/research/40-isthmia">Steven Ellis's team
at Isthmia the Corinthia</a> is the idea of archaeological research as the basis
for story telling. Steven used this metaphor a number of times over the
first week of our work here as a way to frame the goals of our research.
It was absolutely enlightened and almost completely opposite from my growing
obsession with archaeological data collecting. Recently, when I have
approached archaeological problems, I become consumed by the need to document
and gather. This primary stems from an abiding faith that, somehow, data
will produce knowledge. I don't want to suggest that Steven and his team
are not interested in data. In fact, they have collected and collated a
remarkable amount of detailed information on the East Field Area and organized
it carefully in sophisticated databases designed to facilitate their daily
149
analysis. What was striking how little they talk about data as the product
of their field work. In contrast, I am ALWAYS thinking about data as the
product of archaeological analysis. Data then becomes - at some uncertain
time in the future - the basis for interpretation. This is completely and
unabashedly positivist. Steven's team has talked about the stories from
the very first day. This reminded me that the archaeological process was about
narrating events as much a collecting data. Beginning with the idea that a
narrative should be the product of archaeological analysis ensured that data
collection worked toward the goal of explicating the site and its history rather
than squandering resources on producing data without clear objectives in
mind. Some of this coincides with a recent article by <a
href="http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/1120189032-
57400975/gotoissue~db=all~dest=latest~cur=g924451445~tab=toc~order=page">C.
Holtorf in World Archaeology</a>, where he discusses the "meta-stories"
that so often organize the presentation, analysis, and interpretation of
archaeological information. These narratives serve not only to make bits
of information understandable, but also provide the basis for comparing various
similar narratives across time. These stories inform one another by
providing structures which help humanity to approach large scale, complex, and
pressing questions about the fundamental nature of society. Holtorf draws
in part on <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/metahistory-the-historical-
imagination-in-nineteenth-century-europe/oclc/700666">the work of Hayden
White</a> who looked at the narrative structures present in the work of 19th
century scholars like Marx, Burkardt, von Ranke, and Michelet. Holtorf
seems to suggest that archaeological story telling might follow 19th century
models: "By stories (or narratives) I mean an account of one or more characters
acting out plots in a sequence of events that contain a distinctive beginning,
middle and end." (383). While stories of the 19th century,
novelistic type are clearly recognizable to a broad audience, they hardly
represent the scope of potential story types familiar to even popular
audiences. Television shows like Lost, and popular feature films
have become increasingly comfortable twisting time, inverting the standard order
of narration, and leaving the audience with ambiguous endings. Story
telling in the 21st century is open to a much wider range of potential
organizations, resolutions, and plots than its 19th century predecessors.
I can even imagine that some of these narrative types will find ways to
"narrate" the structure of data rich descriptions and explorations of the
archaeological landscape.
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AUTHOR: Cornelius Holtorf
EMAIL: cornelius.holtorf@lnu.se
IP: 90.227.170.172
URL: http://web.comhem.se/cornelius/
DATE: 09/02/2010 01:26:41 PM
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I think I agree with you. There is a difference between the definition of a

story and how you may be telling that story. If you think of the movie Pulp
Fiction, for example, then this is relatively conventional story told in a very
interesting, twisted way. Archaeological stories and meta-stories can be told
like this, too, I suspect.
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COMMENT:
EMAIL:
IP: 134.129.192.180
DATE: 09/02/2010 01:30:25 PM
Thanks for the comment. I suspect that this is the inspiration, in part, for
folks like Christopher Tilley who show that story-telling is not incompatible
with more austere and non-narrative descriptions of archaeological data.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: owlfarmer
EMAIL: owlfarmer@gmail.com
IP: 66.226.212.190
URL: http://owlfarmer.blogspot.com
DATE: 11/02/2010 04:09:30 PM
This was an especially helpful post for someone (a lapsed archaeologist) who
teaches about archaeology in an intro to humanities class as part of a
"humanities toolkit" that helps us understand the stories of cultures.
As an aside, I also live in a part of Texas near Corinth--which is pronounced

by non-natives of the town as "CorINTH" because of St. Paul's letters to the
CorINTHians. Needless to say, they're not among the New Testament scholars you
mention in a more recent post.
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BASENAME: sprawl
DATE: 08/16/2010 12:55:00 AM

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On Kostis' urging, I have been listening to the new Arcade Fire album,
the Suburbs. The album itself is a meditation of urban planning and its
social impact, but I'll leave this larger issue to Kostis. What I
want to focus on in particular is the notion of sprawl that comes through in the
last couple of songs in the album. <a
href="http://www.spin.com/reviews/arcade-fire-suburbs-merge">As critics have
noted</a>, the idea of sprawl (as in, but not exclusively, urban sprawl) derives
some of its meaning in punk circles from <a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Gibson">William Gibson's</a>
fictitious topography of the post-apocalyptic east coast. Gibson
described an massive east coast settlement stretching from Boston to Atlanta
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partially housed in a series of dilapidated geodesic domes. This forms a

suitably bleak environment for his high-tech dystopian novels. Arcade
Fire's understanding of the sprawl clearly has roots in their critique of
urbanism in its many 20th and 21st century guises. The sprawl consists of
a bleak assortment of architectural ("dead shopping malls", bright
lights), social,(dead end jobs, threatening police), and perhaps environmental
images (the black river). All these images resonate with Gibson's
dystopian and apocalyptic vision of the near future world. The kind of
dystopian social critiques of the future are almost always rooted in a kind of
utopian view of the past (and has obvious links with genres like the
jeremiad). In fact, they rely on a recognizable past remaining hidden in
plain sight to make it clear to the reader that their own present has become
just another layer of detritus. Gibson - like Sonic Youth and to some
extent Arcade Fire - liken the Sprawl to the failings of capitalism to produce a
sustainable, responsible prosperity. The chorus from the Sonic Youth anthem
chants: "Come on down to the store, you can buy some more and more and
more." The verses paint the same kind of dystopia as Arcade
Fire's with cheap clothing, depressing shotgun houses, and rusted machines
along a river. Scenes of polluted nature, urbanism, and faded
modernity, is pretty standard fair for both science fiction and music, and the
same ideas inform our archaeological imagination as well. <a
href="http://punkarchaeology.wordpress.com/2010/08/02/more-punk-and-
nostalgia/">As I've mentioned earlier</a>, romantic views of the natural
landscape appeal to me even though I know that these views are as profoundly
unhistorical as utopians imaginings of a primordial, edenic nature. Human
activities have had a fundamental influence on almost every aspect of the
Eastern Mediterranean places where I work. As an archaeologist, I already
understand that there is no escaping from the sprawl and our own present is, in
fact, a past dystopian future. Like the works of Gibson and the music of
Sonic Youth and Arcade Fire the crass consumerism of late capitalism is held up
to be at least tacitly responsible for decline. The focus falls
(predictably and particularly) on the relationship between individuals (and
their behavior) and objects. In fact, the physical character of objects
take on an archaeological character as they become vehicles for both present
identities and history. This is archaeological thought: while punk's
characters take in the sprawling ruins of shopping malls and rusted machines
that stretch outward from centers of human settlement, archaeologists lovingly
document the tell-tale haloes of ceramic material encircle ancient sites.
In fact, many scholars argue that the practice of spreading manure created these
ceramic haloes. Within the settlement, residents discarded bits of broken
pottery on piles of household (both human and animal)waste. The practice
of studying the remains of human activity in the countryside by documenting
these worn fragments of discarded goods reminds us of a profoundly dystopian
image: communities literally consuming their own waste. So, as both
archaeology and our punk friends scrutinize materiality as an indicators of
culture. They invite us to contemplate the remains of the past as both a
cautionary tale for the ephemeral nature of the material accomplishments that we
hold dear, while at the same time validate our ability to understand the past
(and the present) through bits of meaning embedded in those same good and
practices. The failures of culture manifest themselves in the discarded
objects, buildings, and goods scattered about, and these same practices
construct a body of material that we can study and reproduce the past.
 The presence of nature amidst these man-made ruins and the parallel
between the ruins of capitalism (dead shopping malls) and natural features (rise
like mountains beyond mountains) reminds us that all of our surroundings are
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cultural, and, at that point, dystopian landscapes become familiar. We

not only live in the sprawl, but we have always lived in the sprawl.
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TITLE: A Few Quick Hits at the End of a Busy Week
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Not much in the way of time to explore the interwebs lately, but a few heres
and theres: <ul> <li>I've been thinking about Sprawl especially as I listen
to Arcade Fire's new album. I re-read William Gibson's <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/count-zero/oclc/248547973">Count
Zero</a> this past summer (on the flight to Cyprus, in fact) and it is
among Gibson's "Sprawl Trilogy" along with <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/neuromancer/oclc/24379880">Neuromancer</a>
and <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/mona-lisa-
overdrive/oclc/17876008">Mona-Lisa Overdrive</a>. These books
inspired Sonic Youth's track Sprawl (from Daydream Nation) and this
track may or may not have come to inspire the penultimate song on Arcade Fire's
album the recent album Suburbs (for what appears to be a reference to this,
check out <a href="http://www.spin.com/reviews/arcade-fire-suburbs-
merge">this otherwise ordinary review in Spin</a>). <li><a
href="http://writing.upenn.edu/~carmody/Home.html">Tim Carmody</a> one of my
favorite New Media Academic Hipsters is blogging this week at <a
href="http://www.kottke.org/">kottke.org</a>. If you don't already check out his
usual blog, <a href="http://snarkmarket.com/">Snarkmarket</a>, on a regular
basis, you should. He edited one of the more clever (and probably
fleeting) little collections of reflections on the New Media entitled the <a
href="http://snarkmarket.com/nla/">New Liberal Arts</a>. UND
almuni and New Media Design Hipster, <a href="http://www.fimoculous.com/">Rex
Sorgatz</a>, contributed. <li><a
href="http://www.informaworld.com.ezproxy.library.und.edu/smpp/title~db=all~cont
ent=g925690055~tab=toc~order=page">World Archaeology</a> has a nice
collection of assorted article on 'archaeology and contemporary society'.
It has a cool introduction by John Schofield, who I think is pretty
bright. I haven't read much of it yet, but did notice that there were no
articles on archaeology and music (via <a
href="http://individual.utoronto.ca/nakassis/">Dimitri Nakassis</a>). Punk
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Archaeology remains untapped. <li>And more teaching news, <a

href="http://twitter.com/OIDDirector">Anne Kelsch</a>, the Director of
University of North Dakota's <a href="http://www.oid.und.edu/">Office of
Instructional Development</a> (and the patron of <a
href="http://teachingthursday.org/">Teaching Thursday</a>) is now on Twitter
complementing the Office of Instructional Development's own Twitter feed
OIDatUND. So you can see the leading edge of our new social media
presence. Which brings me to... <li>Checked out <a
href="http://teachingthursday.org/2010/08/12/leaving-the-classroom-behind-
teaching-the-public-humanities/">the most recent Teaching Thursday</a>?
It's fantastic!</li></ul>
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TITLE: Go to Teaching Thursday!
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CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 08/12/2010 08:48:59 AM

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Missing out on your Archaeology of the Mediterranean World? Well, I
defer to a far more articulate commentator than I am today. Check out <a
href="http://www.und.edu/dept/philrel/weinstein.html">Jack Russell Weinstein</a>
(from the <a href="http://www.und.edu/dept/philrel/">Department of Philosophy
and Religion</a> at University of North Dakota) as he blogs on <a
href="http://teachingthursday.org/2010/08/12/leaving-the-classroom-behind-
teaching-the-public-humanities/">Leaving the Classroom Behind:Teaching and the
Public Humanities</a>. He captures many of my own sentiments on the role
that the public humanities should play in our society. And while you're
at it, sign on to follow the new Twitter feed for the Office of Instructional
Development: <a title="http://twitter.com/OIDatUND"
href="http://twitter.com/OIDatUND">http://twitter.com/OIDatUND</a>
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TITLE: The Best Inventoried Find from the East Field
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BASENAME: the-best-inventoried-find-from-the-east-field
DATE: 08/11/2010 08:12:19 AM

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One great thing about photographing all the inventoried cards is you discover
remarkable finds, many of which are unfortunately unpublished. Amidst ordinary inventory cards was the following: <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201348621cc3b970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20133f2fe41c5970b
-pi" width="404" height="271"></a> It is a tragedy that the
camera was "broken" than day. 
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COMMENT:
IP: 208.107.115.6
URL: http://doctoralbliss.wordpress.com
DATE: 08/12/2010 12:04:55 AM
Unsure of how to react to the image, as I would guess you were doing a dig on
Pandora ;).
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TITLE: Photos of Photos on Inventory Cards
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BASENAME: photos-of-photos-on-inventory-cards
DATE: 08/10/2010 09:49:38 AM
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I spent today taking photographs of the inventoried artifact
cards at the Ohio State Excavations at Isthmia dig house. First off, this
was incredibly boring work. It involved taking pictures of roughly 5
7 inch inventory cards for about 6 hours straight. I managed to photograph
about 1500 of them. It reminded me that most of academic life is, in fact,
tedious and archaeology - despite its somewhat exotic image (and genuinely
exotic locales) - mostly involves a level of unparalleled tedium. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20134861bb2dd970
right: 0px" border="0" alt="DSCN4894"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20134861bb328970c
-pi" width="404" height="304"></a> Second, it did give me a chance to
muse over the nature of media in archaeology. The cards were hand written
(mostly) and included a photograph of the inventoried object, pasted, generally
onto the card itself. I was translating these images into a digital image,
which would eventually form the basis for a textual image of the object in a
relational database. The transition from one media to the next always
constitutes unique challenges in any discipline and it is particularly
challenging to translate physical objects like cards - which are as much
artifacts as documents of the artifacts collected - from one form to the
next. The most obvious loss is the physical appearance of emendations,
additions, and corrections (inscribed in each instance in different hands,
colors, pen types, and styles) and the attendant humanizing of the
interpretative process over generations. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20134861bb41d970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20133f2f83994970b
-pi" width="404" height="304"></a> The cold reality of text based
databases is that even if earlier notation are not overwritten (either in a
graphically visible sense or in a digital sense), the human aspect of inscribing
physical objects ends. And this is particularly significant for
archaeology which is first and foremost, the study of material objects.
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COMMENT:
IP: 98.111.157.223
DATE: 08/10/2010 12:18:36 PM
I have a reference for you from a German article on the history of photography
that discusses this card system, basically invented by Lucy Talcott in the Agora
in the 30s.
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DATE: 08/09/2010 12:06:00 AM

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I've traveled to and from Greece often enough over the last few years
that I should not be surprised or put off by anything, but each time, no matter
how collected I try to act, something strikes me as particularly bizarre, makes
me uncomfortable, and reinforces my feeling that I do not travel well. 1.
Inexact Time. To get to Ancient Corinth you can take the train from the
airport. This isn't difficult. You just take the regional rail from
the airport station to the end of the line and then literally walk across the
platform to the train to Corinth. There is one ticket, all the trains
leaving the airport go the same place, the platforms are well labeled.
But still, I managed to get confused. I am going to blame the person who
sold me the ticket, but because it makes me feel better about myself and not
because it was her fault. When she handed me the ticket she told me that
the right train would leave in 30 minutes. On the board in the well-
marked train station there were numerous trains arriving (all going the same
place, it would seem), but none that arrived in 30 minutes. In fact,
there were two trains that arrived almost exactly 5 minutes before and 5 minutes
after the 30 minutes the nice woman had told me to wait. So, as any
season traveller seeing the possibility of 2 well-marked trains going to the
exact same place, I panicked and randomly picked one. It worked out fine
and by the time I arrived in Corinth, I had recovered. 2. Blank
Billboards. As the train sped through the Attic countryside along the route of
the modern Attic Highway around Athens, I couldn't help but notice the
number of blank billboards. The billboards looked new and presumably they
were set up for to capitalize on the flood of Olympics tourists, but now in an
era of economic uncertainty in Greece, the billboards are a bleak sign.
It can't be a good sign when companies can't afford or be bothered to
advertise their wares in the summer months - high tourist season - on the main
route from the airport to downtown Athens. The Greek countryside is filled with
abandonment both ancient and modern and the empty billboards with their exposed
and blank plywood pallets just contributed another aspect to the Greek
scene. 3. Producing a landscape. Once I lost interest in staring
at blank billboards (and abandoned a crazy plan to count them) and transferred
onto the high-speed train south to Corinth, I began to look forward to my first
glimpses of the Isthmus of Corinth. While I am not usually associated
with work on the Isthmus - David Pettegrew is probably the next in line to be
the new Mr. Isthmus (Dr. Isthmus?), I still do get a thrill to see the familiar
landscape of development, olive groves, market gardens, citrus orchards,
archaeological landmarks, and, for lack of better term, human detritus. The idea
of finding such a historically important (at least for what I study) place to be
familiar is a remarkable feeling. Moreover, my little archaeologist's
ego is further stoked when I see the ridge of Mt. Oneion and its imagine that I
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can make out the faintest traces of its less well-known site. See, the
thing is, I documented that site. In fact, I "discovered" it
and documented it (with the help of numerous other people) and published it
(with my co-author, Tim Gregory). It was cool to see Mt. Oneion and
imagine its fortification. It gave me an instant feeling of familiarity
and of accomplishment. I know it's dorky, but... 4. Always an
outsider. I still feel like an outsider in Greece and doubly so when I
settle into my oftentimes home-away-from-home at the American School in
Athens. This summer, my short field season, will have me living at their
famous compound in the village of Ancient Corinth. I had visited it
numerous times, enjoyed the hospitality of its community of scholars and
directors, and frequently marveled at the collected, historical expertise of the
Corinth folks. At the same time, I've always felt like an outsider
there. Now, part of this is because I was an outsider! I have
never dug at Corinth and most of my research on the region focuses on the
margins (both in terms of interest and in terms of geography). Moreover,
I am not renowned for my academic confidence or my ease in fitting into
different kinds of professional and personal situations (as I said, I don't
travel well). That being said, I had hoped one day to feel more
comfortable at the Hill House and the American School more generally. It
hasn't happened yet, but maybe this year it will begin. More from
the field as I capture the time to blog.
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AUTHOR: maddy
EMAIL: archaeobaking@gmail.com
IP: 76.91.201.89
URL:
DATE: 09/05/2010 03:05:49 PM
Bill, I still remember you picking me up from the airport and driving me to
Ancient Corinth all those years ago. The fact that you can drive in Greece is
pretty impressive.
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DATE: 08/06/2010 06:53:15 AM

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It's still pretty dark here in North Dakota so it's a bit hard to predict
what the day will be like, but it nevertheless seems like a fine time for a
short quick hits and varia.
<ul>
<li>There's some activity over at <a
href="http://punkarchaeology.wordpress.com/">Punk Archaeology</a>.</li>
<li>And there is some really good activity at <a
href="http://teachingthursday.org/">Teaching Thursday</a>. And my collaboration
with the <a href="http://www.oid.und.edu/">Office for Instructional
Development</a> at the University of North Dakota has extended to include a <a
href="http://www.cricinfo.com/australia/content/current/story/471156.html">Twitt
er account (OIDatUND)</a>. ¬†Follow us!</li>
<li><a href="http://antiquatedvagaries.blogspot.com/2010/07/hands-off.html">This
is a pretty neat blog post</a> on an archaeologist's relationship with their
tools.</li>
<li>Kurt Vonnegut on semi-colons: "ÔªøDon't use semicolons. They stand for
absolutely nothing. They are transvestite hermaphrodites. They are just a way of
showing off. To show that you have been to college." (via <a
href="http://kottke.org/10/08/kurt-vonneguts-advice-to-young-
writers">Kottke.com</a>). </li>
<li><a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/update-on-google-
wave.html">Google Kills Google Wave</a>. ¬†Google announced that they would no
longer develop Google Wave, which to me is sort of a tragedy. ¬†I quite liked
Wave and <a
aching-with-technology-thursday.html">saw it's potential in the classroom</a>.
In fact, I used Wave to coordinate an practicum on public history that I ran
with a small group of graduate students, and it worked really well to integrate
"real time" communication (particular walking a student through an operation on
a piece of software) with "more traditional" types of "bloggy" or discussion
board type written communication. ¬†Anyway, I wonder if the very deliberate and
gradual roll-out strategy made it difficult to gain the kind of critical mass of
adopters necessary to make Wave a useful tool. </li>
<li>An interesting NYTimes article "<a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/04/arts/design/04maker.html">Wringing out
Art of the Rubble in Detroit</a>" that complements my recent little essay on
Detroit as a context for punk and spolia, and <a
href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128935865">a great
radio interview with Queen's Brian May on NPR</a>. (both via Kostis
Kourelis)</li>
<li>It's curious that <a
href="http://www.cricinfo.com/australia/content/current/story/471156.html">Marcu
s North has such a strong hold</a> on a spot on the Australian Test side.</li>
<li>What I am reading: Chuck Klosterman's <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/fargo-rock-city-a-heavy-metal-odyssey-in-
rural-north-dakota/oclc/45202097">Fargo Rock City</a> and¬†Ôªø<a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/sex-drugs-and-cocoa-puffs-a-low-culture-
manifesto/oclc/52121417">Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs : a Low Culture
Manifesto</a>. Jennifer Egan's <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/visit-from-the-goon-squad/oclc/449844391">A
Visit from the Goon Squad</a>.</li>
<li>What I am listening to: Arcade Fire, The Suburbs.</li>
</ul>
I'm off to Greece so the blog might be a bit quiet for the next couple of
weeks or not.
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BASENAME: more-on-bronze-age-kommos
CATEGORY: Cyprus
DATE: 08/05/2010 07:37:42 AM

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Kommos is one of my favorite sites in the Mediterranean. Not only is it
beautifully situated, but it has a great guide and the results of the
excavations there contribute (in a way that I can understand as a non-Bronze
Ageologist) to broader discussions of Mediterranean connectivity and economic
organization. ¬†In fact, I like Kommos so much that <a
mmos-on-crete.html">I blogged about the site almost three years ago</a>. ¬†(Have
I really been blogging that long? Don't I have better things to do with my
mornings by now?)
As I noted in my first blog post on Kommos, the most interesting thing about
the site is the evidence for how deeply interconnected it was with other regions
across the Mediterranean. ¬†An article in the most recent volume of
Hesperia makes a further contribution to what scholars already know
about the economic networks in which Kommos participated. ¬†ÔªøIn "Mycenaean and
Cypriot Late Bronze Age Ceramic Imports to Kommos" (Hesperia 79 (2010), 191-
231),¬†Jonathan Tomlinson, Jeremy Rutter, and Sandra Hoffman confirm using
neutron activation analysis that Kommos featured numerous imports from both the
Mycenaean world and, more interesting to me, from Cyprus. ¬†From what I can
gather, the assemblage at Kommos produced a significant quantity of Late Minoan
III vessels and¬†ÔªøWhite Slip II milk bowls and Base Ring II cups in
particular. ¬†Apparently these types of vessels were shipped around the Aegean
stacked in pithoi (Dimitri Nakassis clarified this for me).
Neutron activation analysis demonstrated that the material from Cyprus could
be identified with certain discrete production sites on the island. ¬†It is hard
to completely understand what this could mean (especially for a time period
outside my specialty). ¬†On the one hand, it may be that Late Bronze Age Cyprus
had certain sites and production facilities dedicated to an export economy in
ceramics (like scholars have argued for copper production). ¬†On the other hand,
it also could indicate that certain classes of high-value Late Bronze Age
ceramics were only produced at certain sites. ¬†Or, finally, on the third hand
(!!!), it could mean that Kommos only had particular political and economic
160
relationships with particular sites on Cyprus and imported material from those
places to the exclusion of similar material derived from other sites. ¬†All
three possibilities reflect how well-organized the commercial economy of Cyprus
was in the Late Bronze Age (something that we had already suspected based on the
evidence found in the Uluburun shipwreck). ¬†It is interesting to think how
patterns of exchange that link discrete consumption and production sites would
influence the more decentralized patterns of pre-modern commerce conjured up by
<a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/corrupting-sea-a-study-of-mediterranean-
history/oclc/42692026">Horden and Purcell</a>. ¬†For Horden and Purcell, trade
seems to flow through flexible and largely decentralized networks of micro-
regions which depended, to some extent, on dynamic, highly-flexible networks of
both supply and demand that functioned across a local, regional, and inter-
regional scale. Would the presence of discrete and seemingly long-standing
relationships between sites of consumption, like Kommos, and production centers
challenge the more decentralized model advanced in <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/corrupting-sea-a-study-of-mediterranean-
history/oclc/42692026">The Corrupting Sea</a>?
It is even more interesting to see how neutron activation analysis has
allowed Tomlinson, Rutter, and Hoffman to identify the regional production sites
that simple visual inspection of ceramics would not have detected. ¬†The
downside of this technology, of course, is the expense and the expertise
required to analyze and interpret the results. ¬†If we can imagine an
archaeological world where neutron activation analysis (and other sophisticated
methods for identifying and describing ceramics) become more common, we can see
a world where the oftentimes black art of ceramics analysis has simultaneous
become blacker and become more transparent. ¬†The individual abilities of
ceramicists to identify artifact types consistently can now be verified through
a more consistently replicable process, but, at the same time, a process that
requires a level of scientific expertise that most Mediterranean archaeologists
lack.
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By the end of this week, I'll be back in Greece continuing a long-standing
project and initiating a new collaboration. ¬†Next week, I'll be working at the
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Ohio State Excavations at Isthmia with Steve Ellis's <a

href="http://classics.uc.edu/index.php/research/40-isthmia">East Isthmia
Archaeology Project</a>. ¬†The project focuses on the mysterious East Field at
Isthmia. ¬†The East Field is a tangles mass of walls of various dates and has
puzzled archaeologists from its initial excavation in the 1970s.
Over the past 5 years, Ellis' team has replanned the East Field and
established a new relative chronology of the walls. ¬†At the same time, I've
been working on (re)digitizing the context data from the Ohio State Excavations
at Isthmia and integrating it with the various inventoried finds from the
various parts of the site. ¬†Our hope for ¬†this summer is that we'll be able to
bring together Ellis' relative chronology of the walls with some parts of my
¬†digitized finds database to determine whether the ceramic data can contribute
a more precise chronology to stratigraphic dating of the walls.
I also hope that my time at Isthmia will help me come to terms with what I'd
need to do to digitize all of the inventoried finds. ¬†From my understanding,
the finds inventory is primarily stored on index cards at the Isthmia excavation
house. ¬†These cards contain the basic chronology, typological, and
stratigraphic context for artifacts ranging from inscriptions, to lamps,
pottery, architectural fragments, and various metal objects. ¬†My feeling is
that it would be inefficient to attempt to key the data from these cards at
Isthmia. ¬†My plan right now is to figure out a way to very efficiently create
images of each card so that the data can be keyed back in the US. ¬†I am hoping
to discover a way to photograph batches of the cards quickly.
My work with the finds data is part of larger and quite diffuse effort to
digitize most of the archaeological records from Isthmia. ¬†Jon Frey has been
working to digitize the notebooks and produce a new site plan, and my hope is
that my finds data will integrate smoothly into his efforts.
During my time in Greece, I'll be staying at the Corinth Excavations in
Ancient Corinth. ¬†Despite working in the Corinthia for almost 15 years, this
will be the first time that I've ever stayed at the Corinth Excavation hostel.
¬†I am almost giddy.
More from the field as my adventures develop!
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TITLE: Some Thoughts on Kim Bowes' Private Worship, Public Values, and Religious
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<img style="float: right;" title="NewImage.jpg"
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I¬†just finished reading Kim Bowes' <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/private-worship-public-values-and-religious-
change-in-late-antiquity/oclc/183179509">Private Worship, Public Values, and
Religious Change in Late Antiquity</a> (Cambridge 2008). ¬†The first lines
of her introduction recounted one of my favorite stories from Late Antiquity:
Pulcheria's dream inspired excavation of the remains of 40 martyrs from Sozomen
(Hist. Eccl. 9.2). Any book that begins with a example of dream
archaeology is o.k. to me.
But, I'll admit that this incident was not why I ¬†read this book. Instead, I
wanted to gather recent insights into the relatively late date for monumental
architecture in Greece. ¬†Bowes does not talk about Greece directly in her book,
but argues for the prevalence and importance of churches associated with elite
domestic contexts throughout better documented regions of the Mediterranean.
These buildings are important because they represent an architectural
counterpoint to the bishop's church which stood as a product of the
ecclesiastical hierarchy and the centralized authority traditionally associated
with that institution. ¬†Acknowledging the widespread existence of church
buildings funded by the Late Roman elite and prominently associated with both
rural and urban¬†Ôªøelite domestic contexts¬†reminds us that the spread of
Christianity was not the simple, linear growth of the institutional church, but
a process riven with disputes. ¬†In fact, the victory of institutional
Christianity overwrote evidence for many of the disputes in the process of
producing a single triumphant narrative for the victor of the church.
Bowes' book also continues to enrich our understanding of space by reminding
us of the fluidity between public and private spaces in the discourse of power
in Late Antiquity. ¬†Issues of display, patronage, and both public and spiritual
mediation played out over a monumental landscape produced as much by private
funds and initiatives as institutional authority of the church. ¬†As a result,
efforts in the law codes to suppress privately funded church buildings were as
much political moves as economic ones as the institutional church sought to
suppress rival spaces of power in the Early Christian landscape.
The book also contributes to our understanding of the later 5th and early 6th
century boom in ecclesiastical architecture in the Eastern Mediterranean.
¬†While Bowes does not discuss these periods explicitly - her book concludes in
the middle decades of the 5th century - it may be that the boom in church
building occurred as the institutional church made the final push for an
exclusive claim to monumental architecture. ¬†The story the church of St.
Polyeuctos in Constantinople and the rivalry between Anicia Juliana's private
church and the imperial church of Justinian is suggestive of just this kind of
rivalry.
In the Corinthia, and in Greece more generally, it is exceedingly difficult
to differentiate between churches associated with the local, non-ecclesiastical
elite, and those constructed by bishops or under the auspices of the
ecclesiastical hierarchy. ¬†Evidence from epigraphy does suggest that non-church
officials did build churches, but this tells us little about who controlled the
church, its clergy, and the rites that took place there. ¬†There is ¬†some
suggestive evidence, however: ¬†for example,¬†groups of smaller, rural
churchesÔªø¬†dot the Greek countryside - like those that throughout southeastern
Attica - and many are not clearly associated with known settlements suggesting
163
the kind of elite-controlled rural churches that Bowes has linked to villas in
the West. ¬†Moreover, we know that there existed a villa-culture in Greece and
that some civic power likely moved from the urban core to suburban and even ex-
urban villas of the elite. ¬†It would be natural then for these buildings which
already served some "public" functions to include religious space as well,
although as far as I know we have no specific evidence for this function among
the handful of Late Roman villas thoroughly excavated in Greece. ¬†The evidence
for 6th century church building in better excavated and documented urban areas -
like the group of contemporary churches located in the Corinthia - could, then,
represent an institutional response to largely undocumented elite, private,
rural practices.
While this all remains tremendously speculative, but it does allow us to
explain how Christianity grew in Greece without evidence for monumental
ecclesiastical architecture. ¬†The needs for Christian communities was largely
met by church buildings associated with the traditional and increasingly rural
elite rather than the new-fangled authority of the emergent, but not yet
locally-powerful ecclesiastical hierarchy.
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IP: 76.104.197.147
DATE: 08/03/2010 12:59:33 PM
Your book recommendations are quite reliable. I immediately contact ILL.
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TITLE: More Punk and Nostalgia
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Kostis Kourelis brought to my attention a recent <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/24/arts/design/24may.html">New York
Times</a><a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/24/arts/design/24may.html"> article</a> on
an exhibit of Victorian era stereoscopic photographs called "A Village Lost and
Found". ¬†What made this exhibit interesting to punk archaeology fans, was that
former Queen guitarist Brian May curated the exhibit and co-wrote the
164
accompanying book. ¬†The New York Times review of the exhibition both feigns
surprise that a rock 'n' roller like May would be interested in such quaint,
esoteric artifacts as hand-colored stereoscopic images and, at the same time,
acknowledged the deep nostalgic vein in British society (and its music). ¬†In
doing so, the NYT's author makes reference to one of my favorite albums which
lurks around the margins of punk rock, The Kinks Are the Village Green
Preservation Society.
The double album, released in 1968, consists of series of tracks celebrating
traditional village life in England. ¬†Topics range from the Village green to
picture books, trains, farms, and typical village characters (Johnny Thunder and
the deviously rocking Wicked Annabella). ¬†The nostalgic element captured,
however ironically, in the Kink's album continues in punk music. ¬†As I have
noted before, punk always had an affection for the pop music of the earlier
generation, even though punk rockers from the Germs to the Ramones and the
Heartbreakers typically sped up the hooks and contorted the lyrics that gave pop
music its wide-spread appeal. ¬†One of my personal favorites is the Germ's cover
of Chuck Berry's "Round and Round". ¬†At the same time punk rockers like
Jonathan Richman (especially in his early Modern Lovers tracks like Old World,
which is bracketed later in the first Modern Lovers' album with the track Modern
World) produced music with the same whimsical nostalgia as the Kink's Village
Green:
ÔªøI see the '50's apartment house It's bleak in the 1970's sun But
I still love the '50's And I still love the old world I wanna keep my
place in this old world Keep my place in the arcane knowledge And I
still love the '50's and I still love the old world
<a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2009/01/pu
nk-rock-nostalgia-and-the-archaeology-of-musical-utopia.html">As I have argued
before </a>the archaeological character of these songs is not in their perfect
reproduction of the past, but in the preservation of the past through critique.
¬†For example, the Kink's celebration of the Village Green evokes the nostalgia
for the earlier times that shot through modernizing British society. In fact, as
<a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2010/07/id
eas-of-landscapes.html">Matthew Johnson has described in his Ideas of
Landscape</a>, such nostalgia for an earlier period influenced how
archaeologist have studied the landscape and regarded material and buildings
from the modern period. ¬†Romantic notions of the earlier, rural world,
celebrated its simplicity, inherent virtues (especially of Britishness and, as
we have witnessed recently the "real" America of the small town), and purity,
and expected some degree of continuity to be visible in the society and culture
of contemporary denizens of the countryside and the small town.
Punk tried to make a mess of these idyllic critiques by taking the staid
nostalgia and melding it with what to many appeared to be the most fleeting,
contemporary, and critical musical genres. In some ways, this finds a parallel
between those of us committed to sophisticated and critical approaches to
archaeology of the countryside, but still enamored with the illusory, anti-
modern character of the rural scene. ¬†I can admit to loving to explore the
lonely hilltops in Greece, to document isolated ruins, and to embracing the
contrast between the bustle of the village or city and the peaceful "isolation"
of rural Greece. ¬†I often will pause and listen just to the wind and revel in
the absence of the motorbikes or trucks while at the same time scrutinizing the
read-out on a state-of-the-art GPS unit or looking at a map showing an aerial
photograph analyzed via sophisticated computer software. ¬†Moreover, as much as
my analyses call into question the notion that the Greek countryside was
165
isolated, I still use a view of olive covered hills in my publications and

presentations to evoke the exotic, traditional character of an archaeological
past. ¬†The contrast between my reliance on modern technology to document the
past and the romantic image of the rural Greece produces a productive conflict.
¬†My appreciation of the beauty and isolation of the Greek countryside drew
inspiration from traditional romantic views of rural life while, at the same
time, my approach to field work and conclusions challenges those very same
views. ¬†A Punk Archaeology approach embraces these same ironies drawing heavily
on traditional of thought while at the same time challenging them.
<a href="http://punkarchaeology.wordpress.com/">For more musings on Punk
Archaeology be sure to check out our blog here</a>.
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IP: 98.111.149.120
DATE: 08/02/2010 05:25:01 PM
Brilliant!!!
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It's a rainy Friday before a (hopefully) sunny weekend, so we have some fun
varia and quick hits to get your day going right.
<ul>
<li><a href="http://teachingthursday.org/2010/07/29/teaching-what-you-
don%e2%80%99t-know-student-research/">A nice response</a> to my short review of
<a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/teaching-what-you-dont-
know/oclc/316037957">T. Huston's Teaching What You Don't Know</a>.
¬†There is nothing more humbling than advising graduate or undergraduate
research. Student research consistently reminds me how much I don't know even in
my own field and energizes me with new and refreshing approaches to familiar
topics. Most importantly, however, student research reinforces the importance of
process in my own work. ¬†It makes me want to be more systematic, more
organized, more exhaustive.</li>
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<li><a href="http://punkarchaeology.wordpress.com/">Punk Archaeology </a>is

back. ¬†I have a couple of most posts brewing in my brain. But the blog might
not last for much longer, so if you haven't checked it out, it's probably best
to do it now. ¬†And fear not, something else is in the works.</li>
<li>I started using <a href="http://hootsuite.com/">HootSuite</a> this week
(instead of<a href="http://www.tweetdeck.com/"> Tweetdeck</a>). ¬†While I
appreciate the aesthetic of Tweetdeck and actually like the Adobe Air built
interface, it may be the Hootsuite is more useful as I look to juggle several <a
href="http://twitter.com/billcaraher/">Twitter</a> accounts this fall. ¬†So it's
Hootsuite on my laptop, <a href="http://seesmic.com/">Seesmic </a>on my Android
Phone, and Tweetdeck on my iPad. ¬†But to read my social media on my iPad
nothing beats <a
href="http://ax.itunes.apple.com/us/app/flipboard/id358801284?mt=8">Flipboard</a
>. ¬†For a cool little review of it, check out this post on<a
href="http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Making-Social-Media-More/25858/">
ProfHacker</a>.</li>
<li>I also purchased a copy of <a href="http://www.red-
sweater.com/marsedit/">MarsEdit</a> this week. I've been looking for blogging
software for my Mac that would rival the simplicity and ease of Window's Life
Writer. ¬†I tried <a href="http://illuminex.com/ecto/">Ecto </a>for a year and
found it just a bit too quirky for my taste. (Actually, I was annoyed that I
could not change the font size of the text I was writing without changing the
size of the font in the blog). ¬†I like MarsEdit better.</li>
<li>As an historian with a serious professional interest in archaeology housed
in a history department, I am increasingly aware of how the professional
credentials amassed in my strange interdisciplinary space do not neatly align
with those of my colleagues. ¬†For example, I do not get any explicit credit for
running my own archaeological project and my collaborative publications (often
with 3 or more authors) - standard practice among archaeologists - does not look
like the more solitary scholarly efforts of my colleagues. ¬†In any event, I was
interested to see how closely my work fits into the new set of best practices
for Public History recently approved by the AHA, OAH, et c. ¬†<a
href="http://www.foundhistory.org/2010/06/16/oah-aha-ncph-approve-
recommendations-on-evaluating-public-history-for-tenure-and-promotion/">Check
out the details and commentary at Found History</a>.</li>
<li><a href="http://craigmod.com/journal/kickstartup/">This is a cool article
</a>on how to use<a href="http://www.kickstarter.com/"> Kickstarter</a> to fund
a publishing project. ¬†It gets me thinking about Phase Two of Punk
Archaeology.</li>
<li>Marcos Ambrose is leaving <a href="http://jtgdaughertyracing.com/">JTG
Daugherty Racing </a>at the end of this year. ¬†I hope he manages to upgrade his
ride. ¬†Rumor has it that he might move over to fill one of the two vacated
seats at Petty Racing.</li>
<li><a href="http://www.cricinfo.com/england-v-pakistan-
2010/engine/current/match/426413.html">England v. Pakistan</a> will show whether
Pakistan is really that good or Australia is really that bad. ¬†So far, England
appears committed to keeping things interesting.</li>
<li>What I'm Reading: R. Price, trans,¬†Ôªø<a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/acts-of-the-council-of-constantinople-of-
553-with-related-texts-on-the-three-chapters-
controversy/oclc/427610844&referer=brief_results">The Acts of the
Council of Constantinople of 553 : with related texts on the Three Chapters
Controversy</a>. (Liverpool 2009); <a
href="http://www.hesperiaonline.org/">Hesperia 79.2</a>; M.T. Fournier,
<a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/minutemens-double-nickels-on-the-
167
dime/oclc/81453237">The Minutemen's Double Nickels on the Dime</a>.

(New York 2009)</li>
<li>What I'm listening to: The Minutemen, Double Nickels on the Dime.</li>
</ul>
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Over the last week or so, I've been listening again to the<a
href="http://www.detroitcobras.org/index.html"> Detroit Cobras</a> and thinking
about some of our first conversations on Punk Archaeology. ¬†The Cobras
specialize in what they have called "revved up soul". ¬†They make this wonderful
noise by covering (mostly) lost classics of the MoTown era over the ¬†driving
rhythms of punk and the fuzzy, distorted lo-fi sound of the punk blues movement.
¬†ÔªøRachel Nagy's voice succeeds at being both smooth and abrasive at the same
time. ¬†Some critics have called their sound "Garage Soul".
Their first album, Mink, Rat or Rabbit covered songs by 1950s and early 1960s
bands like The Marvelettes, The Shirelles, Irma Thomas, The "5" Royales, and The
Shangri-Las. ¬†Later albums continue this tradition. ¬†(They're first two albums
- Mink, Rat or Rabbit and Life, Love and Learning - are, to my ear, their best.
¬†(Notice the absence of the "Oxford comma" in both titles.)
The point of mentioning this somewhat obscure band is to consider the
relationship between punk and spolia. ¬†Spolia is a technical archaeological
term for the re-use older fragments of architecture in new construction. It is
typically associated with Late Antiquity and was initially regarded by critics
steeped in the Classical Tradition as indicative of the lose of technical skills
and economic impoverished conditions at the end of Antiquity. ¬†Other saw the
use of spolia as a conscious decision on the part of Late Antique builders and,
at worst, reflective of a taste for a discordant, disorganized, and, ultimately,
decadent aesthetic.
Of course hip-hop music withstood similar criticisms as they cut up and
sampled R&B classics to form ¬†rhythmic backdrop for their poetry. ¬†Such
reuse of earlier material was unoriginal and indicative of a kind of creative
bankruptcy among "today's generation". ¬†Punk took their lead from pop music
which they sped up and made more up-tempo, raucous and chaotic. ¬†The Cobras
occupy a third space recently developed by bands like the White Stripes and the
168
Black Keys where punk, R&B, and blues infused with the DIY, lo-fy sound of
the garage (which represents a more austere and suburban version of the
venerable lo-fy Juke Joint).
The epicenter of this music has been Detroit (or the Rust Belt more broadly)
where the punk of the MC Five and the blues Son House and John L. Hooker
intersect. ¬†The music here has tremendous symbolic significance, as Detroit has
become emblematic of the decline of "traditional America" and images of the
ruinous conditions of the factories have become images of the decline of
America's fortunes as a manufacturing power. ¬†The photographs are
archaeological in their attention to detail and the need to accommodate
history.
The music of the Detroit Cobras provide a counterpoint to the haunting,
archaeological photographs of abandoned Detroit. ¬†Fragments of the city's
earlier days come through in their music, but rather than critique the declining
fortunes of America's industrial heartland, the music calls forth the continued
vitality of those days in much the same way that spolia maintained a conscious
connection with earlier architecture.
The archaeological impulse in of punk rock of the Detroit Cobras reveals a
kind of native archaeology of the American city which draws backwards on its
unique history to produce critical memory. ¬†Such work is the work of
archaeologists both of the past and the present who sought to communicate
something meaningful from the fragments of the past that remained visible in
their present. ¬†The spolia preserved in the music of the Detroit Cobras
presents a musical museum in much the same way that the fragments of the past in
produce meaning in the context of a physical museum today or in the context of
monumental architecture in Late Antiquity.
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AUTHOR: Constantina Katsari
EMAIL: c_katsari@yahoo.com
IP: 86.182.44.10
URL: http://constantinakatsari.wordpress.com
DATE: 07/31/2010 11:50:46 AM
Not in a million years would I have made a connection between spolia and punk,
until I saw your article. This is a valid point that could be pursued further.
Are you thinking of publishing it in the near future?
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EMAIL:
IP: 208.107.184.168
DATE: 08/02/2010 05:29:24 PM
Constantina,
169
Yep. I am collaborating with Kostis Kourelis on a long-ish term, album length,

project that seeks to bring together a bunch of singles like this into something
of a collection.
Thanks for the comment and will keep you informed!
For more see here:

<a
href="http://punkarchaeology.wordpress.com/">http://punkarchaeology.wordpress.co
m/</a>
Bill
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DATE: 07/28/2010 09:09:16 AM

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I¬†downloaded onto my iPad - via the Kindle application - a copy of Clay
Shirky's¬†<a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/cognitive-surplus-
creativity-and-generosity-in-a-connected-age/oclc/466335766">Congnitive
Surplus</a> (New York 2010). ¬†This book has receive a good bit of
attention on the interwebs, in large part because Shirky is unapologetic about
the potential of the internet and particularly the potential of the internet for
good. ¬†In an era where one's status as a pundit almost depends upon a certain
cynical view of the world, this book is refreshing and positive.
In short, Shirky argues that the internet provides an outlet for surplus
energy that the prosperity of the second half of the 20th century has made
available to us. ¬†The rise in prosperity has allowed residents of the West, in
particular, to enjoy increasing amounts of free-time and leisure. ¬†Shirky
contends that the number one use of this leisure time over the last 60 years has
been watching television. ¬†Watching television is solitary, somewhat anti-
social, and, most importantly, passive.
The rise of the internet has begun to slowly encroach on the dominance of
television. ¬†Unlike TV the internet is social, provides a platform for both
passive consumption and active production of media, and encourages the formation
of communities with shared interests. ¬†The dynamic character of the web as a
social platform functions to channel energies previously locked away in in the
passive relationship between the individual and the television. ¬†The web has
already begun to channel the "cognitive surplus" unleashed by the West's recent
prosperity, but hitherto squandered through passive and more or less solitary
leisure-time activities. ¬†Shirky's best example of this is Wikipedia which
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appeared out of the many moments of leisure enjoyed by tens of thousands of

individual contributors. ¬†The result is a testimony to the aggregate knowledge
of global community of individuals which prior to the internet would have found
a singular, intellectually substantial expression.
While this is cool thesis, it also caused me to think about a few things:
1. I am not convinced that the "cognitive" activity that Shirky associates
with the internet comes directly from surplus time spent in front of the
television. ¬†It's a great idea, but a relatively unsophisticated argument.
¬†First, people always used some of their free time in productive, social ways.
¬†Whether it is membership in a community organization, work with a church or
other religious group, or serving as an elected official or a volunteer, the
cognitive surplus created by economic prosperity poured innumerable areas of
social and community life. ¬†As the internet allows for communities to extend
beyond the institutional and social confines of traditional, place-based
communities, surely some of Shirky's apparent "cognitive surplus" comes at the
expense of these other, more traditional forms of community and social
organization. ¬†At the same time, there are those who suggest that the rather
diffuse creativity on display on the internet comes at the expense of
more¬†economically productive pursuits. ¬†The individuals who
produce¬†<a href="http://icanhascheezburger.com/">LOLCats</a> for
example¬†might otherwise be watching television, but also might be
reading a book, working, learning or refining a skill. ¬†I am all for these
profoundly democratic expressions of creativity, but I'd be reluctant to argue
that television and the internet form a kind of zero-sum dyad. ¬†The arguments
for the evils of the internet, in fact, tend not to be arguments for the
watching of television, but rather arguments that the internet undermines more
rigorous, local, focused, and ultimately socially responsible uses of time and
talent. ¬†Shirky does little to undermine these critiques.
2. The notion of channeling surplus is always appealing, but what really
matters is how that surplus (cognitive or otherwise) is channelled. ¬†The
downside of the unfettered and limitless nature of the internet is that it can
minimize the impact of a small contribution while still giving the individual
the sense of contributing to something larger. ¬†(And I say this a blogger who
regularly devotes 4 or 5 hours a week launching my two-cents into the void, and
with the understanding that these 4 or 5 hours could be spent polishing up a
lecture, reading another, important, argument, reading a graduate student's
paper just that much more carefully, or any number of professionally and
socially responsible (impactful) activities). ¬†The radically democratized space
of the internet is the most efficient venue for all forms of surplus. ¬†The "eat
local" movement provides a nice model here. ¬†Just eating locally produced foods
is not a sure-fire solution to ecological, economic, and ethical problems facing
large scale food production in a globalized economy. In the same way, the shear
scale of the internet presents significant problems for the efficient use of
specialized surplus.
3. Finally, this is the first book that I've read cover-to-cover (so to
speak) on my iPad. ¬†The most interesting aspect of this experience (aside from
the fact that the iPad is a very nice tool for reading a book) is that I could
where other people highlighted passages in Shirky's book. ¬†Slight, dashed
underlines showed me commonly annotated passages and clicking on the passages
indicated how many people underlined that particular text. ¬†Here is a great
example of Shirky's of how the internet takes the solitary act of reading and
annotating a text and turns it into a global activity with numerous participants
creating a running commentary. ¬†While at present (as far as I can tell) the
Kindle application only allows readers to share underlining, it would be
remarkable in the future for readers to share margin notes, comments, and even
171
links to other passages in other books. ¬†The aggregate of these activities

would instantly turn any book into a critical edition.Ôªø
¬†
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Sue Boudreau
EMAIL: sueboudreau2004@yahoo.com
IP: 24.7.84.235
URL: http://trythis1thing.wordpress.com
DATE: 07/30/2010 11:30:00 PM
Enjoyed your summary - seems right on to me. I also love the bright side to the
inexorable tech tide and the antidote to hand-wringing about kids today.
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TITLE: Even More Experiments in Intensive Pedestrian Survey
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DATE: 07/27/2010 07:39:33 AM

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Even more guest-posting brilliance from our esteemed guest blogger, <a
href="http://home.messiah.edu/%7Edpettegrew/">David Pettegrew</a>, the co-
director the <a href="http://www.pkap.org/">Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological
Project</a> and the 2010 Cyprus Research Fund speaker. ¬†Be sure to check out
his posts on <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2010/07/pk
ap-season-in-review.html">Tuesday</a>,¬†<a
ocession-pyla-koutsopetria-pottery.html">Wednesday</a>, <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2010/07/ex
periments-in-intensive-survey-at-pyla-koutsopetria.html">Thursday</a>, and <a
re-experiments-in-intensive-pedestrian-
survey.html">yesterday</a>.ÔªøÔªø
Over the last few days (<a
periments-in-intensive-survey-at-pyla-koutsopetria.html">here</a> and <a
172
re-experiments-in-intensive-pedestrian-survey.html">here</a>), we have been
discussing the results of an experiment we carried out 2010 in order to assess
the relationship between the number of artifacts we see in pedestrian survey and
the number actually on the ground. ¬†You can read about the first two phases of
these experiments here and here.
Today we consider the kinds of artifacts that we observed during total
collection and the sorts of material that made up the surface matrix. ¬†When we
set up the experiment, we consciously decided not to collect artifacts via the
chronotype sample as we normally do in our pedestrian resurvey. ¬†What crueler
thing could one do to the project ceramicist than overwhelm him with 1,000+
surface artifacts? (After all, the logic of sampling is to manage human
resources more effectively.) Because we didn‚Äôt identify the artifacts from the
total collection grid according to chronotype as we did for the survey units, we
limited the kinds of comparisons we can make between the pedestrian survey
sample and the total collection.
Even still, there were still some things we could do to give us a sense of
the kinds of material on the ground, especially their fabric and functional
attributes. ¬†How much of the surface assemblage of a high-density unit at
Koutsopetria consists of cooking ware, coarse wares, coarse wares with surface
treatment like combing, and table wares (slipped or unslipped)?
To address this question in part, we sorted all pottery from each total
collection unit into three basic fabric classes: semi-fine and fine ware
(whether decorated or not), cooking ware, and medium-coarse and coarse wares
(including amphora sherds). ¬†The results below show the count of each of the
categories in each of the total collection grid squares and give in parentheses
the percentage of that fabric group in terms of the total number of potsherds in
the unit.
<div>Ôªø</div>
¬†
Fine ware constitutes 7.6% to 15.4% of the number of potsherds in each
subunit; cooking ware only 1.7% to 5.4% of the total number of potsherds; and
coarse wares consistently 80.2-87.2% of the overall assemblage.
¬†Unsurprisingly, for a predominantly Late Roman assemblage, the great majority
of the sherds are coarse, a small percentage are fine, and tiny percentage are
cooking. ¬†The disparity between coarse wares, on the one hand, and fine and
cooking wares on the other would have been even greater had we compared weight
instead of count, since most fine and cooking ware sherds are thin-walled and
small.
We also counted the ‚Äúparts‚Äù of the vessel according to the standard
ceramicist categories of rims, bases, handles, shoulders / necks, and body
sherds. ¬†Rims represented 2.9-7% of the total sherd count, bases less than
2.2%, handles from 2.2 to 5.3%, neck and shoulders typically less than a
percent. Body sherds typically represent over 90% of the surface assemblage.
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<div>ÔªøFinally, we tabulated the data in a slightly different way, breaking
down the surface assemblage for each subunit by both fabric group and part.
¬†The results shown in the table below suggest that this Late Roman assemblage
includes for fine wares mainly body sherds (73.8% of fine wares) and rims
(19.5%), for cooking ware mainly body sherds (84.5% of cooking wares) and
handles (6.9%), and for coarse ware mainly body sherds (92.9% of coarse wares).
¬†Ôªø</div>
<div></div>
<div><img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"
-pi" border="0" alt="NewImage.jpg" width="480" height="255" /></div>
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20133f2977ba2970b
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20133f2977bb7970b
<div>
<div>Coarse ware body sherds make up 79.5% (n=1474) of the total number of
sherds (n=1,854) counted for all 4 subunits. ¬†By contrast, fine ware rims make
up 2.2% of the total pottery assemblage and cooking ware rims form only .11% of
the total pottery assemblage!!! ¬†The 71 fragments of slipped and glazed fine
ware (i.e., not including fine ware lacking clear glazing or slip) represent
only 3.8% of the total number of potsherds counted (n=1854). ¬†These few black
glazed Classical-Hellenistic sherds and red slipped Roman-Late Roman sherds are
the typical objects used to provide most of the chronological information for
dating archaeological sites but they represent less than 4% of our surface
assemblage of this unit at Koutsopetria.</div>
<div></div>
<div>Finally, it is worth asking what percentage of coarse body sherds have
surface treatments and decorations like grooving, combing, and ridging ‚Äî the
kinds of surface treatments that usually lead to them being collected in most
regional surveys. ¬†To address this question, we counted the coarse sherds for
two of the subunits (G1 & G15) with spiral grooving, combing, or wheel
ridging. ¬†The 66 sherds represent 12.5% of the 526 coarse body sherds from
those subunits and 9.8% of 672 total sherds from those units. ¬†These
‚Äúdiagnostic body sherds‚Äù then are more visible than glazed and slipped fine
ware but still quite unrepresentative of the surface pottery as a whole.</div>
<div></div>
<div>I suppose our next steps with the results of these experiments are to
compare them with 1) the chronotype sample from the broader survey, and 2) the
data from subsurface excavated deposits. ¬†I think the interesting results of
the experiment certainly justified the time it took to totally collect the
subunits and will allow us to understand how close our chronotype sample is to
the population of ceramic artifacts on the ground.</div>
</div>
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TITLE: More Experiments in Intensive Pedestrian Survey
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CATEGORY: Cyprus
DATE: 07/26/2010 06:54:24 AM

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More guest-posting brilliance from our esteemed guest blogger, <a
href="http://home.messiah.edu/%7Edpettegrew/">David Pettegrew</a>, the co-
director the <a href="http://www.pkap.org/">Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological
Project</a> and the 2010 Cyprus Research Fund speaker. ¬†Be sure to check out
his posts on <a
ap-season-in-review.html">Tuesday</a>,¬†<a
ocession-pyla-koutsopetria-pottery.html">Wednesday</a>, and <a
periments-in-intensive-survey-at-pyla-
koutsopetria.html">Thursday</a>.Ôªø
Last Thursday, we introduced the survey experiment that PKAP conducted in
June 2010 to assess the relationship between the number of artifacts that we see
when we walk across a survey unit and the number of artifacts actually on the
ground. ¬†In other words, we wanted to assess how effective our survey methods
are in actually assessing what was on the ground. ¬†On Thursday, we compared the
artifact densities detected by the project‚Äôs untrained student fieldwalkers to
those counted by trained senior staff members. ¬†Today we will discuss the
second phase in our 2010 experiment, an assessment of the total population of
all artifacts on the surface of select subunits. ¬†This part of the experiment
was designed to give us a total count of all surface artifacts that can be
compared with the artifact counts reported in yesterday‚Äôs discussion.
We began by selecting four 10 x 10 m subunits based on the densities of the
10 x 10 m artifact densities counted by the experienced senior staff members.
¬†As with past experiments (published in the RDAC 2007), we selected
our 4 subunits to represent the range of density variation: the lowest density
quartile (G15), highest density quartile (G9), and two middle quartiles (G1 and
175
G6). ¬†Each total subunit was 10 x 10 m, representing 1/16 (6.25%) of the 1,600
sq m survey unit.
title="144.JPG"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2013485b373af970c
-pi" border="0" alt="144.JPG" width="420" height="315" />
To vacuum a high-density unit, you really have to spend a lot of time picking
individual artifacts off the ground. ¬†For each of our units, students Andrew,
Zane, Valerie, and Luke, and I ¬†walked very slowly in adjacent passes across
each selected square gathering together in 1 or 2 corners of the unit all the
artifacts present. ¬†An initial pass was never enough for we observed how many
artifacts we missed initially. ¬†Usually two additional passes were necessary to
vacuum the surface completely, and each pass involved either crawling on hands
and knees, or bending so that you had a closer view of the ground. ¬†I have to
admit that my back and neck got sore after a while of this.
title="143.JPG"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2013485b373bd970c
-pi" border="0" alt="143.JPG" width="420" height="315" />
The results of this ‚Äútotal collection‚Äù, shown below, are interesting to
compare with the ‚Äúpedestrian survey counts‚Äù discussed yesterday. ¬†You have
to keep in mind with the comparison that the pedestrian counts represent a 20%
sample of each subunit while the total collection counts represent a 100%
sample. ¬†You have to multiply the pedestrian count by a factor of 5 to estimate
the ‚Äútotal putative count‚Äù (i.e., an estimation of what the total count
would be for 100% of the unit) for the pedestrian-walked unit.
The first outlined set of grid units below shows the total counts from each
of the total collection units.
The second set of grids compares the total collection counts with the
pedestrian survey counts in parentheses (multiplied by 5 to create the 100%
putative sample). ¬†Ôªø
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2013485b371a6970c
The third shows the factor difference between these two types of counts.
¬†Ôªø
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20133f28f543a970b
Here is where it gets even more interesting. ¬†We can estimate that the 940
artifacts experienced fieldwalkers counted through pedestrian survey across the
entire unit (i.e., the pedestrian counts from 4 walker swaths) would produce a
putative pedestrian survey count (factoring for the 20% sample) of 4,700
artifacts. ¬†In other words, had we walked 100% of the unit, we would have
counted about 4,700 artifacts. ¬†Now, if total collection (vacuuming) produces
on average 2.96 times the number of artifacts as pedestrian survey, we can
estimate that there were 13,212 artifacts actually on the surface of the ground.
¬†To provide some perspective, we collected and brought back to the museum 8,788
total artifacts from the 252 grid squares of Koutsopetria and 19,657 total
176
artifacts from our survey of the entire Pyla-Koutsopetria area. ¬†A single
survey unit at Koutsopetria totally collected would produce 1.5 times the number
of artifacts sampled from all 252 grid squares at Koutsopetria and .67 of the
total artifacts sampled across the entire Pyla area. ¬†If we were to apply the
same multipliers to all 252 forty x forty meter grid squares, i.e., the main
part of the site of Koutsopetria, the total artifact count of 19,182 would
produce a putative total count of 95,910. ¬†Our estimated total population of
artifacts (based on the 2.96 factor) is at least 284,894 (and in reality, poor
visibility in many units often limited our sample to 50% of the ground). ¬†This
is *why* sampling is important!
As for TIME, total collection requires a huge commitment. ¬†Although we
(for clarification here, "we" means David - Bill) initially considered
surveying all 16 subunits, i.e., an entire 40 x 40 m unit, this proved
unrealistic given the time it took for 5 individuals to vacuum a single subunit:
1.5 hours each for G1 and G6, 2 hours for G9, and 1 hour for G15. ¬†Using the
total time it took to hoover 25% of the grid square (6 hours) as an index for
hoovering this unit, we estimate that 5 individuals could hoover a high-density
40 x 40 m unit in about 24 work hours or well over 100 work hours! ¬†If the
typical survey work day is 6 hours long (say, 6AM-noon), it would require 4 full
days of a team collecting artifacts from the surface. ¬†Truly this would be an
incredibly time intensive task! ¬†By contrast, sampling 20% of the unit through
pedestrian survey takes about 20-30 minutes. ¬†In this perspective, total
collection requires 72 times more time than pedestrian survey collection!
One final comparative result is interesting to note here. ¬†The ‚Äúother‚Äù
category increases dramatically through total collection, including numerous
pieces of ancient glass (9), lithic stone artifacts (7), shells (24), slabs
(13), gypsum (141), ceramic bricks (2), stone vessel (1), marble revetment (3),
and a ceramic tessera or gaming piece. ¬†Although total collection was time
intensive, this sort of qualitative information is quite useful in filling out
our picture of the overall survey unit and indicates something of the functional
variability within each survey unit.
Tomorrow, we will conclude our discussion of experiments with an overview of
ceramic fabric categories. ¬†Stay tuned!
¬†
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This week has been an exciting one at the Archaeology of the Mediterranean
World. ¬†We hosted our first guest blogger, David Pettegrew, who gave us an
overview of the work this summer at the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological
Project. ¬†David's review of the season will continue on Monday, in the meantime
check out the first three posts:
<a
ap-season-in-review.html">PKAP Season in ReviewÔªø</a> <a
ocession-pyla-koutsopetria-pottery.html">Processing Pyla-Koutsopetria
PotteryÔªø</a> <a
periments-in-intensive-survey-at-pyla-koutsopetria.html">Experiments in
Intensive Survey at Pyla-KoutsopetriaÔªø</a>
So other odds and ends:
<ul>
<li>Imagine! <a href="http://chronicle.com/article/Colleges-Help-Students-
to/123653/">Using blogs, photos, and other "new media" techniques</a> to get
students to engage with their experiences while studying abroad. </li>
<li><a href="http://mashable.com/2010/07/20/qr-codes-mainstream/">I love the
idea of using QR codes</a> .... somehow. ¬†I can imagine a world where the
barcode on a book in the library serves as a QR code and opens to the student
various user-generated data attached to that specific books. It could be
anything from book notes, to citations for a good review, another book that
challenges the author's thesis, tips on getting the most from the book, advice
on reading time. ¬†At the University of North Dakota, at least, these bar codes
are unique to our library and not particularly stable (e.g. when a book loses
its bar code a new one is simply added and a attached to a book's record).</li>
<li>In more important news, my favorite cheap beer (I am not hip enough to drink
PBR) is undergoing a facelift. ¬†<a
href="http://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/archives/miller_high_life_overh
aul.php">Miller High Life has a new(ish) look</a>. Don't worry, the lovely High
Life lady continues to feature in the new design (after all, she is the oldest
icon in American brewing). ¬†Check out the critique here. ¬†My favorite aspect
of the High Life is the shape of the bottle which was designed to evoke a
Champagne bottle and its moniker: the Champagne of Beers. </li>
<li>I am not sure exactly how I would use this software, but I have to admit <a
href="http://notational.net/">Notational Velocity</a> is pretty slick. It allows
you to take notes quickly on your computer and, more importantly, find those
notes in a super efficient way. ¬†The program follows many of the basic
guidelines of hipster software: it lacks most bells and whistles, is open
source, and does what it does really, really, well.</li>
<li> <a href="http://www.plannedobsolescence.net/five-years-post-
tribble/">Planned Obsolescence</a> and a flurry in the Twittersphere reminded me
that it has been five years since <a
href="http://chronicle.com/article/Bloggers-Need-Not-Apply/45022/">Ivan
Tribble's famous and critical Chronicle article on blogging</a>. ¬†This article
and the responses probably motivated me to start my blog more than any other
(even though it took me another two years to overcome my worry about the
technical aspects of blogging). ¬†It made me think that I was going to be doing
some transgressive, that I would be upsetting people like Tribble, and that I
was defying convention and somehow making my life and career more notable. ¬†(I
suspect this is the same reason why I took a year off after I finished my Ph.D.
178
and before I went on the job market. ¬†By taking the year off I flagrantly
ignored people who told me it was career suicide and made me feel, if just for a
minute, that ¬†convention did not apply to me.)</li>
<li>Alun Salt is messing around with a <a href="http://alunsalt.com/">nice new
blog design</a>. ¬†He does a nice job integrating social media and more formal
blogs as <a href="http://alunsalt.com/2010/07/20/and-now-the-blog-re-design-in-
english/">he describes here</a>. </li>
<li><a href="http://www.cricinfo.com/pakistan-v-australia-
2010/engine/current/match/426395.html">Australia is keeping things interesting
in their second test against Pakistan</a>. ¬†All out for 88 and as of this
writing 218/5 and 48 ahead of Pakistan??? Things don't look good for them. </li>
<li>I am reading: K. Bowes, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/private-
worship-public-values-and-religious-change-in-late-
antiquity/oclc/183179509">Private Worship, Public Values, and Religious
Change in Late Antiquity</a>. ¬†(Cambridge 2008) and David Fischer's,
<a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/historians-fallacies-toward-a-logic-
of-historical-thought/oclc/60580">Historians Falacies: Toward a Logic of
Historical Thought</a>. (New York 1970).</li>
<li>I am listening to: <a href="http://www.detroitcobras.org/index.html">Detroit
Cobras, </a><a href="http://www.detroitcobras.org/index.html">Mink, Rat, or
Rabbit</a>; <a href="http://www.amandapalmer.net/afp/">Amanda Palmer,
</a><a href="http://www.amandapalmer.net/afp/">Performs the Popular Hits of
Radiohead on Her Magical Ukulele</a>, and ¬†Alphaville, Forever
Young.</li>
</ul>
¬†
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TITLE: Experiments in Intensive Survey at Pyla-Koutsopetria
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DATE: 07/22/2010 07:47:46 AM

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Another guest post from our esteemed guest blogger, <a
href="http://home.messiah.edu/~dpettegrew/">David Pettegrew</a>, the co-director
179
the <a href="http://www.pkap.org/">Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project</a>

and the 2010 Cyprus Research Fund speaker. ¬†Be sure to check out his posts on
<a
ap-season-in-review.html">Tuesday</a> and <a
ocession-pyla-koutsopetria-pottery.html">Wednesday</a>.
When I announced my plans to conduct a survey experiment where we would
‚Äúvacuum‚Äù an entire 40 x 40 m unit, <a
href="http://individual.utoronto.ca/nakassis/index.html">Dimitri</a> and Bill
both laughed and told me that I had to try it simply for its absurdity. ¬†The 40
x 40 m survey unit was our standard size for the 252 units that we laid out
across the Koutsopetria plain . ¬†As far as survey units go, 40 x 40 m (or 1,600
square meters) is a relatively small unit compared to that typically employed by
those who conduct distributional survey. ¬†At the same time, when on the group,
40 meters is still vast when compared to the dimension of most lived space.
¬†After all, a 40 x 40 meter unit is over 130 square feet on a side and over
17,000 square feet which makes a single survey unit much larger than even the
most over-sized suburban McMansions. ¬†The reason that my suggestion was
humorous, however, had to do with the method I proposed for collecting
artifacts. ¬†In our typical pedestrian survey, we only looked at 20% of the
surface of the unit (for a more reasonable and suburban 3,400 square feet) and
only collected each unique artifact from what we saw on the surface. ¬†My
proposal was more extreme: get down on our hands and knees and completely
‚Äúvaccum‚Äù (or ‚Äúhoover‚Äù) all the artifacts from 100% of the unit to
produce an exhaustive (and exhausting!) total collection rather than a quick 20%
sample.
Why? ¬†I had the suspicion that the amount of artifacts we see when we walk
across the unit is but a fraction of the total number of artifacts actually on
the ground. ¬†The suspicion was based on experiments conducted in 2004 &
2006 where we ‚Äòvacuumed‚Äô artifacts from a 5% sample of our 40 x 40 m units,
producing on average artifact counts that were 4 times greater than that
produced through our 20% sample using pedestrian survey. ¬†We also proved
through these experiments that the substantially larger number of artifacts did
not really contribute much new chronological or functional information that
warranted the additional investments of time and energy. ¬†We published a report
on those experiments in an article by the authors in the Report of the
Department of Antiquities, Cyprus 2007. ¬†However, we were aware of the
substantial fluctuations of artifacts within 40 x 40 m units and the risk of a
5% sample (80 sq m) being unrepresentative of the unit as a whole (1600 sq m).
¬†The point of our 2010 experiments, then, was to test the results with a much
more robust sample. ¬†While I initially wanted to vacuum 100% of the unit, time
constraints prohibited me to vacuuming 25% of the unit. ¬†Even still, 25% of the
unit is 5 times greater than what we sampled in 2004 and 2006.
Due to the limited time for fieldwork this season (and time constraints were
one of the reasons that we sampled the units to begin with!), we could only
resurvey a single unit placed in the highest-density area immediately northeast
of the excavated apse of the early Christian basilica. ¬†We picked this unit to
overlap with our very first Discovery Unit, a grid square of 40 x 40 m surveyed
in 2004 northeast of the enclosed excavated part of the site of Koutsopetria.
¬†We divided the 40 x 40 unit into sixteen 10 x 10 m subunits, each representing
6.25% of the overall unit area (1,600 sq m). ¬†The grid squares have been given
the prefix of G followed by a number between 1-16, as the following plan
shows.
180

src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20133f2777ade970b
-pi" border="0" alt="NewImage.jpg" width="480" height="324" />In our interest in
comparing artifact counts noted during pedestrian survey‚Äîwhere a surveyor
walks across the unit examining a 2 m wide swath and counting all pottery, tile,
lithics, and other artifact types‚Äîwith the total population of artifacts
actually on the surface, we implemented two stages to the experiments. ¬†The
first stage (pedestrian survey) we will report on today.
We began by having four fieldwalkers walk across the unit, recording all
artifacts visible in their swath, giving a 20% sample of every 10 m of space
across a 40 m transect. ¬†We collected ‚Äòsub-tract‚Äô artifact counts every 10
meters to produce density figures for each of the subunits (G1-G16) and assess
the fluctuating density of pottery, tile, and lithic artifacts within a survey
unit.
We collected the data for pedestrian survey three times. ¬†The results of
these three separate pedestrian survey exercises are shown in the four figures
below. ¬†The numbers represent artifact counts of each type (pottery, tile,
other, and total), and the gray shaded columns with orange numbers represent the
total artifact count for the swath per fieldwalker. ¬†Ôªø
The first time (see figure 1.1 below) a group of untrained students walked
the units‚ÄîAndrew, Luke, Valerie, and Zane‚Äîwho who had only seen artifacts at
the museum and not in their "natural" (or better, archaeological) contexts.
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20133f277c12f970b
-pi" border="0" alt="NewImage.jpg" width="480" height="334" />Ôªø
A steady light rain the following day provided the chance for these same
students to rewalk the unit a second time (see figure 1.2 below) with artifacts
slightly more visible as a result of the washing of the dust.
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20134859ca897970c
Finally, a group of experienced fieldwalkers‚ÄîDavid Pettegrew (DKP), Dimitri
Nakassis (DN), and Bill Caraher (WRC) ‚Äîwalked the unit and counted artifacts
(see figure 1.3).
Hence, the variables in these three episodes of pedestrian survey were
experience, and, to a lesser extent, the amount of dust and dirt obscuring the
surface of the pottery. ¬†Otherwise, between episodes environmental factors were
constant, as were methodological factors and figure 1.4 shows the average of all
the counts produced.
181
We walked these units on June 9 and 10 and each took between 15 minutes and
half an hour.
Comparing simply the total artifact counts (the bottom right grid within each
of the outlined figures), it is interesting to note that the rain appears not to
have made a difference overall in density counts between units [1.1] and [1.2].
¬†Although one student count went up significantly after the rain (LHM: 118
¬†243), and another student count was slightly greater (AMH: 200 ¬†241), VAW‚Äôs
total counts were essentially unchanged (335 to 334), while ZRB‚Äôs total counts
actually declined (238).
As far as the other variable (experience) goes, there were some significant
disparities between experienced walkers and inexperienced walkers as evident in
counts for particular grid squares (compare G1 for [1.1] and [1.3]).
¬†Otherwise, the overall artifact counts were comparable for the units: the
lowest-density and highest-density subunits occurred between all three walking
episodes. ¬†If we look at total artifact counts for each unit as a whole,
students counted 942 artifacts in [1.1] and 1056 artifacts in [1.2] while
experienced walkers counted 940 artifacts in [1.3]. ¬†That is remarkably close!
¬† 
We noticed one major difference, however, in the ‚Äúother‚Äù category, which
includes all artifacts besides pottery and tile: marble revetment, gypsum,
shell, ancient glass, and ground stone agricultural implements. ¬†The
experienced field walkers noted 2-4 times the number of other artifacts in [1.3]
than inexperienced fieldwalkers in [1.1] and [1.2]. ¬†An experienced walker
counted 4 lithic artifacts (chipped stone & ground stone) in G3 and G7 that
an inexperienced walker missed.
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TITLE: Processing Pyla-Koutsopetria Pottery
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DATE: 07/21/2010 08:24:25 AM

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Another post with help from our guest blogger and 2010 Cyprus Research
Fund lecturer, <a href="http://home.messiah.edu/~dpettegrew/">David
Pettegrew</a>. Check out the first in our series of posts <a
ap-season-in-review.html">here</a>.!
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In 2010 the<a href="http://www.pkap.org/"> Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological

Project</a> was above all the year of the potsherd. ¬†Excavations generate a lot
of material. ¬†Our thirteen Excavation Units in 2008 and 2009 generated pottery
at rates faster than our poor ceramicist, <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/pylakoutsopetria_season_s/scott_moor
e/">Scott Moore</a>, could read and pottery began to pile up at the museum while
we were finishing our work. ¬†We promised Scott that 2010 would be different and
we were fully committed to getting the material read. ¬†In fact to our surprise,
some bureaucratic snafus getting our permits to do fieldwork prevented the
collection of additional materials, and allowed us to devote more time to
processing the material collected in past seasons. ¬†So rather than venturing
out into the field, we spent each mornings out at the museum processing hundreds
of bags of ceramic artifacts and our afternoons processing digital data from
previous years. ¬†The result of all this is that we caught up.!
margin-right: auto;" title="Workspace.JPG"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20134859688ba970c
-pi" border="0" alt="Workspace.JPG" width="420" height="315" />!
Now to the untrained eye, ceramic processing looks like a bunch of people
doing just one or two different tasks. ¬†If you had come to Larnaka and peeked
into our work space, you might only discern a couple of obviously different
activities say, washing vs. analysis. ¬†But the team was conducting a wide range
of different tasks related to the finds. ¬†The most obvious and important
preliminary activity involved washing artifacts. ¬†There were a slew of them to
wash, 147 bags to be exact, each bag containing dozens, sometimes hundreds of
artifacts. ¬†Student enthusiasm for washing artifacts declined over a period of
a week and a half but that is to be expected.!
<a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/pylakoutsopetria_graduate/dallas_def
orest/">Dallas Deforest</a> photographed every catalogued artifact at a
resolution high enough to be published. ¬†In 2010, Dallas took over 1,200
digital photos of our catalogued artifacts to join the 3,100 artifacts taken in
previous years. ¬†Two of our PKAP veterans from 2009, Becky Savaria and Melissa
Hogan, began the process of labeling these photos. ¬†In late June, David spent
about 10 additional hours getting all the photos in order. ¬†Now we have an
archive of 4,300 digital photos of the 700+ catalogued artifacts and
uncatalogued artifacts.!
Building 13 was the central hub of ceramic analysis. ¬†Our co-director and
golden child, Scott Moore, spent 3 weeks analyzing the ceramics from excavations
including those occurring in the 1990s at the site of Koutsopetria and our more
recent ones at Koutsopetria and Vigla. ¬†Scott analyzed the pottery in two
different ways. ¬†First, he ‚Äúscanned‚Äù less significant contexts from
stratigraphically unimportant matrices like the plowzone, the kinds of contexts
where reading pottery in great detail is not all that beneficial.
¬†‚ÄúScanning‚Äù involves 1) sorting pottery into broad categories based on
fabric groups (e.g., fine ware, cooking / kitchen ware, and coarse ware); 2)
setting aside the most distinct and diagnostic artifacts; 3) making basic
observations about the context as a whole on a scanned unit form; and 4)
analyzing in greater detail the most diagnostic pottery. ¬†Indeed, scanning is
common in Mediterranean urban excavations where excavations might easily produce
hundreds of thousands of artifacts (or millions). ¬†The more important contexts
Scott read more thoroughly by identifying every artifact with a specific
chronotype. ¬†A chronotype is simply a specific, limited identifier for known
groups of pottery that combines date, potential functions, shape, and
183
appearance. ¬†The point is that Scott read (and this is an estimate) 200
contexts while in Cyprus this year.!
The other activities going on in Building 13 were data management (Bill),
illustration (Becky Savaria, Melissa Hogan) and artifact cataloguing. ¬†David,
Dimitri, and several students wrote more detailed catalog entries for
particularly significant finds from the survey and excavation. ¬†In 2007, we
completed a formal catalogue of the most significant artifacts from our
archaeological survey. ¬†This year, we completed the catalogue of artifacts
recovered in the two years of excavated soundings. ¬†The combined total of
catalogued artifacts now exceeds 700. ¬†While it is unlikely that we'll be able
to publish a catalogue of 700 different artifacts, we plan to eventually release
this complete catalog in a digital form and publish on paper a smaller number of
"greatest hits".!
We recorded the following information for each artifact in our
catalogue.!
Artifact Number:!
Dimensions:!
Munsell:!
Description Fabric:!
Description Shape:!
Description Decoration:!
_______________________________!
 Besides this work, we did a variety
of more specialized work. ¬†Sarah Lepinski and Bill completed the documentation
of the architectural and painted plaster from the excavated area at Koutsopetria
producing a complete catalogue of material for publication. ¬†Sarah's pain-
staking examination of the plaster from the excavated area has revealed not only
several phases of reconstruction and redecoration that remained obscure in the
stratigraphic record, but also import clues about the architecture and even
construction techniques used in the building. ¬†Nearby, several students
completed a special project analyzing artifacts from the plowzone which we plan
to report on later in the week.!
In sum, at the end of the 2010 season, we can offer this summary of the
quantity of artifacts processed by team PKAP between 2003 and 2010:!
Total number of units processed (from both the survey and the excavation):
711. ¬†Each unit represents a discrete archaeological context either in terms of
stratigraphy, method, or horizontal space in the survey area.!
margin-right: auto;" title="ProcessedPots1.JPG"
-pi" border="0" alt="ProcessedPots1.JPG" width="420" height="315" />!
margin-right: auto;" title="ProcessedPots2.JPG"
-pi" border="0" alt="ProcessedPots2.JPG" width="420" height="315" />!
PKAP Pottery Processing by the Numbers!
Batches of artifacts processed: 12,900. ¬†Scott divides the pottery from each
unit into batches of similar types of artifacts based on the artifact's fabric,
the part of the vessel represented, and the chronotype. ¬†Over the past 8 years
Scott has processed slightly fewer 13,000 batches.!
Total number of artifacts processed: 37, 141. ¬†Each batch has an average of
2.9 artifacts.!
Total weight of artifacts processed: 1,482.1 kg or 3,208.7 lbs or over 1.5
tons of pottery.!
Artifact Photos Taken: 5,500!
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Artifacts Catalogued: 727!

¬†
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As promised yesterday, this week will features (gasp!) a guest blogger,
Dr. David Pettegrew. ¬†David is the co-director of the Pyla-Koutsopetria
Archaeological Project and over the next three days he will report on the
various work conducted by the project this season. ¬†David will be visiting us
here in Grand Forks in October as the annual Cyprus Research Fund Lecture
Speaker. 
 Perhaps the greatest misimpression
about archaeology today is that it mainly consists in digging holes in the
ground. ¬†Excavation is the perhaps the most glorious and maybe even the most
exciting, component of archaeological work (although some people find the
analysis of the results of survey and excavation the most exciting. -
Bill), but it‚Äôs still only a tiny part of the pie. ¬†As you may have
gathered from this blog, our own work rarely involves traditional excavation.
¬†In the field, we‚Äôve devoted lots of time to pedestrian survey, geophysical
prospection, aerial photography, illustrating, and recording notes‚Äîand lots of
time to processing all those artifacts, i.e., washing, analyzing, cataloguing,
photographing. ¬†Beyond the field season, we spend most of our time processing
data, reading, writing, and publishing their finds, and preparing for the next
field season. ¬†Students who join us every summer in Cyprus for 3-4 weeks may
forget that most of our work goes on for months after Cyprus. ¬†And the work is
harder, not easier.
This morning we mailed a copy of our 2010 final report to the Cyprus
Department of Antiquities. ¬†If the <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2010/07/py
la-koutsopetria-press-release.html">press release posted yesterday</a>
represents a kind of quick and dirty abstract of our work in the Pyla area, the
annual final report provides in excruciating detail a full outline of our work.
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¬†Anyone who does archaeological work has got to produce these things, and
they‚Äôre not fun to write. ¬†This year‚Äôs report with contributions by <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/pylakoutsopetria_season_s/scott_moor
e/">Scott</a>, <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/">Bill</a>, <a
href="http://home.messiah.edu/~dpettegrew/">David</a>, and Sarah Lepinski, was
about typical in numbering 77 single-spaced pages. ¬†They have been longer (100
pages) but they‚Äôre rarely shorter. ¬†Why so long? ¬†What we do is complicated
and has to be explained in enough detail that it makes sense to anyone reading
the report in the future. ¬†We tend to provide more detail in our reports than
we need for our articles which does make it easier at a later point to create
papers about our work.
As we‚Äôve discussed here and here, the point of our 2010 field season was
completing the analysis of artifacts from our 2008-2009 excavations of the sites
of Koutsopetria and Vigla. ¬†We also anticipated being able to conduct
additional fieldwork at these sites. ¬†As it turned out, for reasons we‚Äôve
explained elsewhere, we were unable to excavate and we received permission only
at the 11th hour for our other fieldwork activities.
Even still, as we outlined in our final report, we‚Äôre not disappointed and
did manage to accomplish the following tasks:
1. We finished a preliminary ‚Äúread‚Äù of all the artifacts collected during
intensive survey (2003-2007) and excavation (2008-2009), cataloguing in greater
detail about 300 finds from survey and excavation.
2. We finished documenting and illustrating the area excavated by Maria
Hadjicosti. We have posted about that <a
om-blimp-to-page.html">here </a>and <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2010/06/cl
eaning-time.html">here</a>.
3. We took low-altitude blimp photographs of the excavated area and the
landscape. We have already posted the results of that‚Äîincluding the disastrous
flight of ‚Ä¶. ‚Äî <a
e-voyage-of-pkap-airship-1.html">here</a> and <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/pylakoutsopetria_season_s/2010/06/pk
ap-airship-1-takes-to-the-skies.html">here</a>.
4. We continued documenting subsurface remains using ground penetrating
radar.
5. We conducted limited resurvey of ridges to the west of Koutsopetria.
6. We conducted experiments designed to calibrate the results of the
intensive survey in the study area.
Such activities lack the dazzle of opening another excavation unit (as
exciting as that can be) but, we would argue, prove more important in the long
run for our understanding of the site and create a solid foundation for the
final publication of our fieldwork now in preparation.
In the next few days we will be providing some behind-the-scenes glimpses of
the kinds of post-processing work that we have been doing in the month since our
field season ended. ¬†Since we have already written about #s 2-3 elsewhere, we
will focus our comments on #s 1, and 4-6. ¬†Enjoy.
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TITLE: Pyla-Koutsopetria Press Release
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At the send of each season, the <a href="http://www.pkap.org/">PKAP</a> team
prepares a press release that accompanies the final report submitted to the
Department of Antiquities. ¬†The press release also gets sent out (in slightly
modified form) by the various collaborating universities.
¬†
Here it is:
From May 20th to June 21st the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project
conducted a study and field season in the coastal zone of Pyla Village on the
south coast of Cyprus. ¬†An international team of scholars under the direction
of¬†William R. Caraher (University of North Dakota)Ôªø,¬†R. Scott Moore (Indiana
University of Pennsylvania), and David K. Pettegrew (Messiah College), have
worked in this area since 2003 documenting a sprawling Archaic to Late Roman
settlement at the site. ¬†This year, the PKAP team took low altitude blimp
photographs of the entire site, sampled the subsurface remains using ground-
penetrating radar, and conducted several experiments to calibrate the results of
earlier fieldwork. ¬†This work will allow the PKAP team to correlate more
accurately the relationship between material on the surface of the grond and
material still safely buried. ¬†Another part of the PKAP team worked in the
Larnaka District Archaeological Museum to document the nearly 13,000 finds
collected since 2003. ¬†The ceramic, architectural, and stone artifacts have
revealed a vibrant community through most of antiquity with trading ties
spanning the Mediterranean basin. ¬†The study of these finds has revealed that a
site on the coastal height of Vigla was a fortified settlement from Archaic to
Hellenistic times complete with a fortification wall and significant quantity of
domestic ceramics. ¬†This is an unusual type of settlement on Cyprus and may
have served as the base for a garrison protecting the eastern flank of Kition
and the Larnaka bay. ¬†In Late Roman and Early Byzantine times, the town of
Pyla-Koutsopetria stretched across the coastal plain below Vigla. This
settlement appears to have been a bustling, cosmopolitan town during at the end
of antiquity and may have met its demise after a series of earthquakes. ¬†The
ceramic evidence demonstrate economic and cultural ties to Asia Minor, North
Africa, Egypt, and Aegean. ¬†Preparations for publication are now under way.
_______
In more exciting news, stay tuned to Archaeology of the Mediterranean World
for a special guest blogging experience! ¬†<a
href="http://home.messiah.edu/~dpettegrew/">David Pettegrew</a> and I are going
187
to collaborate to produce a series of posts reporting on some archaeological

experiments conducted this past summer on the Koutsopetria plain. ¬†Curious?
Stay tuned!

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It's another beautiful Friday morning in the Archaeology of the Mediterranean
World Blogcast area. ¬†So it seems like a good time for another exuberant gaggle
of quick hits and varia:
<ul>
<li><a href="http://melissaterras.blogspot.com/2010/07/dh2010-plenary-present-
not-voting.html">Melissa Terras' Digitial Humanities 2010 Plenary talk</a>
(Present, Not Voting: Digital History in the Panopticon) is among the best,
recent "state-of-the-field" talks about Digital Humanities. ¬†It is equal parts
optimism and critique and any digital humanities project could take something
away from it.</li>
<li>Harvard's Center of Geographic Analysis, <a
href="http://africamap.harvard.edu/">AfricaMap</a> is a nice combination of of
GIS, online distribution, gobs of data, and a user-friendly interface. It's not
overly flashy and has all the feel of something that almost anyone with a modest
budget, time, and data could do (in other words, accessible), and at the same
time is built on a robust, and "lightly" customized Open Source foundation.
¬†The spelling mistakes on the "About" page actually add charm.</li>
<li>Apparently the colon, the punctuation mark not that body part, has come
under some <a href="http://www.themillions.com/2010/07/colonoscopy-it%E2%80%99s-
time-to-check-your-colons.html">intense scrutiny lately</a>. ¬†The changing role
of punctuation in the media has an almost immediate "trickle down" influence
into how students use punctuation. ¬†The new evil: the rise of the jumper
colon.</li>
<li>I missed some things being out of the country. ¬†Here is Yannis Hamilakis'
most recent thoughts on post-colonialism and archaeology: "<a
href="http://proteus.brown.edu/tag2010/7821">Are we Postcolonial Yet? Tales from
the Battlefield</a>". It was delivered at the Theoretical Archaeology Group
meeting in May.</li>
188
<li>I've follow enough cricket to know that <a

href="http://www.cricinfo.com/pakistan-v-australia-
2010/engine/current/match/426394.html">this match</a> won't get more
interesting, but I am still naive enough to think that Pakistan could put
together some kind of rally and do something spectacular. ¬†As of lunch on day
4, Pakistan is chasing 439 (!!) and are now 224 back with a second innings of
216/4. ¬†I know, it'll never happen, but it's a beautiful Friday and there is no
harm keeping an eye on the score, right? </li>
<li>I am listening to three somewhat interesting freebies from World Around
Records lable: Naturetone's <a
href="http://www.worldaroundrecords.com/albums/nihon/">Nihon</a>, Louis
Mackey's <a href="http://www.worldaroundrecords.com/blog/2010/jul/7/louis-
mackey-destroyer-of-all-things/">Destroyer of All Things</a> (if for no
other reason than it's awesome, throwback, album cover), and J. Dante's EP<a
href="http://www.worldaroundrecords.com/blog/2010/jul/2/new-music-j-dante-
destiny-ep/"> Destiny</a>. ¬†All are worth a download, listen, and
chill.</li>
<li>I am reading: S. Friesen, D. Schowalter, J. Walters, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/corinth-in-context-comparative-studies-on-
religion-and-society/oclc/496282300">Corinth in Context: comparative studies on
religion and society</a>. (Brill 2010); C. Nadia Seremetakis, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/last-word-women-death-and-divination-in-
inner-mani/oclc/21950994">The Last Word: Women, Death, and Divination in Inner
Mani</a>. (Chicago 1991); and M. Trachtenberg, The <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/craft-of-international-history-a-guide-to-
method/oclc/60972182">Craft of International History: A Guide to
Method</a>. (Princeton 2006).</li>
<li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ArIj236UHs">This is pretty
funny</a>. ¬†The Old Spice Guy (and concept) has received a good bit of buzz
lately. ¬†<a
href="http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2010/writers/tim_tuttle/07/07/tony.stewar
t/">Too bad for Tony Stewart</a>. </li>
</ul>
Have a good weekend!
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This past week, I read <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/teaching-what-
you-dont-know/oclc/316037957">T. Huston's </a><a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/teaching-what-you-dont-
know/oclc/316037957">Teaching What You Don't Know</a>, largely on the
recommendation of <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/2010/05/28/some-summer-
reading-from-teaching-thursday/">Anne Kelsch and her fantastic summer reading
list</a>. ¬†I spend a good bit of my career teaching courses that are at the
absolute fringes of what I know. ¬†In fact, I am far more drawn to class that
touches on at least some material outside my main field of study. ¬†It may sound
perverse, but I spend plenty of time pondering the wonders of the ancient world;
so I never feel particularly slighted if I don't have to talk about antiquity in
each and every class that I teach. ¬†In an ordinary semester, I teach Western
Civilization I, which begins and ends beyond the chronological limitation of my
knowledge, The Historians Craft, which is part historical method and part
historiography neither of which constitute a particular specialty of mine, and
once a year I teach Graduate Historiography, which only touches briefly on any
scholar who I have studied intensively. ¬†In short, most of my time is spent
teaching what I don't know, if content is the main criteria by which teaching
knowledge is evaluated.
As Huston points out, most of us end up teaching outside our area of
specialty sometime during our academic careers. ¬†This is as much a reflection
of the narrow scope of most graduate expertise as the nature of undergraduate
curricula that tends to be equal parts conservative in the division of knowledge
and cutting edge in the move to cross/trans/inter disciplinary research. ¬†For
example, my Western Civilization class is a very traditional way of introducing
students to European history which probably fits awkwardly with the methods,
approaches, and concentrations most new history faculty experience in Graduate
School. ¬†At the same time, the expanding influence of digital methods in
history and the influence of social science and other disciplines with the
humanities ensures a constantly revised body of post-structural/modern/colonial
critique.
In some ways, we are always teaching what we don't know and, as a result,
this book provides numerous helpful observations to manage the experience of
teaching at the edge of understanding. ¬†While many of these are almost self-
evident (e.g. read what you have assigned before the class begins... does this
really count as advice?), some deal with how to manage student expectations.
¬†In history, it is always amazing to meet a student who is under the impression
that we have taken the liberty of memorizing all of the primary sources.
¬†Managing student expectations is central to moving from the solid ground of
content mastery (after all, I can list all the Roman Emperor and their dates of
rule, can you?) to the far more marshy ground of teaching method or encouraging
students to explore new approaches, analyze new texts, and imagine new
problems.
It's hard to overstate the importance of these techniques in a field like
history where teaching content is giving way to teaching method, the ability to
teach what you don't know is all the more important. ¬†After all the real test
of understanding comes only when a student confronts a foreign body of
information and deploys successfully the techniques, methods, and approaches
necessary to master it. ¬†While it remains easy enough to create "laboratory"
type experiments for students where the instructor knows the possible outcomes
190
and the students do not, these kind of teaching models almost always fall short
of the risks inherent in real world research. ¬†As I tell my undergraduate
historical methods class, when you pick a research topic in the real world, you
are, to a very real extent, on your own to make sense of the material at your
disposal. ¬†As an instructor, I can bring whatever knowledge of method and
content to bear on the topic and material at hand, but there is no guarantee
that I know the best way to approach a historical problem. ¬†As the infamous
"banking" system of teaching where students master a set body of content gives
way toward approaches that emphasize learning by doing (or other active learning
type approaches) the possibility for teaching what you don't know increases
massively. ¬†In fact, one could even argue that if you're not teaching what you
don't know, then you're not doing it right.
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TITLE: Ideas of Landscapes
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CATEGORY: Books
DATE: 07/14/2010 08:03:07 AM

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I strongly recommend Matthew Johnson's <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/ideas-of-landscape/oclc/62728643">Ideas of
Landscapes</a> to anyone interested in landscape archaeology. ¬†It is among
the best books on the topic, and it does a nearly brilliant job of putting the
concept of landscape archaeology in a historiographic context. ¬†Johnson's main
focus is on the emergence of landscape archaeology as a discipline in Great
Britain. ¬†He begins with the Romantic approaches to the study of landscape with
particular attention to Wordsworth's famous rambles from his home in Grasmere
and argues that the Romantic tradition inspired a particular kind of empiricism
which privileged experience as the quintessential character of the landscape.
This Romantic empiricism continues to influence landscape studies even today
through the decidedly more post-modern efforts of archaeologists to present
landscapes in a phenomenological terms (see for example, <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2010/03/wa
lking-home-and-the-phenomenology-of-landscape.html">the approaches critiqued by
John Bintliff</a>).
Johnson goes on to point out that some of the aversion to theory among local
historians derives from this same Romantic empiricism, and this has limited the
ability of scholars to take conclusions formed on the basis of detailed local
191
studies and expand them into more far reaching arguments. ¬†As I noted
yesterday, the use of maps, aerial photographs, and detailed topographic plans
fortified the empirical nature of landscape studies by melding to modern
technologies and techniques. ¬†The result was a discipline with an increasingly
fine-grained capacity for microhistory, but no more robust theoretical
foundation to understand the implications of this kind of methodology. ¬†(Here
he brilliantly invokes E.P. Thompson's <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/making-of-the-english-working-
class/oclc/178185">Making of the English Working Class</a><a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/making-of-the-english-working-
class/oclc/178185"> </a>and <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/poverty-
of-theory-other-essays/oclc/4515967">Poverty of Theory</a> by paralleling
Thompson's attention to detail and, in the latter, attack on theory to the
detailed studies of local landscapes produced by contemporary
archaeologists.)
In his conclusion he places landscape archaeology at the intersection of two
longstanding, divergent strands in archaeology: one, the urge to document in a
detailed way the intricate features visible in the landscape and the tacit
empiricism implicit in that method, and, two, the need to generalize and
theorize about larger problems in the develop of human society and the
epistemological critiques that are central to any effort to synthesize myriad
more focused studies. ¬†The former derives from archaeology's longstanding ties
to a Romantic view of landscapes, and the latter from fields like anthropology
(and more recently history) which insist upon critiquing the particular. The
contrast appears in the accusations that New Archaeology produces dry-as-dust,
quantified, landscapes that while generalized and generalizable, lack any real
sense of place.
My brief, rambling impressions do not do the book justice. ¬†So I'll offer
just a few more:
1. Johnson ties Romantic empiricism to map making to colonialism in a way
that stands as an important caveat to Mediterranean archaeologists who often
root their claims to local knowledge and authority in deeply impressionistic
views of the landscape. ¬†At the same time, we deploy the tools of New
Archaeology and produce quantified landscapes. ¬†The intersection of older
impressionistic practices with the rigor of New Archaeology have allowed us to
appropriate for research large areas of the Mediterranean basin, but at the same
time have moved to the foreground the colonial tendency inherent in so many
archaeological practices.
2. Johnson presents a particularly interesting critique of the palimpsest
metaphor in landscape archaeology. ¬†While I am more familiar with this metaphor
in the study of cities, Johnson discusses the role of the palimpsest in the
larger metaphor of landscape as text. ¬†He suggests that the metaphor has become
"too strong" and reinforced a view of the landscape as static rather than
engaging with more dynamic models for textuality common elsewhere in the
humanities. ¬†I've railed against the use of the palimpsest metaphor for years
largely because the two levels of the palimpsest have no clear relation to one
another. ¬†For example, a text of Plautus could be erased and the skin used for
a sermon of St. Ambrose. ¬†These two texts are unrelated whereas historical
landscapes are places where interaction between past and present is continuous
and the memory of overwritten or erased landscapes often persist preserving the
past "under erasure" for political and social goals.
3. Finally, the link between British landscape archaeology and Mediterranean
landscape archaeology is a direct one and the history of the latter cannot be
fully understood without understanding the history of the former. ¬†I sometimes
wonder if separating Mediterranean landscape studies from its British (and to a
192
less extent North American roots) has allowed certain sections of Mediterranean
archaeology to persist with just the kind of Romantic empiricism that Johnson
critiques. ¬†In fact, I find myself celebrating the more isolated and remote
parts of Greece (the southeastern Corinthia and the island of Kythera, for
example) for many of the same Romantic reasons that Wordsworth championed his
local landscape. ¬†The isolation from the bustle of the everyday (in other words
social, political, economic reality), the feeling of antiquity, and the
untrammeled natural beauty. ¬†Johnson's work will certainly give me pause.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Shawn
IP: 134.117.115.134
DATE: 07/26/2010 11:29:17 AM
I'm reading Johnson's book at the moment too, and it is brilliant! I'm only a
few chapters in though... the connection with Hoskin's work is well laid out,
but I wonder to what extent Hoskin's work influenced British work in say Italy,
where the tradition is from Ashby and Ward-Perkins?
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EMAIL:
IP: 208.107.184.168
DATE: 07/26/2010 11:49:23 AM
Shawn,
I'd be keen to hear your take on that exact matter. I assumed that British
landscape archaeology contributed (as much as New Archaeology and other, new-
world, developments) to the earliest efforts at landscape archaeology in Greece
where there was a clear parallel to the Romantic, pedestrian, solitary wanderer-
archaeologist (e.g. Cattling's Cyprus Survey or Hope Simpson's survey of
prehistoric sites). But I am not as familiar with developments in Italy.
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DATE: 07/13/2010 08:45:29 AM

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I just finished reading <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/ideas-of-
landscape/oclc/62728643">Matthew Johnson's Ideas of Landscape(Blackwell
2006)</a>. In it, he argued that maps, air photos, and archaeological
hachured plans formed the foundation of landscape archaeology in Great Britain
(and, I'd contend, elsewhere). Landscape archaeology in the Mediterranean
has certainly benefited from maps and air (and increasingly satellite) photos
which represent the first step, typically, in data gathering for an
archaeological project. The first aerial photographs that we acquired in the
study of our site of <a href="http://www.pkap.org">Pyla-Koutsopetria</a> were
the 1963 and 1993 series produced by the Cypriot Department of Maps and
Surveys. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20133f240f675970
right: 0px" border="0" alt="a63149KoutsopetriaCropped"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2013485668e7a970c
-pi" width="424" height="382"></a> <a
right: 0px" border="0" alt="A93256KoutsopetriaCropped"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2013485668e9f970c
-pi" width="424" height="462"></a> Since then, we were lucky enough to
have a series of oblique, relatively low altitude air photos taken from an RAF
helicopter in 2007. These photos provide more detail, but the oblique
angles make them more difficult to use for producing accurate maps. 
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2013485668eae970
right: 0px" border="0" alt="Picture 044"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20133f240f6d0970b
-pi" width="424" height="284"></a> <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2013485668ec5970
right: 0px" border="0" alt="Picture 047"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20133f240f6e8970b
-pi" width="424" height="284"></a> This past summer, we took even more
low altitude and far more oblique air photographs using the infamous helikite
(half helium blimp and half kite). We only had enough helium for a limited
number of flights and this tempted us to take the airship up in, let's say, <a
e-voyage-of-pkap-airship-1.html">unfavorable conditions</a>. The results
were blurry, but we were able to salvage some good quality aerial photographs
from the set. The camera was rocking furiously beneath the wind-buffeted
helikite so the photos lack a good representation of the horizontal. More
disappointing is that the strong breeze from the sea made it difficult to
photograph the fields closest to the busy Larnaka-Dhekelia road. The 1963
and 1993 aerial photographs showed some feature near the intersection of the
main road and the northeast running road that now leads to the water treatment
facility. While the feature does not stand out in the 2007 RAF
photographs, they were taken after a particularly wet early summer which caused
green wheat to be left in the field. The nicely ploughed fields of summer
194
2010 may have provided a different image. <a

src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20133f240f70b970b
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2013485668ef6970c
-pi" width="424" height="319"></a> One of my jobs for this summer is
labeling these photographs and moving them to Omeka. For now, enjoy a
different perspective on the site of Pyla-Koutsopetria.
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A week or so ago I was asked why archaeologists spend so much time preparing
line drawing illustrators of things when photography is quick, cheap, and "more
accurate". ¬†The answer is pretty easy, in fact. ¬†Some things are impossible to
photograph. ¬†For example, Dimitri Nakassis and I spent an afternoon
illustrating a wall uncovered by looters on our site. The only way we could
reproduce the wall was to go down into a relatively narrow hole and produce a
stone-by-stone illustration of the what we saw.
margin-right: auto;" title="VigWall1.JPG"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20134855fea3f970c
-pi" border="0" alt="VigWall1.JPG" width="420" height="315" />
margin-right: auto;" title="VigWall2.JPG"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20134855fea56970c
-pi" border="0" alt="VigWall2.JPG" width="420" height="315" />
margin-right: auto;" title="Koutsopetria_Wall_2010.jpg"
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-pi" border="0" alt="Koutsopetria_Wall_2010.jpg" width="420" height="368" />
¬†
Likewise, as I have documented elsewhere, our illustration of the
architecture at Pyla-Koutsopetria. ¬†Here a line drawing enables us to combine
features that are not all visible at the same time in a photograph. ¬†In the
drawing below, we were able to combine the results from excavation (at the far
the southeastern and southwestern corners of the plan) with a stone-by-stone
architectural drawing of the room and the plans produced by the architect at the
time that the room was first excavated.
margin-right: auto;" title="PKbuildingwTrenches.jpg"
-pi" border="0" alt="PKbuildingwTrenches.jpg" width="420" height="356" />
The images is, in effect, a historical composite of
three different archaeological moments.
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Some quick hits and varia on a gorgeous Friday morning in the Grand
Cities.
Lots of talk about blogging on the intertubes lately. ¬†First, <a
href="http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/web/06/29/your.blog.unpopular/index.html?eref
=rss_tech&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A
+rss%2Fcnn_tech+%28RSS%3A+Technology%29&utm_content=Google+Reader">CNN tells
us how to keep your blog popular</a>. ¬†The Economist suggests that <a
href="http://www.economist.com/node/16432794?story_id=16432794">blogs are
becoming more specialized</a>,¬†occupying cybersilos, and becoming the place for
longer writing. ¬†In <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/interview-rex-
sorgatz-infuses-blog-thinking-into-big-media-brands-2010-7#ixzz0tBdC0Kra">a
recent interview</a>, UND alumnus and new media star, Rex Sorgatz, credits blog
culture for his own rise to cyber stardom, but when collaborating on a new media
project said: "Just throw out the blog, I don‚Äôt want another blog,' cause I
have this antagonism with media companies who come along and think, 'I have
something innovative, I am going to do another blog.'"
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I'm listening to: Big Boi,¬†Sir Lucious Left Foot... The Sone of Chico
Dusty; Damian Marley and Naz, Distant Relatives; Mulatu Astatke,
Ethiopiques, Vol. 4; The National, High Violet.
I'm reading (and summer reading is the BEST reading): Matthew Johnson, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/ideas-of-landscape/oclc/62728643">Ideas of
Landscape</a>; Therese Huston, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/teaching-what-you-dont-
know/oclc/316037957">Teaching What You Don't Know</a>; Clay Shirky, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/cognitive-surplus-creativity-and-generosity-
in-a-connected-age/oclc/466335766">Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity
in a Connected Age</a>.
Some UND profs get some good press. Jack Russel Weinstein has <a
href="http://www.philosophyinpubliclife.org/Instute/presscoverage.html">an
article in the NEH Magazine </a><a
href="http://www.neh.gov/news/humanities.html">Humanities</a> about his
call-in Radio show WHY? ¬†Check out <a
href="http://www.whyradioshow.org/upcomingepisodes.html">WHY? on Sunday at 5
pm</a> to hear a follow up report from Paul Sum who has returned from a year
long Fulbright to Romania to discuss, "Exporting Democracy Revisited: A Report
from Romania". ¬†Elsewhere, <a
href="http://www.grandforksherald.com/event/article/id/168079/">chemist Mark
Hoffman demystifies his research</a>.
If you haven't followed Rangar Cline's work in Umbria, check out his blog <a
href="http://undertheumbriansun.blogspot.com/">Under the Umbrian Sun</a>. ¬†Also
check out the Archaeological Institute of America's <a
href="http://www.archaeology.org/interactive/sagalassos/fieldnotes/">Interactive
Dig at Sagalassos</a>.
Enough for this morning. Have a good weekend!
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TITLE: Teaching Thursday: Communicating with Students Online
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CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 07/08/2010 08:37:39 AM

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I was invited this morning to check out the work of the Online Teaching with
Technology Seminar here at the University of North Dakota. (<a
href="http://cilt.und.edu/workshops/twt.html">The seminars have a somewhat
underwhelming web site</a>.) ¬†I was asked to say a few words on communicating
197
with students using technology. ¬†I probably have some idiosyncratic attitudes
toward these practices, so I thought I might work through some of them on my
trusty blog here.
The first observation that I'll offer is that I use technology most
extensively in my online and large lecture format classes. ¬†For my mid-level
courses and grad classes, I generally have an open door policy. ¬†One other
idiosyncratic aspect of my communication strategy is that I no longer have an
office phone. ¬†When we moved buildings a year ago, my phone was never hooked
up. ¬†After a few weeks of not having a phone, I found it really liberating and
decided just to go with it. ¬†So, the two most basic ways for a student to
contact me is to either drop me an email or stop by my office.
I find that these one-on-one meetings with students tend toward the
inefficient. ¬†I often end up repeating to each student who comes by the same
things. ¬†In a small class, the impact of this repetition is relatively small;
for a bigger class, however, one could end up repeating the same clarifications,
explanations, or helpful insights numerous times. ¬†As a result, I try to find
ways to communicate consistently with students as a class.
The most obvious technique to do this is to maintain an updated syllabus that
attempts to address the most common student issues. ¬†While this generally
works, the syllabus is typically a stable medium for communicating with
students. ¬†The greater challenge comes when I have to make changes to the
course or address spontaneous issues arising during the semester. ¬†In these
cases, I've taken to using Twitter to send out messages addressing specific
problems as they arise. ¬†This allows me to "talk" to the class as group while
still being timely. ¬†The nice thing about Twitter is that it privileges a
certain economy of communication and this forces me (and I suspect my students)
to be clear and focused.
Twitter as a primary means of "classroom" communication has several downsides
(as <a
aching-with-twitter-an-interim-report.html">I have documented here</a>). ¬†One
is that it functions in real time. ¬†If a students it not paying attention to
Twitter when I address a particular issue, they have to sort their their Tweets
or my Twitter feed to find the relevant Tweet. ¬†I've attempted to deal with
this through two techniques. ¬†First, I've experimented with using <a
href="http://www.twaitter.com/">Twaiter</a> to release scheduled Tweets. ¬†This
frees me to compose a Tweet on a particular classroom issue whenever I want and
then to release it when it will have maximum visibility. ¬†For example, I can
schedule a Tweet reminding the students that they have 6 hours to complete an
assignment exactly 6 hours before it is due. ¬†I can also schedule Tweets to
repeat or post weekly updates on time.
Some students, however, find it more difficult to follow a Twitter feed than
to monitor the classes Blackboard page. ¬†I've experimented, more or less
successfully, with embedding a Twitter feed into the weekly announcements
section in Blackboard. ¬†I typically post an aggregated feed of those Tweets
marked with that week's hashtag (e.g. #H101Week1, #H101Week2). ¬†A student who
might not check his or her Twitter account can nevertheless check out all the
action from that week right inside Blackboard.¬†The only downside is that the
Twitter feed only remains active for a relatively short length of time
(typically less than a semester) and will usually only include a fixed number of
Tweets.
Another frustration with using Twitter so heavily is that it remains
difficult to link to pages within Blackboard. ¬†Perhaps this will change with
Blackboard 9. ¬†I am not a huge fan of Blackboard, but each new iteration
becomes easier to use and more dynamic and powerful.
198
I've also found discussion boards are a great way to make communication and
assessment more transparent. Each week students are required to post a response
to a question on a class discussion board. ¬†I have long ago abandoned any hope
for a real, dynamic discussion on a class discussion board, but I have
discovered that students do read each others' posts. ¬†In many cases, the
answers to the discussion question become better (if less original) with later
posts. ¬†While I continue to grade each student's work separately, the tendency
for students to repeat or (better still) base their answers on earlier
discussion posts makes it easier for me to address common problems. ¬†Each week,
I will make a post to the discussion board highlighting the good and the bad in
the week's posts. ¬†The lack of originality in the posts and the tendency for
students parrot ideas present in earlier posts makes it easier to use this kind
of public, collective comments to address problems and reinforce good behavior.
¬†Moreover, as long as the earliest posters in each discussion board are
conscientious (and they are most frequently a self-selecting group of
conscientious students), then week-to-week the entire class will follow the
early posting students and begin to internalize my comments. ¬†I understand that
this kind of "passive learning" is not in vogue, but I will contend that it is a
way to condition students to certain practices of argument by creating an
environment that successfully leverages both peer pressure and what we can
charitably call "a tendency toward lowest effort approaches to learning".
Twitter and discussion boards are just two ways that I have used collective
communication to replace personalized emails, long, unfocused office visits, and
redundant comments on student papers. ¬†For longer assignments, I continue to
use personalized comments (supplemented with a "common comments" sheet that I
circulate to all students). ¬†And I do not discourage students from contacting
me directly over email for personal problems or problems that are not resolved
in more public forums.
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TITLE: Some Questions about Late Antique Prosperity and Christianization in the
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I am slowly working to prepare a paper for the <a

href="https://webspace.utexas.edu/sjf365/CC3/Intro.html">Corinth in Contrast
conference</a> scheduled for the end of the September. ¬†(It's my problem that
I'm working on the paper this far in advance, not yours.) It is notable that
most of the scholarship of the Late Roman period in the Corinthia rooted in
archaeological evidence continues to make two major arguments: (1) the Corinthia
remained prosperous much longer than an earlier generation of scholars thought
and (2) At some point in Late Antiquity, and through a variety of processes, the
Corinthia became Christian.
The first argument is an economic version of the old "decline of the Roman
Empire" debate. ¬†To simplify, this argument demonstrates that Corinth remained
economically prosperous far longer than people expected. ¬†This prosperity
depended upon its place within the larger economic world of the Roman Eastern
Mediterranean (which included numerous other sites that continued to prosper
longer than scholars have traditionally thought). ¬†The continued prosperity of
Corinth and the Eastern Empire allowed for the city to continue to fulfill many
functions traditionally associated with the Classical or Roman city albeit
perhaps through different institutions. ¬†In other words, the city was not in
decline (at least economic decline), but was undergoing changes in institutional
structure. ¬†This proposition typically contributes to an updated version of the
"decline of the Roman Empire" debate which centers on more qualitative arguments
over continuity or change in the Roman world. ¬†Typically, scholars have
continued to see prosperity in the Late Roman Corinthia well into the 6th
century A.D. ¬†The evidence for this argument largely comes from revised dating
of ceramics. ¬†By assigning ceramics later dates, we can not only show that
trade continued later than expected, but also revise the dating of buildings and
other civic activities to show that urban life continued later than
expected.
The second argument is related, but largely independent from debates over
prosperity in the Corinthia. ¬†Increasingly, scholars have argued that Corinth
Christianized rather later than other cities. ¬†The largely 6th century date for
the construction of Early Christian basilicas is the main evidence for the
Christianization of Corinth at a late date. ¬†In other words, monumental
architecture provides evidence for the presence of the Christian church as an
institution in Corinth, and this must have represented a critical mass of
Christians among the population and accelerated the conversion of lingering
pagans. ¬†Some scholars have even seen the large scale and number of
baptisteries around the city of Corinth (at the Lechaion, Kraneion, Skoutelas,
and Kenchreai basilicas) as being a functional response to the large number of
converts present in the community.
In general, there has been only minor efforts to generalize from the larger
historical consequences of these two debates. ¬†The questions linked to these
two positions are numerous and significant. ¬†For example, if Corinth is so
deeply interconnected with the larger Mediterranean, why does it Christianize
later than many other major Mediterranean urban areas? Does the relatively late
date of Christianization suggest that economic ties did not facilitate cultural
or religious change? ¬†Did the continue prosperity of Corinth stand so
independent from imperial ties that the construction of monumental Christian
architecture by the local elite did not represent a strategy to improve one's
status both across the empire and at home? ¬† Did the religious ties to the west
(through the position of the Church of Corinth as subordinate to the Papacy in
the West) and economic and political relationship between Corinth and centers in
the East?
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Nate Andrade had <a
href="http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/earl/summary/v018/18.2.andrade.html">a nice
article in the most recent volume of the Journal of Early Christian
Studies</a>, titled, "The Processions of John Chrysostom and the Contested
Spaces of Constantinople". ¬†In it, Andrade considers the role of processions,
particularly those led by the controversial Patriarch John Chrysostom, in
transforming urban spaces inscribed with "secular" or even pagan significance
into spaces of Christian ritual. ¬†He set Chrysostom's actions against the dual
backdrops of his longstanding criticism of secular institutions ranging from the
baths to the theater and games (many of which date to his days in Antioch) and
Chrysostom's battles with members of the Theodosian court in Constantinople.
¬†The use of processions, highlighted by singing psalms, obvious displays of
Christian regalia, and perhaps even the Christian scents of incense, combated
the secular or even demonic associations that Chrysostom saw in the chaotic,
temptation filled, world of the Late Antique city.
Andrade's subtle article relies on the unprecedented textual sources for the
city of Constantinople in the 5th century and the relatively substantial
accounts of Chrysostom's controversial term as bishop of the city. ¬†(A
similarly, if now somewhat dated account of the relationship between the city
and church appears in <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/vox-populi-popular-
opinion-and-violence-in-the-religious-controversies-of-the-fifth-century-
ad/oclc/5171155">Tim Gregory's </a><a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/vox-populi-popular-opinion-and-violence-in-
the-religious-controversies-of-the-fifth-century-ad/oclc/5171155">Vox
Populi</a>). ¬†It's tempting to imagine how Chrysostom's use of processions
in Constantinople would translate to cities where our textual evidence is more
limited. ¬†For example, do the acclamations inscribed in public spaces in
Aphrodisias (and <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/29901">so carefully
analyzed by C. Rouech√©Ôªø</a>) commemorate a kind of processional practice
similar to those employed by Chrysostom?
It is particularly valuable to consider how public processions expanded the
range of liturgical practice from the space of the church building to the urban
space and the community. ¬†As early as the early 4th-century, Licinius
considered it a useful strategy of expel Christians from their churches and
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force them to hold their services outdoors or outside the walls of the city
(Eusebius, VC, 1.53). ¬† This suggests that Chrysostom was not the
first to challenge the secular or pagan nature of the city through Christian
assemblies held outside the space of the church. ¬†J. Baldovin argues for a kind
processional warfare between various groups of Christians in the city of
Constantinople during the 5th century (<a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/urban-character-of-christian-worship-the-
origins-development-and-meaning-of-stational-liturgy/oclc/18426295">Baldovin,
</a><a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/urban-character-of-christian-
worship-the-origins-development-and-meaning-of-stational-
liturgy/oclc/18426295">The Urban Character of Christian Worship</a>, 183-
184). ¬†Andrade's article as well as earlier and later evidence suggests that
urban space could well accommodate Christian liturgical practices which the
clergy viewed as tool to sanctify secular or pagan places. ¬†This turns on its
head the idea that Christian sacred space, namely church buildings, represented
sacred spaces that were a kind of pre-condition for liturgical practices.
¬†While the presence of relics, iconography, and both functional and mnemonic
architecture surely reinforced the suitability of the church for liturgical
activities, the Christianized space did not require these features. ¬†In other
words, Christian activities made places sacred in Late Antiquity.
The mobility and transferability of the Christian sacred within Late Antique
society makes using archaeology to reconstruct Christian landscapes particularly
challenging. With the exception of the kind of inscribed acclamations mentioned
earlier, processional liturgies would leave very little physical evidence.
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Ok, I'm being lazy today. <a
href="http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/completelist/0,29569,1999770,00
.html">Time Magazine</a><a
href="http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/completelist/0,29569,1999770,00
.html"> released a list of the best blogs</a>. ¬†While this is sort of like
getting advice on the automotive industry from a Saturn manager, it is
nevertheless interesting to see what Time regards as the "Best". ¬†Most of the
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blogs listed are the usual suspects (<a href="http://www.theawl.com/">The

Awl</a>, <a href="http://boingboing.net/">Boing Boing</a>, <a
href="http://www.engadget.com/">Engadget</a>, <a
href="http://thesartorialist.blogspot.com/">The Sartorialist</a>, <a
href="http://kottke.org/">Kottke.org</a>), so it's not a particularly useful
list for finding new and exciting things (which is not to say that blogs like
Boing Boing do not introduce the new and the exciting).
What's ironic, of course, is that Time - the most mainstream of mainstream
magazines - list features the most mainstream of mainstream blogs.
Perhaps more interesting is how broad the definition of blog has become. ¬†I
mean, is <a href="http://pitchfork.com/">Pitchfork</a> really a blog? Wouldn't
some other designation, like Webzine be better for it? ¬†It does publish daily
and presumably it is powered by a blogging software (like Wordpress or some
variant). ¬†It does not adhere to the traditional "most recent first format".
¬†Moreover, the content on a blog like Pitchfork is more enduring that the varia
presented daily at one of my favorite blogs, Kottke.org, or a tech blog like
Engadget.
In any event, the increasing flexibility of what the mass media imagines to
be a blog (wait, maybe, Time magazine is just a blog too!) can only be good news
for those of us who use the blog format for somewhat more serious (or at least
somewhat less random) pursuits...
Here are the lists:Ôªø
Best Blogs (the links are to Time's critique of the blogs, not to the blogs
themselves):¬†<a
href="http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1999770_1999761
_1999747,00.html">Zenhabits,</a> <a
_1999751,00.html">PostSecret</a>,¬†<a
_1999752,00.html">Climate Progress</a>,¬†<a
_1999733,00.html">HiLobrow</a>,¬†<a
_1999732,00.html">Hipster Runoff</a>,¬†<a
_1999734,00.html">Kottke.org</a>,¬†<a
_1999735,00.html">Cake Wrecks</a>,¬†<a
_1999738,00.html">The Oatmeal</a>,¬†<a
_1999737,00.html">S___ My Kids Ruined</a>,¬†<a
_1999739,00.html">Deadline Hollywood</a>,¬†<a
_1999748,00.html">Everything Everywhere</a>,¬†<a
_1999749,00.html">The Sartorialist</a>,¬†<a
_1999750,00.html">Information Is Beautiful</a>,¬†<a
_1999736,00.html">The Daily Kitten</a>,¬†<a
_1999755,00.html">Shorpy</a>,¬†<a
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_1999756,00.html">Apartment Therapy</a>,¬†<a
_1999757,00.html">Double X</a>,¬†<a
_1999758,00.html">Strobist</a>,¬†<a
_1999759,00.html">Roger Ebert's Journal</a>,¬†<a
_1999870,00.html">The Awl</a>,¬†<a
_1999868,00.html">GeekDad</a>,¬†<a
_1999863,00.html">Engadget</a>,¬†<a
_1999861,00.html">The Washington Note</a>,¬†<a
_1999860,00.html">The Consumerist</a>,¬†<a
_1999893,00.html">Pitchfork</a>
<div class="specialsArticle">
Essential Blogs: <a
_1999764,00.html">The Daily Wh.at</a>, <a
_1999864,00.html">TechCrunch</a>, <a
_1999873,00.html">Gawker</a>, <a
_1999871,00.html">Politico's Ben Smith</a>, <a
_1999872,00.html">Boing BoingÔªø</a>
</div>
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I am willing to try almost any piece of technology at least once if I think
that it has the potential to improve the way that I teach, write, or do
research. ¬†The investment in time required to learn a new piece of software or
gizmo while often unsatisfactory one an individual level, has so far paid
dividends across the whole range of technologies that I use to manage my
everyday life. ¬†To put it another way, I was very reluctant to learn to use the
so-called e-mail, but the initial investment in learning Eudora (many years ago)
has added a level of efficiency to my everyday life that more than makes up for
the time wasted trying to learn to use the latest gizmo or application.
Over the past six months, I've used and appreciated a whole range of new
technologies, ranging from my iPad and my Android powered phone to light duty
web-aps that solve an immediate problem (how is it possible to schedule a
meeting without¬†<a href="http://www.doodle.com/">Doodle</a>?). ¬†From that
little gaggle of software and hardware, three piece of intriguing technology
stand out:
1.¬†<a href="http://omeka.org/blog/2010/04/29/omeka-net-alpha-
arrives/">Omeka.net</a>. I am really excited to be an alpha test for Omeka.net.
¬†<a href="http://omeka.org/">Omeka</a> is an online collection management
software produced by the¬†<a href="http://chnm.gmu.edu/">Center for History and
the New Media at George Mason University</a>and our neighbors at the¬†<a
href="http://www.mnhs.org/index.htm">Minnesota State Historical Society</a>.
¬†It allows an individual or organization to organize and present collections of
material - from texts and podcasts to images and video. ¬†As someone who views
the world as a kind of infinite archive, a program of this kind has obvious
appeal. ¬†For the last year, I've had Omeka running on a server at the
University of North Dakota and it has become <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.und.edu/">home for various collections </a>of
images including a fine art photography exhibition, a research archive of
vernacular architecture in Greece, and a small collection of maps from my survey
project in Greece.
The only downside to the program was that it took me quite some time (and a
bit of money) to get it up and running on a University server. ¬†Omeka.net
eliminates the hassle of running and maintaining server based software because
they offer both the software and the server side maintenance in the same way
that Wordpress.com hosts Wordpress blogs. ¬†This means that soon, even the least
technologically inclined could be up and running with Omeka and begin to
catalogue their personal or group archives.
The potential for teaching is really clear. ¬†Curation is becoming an
important watchword in our digital age as people come to realize that the
quantity of data produced has come to challenge our ability to manage it. The
ability to deploy and teach easily a powerful tool like Omeka for collecting,
organizing, and presenting a wide range of digital material (primarily in the
humanities, but Omeka is hardly a tool limited to a particular discipline) will
introduce information management and literacy skills that are likely to be
relevant for our digital age.
Right now, Omeka.net is out in invitation only Alpha testing with all the
attended caveats, but I asked for an invitation and received it within a few
months.
2.¬†<a href="http://illuminex.com/ecto/">Ecto</a> vs.¬†<a
href="http://www.red-sweater.com/marsedit/">MarsEdit</a>. This past week,¬†<a
href="http://chronicle.com/blog/profhacker/27/">ProfHacker</a> (a must read for
tech-curious faculty) discussed briefly the relative merits of two offline, blog
composition tools, Ecto and MarsEdit. If you're a blogger (and these days, who
isn't), it is almost essential to be able to write a blog post someplace other
205
than the online space provided by your blog provider. ¬†In general, the online
editors provided by most blogging services (e.g. Typepad, Wordpress, Blogger)
are underpowered, a bit fickle, and dependent on your connection to the internet
(and stability of your browser) to work. ¬†There is nothing more frustrating
than composing a brilliant post online and seeing it vanish with a browser crash
or internet interruption. ¬†Offline composers are half light-duty word
processors and half light-duty html editors. ¬†The best option is probably
Windows Live Writer, but there is no Mac version of this flexible and stable
little program. The two best for Mac users are Ecto and MarsEdit. ¬†Both provide
a word processor type interface that allows you to compose easily, edit HTML,
and to integrate various media content.
I used Ecto for over a year and found it pretty satisfactory. ¬†It did a
particularly nice job managing links (and a blog is nothing without its links to
other blogs and sites on the web) and images. ¬†MarsEdit has a slightly nicer
interface for writing, however. ¬†I love that I can change the font that I am
writing with in MarsEdit without changing the font that appears on my blog. ¬†In
other words, I indulge my idiosyncratic preference to compose in American
Typewriter font without having to publish using that font. MarsEdit may be a bit
less capable of handling images, however.
Either tool makes blog writing less of an adventure and more of a pleasure.
¬†The simple interfaces encourages a focus on the words (not dissimilar from the
recent spate of simplified word processors like<a
href="http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/products/writeroom">WriteRoom</a>) and the
stability and security the software encourages me to write in a longer form than
I might do on the web.
3.¬†<a href="http://daytum.com/">Daytum</a>. ¬†Daytum is one of the quirkier
services on the web. ¬†It provides a subscriber with an interface where they can
record and quantify¬†things. ¬†For example, I count the number of words
that I write each day (since I started using Daytum, I've written 73,810 words).
¬†I also record whether I get a ride home with my wife or walk; to date, I've
walked home 35 times and got a ride home 34 times since January. ¬†I like
recording the temperature in my office in the morning, but I'm just like that.
¬†I also like the idea of keeping track of how many pages I read each day, but
I've found that more of an inconvenience as I move from reading paper books and
articles to reading across a wide range of media, many of which do not use pages
at all (e.g. the web, on my iPad, et c.).
Daytum is a free indulgence for those obsessed with quantifying their lives.
¬†At the same time, it represents the far fringe of a whole batch of software
designed to help one become more efficient or at least more aware of how one
spends their time. As academics, it seems like we are always running out of
time, stumbling across some new deadline, or having to negotiate some kind of
delicate work management solution to balance relationships, teaching, research,
or "outside" interests.

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TITLE: Indigenous Archaeology Georgian Style
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BASENAME: indigenous-archaeology-georgian-style
CATEGORY: Byzantium
CATEGORY: Cyprus
DATE: 06/30/2010 07:52:55 AM

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One of the most exciting afternoon from this year in Cyprus involved a trip
to the ruined monastery at Yialia in the mountains about Polis on the Western
side of Cyprus. ¬†According to textual sources, Georgian monks founded the
monastery on the island in the 10th century and it was occupied until the 14th
century. ¬†The church is currently under study by a group of archaeologists from
the Republic of Georgia with support, apparently, from the Archbishop of
Cyprus.
title="DSCN4713.JPG"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20134851c33dc970c
-pi" border="0" alt="DSCN4713.JPG" width="450" height="337" />
The monastic church itself is a traditional Athonite plan with its
characteristic triconch arrangement. Massive cisterns, storeroom, and living
quarters for the monks (apparently) extend from the church's southern side. The
monastic church underwent several significant modifications in plan including an
extension to the narthex, rather significant adjustments to the eastern end of
the church, a chapel annex on the northern side, and a very strange tetrapylon
type structure abutting the southern apse of the Athonite triconch. ¬†The ruins
preserve some wall painting on the upper, more sheltered parts of the collapsed
vaults, as well as some better preserved frescoes which were built around during
the buildings numerous modifications.
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20134851c33f2970c
The most interesting thing about this very curious building is how it is used
today. ¬†The ruins of the church are currently used for the celebration of
liturgy. ¬†A portable altar and prothesis stand at the eastern end of the church
despite the ruinous condition of the sanctuary space.
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20133f1f6e2ed970b
Incense burners and evidence for the burning of candles dot the various
ledges and niches of the ruined walls. ¬†The practice of re-using excavated, yet
nevertheless consecrated sacred space is not entirely rare. ¬†I observed a
similar phenomenon at the church of St. Tychon near Amathous, for example. ¬†It
does, however, shed some valuable light on the intersection of long-standing
forms of religious archaeology (<a
207
other-better-attempt-at-dream-archaeology.html">dream archaeology</a> being just

one example) and modern "scientific" archaeological practice. ¬†This kind of
provision use of a ruined church may also reflect some of the practices common
to ancient and Byzantine Christianity where churches damaged by earthquakes or
neglect continue to be places of intermittent devotional practices.
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20133f1f6e2ff970b
Making this point all the more clear, a casket occupies of the center of the
nave. ¬†Apparently the excavations revealed a number of burials around the
church and the monastic complex. ¬†A few of these burials appear to be marked by
small, Georgian style crosses.
It seems reasonable to assume that the remains from these excavated grave
sites are placed in the conspicuous casket. ¬†Apparently, the Georgian church
plans to build a new monastery nearby and perhaps the bones of these now
excavated monks will be brought to rest there.
The architecture, decoration, inscriptions (some in Georgian), and artifacts
from this church will surely contribute to our understanding of the multi-ethnic
character of Medieval Cyprus. ¬†More than that, however, the combination of
"scientific" archaeology and Christian devotional practices shows the potential
for a kind of indigenous archaeological practice to exist alongside largely
"western" (by some definition) archaeological practices, methods, and presumably
epistemology.
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COMMENT:
IP: 76.104.197.147
DATE: 06/30/2010 11:00:36 AM
Splendid post and a fascinating view of how history continues! I hope you will
follow-up on this church over the years.
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BASENAME: more-on-polis
CATEGORY: Byzantium
CATEGORY: Early Christian Baptisteries
DATE: 06/29/2010 08:17:26 AM

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One of the great conversations that I had this past week at Polis Chysochous
centered on how one goes about publishing a complex site or sites. ¬†Starting
this fall, (as I discussed yesterday) a dynamic and diverse team of Late
Antique, Byzantine, and Medieval scholars (Amy Papalexandrou, Kyle Killian,
Sarah Lepinski, R. Scott Moore, Nora Laos, and myself) are planning to publish
two multi-phase Christian churches excavated over the last 20 years in the
village of Polis. ¬†The sites are relatively complex architecturally with
numerous overlapping and interrelated phases; they have also produced robust
assemblages of Late Antique to Medieval ceramics, highly fragmentary wall
painting, glass, and mortuary remains.
In a traditional publication each of these materials would have its own
discrete section (or perhaps even volume) produced after a period of careful
study by a specialist. ¬†For example, Amy, Nora, and I would study the
architecture and publish it complete with a description, comparanda, and
comments on the significance of this architecture for existing typologies.
¬†Kyle and Scott would perform a similar study of the ceramics; Sarah would
study and publish the wall painting. ¬†These practices have their roots in the
history of discipline of archaeology (and the humanities more broadly). ¬†In the
first half of the 20th century (outside brief pockets of critique), the
humanities emphasized the mastery of (highly!) specialized bodies of material
which collectively would contribute to the expanding pool of knowledge on a give
topic. ¬†This empirical mode of research favored intensive, specialized, and
discrete studies which would build a enduring body of factual knowledge.
Over the last 40 years (and perhaps more recently in the proudly
anachronistic world of Mediterranean archaeology), scholarship have moved to
more highly integrative approaches to research. These approaches have implicitly
(or more recently explicitly) recognized that discrete bodies of knowledge exist
only in relation to complex interpretative processes. ¬†These interpretative
processes inform both the hypotheses that guide our research as well as the
techniques that we use to collect data to evaluate these hypotheses. ¬†In other
words, a body of factual knowledge does not exist outside interpretation. ¬†The
goal of producing an enduring body of empirically sound knowledge is simply not
attainable.
As a result of this trend, scholars have worked to produce more richly
integrated, interpretative publications across the humanities. ¬†While vestiges
of earlier practices persist in catalogue of finds and narrow specialist studies
of distinct artifact types, these practices are increasingly arranged in
relation to large archaeological and historical problems. ¬†Our efforts at Polis
will, I hope, look to how the assemblage of ceramic material informs how we
understand the architecture and decoration of these buildings; at the same time,
I hope that the architecture informs our interpretation of the decorative
material and the ceramics present at the site. ¬†The interplay between these
various bodies of material create the interpretative space which we hope will
209
produce a richer, more clearly historically relevant publication of the site.

¬†In short, our study will regard the material culture (architecture, ceramics,
plaster, et c.) of the past as both the product and the producer of historical
interpretation.
This approach is not novel, and on Cyprus we have some great models
(particularly <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/cypriot-village-of-late-
antiquity-kalavasos-kopetra-in-the-vasilikos-valley/oclc/249640107">Marcus
Rautman's publication of the churches at Kopetra</a>), but it is not universally
applied. ¬†What could make our approach interesting, however, is that we will
attempt to implement it as a team of specialists (rather than as a single
visionary scholar who can command a vast body of material). ¬†Wish us luck!
¬†
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TITLE: From Pyla-Koustopetria to Polis Chrysochous
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DATE: 06/28/2010 09:22:56 AM

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I am back from Cyprus after a little over 5 weeks. Over the next week or so,
I'll bring everyone up to date on the triumphs and tragedies of our study and
field season. 
I have spent the past week at the site of <a
href="http://web.princeton.edu/sites/Archaeology/rp/polisexhibit/intro.html">Pol
is Chrysochous</a> on the western side of the island. A team from Princeton
University under the direction of William Childs have been documenting the site
of Polis since 1983 and excavating at the site since 1984. The site itself lies
amidst the modern tourist town of Polis and as a result, the excavated areas are
sometimes separated from one another by some distance as the map below
indicates. The material from these various excavations indicate activity on the
site from as early as the Chalcolithic period, and there is archaeological
evidence that the area prospered as late as the 16th century and the Lusignan
era.
<div style="text-align: center;">
<img
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20134850cead3970c
-pi" width="358" height="480" alt="201006280756.jpg" /> 
</div>
210
I was invited to visit the site by Amy Papalexandrou who was working to study
and publish the Late Antique and Medieval material from the site. This included
two basilica style churches both with Early Christian and later phases (one is
clearly visible <a
href="http://web.princeton.edu/sites/Archaeology/rp/polisexhibit/polis1.html">to
the right in this photograph</a>, the other is barely visible <a
href="http://web.princeton.edu/sites/Archaeology/rp/polisexhibit/polis14.html">t
o the far left in this photograph</a> ). While both churches have appeared
occasionally in the literature on the architecture of Christian Cyprus, neither
has been published thoroughly. I hope to contribute to their publication and
learn more about the architecture and use of these buildings as well as the
political, social, economic, and religious history of the island in the shadowy
period of the late 7th to 10th century.
The later phases of the Early Christian basilicas on Cyprus have attracted
some scholarly attention. Of particular interest is the practice of transforming
wood-roofed basilicas to barrel-vaulted structures sometime between the 7th and
10th centuries. The phenomenon was initially studied by A.H.S. Megaw in the
1940s. Numerous other scholars have considered the date, cause, and significance
of this phenomenon, including most recently, Charles Stewart in the Journal of
the Society of Architectural Historians 69 (2010), 162-189. Unfortunately, few
scholars have appealed to excavated remains to make their arguments for the
chronology of this change, nor have they consistently appealed to archaeology to
consider attendant changes in decoration, function, or even social significance
of the churches transformed after the end of antiquity.
The churches of Polis both show signs of modification after their original
construction. Moreover, both churches were systematically and relatively
carefully excavated revealing evidence for chronologically important ceramics, .
As a result, these buildings represent an important opportunity to document the
later life of Early Christian architecture on the island and in the process
consider more fully life on Cyprus during the tumultuous years of condominium
when Arabs and Byzantine jointly ruled the island. 
In other words, the story of the buildings at Polis allows us to continue the
story begun with at the Late Antique coastal settlement at Pyla-Koutsopetria,
which appears to have fallen been in steep decline by the end of the 7th century
and shows little activity in later eras. Unlike Polis, the vulnerable coastal
position of the Pyla-Koutsopetria and its clear dependence on the trading
networks sustained by the trans-Mediterranean Roman Empire probably doomed the
settlement to abandonment.
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TITLE: Last Days in Larnaka
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DATE: 06/19/2010 11:28:38 PM

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The museum team from the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological
Project finished packing up the museum on Friday and is heading off to Polis on
the western part of the island to check out the work of the Princeton Polis
Expedition. They have not only substantial quantities of Late Antique
pottery for Scott, but a pair of Early Christian basilicas (for me) and some
Roman and Byzantine wall painting (for Sarah). Packing up at the end of the season provides a useful perspective
on the quantity of material that we have processed and analyzed during the year,
and need to synthesize in the off season. The stacked creates filled with
artifacts represent order from the chaos of real fieldwork and provide the basis
for both the chronological and functional analysis of both our survey area and
our various soundings. In general, this was a successful
season, although the various small projects, student volunteers, site visits,
issues with the British base, and bizarre archaeo-political controversies
conspired to give it a bit of a disjointed feeling. And the real success of the season will only be evident this off
season as the various members of the team continue to work to write up the
results of our 7+ seasons of fieldwork. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20133f181d1a4970
b-pi"><a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20133f181d166970
width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px" border="0" alt="DSCN4325"
-pi" width="404" height="304"></a></a> <a
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20133f181d17d970b
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20133f181d18f970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2013484a9aab8970c
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20133f181d1a4970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2013484a9aacb970c
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20133f181d1ae970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2013484a9aae4970c
-pi" width="304" height="404"></a> There might be a
bit of radio silence from the blog over the next week, as we might not have the
212
same degree of internet connective in Polis. But I'll be back blogging by

the end of the week. Don't you worry.
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TITLE: Top Five Mistakes on the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project
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DATE: 06/17/2010 11:25:16 PM

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As another field season comes to a close, it is useful to reflect back on
some of our mistakes over the past few years. I am pleased to say that no
mistakes were so significant that archaeological information was lost. On
the other hand, most of these mistakes brought a certain amount of inconvenience
to our seasons and set us back in time, energy, and sometimes other
resources. 1. Not applying for a single, big grant. Over the past eight
seasons, PKAP has been fortunate to be funded by a series of small to mid-sized
grants. The support of numerous organizations not only made our initial
fieldwork possible, but also made it possible for us to take advantage of
opportunities (like excavation and more robust remote sensing campaigns) that
were not present at the project's onset, bring in collaborators from around the
world, and to introduce over 50 students to field archaeology and the island of
Cyprus. The downside of relying on small to mid-sized grants is that each fall
became a frantic scramble for resources to fund the next season. Each spring, as
we waited on the grants, became an exercise in speculative accounting as we
produce multiple budgets and plans based on the possible level of funding
provided by our outstanding grant applications. Fortunately, we always
received enough support to pursue our most optimistic plans, but the wait
(particularly over the last few years as "changes" in the global economy made it
difficult to predict funding levels) was excruciating. Next time we
conduct a multi-year archaeological project in the Mediterranean, we will make
it contingent upon receiving a multi-year grant. 2. Messing with the
Cypriot Bronze Age. While I am not a liberty to go into details about this
mistake, I have learned that the Cypriot Bronze Age is not fun nor is it
necessarily an open field for inquiry. It seems best for specialists in
Late Antiquity working on a largely historical site, to steer very clear of the
Late Bronze Age and <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/22/science/22sail.html">other messy pre-
historic periods in Cyprus</a>. 3. Identifying an Early Christian
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basilica on Vigla from resistivity results. After conducting a substantial

campaign of electrical resistivity survey in 2007, we concluded that an Early
Christian basilica stood atop the coastal height of Vigla. In fact, our scrutiny
of the architecture directed the location of our trenches in 2008. It only
took a few days of excavating to discover that the remains on Vigla were not
associated with an Early Christian church, and moreover, were not
monumental. Now it appears that we have a Classical to Hellenistic
fortified settlement on the height. (For more on this, see <a
la-koutsopetr.html">here</a> and <a
e-vanished-ba.html">here</a>) 4. <a
e-voyage-of-pkap-airship-1.html">Flying PKAP Airship One on a windy day</a>.
5. Conducting a study season without a registrar. At one point this year, I
looked over the numerous scholars and students working on PKAP material and
could see no order to the chaos. In past years, our registrar has brought
order to chaos and allowed for the smooth movement of material through
processing and study. This year, we proceeded without a registrar - a feat
only attempted once before - and the results were terrifying. Well-labeled
(fortunately) artifacts everywhere, forms everywhere, well-labeled (phew!)
pottery bags everywhere, scholars and specialists everywhere, and me frantically
trying to keep up with various questions and requests on my lap top while
attempting to analyze the data. Fortunately, a long, hot, day in the
museum last There are some honorable mentions to this list: working on
Cyprus in late July and August for one year, working on a site in the British
Sovereign Area (paperwork on top of paperwork!), waiting for five years before
discovering how useful a camp manager was to the project, and leaving too little
time each season to wrap up all the odds and ends in a calm and collected
way. Despite these mistakes, we are pleased with the results of
our 8 years of relatively intensive field work and study. We don't lose
artifacts, we haven't lost a student (and have had remarkably few "problem"
students), and we are well on our way to produce a monograph length study of our
work. So, if I am lucky enough to embark on another project like PKAP, I can
only hope that it turns out as well.
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TITLE: The Teaching Blogosphere
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CATEGORY: Teaching
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DATE: 06/16/2010 11:31:07 PM

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Just a quick repost from over on <a
href="http://teachingthursday.org/">Teaching Thursday</a>: If you read
this blog, chances are that you read other blogs like it. So I thought it
would be a useful exercise to crowd-source some of the more useful teaching
related blogs on the web. The three blogs that I check most regularly
are: <a href="http://tomprofblog.mit.edu/">Tomorrow's Professor Blog</a>
aggregates a great selection of online teaching articles each day. It's a
great daily review of what's new across the web. <a
href="http://chronicle.com/blog/profhacker/27/">Prof Hacker</a> has recently
moved to the Chronicle of Higher Education's webpage. It deals with much
more than just the "hacking" or technology aspects of teaching to include
professional advice, productivity tips, and even recipes! Not to
be left out, Inside Higher Ed, offers the daily <a
href="http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/technology_and_learning">Technology
and Learning Blog</a> which covers ground similar to Prof Hacker with maybe a
slightly greater emphasis on technology. Finally, I'd be remiss not to
mention Mark Grabe's <a href="http://learningaloud.com/blog/">Learning Aloud
blog</a> which provides a nice array of personal technology tips with an eye
toward their use in the classroom. This is just a small sample of the
vast teaching related blogosphere. What blogs do you read to keep up with
recent developments in teaching? Let's work to create a list of teaching
blogs that you find useful as a resource. Post your favorite blogs in the
comments section over at <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/">Teaching
Thursday</a>!
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TITLE: Near Disaster on PKAP Airship One
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DATE: 06/15/2010 11:34:56 PM

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The chaotic second flight of <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/pylakoutsopetria_graduate/2010/06/pk
ap-airship-one-and-the-end-of-the-season.html">PKAP Airship One</a> has become
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an instant legend around these parts. Contrary to what the manual says,
we now know that the PKAP Airship One is capable of a 4g negative dive. <a
e-voyage-of-pkap-airship-1.html">Scott Moore has documented it</a>. He'd
tell you where it occurred, but it's classified and he'd have to kill you.
(If you don't know what I'm talking about ask somebody my age or Google "4g
negative dive").
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TITLE: From blimp to page
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DATE: 06/13/2010 11:05:06 PM

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An afternoon with the newest tool in the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological
Project arsenal, PKAP Airship One, produced a series of spectacular aerial
photographs (the adventure of the airship was documented by <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/pylakoutsopetria_graduate/2010/06/pk
ap-airship-one-and-the-end-of-the-season.html">Dallas Deforest here</a>).
I did some quick, post-processing of the low-altitude aerial photographs,
which I document below. My main interest was transforming the aerial
photographs into quick plan views. I first georeferenced the image (and
orthorectified them to compensate for any distortion) using a series of points
acquired by GPS. I then sketched in the most visible features in
the photograph in ArcGIS. The final image is a drawing, base on the photo,
prepared for ground-truthing this afternoon in the field. <a
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right: 0px" border="0" alt="Building_Photo"
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href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2013484159ad1970
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EMAIL:
IP: 208.107.184.168
DATE: 06/14/2010 11:40:41 AM
That's so cool!!
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TITLE: Documenting the Damage
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DATE: 06/10/2010 10:34:42 PM

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Over the last four or five years, we've witnessed first hand the work of
looters on our site in Cyprus. Their work with metal detectors has left
pockmarked fields in their wake, and this past year they left a 2 m deep hole at
the site of Vigla. The hole was probably not worth the looters
efforts as all it did was expose a 2 m high stretch of fortification wall which
I diligently worked with Dimitri Nakassis to document yesterday evening.
This sectional of wall is the best preserved stretch of the wall surrounding
the height of Vigla. Even more useful, it is the only stretch visible (for
the moment at least) on the northern side of the height and confirmed our
suspicions regarding the course of the wall in this area. Unfortunately,
its excavation by looters prevented us from retrieving any significant
chronological data from the hole despite a few pieces of coarse ware scattered
about inside the hole. <a
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IP: 71.162.226.29
DATE: 06/11/2010 10:05:00 AM
Oh man, I've got to dig up an essay I read sometime ago about the looter-
archaeology relationship and how it is fundamental. Both need each other (for
prospecting at different levels). I've started reading this 1920s Greek novel
and it starts with a couple of looters. I wonder why Postprocessualists don't do
more with looters. Now, that would be a fabulous ethnographic project!!!
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TITLE: Cleaning Time
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BASENAME: cleaning-time
DATE: 06/09/2010 10:20:46 PM

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 We finally have received permission from the British base to work out
at our site. Since the students leave this coming weekend, this means re-
prioritizing and frantic days of fieldwork. One of the top priorities has
been to clean up the site of Pyla-Koutsopetria so that we can complete the
documentation of both our excavations and the architecture exposed by previous
work on the site. Cleaning a site involves removing invasive weeds,
"winter wash" (that is dirt that has come into the site over the winter months),
and trimming up the inevitable slumping of our once carefully cut scarps.
It's pretty tedious work, but since we've spent the previous two-and-a-half
weeks in the museum, the students (and staff) attacked these jobs with extra
energy. <a
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src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2013483b489db970c
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src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20133f08af88d970b
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src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2013483b48b81970c
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src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2013483b48bde970c
-pi" width="304" height="404"></a> We also lost the services of our
hardworking cook today; Chester Beltowski left early this morning to return to
Grand Forks. This leaves us with a different cleaning situation... <a
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TITLE: Archaeology and the Tragedy of the Commons
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DATE: 06/08/2010 06:27:58 AM

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One of the more intriguing conversations this summer has been regarding the
role that the state, non-state institutions (foreign archaeological schools,
national archaeological associations, et c.), and even funding agencies play in
shaping the nature, extent, and character of archaeological fieldwork. The
delays in receiving permission to work on the British base (which, to be clear,
has nothing to do with archaeological matters), has tried the patience of the
team and forced us to adjust our fieldwork plans on an almost daily basis.
The question that I've been considering is what would happen if
archaeologists were simply allowed dig or survey wherever they wanted. If
all constraints were removed, would we experience the archaeological equivalent
of the tragedy of the commons? In other words, how deep are our
commitments to responsible archaeology outside of the structures of the
community? My experience on archaeological projects, including PKAP,
suggests that there is a tendency for every individual and project to view their
research as the most important. This "selfish" tendency drives projects
and individuals to prioritize their work over the work of others. Most
scholars understand their approaches, methods, research questions, and
conclusions to be of great significance. One result of this understanding
is, in part, to prioritize fieldwork that will contribute to their work.
The tendency to privilege one's own research over others had tended to drive
research projects to work up to any limits established by outside
authorities. In the Mediterranean, this generally involves the local state
archaeological authorities and any international archaeological institutions
involved in managing the work of foreign expeditions. In fact, these
institutions largely grew up to control the archaeological work in an
area. On a micocosmic level, we constantly debate at PKAP the priorities
of the project and the strategies of these largely friendly interactions involve
project staff moving their research interests at the top of the list. 
The tendency to privilege one's own research interests on both the micro
level (e.g. within a project) and at the macro level (among other projects)
might well create conditions where the overall health of the field and the
protection of the archaeological remains for future generations might not be a
primary concern. In a tragedy of the common scenario, the drive of
individuals to survive or prosper leads to the destruction of community
resources. There is no reason to imagine that this would not occur in an
archaeological context if forces did not exert influence.
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TITLE: Nicosia
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DATE: 06/06/2010 10:46:12 PM

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I took my first trip to Northern Nicosia on Saturday, and my
first stop was the 13th century Selimeye Mosque. This imposing Gothic
building was the cathedral of the Frankish bishop of Cyprus until being
converted into a mosque in the 16th century at the time of the Ottoman conquest
of the island. It remains a dramatic example of the fusion
of Frankish, Byzantine, and Turkish architecture. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20133f03cf31e970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20133f03cf32a970b
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-pi" width="404" height="304"></a> We also managed to catch
the Pope's motorcade and a quick glimpse of the holy head as he made his way to
a meeting with the Archbishop of Cyprus. The Pope's white hat stands out
against the black garb of the Orthodox clergy in the second photograph. <a
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TITLE: The Future of Ancient History
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DATE: 06/04/2010 11:07:22 PM

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The recent Annual Meeting of Postgraduates in Ancient History at Nottingham
in the UK inspired vigorous and wide-ranging debate among the PKAP staff.
Tim Cornell's and Robin Osborne's perspectives were particularly thought
provoking. <a
href="http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/classics/ampah/2010.aspx">Here's a link to the
meeting's site with embedded videos</a>. It's at least suggested viewing
for any graduate students in ancient history.
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TITLE: The Future of Ancient History
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DATE: 06/04/2010 10:38:36 PM

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The recent Annual Meeting of Postgraduates in Ancient History at Nottingham
in the UK inspired vigorous and wide-ranging debate among the PKAP staff.
Tim Cornell's and Robin Osborne's perspectives were particularly
provocative. <a
href="http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/classics/ampah/2010.aspx">Here's a link to the
meeting's site with embedded videos</a>. It's at least suggested viewing
for any graduate students in ancient history.
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TITLE: Open Ended Learning in the Summer
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DATE: 06/02/2010 11:22:24 PM

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One thing that I sometimes forget is that most of my learning has come not
from structured classroom space with structured relationships to material and
environment, clear learning outcomes, and rigid forms of assessment. Summer time
provides the perfect time of year for such open-ended learning. The
relentless pressures of teaching and learning are relaxed, the weekly grind of
meetings of subsides, and for those of us who do research or teach abroad, the
scenery changes allowing for those dislocating moments which are so central to
the uncanny experience associated with learning. For students and
faculty summer breaks can be akin to recess or playtime that some education
critics see as particularly valuable as an opportunity to develop skill well-
suited for real world engagement with the unfamiliar. The challenge for me
and our team, is how do we manage the unstructured environment especially when
both students and faculty tend to understand learning most frequently within far
more formal conditions. The greatest challenge to fostering
informal and unstructured learning is in encouraging students to take full
advantage of the unstructured opportunities, in allowing for the
unpredictability and inefficiency of unstructured learning, and in designing
assessment programs that can evaluate a wide range of possible outcomes.
 This summer, we've been waiting on a permit to conduct fieldwork and
during this time we have had a diverse group of students washing pottery and
biding their time with various small projects. Our lack of fieldwork has
removed one of the more easily assessed and focused aspects of the project's
educational goals. In its place, I've advocated for a series of open ended
learning events, which would force the students to engage with their environment
(the city of Larnaka) or a set of archaeological artifacts (plow-zone
pottery). There has been some reluctance to let the students just roam
free, however. Moreover, there is persistent concern that students
wouldn't "get" an assignment that was required, but at the same time had no
goals beyond engagement. In fact, students are as conditioned to expect
assignments with distinct, assessable learning goals. This, obviously, is
the cause of the most common student question in the classroom: "will this be on
the test?" The summer provides a chance for both faculty and students to
shift expectations and to recognize the opportunities for productive learning
outside the institutional constraints of regularized university life.
These opportunities, like recess or play time in younger children, can cultivate
the sense of wonder, observation, and engagement.
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TITLE: Provisional Discard at the Larnaka Museum Apotheke
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BASENAME: provisional-discard-at-the-larnaka-museum-apotheke
DATE: 05/31/2010 06:06:48 AM

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Due to a bit of a paperwork issue and a series of British holidays, we have
not been able to get the students in our field should out to our site.
While there is plenty of work to do at the museum where we are gaining momentum
in processing artifacts, we are still working to find ways to get our students
to flex their fieldwork brain-muscles. In other words, we hope to find
ways to get the students to think archaeologically on a larger and more complex
scale than the individual artifact. One of the suggestions that I
made was that we could get the students working on the amazing assemblage of
material present just outside the museum storerooms. Unlike the
"archaeological" material in the storerooms, the assemblage of stuff in the
storage area's courtyard represents a whole range of storage and discard
practices. While documenting and studying the various objects, stored, and
discarded used by the local archaeological establishment may seem to some (of my
colleagues) as a classic example of busywork, I think that it would be a great
exercise in archaeological description. It also is an interesting
opportunity to consider the remains of a wide range of archaeological and
conservation practices. As archaeology comes to play a more and more
prominent role in the presentation and performance of the modern state, we have
to assume an increasing amount of recovered archaeological material itself re-
entering new archaeological contexts. <a
c-pi"><a
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TITLE: Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project gains pace
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BASENAME: pyla-koutsopetria-archaeological-project-gains-pace
DATE: 05/28/2010 06:54:15 AM

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It's been a bit of a slow start to the summer work at the <a
href="http://www.pkap.org/">Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological
Project</a>. Some of this may be because my bag and computer power supply
were lost for a bit, but after a roundabout trip to the island, I am back in the
blogging business. But if you miss this PKAP blogosphere, then you ought
to check out our staff blog here: <a
title="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/pylakoutsopetria_season_s/"
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/pylakoutsopetria_season_s/">http://m
editerraneanworld.typepad.com/pylakoutsopetria_season_s/</a> And follow
us on Twitter (now that I have my phone and can provide exciting blow-by-blow
descriptions of our work) with the hashtag: #pkap Or at the <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/PKAPBlogAggregator.html">PKAP
Blog Aggregator site</a>. We've spent the last few days in the museum
attempting to set priorities for the study season, introduce the students to the
project, and organize the ceramics that need to be processed. Our biggest
challenge right now is that the paper copies of many of our forms have gone
missing in our time away from the Larnaka Museum. On the one hand, this is
not surprising since the museum is an active and busy place all year
around. On the other hand, we had hoped that our paper data recording
sheets would remain in relatively close proximity to the physical artifacts for
the duration of the project. The missing sheets provide another challenge,
the data has not been entered into our database yet and this was one of the
goals of the 2010 PKAP season (we have copies back in the US). One of the
main downsides of paper copies is that they can't be multiple places at once,
like our digital databases. While we hope to get copies of our artifact
sheets from the US before too long, their absence makes it harder for us to
225
identify and focus on particular artifacts as we prepare our catalog for

publication. We've become totally dependent on our ability to querry data
efficiently in order to identify patterns in our finds data that will reward
further research. This weekend, we take the students on trips to Paphos,
the monastery of Ay. Neophytos, and the small coastal site of Ay. Georghios-
Peyeas and Maa. then, on a special Sunday trip, to the Classicla to Late Roman
site of Amathous and then to the seaside town of Zygy which once prospered as a
major export port for the islands carobs. We appear to have a good group of
students this year, so these trips should be exciting. 
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TITLE: Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project gains pace
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It's been a bit of slow start to the summer work at the <a
Project</a>. Some of this may be because my bag and computer power supply
were lost for a bit, but after a roundabout trip to the island, I am back in the
blogging business. But if you miss this PKAP blogosphere, then you ought
to check out our staff blog here: <a
title="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/pylakoutsopetria_season_s/"
editerraneanworld.typepad.com/pylakoutsopetria_season_s/</a> And follow
us on Twitter (now that I have my phone and can provide exciting blow-by-blow
descriptions of our work) with the hashtag: #pkap We've spent the last
few days in the museum attempting to set priorities for the study season,
introduce the students to the project, and organize the ceramics that need to be
processed. Our biggest challenge right now is that the paper copies of
many of our forms have gone missing in our time away from the Larnaka
Museum. On the one hand, this is not surprising since the museum is an
active and busy place all year around. On the other hand, we had hoped
that our paper data recording sheets would remain in relatively close proximity
to the physical artifacts for the duration of the project. The missing
sheets provide another challenge, the data has not been entered into our
database yet and this was one of the goals of the 2010 PKAP season (we have
copies back in the US). One of the main downsides of paper copies is that
they can't be multiple places at once, like our digital databases. While
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we hope to get copies of our artifact sheets from the US before too long, their
absence makes it harder for us to identify and focus on particular artifacts as
we prepare our catalog for publication. We've become totally dependent on
our ability to querry data efficiently in order to identify patterns in our
finds data that will reward further research. This weekend, we take the
students on trips to Paphos, the monastery of Ay. Neophytos, and the small
coastal site of Ay. Georghios-Peyeas and Maa. then, on a special Sunday trip, to
the Classicla to Late Roman site of Amathous and then to the seaside town of
Zygy which once prospered as a major export port for the islands carobs. We
appear to have a good group of students this year, so these trips should be
exciting. 
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TITLE: First days on Pyla-Koutsopetria 2010
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DATE: 05/27/2010 12:26:03 AM

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I've made it to Cyprus, but my bag has not. Inside this bag is the massive
power brick for my computer, so for the time being, I am reduced to using my
iPad as my primary computer. As various pundits have observed, the iPad is much
better suited for consuming media than its production. In other words, my blog
posts will be short.
On the positive side, the flight gave me an opportunity to read Michael

Given's most recent article on The Ottoman landscape of Cyprus (Given and
Hadjianastatsis, BMGS 34 (2010), 38-60. Drawing on textual and archaeological
evidence, Given and Hadjianastasis reconstruct segments of the Ottoman period
Cypriot landscape looking at history of a series of villages on the northern
slope of the Troodos mountains.
I also read Charles A. Stewart on the 8th century vaulted churches of Cyprus,
particularly those on the Karpas (JSAH 69 (2010), 162-189). These buildings
represent an important, albeit local, transitional step between wood-roofed
basilicas and more centrally planned, vaulted or even domed structures.
Finally, we've begun to introduce the students to our work in the museum,
the local topography, and local sites. So far the students and staff are filled
with early season energy and enthusiasm. Stay tuned!! 
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TITLE: You're not going to dig?
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DATE: 05/24/2010 08:20:08 AM

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As I put the final touches on my packing for my trip to Cyprus, I want to
address a question that I have been asked numerous times over the past few
weeks. What do you do over there if you're not digging? And why aren't you doing
fieldwork this summer?
As for the first question, my project, the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological
Project, has never been a traditional excavation. In fact, the project started
with no intention of digging at all. Our initial research methods and goals
involved conducting an intensive pedestrian survey across the the Pyla coastal
zone. Excavation served to ground truth various hypotheses developed by survey
and remote sensing. So, we had never intended to excavate large areas or conduct
a full-scale excavation of buildings. Instead, the goal was to establish
chronology of subsurface remains, to try to determine their function, and to
generate a stratified sample of artifacts to which we could compare our survey
materials. So, in short, our excavations were limited in scope and, as a result,
limited in duration.
Despite the limited nature of our excavations, they, nevertheless, produced a
good bit of material that requires careful documentation. We will devote most of
the 2010 season to documenting excavated material and preparing detailed catalog
entries for important artifacts collected during excavation and survey. As we
have begun to prepare our final analysis of the Pyla region for publication, we
have identified artifacts, units, and contexts that require more thorough and
comprehensive documentation. Over the next four weeks, we'll spend time making
sure that the key pieces of archaeological evidence are thoroughly analyzed so
that they can support our arguments.
Fieldwork is the most fun part of archaeological work, but as the pioneering
underwater archaeologist <a
href="http://www.archaeology.org/0307/etc/conversations.html">George Bass
recently quipped</a>, "my most exciting discoveries have all come in the
library". The same can be applied to the artifacts stored away in museum
storerooms which when cleaned from the dirt of the field can often reveal
crucial information overlooked during the bustle of excavation or survey. Our
ceramicist's careful attention to each artifact is a time consuming and tedious
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process, but the results of his work (and the entire teams efforts to facilitate
his work by cleaning artifacts, dividing them into lots, keeping records, and
cataloging) will allow us to reconstruct the history of the site in a way that
digging another or even just a bigger hole would not enable us to do.
 
So, off to Cyprus today, to spend four weeks or so in the museum storerooms
helping our ceramicist go through our collected corpus of artifacts. As with
every year, this blog will continue through the summer, although perhaps with a
few short interruptions. Also be sure to check out our <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/pylakoutsopetria_undergra/">Undergra
duate Perspectives Blog</a>, <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/pylakoutsopetria_season_s/">the PKAP
Season Staff Blog</a>, and our long-running, <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/pylakoutsopetria_graduate/">Graduate
Student Perspectives blog</a>. Or check out the <a
Blog aggregator</a> for the most recent posts from all three.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Nick Karatjas
EMAIL: karatjas@iup.edu
IP: 144.80.228.225
URL:
DATE: 05/24/2010 09:18:33 AM
Have a great and productive trip and time in Cyprus. Sorry I cannot be there
this year.
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DATE: 05/21/2010 08:27:53 AM

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The countdown to the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project is official on,
so we'll spend today running errands and making final preparations for a Monday
departure. In the meantime, you can enjoy a little bevy of quick hits:
<ul> <li>I love reports and statistics, so I was pretty excited when the <a
href="http://www.und.edu/dept/datacol/reports/subFolder/sophomore%202010/sophomo
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re2010.htm">2010 University of North Dakota Sophomore Satisfaction Survey</a>

was released by our Office of Institutional Research.</li> <li>If you share my
worry about the state of graduate education in the U.S., the you certainly need
to read the <a href="http://mygradspace.wordpress.com/2010/05/17/the-future-of-
graduate-education-in-the-u-s/">latest report of from the Council of Graduate
Schools</a>. And, for more info on Graduate Education, you should
certainly bookmark, the other blog in our household: <a
href="http://mygradspace.wordpress.com/">The UND Graduate School Blog</a>.
It's curious that the <a href="http://chronicle.com/section/Home/5">Chronicle of
Higher Education</a> does not feature a blog on Graduate Education in the
US.</li> <li>Teaching Thursday begins its summer semi-slumber this next
week. We'll keep posting throughout the summer (perhaps not with the same
regularity), but our readers move on to more summer related tasks like mowing
the lawn, family vacations, and neglected research projects. Before you
go, be sure to read <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/2010/05/20/more-first-
year-teaching-reflections-two-different-experiences/">the last installment</a>
in our series of <a href="http://en.wordpress.com/tag/first-year-
reflections/">First Year Teaching Reflections</a>.</li> <li><a
href="http://ghostsofnorthdakota.wordpress.com/">Ghosts of North Dakota</a>
continue to update their growing catalogue of photographs of abandoned North
Dakota towns. Their most recent trip through the "abandoned" landscape of North
Dakota produced some pretty brilliant results.</li> <li>While the <a
blogosphere</a> is about to return to bloom, it is now joined by some new
Mediterranean fieldwork blogs. I'm keeping an interested eye on my old
buddy Rangar Cline's <a href="http://undertheumbriansun.blogspot.com/">Under the
Umbrian Sun</a> blog which will document their work at the excavations at Vicus
ad Martis Tudertium.</li> <li>In recent weeks, the Penn State student run blog
<a href="http://onwardstate.com/">Onward State</a> has attracted a good bit of
media attention. Being involved in re-imagining the University of North
Dakota's web presence, I am not sure that the imperiously named "Web Oversight
Council" fully understands the potential power of a site like Onward State and
its ability to influence the image of the university on the internets.
</li></ul> Off to run errands!
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TITLE: Another Thesis: American Scheherazade
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DATE: 05/20/2010 07:30:52 AM
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Nigar Soubra, one of my M.A. students here at the University of North Dakota
will soon defend her thesis. It's entitled "American Scheherazade: Strategic
Orientalism and Hybridity in the Ottoman Tales of Demetra Vaka Brown".
Here's the abstract:
<blockquote>
In the academic era of Post-Colonial scholarship, the discourse of
Orientalism is particularly under close observation and it is a subject for
heated debates among many Post-Colonial scholars. Since Edward Said‚Äôs
Orientalism identified this discourse as a homogeneous historical and political
process, the subsequent field of scholarship engaged in the process of
understanding and re-defining the term of Orientalism. Post-colonial hybrid
personas who were actively engaging and strategically re-addressing the course
of Orientalism destabilize Said‚Äôs monolithic definition and create a ground
for a more complex discussion of this seemingly diverse discourse, which
extended beyond Western colonial agendas. A hybrid cultural status of a Greek-
American writer and an immigrant from the Ottoman Empire, Demetra Vaka, as well
as her first publication, Haremlik, are the focus of this thesis, which
implements a ‚Äúclose-reading‚Äù of the narrative in order to understand the
author‚Äôs ambivalent use of Orientalism. It is argued that Vaka Brown‚Äôs
culturally in-between status granted her a privilege of authorial authority and
authenticity in her representations of the East to the West. Vaka Brown
ambivalently not only re-addressed the previously constructed Orientalist
stereotypes but also engaged in developing Orientalist knowledge through
classification and representation of cultural difference. It is argued that Vaka
Brown utilized Orientalism strategically in order to establish her authorial
authority based on her origins, to map the cultural differences between the East
and the West, and to bring an air of commercially desirable exoticism to her
narrative. In the era of American material Orientalism, when American popular
culture was enchanted by the allure of exotic merchandise and the idea of
escapism, Haremlik represented an authentic voice of experience and a story
about the ‚Äúother.‚Äù In Haremlik, Orientalism is a tool for mapping of
cultural differences and a hallmark for marketing. It is argued that Vaka
Brown‚Äôs strategy for representing an inherent incompatibility between the East
and the West was imbedded in her nostalgic idea about the timeless and
unchanging Orient. The idea of westernizing Orient threatened the author
expertise on the intimately familiar Orient. Not only did the westernization of
the Ottoman Empire destabilize her knowledge about the intimately familiar
‚Äúother,‚Äù but also the idea of the cosmopolitan Ottoman Empire‚Äôs
disintegration and the rise of Turkish nationalism threatened the existence of
Greek minorities in Turkey.
</blockquote>Congratulations Nigar!
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TITLE: Byzantine Archaeology and Indigenous Archaeology
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BASENAME: byzantine-archaeology-and-indigenous-archaeology
CATEGORY: Byzantium
DATE: 05/19/2010 08:50:53 AM

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Over the last few weeks, I have been re-reading some work on indigenous
archaeology and considering its application to the study of Byzantium. The new
edition of <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/archaeological-theory-an-
introduction/">Matthew Johnson's Archaeological Theory</a> spurred this,
in part, as did a more careful reading of <a
href="http://www.unl.edu/rhames/courses/current/readings/McGheeAmAnt08.pdf">Robe
rt McGhee's 2008 critique</a> of indigenous archaeology in American
Antiquity 73 (2008), 579-597. The main arguments supporting indigenous
archaeology stem from the idea that indigenous peoples (broadly construed)
understanding the material past in different ways from that articulated and
advanced by "scientific" (broadly construed) archaeology. In its most radical
applications, indigenous archaeology sees "traditional" Western archaeological
practice as the continuation of centuries of imperialism rooted in the physical
appropriation of the past. Advocates of "scientific" archaeology, of course,
argue that the miracle of the Western scientific approach to disciplines is that
the theories, methods, and conclusions are universal and universalizing. This
makes it possible, in their view, for Western archaeologists to contribute to a
universal understanding of an indigenous past. Indigenous archaeologists
(perhaps more properly the advocates of indigenous archaeology) argue that
Western archaeological practice developed from profoundly different
understandings of time, the past, and material culture which preclude
representing indigenous pasts in ways that do not intentionally undermine
indigenous practices at the expense of Western values.
I've maintained (even occasionally on this blog) that the notion of
indigenous practice is no limited to groups traditionally represented (by the
West) as indigenous, but that we are all indigenous to someplace. As silly as
this seems, this simple notion allows us to re-position European practice as not
simply Western and imperialist and, frankly, "bad," but as indigenous as well.
This has obvious parallels with <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/provincializing-europe-postcolonial-thought-
and-historical-difference/">Chakrabarty's ideas of provincializing Europe</a>
and undermines the oppositional character of both the West (to the East or to
the "other") and the "indigenous" as categories. In other words, Western
practices are indigenous too.
The problem becomes, however, that scholars traditionally understand Western
archaeological practices through the lens of historical analysis and in the
"context" of specific historical developments. As a result, the methods involved
in understanding and writing this history of archaeological practices draw upon
the same basic intellectual frameworks and methods that inform Western
archaeological practices themselves. From a theoretical and methodological
perspective, this creates a kind of circular analogy whereby western archaeology
is understood only through the western practice of history. Ironically, perhaps,
this circularity is liberating inasmuch as this same circularity besets
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traditionally identified indigenous practices as well which often find draw upon
"indigenous" models for understanding the past to validate and authorize
particular archaeological practices.
Where does all this leave Byzantium? This is what I am beginning to attempt
to work out:
Byzantium clearly possessed an indigenous archaeology which manifest itself
through dream inspired excavations, the use of spolia, the practice of
inventio (the rediscovery of lost sacred objects) and translatio
(the transfer of sacred objects from one place to the next), and the practice of
renovation, refurbishment, and reconstruction. All of these practices represent
particular views of the material past that contribute to a broader understanding
of Byzantine history and Byzantine culture. (I've documented some of these
practices <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/30697799/Caraher-Dream-Archaeology-
2010">here</a> and <a
href="http://books.google.com/books?id=U2KXRCJ3gq8C&lpg=PP1&dq=Gregory%2
0Caraher%20Medieval%20Post%20Medieval&pg=PA267#v=onepage&q&f=false">
here</a>). These practices represent profoundly Byzantine attitudes to the past,
to material culture, and to significant (and sacred) places in their world.
These practices remain embedded within persistent sacred narratives and continue
to produce meaningful landscapes. All of this suggests that these indigenous
archaeological practice continue to function and inform social behavior on some
level.
Moreover, the persistence of a kind of "Byzantine archaeology" suggests that
discrete pre-modern archaeological practices existed in the West and
produced meaningful landscapes. In other words, "Western" practice is neither
historically unified, exclusively modern, nor even necessarily exclusionary.
Western archaeology in all of its modern, disciplinary, manifestations
nevertheless circulates in a world of archaeological practices that continuously
challenge it exclusive right to produce meaning. Byzantine and other
archaeologies that exist at the margins of disciplinary practice present
important avenues for the revitalization of archaeology as a discipline. Not
only do these practices demonstrate the potential for differing forms of
archaeological knowledge of co-exist, but also reinforce the historical,
religious, and even irrational influences on the seemingly universalizing
methods of modern archaeological research.
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TITLE: Medieval and Post Medieval Archaeology of the Mediterranean - 2011
Archaeological Institute of America Colloquium
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BASENAME: medieval-and-post-medieval-archaeology-of-the-mediterranean---2011-
archaeological-institute-of-america-colloquium
CATEGORY: Byzantium
CATEGORY: Medieval and Post Medieval Greece Interest Group of the AIA
DATE: 05/18/2010 07:15:05 AM

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I just heard the good news that the Medieval and Post-Medieval Interest Group
of the AIA has had a panel accepted at the 2011 AIA. The proposal is from
David Pettegrew (the Interest Group president from 2008-2010) and Amelia Brown
(current president 2010-). I'll post updates on the panel including the
abstracts for the papers and hopefully the podcasts of the actual panel over at
our <a href="http://pendentive.wordpress.com/">Pendentive Blog</a>. 
Here's the abstract for the entire colloquium session and the paper
titles. Looks like a great panel. "Travel to Greece between
Antiquity and the Grand Tour" Two sets of travel texts have consistently
formed the backdrop to archaeological interpretations of ancient Greek sites and
landscapes: Pausanias's 2nd-century Description of Greece and early modern
accounts of western Europeans, who themselves often wrote with an awareness of
Pausanias. Throughout most of the 20th century, archaeologists attempted to
relate these texts to the new discoveries of excavation and survey, while in
very recent years scholars have sought to understand these accounts, and the
landscapes they represent, in terms of their particular social and intellectual
contexts. In general, however, there has been very little research on travel to
Greece between Pausanias and the start of the Grand Tour, despite the growing
recognition that interregional communication continued uninterrupted between the
3rd and 17th centuries, both in Greece and in the Mediterranean more broadly.
Indeed, the textual evidence for Late Antique, Byzantine, and Ottoman travel to
Greece is greater than is often realized as historians, geographers, imperial
functionaries, sailors, merchants, students, Hellenes, Christian pilgrims,
monks, ‚Äòbarbarian invaders,‚Äô refugees, pirates, Crusaders, knights, and
armies, among many others, visited the peninsula and islands of Greece. It is
true that most of these travelers did not (or even could not) record their
visits to Greek lands in writing, but the extant textual evidence is not
insubstantial. Some educated travelers followed ancient writers and prefigured
the Grand Tourists by recording their interest in the monuments of classical
antiquity while others ignored the classical past and sought places associated
with St. Paul and Christian holy men and women, or viewed sites unaware of
either Christian or classical pasts. The textual evidence itself exists in
the context of an ever-expanding body of material culture of Late Antique to
Ottoman date produced by both urban excavation and regional survey. In this
colloquium, we analyze the varied written sources for different kinds of travel
into, within, and around Greece between the 3rd and 17th centuries together with
the regional archaeological evidence to illuminate landscapes from Late
Antiquity to the Ottoman era. Our goal is to combine both kinds of evidence to
better understand post-antique travel and the sites and landscapes visited
before the Early Modern era. Papers "Intellectuals on the
Isthmus of Greece," David K. Pettegrew, Messiah College "Christian
Pilgrimage to Byzantine Corinth," Amelia R. Brown, University of
Queensland "Two Italian Travelers on Karpathos in 1923 and c 1423, and an
archaeological explanation for Sorzadori," D.J. Ian Begg, Trent
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University ‚Äú'To tell you something very special': Cyriaco of Ancona in

Greece,‚Äù Diana Gilliland Wright, Independent Scholar "Athens through
Ottoman Eyes." Pierre A. MacKay, University of Washington
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TITLE: Teaching Monday: Reflections on the End of a Year
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CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 05/17/2010 09:06:13 AM

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BODY:
As I work to get my final grades together for the Spring semester, I leafed
back through my teaching notebook and began to think a bit about how to change
my classes next semester. (I've already blogged at some length about <a
aching-with-twitter-an-interim-report.html">my Twitter experiment this
semester</a>). I have to good fortune of teaching the same classes almost every
semester, so I have a nicely iterative environment to experiment. This also
allows me to chart trends over multiple semesters and make observations about
the kind of variation present in my classes.
So for this semester, I have five observations:
1. Three years ago, I started a multiple-guess option for my History 101:
Western Civilization class. I allowed the students to opt into a full multiple
guess test, a half-multiple guess and half essay, or an all essay exam. At this
time, I created a fairly robust test bank and revised my lectures to ensure that
I hit on the answer for each question. Eventually, I recorded these lectures and
podcasts (more on this later). Each semester, I add a few questions to the test
and cycle a few questions out basically at random. Over the past three years,
most students answer each question correctly. That is to say, that over 50% of
the students answer the questions right and the average grade on the multiple
guess sections hovered around 60%. I haven't done more sophisticated statistical
analyses on these questions, but it never ceases to amaze me that students'
responses do not pattern more clearly.
2. Attendance woes. Students do not come to my classes. I probably average
less than 60% attendance in my larger 100 level night class and less than 70% in
my midlevel, majors class. I've tried all sorts of tricks to get students to
attend. In other words, I've incentivized student attendance, but I need to do
it better. This is absurd on some level: I use incentives to make students want
to do something that they have paid to do. Generally, these incentives have a
pedagogical goal. In my large lecture class we do a series of in-class writing
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assignments focusing on the use of primary source readings. Some of these are
individual writing assignments (which tend to put pressure on individuals to do
the reading and come to class prepared), some are small group assignments (which
force students to pool their preparation and resources), and some are large
group assignments (which encourage students to hash out the best answers from a
group of with similar levels of preparation). These in-class writing assignments
are facilitated by myself and my teaching assistant, focused on building the
skills required in the short paper and on the essay sections in the exam, and
contribute to a discussion grade that is worth 30% of their final grade. Despite
the grade and pedagogical incentive to come to class students still skip in
remarkable numbers. The reasons are similar: the class is too long (it's a 2:20
minute night class), they work, they can listen to versions of the lectures as
podcasts, they are busy with other classes, and my class competes with
Lost. The defeatist in me sees the reasons for cutting class as being
deeply embedded in student culture (here?), but part of me thinks that I can
find the right combination of incentives and penalties to break student
resistance to attending class.
3. Podcasts are the new textbook. Two years ago, I transitioned from using
textbooks to using my own podcasts to provide basic narrative for my class. I
did this for three reasons. First, podcasts could serve both my in-class and my
online class . Second, textbooks are really expensive and even though most of my
101 students sold their textbooks back at the end of the semester, I was
skeptical that the use of the book was worth the money that the students paid.
Finally, I had this strange idea that students would find it easier to listen to
podcasts than to read a textbook. While there is no disputing that podcasts
serve my online teaching well and that they are free, students -- according to
my very informal poll -- did not find my podcasts any more appealing than a
textbook. In fact, many of the students admitted to not listening to them at
all. This surprised me as I had tried to use the podcasts to turn class time in
a more dynamic space where I could talk about big, conceptual issues in the
history of the West and spend time focusing on class writing. The result,
however, seems to have been that many students felt that the podcasts were as
good as my lectures and opted to neither attend my lecture nor listen to the
podcasts. Yikes.
4. Drafts. I used to be a big advocate of students writing multiple drafts of
papers. In fact, I structured an entire class midlevel history class around this
practice. In the best case scenarios, students would diligently work to improve
a manuscript focusing on various different skills in each version and eventually
produce a sophisticated and polished final draft. In the most-case scenario,
students would work hard on one draft of the paper - either the first or more
often the last - and temporize with the rest making insignificant edits,
cosmetic fixes, or (most annoyingly) only those changes that I recommended
explicitly. So, this year I did away with multiple drafts and instead assigned
multiple, different, unrelated, short papers each of which focused on developing
a particular skill set: focused thesis, citation formats, good prose, et c. The
final paper of the semester required the students to bring together these skills
into a single paper. The result: well, as a group, these papers were no way
worse than the results from papers for which I required multiple drafts.
This got me wondering if the formal process of producing drafts -
particularly completed, substantial, and relatively polished drafts - was an
artifact of older technologies and practices which focused on the production of
relatively complete texts which were then subjected to editing. This made sense
in a world where handwritten texts had to have a degree of polish to be legible
and type-written texts involved a significant commitment of time and energy. As
a result, drafting involved the creating of relatively work-intensive texts,
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which were then only re-produced after receiving substantial editing. Today,
producing a text is relatively easy (as this blog undoubtedly shows!). Editing
can be performed on the fly, printing is a separate and fairly easy process, and
as a result we focus less on creating distinct versions of a paper and more on
the malleability of the text-always-in-revision. In this environment submitting
a copy of a text for critique marks the end of the editing processes, during
which time the text exists on screen or on scrap papers, rather than in a
polished format suitable for circulation.
5. Process versus Product. Along similar lines, I have included components of
my classes that focus on process. A colleague here uses journaling as a way to
capture parts of the intellectual process. I've been using an old-school
threaded discussion board where I post weekly discussion questions. The students
do not discuss the questions as much as write short reflections on the
discussions questions supported with evidence from the primary source readings
for that week. Mostly these short reflections are poorly considered,
historically problematic, or logically flawed. Despite that, the students
nevertheless write around 3000 words a semester and strive over 15 weeks to
write using historical sources as evidence. I've defended these short
assignment, which I evaluate on a 5 point scale, as ways to get the students
write and useful contributions to my goal of having students write 5000 words a
semester in an introductory level class. What I need to do now is set up a way
to evaluate whether these short assignments are successful in making the
students better writers or whether they merely reinforce poor writing
practices.
By noon today, I will have submitted my grades and dust will largely have
settled from another semester. Hopefully, I'll have some new ideas by the time
the fall semester rolls around.
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AUTHOR: Amalia T
IP: 75.27.145.208
URL: http://hellia.blogspot.com
DATE: 05/17/2010 02:50:04 PM
In regard to multiple drafts, I think you might be on to something. Not to say
that writing and rewriting are not important (as I know far too well, even if I
never believed it in college), but we do much more editing and revision during
the writing process now than we could have done before.
Recently I went back to handwriting for a novel and I realized just how much I
depended on and utilized the delete key during my writing process. At least a
third of every page was crossed out as I wrote and edited and changed my
thoughts mid sentence. It is so easy to erase and correct, backtrack and
rewrite, that even a first draft will have been edited multiple times during the
process of putting it together.
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That being said, academic writing and fiction writing aren't the same, and the
process of marshaling argument is a little bit more complex than storytelling,
but writing is still writing when all is said and done.
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COMMENT:
EMAIL:
IP: 134.129.192.225
DATE: 05/17/2010 03:04:53 PM
Amalia,
Actually, I think that academic writing and fiction writing are very similar in
terms of process. And I think that the changes that are taking place now in how
the process works (and is taught) are relevant in both spheres!
Bill
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DATE: 05/14/2010 07:48:47 AM

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It's the last Friday of finals' week and my stack of grading has reached
imaginable proportions. So, there's plenty of time for a Friday varia and quick
hits. Plus, it's sunny for the first time in weeks.
<ul>
<li>I succumbed to peer pressure and have <a
href="http://und.academia.edu/WilliamCaraher">an academia.edu page</a>. I'm not
sure what it will do for me, but I have it. Two people follow me.</li>
<li>I'm pretty amused by all <a href="http://mashable.com/2010/05/12/another-

iphone-4g-found/">these "lost" Apple 4th generation iPhones</a>. I am not sure
why it is taking so long for people to figure out that it's a viral marketing
campaign. Do you think that they might have learned to appreciate these tactics
from the sustained pre-iPad buzz which surely contributed to the significant
sales bounce in the first few weeks of its release?</li>
<li>Home grown tech 'n' teaching blogger Mark Grabe <a

href="http://learningaloud.com/blog/2010/05/14/simple-is-good-posterous-is-
simple/">writes a bit about</a> and <a href="http://grabe.posterous.com/">on
Posterous this week</a>.</li>
<li>I received my <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Archaeological-Theory-

Introduction-Matthew-Johnson/dp/140510015X/">Second Edition of Matthew Johnson's
Archaeological Theory</a> today. Weekend reading.</li>
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<li>I like messed around a bit with the <a

href="http://www.zotero.org/blog/zotero-maps-visualize-your-zotero-library-on-
the-globe/">new Zotero mapping plug-in</a> (yep, even plug-ins have plug-ins)
and I like what <a
href="http://electricarchaeologist.wordpress.com/2010/05/12/zotero-maps-
visualizing-archaeology/">Shawn Graham observes</a> regarding the potential to
map things from, say, an <a href="http://opencontext.org/">OpenContext.org</a>
or Omeka database.</li>
<li>I spent a few hours a day over the last few days playing around with <a
href="http://rapid-i.com/content/view/181/190/">RapidMiner</a>. It's pretty
cool.</li>
<li>If you haven't checked out <a href="http://en.wordpress.com/tag/first-

year-reflections/">our series of reflection from first year faculty</a> at the
University of North Dakota, you need to hop over the <a
href="http://teachingthursday.org/" title="Teaching Thursday">Teaching
Thursday</a>.</li>
<li><a
href="http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_mac/family/macbook_pro?mco=MTM3
NDczMzg">I ordered a new Macbook Pro</a>. I'm going down to 15 inches. With
cheap and large monitors these days, I no longer see the need for the 17 inch
laptop.</li>
<li>Australia v. Pakistan in the World T20 Final Four, and England looms on
the horizon, and Monte Carlo. A good weekend for sport.</li>
</ul>
That's all I can think of off the top of my head this sunny Friday morning.
The prospects of finishing grading, cleaning up my office, and taking a week to
reflect and prepare for Cyprus are amazingly appealing right now.
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IP: 76.104.197.147
DATE: 05/14/2010 08:43:02 AM
"William added themselves to the department Department of History"
So nice to see grammar as an essential part of academic webbing.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Chuck Jones-
EMAIL: cejo@uchicago.edu
IP: 128.122.167.53
URL: http://ancientworldonline.blogspot.com/
DATE: 05/14/2010 09:09:02 AM
Upload some of your articles to acadermia.edu to see what it can do for you
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I've documented on this blog the work to renovate the second floor of O'Kelly
Hall where the Department of History now resides. Most of this has come from a
well-meaning, but misguided efforts to impose corporate order on a creative
space. (For more see <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2010/02/ok
elly-graffiti-under-erasure.html">here</a> and <a
om-merrifield-to-okelly.html">here</a> and <a
king-the-professional-office.html">here</a>)
So, I was ecstatic yesterday morning to see the first reappearing of public
art in the newly renovated second floor of O'Kelly. It appeared above the wood
"accent line", in a little awkward space below the sloping ceiling of a stair
well. It's a modest start. I have no idea who did it. But it is fantastic to see
something public and creative in the newly sanitized O'Kelly hall way.
<img
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20133ed89d7cb970b
-pi" width="200" height="334" alt="201005130746.jpg" /> <img
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20133ed89d7d3970b
-pi" width="200" height="334" alt="201005130752.jpg" /> 
I feel myself becoming more creative and less
corporate already. Now back to grading.
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One of the casualties of this year's hectic schedule was the Pyla-
Koutsopetria Archaeological Project Newsletter. Each year, the PKAP directors
produced the venerable newsletter and printed it out, in color no less, on
paper. But this year, with <a href="http://www.chss.iup.edu/rsmoore/">Scott
Moore</a> being department chair in History at Indiana University of
Pennsylvania, <a href="http://home.messiah.edu/~dpettegrew/">David Pettegrew</a>
frantically working on two books with a newborn in the house, and my typical
hectic schedule (with seems somewhat lame in comparison), the newsletter did not
appear in paper form.
But, we'd be remiss if we didn't keep our PKAP Public appraised of our winter
work and summer plans.
Summer 2009
The 2009 field season was our most successful to date. Our main focus was our
continued work on a series of soundings at Pyla-Vigla and Pyla-
Kokkinokremos. On Vigla, Prof. Dimitri Nakassis assisted by David
Pettegrew and Brandon Olson (Penn State) directed soundings designed to
establish the date of the fortification wall discovered in 2007 and to try to
learn more about the maze of walls across the interior of the plateau. While we
were not able to date the fortifications with any precision despite moving over
2 m of earth, we were able to establish that the structures across the interior
of the Vigla plateau were most likely domestic in nature and had an important
phase dating to the Hellenistic period. Michael Brown and Dr. Sarah
Costello (University of Houston) opened two soundings on Pyla-
Kokkinokremos in an effort to continued to clarify the function,
chronology, and organization of this Late Bronze Age site. Michael directed the
research at this site and it will appear in his University of Edinburgh
dissertation which should be completed this summer. We also returned to
excavations at Pyla-Koutsopetria which had been begun almost 20 years
earlier by Dr. Maria Hadicosti. We sought to determine the phasing and
chronology of a collapsed room apparently associated with an Early Christian
basilica complex. Dr. Sarah Lepinski and graduate student Dallas
Deforest (Ohio State) expanded two earlier trenches and revealed multiple
episodes of destruction and repair at the site.
We could not have accomplished our work across all three sites without the
help of a gaggle of Messiah College undergraduates: Melissa, Becky, Kyle,
Nick, Courtney, Rachel, Caitlin, Matt, and the inimitable Alex. This
group was joined by Jon Crowley, a three year PKAP veteran from IUP and
Paul Ferderer a graduate student from UND.
-pi" width="480" height="319" alt="201005120837.jpg" />
241
We also had the assistance of Prof. Beverly Chairulli and her
remarkable Ground Penetrating Radar rig. While we still await the final results
of her work at Vigla and across a series of survey units with high density
artifact scatters some 300 m to the north of Vigla, we are optimistic that these
will enable not only to discover new activity areas in the Pyla-
Kousopetria region, but also to show that our modest soundings represent
small windows into the extensive and still unexcavated remains. By using GPR
(along with earlier seasons of resistivity and intensive survey), we have been
able to learn a significant amount of information about the sites in our region,
while only excavating small areas.
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2013480b717b6970c
-pi" width="480" height="240" alt="201005120749.jpg" /> 
Susan Caraher worked not only in the field
each day, but also collaborated with Sarah Costello to keep artifacts moving
through processing at the museum storerooms in an orderly way. Without the care
of our registrars data collected from the field would be lost. 
As anyone who follows this blog knows, we continued our Artist-in-Residence
program with Ryan Stander, an M.F.A. student in photography from UND (for
more on them see below!) . The video work of Ian Ragsdale complemented
Ryan's spectacular photographs and we look forward to the third installment of
the PKAP documentary series this coming fall!
-pi" width="480" height="360" alt="201005120800.jpg" /> 
Last, but not least, graduate student Dalton Little (UND) worked with
us as camp manager and cook bringing his own unique brand of cranky efficiency
to the project. Ian's wife Randi also joined the PKAP team and helped
with all manner of archaeological and child care related tasks necessary to keep
the project running smoothly.
Winter 2009-2010
This has been a particularly hectic summer for most members of the PKAP team.
Not only was Michael Brown frantically working to complete his dissertation, but
rest of the PKAP team began the process of writing up the results of our 7 years
of field work and study. As a result, we now have first drafts of 3 or 4
substantive chapters completed for the final publication of our work in the
Pyla-Koutsopetria micro-region. 
We also made significant strides in entering and processing the massive
quantity of archaeological data recorded in the field over the past 7 seasons. A
diligent group of interns keyed and collated data in the Working Group in
Digital and New Media laboratory on the UND campus. As a result, we have
completely digitized the results of our survey and our excavation notebooks. So,
PKAP researchers can now access both images of the paper copies produced in the
field and the keyed version of the same data into a relational database. Over
next few months we hope to have the remainder of our finds keyed into our ever
expan ding finds database, as well as the linked to our massive collection of
both site and artifact photographs.
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20133ed83c97c970b
-pi" width="480" height="360" alt="201005120825.jpg" style="padding-bottom:0px;"
/>
The winter of 2009-2010 also saw the exhibition of
Topos/Chora, the work of Ryan Stander our artist-in-residence. Again helped by a
team from the Working Group in Digital and New Media, we helped Ryan produce a
gallery show at the Empire Arts Center in Grand Forks, but also created a more
242
permanent online gallery of his photographs from Cyprus accompanied by a series

of essays, podcast interviews, and a special trailer of Ian Ragsdale's
forthcoming documentary. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.und.edu/exhibits/show/toposchora">Here's the
link</a>. 
Summer 2010 
This summer, we plan to have much smaller team accompanying us to Cyprus.
While we will still bring together students from Messiah College, IUP, and UND,
and researchers from across the U.S. and Canada, we will focus our energies on
completing the documentation of the finds from the various soundings excavated
over the past 2 years. Scott who has played more of a supporting role the past
few years will take center stage and direct the work at the Museum. Since Susan
Caraher won't be joining us this year, this will involve not only setting
research priorities, but also making sure that artifacts move through the museum
in an orderly way.
While this can sound like boring work (compared to the excitement of
excavating), the chances of discovering something really exciting is, in fact,
every bit as high. A single sherd can change the dating of an entire building
and a link our small site on the Cypriot coast to trade networks that span the
entire Mediterranean.
As per usual, we'll keep the PKAP Public up-to-date with blog posts, tweets,
and podcasts from the field. We'll make an announcement here when the our little
army of bloggers begin to produce content again! So, stay tuned! 
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Here are two cool conferences to fire the imagination.
First, the Gennadius library will host a conference entitled "Philhellenism,
Philanthropy, or Political Convenience? American Archaeology in Greece" next
week. The Gennadius web site provides information on <a
href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/index.php/archives/philhellenism-workshop-scope-
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and-content">the scope</a>, <a

href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/index.php/archives/philhellenism-workshop-
list">the speakers</a>, and <a
href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/index.php/archives/philhellenism-workshop-
abstracts">the abstracts</a>. As one might expect the American School Director,
Jack Davis, and the School's Archivist, Natalia Bogeikoff-Brogan, have assembled
an impressive group to talk about the deeply intertwined phenomena of
philanthropy, philhellenism, and archaeology. I suspect that the ongoing events
in Greece will provide this conference with an even more urgent backdrop. (Also
check out the <a
href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/index.php/gennadius/eventDetails/mystras-
identities-and-perspectives/">one-day conference on Mistra</a> two days
later!)
Next fall, the University of Texas will host a conference called "<a
href="https://webspace.utexas.edu/sjf365/CC3/Intro.html">Corinth in
Contrast</a>". This is the third in a series of conferences focusing on the
history and archaeological of Ancient Corinth. The first has appeared a book,
called <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/urban-religion-in-roman-
corinth-interdisciplinary-approaches/">Urban Religion in Roman Corinth</a>, and I suspect that the <a
href="http://www.utexas.edu/research/pasp/corinth/index.html">second
conference</a> is a forthcoming publication. I am among those invited
to give a paper which I have tentatively entitled, "The Ambivalent Landscape of
Christian Corinth: the Archaeology of Place, Theology, and Politics in a Late
Antique City". As the conference is centered around:
<blockquote>
"the polarities that we often use to characterize forms of
inequality‚Äîurban/rural, male/female, Greek/Roman, rich/poor, pagan/Christian,
Jew/Gentile, monotheist/polytheist, slave/free, high/low status, etc.
Participants are also encouraged to move beyond these polarities by 1) bringing
forward new data; 2) reexamining existing data; 3) showing connections between
different forms of inequality; and/or 4) applying new methods or theories. The
focus on Corinth should allow us to produce more nuanced appraisals and more
complicated categories of analysis. "
</blockquote>
Since ambivalence is a viable opposite of polarity, I think I should be able
to speak to the major themes of the conference.
It's also exciting to see that there will be a PKAP contingent including
David Pettegrew and Sarah Lepinski as well as Sarah James who is one of the
conference's organizers and an honorary PKAP member by marriage. The Corinth-
Koutsopetria Axis is a intellectual alliance to be reckoned with!
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TITLE: Teaching with Twitter: An Interim Report
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BASENAME: teaching-with-twitter-an-interim-report
CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 05/10/2010 09:38:23 AM

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I've just completed my first large scale experiments with integrating Twitter
into my classroom. For those who don't regularly follow this blog, <a
aching-with-twitter-tuesday.html">I used Twitter in my 100 level Western
Civilization at the University of North Dakota</a>. The class met once a week,
at night, for two hours and twenty minutes. Most of the students are freshmen
and sophomores, with a spattering of juniors and seniors typically in the hard
sciences or engineering. The two biggest problems in the class are poor
attendance (I am competing with Lost and, to be blunt, the class has a vigorous
in-class writing component and perhaps not the most interesting lectures) and a
tendency among students to disengage sometime over the course of the semester.
Because the class meets only once a week and attendance is a struggle, students
tend to disengage from the class and vanish into the night until the midterm or
final forces them to re-engage, but at that point it is sometimes too late to
get back into the swing of things, make up myriad missed assignment, and get a
decent grade in what is otherwise a fairly easy class.
Twitter seemed one way to try to engage
the students on the days when my one-day-a-week, 100 level class is probably the
furthest thing from their minds. So, I created a Twitter page and began to Tweet
regularly. Over the course of the semester, this account acquired 111 followers,
all students in my class, or over 75% of all the students in the class. Signing
up for Twitter was voluntary, although I motivated the students with a vague
promise to make it work the 3 minutes necessary to sign up. Over the course of
the semester, I posted 152 Tweets (approximately 10 per week) which represent
both public tweets and responses to student tweets. I posted several scheduled
tweets each week. Generally, I'd post a quick recap to the class on Wednesday,
I'd post weekly announcements on Thursday, and on Friday I would post some kind
of trivia questions on my world famous "Trivia Friday". 90% of the Tweets were
directly concerning the class. The other 10% of the Tweets concerned campus
activities or current events (e.g. the death of Guru, et c.) that touched
loosely on classroom conversations.
I also experimented with using Twitter to provide a back channel in class.
Using weekly hashtags (#H101W3 = History 101 Week 3), I encouraged students in
the lecture style class to post questions or comments during class. I then had
an active version of <a href="http://www.tweetdeck.com/">Tweetdeck</a> on the
classroom computer on which I could check students tweets or project them on the
screen during my lecture. Most, if not all, of the students in the class have
cell phones and many (perhaps 30%) had laptops in class.
While I was not disappointed with the Twitter experiment -- after all it
involved only a modest time commitment on my part (in general, a tweet took me
less than 2 minutes to write so less than 20 minutes per week on average) --
only a tiny fraction of my students embraced it and it did not appear to have
any positive (or negative!) impact on the class. Here are some observations:
245
1. UND Students are not on Twitter. While I did not sample the entire class,
my random sample of 25 students show that only 5 of this group use Twitter in a
regular way and I suspect that the number of regular Twitter users in my class
is even lower. So, Twitter is not built into these students' information
ecosystem. My morning routine involves starting Tweetdeck and scrolling quickly
through my Tweets, but this seems unlikely to be the case for our students. As a
result, Twitter appeared to the students as "something extra" and, as a result,
an inconvenience rather than a helpful supplement to their already existing
information network. As I have discussed elsewhere on this blog, <a
ading-detroit-and-student-resistence.html">students resist anything that they
see as a work increase</a>, even if we make clear how these additional "burdens"
advance learning objectives.
2. Shared Commitment. Twitter works best within a community of people with a
shared commitment to engaging one another and the topics at hand. In other
words, Twitter is not a particularly efficient tool for one-to-one communication
between faculty and a student or it is at least no better than email. Twitter
facilitates community interaction in which students can respond to one another
or interact with each other in a public way. Because my class only met once a
week in a lecture hall setting, had an prevalent lecture component, was rather
large (100+), and encompassed a wide range of students of different academic
years and standings, there was little existing community for Twitter to
facilitate. As a result, students did not, in general, respond to each other,
but penned tweets generally directed toward me and usually in response to a
specific query. A parallel trend appears in my efforts to encourage the use of
Blackboard's wiki tool to produce study guides and class notes. A few students
work hard to create a nice set of notes, and the rest of the class become
passive consumers. Despite the bribe of points, there is no shared commitment to
the class that would support the collective effort to create a body of notes.
Neither Twitter nor the Wiki is enough to create community.
3. Techniques. Despite my efforts to give the students plenty of instruction
on how to use Twitter, my students still struggled with things like hashtags
(used to mark posts as belonging to a particular week or lecture), and we never
used retweets or replies. This contributed to the one-way nature of the Twitter
conversations especially as I was the only one responding to anyone in the
class.
4. Technology. Finally, students compartmentalize technology. Most of the
tweets in my class come from "the web" which I assume means through either their
desktop or laptop computer as opposed to a mobile device like a phone or
smartphone. In other words, despite the recent concerted interest to integrate
social media with mobile devices, very few tweets and almost none from first
time Twitter users came from phones (either as text message or Android/WinMo
based apps -- we do not have iPhones here in North Dakota). This was
disappointing because I thought Twitter would be widely accessible from mobile
phones and, as a result, sufficient democratized not to leave less technophilic
students at a disadvantage. Another technological issue that arose was the slow
speed of Twitter searches made it hard to capture Tweets on specific lectures
during class time. As a result, students were not able to create a realtime back
channel, but only one delayed by 10 to 15 minutes which over the course of a 2
hour class is significant.
So, while my first experiments with Twitter in the class did not produce the
social media plus education utopia that I had hoped, it did highlight certain
weaknesses in the class as I now teach it. I need to work to create more of a
community in the large lecture class if I want to tap into this community with
tools like Twitter or wikis. These tools do not create the sense of community,
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but only serve to manage it. At the same time, I need to find ways to
communicate the technical aspects of Twitter more effectively so that students
can maximize the effectiveness of the medium.
I am excited about the prospect of integrating Twitter into the online
version of my Western Civilization I courses this fall and spring. Since the
students already expect to interact with me and their fellow students through an
online medium, there might be a greater sense of value assigned to the simple
Twitter interface (as compared to the more cumbersome blackboard interface).
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COMMENT:
IP: 64.134.241.231
DATE: 05/10/2010 01:41:45 PM
very interesting
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: sauerkraut
EMAIL: IamSauerkraut@yahoo.com
IP: 98.235.97.184
URL: http://run4chocolate.wordpress.com
DATE: 05/20/2010 08:19:04 PM
Many people do not use twitter from mobile devices because they believe it
involved extra payment for data. At least that's been my experience. And some,
ie, me, prefer the simplicity of tweeting from the docking station. There's
too much other stuff which needs remembering besides the steps needed to get
each app up and running, and working.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Kostas Arvanitis
EMAIL: kostas.arvanitis@manchester.ac.uk
IP: 82.6.78.121
URL: http://digitalheritage.wordpress.com
DATE: 05/29/2010 06:55:58 AM
Thanks for sharing this; very interesting indeed!
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DATE: 05/07/2010 09:13:57 AM

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It's a rainy and maybe even snowy Friday morning for my Varia.
<ul>
<li><a href="http://mattgemmell.com/2010/04/26/creative-space-and-ipad">This
is a cool review of the iPad</a>, and this makes me feel just <a
href="http://mashable.com/2010/05/06/ipad-owner-demographics/">a bit guilt about
owning one</a>.</li>
<li>ProfHacker always <a href="http://chronicle.com/blogPost/How-to-Grade-

Students-Class/23726/">has clever, interesting, and useful stuff</a>. Although I
think their <a href="http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Open-Thread-Wednesday-
/23448/">Open Thread Wednesday</a>, should be Open Thread Thursday.</li>
<li><a href="http://topics.edition.cnn.com/topics/athens_greece">The events in

Greece this past week</a> (really this past year) are really sad and stressful.
I hope that the country finds ways a way out of its difficult time with a
minimum of violence and in a way that is equitable for all of Greek society.
(And I do realize that this statement is banal and a cop-out)</li>
<li>While I write this, I'm listening to Australia v. India, and <a

href="http://www.cricinfo.com/world-twenty20-
2010/engine/current/match/412691.html">Australia is off to a good start</a>.
(Right now, Australia has launched three balls outside of the grounds, but Shane
Watson just got out.)</li>
<li>I'm tempted to try to figure out <a href="http://prezi.com/">an excuse to

use Prezi</a>.</li>
<li>I'm pretty happy with my new HTC Incredible, but Android will take some
getting used to. I can't quite figure out how to integrate Google Docs with
Android yet. Any tips?</li>
<li>I keep forgetting to post a link to this good, local blog: <a
href="http://philosophyinpubliclife.blogspot.com/">Philosophical Questions Every
Day</a>.</li>
<li>A nice short post on <a

href="http://mygradspace.wordpress.com/2010/05/04/social-networks-and-higher-
education-whos-doing-it/">Social Networks and Higher Ed with a local
focus</a>.</li>
<li><a href="http://nickname.und.edu/logo/">More on the Logo and Nickname</a>

(and this will be endless). The good thing is that there will be more
committees.</li>
<li><a href="http://media.twitter.com/blackbird-pie/">We can now experiment

with embedding tweets in blog posts</a>.</li>
<li>If you haven't checked out <a href="http://en.wordpress.com/tag/first-

year-reflections/">our new series of blog posts on Teaching Thursday</a>
featuring the reflections of first year faculty here at UND, you should.</li>
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<li>This is reading and review day!</li>

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DATE: 05/06/2010 07:58:42 AM

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I'm going to shift the attention from my blog to <a
Thursday</a> where we will begin a series of posts by first year faculty at the
University of North Dakota. These posts capture both the energy of first year
faculty, but also (and more importantly) the new perspectives on how to teach on
our campus.
The last few weeks have been really productive for the Teaching Thursday
"team" (which is basically me). We've come up with some great ideas for the blog
new year that will see it expand from one day a week to a new goal of 10 posts a
month. But for that Teaching Thursday excitement, stay tuned.
For now, head over to <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/" title="Teaching
Thursday">Teaching Thursday</a> and check out the first post of our <a
href="http://en.wordpress.com/tag/first-year-reflections/">First Year
Reflections</a> series.
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TITLE: Islands in the Corinthian Gulf: Some Archaeological Data
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CATEGORY: Thisvi-Kastorion Archaeological Project
DATE: 05/05/2010 02:48:31 PM

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Over the last few days, I've taken a break from my normal routine to key in
data collected by the Ohio Boeotia Expedition from the island of Kouveli in the
Gulf of Domvrena on the northern coast of the Corinthian Gulf near the site of
Thisvi. The results of the work by the OBE on the islands in the Gulf of
Domvrena have appeared in scattered publications with the most substantial
publications appearing in a volume of the DXAE and Byzantine
Studies (<a
href="http://www.zotero.org/billcaraher/items/126637709">here</a> and <a
href="http://www.zotero.org/billcaraher/items/126638161">here</a>) <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20133ed475055970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20133ed4750d5970b
-pi" width="400" height="307"></a> This continues my work
to move the data collected over the course of the Ohio Boeotia Expedition to
digital form. As with the earlier data, I keyed the data into an Access
database that will, hopefully, eventually, feed into the transect data from the
survey of the island of Kouveli stored in a GIS. Right now, however, all I
have is the finds data. Despite the lack of a spatial
component, I think that I can make some modest observations about the character
of the data collected from this survey. In Gregory's 1986 publication, he
reports that he surveyed 138,000 m2 with a sample area of 207 m2. This
produced 494 artifacts (and an overall density of 2.39 m2 or an imposing 23,864
artifacts per ha). That is impressive artifact density despite the
relatively small sample. Of these 494 articles, we have records from at
some 320 of artifacts that were at least read in a preliminary way and the
majority of these artifacts (60%) were assigned a chronology -- albeit in small
handful of cases this chronology was as broad as "Ancient". As Gregory
noted in publication, the vast majority of artifacts date to the Late Roman to
Byzantine period. The assemblage was predominantly coarse and utility
wares, particularly combed, spirally grooved, and wheel ridged body sherds which
likely derived from storage or transport vessels. There was also a
significant number of cooking posts and a light scatter of fineware including a
piece of (LRC) Phocaean Ware from 10 and other, perhaps regionally produced, red
glazed sherds in table ware forms like plates. It's striking to note that
over 54% of the identified sherds were body sherds rather than more traditional
feature sherds like rims, handles, and bases. Also
interesting is the quantity of later material on this rather rough and rugged
island. The Byzantine period is substantially represented and some of the
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relatively "late" late Roman artifacts - datable to the 7th century AD for
example - suggests evidence for continuity of use between the Late Antiquity and
Byzantium. While a closer analysis of the material from the island is
necessary to determine function, it would appear that Byzantine finewares are
more recognizable in the assemblage,particularly brown and green glazed ware,
chaffing dishes and bowls, and at least one piece of Constantinopolitan white
slip. (It would be romantic to see this sherd as the ragged fringe of the
prosperous ties between Boeotia and the Capital in the Middle Byzantine
period). Even later still, it appear there was some Ottoman
period activity on this island as "Turkish" period glazed wares appear in the
assemblage. It will be very useful to correlate this material with recent
studies of Ottoman period activities on the nearby mainland. The presence
of table ware on the island suggests that activity on the island was more than
simply episodic exploitation and might suggest more sustained habitation.
Even into the modern period small quantities of table ware appear alongside
other evidence of modern activities like shell-casings. Most striking of all, perhaps, is that dearth of clearly identified
earlier material especially compared the seemingly vigorous landscapes of the
nearby mainland. Unlike the hinterlands of Thisvi or, further east,
Thespiae, there is apparently no evidence for Classical and Hellenistic period
activity on the island and very little evidence for activities from the Roman
period. Even a relatively rugged island, then, seems to show signs of the
Late Roman economic and demographic boom in Greece.
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This past week, a public records request went out on campus for all of our
syllabi for the Spring and Fall 2010. My first thought was: if they really want
my syllabi or to have an idea what I am teaching in my classes they should just
go to my blog or web site. Putting aside the inefficiency of doing that for
every faculty member across campus, it made me think a bit about how blogging
made our work at the university more transparent and how important this could be
in a day-in-age when the university, and public education more broadly, is under
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the duel threat of declining resources and elevated (and perhaps unrealistic)
expectations.
I was asked some months ago by a person in our admissions office here, what
is was, exactly, that I did. After recovering briefly from the shock that this
person would not be intimately familiar with my brilliant academic career
(cough, cough), I tried to explain why it was that I needed to be in my office
over the weekend and what it meant when I said that I was swamped by data.
More recently, I've encouraged my public history students to write <a
href="http://webmuseweavers.wordpress.com/">a blog, and they have, more or less,
here</a>. One of the blog posts considers the difficulty in understanding
community in the age of internet and easy travel. We tend to imagine communities
that revolve around shared values or even experiences rather than any physical
proximity. As a result, it is not only possible, but likely that someone in the
admissions office here would not know what people at the university did even
though they worked less than 200 m from their offices. On the other hand, it is
likely that this individual knows well what folks in the admission offices at
other universities around the country or the world do.
Finally, there is a recent initiative on campus to engage more fully with the
local community. This is partially a response to the flap over the name and logo
here, but it may also be a genuine effort to bridge the gap between the "town
and gown" and to recognize our common ground and our shared resources
These conversations got me thinking about how my blogs function within our
spatially local community and whether they serve as a point of contact between
people here in Grand Forks, in North Dakota or even just at my home university.
<a href="http://lancasterarchitecture.wordpress.com/">A blog</a> authored by a
class offered by Kostis Kourelis, for example, has succeeded in helping bridge
the gap between his home university (Franklin and Marshall College) and t<a
href="http://articles.lancasteronline.com/local/4/252906">he community in
Lancaster</a>. My blog -- with its tendency to focus on Mediterranean
archaeology -- has not captured the public attention as effectively.
<a href="http://teachingthursday.org/" title="Teaching Thursday">Teaching
Thursday</a>, on the other hand, was explicitly designed for the University of
North Dakota community tends to be read as much by folks elsewhere as by folks
here on campus. While this accomplishes the goal of improving the transparency
of university level teaching methods, it does not necessarily present what is
happening here on campus in a way that is of interest to the local community or
in a way that attracts to community's attention.
Recent interest in geolocating and enhanced reality as major additions to the
social media arsenal will certainly improve our ability to local our blogs
spatially. Services like <a href="http://foursquare.com/">Foursquare</a> already
leverage the social network of Twitter and GPS receivers built into new mobile
phones to establish spatially local connections on the internet. Enhanced
reality applications like <a href="http://www.layar.com/">Layar</a> enables an
individual to view a very simple "enhanced reality" and a GIS interface updated
in real time to view the social media, local businesses, and even tags left by
other users embedded in space. In the near future, people will be able to locate
our blogs spatially and use space to mark out a relationship to a community. In
fact, our ability to localize our blogs will make it easier (it is, of course,
possible now) to demonstrate (or even produce) relationships between the
specific place where the blog is located (or composed, hosted, or even
"anchored") and places discussed by the blogger.
The advantage of our ability to embed our blogs within real, lived space is
that we will be better able to recognize the place of the new media in relation
to our local selves. Our work will continue to be available and of interest to
anyone with access to the World Wide Interwebs, but we'll better be able to
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localize ourselves spatially and demonstrate the global links present in to our
local, lived, communities.
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DATE: 05/03/2010 08:43:22 AM

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Last week I juxtaposed reading <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/detroit-i-do-mind-dying/oclc/39157532">D.
Georgakas' and M. Surkin's Detroit: I do mind dying</a> (New York 1975)
and grading a stack of lower division undergraduate papers. This got me thinking
back to some posts from a couple months ago where I speculated that students
disregard particular sets of instructions as a form of resistance. Georgakas and
Surkin's work looks at the organization of resistance particularly among
minority (mostly African-American) auto workers in Detroit in the late 1960s and
early 1970s. They explore the rhetorical of the day and demonstrate the
pervasive overlap between developing radical ideologies and the institutions and
realities which promoted these positions. In their hands, grass-roots resistance
to the dangerous, unrewarding, and soul-crushing work on the Detroit assembly
line became the foundations for a genuine radical consciousness.
I am not going to argue that our students are on a course to a radical
consciousness through their resistance to what they perceive to be an oppressive
educational regime, but I will suggest that some of the patterns of student
behaviors are sufficiently consistent to be regarded - from the perspective of
behavior alone - as resistance. I'll admit that my sample is small, but to my
mind this has the benefit of capturing the "situatedness" of the acts of
resistance. Moreover, I'll contend that the forms of resistance are not merely
the gap between teaching and learning that is typical of educational
environments.
Over the last three weeks, I've encountered three forms of resistance.
1. The contraction. I insist that students do not use contractions in their
writing. As a result, contractions have proliferated. They are particularly
common in the opening paragraphs of papers.
2. Capitalization. I have begged students to observe the rules of
capitalization and even conceded the "obscure" rules like whether to capitalize
proper terms like "the crusades". As a result, students have stopped
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capitalizing proper names, names of cities, and in some cases, even the first
person pronoun.
3. Attendance. Over the last three weeks, I asked the students in my lower
division, major's course, to make it appoint to attend the final month of the
semester where we will workshop writing and focus on preparing the final paper.
The next class, my attendance dropped by over 60% and the following three weeks
attendance was at its lowest point ever. Despite having taught for close to a
decade, I can't help feeling that asking students to attend constituted a kind
of rookie mistake.
All three of these issues are not earthshaking forms of resistance. My
students do not (as a rule) plagiarize, are polite and (generally)
conscientious, do not complain in class about workload or teaching philosophy,
and are as engaged in the learning process as you might expect students to be at
the 100 and 200 level. In other words, their reluctance to follow seemingly
simple guidelines are not symptomatic of an adversarial relationship between
"management" and "labor". Instead, I am regarding these measures as lines in the
sand gestures marking off the limits of my authority and the students'
willingness to embrace my expectations. I suspect that I could get students to
follow these guidelines with draconian measures (by definition out of the
proportion to the significance of the rule being enforced), but I suspect that
this would just displace student resistance elsewhere (which in the case of
class attendance would probably be a good thing).
In short, I've come to expect resistance to certain policies, and have noted
that they tend to coalesce around more marginal educational goals rather than
core concepts of the course. This distinguishes it from the various large-scale
union actions documented by Georgakas and Surkin, and places student resistance
in another category of resistance in which various kinds of work-slowdowns and
almost bureaucratized obstructions establish the limits of engagement in shared
goals.
Of course identifying places and types of resistance places faculty in the
potentially awkward position of seeing themselves as negotiators in the learning
process between the content (and expectations of whatever groups manage the
measurable learning outcome) and the student who ultimately the the final
arbiter in whether any learning expectation is reasonable. While we have seen
over the past few months the worse case scenario, when entire faculties (at the
secondary level) are let go after failing to negotiate the divergent
expectations successfully. At the university level, where students are adults,
student resistance must be taken serious and articulated as active behavior with
the potential to disrupt both the expectations of management and, ultimately, if
not resolved, the functioning of society and the economy.
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DATE: 04/30/2010 09:43:50 AM

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So, if you missed my talk yesterday, you can read it <a
other-better-attempt-at-dream-archaeology.html">here</a>.
And, if you missed a pretty interesting Teaching Thursday, you can read it <a
href="http://teachingthursday.org/2010/04/29/interdisciplinary-teaching-as-a-
chimera/">here</a>.
I have a pretty good weekend ahead my as I have tiny gap in my schedule which
should allow me do to finish up some odds and ends before the end of the
semester and the build up to the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project
season.
In the meantime, I'll write letters of recommendation, read <a
href="http://books.google.com/books?id=g-
NdglUBHSUC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Kristeva+Abject&hl=en&ei=jevaS
4bGE4nQM4_g3JMB&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0
CDMQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false">some Kristeva</a>, read some of the
essays in <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/hellenisms-culture-identity-
and-ethnicity-from-antiquity-to-modernity/oclc/192048201">K. Zacharia's edited
volume,</a> <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/hellenisms-culture-
identity-and-ethnicity-from-antiquity-to-
modernity/oclc/192048201">Hellenisms</a>, work
on a new edited volume project, put the finishing touches on an <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2010/04/ea
rly-chrsitian-baptisteries-a-short-description.html">encyclopedia article</a>,
and finish <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2010/02/ar
chaeological-ethnography-part-2.html">a book review</a>.
And, of course, listen to some of the World Twenty20 and watch the night race
at Richmond.
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TITLE: Another, Better Attempt at Dream Archaeology
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BASENAME: another-better-attempt-at-dream-archaeology
CATEGORY: Byzantium
CATEGORY: Mediterranean Archaeology in North Dakota
DATE: 04/29/2010 08:29:48 AM

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For those of you in the Grand Forks Metropolitan Area this evening, I am
giving a talk at the North Dakota Museum of Art in the Faculty Lecture Series.
The talk starts at 4:30 with a reception from 4:00. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2010/04/ip
ads-powerpoint-and-agency.html">Considering my post yesterday</a>, I promise to
include only a few illustrative slides using The Powerpointer.
My talk is entitled Dream Archaeology and represents the third version of my
efforts to come to terms with this subject. Unlike earlier versions, I think
that I problematize my paper somewhat better and add a bit of flair (mostly
because I am going to present it to relatively diverse audience). If you doubt
my efforts to make my paper better you can (although I don't recommend it) <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/WorkingPapers/Dream%20Archaeolo
gy_Working_Nov2008.pdf">read the first draft here</a>, <a
href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/29361884/Dream-Archaeology-2009">read the second
draft here</a>, and contemplate my third draft below:<a title="View Caraher
Dream Archaeology 2010 on Scribd"
href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/30697799/Caraher-Dream-Archaeology-2010"
style="margin: 12px auto 6px auto; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,Sans-serif;
font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 14px;
line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; -x-system-
font: none; display: block; text-decoration: underline;">Caraher Dream
Archaeology 2010</a> <object id="doc_487269490776634" name="doc_487269490776634"
height="600" width="100%" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"
data="http://d1.scribdassets.com/ScribdViewer.swf" style="outline:none;">
21c1iybbuqhac3sqcieh&page=1&viewMode=list" />
<embed id="doc_487269490776634" name="doc_487269490776634"
_key=key-21c1iybbuqhac3sqcieh&page=1&viewMode=list" type="application/x-
shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="600"
width="100%" wmode="opaque" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" />
</object> 
For more on Dream Archaeology without leaving the comfortable informality of the
blog, see below:
<a
eams-in-ravenna.htm">Dreams in Ravenna</a> 
<a
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Christian West </a><a

re-dreams-rel.html">Blindness, Dreams, and Relics </a><a
re-dreams-rel.html">More Dreams, Religion, and Archaeology </a><a
re-byzantine.html">More Byzantine Dreams... </a><a
eams-pausania.html">Dreams, Pausanias, and Archaeology </a><a
eams-inventio.html">Dreams, Inventio, and Archaeology </a><a
zani.html">Kozani</a>
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CATEGORY: Web/Tech
DATE: 04/28/2010 08:31:19 AM

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There two curious articles published yesterday. <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/27/world/27powerpoint.html?th&emc=th">O
ne was about Powerpoint</a> (or as I call it The Powerpointer) in the New
York Times (and picked up by the <a
href="http://chronicle.com/blogPost/PowerlessPoint/23518/">Chronicle of
Higher Education's Brainstorm blog</a>). The prevalence of Powerpoint in
military briefings has apparently reached epidemic levels and many folks within
the military are saying that the reliance on Powerpoint to communicate
information not only makes the seemingly endless stream of briefings
debilitatingly boring, but also might impair the ability to make good decisions.
In fact, one military official argued that Powerpoint is responsible for
creating "the illusion of understanding and illusion of control" in the U.S.
Military. Let's hope that this is hyperbole. What is clear, however, is that
creating, presenting, and enduring Powerpoint shows takes a tremendous amount of
time, and a significant part of that time is spent dealing (in both good and bad
ways) with Powerpoint rather than dealing with content of the Powerpoint
presentation. This would seem to be a perfect example of technology having
agency; Powerpoint creates a culture that depends upon the use of Powerpoint for
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its daily work, basic communication patterns, and ultimately its decisions
making.
<a href="http://academhack.outsidethetext.com/home/2010/apple-and-censoring-
education/">The other article appeared at the blog academHacK</a> and questioned
the value of the iPad in higher education. David Parry argued that Apple's
practice of censoring apps that do not coincide with rather ambiguous and
strictly enforced views on propriety offers a serious threat to the utility of
the iPad in the context of Higher Education. In large part, Parry's argument was
focused on the possibility that Apple would censor textbooks that appear as apps
on the device. This might happen, of course, but it seems to me another version
of a standard complaint: Apple's device is too limited and limiting to be useful
in a university classroom. Whether it is content creation, app censorship, the
devices inability to run Flash, or even the inflexible and relatively hack-proof
operating system, digital humanists have begun to rally against the iPad as
another example of the things wrong with how the computer industry approaches
academia. The fear is that the potential of the iPad will ultimately lull us
into accepting its limitations and, as a result, limiting the potential for
genuinely creative intersection of technology and learning. In other words, the
iPad promotes a coarsely transactional approach to teaching and learning and
facilitates the highly commodified packets of knowledge move from a relatively
inflexible content provider to consumer.
Both of these arguments postulate that the object (Powerpoint and the iPad)
exert control over the user in particularly unsubtle ways. Powerpoint somehow
makes military briefings boring or suspends critical inquiry. iPads create
apparently insurmountable barriers between content consumers (students) and
content producers. A little Bruno Latour could go a long way in this context.
Both the iPad and Powerpoint exist in a particular network of relations that
both influence how this technology is used and will be used. To assume that the
iPad will be used on University campuses without some kind of compromise
regarding its flexibility and issues of censorship marginalizes the power of
university faculty to find or create work arounds, to reject poorly designed
devices (just like many faculty members reject poorly designed textbooks or
poorly conceived website), or to create pedagogical environments where the
strengths of the iPad shine and its limitations are accommodated without
sacrificing the teaching or learning objectives.
The same can be said for the Powerpointer. Compared to the tedious practice
of preparing, creating, and maintaining collections of photographic slides, The
Powerpointer is revolutionary. Moreover, in a critical environment like the
university or the military, it can be controlled. Boring Powerpoint
presentations likely reflect boring lectures, unnecessary briefings, and a
culture of tedium rather than actually producing them. In fact, it may be that
The Powerpointer manifests agency by allowing us to recognize the inefficiency
of a particular culture or practice of which it is a part.
It is always disappointing to see a piece of technology blamed for its
limitations as if technology existed outside the human networks in which it is
used. Recognizing the role of technology in establish expectations is a valid
form of critique, but a symmetrical approach to understanding technology
demands that we give equal consideration to the character of the networks in
which the technology will function.
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One of the more interesting sub-plots in the ongoing University of North
Dakota logo and nickname scandal is the fate of the mighty Ralph Engelstad Area.
This monumental structure has hosted UND Ice Hockey games for the past 10 years.
As <a href="http://www.theralph.com/asp/default.asp?p=13">its web site</a> puts
it (drinking deeply of the ancient art of <a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ekphrasis">ekphrasis</a>): "It's impossible
to describe the $104+ million Ralph Engelstad Arena in just a words, but it is
described by many as the 'finest facility of its kind in the world.'" In short,
it is a lovely facility, built by an eccentric donor who built the arena and
established it it as a separate entity from the University. A not unbiased
description of the most controversial element of <a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Engelstad">Ralph Engelstad's life
appears in wikipedia</a>.
In recent years, the defining feature of The Ralph (as it's affectionately
known) are the thousands of images of the <a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:UNDsiouxlogo.png">Fighting Sioux
logo</a> including a massive one in inlaid granite on the floor of the lobby. By
all accounts, the almost ubiquitous use of the logo was intentional, and the
controversy surrounding the logo threatened to derail the construction of the
building.
Now with the logo and nickname almost certainly put to rest, the University,
the State, and the NCAA are stuck with this monumental building emblazoned with
thousands of symbols of the Fighting Sioux. Fortunately, the West has several
well-established traditions for dealing with just this kind of controversy. The
best known perhaps is damnatio memoriae, or the damnation of the memory
of an individual. Practiced by the Romans for centuries, this involves the
removing of the name and image of an individual who had fallen afoul of popular
or political favor. Typically this occurred after the individual's death. In
practical terms this involved erasing the name and often times image of the
individual physically from monuments. In fact, this typically occurred among the
elite, political, classes and, as a result, almost always had a monumental
component. In many cases, the practice of damnatio preserved just enough of the
name of the discredited individual to remind a viewer of that individual's fate.
So it did not involve eradicating the individual from all public memory as much
as preserving some tiny fragment of the individual to remind the public of that
individual's fall into dishonor. In the ruthless and competitive world of
259
Imperial Roman domestic politics, it was not enough to defeat one's opponent.
The memory of that defeat
The practice of damnatio memoriae found a subtle variation during the
Christian period when groups of Christians sought to suppress the practice of
paganism. Like in Roman politics, the Christian goal was not necessarily to
defeat the pagans. In fact, most Christians thought that the power of the old
gods had suffered defeat at the time of the incarnation (i.e. when Jesus, the
son of God, came to earth). Christians in the 4th-6th centuries, then, were
merely the mopping up operation. That being said, there are numerous incidents
where Christians sought to mark the defeat of the pagan gods through the
symbolically charged destruction of their temples and symbols. In one of my
favorites from Mark the Deacon's Life of Porphyry of Gaza, architectural
fragments from the burned and desecrated temple of Zeus in Gaza (the Marneion)
were used to pave the courtyard of the Christian church erected in its place, so
that:
<blockquote>
"When, therefore, the ashes were carried away and all the abominations were
destroyed, the rubbish that remained of the marble work of the Marneion, which
they said was sacred, and in a place not to be entered, especially by women,
this did the holy bishop resolve to lay down for a pavement before the temple
outside in the street, that it might be trodden under foot not only of men, but
also of women and dogs and swine and beasts. And this grieved the idolaters more
than the burning of the temple. Wherefore the more part of them, especially the
women, walk not upon the marbles even unto this day." <a
href="http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/porphyry.html">Mark the Deacon,
Vita Porphyrii, 76</a>.
</blockquote>
In most cases, it was the desire to monumentalize one's memory (or one's
causes) made damnatio memormiae possible. In this context, the problem of
removing all the logos from The Ralph evaporates. In fact, keeping some of the
logos present and visible (or at least obviously under erasure) will remind
visitors of the controversy and, in particular, who lost and who won. (And it
will remind all of us that at least part of this controversy has nothing to do
with actual Sioux, and almost everything to do with the structure of power
between donors, the NCAA, and the University community.)
I've offered some more thoughts on the <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2010/04/un
d-the-logo-and-the-name.html">logo and nickname controversy here</a>.
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AUTHOR: BrianB
IP: 134.129.193.248
URL:
DATE: 04/27/2010 10:46:11 AM
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Excellent entry! I love it when you tie the current world, especially locally,
to antiquity.
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CATEGORY: Weblogs
DATE: 04/26/2010 08:00:30 AM

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This is my 700th blog post and so it seemed like a good time to aggregate and
reflect on some metadata.
The blogs received on average 79 page views a day and over its three year
life I've had 87,657 page views. Over the past 120 days, however, I've had well
over 100 page views a day. I set as a goal (and I am not really sure why I have
goals for things like this) to have 100 page views a day; now that I have that,
I think I'll aim for 1000 page views a week. I've had 373 comments over the
lifetime of the blog. My bounce rate is a respectable 75.8%. The average time on
site is 1 minute 13 seconds and visitors look at 1.50 pages.
65% of my visitors are first time visitors and this has held pretty steady
over the past couple of years. That means that 35% of you like what you read
enough to come back! What's pretty cool is that over 20% of my visitors return
more than 9 times.
<img
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20133ecf66e79970b
</div>
Since my first post, I've had visitors from 149 countries with the US,
Greece, the UK, Canada, Italy, Australia, France, Germany, Cyprus and Denmark as
the top 10.
<img
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20133ecf66e6a970b
</div>
I also have had visitors from all 50 states with California, North Dakota,
Pennsylvania, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Illinois, Texas, Florida, and New
Jersey as the top 10.
<img
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20133ecf66e59970b
</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
 
</div>
261
The top referring blogs are the usual suspects with some new additions:
</div>
1. <a href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/" title="Kostis Kourelis">Objects-
Buildings-Situations</a>
</div>
2. <a href="http://www.archaeology.org/online/features/blogs/">Archaeology
Magazine</a>
</div>
3. <a href="http://www.iconoclasm.dk/">Iconoclasm</a>
</div>
4. <a href="http://grandforkslife.blogspot.com/">Grand Forks Life</a>
</div>
5. <a href="http://surprisedbytime.blogspot.com/">Surprised by Time</a>
</div>
6. <a href="http://electricarchaeologist.wordpress.com/">Electric
Archaeologist</a>
</div>
7. <a href="http://researchnewsinla.blogspot.com/">Research News in Late
Antiquity</a>
</div>
8. <a href="http://www.atrium-media.com/rogueclassicism/">Rogue Classicism</a>
</div>
9. <a href="http://antiquatedvagaries.blogspot.com/">Antiquated Vagaries</a>
</div>
10. <a href="http://ancientworldbloggers.blogspot.com/">Ancient World Bloggers
Group</a>
</div>
 
</div>
Thanks to everyone who links to my blog. I love that this list of blog
reflects so many of my research interests. I've also seen a pronounced uptick in
referrals from both <a href="http://twitter.com/BillCaraher">Twitter</a> and
Facebook. It seems that the social network is beginning to exert some influence
on who reads my blog.
</div>
 
</div>
I haven't posted any browser and viewer data <a
tadata-and-macintosh.html">since October 2009</a>, here's an update on that kind
of thing since that post.
262
</div>
 
</div>
Operating Systems:
</div>
Windows: 74.11%
</div>
Macintosh: 23.20%
</div>
Linux: 1.78%
</div>
iPhone: 0.46%
</div>
iPod: 0.08%
</div>
iPad: 0.05%
</div>
Android: 0.03%
</div>
 
</div>
Windows continues to decline among the readers of my blog and Macintosh
continues to grow. It's remarkable to think that from 2007-2008 Windows
accounted for 82% of my readers and Macintosh only 16.5%!
</div>
 
</div>
Browser:
</div>
Firefox: 52.95%
</div>
IE: 27.97%
</div>
Safari: 9.51%
</div>
Chrome: 6.14%
</div>
263
Opera: 1.78%
</div>
 
</div>
Firefox continues to be the most popular browser and by increasingly margins
over Internet Explorer. It's remarkable that from 2007-2008, Internet Explorer
accounted for 45.05% of traffic to my blog; now it accounts for less than 30%.
Chrome continues to become more popular and, it would seem, that Opera has
steadily become less popular. This is a shame since the newest Opera browser for
Mac is a sound alternative to Safari and far better than Chrome for OS X.
</div>
 
</div>
As I noted last October, I do think that my statistics speak to the particular
niche in academic culture that my blog occupies. Computer savvy archaeologists
and historians probably gravitate toward Macs and use Firefox.
</div>
 
</div>
Thanks for taking the time to visit this blog. I'm looking forward to the next
700 posts.
</div>
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Evan Nelson
IP: 134.129.168.218
URL:
DATE: 04/26/2010 09:11:20 AM
Congrats on 700; that's a thing to be proud of, too. I sometimes wonder how much
of the internet is blogs with less than ten posts.
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COMMENT:
EMAIL:
IP: 134.129.203.228
DATE: 04/26/2010 11:00:36 AM
Noice One! That is quite an accomplishment - may there be many more posts!
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Just a few quick hits on a beautiful Friday afternoon:
First, check out this cool series on digital history and public history: <a
href="http://chnm.gmu.edu/staff/sharon/bracket/21st-century-public-history-part-
i/">Part 1 of 3</a>, <a href="http://chnm.gmu.edu/staff/sharon/bracket/21st-
century-public-history-part-ii/">Part 2 of 3</a>... And it complements Tom
Scheinfeldt's recent post on <a
href="http://www.foundhistory.org/2010/04/21/digital-history-and-the-public-
history-curriculum/">Digital History and the Public History Curriculum</a> at
Found History.
Kathy Nedergaard continues to write <a
href="http://webmuseweavers.wordpress.com/category/kathryn-
nedegaard/">interesting posts</a> from my Public History/Digital History
Internship.
We were effected by McAffocalypse this week. <a
href="http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/21/mcafee-update--shutting-down-xp-
machines/">The recaps is pretty interesting</a>.
Are you excited that the <a
href="http://www.cricinfo.com/wt202010/content/series/412671.html?template=fixtu
res">World 20/20 is in our time zone</a>?
A good, practical list of advice for <a
href="http://teachingthursday.org/2010/04/22/strategies-and-tips-for-scholarly-
writing-and-publications/">academic writing</a> on Teaching Thursday. We aspire
to be a local versions of <a
href="http://chronicle.com/blog/ProfHacker/27/">ProfHacker</a> which just moved
over to the Chronicle of Higher Education's webpage.
University of North Dakota ranked number 1 on <a
href="http://www.forbes.com/2010/04/19/college-tuition-risk-public-personal-
finance-tuition_2.html">Forbes' "Tuition Risk List"</a>. This meant that we were
at least risk of a tuition increase. This may be a good thing for students, or
it may not be.
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TITLE: New Additions to the Lakka Skoutara Archives
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We have added another series of photographs to our Omeka archive of <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.und.edu/items/browse?collection=4">archaeologica
l and landscape photographs from Lakka Skoutara</a> in the southeastern
Korinthia. Tim Gregory and Lita Tzortzopoulou-Gregory took these photographs in
the summer of 2009 and they were prepared for the archive by <a
href="http://webmuseweavers.wordpress.com/category/kathryn-nedegaard/">Kathy
Nedergaard</a>, an intern at our <a
href="http://digitalgateway.und.edu/">Working Group in Digital and New
Media</a>. The archive is now over 650 images each with some amount of meta data
(including the name of the photographer, date of the photo, short description of
the feature, and some rudimentary tagging).
These photographs feature alonia (threshing floors) and cisterns from the
site. Both aloni and cisterns are common features in the Greek countryside. The
substantial construction of both cisterns and aloni makes them enduring features
of the Greek countryside and relatively easy to identify markers of intensive
agricultural practices. Alonia were crucial to the production of wheat and
cisterns, particular in the arid lands near the coast of the Saronic Gulf, were
important for watering animals involved in threshing and their human
companions.
We have full descriptions of the threshing floors and cisterns and before
this archive is complete we'll add the dimensions and even locations of these
features to the images. But for now, enjoy the images.
Alonia (Threshing floors)
<a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.und.edu/items/show/2058">Aloni 2</a>:
href="http://mediterraneanworld.und.edu/items/show/2058"><img
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20133ecdd6d2f970b
-pi" width="321" height="480" alt="201004220737.jpg" /></a>
href="http://mediterraneanworld.und.edu/items/browse/tag/Aloni+3">Aloni
3</a>:
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20134800d651f970c
<a href="http://mediterraneanworld.und.edu/items/browse/tag/Aloni+4">Aloni
4</a>: 
</div>
266
 
</div>
<a href="http://mediterraneanworld.und.edu/items/show/1993"><img
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20133ecdd6d45970b
-pi" width="480" height="321" alt="201004220732.jpg" /></a> 
</div>
href="http://mediterraneanworld.und.edu/items/browse/tag/Aloni+6">Aloni
6</a>
Cisterns and Wells:
<a href="http://mediterraneanworld.und.edu/items/browse/tag/Cistern+1">Cistern
1</a>: 
</div>
 
</div>
<a href="http://mediterraneanworld.und.edu/items/show/1989"><img
-pi" width="480" height="321" alt="201004220749.jpg" /></a> 
</div>
href="http://mediterraneanworld.und.edu/items/show/1989"></a><a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.und.edu/items/browse/tag/Cistern+3">Cistern
3</a>:
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20133ecdd6dc9970b
5</a>:
6</a>:
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20133ecdd6d37970b
8</a>:
267

9</a>:
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20134800d652d970c
href="http://mediterraneanworld.und.edu/items/browse/tag/Well+1">Well 1</a>:
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20133ecdd6d9e970b
href="http://mediterraneanworld.und.edu/items/browse/tag/Well+2">Well 2</a>:
For more on this project: 
<a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2010/03/cr
eating-ruins-formation-process-pictures-from-lakka-skoutara.html">Creating
Ruins: Formation Process Pictures from Lakka Skoutara</a> 
<a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2010/03/la
kka-skoutara-a-partial-archive.html">Lakka Skoutara: A Partial Archive </a><a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2009/10/be
tween-sea-and-mountain-the-archaeology-of-a-20th-century-small-world-in-the-
upland-basin-of-the-southeastern-korinthia.html">Between Sea and Mountain: The
Archaeology of a 20th Century "small world" in the upland basin of the
southeastern Korinthia </a><a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2009/08/sl
opes-and-terraces-at-lakka-skoutara.html">Slopes and Terraces at Lakka
Skoutara </a><a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2009/08/co
rinthian-infiltration-the-interior-of-some-houses-at-lakka-
skoutara.html">Corinthian Infiltration: The Interior of Some Houses at Lakka
Skoutara </a><a
kka-skoutara-the-survey.html">Lakka Skoutara: The Survey </a><a
e-houses-of-lakka-skoutara.html">The Houses of Lakka Skoutara </a><a
llapse.html">Collapse </a><a
ovisional-discard.html">Provisional Discard </a><a
nstruction-in-the-corinthia.html">Construction in the Corinthia</a>
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TITLE: UND, the Logo, and the Name
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I resisted posting anything on this topic for as long as I could, but the
lingering drone of the Fighting Sioux conversation has finally pushed me to
write. Before I say anything, I want to confess that I am not an expert on this
topic nor am I particularly engaged in the ongoing controversy regarding the
Fighting Sioux logo. I don't have an ax to grind and while I am certainly a
"liberal faculty member", I don't feel particularly pressed by the requirements
of political correctness or any sort of liberal orthodoxy. In fact, I find both
political correctness, in all of its awkward and poorly executed forms, and any
kinds of orthodox to be pretty boring, onerous, and unproductive.
So, that being said, here are four of my views on this entire logo issue (for
the official views of the <a href="http://nickname.und.edu/logo/">University go
here</a>).
1. The Lack of Civility. The biggest issue from my perspective is that the
logo debate has brought out the worst in people on both sides. The lack of
civility and carefully considered conversations is disappointing. In fact, two
colleagues over the past couple of weeks have said that they have banned
discussions of the logo issue in their classes. Read the comments on any news
article or blog (and I won't link to them from here) to see how rancorous both
sides have become. Moreover, the positions are boring: one side blames everyone
from the university administration to the NCAA to the Native Americans and the
State Board of Higher Education, and the other side pontificates in a painfully
condescending way. So, again, it's disappointing to see that a University
community can't engage this topic in a more intellectually productive way. At
present, the debate makes almost everyone look bad, and it seems to me that we
are in a situation where the need for both sides to claim "victory" makes
compromise and conversation increasingly impossible.
2. Identity is Messy. Anyone who has been on a university campus for more
than 20 minutes over the past two decades should know by now that identity is a
messy thing. This is important to remember as we try to resurrect some kind of
civil discussion about the Fighting Sioux logo and name. There is no doubt that
one side sees itself as honoring the Sioux by appropriating (in a respectful and
perhaps even consensual way) parts of the Sioux identity. This is not
particularly radical from a historical perspective and is not inherently bad.
What strikes me as naive is the idea that if the university could get the Sioux
to somehow vote to approve this process, then it would be in the clear. I am
liberal enough to know that things aren't made right or moral or ethical, just
269
because a group votes for something. The entire idea that the Sioux could vote
as a body to allow another group to associate (respectfully, I am sure) with
some aspect of their identity seems to be so deeply problematic that I can not
understand how it is seriously regarded as a way forward. Fortunately, some
groups within the Sioux seem to agree with this and have refused to put this
matter to referendum. Identity is far too fluid and contested a thing to be
defined by a democratic process alone. The idea that somehow this issue would be
resolved if the Sioux voted to approve the logo and name is naive.
3. The NCAA. The NCAA is a voluntary organization that has the right to set
certain rules for its member institutions. This just makes sense. If the member
institutions do not like the rules, they can either change them or quit the
organization. While I can understand why no one seriously talks about leaving
the NCAA, it is a bit surprising that more people don't at least hold it up as a
potential course of action. My solution would be to drop out of the NCAA and
reform the hockey program as an <a href="http://theahl.com/">AHL franchise</a>.
Playing professional hockey at UND would be revolutionary and, perhaps, offer a
way forward to other schools who feel that the NCAA does not adequately
represent and protect the distinct character of their programs. Moreover, it
could be a real threat to the NCAA as an organization. Imagine if the elite
football programs created a University Professional Football League (UPFL) which
paid their student-athletes a competitive wage based on some kind of profit
sharing model? Isn't this a more fun conversation than most surrounding the logo
and name?
4. Colonialism. Spending time in Australia with my wife's family has led me
to think about the place of Native American's in American society in a different
way. I do worry that the eliminating the name and logo will serve as another
means of hiding or (to be post-modern about it) erasing the awkward legacy of
European (i.e. white) - Native American relations in the Northern Plains. By
"returning" to the Sioux the complete control over their identity, image,
likeness, and name, we run the risk of eliminating a point of contact that
represented a shared moment in history which while contentious and certainly
ugly would nevertheless provide the basis for an ongoing discussion. By
problematizing the name and logo as a highly visible historical artifact, it
forces us to consider complex and messy issues of identity, colonialism,
authority, and race. These are not the kinds of things that interest the NCAA.
In other words, I cannot think that the NCAA's motives are pure. Their interest
is in protecting the commercial entity that is the NCAA and to do this, they
will make policies that seek to eliminate controversies and create a product
that is the most appealing to the broadest possible audience. We can, of course,
argue that a popular, pristine, and neat NCAA product is a good way forward for
all member institutions in that it will guarantee the greatest possible revenues
from various, highly lucrative commercial ventures.
So, I've said my piece. I haven't been a member in the community here long
enough to understand completely what is at stake or what the consequences of any
particular course of action would be. I can, however, complain that the tenor of
the current conversation makes thoughtful, creative, and perspective discussion
of the situation pretty difficult. I still talk to my students about it, though,
because I think it is our job to challenge our students (on both sides of the
debate) to try to see things in <a href="http://www.und.edu/branding/">a
creative, innovative, and spirited way (oh, we're Future Ready too)</a>.
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TITLE: A Study of the City of Ravenna
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CATEGORY: Books
DATE: 04/20/2010 08:27:39 AM

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Over the past decade or so, there has been a new wave of scholarship on the
Late Antique city. These works have ranged from <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/decline-and-fall-of-the-roman-
city/oclc/44720517">W. Liebeschuetz, Decline and Fall of the Roman
City</a> (Oxford 2001) or <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/refiguring-
the-post-classical-city-dura-europos-jerash-jerusalem-and-
ravenna/oclc/31753671">A. Wharton, Refiguring the Post-Classical City</a>
(Cambridge 1995) to a myriad of specific city studies: <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/alexandria-in-late-antiquity-topography-and-
social-conflict/oclc/34663398">Haas on Alexandria</a>, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/roman-berytus-beirut-in-late-
antiquity/oclc/52937907">Hall on Beirut</a>, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/corinth-the-first-city-of-greece-an-urban-
history-of-late-antique-cult-and-religion/oclc/43615467">Rothaus on Corinth</a>,
<a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/pagan-city-and-christian-capital-rome-in-
the-fourth-century/oclc/41641325">Curran on Rome</a>, et c. It's clear that the
late ancient city has remained a source of fascination for scholars and the
increased quantity of archaeological evidence available has allowed even more
robust and synthetic works that have significantly revised our view of urban
life in Late Antiquity
<a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/ravenna-in-late-
antiquity/oclc/316772672">Deborah M. Deliyannis, Ravenna in Late
Antiquity (Cambridge 2010)</a> fits into this tradition by focusing on one
the best studied cities in the Late Antique world. The monumental efforts of
F.W. Deichmann to document the architecture and history of the city of Ravenna
formed a solid foundation of Deliyannis' book which, if nothing else, summarized
many of the conclusions from Deichmann's numerous German tomes in English. In
fact, the strength of this book is the massive amount of summary description of
the major monuments in the city. At the same time, Deliyannis' familiarity with
the literary sources for the city, particularly, the <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/book-of-pontiffs-of-the-church-of-
ravenna/oclc/52341636">Liber Pontificalis of Agnellus</a> which she has
translated, provided a critical textual basis for many of her conclusions.
271
.<img
-pi" width="140" height="206" alt="201004200824.jpg" /> 
In short, Deliyannis argued that Ravenna was uniquely positioned between East
and West both politically and culturally. Nowhere is this more clear than in Its
status as both a capital and a more marginal city over its long post-antique
history. The result of these influences was the blend local and Mediterranean
wide trends that produced a unique synthesis of Late Antique culture. The
influences of the East in the Adriatic is an area of growing interest especially
as we have come to recognize that the aftershocks of the various theological,
ecclesiological, and Christological controversies in the East had a significant
impact on Imperial authority in regions like the Balkans which fell under the
ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Papacy, but the political influence of the
emperor in Constantinople.
While Deliyannis' book does a brilliant job bringing to light the
architectural history of the city, it is disappointing that she seemed so much
less interested in subjecting the people of the city of Ravenna to the same
scrutiny. The was no effort in the book to consider substantially everyday life
in the city. The absence of any discussion of the economy of Ravenna was
particularly striking. Aside from a few comments on the presence of kilns, the
vaguely described ebb and flow of imported pottery, and the tendency to re-use
bricks in the construction of churches, there is no sense for how Ravenna fit
into the trans-Mediterranean economic networks which so many scholars of Late
Antiquity have scrutinized.
There was also almost no discussion of the local economy. Particularly
striking was the absence of any discussion of the hinterland of Ravenna and its
port at Classe. To be fair, Deliyannis makes clear that the marshy territories
to the west of the city apparently contributed to its defense and apparently the
city did not suffer from lack of water. She does not, however, discuss how the
city was fed or even (and perhaps more interesting) whether the marshy land
around the city provided any economic advantage to the inhabitants. This is
disappointing because so much attention in recent times has focused on the
relationship between cities and their hinterlands. In fact, recent work has
focused almost as much on the hinterlands of Late Roman cities as on their urban
cores (see, for example, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/corinth-on-the-
isthmus-studies-of-the-end-of-an-ancient-landscape/oclc/86115995">David
Pettegrew's work</a> on the near-hinterland of Corinth or <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/tilling-the-hateful-earth-agricultural-
production-and-trade-in-the-late-antique-east/oclc/316430311">Michael Decker's
recent book</a> on the Late Antique hinterland of major Levantine cities).
Finally, it also stood out that Deliyannis did relatively little to place the
city of Ravenna explicitly into the recent conversations on the urban fabric of
Late Antiquity. How does the unique urban history of the city of Ravenna compare
to other Late Roman cities both in Italy and elsewhere? And how does the city of
Ravenna for all its unique characteristics, inform how we understand the
regional politics of Italy, the Balkans, or even the Late Antique Mediterranean?
This broader perspective would have added considerable significance to this
already valuable contribution to the history of a city.
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I spent a little time this weekend working on my absolutely rudimentary
illustration skills. I took as my object the three baptisteries that I
included in a recent draft of an encyclopedia article. I worked on tracing
them from well-known illustrations with an eye toward simplifying the plans to
facilitate their reproduction at a smaller scale. Producing new
illustrations is almost always a good exercise in that is forces me to reflect
critically on the various features included in the various floor plans. I
used Illustrator for these illustrations and mostly traced them from existing
plans. I did free sketch some of the features, though, and they are more
illustrative than accurate. I suspect, for example, that leaving out the
thresholds and some of the features associated with the flooring at the Dura
Baptistery has had little effect on how most scholars are likely to interpret
the basic features of the plan: the baptistery is a room in the northwestern
corner of the atrium style house. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201347ff99c87970
right: 0px" border="0" alt="DuraBaptSketch"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20133ecc985d1970b
-pi" width="400" height="393"></a> Dura Europas Baptistery (after <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/excavations-at-dura-europos-final-report-82-
the-christian-building/oclc/186669600">Wells (1967)</a>, plan 5) Likewise, my plan of the Lechaion baptistery illustrates the
complexity of the structure and the strange relationships between the two,
apparently contemporary, centrally planned rooms and the long apsidal hallway to
their west. It boggles the mind that an "architect" (or builder) could so
carefully articulate the interior spaces of the various structures, but arrange
their relationships to one another in such an awkward way. The narrow
passageways linking the northern building to the baptistery proper appear to
have been original to the plan, but utterly inelegant. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201347ff99caf970
right: 0px" border="0" alt="LechaionBapt"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201347ff99cb9970c
-pi" width="400" height="400"></a> Lechaion (after <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/palaiochristianika-vaptisteria-tes-
hellados/oclc/4737938">Volonakes (1976)</a>, plan 1b) My
sketch of the Orthodox Baptistery in Ravenna eliminated some of the later
features which commonly appear in plans and sought to capture the relationship
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between its architectural massing and the central baptismal font. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201347ff99cc1970
right: 0px" border="0" alt="RavennaBapt"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20133ecc985ee970b
-pi" width="400" height="393"></a> Orthodox Baptistery in Ravenna (after <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/orthodox-baptistery-of-
ravenna/oclc/237215">Kostof (1965)</a>, fig. 1) I will never
be confused for an architect, but the exercise of re-illustrating the plans of
well-known buildings can frequently reveal some feature of aspect of the
building (or even the plan) that I might have otherwise overlooked.
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A little gaggle of quick hits on a bright and sunny Friday.
First, <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/pylakoutsopetria_season_s/bret_weber
/">the former cook</a> of the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project,
obviously scarred by his time working for scraps for a group of scrooge-like
archaeologists, takes to the streets on tax day to promote a universal living
wage. (Bret Weber holds is the tall guy holding the banner sign).
(<a
href="http://www.grandforksherald.com/event/image/id/31264/headline/Picket/">Pho
to Grand Forks Herald</a>)
There are lots of cool things taking place over the
last couple week at the University of North Dakota. The Ceramics Department is
celebration the 100th year of ceramics at UND with a a Centennial called 50/50.
The name represents the 50 years of ceramics at UND under Margaret Cable's
guidance and the 50 (plus 1) years since her retirement in 1949. <a
href="http://www.pottery.und.edu/centenial.html">Here's the link</a>. The
Theater Department is producing <a
274
href="http://www.grandforksherald.com/event/article/id/157882/">Sarah Ruhl's
Eurydice</a>.
If you haven't checked out <a
href="http://teachingthursday.org/2010/04/15/bridging-the-gap-in-graduate-
education/">Teaching Thursday</a> this week, you should. <a
href="http://teachingthursday.org/2010/04/15/bridging-the-gap-in-graduate-
education/">Rebecca Romsdahl's thoughts</a> on graduate education are insightful
and productive. In some ways, Rebecca's thoughts complement those offered by <a
href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/2010/04/medieval-art-connecting-with-
students.html">Kostis Kourelis on the same day.</a> I need to use more
reflective practices in my classes. For more on teaching, check out <a
href="http://learningaloud.com/blog/aboutme/">Mark Grabe</a>'s Learning Aloud
project with its <a href="http://learningaloud.com/blog/">helpful blog</a>.
There has also been a good bit of activity over at UND's <a
href="http://mygradspace.wordpress.com/" title="Graduate School Blog">Graduate
School Blog</a> including a flashy new advertisement:
<object style="height: 344px; width: 425px" width="425" height="344">
<param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/oCixalWeeqM" />
<embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/oCixalWeeqM" type="application/x-
shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" width="425"
height="344" />
</object>
</div>
And they now have a <a
href="http://www.youtube.com/user/UNDGradSchool">YouTube channel</a>!
Have a good weekend!
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So, I'm sick and I promised myself that I wouldn't blog today and focus my
meager energies on the handful of things that absolutely need to get done.
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But then I thought, wait, don't I need to remark on a dream from Agnellus of
Ravenna?
<blockquote>
41. Meanwhile, when in that time the mother of Valentinian, the Empress
Galla Placidia, was building the church of the Holy Cross our Redeemer, her
niece, by the name of Singledia, was advised one night by a vision, in which a
man in white vestiments stood there, adorned with a grey-haired head and a
beautiful beard, and said, "In such and such a place not far from this church of
the Holy Cross, which your aunt is having built, as far as a bowshot, build me a
monasterium, as you will find it traced out. And where you find the likeness of
a cross in the ground, there let an altar be consecrated, and dedicate it in the
name of Zacharias, the father of the Precursor.
Waking at once, she ran swiftly to the place, where its outline had been
shown; she found that a foundation had been dug as if by the hand of man.
Running forward at once, she told the empress with great joy and requested
workmen from her; and [Galla] gave her thirteen builders. And at once she
started to build as she had found it drawn out; and in thirteen days she built
in all and brought it to completion. And she consecrated it and endowed it with
gold and silver and golden crowns and most precious gems and gold chalices,
which come out in procession on the Nativity of the Lord...
<a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/book-of-pontiffs-of-the-church-of-
ravenna/oclc/52341636">trans. D. M. Deliyannis</a> (who also has fascinating new
book called <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/ravenna-in-late-
antiquity/oclc/316772672&referer=brief_results">Ravenna in Late
Antiquity</a>)
</blockquote>
I know that I feel better now.
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I finally have a working draft of an encyclopedia entry that was due some
time ago. The entry is on Early Christian baptisteries, and I try to provide a
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cursory study of their architecture, ritual, decoration, and function in less

than 2500 words. For some reason this kind of writing always takes me far more
time than longer writing projects, so I not only underestimate how long it will
take me to produce the original text, but also how long it will take me to tweak
and fuss with the text once it is produced.
In any event, I present an advanced working draft here for your
enjoyment.<a title="View Early Christian Baptisteries Working on Scribd"
href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/29902863/Early-Christian-Baptisteries-Working"
style="margin: 12px auto 6px auto; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,Sans-serif;
font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 14px;
line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; -x-system-
font: none; display: block; text-decoration: underline;">Early Christian
Baptisteries Working</a> <object id="doc_348006909609960"
style="outline:none;">
sy6ww5xxo2nb3zmx67d&page=1&viewMode=list" />
_key=key-sy6ww5xxo2nb3zmx67d&page=1&viewMode=list" type="application/x-
</object>
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Next fall, the University of North Dakota will host the Northern Great Plains
History Conference. This regional conference was originally organized by members
of the History Department in the late 1960 and has continued almost every year
since then being hosted by various school across the Northern Plains.
It seems fitting then, that there be at least one panel that focuses on the
history of the University of North Dakota and the Department of History. So, I
have organized a panel of three papers for the event.
Here it is: 
History of and History in the University of North Dakota
‚ÄúHistory before Libby: University before Disciplines‚Äù 
‚Ä®W. Caraher, Department of History, University of North Dakota
It is commonplace to imagine now that disciplinary divisions are traditional
and neatly contemporary with the creation of the American university system in
the late 19th and early 20th century. In reality, of course, this was not
necessarily the case. Nor was it the case that the development of disciplines,
such as history, took place at only an institutional level. This paper will
examine the career of Horace B. Woodworth who served the University of North
Dakota from 1885-1904. During the same decades when the discipline of history
was reaching its professional maturity through the work of H. B. Adams at Johns
Hopkins and his students like Frederick Jackson Turn at Wisconsin, Woodworth
underwent his own professional development migrating from the Professor of
Mathematics, Physics, and Astronomy to the Professor of Moral and Mental Science
to the University of North Dakota‚Äôs first Professor of History. At his
retirement in 1904, he was the first University faculty member to earn a
Carnegie Pension and from 1910 ‚Äì 1949 the Education Building on campus bore
the name Woodworth Hall in his honor. The lack of a clear disciplinary home,
however, has consigned his name to obscurity and overwritten a valuable,
transdisciplinary, precedent in the history the university and its faculty.
‚ÄúDr. Orin G. Libby: Campus Gadfly‚Äù 
‚Ä®G. Iseminger, Department of History, University of North Dakota
The word ‚Äúgadfly‚Äù comes from the words ‚Äústing‚Äù + ‚Äúfly‚Äù and a
dictionary describes the ‚Äúpest‚Äù as ‚Äúa purposely annoying or provoking
person who criticizes others to get them to reform themselves or their
institutions.‚Äù In the long history of the University of North Dakota, a period
of 125 years, many faculty members aspired to be the campus gadfly. Few
succeeded as well as Dr. Orin G. Libby whose tenure in the university‚Äôs
history department spanned the period 1902-1945. Nothing was so insignificant
that it escaped his attention nor so important that he dared not criticize it
and urge that it be changed or eliminated. He chided the administration for not
clearing campus walks of snow, forcing women students to drag their long skirts
over the drifts and then sitting all day in class with wet skirts around their
ankles. He criticize Dr. William G. Bek, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts,
for compromising graduation standards be eliminating the foreign language
requirement for the Ph.B. degree. He was the unofficial leader of a group that
attempted to remove Dr. Thomas F. Kane from his position as university president
on the grounds that he was ‚Äúirresponsible, inefficient, negligent,
intellectually weak, morally vacillating, and wholly incompetent.‚Äù Although
many felt Libby‚Äôs ‚Äústing,‚Äù he was a respected member of the faculty when
he retired in 1945 at the age of eighty-one.
‚ÄúHistory of Social Work at UND: 1983-2009‚Äù 
‚Ä®B. Weber, Department of Social Work, University of North Dakota 
In 2008 I took up the task of writing the history of the Social Work
Department at the University of North Dakota: my small contribution to a larger
project surrounding the school‚Äôs 125th anniversary. My work built upon Louis
278
Geiger‚Äôs University of the Northern Plains and former department chair

Professor Ken Dawes‚Äô work covering the department up till 1982. My argument
concerning the recent twenty-five years is that department chairs‚Äîdespite no
real managerial authority‚Äîshaped the major events.
In 1982 UND‚Äôs Social Work Department was a modestly sized undergraduate
program. By 2007 it also housed the University‚Äôs third largest graduate
program outside the Medical School and was administering several quasi-
independent service units helping both Social Workers and the general population
of North Dakota. This growth was due to multiple interdependent factors, but in
the final tally the Department Chairs provided the nexus of change. More
precisely, five and a half chairs operated in contexts beyond their control,
dealt with controversies and dysfunction, lawsuits and investigations, and the
troubling combination of academic freedom and the loose knit process of faculty
governance. Yet, through example, cajoling, leadership, and luck they deserve
the credit for the accumulated changes‚Äîgood and bad.
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I‚Äôve been lucky enough over the past 5 years to work with two fantastic
young documentary filmmakers, Joe Patrow and Ian Ragsdale, in shooting
documentary films based on our fieldwork at the Pyla-Koutsopetria
Archaeological Project in Cyprus. Recently Ian has been pressing me (in a good
way) to think about what we want to get out of his documentary work and to offer
some general insights into how I understand what we have done. This has caused
me to begin the process of marshaling 5 years of on and off discussions with Ian
and Joe regarding issues related to making an archaeological documentary. Over
this time, we‚Äôve talked vaguely about co-writing an article that provides some
practical tips for producing a ‚Äúresearch film‚Äù designed to explore,
communicate, and promote a research project. I‚Äôd like to think that this
informal and spontaneous list will be the first step to writing up something
more formal. 
As someone with very little technical knowledge of the filmmaking process,
I‚Äôve relied on the project‚Äôs independent filmmakers to tell our project‚Äôs
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story. Being a part of these activities, however, has convinced me that these
films are not only valuable communication (and teaching) tools, but also useful
reflective activities in their own right. My comments below are based on three
seasons of working with a documentary filmmaker. Joe Patrow worked with us in
2005 and 2007 and produced two films: <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/DocuScript/DSHomePage.html">Sur
vey on Cyprus</a> and <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/Emerging_Cypriot.html">Emerg
ing Cypriot</a>. Ian Ragsdale worked with us in 2009 and is editing his
film: <a
href="http://www.youtube.com/user/PKAP2009#p/a/u/0/L271e8lVkQY">Voices from
Cyprus</a>. Both Ian and Joe provided short interviews <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2008/02/em
erging-cyprio.html">here</a> and <a
la-koutsopetria-filmmaker-ian-ragsdale.html">here</a>.
As a final note, these comments are not meant to be proscriptive, but rather
descriptive of my thinking as we discussed the making a film that communicated
our project to a wider audience.
1. Consider various audiences. We‚Äôve used our films for such a wide variety
of events that we have reaped the benefits of pitching our films to as broad an
audience as possible.
2. Modular Movies. When Joe Patrow returned to Cyprus to shoot another video
in 2007, he quickly realized that to do something creative with similar
material, he had to change the way that he would approach editing his work. As a
result, he produced a series of shorts titled <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/Emerging_Cypriot.html">Emerg
ing Cypriot</a>. These shorts were mostly under 5 minutes in length and
captured various aspect of our work. To be fair, this approach clearly emerged
from his first film, <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/DocuScript/DSHomePage.html">
Survey on Cyprus</a>, which told our story in a linear way, but also divided
the story into a series of well-defined chapters. The benefit of a modular film
is that it allows us to use the film for multiple purposes including embedding
it in Powerpoint presentations, disseminating it over the web, and using in a
classroom setting in a flexible way. With the advent of YouTube, Ian was able to
take this concept even further by uploading a series of interviews edited in the
field to a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/PKAP2009#p/u">PKAP YouTube
channel</a>.
3. Process over product. One thing that we emphasized on our discussions with
both Joe and Ian was the importance to show process rather than just product. In
part, our emphasis on process was a necessity for an archaeological project that
focused on the gradual accumulation of data rather than the search for a
spectacular single find. The emphasis on process, however, ensured that whatever
happened over the course of the season, we could tell the story of the project
as an event in-and-of itself and not be dependent on a spectacular find or even
the elusive answer to a research question during the time when the camera was
rolling.
4. Personalities. One thing that both Joe and Ian have managed to do is
capture the unique mix of personalities present on our project each season. From
the passionate to the silly, the personalities drive the story of the project
forward and captures the human aspect of field research. In other words, Ian and
Joe balanced the technical aspects of archaeological research against the
individuals involved in the project. The result of this balancing act was a more
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engaging film which captured the human dimension of decision making in the
field.
5. Embed the filmmaker. Both Ian and Joe were effectively embedded in our
project. This was perhaps largely a consequence of there only being just single
person rather than a film crew, but it also speaks to the good match between the
filmmaker and our team. Ian was trained as an archaeologist and Joe had an M.A.
in history; so, both understood our project‚Äôs goals and methods and offered
independent, critical interpretation of our work.
6. Trust. Closely related to our ability to embed the filmmaker was our
willingness to trust both Ian and Joe to tell the story of our project in a
responsible and accurate way. In other words, we knew that these two guys would
not go out of their way to make us look bad or to distort our methods and goals.
What we have discovered is that the best results come from letting our filmmakes
tell our story in their own voice.
7. Time. One thing that we perhaps underestimated when we first started these
projects in the time that they would take. Almost every member of the project
had to be willing to take time out of their day to engage the camera and talk
about what they were doing. When everyone is harried, tired, and busy, this was
a significant commitment. And this says nothing of the commitment that both Joe
and Ian have made to take our harried and tired comments and cobble them
together into a cohesive story. Filmmaking takes time.
8. Landscapes and Place. Video captures a different view of landscape than
still photography or maps and plans. Both Joe and Ian were very effective in
placing the project in its physical and natural environment. In particular video
provides a sense of time to travel through the landscape that still photography
often struggles to capture.
9. Humor. Both Ian and Joe captured the humorous moments that are inevitable
in any collaborative research project. Not only has this made their work more
watchable (and less preachy), but also more human and more authentic.
10. Technology. One of the great things that we‚Äôve witnessed over the past
5 years is how much easier it is to distribute the results of our filmmakers
labors. With the advent of YouTube, more robust broadband connections, and more
larger and faster online storage it is now possible to distribute high-quality
video over the internet with almost no specialized technological infra-
structure.
While it remains popular to complain about how academics and p<a
chaeologists-the-media-and-the-real-story.html">articularly archaeologists are
portrayed in the media</a>, it is also increasingly easy to push back by
producing professional quality films to depict archaeological work on a way that
is both entertaining and academically responsible. Technology makes it simple to
distribute the film around the world, high-quality HD video cameras are
relatively inexpensive, and it is now possible to edit and add special effects
on a desktop computer. So, if you want to shoot a film, team up with a filmmaker
and do it. 
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COMMENT:
IP: 155.68.29.254
DATE: 04/12/2010 11:58:44 AM
I used Survey of Cyprus for teaching, to explain what pedestrian survey is all
about to an undergraduate audience.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Sean Williams
EMAIL: sean@heritage-key.com
IP: 94.194.204.88
URL: http://heritage-key.com/ancient-london/video
DATE: 04/13/2010 04:01:58 AM
Why can't more archaeologists see that film-making is an essential part of
getting the word out today? We've made some videos on the archaeology of London
- take a look!
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Ian Ragsdale
EMAIL: delvebelow@gmail.com
IP: 168.7.221.176
URL: http://www.bigapefilms.com
DATE: 04/14/2010 12:50:36 PM
These insights are going to play a huge part in how I structure my upcoming
seminar on digital filmmaking at Rice University. A big theme that I am taking
away from recent reading, discussions, and contemplation is that videos for
projects like PKAP can accomplish many tasks at once. The process of making a
movie informs the research process. An instructional video goes live on the
Internet and becomes a promotional tool in addition to a teaching tool. Brandon
Olson used his featured vlog as a "thank you" to those who funded his
participation in PKAP, in the hopes that that would not be forgotten during the
next application season. It is gratifying to hear the breadth of benefit of
PKAP's use of video.
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Just a few, semi-frantic quick hits:
<ul>
<li>It's been heartening to see the <a href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/"
title="Kostis Kourelis">Objects-Buildings-Situations</a> has sprung back to life
lately!</li>
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<li>Check out the <a

href="http://sports.espn.go.com/rpm/racing/news/story?id=5069688">Corinth Canal
on ESPN</a>.</li>
<li>Teaching Thursday features <a

href="http://teachingthursday.org/2010/04/08/experienced-interdisciplinarity-at-
und-the-integrated-studies-program/">a really thoughtful history of Integrated
Studies at UND</a>.</li>
<li>This is a great new <a href="http://gizmodo.com/5511678/apple-ipad-

review">iPad review</a> (via <a
href="http://www.fimoculous.com/">Fimoculous</a>).</li>
<li>Gonjasufi is fantastic, multimedia, and world wide: <a

href="http://gonjasufi.tumblr.com/">tumblr</a>, <a
href="http://twitter.com/gonjasufi">Twitter</a>, <a
href="http://www.sufisays.com/">web</a>, <a
href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/Gonja-Sufi/47704155280">Facebook</a>, <a
href="http://www.myspace.com/gonjasufi">MySpace</a>.</li>
<li>If you haven't been following it, the University of North Dakota retired
the Fighting Sioux logo and name this week. Check out the webcast of the <a
href="http://nickname.und.edu/logo/?page_id=91">open forum meeting on it here at
noon</a>. Here's the <a
href="http://www.grandforksherald.com/event/article/id/157079/">Grand Forks
Herald coverage</a>.</li>
<li>It seems a shame that <a

href="http://www.cricinfo.com/australia/content/current/story/455150.html">Natha
n Bracken lost his Cricket Australia contract</a>. I think that the Australian
selectors are fickle and short sighted.</li>
</ul>
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TITLE: More on Christian and Pagan Statues
STATUS: Publish
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CATEGORY: Byzantium
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DATE: 04/08/2010 08:54:38 AM

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A few months ago a thought-provoking article on the destruction of pagan
statues and sanctuaries in Egypt by <a href="http://www.iconoclasm.dk/">Troels
Myrup Kristensen</a> appeared <a
href="http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/journal_of_late_antiquity/v002/2.2
.kristensen.html">in the Journal of Late Antiquity</a>. Now, less than a
year later, another thoughtful and extensive article on the topic has appeared
in the august pages of the American Journal of Archaeology: "<a
href="http://www.ajaonline.org/index.php?ptype=content&aid=3639">Production
to Destruction? Pagan and Mythological Statuary in Asia Minor</a>" by Ine
Jacobs.
The article is a sweeping study of the production, re-use, and destruction of
pagan statuary in Late Antique Asia Minor. Jacobs brings to light particularly
important issues regarding the declining production of statuary over the course
of Late Antiquity particularly at traditional production centers in Asia Minor.
She also touched in useful ways on issues regarding the context is which a
statue was displayed (pp. 288-289) Statues that appear to have come from a
cultic context or with close associations with local cult activities (for
example, isolated statues of Artemis found at Ephesos) were more likely to be
destroyed or damaged than statues in more secular settings or in groups
depicting mythological or literary events. This resonates, in particular, with
the work of <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/hellenism-in-late-
antiquity/oclc/20724797">Glen Bowersock</a> (and others) who have shown that
emergence of Christianity did not suppress the importance of pagan literary
motifs in Late Antique culture. In fact, he, Peter Brown, and others have shown
that references to pagan gods in literary texts was inseparable from the
demonstration of Late Antique paideia, the elite discourse of both pagans
and Christians.
At the same time, Jones introduces the idea of statuary as decoration
particularly in so-called "secular" contexts. Pagan statues, for example, could
stand in baths, fountains, theaters, and even gates without offering a sustained
threat to the increasingly Christianity community. The incidents of violence
toward statues -- ranging from ritual and systematic destruction to the incising
of crosses on the heads of pagan statues -- appears to have been sporadic and,
in most cases, random. And this likely reflects the nature of most anti-pagan
(and indeed anti-Christian) sentiments in antiquity.
The article concludes with a nice catalogue of "Pagan and Mythological Statue
Remains in Late Antiquity" which should be a nice guide for anyone looking to do
some work on this topic.
Whenever I read any article on the destruction of pagan statues in Late
Antiquity (or their preservation in increasingly "decorative" contexts), I begin
to consider the relationship between Christian attitudes toward pagan statuary
and the emergence of the iconoclastic movement at the very end of Late
Antiquity. I can't help but think whether the changing attitudes toward statues
and images more generally tell us less about the end of antiquity and more about
the emergence of Byzantine attitudes towards images. The creation of secular art
(following <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/end-of-ancient-
christianity/oclc/20825371">R. A. Markus's idea</a> that the discourse of
Christianity, in effect, created the secular out of the remaining fragments of
the pagan world in Late Antiquity) must have put particular pressure on its
opposite, religious, and in the Late Antique world, Christian art. The surplus
meaning generated from the secularization of pagan art created a new set of
284
expectation for Christian art and these new expectations met their challenge in
the iconoclastic controversies at the very end of antiquity.
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AUTHOR: Troels Myrup
EMAIL: troelsmyrup@gmail.com
IP: 87.57.143.104
URL: http://www.iconoclasm.dk
DATE: 04/08/2010 10:59:00 AM
Bill, good to see you promoting Ine's AJA paper! I think you're quite right
about the need to re-think "destruction" (as well as "conservation") as the
guiding principle(s) to understand the role of "pagan" statuary in LA. It's
important to see these phenomena as part of a change in what may be termed
visual practices rather than as a confrontation with a pagan past. As I argue in
my dissertation, production and destruction are indeed often complementary
processes rather than opposites, when we think more broadly about the impact
that these images had on ancient viewers and what they did to and with them.
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TITLE: An Open Letter on Byzantine Archaeology and Dumbarton Oaks
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DATE: 04/07/2010 07:49:23 AM

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Recently Dumbarton Oaks invited a group of archaeologists with research
interests in the Byzantine period to Washington, D.C. to discuss the future of
Byzantine Archaeology in North America. <a
href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/2010/04/dumbarton-oaks-byzantine-archaeology-
in.html">Kostis Kourelis has posted the schedule on his blog</a>. He has also <a
href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/2010/04/byzantine-archaeology-
intercollegiate.html">re-posted a related letter</a> that he sent to the new
director of Dumbarton Oaks, Margaret Mullett last year, and links to a nice post
critiquing <a href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/2009/05/dumbarton-oaks-and-
surface-surveys.html">Dumbarton Oaks' attitudes toward intensive pedestrian
survey</a>.
285
I was invited to this conference, but unfortunately the invitation came too
late for me to secure funding to make it. I belly-ached a bit about the somewhat
abrupt planning of the conference which made it difficult for those of use in
the hinterland to attend. In a big picture kind of way, it is understandable
that Dumbarton Oaks would have overlooked the interest of very junior scholars
who lived many miles from either coast. As a result, Director Mullett invited me
(as I am sure she did to other folks) to send along my thoughts on Byzantine
Archaeology in North America.
After some thinking, I decided that I might as well post my email here.
<blockquote>
Dear Director Mullett,
Thank you for the invitation to contribute my thoughts to the ongoing

reflection on the relationship between Dumbarton Oaks and the discipline of
archaeology. So that you know, I consider the work done at DO over the past five
decades to be fundamental to the development of Byzantine studies in the US and
I tried doggedly for over a decade to get funding for my research from the
institution, not so much because I felt like I could contribute to what was
going there, but because I felt that being in contact with the environment,
people, and resources of DO would make me a better scholar. I learned this
respect for the institution from my advisors Jim Morganstern and Timothy
Gregory, both of whom benefited from the generosity, collegiality, and resources
of DO.
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
My take on how DO could return to the forefront of the study of Byzantine
archaeology involves reconsidering both the place of Byzantine and Medieval
archaeology in the academic world and leveraging the resources that DO has
developed to contribute not only to Byzantine studies, but to archaeology more
generally. To do this, I can see three things:
1. Archaeology has become increasingly method driven over the past 30
years. These methods range from the quantitative approaches of New Archaeology
to the more reflective methods of post-processuralism. Medieval archaeology has
taken advantage of both of these developments (although more the former than the
latter!). A recently published proceedings from a 1998 conference on the
archaeology of <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/medieval-and-post-
medieval-greece-the-corfu-papers/oclc/476763831">Medieval and Post-Medieval
Greece</a> shows the discipline‚Äôs deep investment in a wide range of
methodologically sophisticated discourses. Unfortunately, publications from
Dumbarton Oaks were largely absent from the bibliographies in this work and, as
result, from the conversation. I know that Kostis Kourelis has shared with you
his thoughts on the role of DO in the support of intensive pedestrian survey in
the Mediterranean world. (And I recognize that DO has supported innovation in
preservation practices as well as in such scientific methods as
dendrochronology). Overlooking intensive pedestrian survey, however, is
particularly glaring because this method has contributed significantly to how we
understand the Byzantine period across so much of the Eastern Mediterranean.
Looking at a slightly bigger picture and overlooking my own, practical
commitment to this form of archaeology, DO has supported very little in the way
of overtly methodological discussion in Byzantine archaeology. In short, if DO
wants to influence the future of Byzantine and Medieval archaeology in the
Mediterranean, they need to engage in methodology. (Marcus Rautman and Tim
Gregory's contributions here are particularly significant.)
286
2. At the same time, archaeology ‚Äì and the humanities in general ‚Äì have
become increasingly theoretical. Most of this theoretical bent comes, as you
know, from the so-called challenge of postmodernism. Despite these somewhat
discredited (or at least controversial) origins, the themes introduced by post-
modern thought have exerted a tremendous influence on archaeology by not only
asking difficult questions of the archaeologist as practitioner, but also
offering important critiques of the role of archaeology in the emergence of
national identities, the understanding of material objects as active agents in
social networks, and the place of archaeology in challenging historical and
political orthodoxies. Despite the longstanding investment of DO on the study of
important objects from the Byzantine Mediterranean, they have exerted very
little influence on discussions of how and why objects create meaning. The most
striking example of this is that DO has played a key role in supporting the
study of Byzantium in Eastern Europe where the intersection of archaeology,
Byzantine studies, and national identities is particularly visible and
susceptible to important scholarly critique, but offered very few critical
reflections on Byzantine archaeology as an a cultural and political phenomenon.
(<a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/making-of-the-slavs-history-and-
archaeology-of-the-lower-danube-region-ca-500-700/oclc/45283024-of-the-slavs-
history-and-archaeology-of-the-lower-danube-region-ca-500-700/oclc/45283024">The
work of Florin Curta</a> is an important representative of this approach)
 
3. Permeability. The final observation regarding DO‚Äôs place in the

academic ecosystem may be largely self-serving. As impressed as I have been with
its scholarly achievements, I have larger felt like an outsider looking in on
its resources and activities. I am not na√Øve and I understand that my academic
credentials have not positioned me geographically or professionally to gain
access to what DO has to offer on a regular basis. Moreover, I understand that
resources (both financial and otherwise) are limited. That being said, I do
wonder whether DO can make itself more inviting to scholars from outside its
traditional academic catchment area. One can easily imagine programs that range
from archaeological field schools for graduate students, pedagogical outreach to
ensure the health of Byzantine archaeology as field taught in American
universities, and research outreach so that the good work of scholars affiliated
with Dumbarton Oaks is visible beyond the traditional bastions of Byzantine
studies (the AIA lecture program is a nice parallel here).
Issue 3 likely reflects my own professional insecurities and academic

limitations, and I hope it does not overshadow the significance of issues 1 and
2. The theoretical and methodological are areas where the archaeology of the
Medieval and Byzantine world has exerted an influence beyond those interested in
its traditional chronological and geographical limits. I suppose my earlier
observation that DO‚Äôs position of leadership in the field of Byzantine
archaeology has lapsed derives from the observation that they have not played a
particularly significant role in developments in archaeology that have extended
to other periods and places. My perspective on the potential of Byzantine
archaeology may be a bit na√Øve, but it seems to me that the transdisciplinary
nature of Byzantine Studies and the deep and persistent commitment to art,
texts, architecture, and objects provides a formidable foundation for a kind of
sophisticated, synthetic archaeology. This is a powerful offering for an
academic community that looks in an increasingly positive way on the inter- and
transdisciplinary organizations whose efforts to forge research questions across
disciplinary boundaries in a self-conscious way surely reflects the future of
academia.
287
Respectfully yours, 

Bill Caraher
</blockquote>
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TITLE: Some more thoughts on Leonidas, Baptism, and Korinth
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: some-more-thoughts-on-leonidas-baptism-and-korinth
DATE: 04/06/2010 07:50:47 AM

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Thanks to our rock-star quality interlibrary loan staff here at the
University of North Dakota, I was able to get my greedy mitts on F. Halkin,
"Saint Leonide et ses sept compagnes martyrs a Corinthe," <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/epeteris-etaireias-buzantinon-
spoudon/oclc/473756833">EEBS</a> 23 (1953), 217-223. This little gem of
an article will help me complete (or at least fill out) some thoughts I offered
a couple of weeks ago <a
me-thoughts-on-st-leonidas-and-baptism-at-lechaion-in-greece.html">in this blog
post</a> (and in a <a
e-ambivalent-landscape-of-late-antique-corinth.html">related post here</a>).
Just in case you can't be bothered to click through to either of those links, I
suggest that the prominent baptistery on the coast at Lechaion may have
particular significance to the site. In short, if this is a church dedicated to
St. Leonidas and his companions, then a baptistery (and references to water)
would have particular significance since the saint and his friends were martyred
by drowning off the coast.
The Late Byzantine (or later, at least, post early-13th century) life of St.
Leonidas published by Halkin in the 1930s includes a couple references that
would appear to support my argument. I'll include paragraph 8 below (p.
223):
<img
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201347faedf6e970c
288
While I won't translate the entire passage, I'll offer a quick translation of
two sections (note that my translations were tweaked in the comments!). First,
beginning at line 5: 
<blockquote>
UPDATED: <a
href="http://individual.utoronto.ca/nakassis/index.html">Dimitri Nakassis</a>
provided this nicer translation:
"So with much

time having passed and with the public executioners having started sending
Leonidƒìs down into the Gulf first, he [Leonidƒìs], having raised his face to
heaven, said, ‚ÄúBehold! And with this second baptism today have I been
baptized, which makes the man within us more clean.‚Äù" 
</blockquote>
Also then at line 12:
<blockquote>
UPDATED: He also offered this: "Pious men, dragging the
bodies of the saints lying on the beach, having attended to them in honor they
buried them, having built a church on the spot, where [the bodies], both
augustly worshiped and extolled everlastingly, to those who approach faithfully
they make to gush out healings each time."
</blockquote>
According to Halkin (and I have no reason to doubt it) this is the only
reference to a church built to honor Leonidas and his martyrs in the accounts of
his martyrdom (p. 219). The text that Halkin presents here is almost certainly
post-13th century in data and pulls information from a range of known synaxaria
and a few other lost sources. One of this unknown sources preserved -- it would
seem -- some memory of the great church on the Lechaion coast. Moreover, the
clear and explicit link between drowning, baptism, and the massive baptistery at
Lechaion might even hint that the building preserved in the memory of this text
is not the church, but the baptistery. The baptistery may well have stood longer
than the church to its south and considering the relatively shallow depth of the
excavations at the site, it seems plausible to assume that significant parts of
the buildings on the coast were long visible.
The goal of all this speculation, of course, was to understand the link
between the Lechaion basilica and the elaborate nymphaion located less than a
kilometer to the south of the basilica along the coastal bluff. This structure
shares many decorative cues with the Lechaion basilica and I have proposed (very
tentatively) that the shared emphasis on water brings together the Corinthian
wide theme of the <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/fountains-and-the-
culture-of-water-at-roman-corinth/oclc/50497698">well-watered city</a> and the
specific circumstances of Leonidas and his companions' martyrdom. This is just
another, albeit very small scale study, of how religious authority projected
into the Corinthian landscape.
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COMMENT:
IP: 99.232.120.203
URL:
DATE: 04/06/2010 02:39:04 PM
I would have translated the first passage, "So with much time having passed and
with the public executioners having started sending Leonidƒìs down into the Gulf
first, he [Leonidƒìs], having raised his face to heaven, said, ‚ÄúBehold! And
with this second baptism today have I been baptized, which makes the man within
us more clean.‚Äù"
-----
COMMENT:
EMAIL:
IP: 134.129.192.225
DATE: 04/06/2010 03:24:07 PM
Dimitri,
Thanks! Mine was really hasty -- I mistranslated timeron. Pretty lame.
Bill
-----
COMMENT:
IP: 99.232.120.203
URL:
DATE: 04/06/2010 06:21:50 PM
Also, I think that I would translate the second passage as follows: "Pious men,
dragging the bodies of the saints lying on the beach, having attended to them in
honor they buried them, having built a church on the spot, where [the bodies],
both augustly worshiped and extolled everlastingly, to those who approach
faithfully they make to gush out healings each time."
This sentence is weird to my Classically-trained eye. Why is œÉœçœÅŒøŒΩœÑŒµœÇ

present? Why is Œ¥ŒøŒºŒ∑œÉŒ¨ŒºŒµŒΩŒøŒπ (itself bizarre) aorist, since surely
they built the church AFTER they buried the bodies of the martyrs? Why use this
odd verb, ŒµŒ∫Œ≤ŒªœçŒ∂œâ, with ŒπŒ¨œÉŒµŒπœÇ (liquid imagery, perhaps)?
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TITLE: The iPad and My Computer Ecosystem
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BASENAME: the-ipad-and-my-computer-ecosystem
CATEGORY: Web/Tech
DATE: 04/05/2010 09:03:52 AM

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BODY:
Enough people have asked that I feel either mocked or obligated to report on
my first two days with my Apple iPad. (And for the record, I think that they're
mostly mocking me.)
As I have said before, I am not necessarily an early adopter, but I also
understand that the next generation of any device will almost always be better
than the device that I decide to eventually purchase. Also, despite one of my
former student's suggestions, I am not an Apple fanboy or "the high priest of
the Apple cult" (although the latter seems sorta cool). I use four computers
regularly. I do most of my writing on a MacBook Pro which is now a couple of
years old. I do GIS, database, and basic statistical work on the Big Diesel -- a
17-inch Dell XPS laptop -- and I also increasingly use this computer for editing
podcasts and various things involved in developing my online classes. At home,
we use a Mac Mini as a media server for our stereo and it runs through our TV
for movies and the like and surf the web on a three year old Toshiba laptop
running Ubuntu. I don't game, but I do have an iPod Touch that I use regularly
to do light web-surfing, check emails, and listen to music.
So, that's my computer ecosystem right now. The one thing missing was a ebook
reader. I travel pretty regularly and I also read all the time. I read books,
articles, student papers, drafts of my own writing, blogs, newspapers, and even,
more and more rarely, fiction. Most of the academic articles that I read are now
disseminated in PDF format and I do at least part of my own editing work in
front of a computer. In other words, I wanted a device that allowed my to
consume media in a more efficient and comfortable way. I had plenty of computers
that enabled me to produce media in a flexible environment.
I was romanced by the Kindle and found it charming and functional enough to
get one for my mother for Christmas a few years back, but I was worried that its
web-surfing abilities seemed pretty limited for a $300 device. I thought maybe
the Nook would be the answer or even one of Sony's elegant ebook readers, but
the reviews on these devices were never quite enough to push me to order one. In
particular, I wanted a device that would let me do a bit more than basic web-
surfing since online classes had increasingly come to play a part in my teaching
load. I wanted to be able to read and critique discussion board posts, for
example, in my classes' threaded-discussions. This can be a time consuming
process, and I wanted to be able to do it with more physical flexibility than I
currently had with my laptops. I also wanted to be able to manage the various
blogs that I write or administer. While I write sitting at the computer, I
wanted to be able to administer comments, spam, and other basic maintenance
aspects of blogging without having to boot up a computer and without being at my
desk.
With these needs in mind, the iPad is doing fine so far. I spent time on
Easter reading a little gaggle of articles that I had downloaded over the course
of the previous week. I uploaded them to my <a
href="http://www.mediafire.com/">Mediafire</a> account and downloaded them
easily onto a PDF reader on my iPad. I suspect that I'll continue to do most of
my research on my laps tops since I am completely dependent on Firefox based <a
href="http://www.zotero.org/">Zotero</a> to keep track of citations, but I could
imagine doing some light research on it in a pinch.
I read my Sunday New York Times on it and even contemplated spending
$80 on <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Hellenism-in-Byzantium-
ebook/dp/B0017XZJPA">Anthony Kaldellis's</a> <a
href="http://www.amazon.com/Hellenism-in-Byzantium-
ebook/dp/B0017XZJPA">Hellenism in Byzantium</a>, before opting for the free,
<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page">Project Gutenburg</a>-
produced, version of Conrad's Secret Agent. I also read some discussion
291
board posts, a couple of blogs, and even watched part of a TV show on it. So,
from what I can tell it does everything that it advertised it could do. The only
frustration that I've encountered is figuring out how to organize files that
I've uploaded to the device. I have the 32 GB version, so I could imagine having
quite a bit of articles, photographs, and even scanned books on it, but I would
need a more clear way of keeping these various documents organized before I make
the device my research companion for trips to museum storerooms and the
like.
Aside from that, it's aesthetically appealing, fast, stable, and seemingly
bug free (although time will surely tell).
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Dallas DeForest
EMAIL: deforest.6@osu.edu
IP: 65.60.192.124
URL:
DATE: 04/05/2010 12:39:30 PM
<a href="http://www.theonion.com/articles/new-device-desirable-old-device-
undesirable,2862/">http://www.theonion.com/articles/new-device-desirable-old-
device-undesirable,2862/</a>
dallas
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COMMENT:
EMAIL:
IP: 208.107.184.168
DATE: 04/05/2010 12:44:46 PM
Absolutely. Except, I didn't have an old device and I never want to have one
either. They sound like they are pretty undesirable.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Mark Hilverda
EMAIL: mark.hilverda@gmail.com
IP: 99.236.177.154
URL: http://twitter.com/markhilverda
DATE: 04/05/2010 07:28:41 PM
I've got to ask...how do standard pdf journal articles look on the iPad? Is a
full page clear and readable and is zooming still needed? This could be
amazing...
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COMMENT:
EMAIL:
292
IP: 208.107.184.168
DATE: 04/05/2010 07:46:23 PM
Mark,
They actually look great. It was very comfortable to read on.
Bill
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COMMENT:
IP: 208.107.115.6
DATE: 04/05/2010 11:26:16 PM
Bill,
Can't wait to see this new addition to your electronic family. Hope your Easter
was a good one. See you tomorrow.
Daniel
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Evan Nelson
IP: 134.129.168.159
URL:
DATE: 04/06/2010 03:00:12 PM
You do know that mocking usually masks abject jealousy, right?
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: R Sang
EMAIL: ratchnok@yahoo.com
IP: 64.178.99.226
URL:
DATE: 04/28/2010 12:27:05 PM
Can you use zotero on the iPad?
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BASENAME: quick-hits-and-varia-on-a-holiday-friday
DATE: 04/02/2010 07:30:43 AM

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A little gaggle of quick hits and varia on a rainy holiday Friday (it seems
fitting that Good Friday be rainy and dark):
<ul>
293
<li>For the first time in a few years Eastern (Greek) Easter and Western
Easter coincide. While both groups use the same method to establish the date of
Easter, the has to do with the differences between the Julian and Gregorian
calendars and the lunar calendars upon which the two churches use to reckon the
date of Easter. The holiday will also coincide next year.</li>
<li>Some interesting conversation about inter-disciplinarity <a

href="http://www.profhacker.com/2010/04/01/building-an-interdisciplinary-
identity-in-a-mostly-non-interdisciplinary-academic-world/">here at Prof-
Hacker</a>, and <a
href="http://electricarchaeologist.wordpress.com/2010/04/01/ethan-watrall-on-
branding-and-interdisciplinary-identity-amen-brother/">here at the Electric
Archaeologist</a>, and in the comments on this post <a
href="http://teachingthursday.org/2010/03/18/reflecting-on-interdisciplinary-
teaching/#comments">here in Teaching Thursday</a>. Keep an eye on Teaching
Thursday for more discussions on the inter/trans/multi/cross disciplinary
moment.</li>
<li>At Tomorrow Museum, <a href="http://tomorrowmuseum.com/2010/03/28/the-

editor-and-the-curator-or-the-context-analyst-and-the-media-synesthete/">it's
all about curating</a>.</li>
<li>I am counting the hours until my iPad arrives (and it left Anchorage,
Alaska early this morning). The best review is probably <a
href="http://www.boingboing.net/2010/03/31/a-first-look-at-ipad.html">this one
on Boing Boing</a>, but I also liked <a
href="http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1976935,00.html">the
slightly bigger picture perspective offered at (gasp) Time</a>. I had a great
(but too short) discussion with a few students about it this past week and I
love that the iPad makes people angry. It reminds me of the early 1990s when
being serious about a Mac was seen as an insult to the serious and sacred power
of the PC. But before I get too excited, I read this and then <a
href="http://www.boingboing.net/2010/04/02/why-i-wont-buy-an-ipad-and-think-you-
shouldnt-either.html">felt a tiny twinge of guilt</a>. There is, however,
something slightly disingenuous about Doctorow's critique. The idea that the
iPad or any "walled-garden" type product is bad because we can't get inside to
manipulate how it works falls apart when pushed too far. The goal with a product
like the iPad is to enhance the experience of consuming content. It's the
equivalent of getting a nice pair of new speakers or getting a favorite book
rebound in a classy new binding. It enhances the pleasure of consuming music and
reading. We can complain that no one should own stereos because, after all it
deprives the individual from creating music -- like on a piano -- or that we
shouldn't spend time reading books or even sanction their distribution because
it will slowly crush our desire to write. These are just silly arguments. The
time when the only way to enjoy technology was when you built it or customized
it yourself is over.</li>
<li>So, one of my graduate students in my public history internship continues

<a href="http://webmuseweavers.wordpress.com/">to blog, and she's pretty good at
it</a>!</li>
<li>The University of North Dakota is slated to begin a major construction

project in the heart of campus. It will involve an expansion and renovation to
the College of Education Building. I want to start a campus wide drive to call
rename it the Woodworth Building (<a
294
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/DHChapter_1.html">if you don't

know, you better ask somebody</a>)</li>
<li>You can also follow <a href="http://webdevelopment.und.edu/">how UND is

revising their website here</a>. I served on one of the committees involved in
some of the decisions making. It was an education on how the university
works.</li>
<li><a
href="http://www.cricinfo.com/nzvaus2010/content/story/454066.html">This was
quite a display by Mitchell Johnson</a>. I just wish he was more
consistent.</li>
</ul>
One last thing, I brought my breakfast to work this morning in this plastic
bag photographed below. It was mixed in with our assorted other plastic bags. It
must have entered our collection from Cyprus somehow. There isn't a Carrefour (a
French supermarket chain) in the US or even in North America. How's that for the
movement of plastic around the world:
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201347f976abc970c
-pi" width="480" height="360" alt="Photo 6.jpg" />
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AUTHOR: Chuck Jones-
IP: 128.122.167.53
DATE: 04/02/2010 10:56:37 AM
I suppose you noticed that the Time review was written not by a techie but by a
(gasp) regular person with a good grasp of the language - Stephen Fry. Well,
maybe he's not quite so regular...
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: renaissance costumes
EMAIL: renblogposts@gmail.com
IP: 125.60.227.198
URL: http://www.renaissancemodel.com/
DATE: 04/05/2010 12:35:47 AM
Hmmm.. probably you have now received your iPad. :) enjoy your new gadget and
hopefully you can post a review on how the thing is doing.. :)
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TITLE: Teaching Thursday: How to introduce the M.A. in History?
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Over the past semester, we've re-conceived our M.A. program in History here
at the University of North Dakota. As part of this process we've added
another required M.A. level course. Traditionally, we've required that the
students take a graduate historiography course; in our new program we will
require our students also to take a an introduction to historical methods
course. This course will involve a "refresher" (let's call it that!) on
advanced research techniques. This means an introduction to both library
and online resources for doing independent historical research as well as basic
refresher on note-taking, outline-writing, and thesis-formulating. This
work will likely culminate in the student's writing a feasibility study for
their proposed M.A. research. In a two year program, it is never too early
to start working on research. The second part of the class will be the
so-called parade of scholars. This will involve at least part of our
graduate faculty presenting their research interests and methods. Our
department has a nice range of scholarly approaches; several of use work on
material culture (albeit in different ways), we have an oral historians, a
quantitative historian, a biographer, a few archival guys, and a clever,
philological Medievalist. So, if even half of the graduate faculty in our
department come through the seminar, we'll provide a nice introduction to
historical approaches present in our department. The only other issue is
how does the historical methods course work together with it's trailing course
in historiography. The methods, approaches, and techniques of history are
closely related to both the history of the discipline (particularly the process
of professionalization) and the theoretical and epistemological assumptions that
we rely upon to understand the past. While separating methods from theory
(or theory from practice) has long been a practical and pedagogical expectation,
it also enables student to take unreflective approach to how they understand
their own discipline. In short, we preach that understanding the past is
vital for understanding the present, but then offer courses that separate the
two making it appear that present practice is sustainable without a
sophisticated understanding of the history and theory of what we do. It
could be hypocritical at best, and at worse, perpetuate the a kind of
theoretical complacency that is not uncommon in history department and among
graduate students. On the other hand, you can't teach everything at
once. And the division between theory and practice does allow for a rather
neat pedagogical division. The practical techniques of historical research
are best learned through going and doing historical research, whereas the
theoretical and historical foundations for the discipline are perhaps better
introduced through a directed readings type environment where a group of
scholars wrestle with challenging ideas a group. The challenge of re-
writing the curriculum is how to accommodate these two different, yet
nevertheless fundamental aspects the process of learning how to conduct
historical research and analysis. The key issue is whether we should
structure our curriculum around pedagogical issues or around the conceptual
links that unite theory and technique in the practice of history.
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I'll admit that I am currently obsessed with <a
href="http://omeka.org/">Omeka</a> (and particularly excited about their new
foray into <a href="http://omeka.org/blog/2010/03/09/omeka-net-be-first-in-
line/">cloud hosting</a>). As any reader of this blog knows, it's a free,
open-source web-publishing platform. And I have begun to use it
extensively to publish images from my archaeological work in the
Mediterranean. The software is powerful and relatively easy to use. I've
managed to build three archives so far. The first included <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.und.edu/collections/show/3">the works of Ryan
Stander</a> who was the artist in residence at the Pyla-Koutsopetria
Archaeological Project this past summer. The second, which I featured in
this blog yesterday, included images taken of <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.und.edu/collections/show/4">the site of Lakka
Skoutara</a> over the course of 9 years showing archaeological formation
processes playing out in the Greek countryside. Yesterday, I uploaded <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.und.edu/collections/show/6">a series of maps</a>
documenting the distribution of material across our study area in Cyprus.
The maps show the distribution of artifacts by chronotype across the coastal
zone of Pyla Village, and these maps will be linked to places within a working
draft of a chapter for the upcoming PKAP monograph on the distributional
analysis of material at the site. <a
src="http://mediterraneanworld.und.edu/archive/fullsize/hellenisticearlyroman_2f
7a1b0d0a.jpg" width="400" height="400"></a> Distribution of Hellenistic to
Early Roman period artifacts <a
src="http://mediterraneanworld.und.edu/archive/fullsize/romanearly_dfd6bdb181.jp
g" width="400" height="400"></a> Distribution of Early Roman period
artifacts Eventually, a working draft of this chapter (part
of which have appeared, albeit in very fragmentary forms in this blog in
Thinking Out Loud <a
297
loud.html">One</a>, <a
loud-2.html">Two</a>, <a
loud-3.html">Three</a>, <a
loud-4.html">Four</a>) will appear on my <a
href="http://www.scribd.com/billcaraher/">Scribd page</a> or, better still, in
<a href="http://mediterraneanworld.und.edu/">my Omeka archive</a> alongside the
other maps and images using their clever Google powered <a
href="http://omeka.org/codex/Plugins/DocsViewer">document viewer plug-
in</a>. None of these applications took me more than a few
hours to find my comfort zone and I can uses these applications to continue to
expand the personal-professional archive that began with the blog. Each
archive is designed to accommodate different types of material, operates with
slightly different principles of organization, and has a different aesthetic of
display (or user-interface as the kids call it). The
scholarly process becomes more transparent and de-mystified.
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TITLE: Creating Ruins: Formation Process Pictures from Lakka Skoutara
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One of the most exciting things about our recent efforts to produce an online
archive of images from the rural site of Lakka Skoutara is that it is now
possible to track the processes that have created the ruins visible today.
It's remarkable how much the houses have broken down over just a decade of
observation. Click on the images of the houses to get access to the
archive itself (powered by <a href="http://omeka.org/">Omeka</a>) and selective
Dublin Core metadata. House 3 represents one of the most dramatic
changes over 8 years time. Once the roof collapses, the walls fall down fairly
quickly. The fieldstone and mud mortar addition on House 3 below collapses
much more quickly than the modern cinder block and concrete. It's
298
interesting that the end walls on the house remain standing, but I suppose
unsurprising since they bear very little of the roof's weight. <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.und.edu/items/show/1892"><img
alt="http://mediterraneanworld.und.edu/archive/fullsize/house3_image1_2001_8f2be
aa35c.jpg"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.und.edu/archive/fullsize/house3_image1_2001_8f2be
aa35c.jpg" width="400" height="270"></a> (2001) <a
alt="http://mediterraneanworld.und.edu/archive/fullsize/house3_image1_2002_51dd3
cf609.jpg"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.und.edu/archive/fullsize/house3_image1_2002_51dd3
cf609.jpg" width="400" height="270"></a> (2002) <a
alt="http://mediterraneanworld.und.edu/archive/fullsize/house3_image4_corinth_ju
ne12_2004_edb2c7d3e7.jpg"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.und.edu/archive/fullsize/house3_image4_corinth_ju
ne12_2004_edb2c7d3e7.jpg" width="400" height="300"></a> (2004) <p
alt="http://mediterraneanworld.und.edu/archive/fullsize/house3_image57_2009_fd1b
971c59.jpg"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.und.edu/archive/fullsize/house3_image57_2009_fd1b
971c59.jpg" width="400" height="300"></a> (2009) The
change in house 2 is equally dramatic, but here you'll notice some little
editing issues. For example, in many cases the images scanned from slides
are backwards. Note that between 2001 and 2002, the tiles of the house
were removed and as a result the roof gives way quickly. <p
alt="http://mediterraneanworld.und.edu/archive/fullsize/house2_image1_2001_28767
bd627.jpg"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.und.edu/archive/fullsize/house2_image1_2001_28767
bd627.jpg" width="400" height="273"></a> (2001) <a
alt="http://mediterraneanworld.und.edu/archive/fullsize/house2_image5_2002_09788
40f81.jpg"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.und.edu/archive/fullsize/house2_image5_2002_09788
40f81.jpg" width="400" height="272"></a> (2002) <a
alt="http://mediterraneanworld.und.edu/archive/fullsize/house2_image1b_corinth_j
une12_2004_53ea038174.jpg"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.und.edu/archive/fullsize/house2_image1b_corinth_j
une12_2004_53ea038174.jpg" width="400" height="300"></a> (2004) <p
alt="http://mediterraneanworld.und.edu/archive/fullsize/house2_image5_2009_386af
cdaf2.jpg"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.und.edu/archive/fullsize/house2_image5_2009_386af
cdaf2.jpg" width="400" height="268"></a> (2009) The plan
with this project is not only to create a resource where students and scholars
can observe the way that buildings break down over time. Be sure to check
out <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.und.edu/collections/show/4">the growing
archive here</a>. The plan is to add some maps and plans as well as some
more pictures over the next few weeks so it is always worth stopping back
through the archive. I'll also likely move <a
href="http://www.scribd.com/full/28737818?access_key=key-
1265siotexydjqyoet25">the working papers</a> over to my Omeka page soon as
well. For more on this project: <a
299
kka-skoutara-a-partial-archive.html">Lakka Skoutara: A Partial Archive</a> <a
upland-basin-of-the-southeastern-korinthia.html">Between Sea and Mountain: The
Archaeology of a 20th Century "small world" in the upland basin of the
southeastern Korinthia</a> <a
Skoutara</a> <a
Skoutara</a> <a
kka-skoutara-the-survey.html">Lakka Skoutara: The Survey</a> <a
e-houses-of-lakka-skoutara.html">The Houses of Lakka Skoutara</a> <a
llapse.html">Collapse</a> <a
ovisional-discard.html">Provisional Discard</a> <a
nstruction-in-the-corinthia.html">Construction in the Corinthia</a> 
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AUTHOR: Maddy
EMAIL: maddy.bray@gmail.com
IP: 76.91.201.94
URL:
DATE: 04/25/2010 02:35:54 PM
This is very cool. Thanks Bill!
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This past week's writers conference was a pretty spectacular event. I
managed to attend several of the lunchtime sessions and a few other
events. I wish I could have done more. Even with that somewhat
limited exposure, I came away with innumerable impressions and ideas that I hope
can somehow influence my thinking and work over the next year. 1. Writing
as Performance. <a href="http://www.undwritersconference.org/wc-
authors.html#williams">Saul Williams</a>, whose poetry is as much about
performance on stage as it is about language, made the point that he regarded
the page itself as a performance space. I am not sure why I was surprised
by this. In the previous days panel entitled "beyond the screen", a number
of the participants described the creative process in performative terms.
One work discussed in this panel was a collective called <a
href="http://www.booki.cc/collaborativefutures/">Collaborative Furtures</a>
created a single book over <a href="http://www.mandiberg.com/2010/01/25/we-
wrote-the-book-collaborative-futures-transmediale-booksprint/">a week
period</a>. The act of writing was as much the final product as the book
itself. It got me thinking about blogging as a kind of performative
writing. The time-based aspect of the blog -- with the date of publication
forming the primary organizing principle -- represents writing in a way that
centers more on the way that ideas develop through time and careen off one
another than any one central theme, argument, plot, or even space. The
time based component of the blog draws inspiration from the practice of writing
journals which seek to capture the immediacy of experience. I think this
relates to our somewhat erratic efforts on the <a
href="http://punkarchaeology.wordpress.com/">Punk Archaeology</a> blog where we
have (I think tacitly) abandoned any plan or argument or even rhythm to our
posts and introduce ideas as they come to us. In effect, blogging (even my
rhythmic, daily, inscription) performs the act of writing by insisting on the
temporal dimension of its practice. Like working papers, blog posts are showing
the work that final drafts of academic and professional writing obscures behind
a find layer of polish. Blogs represent ideas as events in the process of
development. 2. There is no New Media. One of the themes of the
writers conference was the New Media and one of the really obvious outcomes of
all the panels that I attended is that the very notion of the New Media has
outlived its purpose. First off, we probably can't call many of the things
that are traditionally associated with the New Media "new" any more. After
all, the internet as we know it is 20 years old and computer based media
actually predates widespread access to net. Like any once-new medium for
communicating ideas, any effort to produce a common definition is bound to be
inadequate to describe the work of artists and writers across such varied
platforms as interactive fiction, web-based video, digital music, installation
art, and multimedia arguments. In fact, if there is any complaint that I
have about the writers conference is how little common ground there was between
the people on the largest and (to my mind) potentially most dynamic panel --
Beyond the Screen -- which featured new media pioneers and masters across
mutiple fields: <a href="http://www.undwritersconference.org/wc-
authors.html#condit">Cecelia Condit</a> (film), <a
href="http://www.undwritersconference.org/wc-authors.html#amerika">Mark
Amerika</a> (film and literature), <a
href="http://www.undwritersconference.org/wc-authors.html#montfort">Nick
Montfort</a> (literature), <a href="http://www.undwritersconference.org/wc-
authors.html#moulthrop">Stuart Moulthrop</a> (art and literature), <a
301
href="http://www.undwritersconference.org/wc-authors.html#miller">Scott
Miller</a> (music). While we can all accept that a lack of easy definition
can suggest the existence of something profound, in the case of the New Media it
may indicate, instead, that whatever moment in time the newness sought to
capture and define has passed. The New Media no longer has a center around
which ideas are coalescing. In other words, whatever middle ground once
existed which allowed authors and artists to share ideas has now once again
dispersed and we must find new paradigms to understand how former "New" media
works relate. 3. Anxiety and the Book. The first panel I attended
was provocatively titled: "Are Books Obsolete?". The title alone suggests
the anxiety surrounding the coming of the ebook reader, the speed and fluidity
of the web, and the end of the page as a basic unit for measuring writing,
reading, and certain basic intellectual accomplishments. While there were
plenty of opportunities to celebrate the "new" opportunities made available
through the hypertextual medium of the electronic "page", the underlying anxiety
persisted. In this context, all of the sometimes incredible power of books came
to the fore: their ability to capture attention, to stimulate pleasure through
their weight, forms, and even scent, to structure narrative through conditioning
interaction, to create better, more thoughtful readers, and to sustain the
creative arts by protecting the intellectual property of the author.
Anyone who has read this blog knows that I appreciate the role that objects play
in creating relationships between individuals, but all of the anxiety about the
end of the book seems strangely overwrought. There is no denying there
importance of books to the Western intellectual tradition, there is also no
denying that most people in history did not read books. And more than
that, even most people who could read did not necessary read books. I'd
even argue that today, most of us spend more time reading newspapers, magazines,
loose papers, and letters than books. It's not that books aren't important
(and I suspect that they will continue to be), but that their impact has always
been focused on a particular groups and particular circumstances. Perhaps
it's just the historian in me who noticed the lack of historical context for the
significance of the book. This is not to suggest that a dose of
"historical reality" will alleviate fears that the end of books as we know it
will swiftly bring about the end of Western civilization, but it certainly would
make the extent and significance of the book as an object and technology easier
to understand. Any event that causes me to think is a good event (even if
the only thing that I think is "who is that guy and why is he doing that?") and,
with this broad definition, the Writers Conference qualifies as a good event. It
was exciting to hear people talk so freely and to speculate so widely about the
life of the mind on a campus and in a community where such talk is not always
readily accepted. I'm already looking forward to next year, and if you have a
few bucks, <a href="http://www.undwritersconference.org/wc-donation.html">give
something</a> to help the Writers Conference continue to stimulate the minds of
the northern plains.
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AUTHOR: Evan Nelson

IP: 134.129.168.159
URL:
DATE: 03/30/2010 08:58:25 AM
Was the fourth thing you learned just how awesome Saul Williams is?
I've always come away from the Writers Conference week feeling like my brain was
two sizes bigger than my head. Even after hearing of these events second hand, I
feel the same way now.
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Just some quick hits on a sunny Friday.
<ul>
<li>An interview with <a
href="http://www.wiredjournalists.com/notes/An_Interview_with_Rex_Sorgatz_aka_Fi
moculous">UND alumnus Rex Sorgatz</a>.</li>
<li><a href="http://bloggingpompeii.blogspot.com/2010/03/topography-of-
pompeii.html">Crowd-sourcing Pompeii elevation data</a>.</li>
<li><a href="http://sounds.bl.uk/maps/Soundscapes.html">Soundscapes in the

UK</a>.</li>
<li>The last day of the Writers Conference features presentations by <a

href="http://www.undwritersconference.org/wc-schedule.htm">Frank X. Walker and
Saul Williams</a>. Pretty exciting stuff.</li>
<li>I've added some more photographs to the Lakka Skoutara collection on my

Omeka page. <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.und.edu/collections/show/4">Check
them out</a>.</li>
<li>Sneak peek at the newest blog in the Caraher Blog empire: <a
href="http://pendentive.wordpress.com/">Pendentive</a>. It's the successor to
Squinch... check it out.</li>
<li>Some really positive feedback on the <a

href="http://teachingthursday.org/2010/03/25/teaching-thursday-a-year-in-
review/">Teaching Thursday: Year in Review</a>.</li>
</ul>
Be sure to check out Saul Williams at the Chester Fritz Auditorium tonight at
8 pm!
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Thursday</a> We interrupt your regularly scheduled <a
href="http://teachingthursday.org/">Teaching Thursday</a>, for a brief
effort to summarize its first year in existence. Teaching Thursday emerged from
a conversation between me and Anne Kelsch. The idea of Teaching Thursday began
on my blog as an online extension of his regular teaching journal. The
idea was to take time each week to reflect on some issue either in the media or
in practice that influences the way in which he taught. As with blogging in
general, the reflective writing soon became addictive and this addiction (as
they often do) led to changes in behavior. I found that I became more
aware (and, indeed, interested) in how changing approaches to my classroom
practice produced different results, created different environments, and
reflected changing attitudes toward teaching more broadly. I thought it
would be a great idea to supplement the regular discussions organized by the
Office of Instructional Development with a weekly teaching blog where folks
across campus (and perhaps even outside of campus) could reflect on the things
that they do that influence how they teach. SInce those first conversations,
Teaching Thursday has seen 63 posts and 66 comments. The most common
categories (and we divided the post into many, probably too many categories) and
those related to <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/category/online-
teaching/">online teaching</a> (5), <a
href="http://teachingthursday.org/category/technology/">technology</a> (7), <a
href="http://teachingthursday.org/category/cheating/">cheating</a> (4), <a
href="http://teachingthursday.org/category/student-expectations/">student
expectations</a> (6), <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/category/graduate-
instruction/">graduate instruction</a> (6), and <a
href="http://teachingthursday.org/category/future-teaching/">the future of
teaching</a> (6), and <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/category/summer-
teaching/">summer teaching</a> (4). These posts were written by over 20
authors representing 15 departments or divisions on campus and several off-
campus bloggers to add some diversity to our perspective here. The posts
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featured the full range of faculty (both tenure track and non-tenure track, from
full professors to assistant professors), staff, and administrators who are all
committed to teaching in some way on the University of North Dakota campus.
Below is a list of the 25 most popular posts from the past year. One of
the great things about blogs is that you can track, to some extent, the number
of times your pages were viewed. Of course, any kind of web statistic must
be taken with a grain of salt, but the ability to say something about what your
audience found interesting, compelling, or timely. The list below ranks
the most popular posts based on the number of page views per day. The diversity
among these popular posts is remarkable to me. They range from very
traditional blog posts which merely point toward an article of interest on the
web, to inspirational essays, to thoughtful critiques and practice teaching
advice. 1. 2.4. <a
href="http://teachingthursday.wordpress.com/2010/02/11/howard-zinn-and-
teaching/">Howard Zinn and Teaching</a>, R. Kahn 2. 1.80. <a
href="http://teachingthursday.wordpress.com/2010/02/25/the-recruiting-paradox-
recruiting-and-teaching-a-new-generation-of-graduate-students/">The
Recruiting Paradox: Recruiting and Teaching a New Generation of Graduate
Students</a>, E. Nelson 3. 1.75. <a
href="http://teachingthursday.wordpress.com/2010/02/18/online-teaching-the-
panopticon-and-the-unequal-gaze/">Online Teaching, the Panopticon, and the
unequal gaze</a>, M. Beltz 4. 1.59. <a
href="http://teachingthursday.wordpress.com/2009/11/05/on-the-habit-of-
cheating/">On the habit of cheating</a>, M. Beltz 5. 1.39. <a
href="http://teachingthursday.wordpress.com/2010/01/14/how-to-spot-a-bad-
professor/">How to spot a bad professor</a>, W. Caraher 6.
1.38. <a href="http://teachingthursday.wordpress.com/2009/09/17/the-cost-of-
cheap-education/">The Cost of Cheap Education</a>, A. Kelsch 7.
1.28. <a href="http://teachingthursday.wordpress.com/2010/03/04/the-english-
department-and-beyond-the-und-writers-conference/">The English Department and
Beyond: the UND Writers Conference</a>, C. Alberts 8. 0.95. <a
href="http://teachingthursday.wordpress.com/2009/04/02/technology-and-
pedagogy/">Technology and Pedagogy</a>. W. Caraher 9. 0.87. <a
href="http://teachingthursday.wordpress.com/2009/11/12/teaching-thursday-
critiquing-the-three-year-solution/">Teaching Thursday: Critiquing the Three
Year Solution</a>, J. Hawthorne 10. 0.70. <a
href="http://teachingthursday.wordpress.com/2009/09/03/the-new-future-of-
teaching-graduate-student-mentoringdeconstructing-framework/">The New Future
of Teaching: Graduate Student Mentoring/Deconstructing Framework</a> J.
Benoit 11. 0.67. <a
href="http://teachingthursday.wordpress.com/2009/09/01/teaching-thursdays-
boundaries-and-manners/">Teaching Thursdays: Boundaries and Manners</a>,
C. Prescott 12. 0.63. <a
href="http://teachingthursday.wordpress.com/2009/08/27/the-new-future-of-
teaching-social-networks-changing-expectations-and-perils-of-access/">The New
Future of Teaching: Social Networking, Changing Expectations, and the Perils of
Access</a>, W. Caraher. B. Weber 13. 0.57. <a
href="http://teachingthursday.wordpress.com/2009/11/19/teaching-thursday-some-
thoughtful-tips-for-online-teaching/">Teaching Thursday: Some Thoughtful Tips
</a>, M. Beltz,W. Caraher, T. Prescott, B. Weber 14. 0.57. <a
href="http://teachingthursday.wordpress.com/2010/01/21/the-panopticon-and-
online-teaching/">The Panopticon and Online Teaching</a>, W.
Caraher 15. 0.47. <a
href="http://teachingthursday.wordpress.com/2009/04/23/mentoring-graduate-
students/">Mentoring Graduate Students</a>, C. Prescott 16.
305
0.42. <a href="http://teachingthursday.wordpress.com/2009/10/08/the-cost-of-

cheap-education-another-perspective/">The Cost of Cheap Education: Another
Perspective </a>, M. Beltz 17. 0.41. <a
href="http://teachingthursday.wordpress.com/2009/12/03/three-thursday-thoughts-
on-teaching-1-lexical-analysis/">Three Thursday Thoughts on Teaching: 1.
Lexical Analysis </a>, D. Perkins 18. 0.40. <a
href="http://teachingthursday.wordpress.com/2009/10/01/reflecting-on-teaching-
an-all-campus-colloqium-on-the-scholarship-of-teaching-and-
learning/">Reflecting on Teaching: An All-Campus Colloquium on Teaching and
Learning</a>, W. Caraher 19. 0.39. <a
href="http://teachingthursday.wordpress.com/2009/03/12/call-me-edupunk/">Call
me Edupunk</a>, C. Alberts 20. 0.38. <a
href="http://teachingthursday.wordpress.com/2009/04/09/using-models-to-
teach/">Using Models to Teach</a>, C. Barkdull, B. Weber 21.
0.37. <a
href="http://teachingthursday.wordpress.com/2009/10/22/cheating/">Cheating</a>, W. Caraher 22. 0.31. <a
href="http://teachingthursday.wordpress.com/2009/10/16/on-spurring-self-
reflection-in-decision-making/">Reflecting on Teaching Colloquium: On
Spurring Self-Reflection in Decision Making,</a> D. Sauerwein 23.
0.30. <a href="http://teachingthursday.wordpress.com/2009/10/29/online-
cheating/">Online Cheating</a>, C. Prescott 24. 0.26. <a
href="http://teachingthursday.wordpress.com/2009/05/05/another-view-on-teaching-
graduate-students/">Another View on Teaching Graduate Students</a>, A.
Kitzes 25. 0.24. <a
href="http://teachingthursday.wordpress.com/2009/07/16/making-the-most-of-a-
month-in-china-the-role-of-a-directed-journal/">Making the Most of a Month in
China: The Role of a Direct Journal</a>, C. Berry Over the first year,
the blog has enjoyed over 7500 page views (and this does not count views via its
RSS feed in Google Reader and the like). The chart below shows that the
trend over the past 12 months is clearly a positive one especially when you
consider that December and January are typically slow blog months (both in terms
of posts and visits) and March still has a week left and is showing exceptional
traffic. In short, I am optimistic that the upward trend will continue. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201310fdc2121970
width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px" border="0" alt="TeachingThursdayStats"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201310fdc2129970c
-pi" width="400" height="168"></a> While we do not collect a full set of
analytics data, we can say a few things about how people got to our blog.
The biggest referrer is <a href="http://www.und.edu/">und.edu</a>, followed by
<a href="http://www.und.edu/dept/oid">und.edu/dept/oid</a> (the home page of the
office of instructional development). My personal blog -- <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/">The Archaeology of the
Mediterranean World</a> provided some traffic as did the <a
href="http://mygradspace.wordpress.com/">Official Blog of the Graduate
School</a> , but more important perhaps are various social networking sites like
Facebook and Twitter which drove a considerable quantity of traffic to the
site. Finally, several other sites picked up our blog and linked to
it. The most exciting link came from the <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/07/us/07iht-
currents.html?_r=3&ref=world">the New York Times</a>, but we also attracted
links from India, South America, and several blogs in the US. The most
exciting thing is that every day, every week, and every month we see more and
306
more traffic coming to Teaching Thursday to discover what our faculty
and friend have to say about teaching. Without sounding sappy, I've been
very pleased to discover so many people on campus willing to write critical,
reflective, and practical posts on aspects of their teaching. As we look
ahead to our 10,000 visit and 100th post, I am excited to continue to work to
develop content and participation on the blog. In particular, I'd like to get
more participation from across campus, and extend invitations to my colleagues
in the College of Engineering, Nursing, the Law School, and Medical School (I'm
already working on ways to draw in colleagues in Aerospace!) to contribute what
you do that is inspirational, practical, and exciting to the conversation.
With the recent emphasis on the STEM disciplines, I think that this forum can
become a useful place for teachers both within and outside of the STEM fields
to exchange ideas that will enrich all of our classroom experiences.
I'd like to thank all the contributors over the past year -- especially those
who wrote multiple posts or took the time to write about teaching during busiest
parts of the semester -- and thank Anne Kelsch's for all her hard work to keep
the blog in the campus eye. 
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TITLE: Some thoughts on St. Leonidas and Baptism at Lechaion in Greece
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The Lechaion basilica and baptistery are among the most impressive
archaeological and architecture remains from the Early Christian period in
Greece. As I have blogged on many times, the massive Lechaion basilica stood
near the coast at Corinth's Western harbor. It's baptistery is often thought to
date earlier than the massive basilica situated to its south largely because
they have slightly different orientations. (<a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/korinthian
_matters/">This post has a companion post here</a>).
Scholars have often associated the basilica with the martyr Leonidas and his
several companions who, according to the preserved lives, were drowned in
the Gulf of Corinth (AS II, April 16). Since Robin Jensen's visit a few
weeks back, I've been thinking about this episode and its relationship to the
great church at Lechaion. In several articles, Jensen argues that ad
sanctos baptism was a not uncommon practice in Early Christian times (<a
307
href="http://people.vanderbilt.edu/~james.p.burns/chroma/practices/pilgrimjens.h
tml">for a nice summary see here</a>). This largely involved traveling to
pilgrimage sites or even just local martyr's tombs for the initiation rite of
baptism. For Jensen, this evokes the long-standing association between baptism
as a kind of spiritual rebirth and the death of martyrs as their birth into
spiritual and eternal glory.
 <img
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a96f6e94970b
 
<img
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a96f6e8c970b
I began to wonder whether ad sanctos type baptisms might have taken
place at Lechaion. After all, the church is conspicuously close to the sea where
a martyr shrine to Leonidas would be appropriate. Moreover, the church makes
abundant use of water both in some of the imagery present in the yet unpublished
architectural sculpture (at least one unpublished fragment of sculpture includes
a dolphin which would have had particular significance in the context of baptism
and Corinth through the myth of Arion) and in the various water features
associated with its massive western atrium. These water features include the
installation of a large basin, perhaps for fountains, in the center of its
western hemicycle and two large basins along the eastern wall of the atrium. The
baptistery itself is quite large with three rooms: two ancillary rooms and the
baptistery proper with its central font. In short, the basilica featured water
prominently, and if the basilica was to be associated with the martyr Leonidas,
then the use of water throughout may well have been evocative of the events
surround his and his companions martyrdom.
The use of water around Lechnaion is not enough, however, to link this church
to the martyr Leonidas or to make an argument for ad sanctos baptismal
practices. Corinth and the Corinthia was known in antiquity for <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/fountains-and-the-culture-of-water-at-roman-
corinth/oclc/50497698">fountains and water</a>; so, the the use of water at
Lechaion may have merely evoked or advanced Corinth's longstanding reputation.
There is something more however linking Leonidas to baptismal practices. First,
it was not uncommon to associate explicitly martyrdom with baptism, especially
if the martyr was a catechumen. Leonidas seems to have been a full-fledged
Christian. He was, however, martyred on during Easter. Easter was the common
time for baptism in the Mediterranean in general and in the Greece specifically
according to the historian Socrates (5.22). While there does not appear to be
explicit (at least that I've found) references to baptismal imagery, the
accounts of St. Leonidas' martrydom are short and the link between their
physical and fatal submersion in the sea at Easter when catechumens experienced
(at least symbolic) submersion of their own in the baptismal font at Lechaion
seems hard to overlook.
To take this admittedly speculative reading a step further, it would be
interesting to imagine the relationship between the Lechaion basilica and the
nymphaion excavated a short distance to the south of the church (E. Stikas,
Ergon (1957), 53-58).
 
<img
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a96f6e98970b
</div>
308
This building shows many remarkable similarities in both architectural

decoration and in the use of opus sectile floors to the Lechaion
basilica. While the building itself may be earlier, it seems likely that it
underwent some modification by the same work crews who were involved in building
the Lechaion basilica. The location of the nymphaion at the base of a coastal
bluff gave it access to water and a position along a likely coastal road leading
to the north coast of the Peloponnesus and, presumably, past the massive
Lechaion church. It would be appealing to imagine this building as a symbolic
billboard (are there other kinds of billboards?) for the Lechaion basilica
taking not only certain decorative cues from the church as well as the reference
to water. Water would have brought together the local history of the church,
well-known Corinthian water culture, the martyrdom of Leonidas, and the
Christian rite of baptism performed in an elaborate building less than 100 m
from the foreshore of the Corinthian gulf.
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TITLE: Tweets and Writers Conference on a Digital Day
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CATEGORY: Web/Tech
DATE: 03/23/2010 08:08:05 AM

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Today is going to be dominated by digital affairs. First, I plan to attend
the University of North Dakota CIO (Chief Information Officers) Core Technology
Research Forum. The plan, from what I understand, is to focus on the future of
research technology here on campus.
That's probably the least interesting meeting of the day. Immediately after
that meeting, I'll scurry off to the first major panel of the UND Writers
Conference. The theme of this years conference is "Mind the Gap: Print, New
Media, Art" and here's <a href="http://www.undwritersconference.org/wc-
schedule.htm">the exciting schedule</a>. At noon in the lecture bowl, the first
panel will discuss "Are Books Obsolete?" and feature graphic artist, <a
href="http://www.undwritersconference.org/wc-authors.html#spiegelmantop">Art
Spiegelman</a>, e-literature author (and <a
href="http://teachingthursday.org/category/deena-larsen/">Teaching Thursday</a>
contributor!) <a href="http://www.deenalarsen.net/">Deena Larsen</a>, filmmaker
<a href="http://www.ceceliacondit.com/">Cecelia Condit</a>. This is not the
first panel to consider this topic in recent years and the slightly negative
309
tone to the question (as opposed to the more optimistic "<a

href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/">What is the future of the book</a>"? The
fear with a panel focused on a question like this is that the answer could be a
simple "no" and that doesn't leave us anywhere really to go.
One of my little pet projects has been to encourage a Twitter back channel
for the Writers Conference using the hashtag #UNDWC. Let's just say that North
Dakota is not quite ready for Twitter hashtags yet and it's been a bit of an
uphill battle. In any event, the Writers Conference does have <a
href="http://twitter.com/UNDWC">an official Twitter Feed</a>, which awkwardly
has two followers. So, anyone attending, thinking about, or curious about the
Writers Conference, follow their feed. Or, better still, contribute to the
conversation by using the <a
href="http://twitter.com/#search?q=UNDWC">#UNDWC</a>. <a
href="http://twitter.com/#search?q=UNDWC">Then follow the chat (or just me
tweeting merrily away) here</a>.
Then, at 2 pm, I'm off to my History 240 Class to talk about research using
the library. As per usual this involves introducing them to digital tools -
namely <a href="http://odinlibrary.org/F?func=find-b-0&local_base=undal">the
library catalogue</a>, J-Stor, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/">World Cat</a>,
<a href="http://scholar.google.com/">Google Scholar</a>, and <a
href="http://www.zotero.org/">Zotero</a> -- as well as old fashioned analog
ones. One of the greatest challenges that I have each year is explaining to
students exactly what a monograph is or how to distinguish between an academic
and popular work. It's always surprising how little the students understand
about the relationship between form and authority in publishing. In other words,
a book that has all of the basic attributes of an academically authoritative
text (footnotes, bibliography, index, acknowledgements, thesis, academic
publisher) is more likely to be the basis for further research than a book
lacking this attributes. Students simply do not come to University with the
skills needed to discern academic authority. The thing that worries me more, is
that these basic skills are very difficult to communicate and instill in
students. In other words, students will continue to ask me -- sometimes for
semesters after the class is over -- whether a book is a monograph or not. I am
not trying to suggest that students only read monographs or anything like that,
but it strikes me as odd how hard it is for them to distinguish between an
academic book and a non-academic book. And, to return to the theme of this post,
it worries me that in a digital environment it is even more confusing to them.
At least academic publishing adheres to some basic standards whereas the signs
of authority on the web are far more obscure.
Finally, on a digital day, I am slightly embarrassed to announce that I
(well, actually my wife) ordered my iPad over the weekend. While I have, like
any good academic, scurried off to find negative reviews of it (just to keep
myself from being disappointed), I am pretty excited to have a flexible, flawed,
and nicely designed ebook reader. I expect it to substantially improve my
life.
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IP: 155.68.29.254
DATE: 03/24/2010 09:13:00 AM
Can't believe you're meeting Art Spiegelman!!!
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TITLE: Lakka Skoutara: A Partial Archive
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DATE: 03/22/2010 08:17:33 AM

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Over the last 10 years or so, David Pettegrew, Tim Gregory, Lita
Tzortzopoulou-Gregory, and I have been working to document a modern rural
settlement in the southeastern Corinthia. The site is called Lakka Skoutara and
we have presented the preliminary results of our work in a few <a
href="http://www.scribd.com/full/28737818?access_key=key-
1265siotexydjqyoet25">conference papers</a> over the past few years, I've p<a
upland-basin-of-the-southeastern-korinthia.html">resented some photographs and
general discussions in this blog</a>, and Lita-Tzortzopoulou published a very
brief summary of our work in "<a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=n-PYAyk-
ft8C&lpg=PP1&dq=Mediterranean%20Archaeological%20Athanassopoulos&pg=
PA183#v=onepage&q=&f=false">The Archaeology of Modern Greece</a>" in E.
Athanassopoulos and L. Wandsnider eds. Mediterranean Archaeological
Landscapes: current issues. (Philadelphia 2004).
Part of the basis for our study is a significant archive of photographs. I've
made a significant number of these available using Omeka on a companion site to
this blog called <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.und.edu/">Mediterranean
Archaeology at the University of North Dakota</a>. David Pettegrew and I took
these photos over a 9 year period from 2001-2009. So far, I've uploaded and
begun to annotate with metadata photos taken in <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.und.edu/items/browse?search=&advanced%5B0%5D
%5Belement_id%5D=40&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=contains&advanced%5B0%5D%5
Bterms%5D=2002&range=&collection=4&type=&tags=&submit_search
=Search">2002</a>, <a
=Search">2004</a>, and <a
311
=Search">2009</a>.
<img
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a962fb70970b
-pi" width="480" height="406" alt="MedArchUNDOmeka.tiff" />
To find the photos on my Omeka site, click on <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.und.edu/collections">Browse Collections</a> and
then <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.und.edu/collections/show/4">Lakka
Skoutara</a>. You can look at the various photos of individual houses by their
tags: <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.und.edu/items/browse/tag/House+2">House
2</a>, <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.und.edu/items/browse/tag/House+3">House 3</a>,
<a href="http://mediterraneanworld.und.edu/items/browse/tag/House+4">House
4</a>, <a
6</a>, <a
9</a>, <a
11</a>, <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.und.edu/items/browse/tag/House+13">House 13</a>
, <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.und.edu/items/browse/tag/House+14">House
14</a>, <a
17</a>. Or you can go to advanced search (in the upper right hand corner) and
create more complex searches. The simple search is nearly worthless. Once you
find a photo in which you are interested, you can save the citation into your <a
href="http://www.zotero.org/">Zotero</a> database.
At present the houses do not have a significant amount of metadata associated
with each house, but that is coming soon. Moreover, we do not have many
contextualizing documents associated with these houses. But we will have a few
plans posted soon and a map of the site as well as some photos taken in 2001 and
some more robust descriptions of the houses and the area. In other words, this
is a work in progress, but the item numbers for each photograph will remain
stable.
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TITLE: Even more exciting and strangely beautiful flood pictures
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DATE: 03/21/2010 07:49:52 AM

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I always tell people that the most beautiful thing about Grand Forks is the
light. This relatively low-resolution web cam, capture shows just that at about
7:46 am this morning.
The mighty Red River of the North is at 45.99 feet, the 8th highest historic
crest.
<img
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a95dcf7d970b
-pi" width="480" height="363" alt="FloodCam4.tiff" />
Here is the river level <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a959a571970
b-pi">yesterday</a>, <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a95487c9970
b-pi">the day before</a>, and <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201310fb59b0b970
c-pi">the day before</a>
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TITLE: Another Flood Picture
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DATE: 03/20/2010 07:37:59 AM

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It's 7:25 am on a partly cloudy Saturday. Here's what the river is up to from
the <a href="http://www.grandforksherald.com/pages/floodcam2010">Grand Fork
Herald's Flood Cam</a>.
 
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<img
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a959a571970b
-pi" width="480" height="366" alt="FloodCam3.tiff" />
Have a good Saturday.
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DATE: 03/19/2010 07:35:21 AM

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Some cool quick hits on a chilly spring Friday morning:!
<ul>!
<li>If you haven't tracked it down yet, check out <a
href="http://www.danreetz.com/">Dan Reetz's home page and blog</a>.</li>!
<li>The <a href="http://electricarchaeologist.wordpress.com/">Electric
Archaeologist</a> is experimenting with <a href="http://vue.tufts.edu/">Vue
(Visual Understanding Environment)</a> <a
href="http://electricarchaeologist.wordpress.com/2010/03/16/vue-opencontext-org-
quickly-visualizing-relationships-in-data/">here</a> and <a
href="http://electricarchaeologist.wordpress.com/2010/03/18/more-on-
vue/">here</a>.</li>!
<li>The <a href="http://www.iklaina.org/">Iklaina Archaeological Project</a>
publishes its final reports online on a fairly nice looking site.
 </li>!
<li>Here's <a href="http://bristol.ac.uk/news/2010/6840.html">an update on
the project sponsored</a> by the University of Bristol to included homeless
people in the excavation of an urban site.</li>!
<li>Here's a link to a somewhat interesting First Monday article on how
students use <a
76">Wikipedia</a> and an interesting article on how <a
79">peer governance works on that site</a>.</li>!
<li>My lovely wife has offered to get my an iPad for my birthday. At the same
time, I've been talking the Scott Moore who recently purchased a Kindle. And
now I discover that I can read <a
314
href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=kcp_mac_mkt_lnd?docId=1000464931
">Kindle books on my Mac</a> in a real mediocre way.</li>!
<li>Did I link to this interesting (and sort of long) talk by J. Zittrain on
the <a
href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kpur7yJ7EE&feature=youtube_gdata">Hist
orical Record in the Digital Age</a>?</li>!
<li>Some of Ryan Stander's work based on his time in Cyprus was <a
href="http://bit.ly/9Xs7hX">recently declared indecent</a> by the good folks at
the County of Somerset Culture and Heritage Council.</li>!
<li>This is a very funny version of <a href="http://bit.ly/cQlzCK">Classics
version of Adam Sandler's Hannukah</a> song produced by students at my old
stomping ground, the American School of Classical Studies at Athens.</li>!
<li><a href="http://joeljonientz.com/">Joel Jonientz</a>, one of our
collaborators in the Working Group in Digital and New Media, <a
href="http://bit.ly/9gmqJA">interviewed Art Spiegelman</a>.</li>!
<li>One of the fun things to do during the NCAA tournament is to check <a
href="http://www.google.com/trends">Google Trends</a> to see what universities
are getting lots of attention for their teams' success during the NCAA
Tournament.</li>!
<li>For a tiny bit, it looked like <a
href="http://www.cricinfo.com/nzvaus2010/engine/current/match/423789.html">New
Zealand v. Australia</a> might be interesting, but then folks settled in.</li>!
<li>Bristol this week.</li>!
<li>And the NCAA Tournament. I broke my own record for how quickly I could lose
my NCAA Champion (Georgetown): first day, third session. What was I
thinking?</li>!
</ul>!
As a point of comparison, I captured this photo at 7:22 am today. Compare it
to the capture from <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201310fb59b0b970
c-pi">24 hours before</a>.!
<img alt="FloodCam2.tiff" height="365"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a95487c9970b
-pi" width="480" /> 
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TITLE: Spring Thaw and Flood
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DATE: 03/18/2010 07:51:40 AM

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It's that time of year again: flood season. Since so many of you have asked,
I've embedded Grand Forks' flood cam in this post:<object
classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" width="400" height="320"
id="utv666513">
<param name="flashvars" value="autoplay=false&brand=embed&cid=3263976"
/>
<param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" />
<param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" />
<param name="movie" value="http://www.ustream.tv/flash/live/1/3263976" />
<embed flashvars="autoplay=false&brand=embed&cid=3263976" width="400"
height="320" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" id="utv666513"
name="utv_n_570002" src="http://www.ustream.tv/flash/live/1/3263976"
type="application/x-shockwave-flash" />
</object> <a href="http://www.ustream.tv/" style="padding: 2px 0px 4px; width:
400px; background: #ffffff; display: block; color: #000000; font-weight: normal;
font-size: 10px; text-decoration: underline; text-align: center;"
target="_blank">Streaming .TV shows by Ustream</a> 
To offer some perspective, I've included a screen grab of the flood cam as of
7:30 am today: 
<img
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201310fb59b0b970c
-pi" width="480" height="371" alt="FloodCam.jpg" /> 
 
As you can see the bridge is still open and the Mighty Red River of the North is
still largely within its banks. The flood obelisk is just to the right of center
immediately to the left of the electrical pole on the right side of the bridge.
As you can see it's in the water, but that's not too unusual or scary. The crest
is predicted for early next week and to be between 47 and 49 feet. Apparently
the long, early thaw combined with a snowy winter and relatively damp March has
caused the major problems this year. Current predictions put the crest safely
inside the to 10 historic crests: 
 
Historic Crests1) 54.35 feet - April 22, 1997 
2) 50.20 feet - April 10, 1897 
3) 49.34 feet - April 1, 2009 
4) 48.81 feet - April 26, 1979 
5) 48.00 feet - April 18, 1882 
6) 47.93 feet - April 6, 2006 
7) 47.41 feet - April 16, 2006 
8) 45.93 feet - April 21, 1996 
9) 45.73 feet - April 11, 1978 
10) 45.69 feet - April 16, 1969 
Source: National Weather Service via <a
href="http://www.grandforksherald.com/pages/2010floodlinksandinfo">Grand Forks
Herald</a> 
 
I guess there is some worry about ice jams -- or at least that was the topic of
conversation last night at dinner. If you want to know as much as we do out
here, check out the <a
href="http://www.grandforksherald.com/pages/2010floodlinksandinfo">Grand
Forks Herald's flood page</a>. We'll do all we can to stay dry and hope the
best for our friends to the south. 
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TITLE: Medieval and Post Medieval Greece and Dumbarton Oaks
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I've just finished reading through John Bintliff and Hanna StoÃàger's, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/medieval-and-post-medieval-greece-the-corfu-
papers/oclc/476763831">Medieval and Post-Medieval Greece: The Corfu
Papers</a> (2009). It's an edited volume produced from a conference
in Corfu in 1998. The papers, however, have largely been updated and
represent a nice cross-section of the kind of work being done in Medieval and
Post-Medieval Greece. The papers focus on ceramic studies, the results of
intensive pedestrian survey, studies on settlement patterns, new directions in
the study of domestic and monumental architecture, and, finally, discussions of
issues of cultural research management in Greece. I found W. Bowden's short
analysis of the Christian archaeology in Greece with an emphasis on church in
Mastron, Aetolia, which scholars have traditionally dated to the 7th-8th
centuries. Bowden suggests that simple stylistic dating based either on
decoration or architecture can be misleading especially considering the
prevalence of re-use and conscious anachronism in the Middle and Late Byzantine
period in the region. Also worthy of note is Platon Petrides short review
of Late Antique Delphi, which doesn't say anything new here, but is still a nice
overview of post-ancient period at the site. T.Gregory, F. Lang, J. Vroom offer
some useful commentary on the use of intensive survey and the study of ceramics
in the study of Medieval and Post-Medieval Greece; Gregory's article, which has
been substantially up-dated, has a nice critiquing the impact of "second-wave"
intensive survey projects on our understanding of Medieval and Post-Medieval
Greece. The final three papers (M. Mouliou, K. Sbonias, and L.
Tzortzopoulou-Gregory) deal with issues of cultural resource management in
Greece. L. Tzortzopoulou-Gregory's paper provides more useful evidence for
the difficult position that foreign (or even just non-local) archaeologists find
themselves in when they are placed between the national archaeological
bureaucracy, local communities, and non-local/non-national research
interests. I received my copy of this volume the same week that I was
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invited (along with many others) to a "conversation" at <a

href="http://www.doaks.org/">Dumbarton Oaks</a> on Byzantine Archaeology in
North America. While I will not be able to attend, I was invited by the
director of Dumbarton Oaks (as I am sure were many of my colleagues) to send
along any thoughts I might have about this particular topic. I was struck
by how rarely Dumbarton Oaks publications appeared in the bibliographies of the
various articles in this volume. The main reason for this absence is because few
of the papers showed much concern for the kinds of art historical approaches
long favored by Dumbarton Oaks (for this critique see <a
href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/2009/05/dumbarton-oaks-and-surface-
surveys.html">Kostis Kourelis open letter</a>). The approaches favored by
Dumbarton Oaks have tended to particularly ill-suited to research in the Greek
countryside where textual evidence is relatively scarce, monumental architecture
is often in poor condition, representing stylistically "crude" or provincial
work, or even "late" by Dumbarton Oaks standards (although DO has contributed
significantly to preservation of neglected buildings, the definition of
provincial style, and late and post-Byzantine art), and the field techniques and
methods require some specialized training to evaluate and critique. Ironically,
Dumbarton Oaks' interest in economic history, the history of everyday life
(particularly as manifest in realia in saints lives and other Byzantine
documents), and the character of "the provincial" in terms of style and
influence on the traditional centers of Byzantine society (Constantinople,
Thessaloniki, et c.). The Bintliff and StoÃàger volume (along with
<a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/archaeology-and-history-in-roman-
medieval-and-post-medieval-greece-studies-on-method-and-meaning-in-honor-of-
timothy-e-gregory/oclc/191758469">another recent volume</a> focusing on the same
period and region) have shown that the tools exist to develop more nuanced
interpretations of the Byzantine countryside. And that these analyses have
much to offer traditional textual approaches to the history of Byzantium.
In fact, one fault I might offer among the articles in the Bintliff volume is
the relative lack of attention to questions that extend beyond the national or
local boundaries of Medieval (or even post-Medieval) Greece. The
transnational approaches fostered by institutions like Dumbarton Oaks could work
to counteract a tendency toward studies that emphasize the modern region or
nation at the expense of more revealing Medieval concepts of political,
economic, and cultural organization. Moreover the relative absence of
sustained discussion of texts, urban centers, or elite art in the Bintliff
volume is not necessarily a strength. The very areas neglected (to some
extent, but not ignored) in the Bintliff and StoÃàger volume are areas where
Dumbarton Oaks could and perhaps even should show the way by showing the value
of traditional methods and approaches to contemporary archaeological
research. It seems clear to me that the archaeology of the Medieval and
Post-Medieval Mediterranean is at a watershed moment. As Kourelis noted, a
generation of pioneers in the field of Byzantine archaeology are approach
retirement age. Part of their legacy is there a strong group of ambitious
and dedicated young scholars. This informally-defined group seeks not only
to push the methods advanced by folks like Tim Gregory, John Bintliff, Jack
Davis, and others, in their individual scholarship but to find ways to push
institutions like the <a href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/">American School in
Athens</a> and Dumbarton Oaks to bring these methods into fold of traditional
research on these periods and places. This should not involve rejecting
the important traditions of scholarship at these institutions -- after all,
hardly a week goes by when I don't consult a publication produced at Dumbarton
Oaks and I value the amazing support that I have received from the American
School in Athens -- but showing how recent developments in, say, survey
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archaeology, applied post-modern or post-processural theory, or even kinds

of reflective, historical criticism of past and present institutional practices,
can enrich the disciplines to which we are all committed. 
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TITLE: Teaching Tuesday: Readings for History 240: The Historians Craft
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Over the past two semesters, I've been teaching a revised version of our
department's required undergraduate methods course -- the historian's
craft. I split the course into two parts: the first part is a
historiographical survey of the development of the discipline. The class time is
divided between a formal lecture and readings of primary sources central to the
development of history. Fortunately, most of these primary sources are
easily found on the interwebs. In fact, I've been able to teach the class
without requiring a textbook or a primary source reader. Here's the basic
reading list: <a
href="http://classics.mit.edu/Homer/iliad.1.i.html">Homer, Iliad, Book
1-2</a> <a
href="http://classics.mit.edu/Herodotus/history.1.i.html">Herodotus, Book
1</a> <a
href="http://www.utexas.edu/courses/classicalarch/readings/thucydides_book_1.htm
l">Thucydides, Book 1</a> <a
href="http://classics.mit.edu/Plutarch/alexandr.html">Plutarch, Life of
Alexander, excerpts</a> <a
href="http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/vita-constantine.html">Euseubus,
Life of Constantine, excerpts</a> <a
href="http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/bede-book1.html">Bede,
Ecclesiastical History of England, Book 1, excerpts</a> <a
href="http://omacl.org/Anglo/part2.html">The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,
excerpts</a> <a href="http://history.hanover.edu/texts/vallapart2.html">L.
Valla, Discourse on the Forgery of the Alleged Donation of Constantine,
excerpts</a> <a
href="http://books.google.com/books?id=BXsfAAAAMAAJ&dq=History%20of%20the%20
Reformation%20Ranke&pg=PR3#v=onepage&q=&f=false">L. von Ranke,
History of the Reformation, excerpts</a> T. Mommsen, "Rectoral
Address," University of Berlin (1874). <a
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href="http://books.google.com/books?id=3fticLUr2XIC&dq=J.%20Michelet%20The%2
0People&lr=&pg=PA3#v=onepage&q=&f=false">J. Michelet, The
People (1846), excerpts</a> <a
href="http://books.google.com/books?id=QTENAAAAYAAJ&dq=Bury%20History%20of%2
0Science&lr=&pg=PA3#v=onepage&q=&f=false">J.B. Bury, "The
Science of History" (1903)</a>. <a
href="http://www.historians.org/projects/cge/Related/Emerton.htm">E. Emerton,
"The Requirements for the Historical Doctorate in America," American Historical
Association Annual Report 1893</a> <a
href="http://books.google.com/books?id=LFQZAAAAYAAJ&dq=Methods%20of%20Teachi
ng%20History&pg=PA113#v=onepage&q=&f=false">H.B. Adams, "Special
Methods for the Study of History," in G. Stanley Hall ed., Methods of Teaching
History. 2nd ed. (1902), 113-148</a>. <a
href="http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=1427">C.
Beard, "That Noble Dream," AHR 41 (1935), 74-87</a>. F. Braudel, The
Mediterranean World in the Age of Phillip II, excerpts. E. Said,
Orientalism, "Introduction" (New York 1978). H. K. Bhabha, The Location
of Culture, excerpt. This past semester, however, I detected some
fatigue with the sources. Some were too long and the students did not read
them carefully. Others were too difficult to digest during a busy
semester. One of the key points of emphasis in our recent revisions of
this class is to make it easier for students and more like other 200 level
classes. Students were enrolling in the class, finding it difficult, and
dropping it and this made it difficult to move our majors through this course in
a timely and efficient manner. So, while the subject matter is demanding,
we have discovered that the course itself cannot be. As an added benefit
to this more "realistic" approach to the course, I've discovered the more non-
majors have enrolled and some of these are students who like history, but have
been attracted into other majors. In other words, keeping this course accessible
has the potential to attract prodigal students who have wandered from their one
true love. So, as I look ahead to teaching it next fall and spring, I am
wondering whether there are some classics in the European or American historical
tradition that are (1) accessible online and (2) easily excerpted into a 10-15
page section appropriate for a lower level history course. The goal of the
readings is to spur discussion of principles central to history as a discipline
in either the past or present or to show some particular watershed in the
development of history as a professional, academic, and intellectual pursuit.
Any thoughts?
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TITLE: Preliminary Analysis of Pyla-Koustopetria Archaeological Data or Thinking
Out Loud 4
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DATE: 03/15/2010 07:45:54 AM

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In September, I began <a
loud-3.html">a series of posts</a> in which I thought out loud about the survey
data from the <a href="http://www.pkap.org/">Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological
Project</a>. The posts mainly focused on overall ceramic densities across
the entire study area. Over the last two or three weeks, I've begun
working on the final analysis of the period data from the survey. To do
this, I take the finds data produced by R. Scott Moore and Mara Horowitz and
plot is against the survey maps produced in the field by David Pettegrew and
myself. In most cases, this work has confirmed our long held (and argued)
perspectives on the distribution of material at our site, but sometimes,
bringing finds data together with our survey maps shows patterns that were not
entirely apparent on the ground. While we have dedicated much of our
attention to activities along the Pyla-Koutsopetria coastal plain or in the area
of the known Bronze Age site of Kokkinokremos, it may be that some important
activity is taking place on the coastal ridge running north of the Koutsopetria
plain and the very prominent coast height of Vigla. The main concentration
of activity in what we call <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a61fec54970
c-pi">Zone 4</a> sits along its southern edge. The site in this area first
appears during the Iron Age. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201310fa14d98970
right: 0px" border="0" alt="ArchaictoClassical"
-pi" width="400" height="552"></a> This image shows
the site from the Iron Age to the Hellenistic period. The blue dots are
Iron Age material (1050-475 BC). The assemblage in the red circle included
everything from Classical era terracota figurines to fine wares and kitchen
wares and utility wares (amphoras, medium coarse and coarse wares). The
material is highly localized in an area of 25 units or so and does not appear to
extend further north. The assemblage from these periods on Vigla (the
concentration of material to the southwest of the red circle) is contemporary,
but far less robust and diverse. The activity at this area appears to
persist into the later Hellenistic and Early Roman period as well. <a
right: 0px" border="0" alt="EarlyRomantoRoman"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a93a99a9970b
-pi" width="400" height="552"></a> In this map, the
triangles are Early Roman material, the pentagons are Hellenistic-Early Roman
material and the green dots date to the more generic Roman period. While
there is evidence that the activities at the site begin to extend further to the
north along the plateau, the main concentration of material is still in the
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southern most units of along our north to south transect. Like for earlier
periods, the assemblage is reasonably diverse including fine wares, lamp
fragments, and a full range of utility wares. The
most remarkable thing about the site is that it suddenly, within the limits of
our chronological resolutions, stops in the Late Roman period. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201310fa14db0970
right: 0px" border="0" alt="LateRoman"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201310fa14dc1970c
-pi" width="400" height="552"></a> In this map, the
different colored dots are all Late Roman material and, as you can see, there is
not much Late Roman activity in the area of the earlier site. So, the
question is what kind of site of sees consistent activity for close to 1200
years and then is suddenly abandoned. To my mind, there are three
options. First, Late Roman activity does not decline over the study area
as a whole. In fact, the coastal plain becomes the center of unprecedented
activity during this period. It may be that the center of settlement shifted
from the more protected top of the coastal plateau to the more convenient
coastal plain during the relatively peace epoch of Late Antiquity. Second,
the area on the plateau could be a religious sanctuary of some
description. The scholar of Late Antique Christianity in me is drawn to
the idea that the site is a long-standing pagan sanctuary abandoned with the
growing prominence of Christianity on the island. Perhaps the very fabric
of the sanctuary was quarried for the building of the excavated Early Christian
basilica on the plain below. Finally, it may be that this coastal height
served as the local cemetery. While the diversity of the assemblage at the
site hints at habitation or even religious uses (which could include the same
material signature as domestic activity), it may be that the main settlement was
on the fortified height of Vigla (as our excavations at least hints) and they
buried their dead outside the city walls to the north. The abandonment of
burial in this area occurred in Late Antiquity where (I can't resist) Christian
conventions gently resisted burial among pagan ancestors. At the same
time, the persistent sanctity of the long-standing burial ground made it
impolitic or even impious to use the space for more mundane activities. As
a result, the area was largely abandoned even as activity along the northern
part of the plateau continued. We do not have any definitive
evidence for any of these hypothesis, although ground-penetrating radar
transects recorded in 2009 might provide us with some hints once they are
analyzed. At the same time, the clear shift in activity away from this
site stands out as one of the most definitive changes in the distribution of
material across our site.
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AUTHOR: Dallas
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IP: 65.60.192.124
URL:
DATE: 03/15/2010 05:39:25 PM
Interesting. Seems like there is a need for a few more soundings.
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DATE: 03/12/2010 10:03:07 AM

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<a href="http://www.psych.ndsu.nodak.edu/index.php?f=7&uid=dreetz">Dan
Reetz</a> <a
href="http://www2.und.edu/our/uletter/astory.php?uletterID=8103&DateID=290">
spoke on campus yesterday</a> and amazed us with not only his <a
href="http://www.diybookscanner.org/">DIY Book Scanner</a>, but perhaps more
importantly the DIY Book Scanner community. Dan estimated that his $250 scanner
could easily produce high-resolution scans of 500 page an hour. And the scanner
is portable, and the plans exist online and could be customized.!
 !
<img alt="201003121001.jpg" height="320"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a92c9ba3970b
-pi" width="480" />!
The applications for this kind of thing for small archaeological projects is
patently obvious. A site like <a
href="http://isthmia.osu.edu/">Isthmia</a>, for example, which has, at most,
40,000 pages of notebooks (that is 160, 250 page notebooks). Using a scanner
like the one Dan designed would allow a project like Isthmia to digitize all of
its notebooks over, conservatively, three weeks. And that's just with one
scanner. The relatively low cost of the scanners (of course better cameras could
increase the cost of each scanner quickly) could allow us to run two scanners
and cut the time on site to less than two weeks.!
Post-processing and mark up, of course, is another issue. But I think that
the <a href="http://omeka.org/">Omeka</a> interface, if tweaked appropriately
could provide the foundation for presenting the scanned notebook pages. This
would could all be done without radically expanding the current digital and
physical infrastructure (i.e. expensive equipment, et c.).!
The development of a relatively portable, efficient, and affordable device
would be a pretty remarkable breakthrough for the imposing task of digitizing
the archives of a small to mid-sized project.!
 
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TITLE: Teaching Thursday: Grading and Resistance
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BASENAME: teaching-thursday-grading-and-resistance
CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 03/11/2010 07:32:07 AM

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I just finished grading two stacks of midterm essays for lower division
courses (in the interest of full disclosure my graduate assistant also graded a
third stack). I noticed certain trends that were so pronounced and consistent
across almost all of the essays in these stacks that they are worthy of
remark.
First, the students will not articulate a specific thesis. They might offer a
number of closely related specific and focused arguments over the course of the
paper, but they will not tie themselves down with a specific thesis. I ask them
to do this. I provide myriad examples in class, and I have critiqued earlier
works from these same students pointing out how a vague thesis undermines the
overall structure of a paper and argument. All of this is to no avail. And it's
not like these are bad students. In fact, they are good students who can write
good arguments. The main concern about writing a strong, focused thesis may be
that these students feel like they are going to give alway their "good material"
too early in the paper. In other words, they may be following a narrative style
more common to the "popular" media like television where arguments are revealed
slowly, layer-by-layer, over the course of the program.
On Wednesday, Richard Kahn gave a fantastic talk entitled "<a
href="http://und.academia.edu/RichardKahn/attachment/719229/full/Education-as-
the-Avatar-of-Sustainability-">Education as the Avatar of Sustainability</a>".
While I'll leave you to suss out the specifics of the talk, one thing that I
came away from is the role of education is fomenting resistance. In Kahn's talk
education provided a way to resist "Big Coal", but this was clearly meant as a
metaphor for any source of oppression or iniquity in the world. After the talk,
I pointed out that universities, generally speaking, were in league with Big
Coal. Universities oppress as much as they liberate when it comes to the
production of knowledge. I've blogged before about the industrial roots of the
system of <a
oughts-on-the-end-of-disciplines.html">disciplines that continue to form the
foundation of the university system</a>. If at least part of the institutional
goal of universities is to create the kind of docile bodies that serve modern,
industrialized society, then how do we understand the steadfast refusal of our
students to follow certain simple procedures in their work.
Here's an example: I tell my students not to use contractions in formal
writing. I even tell them that the so-called "word processors" can be set up to
automatically convert contractions to proper, complete words. No matter how many
times I tell students not to use contractions, they use contractions flagrantly
324
throughout their papers. Is it possible to regard this practice as a kind of

resistance not only to my expectations, but to the institution that supports
such formal diction.
I have my doubts about any one episode or manifestation, but when the pattern
of resistance appears consistently across so many student behaviors (and we
should not fall into the easy route of just condemning students as "lazy". There
is no reason to expect students are any more lazy than faculty to enforce rules
and procedures in an uncritical way), I find myself wonder whether students have
successfully framed me as the oppressor.
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AUTHOR: Shawn
EMAIL: grahams@cc.umanitoba.ca
IP: 70.52.192.222
DATE: 03/11/2010 08:52:19 AM
Resistance? I don't know about that... in the undergrad papers sitting on my
desk, the pattern I think I'm seeing is simply one where the traditional
conventions of written English simply haven't been taught, and/or driven home.
"Caesar enjoyed a great defeat over his rivals" turns up again and again (and
similar violence to the language): a basic lack of understanding how grammar
conveys direction and action and certain words are reflective and so on?
This reminds me of a talk I was at, about the reuse of spolia in Christian
buildings. The speaker outlined the various theories - stuff about victorious
Christians defusing pagan power by turning inscriptions this way and that, etc -
but the speaker, who started life as a brick layer, pointed out that really, an
inscription makes an excellent bond for plaster. Nothing deeper need be posited.
Occam's razor?
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COMMENT:
EMAIL:
IP: 134.129.192.225
DATE: 03/11/2010 09:01:03 AM
Shawn,
I'd posit a difference between inadvertent violence to the English language (I

heard a sportscaster go on and on about the "dearth" of talent in this year's
Formula 1 field with 8 former race winners and four former champions. It made
me cringe!) and things like contractions where the students could correct the
mistake without much additional effort. The former involves a life time of
careful reading and writing; the latter involves simple attention to detail. I
suspect that willful inattention is a kind of resistance to structures of
325
authority that extend from my position as faculty to the rules that produce
disciplinary knowledge.
Bill
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Shawn
IP: 70.52.192.222
DATE: 03/12/2010 10:04:22 AM
It's not that long ago that we were both students... do you recall 'resisting
authority'? I'm not being glib - now that I've paused to reflect a bit more, and
taken off my grading hat, I actually do remember being passive-aggressive to one
prof whose style and approach I absolutely loathed. So perhaps you're right,
yes... so what do we do now?
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DATE: 03/10/2010 08:14:11 AM

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I keep thinking about <a
nk-archaeology-squatting-and-abandonment.html">abandonment in both modern and
ancient contexts</a> and wondering why (and to a lesser extent whether) there
seems to be a recent upswing in public interest in abandonment. I've written
elsewhere about the work of such photographers as <a
href="http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1882089_1850973,00.html">Yve
s Marchand and Romain Meffree</a>, <a
href="http://www.slate.com/id/2241211/">Camio Jose Vergara</a> (via <a
href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/" title="Kostis Kourelis">Kostis
Kourelis</a>) and <a href="http://www.jamesgriffioen.net/">James D.
Griffioen</a> (we can now add (thanks to <a
href="http://axisofaccess.blogspot.com/">Ryan Stander</a>, <a
href="http://www.jeffbrouws.com/series/main_discarded.html">Jeff Brouws</a>, and
thanks to <a
href="http://www.bismarcktribune.com/app/blog/?w=theedgeofthevillage">Aaron
Barth</a>, <a
href="http://www.brianherbelphotography.com/Other/Abandonded/11351771_w5gaE">Bri
an Herbe</a>l), and from closer to home the folks at <a
href="http://ghostsofnorthdakota.wordpress.com/">Ghosts of North Dakota</a> and
the haunting 2008 Nation Geographic article "<a
326
href="http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/01/emptied-north-dakota/bowden-
text.html">The Emptied Prairie</a>"). I've contributed my own fuel to the fire
by co-chairing a panel at the 2007 Archaeological Institute of America which
focused on <a
href="http://www.squinch.und.edu/SqunichNewsFiles/MPMAG%20Colloquium%20Session.h
tm">abandonment in the archaeological record</a>.
In a forthcoming article (yes, I know...) in the International Journal of
Historical Archaeology, I argue, among other things, that abandonment, in
its many guises, served as a chronological marker for the end of something.
Typically, the something was the abandoned building or object or space, and
since archaeology tends to plot the rise and fall of civilizations (in its
crudest forms) according to the life history of objects, buildings, and spaces,
the abandonment of such things typically serve to mark out the end of a
particular culture or period of time. Thus, abandonments are central to the way
in which we create historical and chronological periods from the events of the
past. Abandonment helps us organize time.
There is an inevitability to abandonment which evokes tragedy. Despite the
best intentions of humanity, time (as an active agent) inevitably takes
its toll on human constructions and brings them down. In these formulations,
abandonment brings to the fore both the power of nature and the folly of human
ambition. What I am more interested in, however, is whether our current focus on
abandonment is meant to bring about and mark out the end of some era. For as
long as history has existed, people have declared history to be at an end. Since
the Enlightenment, this call has most frequently been triumphant (see, for
example, <a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_History_and_the_Last_Man">Fukuyama
's End of History and the Last Man</a>), but in our current fixation on
abandonment, it seems to be tragic. The focus of abandonment -- monumental
hotels, bustling factories, middle class suburbs, rural towns -- cut across
American and Western society and suggests a kind of all encompassing
futility.
Of course, the celebration of the futility of human works could point to an
interpretation that is not simply apocalyptic. The end of one era of achievement
whether inevitable or calculated (<a
href="http://histories.cambridge.org/extract?id=chol9780521256032_CHOL9780521256
032A023">was the Roman Republic assassinated</a>?) typically ushers in the dawn
of a new age. If we see abandonment as a critique of past folly, and it seems
that some works that celebrate <a
href="http://www.thehighline.org/galleries/images/joel-sternfeld">the return of
nature to abandoned places</a> see abandonment as the first step toward a return
to a more environmentally conscious and humane world. <a
href="http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/07/0081594">A post-American
landscape</a> sees the collapse of the densely packed urban world and <a
href="http://web.me.com/craigstellmacher/craigstellmacher.com/100abandonedhomes_
Links.html">the sprawling suburbs</a> as marking the beginning of a new
time.
In fact, it may be necessary to mark or even promote the end of an era in
order to take credit for building something new. It was common for ancient
rulers to celebrate renewal or return to past glories. They took particular
pride in the Early and Middle Byzantine periods for the reconstruction,
rebuilding, or refounding of institutions or buildings long abandoned. In these
narratives, abandonment continued to mark the folly of the past, but also placed
hope in new beginnings. 
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AUTHOR: Rangar Cline
IP: 129.15.127.168
URL:
DATE: 03/10/2010 01:05:49 PM
Bill-
Great topic! I sometimes think that my childhood encounters with abandonment

were what got me interested in archaeology many years ago. One of my favorite
dramatic narratives of an encounter with abandonment comes from This American
Life. I apologize if you have liked to this already.
<a href="http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/199/House-on-
Loon-Lake">http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/199/House-on-
Loon-Lake</a>
--R.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Richard Rothaus
EMAIL: rothaus@trefoilcultural.com
IP: 64.83.200.199
URL:
DATE: 03/10/2010 07:49:04 PM
Indeed a good topic. I listened to house on Loon Lake and wasn't so impressed.
Houses and property are abandoned all the time, and the Loon Lake story is so
very, very typical. I rolled my eyes that the adult narrator was so astonished
by the mundane nature of the answer. Most of time when you find a house such as
he found, the cause is just what he found. He could have just asked an old
person. But listen for yourself‚Äîthat I remember the story and my thoughts is
an indicator it has strong merits.
Of course, my reaction to the story and the abandonment theme are framed by my
own stage of life. My parents are gone, their stuff is dispersed, and the places
of my youth have been transformed.
Perhaps the upswing in the interest in abandonment is not a societal reflection,

but rather a generation of scholars reaching a stage of life. As young folks we
just assumed what was normal for us was normal and permanent for everyone. When
our childhood haunts disappear, our hometowns become unrecognizable, and our
relatives and friends die, the impermanence of existence becomes something much
more real and interesting.
328
Because we write articles, and blog, and post photos, we are visible. But I also
have found that some of the old-timers in those small town cafes have already
had many of the same thoughts and feelings about the issues that I have.
Someone (not me!) should do a spreadsheet of scholars writing on abandonment as

societal theme and see if you can find commonalities in age, parents
deceased/living, homeownership, tenure, visits to childhood haunts and the like.
Then go backwards in time. Maybe the historical pattern is not just about
societal views, but also comes from bulges of overly-literate folks committing
their musing to posterity.
But lest I come across as a total curmudgeon, I also am still fascinated by the
abandoned. One of these days I'll post some photos of the reuse of the Terlingua
cemetery by the new-agers who are trying to make a go of the old town (but who
will also abandon it in a few years).
<a href="http://www.historic-
terlingua.com/historic_terlingua_ghostown_001.htm">http://www.historic-
terlingua.com/historic_terlingua_ghostown_001.htm</a>
Just an idea I have been thinking about--which may mean I have embraced some
societal focus. . . .
R.
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COMMENT:
IP: 67.67.14.246
URL:
DATE: 03/11/2010 09:30:43 AM
Richard-
I found the ending of the Loon Lake story very unsatisfying the fist time I
heard it -- sort of like "what, that's it?" But, that's part of the reason I
think it is a good case study for archaeologists. The narrator interprets the
material left in the house (clothes, wallet, etc.) as signs of a sudden
abandonment that could only be caused by some sort of catastrophe -- the
listener then wonders: "what happened? murder, kidnapping!" -- without
considering more mundane causes. When the narrator (and the listener) learns
that the abandonment was not caused by a catastrophe, the result is
anticlimactic. However, the dramatic realization that abandonment can occur
outside of sudden violence, death, or tragedy -- that its causes can be banal --
is somehow more unsettling, at least for me.
But, that is where I think the story is useful for archaeologists thinking about
abandonment. Many -- myself included -- have a tendency to search for sudden
and catastrophic causes in cases of abandonment. Perhaps this is because the
idea of someone just walking off and leaving something is just hard to imagine.
However, as you suggest, and some of Bill's and K. Kourelis' recent posts
illustrate, it happens all the time. For me, the story is a reminder to talk to
the neighbors.
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TITLE: A Huge Tuesday and a Huge Week

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CATEGORY: Web/Tech
DATE: 03/09/2010 07:43:27 AM

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Today and this week are going to be huge, and I mean that in the most
generic, non-specific way possible.
1. The University of North Dakota's <a
href="http://www.und.edu/dept/grad/html/2010ScholarlyForumHome.html">Graduate
School Scholarly Forum</a> is today and tomorrow. At noon today Richard Kahn
(who has <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/2010/02/11/howard-zinn-and-
teaching/">blogged for us at Teaching Thursday</a>!) will present in the Dean's
Lecture Series a talk entitled "<a
href="http://www.und.edu/dept/grad/html/RichardKahn.html">Education as the
Avatar of Sustainability</a>". He teaches in our department of Educational
Foundations and Research and has just released a book called <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/critical-pedagogy-ecoliteracy-planetary-
crisis-the-ecopedagogy-movement/oclc/458892666">Critical Pedagogy,
Ecoliteracy, and Planetary Crisis: The Ecopedagogy Movement</a> (Peter Lang,
2010).
Here are some more interesting sessions and papers:
Session 12: Department of History 
Memorial Room, Tuesday 9 March, 2:20pm 
"Words of Death: A Theology of Death in the Alexandrian Sayings of the Desert
Fathers," Paul A. Ferderer (Faculty Sponsor, Dr. William Caraher) Department of
History 
"Women‚Äôs Associations and Employment: Succor and Impediment of Married Women,
1920-1933," Thomas Harlow (Faculty Sponsor, Dr. Kimberley Porter) Department of
History 
"Independence in Cape Palmas: The Contentious Path For Autonomy in Maryland in
Liberia," Matthew Helm (Faculty Sponsor, Dr. Eric Burin) Department of
History 
"What Are You Afraid Of? How Governments Have Reacted to Real (or unreal)
Threats," Mark Herrmann (Faculty Sponsor, Dr. Kimberley Porter) Department of
History
Session 21: Social Sciences Writing Panel Memorial Room, Wednesday 10 March,
1:00pm 
Scholarly Writing Planning and Finding Success in Writing for
Publications, Dr. J. Sagini Keengwe, Dr. Travis Heggie and Dr. <a
href="http://teachingthursday.org/category/cynthia-prescott/">Cynthia
Prescott</a>.
and at the same time:
Session 20: Tutorial Badlands Room, Wednesday 10 March, 1:00pm 
<a href="http://www.und.edu/dept/grad/html/PythonTutorial.html">Python and
Scientific Computing in Open-Source, G√∂khan Sever, Department of Atmospheric
Sciences</a> 
Python has become the programing language of choice across the Digital
Humanities. Check out William J. Turkel, Adam Crymble and Alan MacEachern, <a
330
href="http://niche-canada.org/programming-historian/">The Programing
Historian</a> for more on Python.
2. Be sure to check out a fantastic guest blogger over at <a
Thursda</a>y. <a href="http://www.deenalarsen.net/webshelf.htm">Deena
Larsen</a>, on the premier English Language E-Lit writers, <a
href="http://teachingthursday.org/2010/03/09/link-spot-link-electronic-
literature-made-easy/">has offered the second in a series of posts</a> on using
Electronic Literature in the classroom called Teaching the Writers Conference.
As the title suggests, these posts appear in conjunction with the <a
href="http://www.undwritersconference.org/">41st Annual University of North
Dakota's Writers Conference</a>, which this year will focus on digital and new
media. 
3. If you still haven't had enough excitement you should be sure to check out
Dan Reetz talk on Thursday in the Arts and Sciences Interdisciplinary Speaker
Series:
<img
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a919f30c970b
Reetz hit it big last year when his DIY book scanner went viral in the
blogosphere. He was featured in <a
href="http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/12/diy-book-scanner/">a substantial
article in the December 2009 Wired Magazine</a>. He's a new kind of
hometown, digital folk hero. Be sure to check out his talk.
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TITLE: Walking Home and the Phenomenology of Landscape
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DATE: 03/08/2010 08:08:07 AM

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<img alt="NotebookBlog.jpg" height="517"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201310f7af197970c
-pi" width="400" />!
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In a recent article, by John Bintliff ("The

Implications of a Phenomenology of Landscape," in E. Olshausen and V.
Sauer, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/landschaft-und-die-
religion/oclc/488691541&referer=brief_results">Die Landschaft und die
Religion</a>. (Stuttgart 2009), 27-45) offers (another) harsh critique of
Christopher Tilley's efforts toward a phenomenology of ancient landscapes.
Bintliff, in particular, takes issue with Tilley's efforts to produce an
landscape rooted in its "emotional and symbolic significance" to the
exclusion of a more holistic view that includes an emphasis on the landscape as
economically productive space. He argues that Tilley's view of the landscape
as "really just about feelings, and symbolic behaviors..." represents
a distinctly British reaction to historical phenomenon of the last century or
two: namely the gradual abandonment of the countryside by a large part of the
population who moved to cities and the consequent inability of most of the
population to understand the countryside as productive space. Instead, the
countryside has become a kind of "enormous themepark for the urban
millions".!
Reading this and contemplating my own walks home
made me question the authenticity of my own experience. After all, I don't
need to walk home or even be outside in the cold. I don't walk home for
environmental reasons - my wife happily drives to and from campus in the
relative warmth of our relatively inefficient little Honda. I do not even do it
for convenience, bowing to our more than hectic schedules my wife and I indulged
in the ultimate symbol of middle class affluence, when we purchases a second
car. I always thought that I walked home because the outdoors offered an
experience that was common not only to members of my community today, but also
to historical members of this community who would braved the brisk walks across
the exposed prairie for over a century. In short, I was imitating, in my own
hopelessly local way, Tilley's call for phenomenological approach to the
local landscape.!
<img alt="201003080756.jpg" height="394"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201310f7af1aa970c
-pi" width="480" />!
<img alt="201003080757.jpg" height="392"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201310f7af1b3970c
-pi" width="480" />!
At the end of the day, I suppose my walks home did
lack the kind of authenticity necessary to allow me to engage with the past in
anything but the most superficial way. The cold, bracing, North Dakota evenings
existed only in contrast to the forced-air warmth of my home and office. Our
knowledge of space and place can only ever be relative to our historical
engagement. Bintliff's holistic view of the past, of course, is just as
easily subsumed into this paradigm. His call for a holistic view of the
landscape is clearly fed by the modern roots of archaeological practice and the
political drive to document exhaustively the natural, cultural, social,
political, and economic resources of a place. So, if the critique of
Tilley's methods for understanding the landscape derives exclusively from
its unabashedly urban, 20th century, bourgeois position, then Bintliff's
calls for a holistic view of the landscape must certainly have roots in the
modern or even colonial dream of documenting the entire world. 
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AUTHOR: John Bintliff
EMAIL: j.l.bintliff@arch.leidenuniv.nl
IP: 132.229.241.60
URL:
DATE: 03/12/2010 06:15:27 AM
Dear Bill, I think you are putting people into boxes too much. The danger of
Tilley's landscape work was the incompleteness of the analysis, not a problem
with the aspects he focussed on. My case study example was not the Enlightenment
but the farmer poet Hesiod ca 700 BC (but many other voices from the past would
have served), and you will find that pre-moderns do not make the Tilleyesque
division into the practical world and the symbolic world as he wishes to do. As
for walking for pleasure, this turns out to be something inherited from our
hunter-gatherer selves, where we got a kick from landscape and physical exercice
but also need to to avoid predators and find food. On this see my other rather
obscure paper:
Bintliff, J. L. (2009). Is the Essence of Innovative Archaeology a Technology
for the Unconscious? Metals and Societies: Studies in honour of Barbara S.
Ottaway. T. L. Kienlin and B. W. Roberts. Bonn, UPA: 181-190. If anyone wants to
download this and other relevant papers send me an e mail for a personal link to
my website
Best wishes
John Bintliff
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COMMENT:
EMAIL:
IP: 134.129.192.225
DATE: 03/12/2010 09:35:34 AM
John,
I probably painted with broad brush strokes; you're right there. And I like the
idea that we acquired the desire to walk for pleasure from our hunter-gatherer
ancestors!
I do wonder how much our integrated perspective on the landscape derives from
folks like Hesiod and how much comes from reading Hesiod with heads full of
Enlightenment values. I suppose the difference is between an integrative
holistic landscape -- which clearly appears in Hesiod -- and a total landscape
(in the spirit of total history) -- which is perhaps how I misread your short
article. On the other hand, once the categories of "productive", "symbolic",
"practical", et c. have come into existence in relation to the landscape, I am
not sure it is possible to think them away and return to premodern conceptions
of the space. Perhaps I'm wrong though!
Thanks for the comment!
333
Bill
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DATE: 03/05/2010 10:33:15 AM

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Stop reading this blog post and hurry over the <a
href="http://www.union.und.edu/">Memorial Union</a> on the beautiful campus of
the <a href="http://www.und.edu/" title="University of North Dakota">University
of North Dakota</a> to check out the Red River Valley History Conference
today.
Go <a
d-river-valley-history-conference-friday-march-5-2010.html">here for the
program</a> and don't miss Robin Jensen's talk this late afternoon. <a
10-wilkins-lecture-robin-jensen.html">Here's a link to that talk</a>.
Have a great weekend!
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When tracking down a few footnotes, I stumbled upon an article J. M.

Adovasio, G.F. Fry, J.D. Gunn, and R.F. Maslowski, "<a
href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/124101">Prehistoric and historic settlement
patterns in western Cyprus (with a discussion of Cypriot Neolithic stone tool
technology)</a>," World Archaeology 6 (1975), 339-364. This team
conducted an extensive style survey "reconnaissance survey" of the Khrysokhou
drainage in Western Cyprus not far from the site of Polis. I was mostly
interested in their documentation of a "large settlement of the Cypro-Archaic
Age (600-400 BC) and "very large Hellenistic town" (325-50 BC) thinking that I
might find some useful parallels between these sites and our site at Pyla-
Koutsopetria. The description of the sites are pretty superficial,
although the observation that the settlement are in defensively advantageous
positions is vaguely useful. That being said, the effort of the survey
team to document sites systematically with an eye toward computer analysis must
represent one of the earlier efforts along these lines in the Eastern
Mediterranean (the field work was conducted in 1972). They also were
explicitly diachronic in their approach and mapped not the location of Ancient
material but the location of Medieval/Byzantine material and even modern
settlement. What really caught my eye were the fantastic, old school
computer generated maps of the area. Here's the map of the Cypro-
Geometric to Hellenistic components of their survey area: <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a8f98c7f970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201310f6051fa970c
-pi" width="400" height="417"></a> Here are maps showing a
slightly larger area and including the Roman and Medieval and Byzantine
sites. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a8f98cb0970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a8f98cbe970b
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a8f98cde970b
-pi" width="400" height="343"></a> The project used Harvard's SYMAP
software (<a
href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8163799423258336471&hl=en#">ch
eck out this cool little movie talking a bit about the history of SYMAP</a>) run
on the University of Pittsburgh mainframe to produce these images. The
images themselves include both elevation data (zone data) and archaeological
data. While I'll concede that these maps are not immediately legible, they do
reflect a very early effort on Cyprus to take data from the field, process it by
a computer, and present this analyzed data in a relatively transparent way (that
is in a way that does not hide the computer produced character of the
analyses). At the same time, there is something aesthetically pleasing
about these maps which, after all, were basically contemporary with the first
generation of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_art">computer
generated art</a>.
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DATE: 03/03/2010 08:12:22 AM

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This last week, I've heard a story from a colleague about an
archaeological project in the Eastern Mediterranean who has been denied
permission to study unpublished finds from their own excavation and survey. It
seems like a strange story, but from the various accounts, it seems to be
legitimate. The project apparently violated some political etiquette in host
country and, in response to the ensuing political tumult has been asked not to
ask for permission to study a group of finds.!
When I first heard this, I was pretty outraged. After all, the project and
its directors, participants, and resources had gone to some length to produce
this material in an archaeologically responsible way, and now, from what I
understood, they were being asked to do something that was pretty irresponsible
-- namely leave this material unstudied and unpublished. On the other hand, I
recognized the right (let's say) and, more importantly, the responsibility
of the home country to manage its archaeological resources in a way that made
sense to the host country. And while <a
chaeological-ethnography-part-2.html">the recent volume on Archaeological
Ethnographies</a> tended to portray archaeologists as having a certain
advantageous position in respect to the local communities where they do their
work, I also recognized that the archaeological establishing (government
agencies with their political entanglements) exert a tremendous influence on how
both foreign and local archaeologists conduct their work. After all, we've
read enough of <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/nation-and-its-ruins-
antiquity-archaeology-and-national-imagination-in-greece/oclc/122424890">Y.
Hamilakis other work</a> to understand that many Mediterranean countries see
archaeology as a discipline and a practice as having important nationalist
goals. So, asking a project to suppress a particular body of archaeological data
in order to maintain political peace or to ensure the continued vitality of a
particular nationalistic argument is well within the rights of an archaeological
bureaucracy in the host country.!
After all, archaeological politics and practice always involve, to
some extent, the suppression of archaeological data. Any foreign project in the
eastern Mediterranean has limitations imposed on their work. No project, for
336
example, can ask to survey as much of the landscape as they need until they have
satisfied their research questions. Most project have to work in a designated
survey area, established before the beginning of archaeological fieldwork, and
independent, at least to some extent, from the results of the fieldwork.
Excavations this is even more obvious. The politics of acquiring land, the
responsibilities and resources for curation, and the limited number of field
permits always shape the design of the project. In most cases, then,
archaeological data is shaped by practical and political concerns and negotiated
between the foreign project and the home country.!
At the same time, projects regularly suppress certain results from their
fieldwork. I know of several survey projects, for example, that have limited
their collection to material from certain chronological periods. The results,
from what I understand about survey, is not that no material from the later or
earlier periods is collected -- it would be impossible to only collect material
from a particular period -- but that artifacts from earlier or later periods are
simply not studied. In the context of excavation, the practice of suppressing
material from certain periods is even more common. A project will often choose
to publish certain layers, deposits, buildings, or features in great detail and
not necessary publish other parts of the projects. In "the bad old
days," this accounted for the practice of digging through the Modern,
Byzantine, and sometimes even Late Roman levels. Even now, all multi-period
projects have to establish priorities as to what they publish.!
I suppose my initial, shocked response speaks to how deeply an adherence to a
mythical scientific archaeology still runs within me. At the same time, I still
think that publishing archaeological material promptly is important. And I'd
argue that it is even more important to publish completely when sites are
damaged or destroyed as a result of excavation or intensive survey. It is
difficult to avoid the conclusion that the mechanics and politics of
archaeological investigation dictate the extent to which it is possible or even
desirable to adhere to these ideals in practice. This is even more evident when
working in a foreign country with an archaeological establishment who understand
the goals, procedures, and responsibilities of archaeological work in a very
different light. The intersection of such "indigenous practices" of
archaeological work -- manifest in the goals of the nation building, the
contingencies of local politics, and realities of curating sites long after
foreign projects depart -- and an outsider's view of archaeological
expectations throw into relief how much <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2010/02/he
roic-archaeology-digital-data-and-disciplinarity-a-draft.html">the discipline of
archaeology</a> is really embedded within social practice.
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IP: 76.104.197.147
337
DATE: 03/03/2010 10:45:53 AM

Last year, I was asked to consult with archaeologists in the town of X, about a
particular find from a previous generation that they wanted to publish in a
shiny new book celebrating a new museum. I spent some time studying the find &
wrote them a letter saying that it could not have come from X for these assorted
reasons, and that it, in fact, came from organized grave-robbing.
I had a letter back from them saying, "We have discussed your opinions and are
in agreement with you, but you don't understand, we have to have it come from
X."
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Katie Rask
EMAIL: rask.4@osu.edu
IP: 24.106.233.94
URL:
DATE: 03/06/2010 12:19:23 PM
Really interesting post and a topic that ought to be discussed publicly with
more frequency. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: luke t
EMAIL: typhoon778@hotmail.com
IP: 121.73.55.120
URL:
DATE: 06/06/2010 12:52:17 AM
there is a long history of archaeological suppression and it is utterly
unacceptable. in our supposedly enlightened era it would seem unthinkable to
repeat the mistakes of our past. preconceived notions need to be discarded in
the face of irrefutable evidence. archaeological anomalies also make no sense -
why should they be called anomalies,they are finds not anomalies perhaps the
only anomaly is an established tradition that makes them so. thorough research
needs to be carried out not ruled out. science owes it to humanity if only to
prove that these claims and finds are false or mistaken. another interesting
article highlighting the suppression respected archaeologists encounter is
pasted below for your perusal. <a
href="http://www.suppressedscience.net/archeology.html">http://www.suppressedsci
ence.net/archeology.html</a>
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via <a href="http://doctoralbliss.wordpress.com/">Doctoral Bliss</a> 
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This Friday, March 5, the Beta-Upsilon Chapter of Phi Alpha Theta will host
its 5th Annual Red River Valley History Conference at the Memorial Union on the
UND campus. Several student will present papers on a variety of topics. In
addition, staff from our Dept. of Special Collections, as well as local
archivists will present a panel on careers in public history. Finally, Dr. Robin
Jensen will deliver the keynote address as part of the 2010 Robert Wilkins
Lecture at 4:00PM entitled ‚Äú<a
10-wilkins-lecture-robin-jensen.html">Living Water: Rituals, Spaces, and Images
of Early Christian Baptism</a>‚Äù. Below is the schedule of panels:
Panel 1: (9:15-10:30)‚ÄîMemorial Room 
Race and Gender in 19th Century America 
Chair: Daniel Sauerwein,
UND
‚ÄúNo Country For End Men: A Re-Evaluation of American Small Ensemble
Blackface Minstrelsy From 1843 to 1853.‚Äù By Dorothea Nelson, UND 
‚ÄúIndependence in Cape Palmas: The Contentious Path for Autonomy in Maryland in
Liberia‚Äù By Matthew Helm, UND 
‚ÄúWomen and the American Civil War‚Äù By Chad Holter, UND
Panel 2: (9:15-10:30)‚ÄîPresident‚Äôs Room 
Controversy in American History 
Chair: TBD
‚ÄúWhat Are You Afraid Of? How Governments Have Reacted to Real (or unreal)
Threats‚Äù By Mark Hermann, UND 
‚ÄúThe Lost Environmentalists: The Struggle Between Conservative Christianity
and the Environment in the 1970s‚Äù By Neall Pogue, NDSU
Panel 3 (10:45-12:00)‚ÄîAlumni Room 
Material Culture, New Media, and How They Shape History 
Chair: TBD
‚ÄúGrandma‚Äôs Cookie Jar‚Äù By Kathryn Nedegaard, UND 
‚ÄúFrench Heritage Tour 2009 ‚Äì Directed by Dr. Virgil Benoit with IFMidwest‚Äù
By Emilie VanDeventer, UND 
‚ÄúWilliam Bligh or Jack Aubrey? Two Alternative Historical Views of Nelson‚Äôs
Navy‚Äù By Jon Eclov, UND
Panel 4: (1:00-2:30)‚ÄîMemorial Room 
‚ÄúCareer Paths for History Majors: Opportunities in Museums and
Archives‚Äù 
Chair: Daniel Sauerwein,
Leah Byzewski, Director, Grand Forks County Historical Society 
Curt Hanson, Head, Department of Special Collections, UND Library 
Mark Peihl, Archivist, Historical and Cultural Society of Clay County 
Michael Swanson, Assistant Archivist, Department of Special Collections, UND
Library 
Alison Voss, Head Curator/Director of Education, Bonanzaville
Panel 5: (1:00-2:30)‚ÄîAlumni Room 
Art and Faith in European History 
Chair: Dr. Bill Caraher,
‚ÄúCaught between the Old Man and the New: Women and the Body of the Soul in
High Medieval Ghost Stories‚Äù By Christopher Gust, UND 
‚ÄúThe Theology of Existential Salvation in the Interrogative Sayings of the
Desert Fathers‚Äù By Paul A. Ferderer, UND 
‚ÄúA wild boar from the forest:‚Äù Martin Luther as a Model of Rebellion, 1520-
1525‚Äù By Danielle Skjelver, UND 
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‚ÄúThe New Topographics: Emergence and Legacy‚Äù By Ryan Stander, UND

Panel 6: (1:00-2:30)‚ÄîPresident‚Äôs Room 
The Power of Persuasion in early 20th Century America 
Chair: Dr. Kimberly Porter,
‚ÄúFather Coughlin: A Historiography of the Radio Priest‚Äù By Emilie
VanDeventer, UND 
‚ÄúHenry Ford‚Äôs Anti-Semitism and Influence on the Nationalsozialistische
Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (Nazi Party)‚Äù By Paul Robinette, UND
In addition, conference participants have the option to partake of a lunch
and there will be displays for various on and off-campus entities, including the
<a href="http://www.smh-hq.org" target="_blank">Society for Military
History</a>, <a href="http://www.library.und.edu/Collections/spk.html"
target="_blank">Elwyn B. Robinson Dept. of Special Collections</a>, Civil War
items by Stuart Lawrence, to name a few. I hope you will come out and join us if
you are in the area.
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TITLE: Metablogging Monday
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DATE: 03/01/2010 08:21:14 AM

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I usually find it useful to step back every now and then and consider the
enterprise of blogging. Most people who've read this blog for any
significant length of time, know that I make (over and over) certain arguments
for how blogging helps me as a scholar to work better. Three things have led me
to return to my thoughts on academic blogging this lovely Monday:!
1. I was asked recently by a blogging colleague whether I knew of any good
literature that would help a new academic blogger. I've read some of the
recent and "standard" works on blogging: <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/blogging/oclc/228275786">Rettberg's
Blogging</a> (Polity 2009), and <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/say-
everything-how-blogging-began-what-its-becoming-and-why-it-
matters/oclc/264044762">Rosenberg's Say Everything</a> (Crown
2009), some of the old faithfuls on e-literature like <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/hamlet-on-the-holodeck-the-future-of-
narrative-in-cyberspace/oclc/36446940">Murray's Hamlet on the
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Holodeck</a> (MIT 1998) and some works on participatory culture like Henry
Jenkins, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/convergence-culture-where-old-
and-new-media-collide/oclc/64594290">Convergence Culture</a> (NYU 2008)
and <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/fans-bloggers-and-gamers-exploring-
participatory-culture/oclc/65187292">Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers</a>
(NYU 2006). All these works tend to locate blogging the realm of popular
culture. This is not particularly helpful to an aspiring academic
blogger. In fact, academic blogging has been almost complete ignored. In fact,
in the 2004 <a href="http://www.digitalhumanities.org/companion/">Blackwell
Companion to Digital Humanities</a> (a nicely expansive and
representatively volume) there are no references to blogs or blogging. In
general, the popular press tends to ignore academic blogging as well. <a
href="http://technorati.com/state-of-the-blogosphere/">Technorati's annual
"State of the Blogosphere"</a> has never (in my knowledge) referred to
academic blogging. The academic trade press, namely the <a
href="http://chronicle.com/section/Home/5">Chronicle of Higher
Education</a>, hosts blogs, but, in general, <a
href="http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2007/11/01/kotsko">the attitude toward
blogging</a> is cautious with a dose of pessimism. This all being said, the best
place to start thinking about blogging is probably <a
href="http://www.millinerd.com/2009/11/blogging-c-2010-state-of-art.html">this
post at Millinerd.com</a>. In particular, I liked the idea (from <a
href="http://ma.tt/about/">Matt Mullenweeg</a> via <a
href="http://andrewkeen.typepad.com/the_great_seduction/2009/04/blogs-are-dead-
long-live-blogs.html">Andrew Keen</a>) that blogs are aggregation points for the
content that defines (in whatever context) one's identity. As most of us
celebrate multiple personalities (appropriate for multiple contexts) academic
blogs tend to represent one facet of my identity, namely my research interests.
My blog is the home of my book notes, my rough drafts, my academic (and almost
intellectual) musings, and, in many cases, my naivete and curiosity. If someone
wants to know about me as an academic and my work, read my blog.!
2. This past week saw the publication of a <a
href="http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/123301409/">review essay on
three anthropological blogs</a> in the Public Archaeology section of the
American Anthropologist 112 (2010), 140-141 (via the <a
href="http://ancientworldbloggers.blogspot.com/2010/02/blogs-dont-get-no-
respect.html">Ancient World Bloggers Group</a>). The review focused on three
blogs: a group blog, Savage Minds, a personal blog, Zero Anthopology, and the
American Anthropological Associations official blog. The pros and cons of each
approach were weighed, in a fairly uninteresting way, the usual caveats appeared
-- blogs aren't peer reviewed, they can be hastily written, and they might
include logical fallacies or half-baked ideas (as if the peer-review processes
and these problems were mutually exclusive categories) -- and the typical
critique of the assessable value of academic blogging:!
<blockquote>!
"Like any other writing project, the time required for effective
blogging can be enormous and with some of the high scholarship shown in detailed
and thoughtful postings and exchanges by scholars at blog sites like Savage
Minds, Zero Anthropology (formerly Open Anthropology), or Culture Matters, there
are reasons to wonder about the unrewarded disciplinary usefulness of
establishing and maintaining such valuable public commons. The political economy
of academia is not structured to reward individuals building things for a common
good outside of the peer-review process. It has long been true that many of the
most useful academic resource tools (annotated bibliographies, reference books,
and the like) are undervalued or unrecognized by formal academic assessments.
341
For now at least, academic blogs seem to be an electronic extension of this

troubling phenomenon."!
</blockquote>!
It's good to realize and recognize this. In most cases a blogger blogs on
their own time and for personal benefit more than academic recognition (although
the value of blogs for the construction and maintenance of the informal networks
that play such a key role in nourishing the academic discourse should not be
underestimated). The greatest disappointment that I had with this review is that
it made almost not comment on the content of these blogs. It did not, as one
would expect an academic review to do, comment on the strength of particular
arguments, the value of the contributions in the blog, or even the extent to
which the posts in a blog represent a useful companion to the more scholarly
discourse manifest in its perfected form in peer-reviewed journals. In effect,
the review critiqued blogging as phenomenon. From my perspective, this is the
equivalent of reviewing a book that appeared in 2002. What would have been of
particular value for a reading public, perhaps tentatively recognizing blogs for
the first time as a complement to the traditional academic press, would be a
month review of blogs for content, argument, scope, and significance. If blogs
move at the speed of our keyboards and the internet (which peer reviewed
journals move at the more leisurely pace of institutions, publishers, and
collegial good will), a quarterly round up of blogs as sources for information
would not only be useful, but also recognize the ability of blogs to shape
conversations from the academic margins.!
3. I'm contemplating going up for tenure next year. I've received
assurance from the involved parties, compiled good reviews of my scholarly
output, teaching, and service, and have the supportive of my colleagues. I feel
confident that my traditional scholarly credentials will live up to the
expectations of our department, college, and university. Now, what to do about
the blog? None of my colleagues are bloggers and few, if any read blogs. And I
don't feel like I need my blog in order to gain promotion and tenure. On the
other hand, <a href="http://daytum.com/billcaraher">over the past month</a>
I've scrawled more the 13,000 words here. That's almost 50% more than
the 9,685 words that I have written for various other research projects, book
reviews, public lectures, correspondence, and grant proposals. Surely that
output represents something, if only the misguided folly of a junior scholar who
values prematurely exposing his half-formed ideas to a reading audience. Again,
I am not going to insist that the blog count the same as 13,000 peer reviewed
words or that I get special recognition for this effort (which as I note in
point 2, is mostly done on my own time for my own academic disciplina),
but on the other hand, blogging is not as removed from my academic identity as,
say, gardening (which I don't do) or religiously watching every lap of every
NASCAR race on the weekend (no comment). How does blogging fit into a modern
academic curriculum vitae?UPDATE: Do check out
<a href="http://electricarchaeologist.wordpress.com/2010/03/02/why-academic-
blogging-matters/">Shawn Graham's response to this post</a>. He's
an iconic archaeologist blogger whose <a
href="http://electricarchaeologist.wordpress.com/">Electric Archaeologist</a>
has long set the standard for high-quality academic blogging. When he
chimes in, it does us all good to listen! 
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The pros and cons of each approach were weighed, in a fairly uninteresting way,
the usual caveats appeared -- blogs aren't peer reviewed, they can be hastily
written, and they might include logical fallacies or half-baked ideas (as if the
peer-review processes and these problems were mutually exclusive categories) --
and the typical critique of the assessable value of academic blogging: "Like any
other writing project, the time required for effective blogging can be enormous
and with some of the high scholarship shown in detailed and thoughtful postings
and exchanges by scholars at blog sites like Savage Minds, Zero Anthropology
(formerly Open Anthropology), or Culture Matters, there are reasons to wonder
about the unrewarded disciplinary usefulness of establishing and maintaining
such valuable public commons. ... Again, I am not going to insist that the blog
count the same as 13,000 peer reviewed words or that I get special recognition
for this effort (which as I note in point 2, is mostly done on my own time for
my own academic disciplina ), but on the other hand, blogging is not as removed
from my academic identity as, say, gardening (which I don't do) or religiously
watching every lap of every NASCAR race on the weekend (no comment).!
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AUTHOR: Amalia T
IP: 75.25.98.223
URL: http://hellia.blogspot.com
DATE: 03/01/2010 11:11:33 AM
I think academic blogging like this is a great way to break down doors and
disseminate information to people who otherwise wouldn't be reading anything
having to do with this kind of research. Sure, a lot of the people reading will
already be interested-- but every so often you'll open someone's eyes, get them
hooked, make them think.
Furthermore, for those of us no longer in Academia, but who still wish we had
at-our-fingertips access to all those peer reviewed journals and subscription
services (which we can't afford to shell out for), the alternatives are limited,
but academic blogs are a great taste of what we are missing.
I guess what it comes down to is this: Information and research being shared and
read and put out there is, in my opinion, a very good thing. It should be
admired and celebrated. I kind of want to compare it to volunteering time for a
charity, but that is probably overstating things by a large margin. But I don't
think I'm telling you anything you don't already know.
Of course, just because I think it does not mean that's how the greater academic
world sees things.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Richard Rothaus
EMAIL: rothaus@trefoilcultural.com
IP: 64.83.200.199
URL:
DATE: 03/10/2010 08:18:16 PM
Since I'm commenting today, here's a comment. When I was an evil administrator,
my problem with crediting blogs (and webpages) as academic activity was an
343
inability to judge impact. If no one reads a blog, then the brilliant words
might as well have been written on a napkin. In a respected journal or book, I
can at least assume someone might have read it.
That of course has little to do with reality. I imagine many an article

(including mine) languishes unread in "respectable" journals; it's simple math--
published articles/year far exceeds the time available to scholars in the
discipline to read them.
The technology is already there to figure out an impact--page counts, google

ranking, number of subscribers, cross-linking. Nobody can fake all of
those (and cumulatively they indeed are a form of peer review). But this is
where the system fell apart. Too many less-than-google-savvy folks couldn't
keep up with how things work, and recognize the different significance of hit
count vs cross-linking. On top of that the internet authors whose trite
postings should have been reserved for napkins, fought tooth and nail against
any such evaluation system. They wanted anything on the web to count, and were
desperate as they usually had written nothing else.
Since scholars who don't get promotion or tenure sue (or worse), the system goes
totally risk-adverse. The curmudgeons (me) refused to consider the electronic
media without some form of evaluation (even though I think some web stuff has a
greater impact than articles/books). The career politicians embraced all web
based media (crappy or otherwise) as wonderful, forward thinking scholarship.
Then I went to the private sector (where you can blog on your own time, mister,
but until those ads generate your pay, it's not work).
This of course will be resolved in time, about 10yrs after blogs have become
irrelevant.
R.
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It's a cloudy and grey Friday here at Archaeology of the Mediterranean World
Headquarters.
I've been mucking about with the <a href="http://vue.tufts.edu/index.cfm">VUE
(Visual Understanding Environment) application produced at Tufts University</a>.
It allows one to create flow charts of complex ideas that integrate a wide range
of media (from web pages, to Zotero bibliography, to documents). This method for
organizing one's thoughts has not yet perfectly coincided with my processes, but
I can see the utility to an application like this.
I have found <a href="http://www.zotero.org/">Zotero 2.0</a> really useful
and have used to to sync my bibliography between multiple computers. I'll admit
344
to having lost some interest in Zotero once I began to split my time between a
Mac and PC, but now with 2, it is easy to sync the bibliographies. I also like
the public nature of our Zotero databases. While I haven't found many
opportunities to surf around for what other folks are reading, it does produce a
great environment for work on collective projects.
<a href="http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/02/ff_google_algorithm/">This is
a really cool story</a> about how Google works. In particular, it does a great
job at presenting the complex variable that occur within any search environment
and provides some idea of how Google goes about coping with this. I've added
this article to my History 240: The Historians Craft syllabus. If students
understand how searches work from the back-end, maybe they'll become more clever
at searching for things on the front end.
I've fielded lots of questions about this <a
href="http://www.newsweek.com/id/233844">Newsweek article on G√∂bekli
Tepe</a> this week. Claiming something is the first, oldest, or only brings out
the press. It also makes it very difficult to put something into any meaningful
context.
Who better to score <a
href="http://www.cricinfo.com/indvrsa2010/engine/current/match/441828.html">the
first double century in ODI Cricket history</a> than the Little Master, Sachin
Tendulkar. He is 36 years old (almost 37) and appears to be still getting
better. Amazing.
The highlight of my weekend will be watching my Richmond Spiders play Xavier
on ESPN2. It's the first time in 24 years that the Spiders are ranked in both
polls.
Have a good weekend! 
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BASENAME: a-new-table
CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 02/25/2010 07:46:45 AM

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To be honest, I have nothing today. I've been working on departmental paper
work all week, writing letters of recommendation, preparing tests, grading
papers, giving a talk, and going to meetings. It's odd that for such a busy
week, I have almost nothing to report. Well, almost nothing:
345
1. Go and read Evan Nelson's post over at <a

Thursday</a>. He does a great job reminding us that teaching often begins before
a student ever sets foot on campus. He's a recruitment specialist for <a
href="http://www.und.edu/dept/grad/">The Graduate School</a> here at the
University of North Dakota and reminds us that success as a teacher is often
dependent upon a good match between a student, a program, and a faculty
member.
2. The second thing I'll offer is a photograph of the new table that I found
orphaned in a hallway and that I squeezed into my office. It's pretty sweet and
seems very happy there.
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a8d26e27970b
-pi" width="480" height="360" alt="Photo 3.jpg" />
 
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AUTHOR: ryan stander
EMAIL: ryan.stander@und.nodak.edu
IP: 134.129.203.20
URL: http://axisofaccess.blogspot.com
DATE: 02/25/2010 06:25:12 PM
good fortune indeed in finding such a fine orphaned specimen. maybe you can
adopt some nice matching orphaned wooden chairs to replace that plastic one.
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COMMENT:
IP: 208.107.115.6
DATE: 03/03/2010 12:55:08 AM
Bill,
Thought you would like to know that the table was the computer table used by us
TA's back in Merrifield 210. Unfortunately, our smaller accommodations prevented
us from having one office and continuing to use it as such. May you enjoy it and
remember us who sat at it long after we leave.
Daniel
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BASENAME: thoughts-on-the-end-of-disciplines
CATEGORY: Academia
DATE: 02/24/2010 07:54:05 AM

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Three things have made me think about disciplines lately. First, some
colleagues and I got a substantial amount of money to create a laboratory for a
Working Group in Digital and New Media. Next, I've been invited to give a
talk next week at our library here that would animate in some way the work of
the Working Group. And finally, I've been reading Louis Menand's new
book of essays called <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/marketplace-of-
ideas-reform-and-resistance-in-the-american-university/oclc/286488147">The
Marketplace of Ideas</a> , and it has two chapters that deal with various
issues facing the disciplines. All of this is topped off by a buzz on campus
about synergistic activities.!
I have three thoughts on the role of disciplines within the academy:!
1. Menand has caused me to think through the origins of disciplines again and
their link to the professionalization of the university and academic professions
at the turn of the century. He pointed out, quite rightly, that the creation of
professional disciplines from fields of study depended in part on an
industrialized view of knowledge production. In particular, he tied
professionalization and the emergence of disciplines to the division of labor
within market economies (as well as toward the university's role in creating
a more democratic society). In this way, Menand has argued little different from
P. Novick in his work, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/that-noble-
dream-the-objectivity-question-and-the-american-historical-
profession/oclc/17441827">That Noble Dream</a>. Menand goes on to emphasize
how these professionalized disciplines then created complex and exclusionary
systems designed to provide credentials for participants in these emerging
professional disciplines; the most obvious credential even today is the Ph.D.,
but there are a whole series of less obvious mechanisms that also exert control
over access to academic life.!
2. Menand also points out -- and he's not unique here -- that over the
last 40 years activity within the disciplinary themselves have challenged the
foundation of disciplinary integrity. Historians, archaeologists,
anthropologists and scholars throughout the social sciences and humanities have
increasingly come to rely on epistemologies that increasingly reject an
industrial view of knowledge production. In its place, scholars like <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2010/02/au
dit-culture-and-history-as-craft.html">Michael Herzfeld have looked to craft
production and the practice of artisans</a> to understand how embodied knowledge
is passed down from scholars to students. Such distinctly pre-modern modes of
production have traditionally produced highly integrated systems of embodied
knowledge that, while every bit as specialized, are far less fragmented and
discourage the division of labor. This epistemological disjunction between the
methods and goals of the academy and the methods and goals of the individual
disciplines has pushed some area of study into a kind of post-disciplinary
status where eclectic, post-modern, and extensive systems of knowledge within
traditional disciplinary fields challenge of the overarching model of the modern
university. !
3. The result of this is a kind of hybrid academy which relies upon both
disciplinary and post-disciplinary approaches to function. As so many hybrids,
347
this is an especially destabilizing state of affairs. Pressure to be

inter/trans/cross disciplinary is, in effect, pressure to undermine the
traditional boundaries established to preserve the professional integrity of
disciplinary authority. In other words, it asks us to conceive of authority in
the academy in a different way. The cynic in me recognizes that undermining
disciplinary authority plays into the hands of administrators who increasingly
assert the privilege of speaking for the Institution of Higher Learning. As we
undermine the foundation of the disciplines within the university, our authority
will increasingly come to rest not on professional expertise but on the strength
of the institution as the source of authority. This is bad because it puts more
power in the hands of local administrators and takes it away from the broader
community of professionals. The less cynical side of me, however, sees the break
down of traditional disciplinary barriers as a step toward a more democratized
form of knowledge. As with all processes of democratization, this will involve
ceding authority and this will inevitably involve the sacrificing of some kind
of privilege. This is never an easy pill to swallow for any group, and it might
even be harder from academics in traditional humanities fields who feel that
they have already sacrificed so much and do what they do for so little (money,
respect, authority, et c.).!
Ok, back to work on <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2010/02/el
ywn-robinson-lecture-digital-archaeology-technology-in-the-trenches.html">my
paper for this afternoon</a>!
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IP: 155.68.29.254
DATE: 02/24/2010 09:13:42 AM
A bunch of F&M faculty are starting a Menand reading group in March. I'm looking
forward to reading it.
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TITLE: Elywn Robinson Lecture: Digital Archaeology: Technology in the Trenches
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I've finally finished my talk for the Elwyn Robinson Lecture tomorrow (at 3:30
pm!) in the East Asian Room at the Chester Fritz Library on the beautiful campus
of the University of North Dakota. The UND Women's Chorus will open the
afternoon's proceedings. It will be fantastic! 
 
 
<img
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201310f2f46de970c
-pi" width="480" height="360" alt="DigitalArchaeology.jpg" />
</div> 
I've also experimented with <a href="http://www.scribd.com/">Scribd</a> as a way
to make my working papers available in one place. 
 
It also cleverly allows you to embed the papers a blog post (see below). 
Enjoy the paper, please feel free to provide feedback, and for all my friends in
North Dakota: this is not an excuse to avoid my talk! 
 
<a title="View Digital Archaeology: Technology in the Trenches on Scribd"
href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/27328060/Digital-Archaeology-Technology-in-the-
Trenches" style="margin: 12px auto 6px auto; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,Sans-
14px; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; -x-
system-font: none; display: block; text-decoration: underline;">Digital
Archaeology: Technology in the Trenches</a> <object id="doc_753883999903196"
style="outline:none;">
1kr450he9rg0rt0w6jh3&page=1&viewMode=list" />
_key=key-1kr450he9rg0rt0w6jh3&page=1&viewMode=list" type="application/x-
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TITLE: Punk Archaeology, Squatting and Abandonment
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Cross-posted to <a href="http://punkarchaeology.wordpress.com/">Punk
Archaeology</a> I spent part of the weekend exploring <a
href="http://flowersandcream.blogspot.com/">Thurston Moore</a>'s and Abby
Bank's evocative book, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/punk-
house/oclc/154309288">Punk House. </a> The book largely features Abby
Bank's photographs of punk houses across the U.S. Thurston Moore, of Sonic
Youth fame, provides a short introduction where he talks about the punk house
phenomenon, the practice of squatting associated with the most radical
expression of the punk lifestyle, and the aesthetic of the punk interpretation
of the DIY approach to home decoration. All of these practices speak to the
radical politics behind punk rock as a movement. The rejection (or total
disregard for) private property made squatting an appealing alternative to
ownership, and the collective house represented a more domesticated (and less
risky) alternative. Squatting, Archaeology, and
Abandonment Squatting is essentially an archaeological phenomenon;
archaeologists are squatters who occupy and savor the abandoned corners of a
society. While archaeology tends to be a form of high impact squatting which
often leads to the destruction, punk squatting represents a whole series of
ephemeral practices that can go almost undetected by subsequent visitors to the
space. Like archaeology itself, the practice squatting challenge any simple view
of abandonment and in turn challenges the notion of ownership, possession, and
use that are vital in some way to our understanding of function within an
archaeological context. So while archaeologists are squatters, like punks, the
practice of squatting undermines basic assumptions that allow archaeology to
function. Archaeologists, like squatters, put spaces in the margins of the
mainstream world into use. Recent attention to the practice of
abandonment both within the archaeological record and in the American cities
wracked by the recent economic downturn has tended to view the spaces of
abandonment as tragic expressions of the ultimate futility of human efforts to
transform the landscape or the false optimism of progress. Abandoned monumental
architecture ‚Äì especially hospitals, prisons, factories, churches, or public
works ‚Äì provided evidence for the cynicism of the punk world view as well as
the backdrop for their ability live without these amenities. Archaeological evidence for so-called squatters in the period of history that
I study, Late Antiquity, almost beg such ideological questions. Were the Late
Antique squatters in the monumental architecture of the earlier, Classical, era
proto-punks who recognized and celebrated the futility of their predecessors?
Should we view their re-use of abandoned spaces as critique? At the
same time the modern archaeologist as squatter likewise searches for fragments
of the past ‚Äì something useful among the neglected corners of society ‚Äì in a
utopian and ideological quest to produce a singular, uninterrupted world. Formation Process and Provisional Discard Bank's
photographs capture the layered, weathered, look of group houses that both
support the impecunious lifestyles of their punk residents as well as the
chaotic, multi-generation application of DIY practices. The rooms that
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Bank's photographed were filled with objects out of context ‚Äì junk ‚Äì
deployed to support lifestyles at the margins of capitalism. The houses stand as
living testimony to the value quintessential archaeological practice of
provisional discard. The pattern of occupation produces a stratigraphic space as
each resident adds a layer of interpretation to what went before. These houses take what archaeologists have sometimes seen as an almost
subconscious or deeply structured processes of discard into a performative
critique of society. Short term habitation practices, in turn, transform a
series of practical choices into the chaotic pastiche of lived stratigraphy. Music The link between these houses and punk music is
clear. As we have observed before, punk music is a nostalgic, utopian, critique
that seeks a more profound authority than punks observe from the world around
them. The punk houses, the temporary residence of squatters, and the archaeology
of a stratified, provisional existence, forms a physical counterpoint to the
archaeological overtones in punk music.
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Just some quick hits on a cloudy but warmish North Dakota morning:!
<ul>!
<li>If you haven't checked out <a
href="http://teachingthursday.org/2010/02/18/online-teaching-the-panopticon-and-
the-unequal-gaze/">Teaching Thursday</a> or <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.und.edu/exhibits/show/toposchora">Topos/Chor</a>
a now is the time to do it. View Topos/Chora with any browser other than
Internet Explorer.</li>!
<li>It's a fun and busy time here at UND:!
!
<ul>!
<li>Wednesday, February 24, 2010: <a href="http://www2.und.edu/our/uletter-
new/?p=788">The Elwyn B. Robinson Lecture</a>: Digital Archaeology: Technology
in the Trenches</li>!
<li>Thursday, March 5, 2010: <a
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10-wilkins-lecture-robin-jensen.html">The Robert Wilkins' Lecture</a>: Robin

Jensen presenting "Living Water: Rituals, Spaces, and Images of Early
Christian Baptism"</li>!
<li>Thursday, March 5, 2010: The Red River Valley History Conference (more
soon!)</li>!
<li>Tuesday, March 23, 2010 - Saturday, March 27, 2010: <a
href="http://www.undwritersconference.org/">41st Annual UND Writers
Conference</a>.</li>!
</ul>!
</li>!
<li><a href="http://www.cricinfo.com/ausvwi09/engine/match/406196.html">These
seem hardly even fun to watch</a>. At least the test series had drama.</li>!
<li><a href="http://webmuseweavers.wordpress.com/">Some fun chatter among my
public history interns</a>.</li>!
<li><a href="http://opencontext.org/about/publishing">This is a very nice
guide</a> to preparing data for digital publication. Note the emphasis on peer-
review. Very cool.</li>!
<li>Thurston Moore is definitely a Punk Archaeologist and <a
href="http://flowersandcream.blogspot.com/">his new blog proves it</a>.</li>!
<li>I'm currently reading about <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/467143303">The Mangle</a> and love its
utility in understanding the interplay between objects and humans.</li>!
<li>Does anyone use <a href="http://www.scribd.com/">Scribd</a>? Is it a
convenient platform for a working papers site?</li>!
</ul>!
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TITLE: Ryan Stander's Topos/Chora: Online Edition
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We are very pleased to announce that the Online Edition of Ryan Stander's
photography exhibition <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.und.edu/exhibits/show/toposchora">Topos/Chora:
The Photographs of the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project</a> is now live.
The online exhibit includes over 60 photographs most of which are not appearing
in Ryan's gallery show at the Empire Arts Center (which continues through the
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end of February). In addition, to the photographs we have included a whole bunch

of bonus features:
<ul>
<li>An interview with the photographer</li>
<li>A collection of reflective essays written by participants of the project

in response to both Ryan's photographs and the landscape at Pyla-
Koutsopetria.</li>
<li>The trailer for an upcoming documentary directed by Ian Ragsale and based
on our field work in Cyprus</li>
<li>An experimental, audio experience called Trench Sounds.</li>

</ul>
We are tremendously excited about Ryan's work and we hope that these
photographs spur further reflection both by PKAP team members, but also by
people interested in landscape, photography, and archaeology more broadly. We
hope to update the site from time to time if new material becomes available.
The website was developed using a brilliant application from <a
href="http://chnm.gmu.edu/">George Mason's Center for History and the New
Media</a> called <a href="http://omeka.org/">Omeka</a>. My public history
interns -- Chris, Gust, Sara McIntee, Kathy Nedergaard -- prepared the metadata,
layout, and proofing of the photographs and text. Support for their work and for
the installation and maintenance of Omeka comes from the <a
href="http://digitalgateway.und.edu/About.html">Working Group in Digital and New
Media</a>. Ryan's work in Cyprus was supported by the <a
href="http://www.und.edu/dept/grad/html/welcome2.html">Dean of the Graduate
School at the University of North Dakota</a> and the whole team at the <a
href="http://www.pkap.org/" title="Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological
Project">Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological
Project</a> Feed back is always welcome!
The site is best viewed with any browser other than Internet Explore (Opera,
Chrome, Firefox, or Safari!).
href="http://mediterraneanworld.und.edu/exhibits/show/toposchora"><img
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a8b13124970b
-pi" width="470" height="480" alt="ToposChoraCapture.tiff" /></a>
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It's exciting to announce that Grand Forks native, Robin Jensen will present
the 2010 Robert Wilkins lecture on Friday March 5, 2010 at 4:00 pm in the
Lecture Bowl. This semi-annual talk is dedicated to the memory of Prof. Robert
Wilkins, a long time member of the Department of History. Prof. Wilkins
contributed to the departments development from the early 1960s through the
1980s during which time it was transformed from a small and fractious department
to a major contributor to the intellectual life of the university.
Professor Jensen's talk is entitled "Living Water: Rituals, Spaces, and
Images of Early Christian Baptism" and it will coincide with the Fifth Annual
Red River Valley History Conference that same day. The talk and the conference
are free and open to the public.
Here's the flier.
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2012877aeb93f970c
-pi" width="368" height="480" alt="201002170756.jpg" /> 
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IP: 76.104.197.147
DATE: 02/17/2010 12:17:16 PM
You will, of course, video this & make the video available on-line? ND is a
very long way to drive from Seattle. Or from anywhere.
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DATE: 02/16/2010 10:41:25 AM

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Late Friday afternoon(always a sneaky time of day in an academic building)
people from University of North Dakota facilities painted over the famed Rich2
(aka King Rich) graffiti wall in O'Kelly Hall. UND's Integrated Studies
Program had originally commissioned the work and it graced the entrance hall to
the program.!
Unfortunately, in an interesting example of attitudes toward control,
"the administration" (with all of its pleasant ambiguity) reasserted
their ownership over the wall (and their control over buildings) and slated it
for renovation sometime last summer. Once it was clear that the wall would be
destroyed the Provost commissioned Rich Patterson, a well-known graffiti artist
from New York who earned an undergraduate and graduate degree at UND, to prepare
a new work on canvass to hang in the place of this work. <a
href="http://axisofaccess.blogspot.com/2009/10/rich-2-visit-to-und.html">Ryan
Stander covered these developments in the fall in his blog Axis of Access</a>.
They were picked up by bloggers elsewhere.!
At the same time that cash-strapped universities all across the US are
beginning to liquidate their art collections, UND has thought outside the box by
beginning to destroy parts of their collection while commissioning new works.
This might account for why visitors to the building have asked whether these
projects are being funded "by stimulus money" noting how long the
projects are taking to be completed and the dubious value of their contributions
to campus life. They aren't being paid for by stimulus money and I am not
sure that stimulus money was designed to pay for make-work projects. The
parallel between the stimulus package and various New Deal programs is amusing,
though, and suggests that some of our students are using historical knowledge in
a critical way. We offered U.S. History 1920-1945 in the fall.!
One of the great things about Rich's work is that, first, simple primer
did almost nothing to cover it. I was lucky enough to spend some time with Rich
when he was on campus, and he certainly understood the ephemeral quality of
graffiti art. In fact, he told me that rarely would his works last a week on the
trains of New York. So, in some ways the long life of the O'Kelly wall makes
it an exceptional example of the medium.!
<img alt="Rich2OKelly.jpg" height="360"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2012877a9861a970c
-pi" width="480" />!
His signature seems particularly resistant to
erasure.!
<img alt="Rich2Signature.jpg" height="480"
-pi" width="290" />!
Even when we know that fresh paint will eventually
cover the graffiti, it is clear that Rich knew how to make traces of his work
last. He clever extended the design to the ceiling marking the acoustic tiles
and the aluminum rails that support them.!
<img alt="ISPUnderErasure.jpg" height="360"
-pi" width="480" />!
<img alt="PaintedinCorner.jpg" height="360"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a8a6ea47970b
-pi" width="480" />!
Come over and visit the wall at O'Kelly when
you have a chance. Its liminal state -- between visibility and erasure --
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captures the ephemeral essence of the medium and evokes the ambivalent reception
of the art itself.
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I was pretty excited when the <a
href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/index.php/news/newsDetails/agora-and-corinth-
partner-for-online-excavation-databases/">American School announced that they
had released so many of Corinth Excavation's (and Athenian Agora's)
notebooks the past week</a>. First, I am working on a paper that thinks
considers how recording archaeological data in notebooks differs from recording
archaeological data using digital technology, and I used the famed Corinth
notebooks as an example in the paper. Next, i was excited to look at some of
Carl Blegen's notebooks since I knew he was a keen observer of the landscape
and often included some details of the contemporary Greek countryside in his
published articles (for example, <a
href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/1522769">his description of the location of
Gonia here</a>). I noticed that they included four notebooks from his work at
Zygouries. <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/7035161">The Bronze Age site
Zygouries</a> was near the imposing Frankish castle of Ay. Vasileios where I had
spent a couple of grueling days many years ago and I wondered if Blegen had
anything to say about the site, the village or the countryside.!
So, I eagerly searched for Blegen and Zygouries and was promptly rewarded
with four notebooks from the site. <a
href="http://ascsa.net/id/corinth/page/0987%20s008">The first notebook</a>, I
think, included some of the detail about which I was curious. Moreover, the
American School project had meticulously scanned even the outsides of the
notebook giving preserving the tactile, physical quality of the notebook. <a
href="http://ascsa.net/id/corinth/page/0987%20s001">The well-worn binding</a>
surely preserved some of the actual dirt excavated from Zygouries as well as the
marks of generations of scholars who had leafed through Blegen's field notes
with critical eyes.!
At the same time there were issues. First, Blegen writes in a small, stylish
hand and in pencil which is difficult to read at the resolution of scans that
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the American School provides. Now, someone who had read Blegen's notebooks
first hand might have found it easier to decipher. I also found that downloading
the page as an image and fussing a bit with it in Photoshop allowed me to
improve the contrast and zoom in a more sophisticated way to make it seem easier
to read (I am not sure whether I did anything, in fact). What I really wanted,
it turned out was a transcription of Blegen's notebook ( (consider, Jack
Davis's transcription of <a
href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/index.php/archives/blegen-red-cross-diary-
1918">Blegen's Red Cross notebook here</a>). Now, it's not the American
Schools fault that I could not read Blegen's writing or that they didn't
provide a transcription (the low resolution of the image is another matter), but
as I thought about this I began to imagine a parallel site where scholars could
upload their transcriptions of notebook pages. These would be keyed to the
stable urls provided by the American School and presented in a wiki which would
allow for and track revisions. I am sure that some notebooks are useful enough
and commonly investigated enough to warrant this.!
As I continued my browsing of Blegen's notebooks, I came across another
strange anomaly. <a href="http://ascsa.net/id/corinth/notebook/988">Notebook 3
from Zygouries</a> is clearly not in Blegen's hand. In fact, <a
href="http://ascsa.net/id/corinth/page/0988%20s005">the first page</a> of the
notebook tells us that it is in the hand of J. P. Harland. Harland's name,
however, is not included in <a
href="http://ascsa.net/id/corinth/notebook/988/html">the public metadata for
this notebook</a>. The metadata for later notebooks clearly indicate the name of
the recorder. For example, the metadata for <a
href="http://ascsa.net/id/corinth/notebook/974">Notebook 974 clearly</a> stated
that the legendary David Pettegrew and Thomas Henderson were its authors. This
got me thinking, on the one hand, about the some text from the description of
the collection on <a href="http://ascsa.net/research?v=default">the
webpage</a>:!
<blockquote>!
Using day journal diaries, archaeologists began recording finds, monuments
and excavation, as well as their daily life in Greece. Often their thoughts and
personalities are evident on the pages. More recent notebooks are more
‚Äòobjective‚Äô and standardized but offer no less to the interested
reader.!
</blockquote>!
Clearly the recorders of the metadata became more "objective" as
well in that they documented the names of the recorders and not just the
excavation director (in the case of Notebook 974 it would be Guy Sanders). The
failure to do this in the earlier notebook captures a bit of the spirit of an
earlier era of "heroic archaeology" where the personality of the
excavation director stood in the foreground of knowledge production. (It also
seeming has to do with the difference between Blegen's project at Zygouries
and the American School's project at Corinth).!
The absence of Harland's name from the public notebook metadata also made
me return to the idea that this could be the kind of data captured by the public
as they use these notebooks. If it was possible, I would not have hesitated to
add Harland's name to the notebook's metadata or to some publicly tagged
version of the metadata. I might have even been inclined to add a link to <a
href="http://diglib.princeton.edu/ead/getEad?id=ark:/88435/pr76f3432">Harland&#3
9;s papers at Princeton</a> which Kostis Kourelis pointed out to me especially
since he apparently kept a a dairy for over 50 years. One could imagine a
researcher at Princeton adding notations from Harland's diaries to dates in
the notebooks which would allow a researcher to "<a
357
href="http://mediterraneanceramics.blogspot.com/2008/04/ecosystems.html">drill
sideways</a>".!
I know some people who committed tremendous energy to this massive
digitization project read this blog from time to time, and I want to stress that
my remarks here are not meant to be critical of the tremendous effort that this
project took. In fact, my only criticism of the existing interface -- the lack
of high resolution images -- I am sure is easily adjusted in the future as more
people have access to significant bandwidth necessary to handle large images. At
the same time, my observations about the lack of public markup to these
incredibly valuable archaeological resources may be more directed at the
scholarly community who makes use of this material than the institution that
provided it. After all, it would not be particularly difficult to begin such a
project (although it would benefit immeasurably from collaboration with the
American School). More importantly, the idea of collaborative projects which add
real value to the data available on the web shows how thinking about the
internet publication has changed quickly over the past five years. The next
generation of digitalized archaeological data is likely to expand the concept of
the notebook, context, photograph to include a range of dynamic metadata that
embeds the digital artifact within an academic and intellectual context that is
every bit as robust as the archaeological context provided by the original
excavator.
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A flurry-y Friday morning in a toasty warm office offers this quick hits:
<ul>
<li>The American School of Classical Studies at Athens has announced <a
href="http://ascsa.net/research?v=default">their digital library</a>. This is
huge news for anyone interested in the archaeology and history of Greece and
Athens and Corinth in particular. This is relevant to <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2010/02/he
roic-archaeology-digital-data-and-disciplinarity-a-draft.html">my post (and
paper) here</a>. And you can check out both <a
href="http://ascsa.net/id/corinth/page/0974%20s005">David Pettegrew's Corinth
Notebook</a> and Carl <a
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href="http://ascsa.net/id/corinth/page/0987%20s001">Blegen at
Zygourias</a>.</li>
<li>Apparently, <a href="http://www.cyprus-mail.com/opinions/our-view-big-

cathedrals-don-t-necessarily-have-be-ugly/20100211">huge, modern churches don't
have to be ugly in Cyprus!</a> A novel idea!</li>
<li><a href="http://teachingthursday.org/2010/02/11/howard-zinn-and-
teaching/">A huge day (almost 100 hits) and brilliant post on Teaching Thursday
yesterday</a>. If you haven't checked it out, now is the time!</li>
<li>Begin to get excited about the <a

href="http://www.undwritersconference.org/wc-authors.html">University of North
Dakota's Writers Conference</a>.</li>
<li><a href="http://webmuseweavers.wordpress.com/">More public history type

musing here</a>.</li>
<li>What do people think about <a href="http://www.google.com/buzz">Google

Buzz</a>?</li>
<li>More on <a
href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/8509244.s
tm">the economic crisis in Greece</a> and some on how <a
href="http://www.cyprus-mail.com/cyprus/let-greece-be-lesson-us/20100212">this
is being viewed in Cyprus</a>.</li>
<li><a
href="http://www.cricinfo.com/ausvwi09/engine/current/match/406194.html">Only
rain can slow down Australia</a>!</li>
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AUTHOR: Guy Sanders
EMAIL: gsanders.corinth@ascsa.edu.gr
IP: 94.66.247.167
URL: http://ascsa.net/research?q=;v=;t=;sort=
DATE: 02/17/2010 09:00:13 AM
I have been pushing for this for this since 1997 and when the opportunity to
apply for EU funds arose, jumped on on it because Bruce Harzler over in the
Agora started after us and had managed to get so far ahead with PHI funding.
When we got ahead of them, they received funding to digitize their resources
systematically which will start very soon. With a password you can access over
700,000 images and records and since the Agora and we are both pretty much born
digital, many more records will become available every year. The data is a bit
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dirty but rather than wait we put out ugly rather than wait for years and give a
clean product. Others have expressed an interest in mapping their material with
ours so that will add reams more.
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TITLE: Teaching Thursday Redirect
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DATE: 02/11/2010 07:59:50 AM

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We have a <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/2010/02/11/howard-zinn-and-
teaching/">great blog over at Teaching Thursday today</a>, and I am not in the
mood to compete with it. <a href="http://richardkahn.org/">Richard Kahn</a>,
explores Howard Zinn's attitudes toward teaching in a provocative blog post that
should generate some conversation regarding our responsibilities as university
educators.
Some of the main points of the argument reflect Zinn and Kahn's commitment to
ideologically aware teaching. That is, to teaching from a particular perspective
(and being explicit and open about it) rather than attempting to impart a fixed
body of knowledge (Kahn refers here to Paulo Freire's idea of "pedagogical
banking") to our students. The former involves being honest and open with our
students and in an effort to both model and promote the same kind of honest and
open discourse that exists at the heart of the humanities and, perhaps, our
experiences as individuals. The latter, however, has roots in foundational
notions of the university's disciplinary structure where each discipline
contributes a fixed quantity of content toward the production of a "well-round"
citizen.
Both perspectives on teaching have powerful advocates both within and outside
of the academy. For example, few faculty members would regard teaching content -
- whether we identify content as "methodology", "method", or "facts" -- as a
value-free position. Nevertheless, this willful deception has strategic
advantages; namely, it creates rhetorical space that preserves the disciplinary
integrity that many scholars value as an institutional counterweight to the
potential abuses of the university. Kahn's (and others') view of the ecology of
teaching:
<blockquote>
For students, like all people, are actively constructing their
reality and placing new experience in the contexts of how they have come to
understand and identify with their world. Thus, to teach in this way is to deny
the human agency that students bring to the pedagogical encounter. Further, the
zone of university teaching does not take place in a void, but is the complex
ecological space constructed out of the myriad histories of the people
inhabiting the campus, the institution‚Äôs own policy and disciplinary
histories, the regional history in which a college is situated, the political
history of the nation, and the social history of the planet (i.e.,
globalization). Thus, there is no value-free perspective from which to impart
objective knowledge, but only the dynamic landscape that is the actively
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evolving history of ideas as articulated by various groups occupying a highly

diverse array of social locations.
</blockquote>
While this can be liberating and, frankly, appealing, admitting it explicitly
has consequences.
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TITLE: Saints and Church Spaces
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DATE: 02/10/2010 07:59:59 AM

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I just finished reading Ann Marie Yasin's new book, Saints and Church Spaces
in the Late Antique Mediterranean, and it is the best recent book on Early
Christian architecture in the Mediterranean. I can only admire her breadth of
knowledge and ability to synthesize trends across the entire Mediterranean basin
without getting mired in the chronological, liturgical, or regional quagmires
that can doom large scale analyses like hers. I think the effort to focus the
book around the role of saints and commemoration in the architecture and
decoration of Early Christian churches was really smart.
I won't review the book because if you're interested in Early Christian
architecture, or Late Antiquity more broadly, you'll want to go and read it for
yourself. Instead, I'll offer 7 observations that I had as I read the book.
<ol>
<li>I thought that the book got stronger as it went along. I did not think
that the early chapters on pre-Constantinean churches or on commemorative
practices carried through the rest of the text particularly well, and most of
her observations in these chapters depended upon the work of earlier scholars.
This isn't a bad thing, but they stand in contrast to her really creative
interpretative work later in the book.</li>
<li>Chapter 3 is really good. In it, she argues that churches functioned as

places of commemoration largely replacing earlier practices of civic
commemoration, while carrying on many of the basic attitudes of euergetism in
the Roman world. In other words, people began to commemorate themselves in
churches rather than in the civic fabric. While I generally agree with her
argument that donors in Early Christian space sought to position inscriptions
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commemorating their donations in visible places, I am not sure that she

adequately explained anonymous donor texts which are not uncommon in early
Christian spaces. At the same time, I am not sure that her argument for
commemoration accommodated the broader practice of Christian euergetism which
could include things like silver objects which contained inscriptions that we
too small to be easily read by an audience. In other words, I would have
emphasized texts that had seem to be directed at a divine audience (like
inscribed prayers) or a more specific lay or clerical audience (depending upon
the location of the text and its relation to the liturgy). These texts depended
upon the church as sacred space as much a social space for the community. This
doesn't necessary contradict her argument, but perhaps offers a somewhat more
subtle reading of the Christian commemorative impulse which separated it a bit
more from traditional Roman practices and placed it more fully in an Early
Christian context.</li>
<li>Following on from point 2, I wonder whether the economics of Christian

euergetism was fundamentally different from the economics of earlier Roman
euergetism. In particular, I still wonder whether it pulled in a more
economically and socially diverse cross-section of the population than earlier
Roman practices that were bound up in specifically elite forms of expression.
Can we see, in dedications to Early Christian architecture examples of the
widow's mite?</li>
<li>Regional Variation. I kept thinking throughout the book that it would have
been great to get a better understanding of regional variation in Early
Christian architecture. While I recognize that this could be a can of worms, I
found the differences between practices in the East, in say Syria, and in Italy
and North Africa fascinating. Are these to be explained by variation in
liturgical practices? Or do they represent long standing differences in social
practices?</li>
<li>Ritual. In my dissertation I was distracted by the siren-song of Early

Christian liturgy. I probably still feel its pull to some extent. I'd have liked
to understand more about the interaction between architecture and liturgical
practices or even just ritual practices in Late Antiquity -- even if it was
speculative. The discussion of the positioning of martyr's shrines and the main
axis of the church, for example, would have been even stronger if we knew how
the clergy and congregation would have moved in these spaces. Now, the reason
why the Early Christian liturgy is a siren song is that in most cases, we don't
know how the clergy and congregation moved in liturgical space. At the same
time, we can likely explain the off-axis location of the ciborium in the church
of St. Demetrios in Thessaloniki as the need to keep the main axis of the church
open for liturgical processions; amboes also tended to be offset to the left or
right of the main axis in Greek churches suggesting that processions up the axis
of the church has a particularly important place in local liturgical practice.
Moreover, its position next to the north aisle rail may have allowed the
congregation easy access t the shrine from the aisles where they may stood while
the liturgy took place.</li>
<li>I liked how forcefully she makes the point that relics were necessary for
the founding of churches tying saints to liturgical space. In general, her
treatment of the intersection of the community of saints and the liturgy was
interesting and good.</li>
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<li>Churches and Pagans. One thing I was surprised not to see in the book was
any discussion of Christian and Pagan interaction particularly over the matter
of martyrs tombs and sacred space. The most obvious incident involving this was
remains of St. Babylas and the temple of Apollo at Daphne. The bones of the
saint apparently disrupted the oracle at the temple causing Julian to remove
them.</li>
<li>I loved her section on Augustine's De cura pro mortuis gerenda (pp.
213-222). I need to check this text out, particular Augustine's discussion of
dreams and visions. I don't know how I missed this! I thought that her dealing
with Augustine's text in the context of Paulinus' own building campaign was
useful for her argument and our understanding of the subtle differences between
Paulinus's and Augustine's understanding of the popular veneration of
saints.</li>
</ol>
So, if you're interested in Late Antique religious history and architecture,
this is a must read book!
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TITLE: Heroic Archaeology, Digital Data, and Disciplinarity: A Draft
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CATEGORY: Web/Tech
DATE: 02/09/2010 08:51:46 AM

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I've been invited to give the Elwyn B. Robinson lecture at the library at the
end of the month. This is a fun event where a nice cross-section of the
university community shows up to commemorate the life and work of the historian
Elwyn Robinson. So, as per usual, I am being overly ambitious in putting
together a paper for this event and trying to articulate the historical and
practical links between technology, practice and basic assumptions about
archaeology as a discipline. In practical terms, I am trying to tout our new
Working Group for Digital and New Media by arguing that digital technology
(broadly construed) holds particular potential as a medium for cross/trans/post-
disciplinary dialogue.
To make this argument, I first suggest that a kind of "heroic archaeologist"
characterized the earliest days of "modern" archaeology in the Mediterranean.
Think Carl Blegen, not Indiana Jones. The vision of these heroic archaeologists
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adhered closely not only to the data that they produced, but also the
conclusions they drew from this data. The legacy of these men's work can be seen
even today when we refer to certain archaeological field notebooks as "Blegen's
Notebooks". The importance of the paper notebook as the locus of the primary
data that these men collected from the field (and through which they actualized
their vision of a scientific archaeology) led to incredible steps being taken to
prevent these notebooks from being lost or damaged. As a result, we have the
notebooks today, but access to them, up until very recently, has been limited. I
think that this is both institutional and technological. In the case of the
former, these notebooks became so closely related to the heros of archaeology's
early days that they acquired relic status. The preservation of the notebooks
was regarded as an crucial requirement for the preservation of knowledge in part
because notebooks were and are fragile. Moreover, publishing raw notes by
traditional means was both prohibitively expensive and perhaps even
intellectually risky as it exposed the heroic underpinnings of archaeology to
the outsiders' gaze. To get access to the notebooks then, the institutional
keepers of the data had to approve. This was both a matter of preserving the
fragile media and preserving the past's heroic legacy. In the most extreme
cases, notebooks become family possessions and completely removed from any
academic circulation.
For the past decade, this trend has reversed. Digital technology has made it
easier and easier to publish archaeological data. Numerous projects are underway
both to preserve and make accessible archaeological field data once hidden deep
within the bowels of the archive. The increasing use of digital technology in
the field has increased the amount of born digital data and streamlined (in most
cases) archaeological workflow to the point where it is feasible in some cases
to release data directly from the field into circulation. For example, at the
end of every season on my project in Cyprus, we can circulate a completed
(albeit provisional) data set that encompasses plans of trenches, (some) finds
data, study photographs, and preliminary analyses, and we are far from unique in
this respect. The born-digital character of this data makes it particularly
easy, then, to circulate data sets. Moreover, the act of circulating even
relatively "raw" (that is unanalyzed) data serves as a means to curate this data
as well. This is the opposite of the old style notebook which is locked away
(after perhaps being copied) at the excavation house under the careful eye of
the excavation as an institution or the director. The responsibility that the
institution or the person of the director feels toward this data contributes to
the status of the notebook as the property of the excavation (or, in some cases,
the director). There are obviously other issues at play as well, but I'd contend
that the tremendously fragile nature of the archaeological notebook is a
significant contributor to the idea that archaeological data is property.
With the increasingly easy circulation of archaeological field data, however,
there is a growing sense that the data collected from intensive surveys and
excavations in the Mediterranean should be made freely available. Sebastian
Heath is among the biggest advocates of this idea and he has explored some of
the intellectual justifications and consequences of this movement <a
href="http://mediterraneanceramics.blogspot.com/2008/04/ecosystems.html">in his
blog</a>. He makes, for example, the link between curating archaeological data
and sharing it. On the simplest level: when digital data is shared it is
inevitably copied. When archaeological data is made available, the community
will put forth increasing efforts to make sure that it is preserved. The simple
practice of circulating data freely from a server will not only ensure that at
least several copies of the data exist as a result of server architecture, but
it will be accessible for people to download and copy onto their own computers,
backing it up, and then recirculating it. In effect, the curation is left to the
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community because the data becomes their possession. The solitary, heroic,
archaeologist gives way to the collective community who replace the person or
institution as both archive and interpreter of data.
While this all sounds pretty cool, I am not naive, however, and recognize
that some provision of long-term archiving must exist. After all, the collective
effort to preserve the "most important knowledge" from antiquity has produced a
body of texts filled with lacunae and hardly suitable to answer every question
of significance for every age. Long-term, "deep" and stable storage of
archaeological data should remain a key component of any archaeological
enterprise, but the easy proliferation of digital texts will surely complement
these efforts by creating an environment where the archiving and circulation of
data are not incompatible. 
At the same time that digital technology and intellectual shifts within the
discipline of archaeology has made it easier to access and circulate data from
projects, scholars like Ian Hodder and Michael Shanks have pushed for a greater
reflexivity in archaeological practice and have come to see archaeological
knowledge as product of far more sophisticated forces than the singular vision
of a project director or the weight of a seemingly enduring historical problem.
The heroic archaeologist is under assault not just from the perspective of
technological change. As scholars have articulated the profoundly anti-modern
aspects of archaeological practice -- some with closer parallels to craft
production or <a href="http://punkarchaeology.wordpress.com/">even punk rock
music</a>, the hard edges of the discipline have begun to erode. For example,
the growing recognition of indigenous archaeologies which articulate how
traditionally alienated groups understand their material history has shown that
archaeological practice in a modernist mode offers only one of any number of
perspectives on the past. Even within the traditional boundaries of the
discipline itself, the growing number of specialists involved on even a modest
sized archaeological project has produced a space of overlapping and often times
conflicting discursive, disciplinary, and even interpersonal agendas and
practices. The heroically linear flow from the fieldwork to documentation to
publication is now a very crowded space filled with voices. In such a context,
archaeological knowledge is negotiated.
Digital technologies have made it far easier to document and to disseminate
the negotiated character of archaeological knowledge. For example, my wife and I
were just talking yesterday about our experiences on archaeological project not
that long ago that had only one "official" camera. Typically, this was a pretty
nice camera -- often the nicest on the project or with the highest quality film.
Now it is common for everyone in a trench to have a good quality digital camera.
Unlike just 15 years ago, when developing and circulating slides was an
expensive and time consuming process, now we can instantly develop and circulate
photographs of the archaeological experience. While there might still be a
limited number of "official cameras", the official photograph of a trench is now
just one of any number of competing photographs of that archaeological space.
Moreover, it is possible to capture this diversity of perspectives and even to
publish it on the internet at limited cost. The ease in disseminating the
numerous perspectives on a project comes through with inexpensively captured
digital audio and video. Consider how easy it is for archaeologists to produce
their own documentary films that compete in quality and content with the
professional productions of just decades ago. Low cost, HD video cameras and
YouTube even hold forth the prospect of making everyone on the project a
documentary filmmaker. At my project in Cyprus, we've used blogs to publish
instantaneously myriad perspectives offered by undergraduate, graduate students,
and even within the senior staff.
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As the collaborative environment within archaeology reveals archaeological

practice as inherently transdisciplinary. There are too many moving parts to
subject archaeology to a singular disciplinary practice. This should be no
surprise; the disciplines are a product of a particular moment in the
development of the academy. The influence and faith in modernity and in
systematic scientific approaches to knowledge about the past allowed archaeology
under the watchful gaze of its heroic founding fathers to carve out a lasting
place within the academia and the university. The archive of notebooks protected
and preserved the modern disciplinary achievements of the archaeological method.
Digital data, however, resists the enclosed space of the "finite" archive just
as digital technologies make it more and more difficult to maintain a singular
voice in archaeological research. Any effort to accommodate the myriad voices
produced by any archaeological project challenges the notion of a "project" and
an "archaeology". The easy dissemination of both archaeological data (in a
proper, modernist sense) and the various "unofficial" voices of archaeology make
it impossible to limit the multi-vocal character of archaeological research and
reinforce the centuries old disciplinary strictures. Moreover, the inability
necessary to distinguish between data produces by "amateurs" and that produced
by "professional" (professionalism is the hallmark of a discipline) suggests
that the end of the discipline is near.
This is not suggest that people will not continue to use archaeological
methods for studying the past; after all, the methods of indigenous
archaeologists, undergraduate bloggers, fine art photographers, and casual
videobloggers will not answer every question that an individual or community
might have about the remains of a past community, building, or event.
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DATE: 02/08/2010 08:18:05 AM

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Another banner month for Corinth related articles! This past week saw the
publication of <a href="http://www.atypon-
link.com/ASCS/doi/abs/10.2972/hesp.78.4.501">A.H. Rohn's, E. Barnes's, and
G.D.R. Sander's "An Early Ottoman Cemetery at Ancient Corinth," Hesperia
78 (2009), 501-615</a>. It's fantastic that Hesperia is so flexible to publish
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what is, in effect, a short archaeological monograph! The highly-detailed

article documents with great care the 17th century Ottoman cemetery excavated in
Panayia Field in Ancient Corinth. The 133 individuals excavated from 81 graves
represented both the Christian and Muslim community at Corinth. The excavators
suggest that the presence of both groups in the same cemetery and the common
appearance of "boot-heel reinforcement cleats" may associate the cemetery with
the Ottoman garrison in the town.
If the cemetery is indeed associated with the garrison the ratio of 11
Muslim-style graves to 55 Christian-style graves based, in large part, on the
arrangement of the bodies in the graves (p. 516), suggests that the Ottoman
garrison may have been relatively well integrated with the local population.
This is further indicated by the cross-section of the local demographic
represented in the graves with adult men (54), adult women (23) and children of
all ages (54) present (pp. 527-528). The analysis of the skull types seem to
indicate that many of the women were local while most of the men were from
elsewhere (pp.530-531). This would reinforce the notion that this cemetery
served the local garrison. The graves also showed some wealth in the community
with numerous examples of jewelry (although mostly featuring non-precious metal
and stones) and the regular occurrence of the bodies being interned wearing
boots suggesting at least some disposable wealth. At the same time, only a few
of the graves preserved indications of wooden coffins with nails preserved in a
neat halo around the body in at least one grave (p. 512)
It seems that whenever someone excavates a cemetery, there is at least on
creepy grave (this is not a technical term), the description of which is worth
quoting in full:
<blockquote>
Grave 20 contained the body of a young 20‚Äì21-year-old male lying extended
with his head pointing westward, but face down (Figs. 24, 25). A thick iron rod
projecting out of the left side of his neck turned out to be an iron hook that
had been inserted into his left shoulder beneath his left clavicle (collarbone).
Apparently, he had been suspended from this hook until he died, because both
legs and feet extended fully and parallel to one another as they would have
while he hung and rigor mortis set in. His right hand had balled up into a fist
that clutched the spot where the hook had been inserted into his shoulder. His
left arm dangled behind his back. Presumably, once he had died, his punishers
had taken down his rigid body and placed it face down (a position of disgrace?)
into his final resting place, leaving the hook still embedded. We suspect this
represents a death sentence for an individual who defied the order of the local
governing body. Ottoman rule at Ancient Corinth during the early 17th century
apparently tolerated Christian religious practice, but only as long as the
Christians obeyed their rulers and did not cause trouble for them. (p. 521)
</blockquote>
The cemetery appears to have fallen out of use during the Second Venetian
period at Corinth (1687-1715) and perhaps forgotten by the 18th century. I can't
help wonder how quickly the cemetery fell out of use as place of burial or even
commemoration for while the men in the group may have represented Ottoman power,
the women would have tied at least some members of that group to the local
community. Lita Tzortzopoulou-Gregory has noted that in the Modern period, Greek
graves can fall into neglect very quickly if there are no long any close
relatives in the community to maintain them. By the Early Modern period (19th
century in Greece) the area had been built over with houses. It is remarkable
(and a useful reminder) that there was little evidence of the cemetery in the
plow-zone. Thus, the function of this area would have been virtually invisible
to intensive survey techniques.
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With the recent publications of Lita Tzortzopolou-Gregory on the modern

period, the work of Joe Rife on the Late Roman and Roman period, it should now
be possible to present an almost comprehensive survey of mortuary practices in
the Corinthia from Roman times to the present.
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DATE: 02/05/2010 10:20:27 AM

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Some odds and ends on a snowy Friday.
<ul>
<li><a href="http://axisofaccess.blogspot.com/">Ryan Stander</a>, who is
rapidly becoming the star of this blog, has some photos showing with <a
href="http://archaeologistsphotographers.wordpress.com/">this project
here</a>.</li>
<li>I've been thinking about the recent vogue in photographing abandoned

buildings. <a href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/2010/02/hospital-ruins-rebecca-
solnit.html">Kostis posted on it this past week</a>, he linked to <a
href="http://www.slate.com/id/2241211/">an article by Camio Jose Vergara</a>,
and I've been mesmerized by <a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2241211/">the
photographs of James D. Griffioen</a>. I wonder what this all means...</li>
<li><a
href="http://henryjenkins.org/2010/02/killer_paragraphs_and_other_re.html">A
thoughtful review</a> of <a
href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/">PBS's Digital
Nation</a> by Henry Jenkins that offers some interesting observations on writing
in our digital age.</li>
<li>I'm not a huge fan of the 20-20 format in Cricket, but <a
href="http://www.cricinfo.com/ausvpak09/engine/current/match/406207.html">this</
a> must have been an exciting game, and it's great to see Shaun Tait be
successful again.</li>
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<li>My public history intern's blog, <a

href="http://webmuseweavers.wordpress.com/">The Muses' Web</a> is so far pretty
successful.</li>
<li>Some fun articles came across my desk this week: from <a
href="http://www.atypon-link.com/ASCS/doi/abs/10.2972/hesp.78.4.501">Ottoman
cemeteries</a> to <a
href="http://www.springerlink.com/content/k254u1q4tt357918/fulltext.pdf">digital
Catalhoyuk</a> (via <a href="http://electricarchaeologist.wordpress.com/">Shawn
Graham</a>)</li>
<li>For those interested in seeing me in the flesh: February 24, 2010 - I'm
giving the Elwyn B. Robinson lecture at the Chester Fritz Library on campus at
the University of North Dakota; the talk is "Digital Archaeology: Technology in
the Trenches". On April 29, 2010, I am going to give one of the Faculty Lecture
Series Lectures, probably at the North Dakota Museum of Art, paper title
tbd.</li>
<li><a href="http://sports.espn.go.com/los-
angeles/ncf/news/story?id=4888515">So this kid is going to</a> put Bear,
Delaware on the map. Sweet.</li>
</ul>
I am ready for the weekend! Enjoy the big game and the unofficial start of
NASCAR season. 
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TITLE: More on Ryan Stander's Topos/Chora: Photographs of the Pyla-Koutsopetria
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We are almost ready to release the online version of Ryan Stander's photo
exhibition, Topos/Chora. For the last week, the exhibit has been up at the
Empire Arts Center in Grand Forks, North Dakota where it will stay all
February.!
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Here's the press release (comliments of our most excellent <a

href="http://www3.und.edu/dept/our/">Office of University Relations</a>):!
!
<blockquote>!
The exhibit Topos/Chora: Photographs of the Pyla-Koutsopetria
Archaeological Project is featured now through the end of the month at the
Empire Arts Center. The exhibit features the photographs of UND Master‚Äôs of
Fine Art student Ryan Stander. These images were produced during Stander‚Äôs
time as the artist-in-residence at Pyla-Koustopetria Archaeological Project in
Cyprus.!
!
Since 2003, the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project has conducted
archaeological fieldwork in the Republic of Cyprus under the direction of Bill
Caraher of the UND Department of History. It is one of very few archaeological
projects in the Mediterranean to support an artist-in-residence program, Caraher
said. !
 !
Stander's photos seek to present the relationship between the archaeologist
at work in the field and the physical and natural environment. Portraits,
landscape views, and dynamic work images capture the intersection of physical
energy, personality, and the striking archaeological and natural landscape of
the Cypriot coastline. !
 !
Stander‚Äôs photos will be at the Empire Arts Center through the end of the
month. The exhibit is free and open to the public and is open during Empire Arts
Center events and by appointment. Check the Center‚Äôs Web site for a calender
of this month‚Äôs events. An online exhibit supported by the Working Group in
Digital and New Media will be released later this week. !
 !
Useful links !
William Caraher home page <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/HomePage.html">www.und.nodak.ed
u/instruct/wcaraher/HomePage.html</a> !
Ryan Stander blog Ryan's blog Axis of Access <a
href="http://axisofaccess.blogspot.com/">http://axisofaccess.blogspot.com/</a>!
Pyla Koutsopetria Archeological Project Web site <a
href="http://www.pkap.org/">www.pkap.org/</a> !
Pyla Koutsopetria Graduate Student Perspectives <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/pylakoutsopetria_graduate/">http://m
editerraneanworld.typepad.com/pylakoutsopetria_graduate/</a> !
 !
Contacts: !
Bill Caraher, assistant professor !
UND Department of History !
<a href="mailto:william.caraher@und.edu">william.caraher@und.edu</a> !
 !
Empire Arts Center !
415 Demers Ave, Grand Forks !
701-746-5500 !
<a href="http://www.empireartscenter.com">www.empireartscenter.com</a>!
</blockquote> !
And here is the first part of a three-part interview prepared by my public
history internship program (for a reflectve, behind the scene's view of
their work check out the intern's office blog: <a
370
href="http://webmuseweavers.wordpress.com/">The Muse's Web</a>). The

interview was produced by Kathy Nedegaard, Sara McIntee, and Chris Gust,
conducted by Chris Gust and edited by Sara McIntee. It was conducted in our
almost-finished Working Group in Digital and New Media Laboratory. !
<div style="text-align: center;">!
Interview, Chris Gust, Ryan Stander, (Part 1: 13:01) !
</div>!
 !
</div>!
<embed allowscriptaccess="never" bgcolor="#FFFFFF"
flashvars="playerMode=embedded" height="27" quality="best"
src="http://www.google.com/reader/ui/3247397568-audio-
player.swf?audioUrl=http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/PodCasts/Stander%
20Interview/Stander%20Interview%201.mp3" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"
width="400" wmode="window" />!
</div>!
 !
</div>!
<div style="text-align: left;">!
Stay tuned for Parts 2 and Part 3 which will appear with the online exhibit!!
</div>
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TITLE: Audit Culture and History as Craft
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BASENAME: audit-culture-and-history-as-craft
CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 02/03/2010 08:11:44 AM

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If you read this blog regularly, you know that I am fond of E. P. Thompson
and I have found in some of his works <a
aching-tuesday-syllabus-as-contract.html">useful ways</a> to articulate not only
scholarly work, but also the way in which I teach history as a discipline. In
particular, I've found his notion of artisanal work useful to explaining how
academic work is different from, say, the stereotypical corporate workplace.
Artisans work on their own time and produced according the principles of what
371
Thompson called the "moral economy" in contrast to the market economy which
becomes the dominant force within capitalism. Two weeks ago, I returned to this
analysis and c<a
aching-with-technology-thursday.html">onsidered how the panopticon</a> and
online teaching served the market economy. In particular, I suggested (almost
argued) that the transparency of student behavior to the gaze of the instructor
conditioned them to participate in the so-call "information economy" where every
aspect of an individual's identity is observed, recorded, and redeployed
(typically to encourage consumption or the production of goods).
While ruminating on these things, I stumbled upon an article by M. Herzfeld
entitled, <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=JF1X-
WEtDFgC&lpg=PT1&dq=Ways%20of%20Knowing%20new%20approaches%20in%20the%20a
nthropology%20of%20experience&client=firefox-
a&pg=PA91#v=onepage&q=Ways%20of%20Knowing%20new%20approaches%20in%20the%
20anthropology%20of%20experience&f=false">"Deskilling, 'Dumbing Down', and
the Auditing of Knowledge in the Practical Mastery of Artisans and Academics: An
Ethnographers Response to a Global Problem,</a>" in M. Harris ed, Ways of knowing (Berghahn Books, 2007), 91-
112. <span class="Z3988" title="url_ver=Z39.88-2004&ctx_ver=Z39.88-
2004&rft_id=urn%3Aisbn%3A1845453646%2C%209781845453640&rft_val_fmt=info%
3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&rft.genre=book&rft.btitle=Ways%20of%20kno
wing&rft.publisher=Berghahn%20Books&rft.aufirst=Mark&rft.aulast=Harr
is&rft.au=Mark%20Harris&rft.date=2007&rft.isbn=1845453646%2C%2097818
45453640">Characteristic of Herzfeld's work, this article is dense and
significant, so I found myself more mesmerized than necessarily comprehending.
From what I can distill, he argues (among other things) that academic work is
under the same pressures the ultimately undermined artisanal modes of production
(p. 91). The emergence of a culture where administrators (if not fellow
academics) expect quantifiable results and by doing so anticipate a kind of
"replicability" that runs counter to the fundamental intellectual premises of
disciplines like anthropology (p. 97). To Herzfeld, the way in which students
acquire the kind of knowledge available through anthropology is parallel to way
that apprentices learned from master craft men. Of course, artisanal ways of
work have ultimately collapsed in the face of the pressures of the market
economy which put greater pressure on the consistency of production and less
value on the unique abilities of the individual artisan. As a result, in the
place of artisans, we now have deskilled and marginalized labor. The need to
maintain this pool of deskilled labor depends upon a kind of "prefabricated
knowledge design" which ensures that workers have docile bodies and minds,
capable of accommodating market forces (p. 93). In other words, the irregular
and creative outcomes of artisanal methods of producing knowledge are
undesirable in the market economy which looks toward consistency in production.
The goal in education then is to produce consistent outcomes at the expense of
creativity (and we must assume with Herzfeld that these two potential outcomes
are mutually exclusive).
<span class="Z3988" title="url_ver=Z39.88-2004&ctx_ver=Z39.88-
2004&rft_id=urn%3Aisbn%3A1845453646%2C%209781845453640&rft_val_fmt=info%
3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&rft.genre=book&rft.btitle=Ways%20of%20kno
wing&rft.publisher=Berghahn%20Books&rft.aufirst=Mark&rft.aulast=Harr
is&rft.au=Mark%20Harris&rft.date=2007&rft.isbn=1845453646%2C%2097818
45453640">The discipline of history, like anthropology, often finds itself in a
nervous place when faced with this philosophy of education. I'd contend that it
is exceedingly difficult to demonstrate that students understand the notoriously
ill-defined "historical method" through quantitative means. Thus scientific (or,
372
better, scientistic) means of judging the success or failure -- the consistency

-- of the educational process are ill-suited to evaluate the discipline of
history as it currently stands. It is possible, of course, to make sure that
students know some basic historical facts, but few within the discipline would
accept this "prefabricated knowledge" to be a particularly significant
indication of one's ability to be a historian. We acknowledge the central place
of method in the historical discourse by calling the one required class in the
historical curriculum here at the University of North Dakota, The Historians
Craft. We explicitly situate history within the tradition of craft -- that is
artisanal -- production (pp. 98-99). The outcomes in this class, and in
historical research more generally, are uneven, unpredictable, almost impossible
to quantify and to replicate. The reasons for this are rooted in the varying
nature of historical source material as well as variation in students' (and
historians') ability to grasp any particular body of historical source material.
Experience plays a key role in our abilities as historians and, as the saying
goes, you can't teach experience.
Lest we think that Herzfeld's paralleling artisans and anthropologists
predicts the ultimate collapse of academic disciplines that embrace knowledge
over skills, he concludes with an optimistic vision. Anthropologists, like
historians, trained through experience are quick to realize the flaws in any
form of assessment that endeavors to reduce actual learning to numerical or
structural models (pp. 106-107). In fact, the sensitivity among historians and
anthropologists to the irregularities present in any form of data (and to the
power structures that create these data sets) put them in a position to reject
assessments that undermine their devotion to knowledge production. I'd add to
this that our understanding of the context of audit culture allows us to subvert
it goals by forms of passive resistance which range from mimicking successful
outcomes through the deft manipulation of scientistic language to intentional
misrepresentation of the audit culture's expectations for the discipline. How
long these strategies can sustain the discipline speaks as much to the health of
the discipline and its continued ability to produce knowledge as it does the
strength of the powers that seek to de-skill academic artisans in the name of
scholarly production. 
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COMMENT:
IP: 155.68.29.254
DATE: 02/03/2010 08:14:05 AM
I'm really interested in reading Louis Menand's new book, The Marketplace of
Ideas. Check out a review and NPR interview
373
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/31/books/review/Berube-
t.html?scp=2&sq=louis%20menand&st=cse">http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/31/books/r
eview/Berube-t.html?scp=2&sq=louis%20menand&st=cse</a>
<a
href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122702647">http://www
.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122702647</a>
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DATE: 02/02/2010 08:07:59 AM

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This week I've been working on a review for the <a
href="http://eja.sagepub.com/">European Journal of Archaeology</a> on the
Y. Hamilakis and A. Anagnostopoulos' edited volume, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/468828461">Archaeological
Ethnographies</a> (London 2009). The papers in the volume derive
from a workshop on Poros in 2008 and focus on the intersection of archaeology
and anthropological ethnography. The papers were almost all cases studies and
these alternated between examples from Greece and those from World Archaeology.
In general, the papers with foci outside of Greece demonstrated a greater
methodological and, perhaps, theoretical sophistication, but there were
numerous, clear points of dialogue between all the scholars at the workshop. It
would be hard to imagine a similar dialogue between a representative sampling of
scholars working within the traditional disciplinary limits of Greek archaeology
and those conducting archaeological fieldwork or theory outside the
Mediterranean basin. 
The interplay between scholars offering perspectives from World Archaeology
and those writing from a Greek perspective is stimulating and, in general,
constructive. But this juxtaposition leaves little room to contrast the contexts
from which these case-studies emerged. While superficially, it is clear that
this alternation of context reveals the different vocabularies, intellectual
traditions, and conditions of work across the world. On the other hand, this
alternation avoid problematizing evidence that many of the World Archaeologists
worked in places, in conditions, and on sites where they encountered radically
alienated groups who were largely deprived of intellectual and physical control
over the archaeological remains of their past and struggled to deploy them as a
means to secure political authority in the present. For example, Colwell-
Chanthaphonh‚Äôs study of the term Anasazi among the Native Americans in the
southwest revealed that the words for past cultures remain layered with numerous
subtexts capable of alienating and disenfranchising in the present.
In Greece, the power relationship between archaeologists and local residents
is far more subtle and less visibly contested as the overwhelming power of
Greece‚Äôs national identity saturates archaeological remains with patriotic
significance. As Stroulia and Sutton, Forbes, and Deltsou show, the persistent
and sometimes overwhelming din of archaeological nationalism belies the local
374
conflicts, attitudes, and practices on the local level. Ethnographic practices

holds out the potential to capture these dissonant attitudes toward
archaeological sites and archaeologists in their communities. Sutton and
Stroulia argue, for example, that the site of Nemea despite its presence on the
informed tourist‚Äôs itinerary has little meaning to the residents of the Nemea
Valley today. Forbes reveals that Arvanites farmers on the Methana Peninsula
find little in Classical antiquity to celebrate and associate the past mainly
with hardships. At the site of Sikyon, Deltsou demonstrates how official
archaeological policy differed from local attitudes toward the local site. Near
Kozani in Macedonia, looting practices also reveal the tension between, on the
one hand, official expectations and the law, and, on the other hand, a wide
array of indigenous archaeological practices that have been generally classified
as looting and criminalized or subjected to extreme ethical censure. Hamilakis
and Anagnostopoulos demonstrated from their experiences at the sanctuary of
Kalaureia that the lines between archaeologist, local resident, and ethnographer
can produce shifting hybrid identities and resist easy recourse to essential
categories or positions.
The value of these conclusions are less in the specifics ‚Äì after all it is
unremarkable that Greeks or any groups have diverse attitudes toward the
practice and product of archaeology ‚Äì and more in value of ethnography as a
tool to cross barriers between social groups, to articulate alternative
histories, to undermine lingering colonial or even racist perspectives embedded
in the practices of exploring the past, and toproblematize archaeology‚Äôs
epistemological roots in modernity. Despite these ambitious goals, most of the
case studies presented in this volume at least initially situate the
archaeologist or ethnographer in a position of power in relation to the local
resident, and this is particularly clear in the case studies from World
Archaeology. Ethnography then becomes a strategy that bridges the gap between
the authority rooted in modern archaeological practice with its claims to
universality and localized, indigenous strategies of imparting meaning in past
material culture. While few would argue that the anthropological turn in
archaeological practice has contributed to a more dynamic, politically aware,
and "sensuous" discipline, in Greece the focus of the ethnographic relationship
between outsider archaeologist and the alienated local overlook the relationship
between the outsider archaeologist and the state's ability to articulate power
on the local level, for example, or the archaeologist and the myriad mediating
institutions (foreign schools, academic institutions, disciplinary bodies,
scholarly discourses) that influence archaeological practice.
In other words, there is no doubt that archaeologists may productively employ
ethnography reveal and ameliorate asymmetrical power relationships between the
outsider-academic and the local. Ethnography can also function more broadly to
document and articulate the relationship between the archaeologist and the
various mechanisms of power that influence his or her work. See for example <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/137325143">A. Loukaki's</a> <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/137325143">Living Ruins, Value Conflicts</a>
and <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2009/09/ju
st-a-bit-more-on-post-classical-athens.html">my blog post here</a>. Archaeologists are never in complete control over
their research, how it is communicated, and their relationship with the local
community. "Locals" (for lack of a better word) often exploit their relationship
with both foreign and Greek archaeologists for their own benefit. The state --
through both the Central Archaeological Council and as manifest in its local
representatives in ephorias -- answers to its own logic, political concerns, and
networks of power. As often as archaeologists appear to be outsiders to
375
alienated local residents, they are also alienated themselves from the various
networks of relations and strategical concerns of local residents and national
(not to mention disciplinary) politics and power structures. Ethnography may
enable an archaeologist to be complicit in liberating and informing local
knowledge, but it could also function, in practical terms, as a counterweight to
the manipulative strategies employed on all levels and to the lack of
transparency within archaeology as a discipline. The deeply embedded position of
archaeology within all manner of political, intellectual, and institutional
networks makes it an appealing subject for ethnographic scrutiny and perhaps
archaeology and ethnography will find even more opportunities to speak truth to
power in these contexts.
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AUTHOR: Colleen
EMAIL: clmorgan@berkeley.edu
IP: 136.152.182.21
URL: http://middlesavagery.wordpress.com
DATE: 02/03/2010 12:55:54 PM
I'll be happy to see the review--the book is $60, so I doubt that me or the UC
library system will have it any time soon.
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TITLE: Topos/Chora Opening and Archaeological Ethnography (Part 1)
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On Friday night we had an amazing turn out for the opening of Ryan Stander's
photo <a href="http://axisofaccess.blogspot.com/2010/01/toposchora-
opening.html">exhibition Topos/Chora</a>. Ryan was the artist-in-resident at the
<a href="http://www.pkap.org/" title="Pyla-Koutsopetria">Pyla-Koutsopetria
Archaeological Project</a> last summer and produced a remarkable series of
photographs during his time with us. We also showed a trailer of a new PKAP
documentary produced by I<a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/pylakoutsopetria_season_s/2009/06/py
la-koutsopetria-filmmaker-ian-ragsdale.html">an Ragsdale</a> and his company <a
376
href="http://www.bigapefilms.com/">Big Ape Productions</a>. Both the film and

photographs garnered their respective creators great reviews.
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a83b3ef8970b
-pi" width="480" height="360" alt="Pictures.jpg" />
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a83b3ee8970b
-pi" width="480" height="360" alt="Paul-Bill.jpg" />
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20128773e8f3e970c
-pi" width="480" height="360" alt="Portraits2.jpg" style="float:left;" />
At the same time as the opening was being planned
and produced, I've been reading Y. Hamilakis and A. Anagnostopoulos's edited
volume <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/468828461">Archaeological
Ethnographies</a> (London 2009). It occurred to me, particularly after
reading the final article in the collection which featured a photo-essay by the
editors and F. Ifantidis, that Ryan's photographs were a kind of ethnographic
documentary of our project. Unlike much of the Hamilakis and Anagnostopoulos
volume, Ryan's photographs did not capture the interaction between project
members and the Cypriot community, but rather captured the interaction between
the members of the project. One could argue that Ryan's photographs sought to
capture the dynamic between people on a project as they sought to produce
archaeological knowledge from the landscape. The gallery opening represented
another ethnographic moment as a wide range of visitors both attempted to
understand the photographs as expressions of the photographers art as well as
used the photographs as prompts to explore the experience and goals of the
archaeological processes. PKAP alumni who came to the opening used the
photographs as mnemonic triggers to recall the landscape and, more importantly,
their experiences at the site. The result of these conversations was a genuinely
transdisciplinary experience as conversations moved from the field of
photography to archaeology. In this context, the ethnography of archaeology is
doubled: once in the photographs and a second time in the engagement with the
photographs as prompts to recall or explore the archaeological process.
We did not document the public's engagement with
the photographs at the opening (we should have), and this limited the value of
the evening as a genuinely ethnographic experience. The experience was enough,
however, to demonstrate the potential of this kind of transdisciplinary space in
documenting the way in which a dynamic group of people understand archaeology as
a picture, process, and experience.
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DATE: 02/01/2010 08:37:15 AM

This looks just FANTASTIC
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DATE: 01/29/2010 10:37:25 AM

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A beautiful, but cold Friday morning for some quick hits and varia.!
<ul>!
<li>Be sure to come down to the Empire Arts Center tonight around 6:30 pm to
check out <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2010/01/to
poschora-and-archaeological-photography.html">Ryan Stander's gallery
show</a> and get a sneak peek of Ian Ragsdale's new documentary.</li>!
<li><a href="http://und.academia.edu/RichardKahn">Richard Kahn and
ecopedagogy</a>. How cool is that?</li>!
<li>I am not sure what to do with Daytum, but I now have a <a
href="http://daytum.com/billcaraher">Daytum page</a>.</li>!
<li>Some great discussion about the limitations and problems with the iPad <a
href="http://bavatuesdays.com/iprop/">here</a>, <a
href="http://andheblogs.andyrush.net/ipad-its-a-consumption-device/">here</a>,
<a href="http://mikecaulfield.com/2010/01/27/belated-realization-about-the-
romance-of-mobile-learning/">here</a> and <a
href="http://blogs.ubc.ca/brian/2010/01/open-course-wars-redux/">here</a>. (via
<a href="http://bavatuesdays.com/">bavatuesdays</a>) For the real scoop, check
out <a
href="http://www.thefee.net/delirium/index.php/site/comments/apple_tablet_device
/">Sam Fee</a>. Some more interesting perspectives on the iPad over at <a
href="http://exploringourmatrix.blogspot.com/">Exploring Our Martix</a> with
lots more links.</li>!
<li>Keep checking back to the <a
href="http://webmuseweavers.wordpress.com/">public history blogging project</a>;
I'll turn my public history interns into bloggers yet.</li>!
<li>Ok, I lied a bit about the exciting <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/"
title="Teaching Thursday">Teaching Thursday</a> post... but it's still
coming. We have a bit of a reluctant blogger issue there. Look for it later
today.</li>!
<li>Who is Ryan Harris? <a
href="http://www.cricinfo.com/ausvpak09/engine/current/match/406205.html">He
took 5 more wickets this week</a>.</li>!
</ul>!
Maybe some updates throughout today.
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CATEGORY: Teaching
CATEGORY: Web/Tech
DATE: 01/28/2010 08:21:22 AM

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Technology is all over the news this week with both <a
href="http://www.apple.com/ipad/">Apple's announcement yesterday</a> and the
<a href="http://wp.nmc.org/horizon2010/">official publication of the 2010
Horizon Report</a>; so I thought it might be a good time to talk a bit about
some of the high-tech new and its potential impact on teaching and some of my
own efforts to use technology in the classroom. This will also set up
today's contribution to the <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/"
title="Teaching Thursday">Teaching Thursday</a> blog. It might be a bit later
than usual, but it will certainly be worth it!!
1. Apple iPad. Every other blogger is talking about so, I would feel left
out. As much as I love my MacBook Pro, I am deeply skeptical about claims that
the iPad will have a significant impact in the classroom. Having said this, <a
href="http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Diagnosing-the-Tablet-Fever-in/20888/">at
least one school</a>, Abiliene Christian, is already talking about the
possibility of requiring the iPad for all of its students and Steve Jobs'
consistently linked the iPad with Apple's goal to position itself at the
"intersection of technology and the liberal arts". So, it seems clear
that Apple conceives of the iPad as being at home in a university environment
and at places like Abiliene Christian, where a significant relationship with
Apple already exists -- they require their students to have either iPhones or
the iPod Touch -- the iPad will certainly provide an appealing upgrade to the
hardware that they are already using. Moreover, the prospect of students being
able to bring their digital textbooks (or most online content) to class with
them will be hugely appealing.!
From the perspective of someone who teaches at a school that occupies the
trailing edge of tech trends in higher education, I think that the iPad will
struggle at places without a consistent equipment to Apple products. First,
there will be interoperability issues with the existing technology
infrastructure. Basically, the iPad which is built around Apples iPhone OS, will
require students and tech folks to accommodate a new operating system. At a
place like UND, there is only minimal support for OS X and very little support
for Linux, so I can't imagine their being sufficient technical support for
integrating the iPad into the day-to-day classroom environment. This isn't
to suggest that the iPad would not function splendidly in those environments or
379
that I can't imagine it's potential, but like a slow moving ship, large,
underfunded, university's change courses slowly and if the iPad can not
function within the existing technological infrastructure which, for better or
for worse, is focused around Microsoft and Windows (XP!), there will be real
barriers to its systematic adoption.!
Next, I suspect that it's inability to handle Adobe Flash applications
and its inability to run multiple programs simultaneously will be series
drawbacks. On a phone or smaller and more simple mobile device, the lack of
Flash is an acceptable annoyance -- after all you're surfing the web on a
tiny screen that fits in your pocket; it's not whether the horse can ride
the motorcycle well, it's that it can ride it at all. But on a full screen
table, the inability to run flash will be a significant draw back. As an
example, the iPad will not be able to run the <a
href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/explorerflash/#/object_Hvi54RDiQym
6Pgd3_IsRKA">BBC's spectacular History of the World</a> website or the
proper web version of the <a href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/">UND homepage</a>.
Since Flash remains an economical way for universities, museums, and the media
to produce content rich web experiences, the incompatibility with Flash on the
iPad will limit some of its popularity among a group who relies heavily on Flash
to make their web go. The inability to run multiple applications simultaneously
will make it hard to ask the students to jump back and forth from a digital
textbook, to an online interface, to a Twitter application and these are the
kinds of expectations that we already have with analog media in the classroom.
We expect students to be able to "run multiple applications
simultaneously" (take notes, annotate a text, and participate in a
classroom discussion) and we need to expect our teaching technology to follow
suite.!
Finally, I have to agree with <a href="http://bavatuesdays.com/">Jim
Groom</a> -- the noted and notorious semi-underground higher ed tech guru -- who
told the <a href="http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Diagnosing-the-Tablet-Fever-
in/20888/">Chronicle's Wired Blog</a> that Apple control over the
application approval process may be jarring to those in higher education who
want to develop specific applications for the iPad. On the one hand, there are
universities like Stanford, who have embraced the iPhone apps as a development
challenge and teach courses in app development; many more schools, I suspect,
will be wary of having to partner with Apple to navigate what most developers
claim to be an mysterious and opaque process.Update: <a
href="http://bavatuesdays.com/iprop/">Groom (and others via links) really nails
some key concerns in this post.</a>!
The reason for this wariness, of course, is that the iPad will not be the
only player in the high-end tablet market for vary long. Google's Android
operating system should soon be powering alternatives to the iPad which will
likely suffer many of the same problems with interoperability, but at least
represent a more open source alternative to the iPad restricted development
model. At the same time, Windows has long powered tablets and these tablet have
not caught on the classroom. This probably reflects hardware issues as much as
anything, but its hard to imagine that Windows based developers will not soon
offer similar products to the iPad with the advantage of being more clearly
interoperable with the existing technological infrastructure on a university
campus.!
2. Twitter and the Wave in the Classroom. Over the last four weeks, I've
be experimenting with both Twitter and Google Wave in a classroom setting. Here
are some quick updates:!
Twitter. I use Twitter in a large, lower division, night class that meets
once a week. So far, it has not produced much in the way of immediate results.
380
Students are still unsure how to use Twitter in the classroom. Most of the in-
class Tweets are silly comments about the Viking's loss this past weekend
(the football Vikings, not the Scandinavian kind) or remarks about how cool they
think Sparta is or was. They seem to have forgotten that I know who they are on
Twitter because they have provided me with a concordance that connects their
Twitter alias with their real names. Outside the classroom, that is during the
week between classes, Twitter seems to have at least made the students somewhat
more engaged in the material. I ask questions related to the course material in
the form of trivia (everything seems more fun if it's called trivia) and get
regular responses. I've also had some nice responses to reflection
questions: e.g. Would you rather live the Athens of Perikles or Sparta of the
Classical Age? (More preferred Sparta, um, largely because the movie made it
seem real cool.) At present probably 15%-20% of those in class who have signed
up for Twitter have used it in some way. For more on my Twitter experiment <a
aching-tuesday-on-the-first-tuesday-of-the-spring-semester.html">see
here</a>.!
Google Wave. I've been using Google's latest and greatest web-based
collaborative platform in a small graduate class this semester. So far, it works
brilliantly. Even my most technologically challenged graduate student has
embraced (reluctantly at first) the wave and has contributed to a wide range of
spontaneous, threaded discussions. We have not been as successful using Google
Wave to actually collaborate on a specific document, but this aspect of its
operability is less refined. More on this as the semester progresses, but I
already feel confident in saying that Google Wave has real potential in a
graduate level class.!
3. As I said in my little introduction, we are excited to have a guest
blogger over at <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/" title="Teaching
Thursday">Teaching Thursday</a>. The blog post will be a bit later than usual,
but it drop a <a href="http://twitter.com/BillCaraher">Tweet</a> when it is
posted
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AUTHOR: Jim Groom
EMAIL: jimgroom@gmail.com
IP: 173.72.165.158
URL: http://bavatuesdays.com
DATE: 01/30/2010 12:18:33 AM
Bill,
It's cool to hear you are having success with Google Wave. Just about
everything I've heard so far was rather tepid, and while I've played with it
only briefly, I really had no project to conquer in it. I'd love to hear more
about how you are using it, and whether students use that as their CMS/LMS
space.
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COMMENT:
EMAIL:
IP: 134.129.192.225
DATE: 02/01/2010 08:35:09 AM
Jim,
Good to hear from you. I have found Google Wave to be a great space for student
collaboration. It is easy enough to set up and use, is designed to allow for
flexible access (i.e. there can be four "waves" (or threads) each with different
groups of students participating), and allows for real time collaboration. This
being said, I am looking forward to it becoming more functional and to allow for
a more diverse range of content and media. And, I use it with graduate students
in a small practicum -- rather than with undergraduates in a formal class.
Finally, I don't want to make it seem like Google Wave does something that, say,
a nice wiki or threaded discussion board can't do. What I can say is that
Google Wave does provide a nice environment for collaborative work.
Bill
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Sound Systems
EMAIL: anithachange@gmail.com
IP: 115.252.65.9
URL: http://www.atvvideo.com
DATE: 03/03/2010 05:29:09 AM
Technology is getting increased day by day we have to change our life according
to it or self it will not suit to work on it
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Premium Flash Templates
EMAIL: mass.jo16@gmail.com
IP: 115.252.65.9
URL: http://premiumwpthemes.in
DATE: 03/05/2010 01:25:14 AM
nowadays, technology improving lot more, like edu com class
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DATE: 01/27/2010 08:16:32 AM

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If you're in the Grand Forks area (or even if you're not!), I
encourage you come and enjoy the opening night of Ryan Stander's
photographic exhibit entitled Topos/Chora: Photographs of the Pyla-
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Koutsopetria Archaeological Project. The gallery opens at 6:30 and short

gallery talks begin at 7 pm on Friday night. We also hope to give a sneak peek
of a film by documentary filmmaker Ian Ragsdale who worked with us this past
summer as well.!
<img alt="201001270819.jpg" height="480"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20128771a671e970c
-pi" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px;" width="360" />The exhibit of
photographs is an exciting example of an almost ritualized inversion of roles.
In the past, archaeologists have used photographs or art to illustrate the
results of their work or even their procedures. The recent turn toward post-
processural, reflexive archaeological practice has emphasized documenting the
processes and experiences the produce archaeological knowledge. While scholars
who have used video, still photography, audio, and reflexive writing in these
contexts have problematized the techniques and tools used to gather this
information, few have sought to invert the process entirely and free the
camera's gaze from the control of the archaeologist. Our collaboration with
Ryan Stander, does just that. I turns the camera toward the archaeologists and
removes it from their physical and intellectual command.!
In these photographs (which will come the web soon, I promise), the
photographer's autonomy allowed for a perspective of the archaeologists'
work that is outside the archaeologists' gaze and control. While I would be
naive to claim that these photographs are a fully independent perspective, after
all the photographer lived with the project and interacted daily with us, they
nevertheless capture something approaching an outsider (or objective, at least
from the archaeologists' perspective) view of archaeological practice.!
For more on Ryan's work, check out his blog <a
href="http://axisofaccess.blogspot.com/">Axis of Access</a>.!
So, come down to the <a href="http://www.empireartscenter.com/">Empire Arts
Center</a> in beautiful downtown Grand Forks, North Dakota to check out
Ryan's work, hear about the project, and see some moving pictures! 7 pm for
the gallery talks on Friday night. Some light refreshments will be served.!
And stay tuned for the online companion to the exhibit!
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DATE: 01/26/2010 08:43:03 AM

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The other day, for vanity's sake, I was looking at my <a
href="http://www.archaeology.org/online/features/blogs/index.html">Blogging
Archaeology</a> article over at the <a
href="http://www.archaeology.org/">Archaeology Magazine</a> webpage. I noticed
that it was formally published on January 18, 2008, two years ago. I began to
think about how much archaeology's engagement with the web has changed over the
past two years. It's not that blogs were revolutionary back in '08, but they
still were things that required, at least in an academic and archaeological
context, some kind of explanation. While I don't think that blogs are self-
explanatory today nor do I think they've reached a point of widespread
acceptance as a useful contribution to the academic discourse, they are at least
held in less contempt, which may be enough.
The most remarkable thing about the article is how many of the blogs and
their links remain live. A few have been dormant over the holiday season with
their most recent posts in November ( <a
href="http://adventureswithyandm.blogspot.com/" target="new">Adventures with Yo
and Mo</a>, <a href="http://neonostalgia.com/weblog/" target="new">Thoughts on
Antiquity</a>) and few have changed urls (Alun Salt's Clioaudio is defunct, but
I am sure that he is <a
href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=clnk&cd=1&ved
=undefined&url=http%3A%2F%2F74.125.95.132%2Fsearch%3Fq%3Dcache%3AUbvLbNydFB4
J%3Aalunsalt.com%2F%2BAlun%2BSalt%26cd%3D1%26hl%3Den%26ct%3Dclnk%26gl%3Dus%26cli
ent%3Dfirefox-a&ei=ye1eS-G8CofSNeHz5eoL&usg=AFQjCNEQKO32UnjrtmhOv-
9WynQdIKAMTQ&sig2=SayXlu5AFXOoqKXfPvlmdQ">blogging somewhere</a>), but the
vast majority of the blogs listed in 2008 are still active to some extent. This
reveals some impressive stability in the archaeological blogosphere. There have
also been some great additions to the blogging world like the informative <a
href="http://bloggingpompeii.blogspot.com/">Blogging Pompei</a>i and the
wonderfully dramatic <a href="http://lateantiqueostia.wordpress.com/">Kent-
Berlin Ostia Excavations</a>' blog and more than a handful of blogs that I
missed in my original article (especially worthy of note is Colleen Morgan's
remarkably diverse <a href="http://middlesavagery.wordpress.com/">Middle
Savagery</a>, Diana Wright's elegant <a
href="http://surprisedbytime.blogspot.com/">Surprised by Time</a>, Katie Rask's
playful and smart <a
href="http://www.antiquatedvagaries.blogspot.com/">Antiquate Vagaries</a>, and
the useful <a href="http://researchnewsinla.blogspot.com/">Research News in Late
Antiquity</a>).
More interesting, however, is the development of alternatives to blogging
within the archaeological community. A number of veteran bloggers have moved
seamlessly into Tweeting: <a href="http://twitter.com/alun">Alun Salt</a>, the
longstanding dean of ancient world bloggers, the <a
href="http://twitter.com/rogueclassicist">Rogue Classicist</a>, <a
href="http://twitter.com/adrianmurdoch">Adrian Murdoch</a> of <a
href="http://adrianmurdoch.typepad.com/my_weblog/">Bread and Circuses</a>, and
<a href="http://twitter.com/chuckjones2000">Chuck Jones</a>, the Librarian at
the <a href="http://www.nyu.edu/isaw/">Institute for the Study of the Ancient
World</a>, who edits and contributes to so many blogs, I can't keep
track. There are some new players as well like <a
href="http://twitter.com/archaeologynews">Archaeology News</a>. <a
href="http://twitter.com/researchnewsinl">Research News in Late Antiquity</a>
provides timely Tweets complementing many of this blog's posts. The <a
href="https://twitter.com/archaeologymag">Twitter feed from Archaeology
Magazine</a> provides a nice way to keep track of content on their site.
384
Several projects, including mine, the <a href="http://www.pkap.org/"

title="Pyla-Koutsopetria">Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project</a>,
Twittered from the field allowing a global audience of interested observers to
follow the day-to-day or hour-to-hour working of their project.
<a href="http://twitter.com/#search?q=Archaeology">A simple search of
Twitter</a> for the word archaeology produces hundreds of tweets a day dedicated
to a whole range of archaeological topics. At the same time, there are a wide
range of lists that draw together like-minded tweeters from across the web.
These lists begin to bring together the real power of the Twitter as a social-
media platform. Like the blog rolls of old, the creators of these lists compile
Twitter feeds which interest them. When a particular feed is included on a list,
however, it is marked as being "listed". This allows a user not only to follow a
particular feed, but also, to track down and find other similar feeds brought
together by Twitter users. Here are the various lists that include the feed for
<a href="http://twitter.com/researchnewsinl/lists/memberships">Research News in
Late Antiquity</a> and <a
href="https://twitter.com/archaeologymag/lists/memberships">these lists feature
the Archaeology Magazine</a> Twitter feed. My Twitter feed only appears on four,
lonely, <a href="http://twitter.com/BillCaraher/lists/memberships">little
lists</a>. Despite this obvious snub, these lists remain a great way to track
down Twitter feeds that feature content of interest to students of archaeology
or the ancient world.
Facebook and other social-media applications have likewise emerged to
complement more fully the dynamic "archaeological" blogoshpere. Moreover, it is
clear that archaeology will increasingly embrace new media spaces on the web
like YouTube (here is <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/PKAP2009">PKAP's
YouTube channel</a>) or sites that host podcasts (although these are far less
technologically challenging to make available through one's own website or blog)
Perhaps even more important will be the influence of the next generation of
communication applications like <a href="http://wave.google.com/">Google
Wave</a>. Already archaeologists have descended upon Google Wav, even though it
remains in alpha (not even beta) testing status, to take advantage of its
ability to create threaded discussions, realtime chat, and (eventually)
integrate a wide range of media.
In any event, this was my superficial effort to bring together some of the
applications and spaces that I rely on every day to stay connected to the
archaeological world. I will come back and update this page from time to time
over the next few weeks. Maybe I'll even consider writing up a formal article
that captures archaeology on the web in 2010.
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TITLE: The Hateful Earth and the Late Roman Economy
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CATEGORY: Books
DATE: 01/25/2010 08:44:04 AM

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<img
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20128770ddedc970c
-pi" width="140" height="219" alt="201001250817.jpg" style="float:left; margin-
right:10px;" /> On a snowy weekend, I managed to plow through the rest of <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/316430311">M. Decker's Tilling the Hateful
Earth (Oxford 2009)</a>. (Get it, plow (or for my readers in the UK, plough,
through... you know, like a farm plow...). Anyway. Decker's work is the most
recent installment in the recent vogue for ancient economic history over the
last decade (see, for example, Horden and Purcell's, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/42692026">The Corrupting
Sea</a>, M. McCormick's <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/44860892">Origins of the European
Economy</a>, Christopher Wickham's, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/70764463">Framing the Early Middle
Ages</a>, J. Banaji's <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/45806466">Agrarian Change in Late
Antiquity</a> as four significant works that immediately come to mind).
Decker's book stands out in that it is neither theoretically ambitious or
immensely long. This isn't meant to be a criticism. In fact, Decker does what he
does quite well. He describes and analyzes in some detail the agrarian landscape
of the Diocese of Oriens.
As per my usual practice, I'll eschew giving anything like a comprehensive
review and, instead, make a series of observations:
1. The strength of this book is the detailed analysis of agricultural
practices rather than a comprehensive view of the agricultural economy in the
East. The information presented on various settlement types, rural structures,
crops and agricultural practices will provide a nice foundation for any kind of
comprehensive archaeological and historical study of this region in the
future.
2. If any weakness in the detailed study of the agricultural practices did
exist, it was in the area of Cyprus. Decker does not seem to have as full a
command over the impressive body of material from Cyprus. In particular, he does
not take into full account M. Rautman's important studies of the village at
Kopetra or any less comprehensive, but nonetheless valuable studies of Late
Antique settlement elsewhere in Cyprus. This is unfortunate because the Cypriot
countryside is rapidly becoming one of the best documented regions in the Late
Roman East and it falls within the geographic boundaries of the Diocese of
Oriens. It was particular disappointing in that Late Antique Cyprus has recently
produced an impressive body of quantified Late Roman ceramic evidence which
would have contributed to the author's main argument.
3. While the detailed nature of Decker's study was a welcome repast from the
sweeping or expansive analyses common these day in the study of the ancient
economy, his work did leave me wondering why such economic and agricultural
prosperity occurred in the East. In places, he argued relatively persuasively
against the "minimalist" perspectives on the ancient economy offered by <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/765341">M. Finley</a> and <a
386
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/69655444">A. H. M. Jones</a> (pp. 228-229).

In other words, he did not see the prosperity of the east on a macro level as
being tied to administrative practices (namely taxation and other such
administrative trade) and their impact of economic and social decisions on the
micro level. This, of course, begs the question why he chose the Diocese of
Oriens -- an administrative unit -- as the basic unit for his analysis. If trade
really functioned according to markets, as he argues, wouldn't it have been more
effective to make an argument based on, say, market catchments for agricultural
produce or even commercial networks where one could hope to detect the kind of
competitive, collaborative, and responsive practices that would characterize
market economies in the ancient world? This isn't to suggest that Decker did not
analyze specific market reasons, but his decision to organize his book around an
administrative unit sometimes made it hard to detect the main impetus of market
forces in the Mediterranean basin more generally.
4. From the perspective of my field project, the Pyla-Koutsopetria
Archaeological Project, Decker's effort to define or at least describe
settlement types is helpful. While one can argue that site size definitions are
not the most useful (and comparable) kinds of data for the understanding of
settlement structure, his description of the features in various kinds of sites
does form a useful point of departure for a more comparative approach to
settlement during Late Antiquity. For example, he notes the proliferation of
settlement which lacked a proper, or at least formally defined, elite, but
nevertheless saw the development of some kinds of public buildings and services,
churches, and even traditional practices of euergetism. This indicates that by
Late Antiquity euergetism had become severed from self-promotion within the
traditional avenues of civic or even imperial service. This enabled wealthy
folks to give money to their communities outside both the physical and
institutional confines of civic or imperial centers. While Decker does not
explain why people would have done this (collective security? economic benefit?
hopes of civic or imperial promotion? Christianity?), it reveals a shift in how
most scholars have understood at least one component of the Late Roman gift
economy. Moreover, it explains sites that did not have formal administrative or
civic standing could receive both Christian and practical monumental
architecture through the generosity of the local elite.
It's a good book! Focused chapters, copious bibliography (befitting a revised
dissertation), and nice maps make it a useful contribution to anyone's
library.
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DATE: 01/22/2010 09:53:32 AM

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As we brace for another bout of winter weather, some quick hits and varia to
keep you warm this weekend:
<ul>
<li>Check out our Public History Interns as they figure out how to promote
their work using a blog. <a href="http://webmuseweavers.wordpress.com/">Go
here</a>.</li>
<li><a href="http://trefoilcultural.com/haiti2010.htm">This is a neat way</a>

to look at the devastating earthquake in Haiti. (via Richard Rothaus)</li>
<li>The <a href="http://www.whitehousetapes.net/">Presidential Recordings

Program</a> at the University of Virginia's Miller Center of Pubic Affairs
presents a huge number of amazing recording including this one of LBJ <a
href="http://www.whitehousetapes.net/clip/lyndon-johnson-joe-haggar-lbj-orders-
some-new-haggar-pants">ordering a pair of Haggar pants</a>. (via <a
href="http://twitter.com/JamesBWells">James Wells</a>)</li>
<li><a href="http://www.archaeology.org/online/features/blogs/">My article on

archaeology and blogging</a> is now over 2 years old. I am really thinking about
updating it.</li>
<li>Follow the snow on <a href="http://www.rwic.und.edu/webcam/">UND's

Regional Weather Information Center webcam</a>.</li>
<li>And if you need more warmth, read James Henry Breasted's letters from his
trip to the Middle East in 1919/1920 on the <a
href="https://blogs.uchicago.edu/oi/">Oriental Institute's blog</a>. (via <a
href="http://oihistory.blogspot.com/">Chuck Jones</a>)</li>
<li>Some cool cricket news. First, the <a

href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8470796.stm">IPL is really
interested in the U.S. market</a>. Next the IPL will be broadcast live on
YouTube except in the US. Booo.</li>
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DATE: 01/21/2010 07:20:21 AM

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Crossposted to <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/" title="Teaching
Thursday">Teaching Thursday</a>
In <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/2009/11/19/teaching-thursday-some-
thoughtful-tips-for-online-teaching/">a blog post a few months back</a>
dedicated to the topic of online teaching, I mentioned an observation by <a
href="http://teachingthursday.org/category/michael-beltz/">Mick Beltz</a>, a
regular contributor to <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/" title="Teaching
Thursday">Teaching Thursday</a>. He suggested that teaching online captured some
of the essential characteristics of M. Foucault's panopticon as outlined in his
<a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/3328401">Discipline and Punish: The
Birth of the Prison</a>. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this
metaphor, Foucault used Jeremy Bentham's vision of <a
href="http://cartome.org/panopticon2.htm">the panopticon</a> to describe modern
society. The panopticon is an architectural form, most famously used for
prisons, where an observer stationed at a central point can see into a series of
cells. The people in these cells can always see the observation post (although
they do not know whether they are being observed), but cannot see into any of
the other cells. In this way they are together, yet isolated from one another In
practical application, this means that a warden can observe the behavior of all
the inmates almost simultaneously while the inmate cannot observe each other's
behavior.
For Foucault, the pressure of constant observations implied specifically in
the panoticon, but functioning elsewhere formed the ideal environment for
maintaining the kind of discipline introduced in the prison, the factory, and
even the modern school. For Foucault, this kind of internalized discipline
produced by the fear of being constantly observed, ensured that society
maintained a degree of conformity sufficient to keep the engines of capitalism
moving. The panopticon and its culture of observation were part of Foucault's
analysis of discipline in modern times and part of a greater goal of the modern
state to produce "docile" bodies .
The parallel between the panopticon as a physical building and the experience
of teaching (and presumably taking) an online course are quite striking. First
the observer, in this case the faculty member, can observe student behavior
through a comprehensive array of statistics as well as submitted work. The
individual student, on the other hand, has almost no view of the faculty member,
except for when their work is evaluated. At the same time, they have only
limited abilities to observe the work of other students and rarely would know
when another student is being particular successful in the class or struggling.
In a classroom setting, of course, students can interact freely with one another
both before and after class and encode their behavior in ways that make it
difficult for a faculty member to observe, much less understand. Even during
class, verbal and non-verbal cues from the blatant -- like laughter at a
particularly innane comment by a fellow student -- or subtle, like glances at
one another or eye-rolling or even the frustrated figiting that occurs when a
class runs over, provide clear modes of communication between students.
389
Moreover, students can use these techniques to force a dialog with even a
reluctant faculty member. The classroom dynamic presents a formidable and almost
irresistible check on unfettered faculty authority.
The removal of this opportunity for spontaneous, collective action certainly
removes a key aspect of the faculty-student dialog from the classroom setting.
Moreover, the realization that one is being constantly observed initiates and
conditions the student for a world where companies like Google see everything
from your mundane search patterns to your house to your financial, personal, and
religious identities. The conditioning of students to be observed in an online
environment prepares them for a world where companies and governments constantly
gather information and construct identities for individuals which are so subtle,
varied, and complex that they exceed the individual's ability to understand or
realize them.
The impact of this environment on teaching as a profession is significant.
While the "teacherly" gaze has always been one of any number of treasured weapon
in the teacher's arsenal (able, when deployed successfully, to bring to order
even the most disruptive student), it now has the potential to become the single
most powerful tool for conditioning behavior. We can observe when a student
comes online, how long they stay for, what they look at, as well as the what
they produce. With only a little exaggeration, we can say that the student study
habits, reading behavior, and analytical practices are de-mystified and can be
placed in direct correlation to student performance on evaluated work. In
effect, the barrier that has long separated the mystical process of learning
from the work of evaluation has come down.
The advantage, then, of online education is that it conditions students to
become the docile bodies in our information age and to accept our individuality
as a commodity in the information economy. The documented life is the
commodified life.
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DATE: 01/20/2010 07:48:05 AM

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So, we're two weeks into <a
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pping-my-toe-in-the-public-history-pool.html">my public history internship

program</a> and we are slowing putting together the public face of our project.
This past week, we set up the project's <a
href="http://webmuseweavers.wordpress.com/">blog here</a>. The following post
explaining the role the blog will play in the project is as follows:!
<blockquote>!
Welcome to an experiment blog for an experimental class! This blog will
detail the adventures of an intrepid group of public history interns as they
work on several online and real life public history projects in the <a
href="http://www.und.edu/dept/histdept/">Department of History</a> at the <a
href="http://www.und.edu/">University of North Dakota</a>. The goal of this blog
is to make our efforts to create an online museum, manage an online complement
to a gallery show, digitize analog data, prepare analog data for formal
archiving, and create an online companion to a paper article. I have no idea how
many of these projects this team will succeed in completing this semester or
what realizations and limitations the team will encounter. The primary method of
instruction, which this blog will reflect, is hands-on learning and like the
best kind of hands on learning experiments, the results are not predetermined,
but will depend on the success, energy, and abilities of the participants.!
!
The hope is that this blog will make the process of learning and creating a
range of public history experiments transparent to anyone who is interested and
attract some positive (and maybe even critical!) attention to our high quality
graduate students and their creativity. Above all,however, the idea is to make
the process of public history as visible as the products of public history
itself. In other words, I want to make sure that the process of producing public
history (of all descriptions) is as important to how we think about the past as
the product is.!
!
So, stop back to the blog, three times a week to follow the trials and
accomplishments of the public history team! And feel free to contribute in the
comments line.!
</blockquote>!
It has been interesting to participate in the discussions surrounding the
public face of the various projects that we plan to undertake and get a clearer
understanding of how different people view the potential of the internet as well
as how the technology gaps between someone like me, who spends much of their day
online in some way, and students who consume online information, but have little
experience producing online content. So the learning curve will be steep at
times, but I expect that the results will show how much is possible in a short
time.
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TITLE: Temples and Churches
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CATEGORY: Byzantium
DATE: 01/19/2010 08:20:42 AM

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<a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2012876ef5538970
c-pi"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 5px 10px;
border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="214" alt="image"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a7ec557a970b
-pi" width="144" align="right" border="0"></a> This past weekend, I read <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/276816822">V.N. Makrides' Hellenic
Temples and Christian Churches: A Concise History of the Religious Cultures of
Greece from Antiquity to the Present</a> (New York 2009), and I did it
graduate school style, cover-to-cover in a couple of days. The book was
pointed out to me by a colleague and I immediately saw how the diachronic scope
of the work might resonate with my own diachronic study of dreams as a religious
phenomenon. The first part of the book is a pretty superficial survey of
the interaction between Hellenic ideas and Christian ideas across the broad span
of Greek history. I wasn't overly impressed with this survey which said
little that was new, but it would be a nice complement to a Greek history class
in that it touches on many of the key points of conflict. In fact, class
many years ago, when I taught my Greek history, which considered Greek history
from the Neolithic to the Modern period, I was looking for exactly this kind of
book to help me integrate and problematize the legacy of the ancient world
within the modern, Christian nation. The appearance of a book like this,
in English, from an American press, suggests that there might be a growing
market for not only the study of modern Greece, but also the an approach to the
entire span of Greek history that views understanding the modern nation-state as
an indispensable part of any study of the ancient world. The real value
in this book comes from the second part where Makrides addresses some of the
same that I am dealing with in my dream project. He had to find a way to
explain clear parallels in religious expression overtime without falling back on
tired arguments for the continuity of Greek culture. To do this, he argues
that Greeks over time consciously engaged in an intertextual reading of their
religious past, selecting certain modes of expression (whether Hellenic or
Christian) to suit particular strategic goals. He presents these various
strategies in a series of chapters which focus on the various strategies at
play: Antithesis, Thesis, Conflict; Selection, Transformation, Synthesis;
Symbiosis, Mixture, Fusion; Individuality, Distinctiveness, Idiosyncrasy.
This chapters demonstrate an impressive ability to understand a wide range of
area of religious conflict ranging from clashes between Christians and Pagans in
Late Antiquity to the politics of the Orthodox church under Ottoman rule to the
church's role in modern conflicts with secularizing forces within the Greek
state and society. The only thing that I really wished for was for
Makrides to make more clear the link between a particular strategy and a
particular situation. In other words, were there patterns in how and when
Greeks (broadly construed) deployed various religious strategies through
time? G. Jusdanis, <a
392
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/232497163">Belated Modernity</a>
(Minneapolis 1991), for example, has made clear that modern Greece's engagement
with the modern was not random, but selective and strategic. The
other curious weakness in the book is the lack of any sustained conversation
about archaeology. Archaeology in Greece has long played on both
nationalist, but also religious impulses within Greek society. Moreover,
archaeologists often express the vocation of archaeology in religious
terms. Makrides acknowledges this with a quote from Yiannis Sakellarakis
who considered his "higher calling " to be "a hunter of the mystical continuity
of place." (229) Y. Hamilakis recent work <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/122424890">The Nation and its Ruins:
Antiquity, Archaeology and National Imagination in Greece (Oxford 2007)</a>
dealt with some of these matters specifically. Preserving and
producing the archaeology of the Hellenic past not infrequently involved
overwriting the history of Byzantine and Christian Greece. Foreign
archaeologists destroyed numerous churches in search of inscriptions or
Classical buildings. Major, recurring restoration projects like those on the
Parthnon on the Athenian Acropolis have likewise eliminated traces of Christian
antiquity in an effort to preserve an more authentic expression of a Classical
ideal. As a rule, Byzantine , Ottoman, and Early Modern (19th c.)
monuments, many of which remain deeply embedded within the physical and ritual
fabrics of communities have far less protection from the Greek state. The
physical manifestations of the conflict between Hellenic and Christian ideals
within the Greek state is particularly crucial in an archaeological context
because ancient, Hellenic monuments represent the most visible face of the
nation to foreign visitors and in tourist, popular, and academic
publications. Historically Greece has catered to the interest of foreign
visitors in this regard and suppressed or overlooked aspects of Greece's
Christian identity which nevertheless played a key role in its national
development. Despite this missed opportunity, Makrides book is
well worth reading! In particular, his emphasis on the persistent religious
plurality in Greek society serves as a useful reminder to all states that
romanticized and idealized images of a religious and culturally homogeneous past
are almost always false. Greece like so many Mediterranean countries has a
long history of diverse forms of religious expression both within their
Christian community, but also outside of it. Thus, in his final analysis,
part of the Christian and Hellenic legacy of Greece is the ability to respond to
religious diversity through a variety of strategies and this is as good a thing
for scholars of the past as it is for modern society.
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COMMENT:
IP: 129.15.127.168
URL:
DATE: 01/20/2010 09:11:28 AM
393
Bill,
I'm not sure if you are still blogging about winter break reading. But, in case
you are, my reading included Kimberly Bowes, _Public Worship, Private Values,
and Religious Change in Late Antiquity_, which (I think) provides a useful model
for integrating textual sources and archaeological data in its analysis of
religious change and authority in the late Roman countryside and urban center.
-R
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Those of you who follow my Twitter feed know that I spent the end of last
week reading <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/64390557">H. Maguire's and
Anne Bennett Terry's Dynamic splendor : the wall mosaics in the Cathedral of
Eufrasius at Poreƒç. (University Park 2007)</a>. It's a pretty fantastic
book that delves deeply both into the techniques that produced a set of amazing
6th century mosaics, but also how they were "restored" at various times an what
they likely meant to their audience. Like many scholars of Late Antique
iconography and iconography, Maguire and Bennett regard these mosaics as being
both dynamic in a diachronic sense (that is, restored and meaning different
things to different people over time), but also dynamic in the sense of being
multivalent with many of the images capable of sustaining multiple
interpretations at the time of their production.
I was struck by one particular interpretation. The cathedral had several
images that evoked the Trinity. Maguire and Terry relate these images to the
ecclesiastical controversies that rocked the end of Justinian's reign and, in
particular, the Three Chapters Controversy which arose over the course of the
Fifth Ecumenical Council (553) and led to a number of bishops from the province
of Illyricum to break communion with the church in Constantinople and side,
initially with the Pope regarding the doctrines promulgated by this council. In
short, western bishops felt that by declaring anathema the works of Theodore of
Mopsuetia, Theodoret of Cyrus and Ibas of Edessa, the Emperor rejected the
orthodoxy established by Chalcedon. This was a traditional rallying cry for
bishops in the west (and including the province of Illyricum) who saw
Justinian's efforts to promote a compromise position between
miaphysites/monophysites in the East and the strict Chalcedonianism of the West
(led generally by the Pope) to be heretical. The definition of the Trinity was a
central statement at the Council of Chalcedon and so the Trinity became an
important symbol for both schismatic Western bishops and Eastern Emperors as
they sought to demonstrate their adherence to the spirit of Chalcedon and
Orthodoxy.
This interested me largely because, while writing my dissertation, I had
struggled with a strange inscription from a church in southern Greece. At the
three-aisled basilica of Thyrsos at Tegea (also studied by H. Maguire in his <a
394
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/14187975">Earth and Ocean: The Terrestrial

World in Early Byzantine Art (University Park 1987)</a>), best known for its
dramatic early 6th c. (?) calendar mosaic in its central nave, there is a small
"chapel" attached to the northern wall of the nave (others have suggested that
this chapel is, in fact, a fifth aisle). The church itself is poorly published
as a building and the exact chronological and architectural relationship between
the chapel and the main body of the church is unclear. The humble style of the
floor mosaic in the chapel, especially when compared with the floors in the main
nave, suggest that this annex space is later or at least the decoration of this
space is later in date than the fancy mosaics in the central nave.
The mosaic floor from this chapel includes a strange and poorly preserved
inscription. The text, as far as I know, does not exist in proper edition. I
include my catalog entry from my dissertation here:
<img
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2012876e9f834970c
</div>
This text derives from Orlandos 1973 which includes a small, grainy photograph
which is no help at all in determining the actual text of the inscription. The
text begins with a strange version of the sanctus that includes four "holies".
As far as I know this version of the sanctus has no liturgical parallels and is
likely a mistake in transcription or a mistake in the creation of the mosaic.
The text does not, however, continue with the words of the sanctus (or at least
any known sanctus), but provides a small bit of exegesis. The next line would
appear to read Lord God with the Son and the Holy Spirit. This draws in a phrase
from the Trisagion (Lord God) and mashes it up (as the kids would say) with
trinitarian language. Again, this exact way of representing the Trinity does not
appear, as far as I know, in any liturgical text. I read it here to mean: Holy,
Holy, Holy (ignoring the fourth Holy) = Lord God with the Son and the Holy
Spirit.
</div>
 
</div>
This is a pretty speculative interpretation, but it could resonate with the
increased interest in Trinitarian doctrine in the later 6th century. This would
fit the buildings terminus post quem, if we accept that this more modest
inscription likely dated to some time after the completion of the much more
elaborate calendar mosaic in the main nave. Moreover, <a
igraphy-litur.html">as I have argued elsewhere</a>, there is some evidence that
Greece was an area in which the emperor had particular interest concerning
doctrinal matters. This was probably because the province of Achaia (and all of
Illyricum Orientalis) fell under the direct rule of the emperor, but under the
ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the papacy. This divergent jurisdiction had led
to problems throughout the 5th and 6th centuries as the churches of Achaia,
Epirus, and elsewhere in the Balkans maneuvered politically to align themselves
with powers that provided them with the most benefit and accommodated their
theological perspectives. So, the appearance of a Trinitarian inscription in
Tegea might well resonate with the Trinitarian mosaics analyzed by Maguire and
Terry in Istria at <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/64390557">Poreƒç</a> as
395
another effort by a Greek congregation to articulate their theological and

political position in the complex world of 6th century ecclesiastical politics.
</div>
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Some quick hits on a balmy and sunny Friday:
<ul>
<li>At one point, I had given up on comments on my blog. And then, <a
rinths-greek-agora.html#comments">a really interesting discussion broke out
here</a> and <a
aching-thursday-how-to-spot-a-bad-professor.html#comments">a nice comment
appeared here</a>.</li>
<li>If you're curious on how I am using my History 101 Twitter feed, check it
out <a href="http://twitter.com/History101SP10">here</a>.</li>
<li><a
href="http://www.cricinfo.com/ausvpak09/engine/current/match/406201.html">This
is an impressive innings</a>. I like the idea of dropping North and moving
Watson to the 3 slot and giving Hughes a chance to open with Katich.</li>
<li>I like that you can put the little Beta tag back on your Gmail page.</li>
<li>So far, <a href="http://wave.google.com/">Google Wave</a> has worked

pretty well in my public history course.</li>
<li><a href="http://wiki.okfn.org/wg/archaeology">This could be

interesting</a>.</li>
</ul>
Have a good weekend! 
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TITLE: Teaching Thursday: How to spot a bad professor
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BASENAME: teaching-thursday-how-to-spot-a-bad-professor
CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 01/14/2010 07:43:49 AM

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Cross posted to <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/">Teaching
Thursday</a> This past week <a
href="http://www.usnews.com/blogs/professors-guide/index.html">one of the blogs
hosted by U.S. News and World Report</a> published <a
href="http://www.usnews.com/blogs/professors-guide/2010/01/06/10-warning-signs-
of-a-bad-professor.html">a short list of ways to spot a bad professor</a> (via
<a href="http://www.oid.und.edu/">Anne Kelsch</a>). Two former university
professors, Lynn F. Jacobs and Jeremy S. Hyman write for the blog giving some
kind of authority. Here's a short summary of <a
href="http://www.usnews.com/blogs/professors-guide/2010/01/06/10-warning-signs-
of-a-bad-professor.html">their list</a>: 1. The professor is
boring. <a></a> 2. The professor is bummed out.
3. The professor doesn't give out a syllabus‚Äîor hands out
a one-paragraph syllabus that is just the course description from the Web.
4. The professor isn't clear about the requirements and how much they
count. 5. The professor assigns an undoable amount of
work‚Äîor no work at all. 6. The professor has incredibly
petty rules. 7. The professor can't fill the whole class
period. 8. The professor seems unsure about the material.
 9. The professor presents the material in a confused
way. 10. The professor never involves the students.
 First, it is probably important to realize that this list is
designed to attract hits to their blog as much as to advise students. Once
we accept that, it is hard not to think that the list has some merit. I
think I would flee from a class if a professor showed any number of these
traits. More troubling, however, is the assumption that this kind of
behavior is widespread on university campuses or at least common enough to make
a list. There is also the issue of how to determine whether a professor
is boring or whether a particular workload is "undoable". Petty rules and
honest insecurity about material are likewise in the eye of the beholder.
Big classes often require some rules that would appear petty in a seminar
environment. For example, I tell my students that I am not particularly
397
offended if their phone rings during class (and most of our students here at UND
know that this is rude), but I am offended if the student answers the
phone. This kind of explicit statement is hardly necessary in a seminar
environment. On the other hand, I've found it productive to admit in a
seminar that I struggled with a particular text. This can often put a
student at ease when confronting a very challenging text. I am not sure
that this strategy would be as effective in, say, a large lecture course.
The real question, I suppose, is not whether a list like this is good or not
(after all, who would want to be taught by a "bummed out" or confusing
professor?), but what are the basic assumptions about good teaching (or being a
good professor) in this list. 
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Jeremy
EMAIL: Jeremy.Hyman@yahoo.com
IP: 72.204.31.225
URL: http://www.professorsguide.com
DATE: 01/14/2010 06:45:48 PM
Thanks very mcuh for reproducing our piece on your site; we're always happy to
have colleagues reading our piece. The purpose of our work is not to garner
hits, but rather to help students navigate the shoals of college. The
introduction to the complete piece expresses the point: "Many students are
heading back for the second semester of college this week. How the semester goes
will depend heavily on the quality of the courses they've chosen. Many students
will consult sites such as rate my professors. com, their college's own
evaluation systems (when public), and the general scuttlebutt from their real
and virtual friends. But it's always better to size the professor up yourself by
attending the first couple of lectures, then dropping the course if you think
the professor is bad."!
One of the issues raised in your comment is how to determine whether a professor
is too boring or the workload undoable. It's true that there's a certain
subjectivity here, and of course it's a matter of degree, but we think that,
since the student is the one who has to learn, often he or she is in a good
position to determine what counts as too boring or an undoable workload. Many
professors think that basic class rules are desirable; we agree. But's it's
also possible to offer up so many rules that the class atmosphere becomes
noxious and the professor unduly combative. (It does seem that it would be
unnerving to allow one's phone to ring but to be prohibited from answering. Why
not just instruct the students to turn off the ringer?) And certainly in a
seminar, or other advanced class, it's fully appropriate to admit one is
learning along with the students, that no investigator has all the answers (On
the other hand, a bold confesion of this sort in an intro or service course
might undermine the students' confidence in the professor, more than anything
else). !
398
All in all, the most basic "assumption" in this piece is that, since the student
is the learn who has to learn, he or she should select professors from whom he
or she can learn. We think that much is uncontroversial. !
Thanks for taking the time to comment.
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DATE: 01/13/2010 08:05:54 AM

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<a
me-new-work-on-historic-corinthian-lithics.html">These are boom times for
articles on Corinth</a>. I just completed Jamie Donati's interesting new article
in the American Journal of Archaeology: <a
href="http://www.ajaonline.org/index.php?ptype=content&aid=3624">"Marks of
State Ownership and the Greek Agora at Corinth" AJA 114 (2010), 3-26</a>.
In it, Jamie argues that the evidence for state owned objects (drinking vessels,
weights, counting tables, et c.) suggests that the Archaic to Classical agora in
Corinth most likely stood below the Hellenistic agora and Roman forum. This runs
counter to the prevailing wisdom at Corinth which typically places the earlier
agora either north of the city or under the plataea of the modern village.
While I won't go through the detail of Jamie's argument, he suggests that
part of the reason why scholars have not seen the evidence for the Greek agora
under the Hellenistic and Roman levels is because they assumed that the Archaic
and Classical agora of Corinth would be in some way similar to the Classical
agora of Athens which was uncovered at approximately the same time as major
excavations at Corinth continued. The rivalry between these two major American
excavations in Greece, in effect, shaped scholarly assumptions. Jamie argued
that Corinth, with rather different civic institutions and forms of government,
would not have required the same kinds of buildings at Athens. He then points
out that the government of Elis met in rather modest structures which, in fact,
stood outside of the proper agora of that city.
Even more interesting (at least to me) is how Jamie's argument for the
location of the Greek agora influence how we imagine the motives for the
monumental elaboration of the city in the Hellenistic (and later, Roman,
periods). In one of my favorite <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/5049769">dissertations on Corinth, Betsy
Robinson</a> argues that the three famous fountains of the Corinth -- Peirene,
Glauke, and the Sacred Spring -- were important "places of memory" for the city
during the Roman period and served to link the rebuilt Roman agora with the
earlier history of the Corinth as a city of water. If we accept Jamie's
identification of pre-Hellenistic agora under the Hellenistic and Roman agora,
then this might contribute additional perspective to the way that place informed
monumental and civic continuity in the ancient city. <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/49859958">Sue Alcock has argued</a> that the
Athenian agora became, during the Roman period, a kind of memory theater where
399
monuments of various aspects of the glorious Athenian past jostled for attention
in a space largely devoid of any practical function. While the Corinth's Greek
agora (accepting for a moment Jamie's argument) may have lacked monumental
reminders of the city's past, could the place itself, the topography, the views,
or even more modest reminders have served to evoke urban continuity (or even a
highly localized mytho-history, in Robinson's terms) that largely functioned
well below the level of monumental commemoration.
Such an approach reminds me of work on the mnemonics of landscapes where
physically invisible markers could nevertheless evoke memories for individuals
and groups historically invested in a place. While we tend to conceive of
urbanism as replacing these relatively obscure places of memory with monumental
expressions, there is no reason to assume that more subtle mnemonic places could
not provide a framework for continuity within an urban environment. This
observation, however, goes well beyond what Jamie argued. It will be interesting
to see what folks do with this article and whether (or how) it shapes the study
of urban Corinth.
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AUTHOR: Guy Sanders
EMAIL: gsanders.corinth@ascsa.edu.gr
IP: 94.66.203.140
URL:
DATE: 01/14/2010 01:31:05 AM
This article is indeed an interesting take on Corinth's agora. The idea that it
is elsewhere is partly based on the absence of evidence for "suitable"
monumental buildings in and around the Roman forum, the important communal area
served by Peirene was presumably downstream from the fountain and that
documented roads converged on an area northeast of Temple Hill. There is also
inconclusive evidence from the murderous events at the Euklaia one year and that
the Temple of Apollo should be close to the agora. This suggested that the agora
was not under the forum, but not too far away, perhaps under that part the
village northeast of Temple Hill.
Donati has lined up evidence for public functions in the area under the forum
and puts forward the falsifiable hypothesis that it was the agora. As you say,
it will be very interesting to see how people react to this challenge. It makes
me wonder if the building which Saul Weinberg "saw" under the Julian Basilica
(Corinth I.v pp. 37-9, plan iv) indeed exists. If so, then it may have served
some civic function similar to that served by the Roman basilica. Its
juxtaposition with the race track is reminiscent of that of the bouleuterion to
the track at Argos. The Hellenistic starting line seems to be oriented with the
suggested building and they both have very similar north-south dimensions. The
early Roman monumental assemblage including the basilica, the Fountain of
Poseidon and the Babbius Monument, seems to relate to the track. Sarah James's
has identified post-Mummian fine ware pottery manufacture at Corinth and in a
forthcoming article she suggests that life at Corinth did not come to a grinding
400
halt after the sack. This raises the distinct possibility that some of the Roman
monuments in the forum preserve memories of the Hellenistic past. On the other
hand, I am beginning to view the area under the forum in the Hellenistic period
to be largely agonsitic serving a festival purpose similar to the platanistas /
dromos region in Pausanias's Sparta. I have alluded to this possibility in an
article on the Sacred Spring forthcoming in the publication of the "Corinth in
Context" conference a couple of years ago at Austin Texas. If so, then it
suggests the agora may indeed be elsewhere unless the race track is, like the
Athenian Agora and unlike the case at Sparta, in the agora.
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COMMENT:
EMAIL:
IP: 134.129.192.74
DATE: 01/14/2010 07:49:36 AM
Guy,
Thanks for the lengthy response and some intriguing alternative both to Donati's
perspective and the traditional views. I like his idea that the agora need not
be a monumentalized area, but this makes it difficult to identify in any case --
even if one could excavate all the proposed locations.
Bill
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Jamie Donati
EMAIL: jcd297@nyu.edu
IP: 94.70.101.34
URL:
DATE: 01/15/2010 09:22:56 AM
Some great input here. If Saul Weinberg's monumental Greek structure beneath the
Julian Basilica did in fact exist, then its presence at the eastern side of what
I view as the Corinthian agora would certainly be in line with how the
Hellenistic agora became a more strictly defined urban venue in the Greek city.
So we would have the South Stoa, Northwest Stoa, and an eastern monumental
structure forming a tight architectural ensemble with the racetrack in the
center. As for Guy's suggestion that the pre-Roman forum was not the agora, but
served only an agonistic function in the Hellenistic period, I would want to see
how this theory fits in with the broader urban history of the site from the 7th
century B.C.E. onwards. There were many structures along the southern side of
the valley prior to the construction of the Hellenistic South Stoa and the re-
orientation of the racetrack (e.g. Buildings I-IV, the "Centaur Bath", a number
of Protocorinthian buildings, etc.). We need to tie in this phase of the city
with the Hellenistic period, rather than look at a single period or building in
isolation.
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CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 01/12/2010 08:24:38 AM

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As I mentioned yesterday, I am teaching the same classes this semester as I
have the last few. To keep things interesting (to me!), I am experimenting. Over
the last week, I've been setting up my History 101: Western Civilization
class to have a complementary Twitter feed. (<a
aching-with-twitter-tuesday.html">I've blogged on this idea before</a>) To
do this, I've been following the efforts of Monica Rankin at the University
of Texas at Dallas who used Twitter in a similar setting and reported on <a
href="http://www.utdallas.edu/%7Emrankin/usweb/twitterconclusions.htm">the
results here</a> and in this clever YouTube video.<object height="340"
width="560">!
<param name="movie"
value="http://www.youtube.com/v/6WPVWDkF7U8&hl=en_US&fs=1&" />!
<param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" />!
<embed allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" height="340"
src="http://www.youtube.com/v/6WPVWDkF7U8&hl=en_US&fs=1&"
type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="560" />!
</object> !
 !
My goals are not radically different from Dr. Rankin's goals. My History 101
class is over 150 students making traditional classroom discussions difficult.
To make matters more challenging, I teach the class one day a week, at night,
for 2 hours 20 minutes. To avoid turning the class into a series of marathon
lectures, I disseminate most of the standard historical narrative through a
series of podcast which I beg students to listen to before coming to class.
Since I can expect students to know the basic narrative, I can avoid conducting
a formal lecture during class time. Instead, I walk the students through primary
and secondary sources in an effort to model how a historian analyzes and
integrates primary sources or challenges the arguments in a secondary source.
Some days, I am quite Socratic, asking the students a series of relatively
simple questions about a source in an effort to break down the process of
historical reading into simple parts. Other days, I put more pressure on the
students to analyze documents on their own (through in class writing
assignments) or, more frequently, in groups. My teaching assistant and I then
circulate to help with specific questions.!
Generally, these techniques have proven to be successful in making a large class
a more dynamic and interactive environment. One weakness to these techniques,
however, is that the class can easily by dominated by a cadre of more confident
(and generally better prepared) students who are very comfortable with the
material. These students tend to answer many of the Socratic questions and
influence (generally for the better) group discussions. Students who are
struggling tend to remain quiet and disengaged. My hope is that by using Twitter
during class time as a back channel to the classrooms discussions, I can
encourage more reserved students to participate more actively in the class. To
help with aggregating student Tweets during class, I'll rely (as per
Rankin's method) on a series of hashtags designated for each class. One
concern that I have, however, is that various Twitter search engines tend to be
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laggy, taking sometimes as much as 20 minutes to find register a hashtag in a

search. My hope is that this is only an occasional issue or that volume of
hashtags serves to make them more visible to search engines, or that I'll
find a better Twitter search engine.I have two other goals with using
Twitter:First, my students here at UND have a tendency to be a bit
technophobic (there are still students who claim "not to be good with
computers") so incorporating Twitter in my class should encourage them to
become more familiar with what the internet and social media applications can
do. Many people here at UND still see the web as a series of more or less stable
"web pages" rather than a dynamic, response environment. It is simply
imperative for a well-rounded humanities student to have some familiarity with
how the 21st century internet works. So, I'll add Twitter to my use of
threaded discussions (admittedly old-school) and my weekly wiki pages where
students can collaborate to create a comprehensive (and authoritative) set of
class notes. To help my students feel more comfortable with Twitter, I've
hastily created a very basic, <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/History%20101%20How%20to%20use%
20Twitter.htm">How to use Twitter page</a>. I'm sure that I'll have to
tweak it some over the next few days.Next, I hope that Twitter helps make
a one-day-a-week class a higher priority in a student's schedule. The
tendency is for students to only think about a one-day-a-week class when
something is due or during class time itself. The class lacks a certain amount
of persistence. I plan to update my class's Twitter page daily with
different kinds of Tweets. Some days, I'll simply post an interesting link;
other days, I'll post reminders about assignments; and other days, I'll
post "bonus points" questions that will encourage students to check on
the History 101 Twitter account regularly.Stay tuned to hear how this all
works.!

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TITLE: Semester Preview...
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CATEGORY: Teaching
CATEGORY: Web/Tech
DATE: 01/11/2010 08:09:23 AM
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After a few weeks vacation, I am ready to get back going this semester. And
it will be an exciting semester, I think. So here's something of a preview on
the day before my classes start in earnest.
1. Tweaking existing classes. This semester I'll teach History 101: Western
Civilization (in the classroom) and History 240: The Historians Craft. I've
taught these classes each semester for the past few years. While this can get
boring, the one advantage to this continuity is that I can spend time tweaking
each class in ways that a more diverse schedule of course preparation just would
not allow. For example, check back here to see how I plan to use social media
applications in History 101.
2. Public History Interns. As our department tentatively <a
pping-my-toe-in-the-public-history-pool.html">dips its toes in the public
history pool</a>, I am going to run a public history internship. Based on the
conversations already taking place in Google Wave, it seems like we are off to a
good start. The plans include working on an online museum of the Late Antique
material from the site of <a href="http://www.pkap.org/" title="Pyla-
Koutsopetria">Pyla-Koutsopetria</a>, working with <a
href="http://axisofaccess.blogspot.com/">Ryan Stander</a> on the online
complement to his gallery show of photographs from this summer's PKAP season,
keying and normalizing the survey and excavation data from the last few PKAP
field seasons plus some other odds and ends. Part of their responsibilities will
be to write a blog to make their work as transparent as possible.
3. Writing. I am looking forward to wrapping up work on a few articles
submitted over the past few years. This includes a co-edited volume of the <a
href="http://www.springer.com/social+sciences/anthropology+and+archaeology/journ
al/10761">International Journal of Historical Archaeology</a> and
a co-written piece for <a
href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/index.php/publications/hesperia">Hesperia</
a>. The PKAP team will submit its last preliminary report to the Report of the
Department of Antiquities of Cyprus, and I'll finish a contribution to
Cambridge Encyclopedia of World Religious Architecture on <a
derstanding-early-christian-baptisteries.html">Early Christian
baptisteries</a>.
4. Lectures. While my conference schedule is pretty clear this spring, I will
deliver the <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2009/12/el
wyn-robinson-lecture-thoughts-digital-archaeology.html">Elwyn Robinson Lecture
(which I think will be on Digital Archaeology</a>) sometime in February. Even
more exciting in our keynote speaker for the annual Phi Alpha Theta History
Conference here at UND: <a
href="http://www.vanderbilt.edu/divinity/facultypages/jensen.php">Robin
Jensen</a> of Vanderbilt University, has agreed to come and talk about some
aspect of her work on Early Christian art and ritual in March. More on this
soon!!
5. Reading. I am really looking forward to my winter reading list. First, I
need to finish Y. Hamilakis and A. Anagnostopoulos edited volume Archaeological
Ethnographies for a review for the <a href="http://eja.sagepub.com/">European
Journal of Archaeology</a>. But I am also looking forward to M. Decker's <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/316430311">Tilling the Hateful Earth:
Agricultural Production and Trade in the Late Antique East (Oxford 2009)</a>
and V. Makrides, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/276816822">Hellenic
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Temples and Christian Churches: A concise history of the religious cultures of

Greece from antiquity to the present</a> (New York 2009).
6. Blogging. I am looking forward to getting <a
Thursday</a> going again. At the end of last semester I began to despair of
ideas, contributors, and motivation, but after a brief break, I am recommitted
to making it work as a forum for conversations about teaching and pedagogy here
at UND. I am excited to get feedback on transmedia teaching, using technology in
new ways in the classroom, and exploring the potential of Foucault's panopticon
for understanding the experience of teaching online. And more!
7. Administrative. I agreed to write up by-laws for our Working Group in
Digital and New Media. Having never written by-laws before (and generally
ignoring them when they do exist!), this should be an adventure. I am also
working with an interesting group on the redesign of the University's website.
Stay tuned for more on the latter.
Lots on tap for this winter and spring. Plus the standard routine of planning
for summer fieldwork and writing grants.
So plenty of blog-fodder!
Stay tuned!
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TITLE: Airports as Networks
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CATEGORY: Travel
DATE: 01/09/2010 04:45:02 PM

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I've been doing a bit of traveling lately and spent some serious time in
airports. Last night, we had to go from Gate C5 to Gate A13 at Minneapolis-St.
Paul's Lindbergh Terminal. While this map doesn't really do the distance
justice, gate C5 is close to the core area of the airport and A12 is perhaps the
furtherest gate from the center. In fact, as you walk toward gate A13, the
moving walkway ends, the concourse narrows, the little concessions disappear
replaced by by open janitorial closets and worn gate furniture.
 
<img
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2012876be44b7970c
-pi" width="480" height="399" alt="MinneapolisAirportMap.tiff" /> 
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</div>
It was appropriate that gate A13 was on the periphery of the airport as our
flight from Minneapolis to Grand Forks represented movement toward the periphery
of the nation (if not geographically, at least in most other ways!).
In Brisbane, the situation was a bit different. We departed from Gate 75 of
the International Terminal. Like gate A13, this was at the far left (east?) end
of the International Terminal. Its isolation was largely because flights to the
U.S. require additional security measures best managed at a gate that can be
isolated from the major flow of traffic through the airport. So, in this case,
the isolation of the gate represents another form of isolation both in terms of
global security and in the local network
 
<img
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2012876be44ac970c
-pi" width="480" height="160" alt="201001091613.jpg" />
</div>
 
</div>
The prayer room (see <a
href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/search/label/Airport%20Chapels">Kostis'
efforts on his blog to document these strangely post-modern places</a>) is
perhaps even more peripheral than our gate 75. It is tucked behind bathrooms and
a family changing room. The lack of windows and depressing, institutional
furniture make it perhaps the least comforting place in the entire airport. My
suspicion is that this space was designed more the hide the act of prayer from
prying and nervous eyes than to present a suitable place for contemplating and
communicating with the divine.
</div>

</div>
<img
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2012876be44be970c
-pi" width="480" height="360" alt="DSCN2273.JPG" />
</div>

<img
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a7bbd09d970b
</div>

<img
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2012876be44c2970c
</div>

 
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</div>
</div>
Of course, this kind of simple and fun network analysis breaks down a bit when
dealing with a massive airport like LAX. Here we flew to Minneapolis from
Terminal 5, where Delta/Northwest departs and to Australia from Terminal 3 on V
Australia, both peripheral to the central Bradley International Terminal. It's
harder, however, to find metaphorical associations between the gates and their
destinations.
</div>
 
</div>
<img
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2012876be44ca970c
-pi" width="480" height="348" alt="201001091621.jpg" />
</div>
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TITLE: AIA Panel 2010: First Out: Late Levels of Early Sites
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DATE: 01/05/2010 04:38:24 PM

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Once again the Medieval and Post-Medieval Archaeology in Greece Interest
Group of the Archaeological Institute of America is sponsoring a panel at the
AIA Annual Meeting. While I won't be at the meeting, I will be giving a
paper with Timothy Gregory. If you're going to be in Anaheim be sure to
check out what I'm sure will be a brilliant panel! I hope that we'll have
podcasts of these talks as well! On Thursday: SESSION 1C:
Colloquium Platinum Ballroom 6 First Out: Late Levels of Early Sites
Sponsored by the Medieval and Post-Medieval Archaeology in Greece Interest
Group 8:30 a.m. ‚Äì 11:30 a.m. ORGANIZERS: Sharon E.J. Gerstel,
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University of California, Los Angeles and Kostis Kourelis, Franklin &

Marshall College 8:30 I Introduction: Sharon E.J. Gerstel, University of
California, Los Angeles and Kostis Kourelis, Franklin & Marshall College (10
min.) 8:40 P Prioritizing Prehistory? A Byzantine Deposit from the Palace
of Nestor at Englianos Jack L. Davis, University of Cincinnati and American
School of Classical Studies at Athens, and Sharon R. Stocker, University of
Cincinnati and American School of Classical Studies at Athens (20 min.)
9:05 D Drowned in the Depths of Obscurity: How Archaeology both Marginalized
and Revitalized Our Understanding of Late Byzantine Troy Kathleen M. Quinn,
Northern Kentucky University (20 min.) 9:30 A A Middle Byzantine
Neighborhood in Athens: Recent Excavations in the Agora Anne McCabe, Centre
for the Study of Ancient Documents, Oxford (20 min.) 10:05 F First but
Not Out: The Byzantine Levels at Chersonesos in Historical and Archaeological
Context Adam Rabinowitz, University of Texas at Austin, and Larissa Sedikova,
National Preserve of Tauric Chersonesos, Ukraine (20 min.) 10:30 N New
Views on Old Data: Reinterpreting Intensive Survey Results after 30
Years William R. Caraher, University of North Dakota, and Timothy E. Gregory,
Ohio State University (20 min.) 10:55 L Late Ottoman and Early Modern
Levels from New Excavations in Ancient Corinth Guy D. R. Sanders, American
School of Classical Studies at Athens (20 min.) Some other
notables from the <a href="http://www.pkap.org/">Pyla-
Koutsopetria Archaeological Project</a>... On
Friday: SESSION 6F Grand Ballroom J & K Archaeological
Methodology 4:30 P Painting Practices in Roman Corinth: Contextualizing
Analytical Analyses on Wall Paintings from Panaghia Field and the Area East
of the Theater Sarah Lepinski, American School of Classical Studies at
Athens, and Hariclia Brecoulaki, Institute of Greek and Roman Antiquity, The
National Hellenic Research Foundation (20 min.) SESSION 6G Platinum Ballroom
7 Archaeology of Ancient Warfare 3:35 T The Inscribed Sling-Bullets of
Perusia as a Unique Discourse Brandon R. Olson, Penn State University (20
min.) For <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/EKASPage/EKASHome.html">Eastern Korinthia Archaeological Survey</a>
types: On Friday: SESSION 4A Grand Ballroom
Salon E Excavation and Survey in Bronze Age Greece 9:20 T The Saronic
Harbors Archaeological Research Project (SHARP): The Bronze Age Worlds of
Kalamianos Daniel J. Pullen, The Florida State University, and Thomas F.
Tartaron, The University of Pennsylvania (20 min.)
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TITLE: New Views on Old Data: Reinterpreting Intensive Survey Results After 30
Years
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DATE: 01/04/2010 03:08:52 PM

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For those of you who will miss the 2010 Archaeological Institute of America
Annual Meeting next week, here's a draft of our paper. Regular readers of
my blog will recognize this as the continued development of my analysis of the
data from the Ohio Boeotia Expedition. New Views on Old Data:
Reinterpreting Intensive Survey Results After 30 Years William
R. Caraher, University of North Dakota Timothy E. Gregory, Ohio State
University [draft] It seems natural to include a paper on survey
archaeology on a panel entitled ‚ÄúFirst Out‚Äù. After all, the surface
assemblage is, by necessity, the first out for any excavation. At the same
time, the study of surface assemblages has fit into the definition of ‚ÄúFirst
out‚Äù intended by the organizers of this panel by contributing significantly to
our understanding of post-Classical periods in Greece over the past four
decades. In fact, the ground breaking work of many of the participants on
this panel has made clear that the rigorous documentation and analysis of
surface finds has expanded our notion of what constitutes an archaeological site
to well beyond the built-up centers of ancient poleis and across every
century from the end of antiquity to the modern era. Intensive surveys in
Boeotia, Laconia, Messenia, and the Corinthia are rewriting both the ancient and
post-Classical landscapes of these well-studied regions. If we can
continue to play with the idea of ‚Äúfirst out‚Äù, it is also clear that this
phrase could apply to the first generation of intensive, pedestrian
‚Äúsiteless‚Äù surveys in another way. Like the first phase of excavation
at major sites across the Mediterranean, the first efforts at intensive survey
often relied upon assumptions and methods that were unrefined or unsophisticated
in comparison with more recent work. While the methodological concerns
associated with revisiting early ‚Äúsecond wave‚Äù survey data prose problems,
these data nevertheless preserve evidence for the ephemeral surface record in
Greece. Both ever-expanding development of the Greek countryside and the
irregular patterns of surface visibility, agricultural practices, and erosion
patterns obscure and threaten the surface record. This paper will use
the data collected from the Ohio Boeotia Expedition between 1979 and 1982 from
the (modern village and) Boeotian polis of Thisvi. The results of this
survey were published in a series of short articles between 1980 and 1992.
While these articles provided for a broad discussion of method and a basic
report on the project‚Äôs findings, they did not publish finds or quantitative
data extensively. Our goal with this paper is to take the first step in re-
introducing data from the OBE into the broader conversation about settlement and
survey data in both in Boeotia and across Greece more broadly. To do this,
we would like first to discuss briefly the process of curating the survey data
produced by the OBE and then go on to analyze this data in the context of some
recently published survey work from Greece. The first step in preparing the
OBE data for analysis was the keying of records preserved in a series of
notebooks and binder pages into a relational database. At the same time as
we keyed data from notebooks and binder pages, we also sought to remap the
location of the transects using GIS software. It should be noted that in
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the mid-1980s the artifact counts and location of transects were entered into
the Surface II software program and this produced a contour map of the artifact
densities across the Thivi basin. This, in itself was a significant
attempt to examine the survey evidence across the landscape, and to make use of
a siteless survey approach in the context of Mediterranean archaeology at a
relatively early time. While versions of these maps were published, the
data behind these maps appears to be lost. In part this was the result of the
necessity of using mainframe computers and punchcard data-entry techniques,
coupled with the difficulty of maintaining this information in the context of
funding for humanities projects at that time. We have hopes that some of
these data may yet be recovered but, unfortunately, at present the disappearance
of this spatial data has made it difficult o place the western-most transects on
the ground. The written description of the locations of the western
transects relies upon points of reference that are not visible on the Greek Army
Mapping Service 1:5000 maps and have been destroyed on the ground as a result of
the construction of a massive pipemaking factory. There is hope that we
can find the location of these transects from older aerial photographs of the
area. The final step in the production of this data is recording
comprehensive metadata for all the information that we entered. Once the
keying of the data and metadata is complete we plan to make all this available
to the public via the internet. This step is especially important for
small projects because the distribution of digital data expands the curation
process from the purview of the creator of the data to the community of users
who want to make use of the data. By disseminating the data to end users,
with the proper metadata, we make it possible for others to use our material and
make it far more likely they will be kept compatible with changes in technology.
_____ There have been significant changes in our understanding of the
post-Classical countryside since the Ohio Boeotia Expedition published their
results in the 1980s. The work of both excavations and survey in Boeotia
and elsewhere in Greece alone has produced a foundation for the reinterpretation
of our survey data. Recent work by Archie Dunn and a team from the
University of Birmingham has begun to document the post-Classical finds at
Thisvi itself and Jonita Vroom‚Äôs study of the post-Classical ceramics from the
Cambridge-Bradford Boeotia Project has shed important light on the relationship
between post-ancient ceramics and settlement patterns across Boeotia. Our
work on the older material from Thisvi needs to be put into the context of these
newer initiatives. The OBE team produced the current dataset through a number
of different methods. The diversity of methods reflected the early stage
in the development of field procedures and an avowedly experimental approach to
documenting the landscape. The area closest to the city walls, Area A, was
surveyed using a series of 11, randomly placed, 30 m radius circular survey
areas from which samples were taken. The team surveyed the plain itself
using a series of long transects (Areas, C, D, and E) from which they typically
took 1 sq meter samples, at regular intervals, for density and diagnostic
artifacts. Finally, the teams also collected samples for areas of
particularly high density which they designated sites. They surveyed these
areas using flexible methods best suited for documenting the extent,
chronology, and function of the material on the ground. In addition to
these survey areas, the OBE team also conducted intensive survey on two nearby
islands in the Gulf of Corinth, Kouveli and Makronisos, which we have not
included in the aggregated totals produced in the analysis below. In
toto the survey of the mainland counted over 8700 artifacts and documented
over 1700 batches of unique artifacts from the four areas investigated.
The artifact density data from the OBE shows that the number of artifacts
declined across the central part of the Thisvi basin. This pattern, noted
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in the original publication of the survey, may be at least in part a product of

the geomorphological patterns. In antiquity, an ancient barrage, described
by Pausanias, controlled the flow of water and sediment into the basin.
The periodic introduction of water-born sediments into the basin, whether
controlled by this barrage or not, may have obscured sites of past activity or
discouraged habitation at various times. The density of artifacts,
however, clearly increases once again on the gently sloping, stony ground the
along the south side of the basin. Against the backdrop of overall
artifact density we can show the distribution of post-Classical material across
the survey area. In general, the survey area is dominated by artifacts
from the Classical to Hellenistic and Roman periods which accounted for over
2/3rd of the datable ceramics. In contrast, the far more
localized concentrations of both Late Roman and Byzantine to Medieval pottery
represented only about 10% of the overall assemblage of datable material
collected from survey. Modern material and a thin and rather diffused
scatter of pre-Classical artifacts accounted for the other 20% or so of material
from the survey. For the post-Classical period, area A encompassed the
highest density areas immediately south of the plateau upon which the ancient
city and the modern village stand. The post-ancient material from this
area was more focused than material from earlier periods with most of post-
classical artifacts deriving from three units: A2, A5, and A8. The
transects immediately to the south of the urban center of Thisvi, Area D
and C, show that post-Classical material declined at a much steeper rate than
Classical-Hellensitic material with distance from the presumed center of post-
Classical habitation. The most significant variation between Area D and C
was the rich assemblage of Late Roman material collected from the habor at Vathy
which fell within Area C. The harbor area at Vathy has been completely
destroyed by an industrial harbor serving that factory, but a rock-cut road ran
between the harbor and the Thisvi plain and that there were significant stone-
built harbor facilities along the water‚Äôs edge, all of them apparently dating
to the post-classical period. Area E to the east of the ancient city tells
a similar story to areas C and D except for a significant post-Classical site
situated along the southern edge of the basin and designated E1. Since the
most significant quantity of post-ancient pottery from the Thisvi basin can be
dated to Late Antiquity, it is perhaps most useful in this short paper to
explore how we can reinterpret this distribution of Late Antique material in the
countryside in light of the significant new analyses of material from this
period in Boeotia and across Greece and with the help of a more easily
manipulated dataset. It is significant, on first glance, that the
distribution of material around Thisvi is similar to that recently published
around the city of Thespiai to the east. The team from the Cambridge-
Bradford Boeotia Project argued that the overall population of the city of
Thespiai declined during Late Antiquity and, as a result, the residents of the
city progressively abandoned the immediate hinterland of the city to intensive
cultivation. In particular, this meant that the residents of Thespiai
stopped the practice of regular manuring the fields near the city which,
Bintliff and others argued, deposited ceramic material in a tell-tale halo
around the urban core. In place of manuring, Late Roman farmers adopted
less intensive agricultural practices and, at the same time, large tracts of
land previously dedicated to feeding a urban population became part extra-urban
agglomerations ranging from agricultural villas to self-sufficient
hamlets. The decline in artifact density visible for the Late Roman
period in the Thisvi basin would fit well with this hypothesis as Late Roman
(and more generally post-Classical) densities declining away from the city
itself not simply as evidence for contracted habitation, but as the relationship
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between contracting populations and changing land-use patterns. The work of

the CBBP also revealed large extramural concentration of Late Roman material
like those at the southeastern corner of the of the survey area, E1. This
site coincides particularly well with kinds of site interpreted by the Cambridge
Boeotia Survey as villas. The assemblage from the site contained storage
vessels consistent with some kind of agricultural installation as well as
beehive sherds so common at Late Roman agricultural sites around Thespiai.
Moreover, the site was outside the densest areas of ceramics around Thisvi even
at its Classical-Hellenistic peek, and this too paralleled the findings of the
work at Thespiai. The second major concentration of Late Roman at the
harbor at Vathy represents a more complex phenomenon. The material at this
site was more diverse than a simple agricultural installation and included some
of the few example of Late Roman fineware from the survey area, in addition to a
significant complement of transport vessels which would be expected at a coastal
site (except probably not in the Bintliff scenario). Vathy resembles more
closely the assemblages present on the islands of Kouveli and Makronisos than
the material present inland in the Thisvi basin or even neighboring Thespiai,
which lacked significant quantities of Late Roman finewares: fewer than 10
sherds of imported finewares were identified on CBBP sites and this amounted to
far less than 3% of the total assemblage of potentially Late Roman
material. In contrast, at the Eastern Korinthia Archaeological Survey in
the immediate hinterland of the important Late Roman city of Corinth, fineware
made up almost 10% of the total assemblage of Late Roman artifacts, despite a
collection strategy that would tend to under represent the proportion of fine
ware to coarse ware. Our ability to compare the material at Thisvi in
quantitative and spatial ways to the results of more recent survey projects
makes a return to this material particularly profitable. When first
documented and published in the mid-1980s, the presence of Late Roman and post-
Classical material in the countryside of Thisvi was worthy of remark in its own
right. Now as ‚Äúthe busy countryside‚Äù of Late Antique Greece comes into
sharper focus, the functional and non-cosmopolitan character of Late Roman
pottery from the Thisvi basin gives pause. There is no question that
southeastern Boeotian countryside continued to see investment in post-antique
period with Late Antique fortifications extant at Thisvi, Thespiai, Khostia and
on Mavrovouni. On the other hand, the lack of imported fine ware in the
basin itself during the Late Antique period suggests a particular kind of
investment in the countryside. The countryside around both Thisvi and
Thespiai during Late Antiquity would appear to have received a less substantial
investment in the kind of prestige habitation that is often associated with the
concomitant decline in the urban core of the ancient world elsewhere. In
contrast, the concentration of imported finewares, as well as the transport
vessels, at the harbor site of Vathy along with the islands of Kouveli and
Makronisos, indicates that finewares were entering the area, but apparently did
not find their way into the local rural assemblages. Perhaps the sites in
the gulf of Domvrena were transshipment points for goods destined to more
economically prosperous elites around the city of Thebes in the Boeotian
interior. The title of today‚Äôs panel was ‚ÄúFirst Out‚Äù and we hope that
our paper today extended the potential meaning of that phrase to include the
post-Classical material from the first generation intensive pedestrian
survey. Our paper today represents a point of departure for further study
of both the material produced by the OBE across the Thisvi basin and the growing
body of ‚Äúsecond wave‚Äù survey material from Greece. While much second
wave survey material has seen initial publication and has contributed to the
present body of knowledge regarding the post-Classical landscape, we have shown
the potential in returning to this material. For the Late Roman period, in
412
particular, we think that returning to this material will allow us to move

beyond the juxtaposition of rural prosperity to abandonment (a version of the
old continuity or change question) and tease out indications of regional
difference present in across the Late Roman landscape of Greece. The
potential present in returning to the first sherds collected from the Greek
landscape in an intensive and systematic way demands that we make the results of
these early intensive surveys available in flexible digital formats. A
return to these survey projects will not only contribute to the curation of
survey data and, in the processes, confirm the continued value of ‚Äúfirst
out‚Äù.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Maddy
IP: 76.91.201.94
URL:
DATE: 01/07/2010 11:24:40 PM
Thanks for publishing the paper, Bill. Even though I'm only 25 mile from
Anaheim, I can't make it to the conference (work and all). Have fun!
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COMMENT:
EMAIL:
IP: 71.173.185.136
URL: http://profile.typepad.com/davidpettegrew
DATE: 04/16/2010 06:12:55 AM
Thanks again for posting this, Bill. Finding it useful.
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TITLE: Elwyn Robinson Lecture Thoughts: Digital Archaeology
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
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BASENAME: elwyn-robinson-lecture-thoughts-digital-archaeology
CATEGORY: Web/Tech
DATE: 12/30/2009 09:49:38 PM

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Just before the holidays, I was invited to give the library‚Äôs <a
href="http://www.library.und.edu/about/robinson.htm">Elwyn Robinson
Lecture</a>. The librarian suggested that I do something that highlights
413
how my research will benefit from the newly established Working Group in Digital
and New Media. This would coincide well with Elwyn Robinson‚Äôs interest
in the ‚Äúnew media‚Äù of his day, namely radio. Robinson‚Äôs Heroes
of Dakota radio broadcast brought the University of North Dakota, the
department of history, and his research on the history of North Dakota to a
broad audience far beyond the limits of scholarly publication. His
broadcasts were so popular that he circulated paper copies of his broadcasts to
listeners across the state and his research for this broadcasts became the basis
for his course on the history of region and the state and eventually his magnum
opus, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/190890">The History of North
Dakota</a>. So in some sense, Robinson embraced what some scholars
today would call a transmedia approach to scholarship. My approach
to using the digital and new media in the service of historical and
archaeological research shares two features at least with Robinson‚Äôs: it is
both practical and, as yet, under-theorized. I am contemplating using the
Robinson lecture to try to assign some theoretical or at very least
methodological aspect to my use of digital and new media approaches in my own
research. In particular, I am thinking about articulating the notion of
digital workflow and its implications in my own archaeological research.
 By digital workflow, I mean the use of digital technologies across the
entire range of archaeological procedures from pre-season planning, data
collection in the field, and the dissemination of our results across multiple
platforms for diverse audiences. I like to imagine that our deep
dependence on digital data and applications shaped not only how we approached
historical and archaeological problems but also how we understood the results of
our research and imagined the process of scholarly critique as well as
pedagogical . This is, in part, a response to the view of digital
technology as merely a tool that scholars and teachers deploy in the ongoing
search for truth rather than an ‚Äúactive‚Äù participant in the process of
determining what truths are significant, knowable, and even imaginable within a
particular academic discourse. This is a pretty ambitious goal for
a 30 minute paper and would reach well beyond my intellectual comfort
zone. It would require me to link the mundane world of field procedures to
the more ethereal world of epistemology. The most obvious point of contact
is through an emphasis on documenting archaeology as a performance. If the
performance of archaeological procedure and method is central to the production
of authentic archaeological knowledge, then archaeological knowledge would
certainly benefit from the growing set of tools capable of documenting
efficiently the whole range of archaeological experiences (from the daily grind
of excavation to evening banter with colleagues and the reflective moments at
the end of a chaotic field season). Another, perhaps more
practical, example would emphasize how the wide dissemination of applications
designed to facilitate collaborative research from Wiki-pages to blogs and the
yet unrecognized potential of applications like Google Wave open the door to
more democratic approaches to field research as it became easier to distribute
decision making and analysis across a more diverse team. These
applications allow almost real-time collaboration across the world blurring the
century old division between academic periphery and the center. While such
de-centered projects have clear limitations ‚Äì our project is often better at
identifying problems than establishing a clear course of action ‚Äì and rest on
assumptions of how knowledge production is organized that precede the existence
of particular digital applications, digital collaborative workspaces rest upon
the assumption that so-called ‚Äúcollective intelligence‚Äù is superior to
judgment of a single individual serving as director. A
similar process of relying upon a digital, collaborative environment appears in
414
the way in which the curation of archaeological data will change with the
production, storage, and dissemination of archaeological data in digital
media. In past, the careful documentation of archaeological information
was largely confined to analog storage devices. This included film based
photographs, paper notebooks (often archived on microfilm), and carefully
archived paper illustrations and plans. Today, most projects have
some level of digitization involved in the recording of archaeological
information. Forward thinking project store this data on servers which
typically include digital back-ups in their basic infrastructure. Once on
a server, this digital data, unlike its analog predecessors, is available to
groups of researchers around the world. As these scholars use this data,
they can typically download some form of the various datasets onto their
personal computers, servers, and backup systems, effectively multiplying the
copies of the existing archaeological data. As researchers use the data,
they invariably move the information from one format to another for analysis or
manipulation and, in some case, they produce alternate versions of the original
data (hopefully with a full complement of metadata). As a result, they
participate in the process of preserving the data by ensuring the proliferation
of copies and ensuring that it remains in a useable format. Like the de-
centered, collaborative model of decision making, the de-center, collaborative
model of archaeological data curation relies upon the (relatively) easy movement
of digital data from person to person and from format to format. The
audience of the Robinson lectures is a mix of academics and non-academics.
My talk would largely focus on the part of the audience who still struggle to
understand why it is important to develop not only the physical aspects of the
digital infrastructure (servers, computers, software), but also the theoretical
and practical aspects of the digital infrastructure especially in the humanities
(which have remained on many campuses bastions of unapologetically analog
thinking). At the same time, the paper will continue my own effort to
articulate in more sophisticated terms the effect of the digital technologies on
my own research.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Colleen
EMAIL: clmorgan@berkeley.edu
IP: 24.5.196.150
URL: http://middlesavagery.wordpress.com
DATE: 01/07/2010 11:22:57 PM
Hey look, it's my dissertation research. :) Good luck, I'd like a copy of the
paper when you're finished.
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COMMENT:
EMAIL:
IP: 208.107.184.168
415
DATE: 01/09/2010 11:07:47 AM

Good dissertation topic! I'll certainly pass along my paper. Have you published
on the topic? I am scrambling a bit to develop bibliography.
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TITLE: Understanding Early Christian Baptisteries
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
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BASENAME: understanding-early-christian-baptisteries
DATE: 12/28/2009 03:58:07 PM

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BODY:
Over the Christmas holiday, I‚Äôve spent some time thinking and reading on
Early Christian baptisteries. This contributes to a relatively long-term
collaborative project with Robin Jensen of Vanderbilt University and Dick
Rutherford of the University of Portland, but also to a short-term project of
writing an encyclopedia entry on Early Christian Baptisteries for a encyclopedia
of world religious architecture published by Cambridge University Press.
So, I‚Äôve spent the break reviewing some very basic works on Early Christian
baptisteries and considering how to approach a 2000 word essay on their
architecture. In many ways, the study of baptisteries suffers from many
of the same problems that the study of Early Christian architecture faces in
general. There are five major problems, as I see it: 1. Most Early
Christian baptisteries, like churches from the same period, lack a clear date
for their construction, use, and modification. Many of the best examples of
architecture from the Early Christian period (roughly from the 3rd-7th century)
were excavated before the middle years of the 20th century and were not
subjected to stratigraphic excavations (or at least not published as
such). The absence of stratigraphic information and the archaeological
material that allows scholars to assign dates to the relative chronologies
produced through careful excavation has made it difficult to determine the
degree to which diversity across the entire corpus of Early Christian
architecture is the result of chronological changes or simply differences in
style, taste, or the needs of a specific community. 2. In fact, it is
clear that there was considerable diversity in the architectural forms of
baptisteries across a region or even across the buildings in a specific
city. This diversity may reflect differences in taste or a desire to
create a distinct space of initiation for admission into a particular group of
Christians. The diverse range of ‚Äúorthodoxies‚Äù among Christian groups
present in the Mediterranean basin ensured that any number of different
Christian groups could live and build in a particular region. The Arian
and Orthodox baptisteries in Ravenna are clear evidence for this and propose a
model that might explain the differences of architectural form in other urban
centers like Corinth where several baptisteries of different forms existed at
the same time. 3. Recognizing that different groups may have
desired different kinds of buildings is a far cry from understanding why these
differences were required. The importance of ritual in the process of Christian
initiation suggests that differences in the baptismal liturgy might account for
some of the differences. The known rituals across the Mediterranean reveal
416
considerable variation even among grounds regarded broadly as Orthodox. It

would stand to reason that ‚Äúnon-orthodox‚Äù groups would have differed from
their Orthodox brethren as well as from one another adding to the considerable
variation in ritual structure of Christian initiation. Unfortunately the
lack of chronology for many of our buildings and our uneven coverage of known
baptismal rituals mean that liturgical texts can only shed light on the function
of Early Christian baptisteries in some areas. For Greece, for example, we
have no liturgical texts at all. 4. Further compounding the uneven
distribution of liturgical texts is the diverse range of symbolic and exegetical
readings of the baptismal ritual. Even if a liturgical text provided a
blue-print of sorts to the rites involved in Christian initiation, the meaning
of these rites derived from the ongoing interpretative work of various
communities, church leaders, and even, one must assume, the viewers.
Moreover, it seems likely to me that the rich symbolism and interpretive skill
of Early Christians produced multiple simultaneous or even contested meanings
for baptismal ritual. It, therefore, becomes very difficult to assign a
single symbolic text to an Early Christian baptistery and then relate this text
to a particular Christian community or set of initiatory values. This does
not mean, of course, that it is impossible to interpret the symbolism present in
Early Christian baptisteries. Some symbols like water, the hart, paradise,
the river Jordan, and the dove appear consistently enough to present a
consistent array of baptismal imagery. What I mean, rather, is that the
diversity of images associated with baptism and baptisteries should discourage
us from assigning a single, exclusive meaning to Early Christian space and
ritual. 5. The diversity of meanings in Early Christian
architecture is made clear in the practice of literary ekphrasis.
Ekphrasis was a popular genre of Early Christian ritual focused on unpacking and
exploring the symbolism present in architecture. The authors of ekphrastic
texts clearly took it upon themselves to produce wide ranging symbolic meaning
from even relatively mundane objects in a religious building. Such
extensive architectural exegesis often departed from structural reality which
these authors subordinated entirely to their own creativity. Efforts by
modern scholars to reconstruct actual spaces and buildings from ekphrastic texts
regularly end in tears. The goal of ekphrasis was the text itself as a
literary artifact and not as an even loosely empirical reproduction of an actual
building. As a result, some of the most detailed descriptions of Early
Christian space are, ironically, the least helpful in construction actual
practice or architecture, and, instead, reveal Early Christian architecture as a
suitable foundation for multiple symbolic regimes. The challenges
associated with our understanding of Early Christian baptisteries and
architecture more broadly will likely discourage any scholar committed to
understanding these spaces as a manifestation of a single unified ritual or
symbolic regime. (And, in all fairness, I am not sure that there are many
scholars committed to this particular approach.) Instead, the diversity of
architectural forms, symbolic regimes, and the ambiguity of chronology begs for
interpretations that embrace the multivocal nature of the evidence itself.
Taking the lead from the authors of ekphrasis, scholars might be well-served by
exploring the space of Christian initiation as the space susceptible to
multiple, overlapping, and perhaps in some cases contested, symbolic,
architectural, and ritual significance. In such a case, the study of Early
Christian architecture becomes the study of Early Christian architectures in the
same way that Early Christianity has given way to the study of Early
Christianities.
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TITLE: Christmastime in Brisbane
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
ALLOW PINGS: 1
BASENAME: christmastime-in-brisbane
CATEGORY: Australiana
DATE: 12/23/2009 04:23:05 PM

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BODY:
Some happy Christmas photos of Brisbane City Hall
(with its solar powered Christmas tree) and some architecture from the Fortitude
Valley neighborhood of Brisbane. Plus a photo of irrigation for
fun.Merry Christmas!!!<a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20128767a73b8970
c-pi" style="display: inline;"><img alt="CityHall" border="0" class="asset
asset-image at-xid-6a00d83451908369e20128767a73b8970c "
-500pi" title="CityHall" /></a> <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a7778ad1970
b-pi" style="display: inline;"><img alt="Hotel1" border="0" class="asset asset-
image at-xid-6a00d83451908369e20120a7778ad1970b "
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a7778ad1970b
-500pi" style="margin-top: 1px; margin-right: 1px; margin-bottom: 1px; margin-
left: 1px; " title="Hotel1" /></a> <a
b-pi" style="display: inline;"><img alt="TheValley" border="0" class="asset
asset-image at-xid-6a00d83451908369e20120a7778c84970b "
-500pi" title="TheValley" /></a> <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a7778e07970
b-pi" style="display: inline;"><img alt="TheSaints" border="0" class="asset
asset-image at-xid-6a00d83451908369e20120a7778e07970b "
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a7778e07970b
-500pi" title="TheSaints" /></a> <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20128767a7a4f970
c-pi" style="display: inline;"><img alt="McWhirtersintheValley" border="0"
class="asset asset-image at-xid-6a00d83451908369e20128767a7a4f970c "
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20128767a7a4f970c
-500pi" title="McWhirtersintheValley" /></a> <a
b-pi" style="display: inline;"><img alt="TheChurchinTheValley" border="0"
418
class="asset asset-image at-xid-6a00d83451908369e20120a7779115970b "

src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a7779115970b
-500pi" title="TheChurchinTheValley" /></a> <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20128767a7d7f970
c-pi" style="display: inline;"><img alt="ValleyPool" border="0" class="asset
asset-image at-xid-6a00d83451908369e20128767a7d7f970c "
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20128767a7d7f970c
-500pi" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-
left: 0px; " title="ValleyPool" /></a><a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a77794bd970
b-pi" style="display: inline;"><img alt="Irrigation" border="0" class="asset
asset-image at-xid-6a00d83451908369e20120a77794bd970b "
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a77794bd970b
-500pi" title="Irrigation" /></a> <a
c-pi" style="display: inline;"><img alt="ChristmasTree" border="0" class="asset
asset-image at-xid-6a00d83451908369e20128767a82a7970c "
-500pi" title="ChristmasTree" /></a> 
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Vincent
EMAIL: vincent@talkingpyramids.com
IP: 118.210.9.61
DATE: 12/23/2009 07:26:15 PM
Hey I will be passing through Brisbane in a couple of days time. I didn't
realise the Christmas tree was solar powered though.
Perhaps it should be called the Summer Soltice Tree instead.

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TITLE: Transmedia Teaching
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
ALLOW PINGS: 1
BASENAME: transmedia-teaching
CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 12/22/2009 12:41:50 AM

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BODY:
The very first series of posts on our <a
href="http://teachingthursday.org/">Teaching Thursday</a> blog revolved around
the idea of EduPunk which represented a combination of outside-the-box
educational thinking, the widespread use of digital technologies, and the DIY
attitude associated closely with punk rock (check them out <a
href="http://teachingthursday.org/2009/03/10/edupunk/">here</a> and <a
href="http://teachingthursday.org/2009/03/10/edupunk/">here</a>). While
EduPunk appears to have been a flash in the pan, the ideas at the core of the
movement probably possess more staying power. In particular, I have
noticed a resonance between some of the ideas around EduPunk (whatever they
precisely were!) and the notion of transmedia teaching. Transmedia
teaching is a term that describes teaching and pedagogical techniques that work
to create an immersive learning environment which extends beyond the limits of
the classroom through the use of multiple, typically digital, media. The idea
derives most specifically from the work of <a
href="http://henryjenkins.org/">Henry Jenkins</a> on fan culture, convergence
culture, and transmedia experiences. Jenkins has recently summarized his
ideas on transmedia culture in a pair of blog posts (<a
href="http://henryjenkins.org/2009/12/revenge_of_the_origami_unicorn.html">here
</a>and <a
href="http://henryjenkins.org/2009/12/the_revenge_of_the_origami_uni.html">here<
/a>). In these posts, he identifies 7 key characteristics of transmedia,
or convergence, culture which center on how new and user generated digital media
has come to transform the relationship between the original content provider and
groups who were once imagined to be consumers of content. The emergence
of a whole series of new media platforms and technologies (such as YouTube,
blogging platforms, audio and video mash-ups, wikis and other collaborative
environments of various descriptions, et c.) has encouraged both the
‚Äúauthorized‚Äù groups of content producers as well as groups of fans to
create, manipulate, modify, and expand original content in ways that extended
these franchises across a wide array of narratives and into different media
environments. For example, action movies often spawn a whole set of
related, authorized video games, a range of sequels and ‚Äúprequels‚Äù, books,
music videos, toys as well as ‚Äúunauthorized‚Äù fan-fiction, blogs, and even
various forms of adaptation in user-generated environments like YouTube.
The proliferation of related content across platforms represents the core
of the transmedia phenomenon as both an aspect of contemporary multimedia
marketing strategies, but also as a far more de-centered phenomenon engaging a
wide range of fans whose commitment and interest in a storyline, cast of
characters, or imaginary world manifest itself in highly dynamic and creative
ways. The interaction between the ‚Äúoriginal‚Äù content producers and
the committed fan community can be either sequential ‚Äì that is fans responding
to a creative franchise after it is imagined as, say, a major motion picture ‚Äì
or simultaneous ‚Äì as is manifest in reality TV shows like American Idol where
the ‚Äúaudience‚Äù co-authors the outcome of the narrative by voting or
otherwise actively participating in the creation of the story. You can
read his original postings here. My goal in this short essay is to
consider how Jenkins‚Äô ideas could be applied to a notion of transmedia
teaching. Our goals as teachers are largely the same as those of content
providers in any media franchise. We hope that our students become
committed to the ideas, stories, methods, and worlds that we create in the
classroom. We hope that the commitment on the part of our students
manifest itself at least in being able to model certain behaviors and methods on
their own (in, say, a laboratory assignment or as a paper or test) and ideally
420
in our students willingness to internalize the lessons of the classroom (broadly

construed) and commit to producing their own content. We measure student
success in generating content by how closely it relates to the rules that we
identified as governing the thought worlds of our discipline or a particular
method. What a creative franchise might regard as the best examples of
‚Äúfan fiction‚Äù, we as teachers regard as evidence for learning, a familiarity
with content, and the ability to internalize certain methods These
goals, of course, are not exclusive to transmedia teaching, but they do suggest
a certain similarity in the best-case scenario outcomes of a transmedia
franchise in the sense that Henry Jenkins studies. What I‚Äôd like
to suggest here is that Jenkins‚Äô study of transmedia phenomenon can provide
teachers with another way of thinking about how we present and articulate
content to our students. It is worth noting that when I am referring to
content here, I mean both formal content (for a historian like myself this would
be names, dates, events, places, et c.) as well as methods which are just as
often the goal of a classroom environment. We often teach methods in such
a way that makes them a kind of content which is particularly susceptible to
transmedia expression. Media, in this analysis, refers to both the
context and the physical (or technical) environment in which students deploy
various the various skill sets. I regularly repeat that the core aspects
of the historical method, for example, represent transferable skills; I far less
frequently articulate either where I imagine students transferring these skills
or, perhaps more significantly, how these skills are to be transferred (much
less modeling the process!). Transmedia teaching foregrounds the idea
that skills are transferable by encouraging from the very start the transfer of
skills from one media to the next. Digital media are particularly useful
in this regard in that they are ubiquitous in our 21st century world and
increasingly geared toward the production and dissemination of ‚Äúuser generated
content‚Äù. In other words, digital media provide an almost perfect
environment for the easy transfer of skills (or more traditional content) from
one medium to the next. There are clear analogies between taking the
critical analysis skills central to historical interpretation from the realm of
‚Äúhistoric‚Äù texts to realm of critically reading a piece of popular
journalism or the creation of a compelling corporate memo and the creation of a
plausible argument using the historical method in the context of a blog, YouTube
video, podcast, or Wikipedia entry. Transferring a historical argument
across differing media requires an understanding of the basic historical method
as well as the commitment to the notion of the historical method (or even well
established historical coordinates) as an immersive environment replete with a
kind of internal coherence and continuity that makes the creation of multiple
storylines, perspectives, and even performative expression not just possible,
but desirable (most of these terms derive from Jenkins). The work
of transmedia teaching, however, is more than just the use of digital space to
encourage students to produce their own interpretation of, say, a historical
narrative or method, but rather a method of teaching that prioritizes convincing
students to internalize an immersive world with particular rules, tropes,
characters, relationships, and even events. By taking a transmedia
approach to the pedagogical process from the start, we foreground the
transferable nature of the content presented within the classroom environment by
modeling its spreadability across different platforms, genres, and media readily
available to students in their everyday, increasingly digital lives. We
can also note the attendant benefit of this method is encouraging students to
become familiar with the basic digital tools and techniques necessary to
manipulate digital media and to imagine these media as sharing common boundaries
and limitations of particular worlds of content or method. At the
421
same time (and perhaps more importantly!), transmedia teaching would realize
that differing media will react differently to different content (whether this
content is specific bits of data, content, or methods). Thus, we would
explicitly reject any perspective that regarded media as merely vessels or tools
for the dissemination of specific content or the execution of methods presented
in laboratory environments, but as active participants in the transference of
one skill set or body of knowledge to another context. In other words,
the notion of user generated content at the core of transmedia phenomena
requires a knowledge of both the content and the processes whereby the user
actually generates content. In the end, we encourage our students to see
digital technologies (and creative places) less as inert tools and more as
active participants who produce knowledge, narrative, and methodology.
This move toward viewing media as central to the creation of knowledge is
long established and coincides well with the methods that scholars in the
humanities employ every day. We would never read an inscription on an
ancient stone block the same way that we would read an ancient text or piece of
architecture. The same process is, of course, true for disseminating
knowledge in a transmedia world: the world created in the classroom takes on
different manifestations across different media. By foregrounding this
process, we‚Äôre emphasizing the transferable nature of skills.This is
all relatively abstract, I realize; so a case-study is perhaps in order.
Over the past several years, I have worked with a wide range of
collaborators to present my archaeological research in Cyprus as a kind of
transmedia experiment. Our project has employed a wide range of media and
techniques to communicate our discoveries, methods, and experiences to a wider
audience. Our goal has consistently been to create an immersive
environment for a wide range of end-users (from students, interested onlookers,
fellow scholars, donors et c.) by extending our work across a number of
platforms and media. Over the past 5 years we have produced documentaries
in digital video, released series of podcasts interviews with students and
staff, created interactive maps, supported the work of a landscape photographer,
‚Äútweeted‚Äù our day-to-day life across social media applications, reflected on
our work and life together across student and staff generated blogs, written
reflective essays, documented the site through a series of regular forms and
procedures in the field, and published a constant stream of formal reports and
articles in academic journals. The result has been a deepening
understanding of the performative aspects of site (that is specific geographical
and chronological content) and archaeology (that is as a method and set of
regular procedures). Describing the site to a small digital recorder for
a broad ‚Äúnon-expert audience‚Äù is different from recording stratigraphic
layers in an official field notebook. Reflecting on the experience of
working at the site on a blog is different from preparing a final budget of
expenses. Taking systematic photographs of an object or archaeological context
is different from taking photographs of the site in such a way to communicate
the sense of place to a broader audience. The different techniques and
modes of expression required of these significant shifts in how we present our
site and method force us to consider how various different media function within
a larger cultural context. In short, even this rather simple example of
the transmedia representation of an archaeological project encouraged
participants to model archaeological knowledge as a transferable
skill.
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TITLE: Some Random Thoughts on a Travel Tuesday
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BASENAME: some-random-thoughts-on-a-travel-tuesday
CATEGORY: Books
CATEGORY: Teaching
CATEGORY: Travel
DATE: 12/15/2009 04:13:48 PM

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I am blogging from LAX today and there‚Äôs nothing like travel to give me
time to entertain random thoughts. So here are three random, end of the
semester, travel inspired thoughts: 1. LAX replicates the city of
LA. The terminals and facilities are dispersed and more or less without a
clear center. Minneapolis Airport in contrast is centered around a gaudy
food court and shopping mall with a nice observation deck that lets you look out
and watch jets come and go. LAX (at least the various terminals that I
drifted through over this 8 hour layover) makes it pretty hard to watch the
plains come and go and almost always involves a trip outside of a particular
terminal to find important information like departure times, gate numbers, or
even places to eat and chill out on a long layover. 2. Students.
I‚Äôve been pretty lucky this semester. I had a number of students take
the time to send along little notes thanking me for the semester. These are so
gratifying! This semester I taught two completely revamped classes and a
graduate seminar that threatened to devolve into a kind of pedagogical trench
warfare. Despite the challenging semester, it was energizing to know that
students enjoyed their class and learned something! 3. What I read when
traveling: Harpers, Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker. I‚Äôve
traveled enough this past year to have read almost every issue of the two
monthlies. I‚Äôll also read William Gibson‚Äôs Spook Country
(2007)). When I asked my <a
href="http://teachingthursday.org/2009/12/10/holiday-reading/">Teaching
Thursday</a> readers what they planned to read over the holidays, I got one
response. This either means that we faculty need to do a better job of
modeling our behavior or that the readers of our blog are unlikely (for whatever
reason) to read books over break.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: maddy
IP: 76.91.201.94
URL:
DATE: 12/27/2009 10:40:51 PM
Don't get me started on LAX. Happy holidays Bill!
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TITLE: Dipping my Toe in the Public History Pool
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: dipping-my-toe-in-the-public-history-pool
CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 12/14/2009 07:51:14 AM

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Public history is all the rage these days in history programs. To my
eye, the interest in public history is an effort within the discipline of
history to connect our work with a recognized group of jobs as archivists,
public historians, and at museums. On the one hand, this is good in that
it recognizes that many of our students want to stay in the field of history,
but do not aspire to academic positions. On the other hand, this is part
of a larger vocational trend in the humanities that we probably need to
monitor. While there is no reason not to embrace programs which hold forth
the prospect of employment for our students, history as a discipline would be
weaker if preparing future public historians became the dominant goal of history
departments. In any event, since our department is looking to get more
serious about its offerings in public history, I thought I'd make an effort to
see how my work in Greece and Cyprus could contribute. So in 2010, I am
going to offer a small internship program in public history. Below is a
very, very rough fact-sheet on this graduate level internship. As you can
see, many of the details are to-be-determined, but I think it captures the core
of what I'd like my internship to do. Public History
Internship SP2010 The goal of this internship program is to provide an
opportunity to gain experience with a wide range of digital and new media
applications that are becoming increasingly central to public history, museum
management and outreach, archival work and archaeological curation. This
work will focus on a number of ongoing and completed archaeological and
historical projects and tools. 1. Topos/Chora: The Photographs of Ryan
Stander. This is a series of photographs and related essays from the Pyla-
Koutsopetria Archaeological Project. The photographs will appear at the
Empire Theater for the month of January and then in an online gallery. They will
be accompanied by a series of reflective essays written by the archaeologists
who participated in the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project. The
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goal here is to have something up on the web by January 15th and the gallery
available for viewing by January 30th. 2. Pyla-Koutsopetria
Archaeological Project: A Digital Museum. Since 2003, a team under the
direction of Scott Moore, David Pettegrew, and me has been working at a site
called Pyla-Koutsopetria on the south coast of Cyprus. This project has
produced a vast amount of digital data ranging from video to podcast,
photographs, text, descriptive data, maps, plans, illustration, quantitative
data, et c. The goal of the Digital Museum is to present some subset of this
data in a coherent way for the educated public. We have Omeka, online museum
software, installed on a university server. This software can provide the base
for our online museum. 3. Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project:
Data Curation. One of the most important aspects of any archaeological or museum
work is the responsible curation of all forms of data. PKAP has recorded a
substantial amount of both digital and paper data over the past 7 years. This
data needs to be curated. The paper data must be prepare to be deposited in the
university archives and parts of the digital data, to be uploaded to Open
Context for digital publication. In many ways this curation project is the
flipside of the project 2. 4. Lakka Skoutara: An Early Modern Site in the
Eastern Corinthia. Since 2000, David Pettegrew and I have recorded descriptive
and photographic data from the early modern site of Lakka Skoutara that
documented the changes at this site as a result of a whole range of abandonment
practices. These photographs need to be put together with textual descriptions
in a way that is useful to scholars. This archive will become the online
companion piece to a published article. 5. Ohio Boeotia Project at Thisvi,
Boeotia. Over the past two years, I have slowly been digitizing the results of
an intensive pedestrian survey project conducted between 1979-1982 around the
village of Thisvi in southeastern Boeotia. It would be excellent to report the
results of this project in a transparent way or to develop an online environment
where this work can be highlighted and made accessible. Goals and Priorities:
To some extent, I will let you imagine a set of priorities for this list of
tasks, and I certainly don‚Äôt imagine that you‚Äôll get all these done. On the
other hand, I expect that early on, we as a team develop some sense of
priorities in how we plan to attack these various projects. It is important to
emphasize that public history projects are almost always collaborative. That is
to say that people work together to accomplish a particular task. We are going
to work together as a team to accomplish the goals listed below. Assignments
and Responsibilities: Since this is an internship, I will not have a major
writing or reading assignment. You should plan to dedicate 10 hours a week to
working this internship. I will insist on weekly 1 hour meetings. These will
include status updates and are not optional. In addition, you will be expected
to maintain a public blog detailing weekly how the various projects are
progressing. The goal of the blog will be both to keep you honest (as a team)
and to make the progress of the various projects underway transparent to the
various stakeholders both at the university and elsewhere. I will expect each
participant in the internship to contribute a single blog post a week. It might
be best to blog on a Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule. The first assignment will
be to select a blogging service. Resources: 1. Digital and New Media
Laboratory. At present we have a single PC, a Linux powered laptop, and a
gaggles of very powerful Macintosh computers. Time in the laboratory should be
negotiated with the various other users. 2. Published and unpublished reports
from Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project, Ohio Boeotia Project, and Lakka
Skoutara (which was a part of the Eastern Korinthia Archaeological Survey
(EKAS)). 3. People. Consider me, my various colleagues, and folks on campus
potential resources. When in doubt, ask questions. Part of a successful public
history project is knowing how to get the information that you need. Some
425
websites: <a href="http://omeka.org/">http://omeka.org/</a> <a

href="http://www.pkap.org/">http://www.pkap.org/</a> <a
editerraneanworld.typepad.com/pylakoutsopetria_graduate/</a> <a
editerraneanworld.typepad.com/pylakoutsopetria_season_s/</a> <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/pylakoutsopetria_undergra/">http://m
editerraneanworld.typepad.com/pylakoutsopetria_undergra/</a> <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/">http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.
com/</a> <a
upland-basin-of-the-southeastern-
korinthia.html">http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/
2009/10/between-sea-and-mountain-the-archaeology-of-a-20th-century-small-world-
in-the-upland-basin-of-the-southeastern-korinthia.html</a> <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/thisvikast
orion_archaeological_project/">http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeo
logy_of_the_me/thisvikastorion_archaeological_project/</a>
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COMMENT:
IP: 134.129.205.189
DATE: 12/14/2009 05:46:43 PM
Bill,
While I will be likely unable to take the class (even though it would fit
wonderfully into my Public History minor), I would very much like to assist with
this in whatever way I can. I am more than happy to serve as a guest speaker
during weekly meetings to talk with students about interning at a museum and
interaction with the public, if you desire. Let me know how I can be of
assistance to you in this course. Have a great break if I do not see you this
week.
Daniel
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Dallas
IP: 65.60.192.124
URL:
DATE: 12/15/2009 08:17:31 AM
Bill,
426
I did something like this the last two years through the Classical Arch. Museum
here. I only had one student in each class, but I let each get a feel for the
place and decide what to work on. Mainly it came down to some work on our
displays, dissemination of info to the public, some research on our collection,
etc. One student this year is working on our CYpriot pottery (unofficially).
Anyway, it was a good experience, I think, for the students, me, the Museum and
the department. We really got some useful stuff from the work of the students.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Shawn
IP: 69.168.144.135
DATE: 01/11/2010 10:03:36 AM
Hi Bill,
You write, "history as a discipline would be weaker if preparing future public

historians became the dominant goal of history departments. "
I should think that preparing students to communicate with the public about
history would only strengthen the position and standing of history...?
Just a thought.
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COMMENT:
EMAIL:
IP: 134.129.192.225
DATE: 01/11/2010 10:47:33 AM
Shawn,
All I meant by that sentence is that history departments are probably still
obligated to teach the core disciplinary methods for historical analysis rather
than the application of those methods to communicate historical knowledge to a
broader public. In other words, teaching history broadly construed (as a means
to teach various "transferable skills and discipline specific methods) rather
than simply focusing on preparing public historians.
Narrowing our focus to study on particular group of methods would run the risk
of limiting the applicability of a history degree and moving it from among core
courses of the humanities to a more marginal, and frankly vocational, position.
After all, there are a limited number of public historians in the US at any
given time. History majors who receive a broader exposure to historical methods
have the basic skills to go one to study law, enter business, become public
servants, or even go on to study history at the graduate level as well as work
as public historians.
Is that more clear?

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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Hubert
EMAIL: hubsibubsi@gmail.com
IP: 134.102.249.90
URL:
427
DATE: 08/11/2010 03:51:01 AM

For those not taking that class, but would like to start playing with museum and
archival standards, creating object data etc. <a
href="http://www.collectconcept.de">http://www.collectconcept.de</a>
(CollectConcept) is a free online tool which supports a variety of standards and
can be used for free..
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DATE: 12/11/2009 10:17:31 AM

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It's cold here! So a frigid Friday Varia: <ul> <li>This is <a
href="http://www.archaeological.org/webinfo.php?page=10547">Sebastian Heath's
account of the CPAC (</a>Cultural Property Advisory Committee) meeting in
Washington, D.C. </li> <li>This is an interesting concept: <a
href="http://www.twhistory.com/">TwHistory</a>. Check it out. (via <a
href="http://www.ancienthistory.typepad.com/ancient_history_ramblings/">R. Scott
Moore</a>)</li> <li>This is a cool post on the <a
href="http://antiquatedvagaries.blogspot.com/2009/12/graves-of-
archaeologists.html">graves of archaeologists</a>.</li> <li><a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2009/08/mi
chael-fronda-lecture-at-und.html">The First Cyprus Research Fund lecturer</a>,
<a
href="http://www.cambridge.org/us/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=0521516943">Micha
el Fronda, has a book cover</a>!</li> <li><a
href="http://www.theatlanticwire.com/opinions/view/opinion/On-Brink-of-
Bankruptcy-Greece-Spreads-Panic-in-European-Union-1848">This can't be good news
for Greece</a>.</li> <li><a
href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/news/2009/12/091211_cyprus_grave_robbed_
nh_sl.shtml?s">This is strange news</a>. Tassos Papadopoulos grave was
robbed and his body stolen. </li> <li>But this is undoubtedly good new for
Bismark and the rest of us who appreciate <a
href="http://www.bismarcktribune.com/app/blog/?w=theedgeofthevillage">Aaron
Barth's quirky ruminations</a>.</li> <li>This is good news: <a
href="http://lateantiqueostia.wordpress.com/">The Kent-Berlin Ostia Excavations
got the funding it needed to continue</a>, <a
href="http://lateantiqueostia.wordpress.com/2009/11/09/bankrupt/">after almost
having to pack it in</a>. </li> <li><a
href="http://teachingthursday.org/2009/12/10/holiday-reading/">Go to Teaching
Thursday and tell us what you're reading this holiday break</a>. There is
no excuse not to and we know that you are going to be reading something.
So, please.</li> <li>Big news about the 2010 Wilkins Lecture in the Department
of History at the University of North Dakota... so stay tuned.</li> <li>I've
been invited to give the <a
href="http://www.library.und.edu/about/robinson.htm">Elwyn B. Robinson at the
Chester Fritz Library at UND</a>. Readers of this blog know my interest in
428
Elwyn B. Robinson so this a particular honor. More on my subject

soon.</li></ul> Ok, I better get back to this stack of grading, but
I'll check back and update this quick hits and varia over the course of the
day. I am sure there are things that I meant to include, but they just
slipped my mind at this hectic time of the semester.
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TITLE: Some Fun Web Data and Some Light Duty Analysis
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: some-fun-web-data-and-some-light-duty-analysis
CATEGORY: Web/Tech
DATE: 12/10/2009 12:26:57 PM

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Some quick notes on Google data for the <a
href="http://www.und.edu/">University of North Dakota</a> Website. I did
this mostly for fun, but the results are sort of interesting... Google
Trends The goal of this short report is to summarize my very superficial
analysis of our site data via the <a href="http://www.google.com/trends">Google
Trends interface</a>. I suspect that this report will raise more questions than
answers, but some of the patterns in the data are interesting (and perhaps
vaguely alarming). As with all things Google, they are relatively opaque
concerning what variable go into their analysis, but I suspect that they are
more or less stable and the analysis is systematic. Analysis of
und.edu This first graph shows the number of visitors who visit the
website over a 1 day period. This chart compares und.edu (in blue) with ndsu.edu
(on red), and as a control grandforksherald.com (in gold). The most curious
thing about these graphs is the huge drop in traffic over summer of 2008. This
could be a simple matter of the data that Google for analysis, but if it is
associated with a particular change in the way that the site was organized, the
we should make note that visitors stopped visiting our main domain (i.e.
und.edu) rather abruptly and most never returned. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a73e422e970
b-pi"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-bottom-
width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px" height="134" alt="clip_image002"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2012876412e51970c
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> Moreover, the general trend, according to
page rank, is that our site (as well as ndsu‚Äôs site) has become less popular
through time. It is interesting to note, however, that the downward trend
appears to be the case will any number of university home pages. This chart adds
sdstate.edu (gold) and wichita.edu (green) to the chart. The similar slide over
429
the summer months of 2008 suggest that the pronounced slide in und.edu has at
least something to do with how Google collected data. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a73e423a970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2012876412e5d970c
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> To compare the decline in the number of
visits to main domains, here is a chart comparing four major big ten
universities: osu.edu (blue), psu.edu (red), umich.edu (gold or, better, maize),
and umn.edu: <a
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> They all show similar declines with a slide
during the summer months of 2008 (although this slide is far less pronounced at
osu.edu). The rather steady decline of the und.edu domain also appears in
the data prepared for Google Ad Planner. Of course, in this context Google is
trying to sell us on advertisements, so they have every interest in showing
declining visitors, but it is nevertheless interesting: <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2012876412e67970
c-pi"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-bottom-
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> To this can be added some basic demographic
data collected by Google. I take this cum grano salis, but it is
interesting to contemplate and there might be so real motive for Google to be
accurate here. They make money (actually, almost all their money) from per-click
advertisements. So the more people who click on your advertisement, the better
they do. Consequently it is in their best interest to provide the user with good
data to maximize the visibility and profitability of their advertisements.
Gender <a
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2012876412e7a970c
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> Age <a
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> Education <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a73e426e970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2012876412e9e970c
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> While the data from these charts is
probably inconclusive, it seems to suggest that visitors to the main domain of
university pages are on the decline. This may well reflect the proliferation of
servers on campus (and multiple domains), but I suspect that it also reflects
changes in how the web is surfed, with visitors less frequently jumping from
main page to main page and more frequently entering into domains through
numerous other entry points. Google Insights for Search (beta) Data
<a href="http://www.google.com/insights/search/#">This service</a> provides
data on ‚Äúthe number of searches for a particular term relative to the total
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number of searches done on Google over time‚Äù normalized on a scale of 0-100.

To begin, I compared the search terms ‚ÄúUniversity of North Dakota‚Äù (light
blue) to ‚ÄúNorth Dakota State University‚Äù (red). Since these are specific
search terms, it is probably worth noting that NDSU is probably better known was
‚ÄúNorth Dakota State‚Äù than ‚ÄúNorth Dakota State University‚Äù, I included
searches for ‚ÄúNorth Dakota State‚Äù (gold). I would guess that the higher
‚ÄúNorth Dakota State‚Äù numbers are bolstered by people searching for things
other than the NDSU, like state offices or even general information on the state
itself. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2012876412ea5970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a73e427d970b
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> This graph shows the relationship between
the overall number of searches in the specific category of colleges (dark blue)
and universities to searches for ‚ÄúUniversity of North Dakota‚Äù (light blue),
‚ÄúNorth Dakota State‚Äù (gold) and ‚ÄúNorth Dakota State University‚Äù (red);
the dark blue line represents the relative growth of the number of specific
searches against searches for colleges and universities in general. Apparently
‚ÄúUniversity of North Dakota‚Äù performs better as a ‚Äúglobal brand‚Äù than in
the subset of university and college searches. Note the huge spike in searches
for North Dakota State and North Dakota State University precipitated by the
flooding last spring! <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2012876412eb1970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2012876412eb8970c
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> It is important to note that the
downward sloping line does not necessarily mean that the number of searches for
‚ÄúUniversity of North Dakota‚Äù is declining, but that the number of searches
for this term in relation to the number of searches through Google overall is
declining. The line however does decline at a significantly steeper slope than
the lines for either ‚ÄúNorth Dakota State‚Äù or ‚ÄúNorth Dakota State
University‚Äù. This suggests that the number of searches for our university name
have declined more significantly in relation to all searches than searches for
our friendly rival to the south. As a check on this, I also compared Google
searches for UND versus those for NDSU, recognizing, of course, that und
is a very common word where I don‚Äôt thing ndsu means anything (it may
be a kind of Asian fungus, but even then a rather rare one). To compensate for
this I limited our comparison to the U.S. where people use the word und somewhat
less frequently than, say, in Germany. I also did a comparison for North Dakota
and Minnesota. UND is light blue and NDSU is red. In the US: <a
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2012876412ec0970c
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> In North Dakota (with forecasted data):
<a
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a73e4298970b
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> In Minnesota (with forecasted data): <a
431

src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2012876412ed9970c
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> The results here were surprising. Despite
the fact that ‚ÄúUND‚Äù is a word, it is still being searched for less than
‚ÄúNDSU‚Äù in North Dakota and they are very close in Minnesota. As another
point of comparison for the analysis of various searches, I produced a chart
based on searches for ‚ÄúPenn State‚Äù (blue), ‚ÄúOhio State‚Äù (red),
‚ÄúUniversity of Michigan‚Äù (maize) and ‚ÄúUniversity of Minnesota‚Äù (green).
The very dark blue line shows the overall searches for the Colleges and
University Category. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2012876412ee0970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2012876412ee9970c
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> It clear that the searches for the name of
the university reflect the rhythm of academic life (and presumably recruitment),
with peaks in September and October. To see whether I could isolate other, non-
academic influences, I plotted searches for WCHA (red), ‚ÄúFighting Sioux‚Äù
(gold) and ‚ÄúUniversity of North Dakota‚Äù (blue). To be safe, I checked the
WCHA against searches for ‚ÄúFrozen Four‚Äù and found them almost completely
parallel. I also checked ‚ÄúFighting Sioux‚Äù against ‚ÄúSioux Hockey‚Äù and
found that they carved a similar pattern. In any event, it is interesting to
note how little the Fighting Sioux‚Äôs end of the season battles has on searches
for the term ‚ÄúUniversity of North Dakota‚Äù. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2012876412eee970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2012876412ef5970c
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> Like the charts based on visits to various
specific pages and domains, these charts (which show specific searches) also
show a decline of searches for broad forms of classification. This chart
reflects the decline in specific searches for the name of the university (i.e.
University of North Dakota) and it more or less coincides with the decline in
site visits to und.edu as a specific domain. The best analysis of this
correlation is that visitors to our site (which according to our in-house Google
Analytics data have remained relatively stable) are entering through venues
other than the main und.edu page and they are not searching for the university
through general search terms like ‚ÄúUniversity of North Dakota‚Äù.
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TITLE: Thesis Defense: The Representation of Salvation in The Sayings of the
Desert Fathers
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BASENAME: thesis-defense-the-representation-of-salvation-in-the-sayings-of-the-
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DATE: 12/09/2009 07:33:09 AM

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Paul Ferderer defends his M.A. Thesis today at 1 pm in O'Kelly 221. He
will be my first student to write in my area of research (the previous group
includes theses on Frankish Cyprus, Roman military equipment, and Caesar's
Gallic Wars). So this alone is reason to celebrate. More
importantly, Paul is a great guy. He worked with us last year in Cyprus
and has continued to help manage data this fall. He is a regular visitor
to my office and an expert on the NFL, professional wrestling, and public
service announcements. He also is a thoughtful commentator on the state of
evangelical Christianity and longstanding member of our Latin Friday Morning
group. It will be sad to see Paul move on, but wherever he lands will get
a first class mind and an all around good guy. Here's the abstract for his
thesis: <blockquote> This thesis examines four prominent works of monastic
literature composed during the third through the sixth centuries and contrasts
the representations of salvation within them. The Lives of
Constantine and Antony, The Lausiac History and The Sayings of the
Desert Fathers discussed conceptions of salvation in some of the earliest
forms of monastic literature. The contention of this thesis is that in
relation to the major works of monastic literature composed during the same
period, The Sayings, articulated an existential dimension of salvation
experienced as deliverance from sin and manifested in restored communion between
God and the believer. Using genre as its primary unit of analysis, this
study reveals the unique theology of salvation found in The Sayings of the
Desert Fathers. While this study focuses on the early monastic
community, it has much broader implications in the study of historical theology
and Late Antique religion. This study‚Äôs theological focus contributes to
the existing discussions on the holy man of Late Antiquity. At present,
such scholarship remains focused on the sociological implications of ancient
religion. This thesis provides a point of departure for studies of
theological texts as works that describe the intellectual history of Late
Antiquity. The present discourse on the history of Christianity places
much of its emphasis on Western Christendom. Saint Augustine and Aquinas
remain the exemplars of Christian thought, and the reformation the pinnacle of
the church‚Äôs impact on the course of history. This thesis contributes to
a growing body of scholarship which probes Eastern foundations of Christian
spirituality through the monastic movement and its rich intellectual
history. </blockquote> He wants his defense to be open
to the public. So if you know Paul or this topic interests you, stop in to
see the show!
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TITLE: Small Town Archaeology III pt.2
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: small-town-archaeology-iii-pt2
DATE: 12/08/2009 08:24:38 AM

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As promised yesterday, here is the second part of our salvaging expedition to
Crookston, Minnesota. Our goal was a beautiful, 1898, yellow-brick house
which was to be demolished in the levy building projected on the banks of the
Red Lake River. The buff bricks immediately tie the house to the building
traditions of the Red River Valley. Numerous brick buildings in the region
sport these buff colored bricks produced at either the Crookston or Grand Forks
brickworks. The house preserved some nice architectural detail. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a72d87b8970
b-pi"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; border-left: 0px; border-
bottom: 0px" height="272" alt="Crookston House"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a72d87bd970b
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a72d87c3970
bottom: 0px" height="272" alt="ArchDetail"
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> But also some unmistakable
signs of age. The back wall of the house showed significant distress.
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a72d87ca970
bottom: 0px" height="276" alt="Crackedwall"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a72d87d3970b
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> It was interesting to see
that the builders had arranged a single course of bricks perpendicular to the
courses used in the rest of the house (I am sure there is an architectural term
for this and I suspect that I knew it once, but now I can't remember it!).
It served as an informal cornice immediately above ground level. <a
c-pi"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; border-left: 0px; border-
bottom: 0px" height="272" alt="Brickdetail"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a72d87dd970b
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a72d87e2970
bottom: 0px" height="272" alt="Backwall"
434
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> We were not the first salvagers in the
house. Early arrivals had removed much of the kitchen cabinets and
counters, but had left behind the two working flour bins with hardware. <a
bottom: 0px" height="332" alt="KitchenRemoval"
-pi" width="224" border="0"></a> <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a72d87f6970
bottom: 0px" height="332" alt="flourbin"
-pi" width="224" border="0"></a> They had also removed the carpets from
the first floor and exposed in the process the hardwood floors on the lower
level. <a
bottom: 0px" height="332" alt="hardwoodfloor"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a72d8800970b
-pi" width="224" border="0"></a> They had, somewhat aggressively,
removed the wooden railing from the interior stair case. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a72d8809970
bottom: 0px" height="272" alt="RailingRemoval"
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> Despite the efforts at
salvaging, the house itself retained features common to its age including nicely
executed wood frames around the doors, wooden doors with attractive hardware,
some well-maintained three-pane windows, and early 20th century duct
covers. We scoped out the situation quickly and decided to attempt the
most serious salvaging projects first. This involved the turn of the
century picture window with stained glass insert. The window was held in place
by a relatively narrow trim piece that once removed, allowed us to remove the
window and pane without any damage. I'd like to think that the stained glass was
original to the house. <a
bottom: 0px" height="205" alt="Window"
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2012876306ab0970
bottom: 0px" height="205" alt="Window2"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2012876306aba970c
-pi" width="139" border="0"></a> We then turned out
attention to doors (my co-conspirator Bret Weber was in search of 30 inch wooden
doors for his roughly contemporary house in Grand Forks) and the duct
covers. My house has forced air hear that comes up through the
floor. We keep saying that we'd like to have in wall ducts and these early
20th century duct covers would complement our 1900 American four-square's
architecture. It was interesting to see that some of the duct covers had
lost their ornate little regulators. Bret pointed out how these small
hoops (visible in the top picture below) turned a braided piece of metal (not a
435
screw!) that pushed or pulled a metal flap that opened or closed the duct.
A very elegant solution! <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2012876306ac8970
bottom: 0px" height="289" alt="DuctCover"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a72d881c970b
bottom: 0px" height="272" alt="DuctCoveriWall"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2012876306aea970c
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> Examining the doors
revealed some nice early 20th century hardware. We expected to see glass
door knobs, but the intricate work on the mortise locks, in particular,
attracted our attention. I think that I could see some art deco influences
on the design, so my feeling is that these date to the second quarter of the
20th century, but then again, they were consistent throughout the house and it
is hard to imagine a systematic effort to replace all the door hardware 40 years
after the house was completed. It is possible that these are
original. The mortise lock and hardware was relatively easy to
salvage. <a
bottom: 0px" height="256" alt="Mortiselock"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a72d882a970b
bottom: 0px" height="228" alt="Hardware"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a72d883a970b
bottom: 0px" height="228" alt="Hardware2"
-pi" width="154" border="0"></a> From an archaeological
perspective, it was interesting (although unsurprising) to see that all the
meters were removed from the outside of the house. The house was quite
literally "off the grid" in that some of the tools which embedded the house
within the community fabric were stripped away. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a72d884c970
bottom: 0px" height="204" alt="ElectricMeter"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2012876306b5f970c
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2012876306b6a970
bottom: 0px" height="204" alt="GasMeter"
-pi" width="302" border="0"></a> On the other hand, there
were all sorts of reminders that the house had recently been lived in. The
reminders of everyday life were haunting. Christmas lights, an outlet, a
marble. <a
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bottom: 0px" height="272" alt="Christmas lights"

bottom: 0px" height="284" alt="outlet"
bottom: 0px" height="600" alt="Marble"
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> 
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Kay Hegge
EMAIL: khegge@gmail.com
IP: 174.39.242.36
URL: http://prairieskyline.blogspot.com
DATE: 12/09/2009 09:36:27 AM
Oh, I'm so glad you salvaged these beautiful items! This house was not on our
list. Your photographic story gives the house a proper goodbye. Thank you!
Kay
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Alexa
EMAIL: akaymcd@hotmail.com
IP: 173.26.215.131
URL:
DATE: 12/09/2009 10:16:41 AM
As the architectural historian who documented this house in preparation for its
demolition, I am very pleased to see that much of the interior elements will be
salvaged. I hope plans have been made for salvage of the lovely brick. FYI -
the door hardware and stained glass are undoubtedly original to the building.
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TITLE: Small Town Archaeology III
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: small-town-archaeology-iii
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DATE: 12/07/2009 08:05:26 AM

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On Friday afternoon, Bret Weber (a historian and social worker in the
Department of Social Work) headed out to Crookston, Minnesota on a tip that
there were a handful of houses there available for salvage. The house that
interested us the most was 19th century yellow brick home. Readers of this
blog know that I have an interest in what I've termed "small town archaeology"
(<a
re-small-town.html">more here</a> and <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2008/07/sm
all-town-arch.html">here</a>). This is the archaeological processes
visible in everyday life in a small town. On Friday, we were able to
examine abandonment patterns visible in a group of houses slated for demolition
as part of the new levy building project in Crookston. The Red Lake River
curls its way through town so a good many historically significant buildings are
likely to be effected by this levy building project. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2012876236d75970
bottom: 0px" height="272" alt="Red Lake River"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2012876236d8b970c
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> The town itself is not
inconsequential. It is the county seat of Polk County, Minnesota and the
seat of the Catholic Bishop with a population of around 8,000 people. In
recent years, however, it has suffered economic decline with several local
industries closing down. Fortunately, the local hospital and the
University of Minnesota at Crookston provide some economic stability to the
town, but it can hardly be considered a thriving place. With this
context in mind, it is interesting to see how abandonment and salvage processes
proceeded locally. Driving through town, one of the strangest
sights is a brick building from which the bricks have been removed from one long
stretch exposing the wood superstructure. It seems likely that at some
point the brick face of the building became unstable and potentially dangerous
and was then removed. It, nevertheless, presents and intriguing example of
the kind of small town archaeological visible here, and it, of course, begs the
question: where did those bricks go? <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2012876236d9a970
bottom: 0px" height="205" alt="Stripped Bricks"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2012876236da4970c
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2012876236da7970
bottom: 0px" height="205" alt="Stripped Bricks 2"
-pi" width="139" border="0"></a> As we approached our goal,
it was clear that the salvaging process was well underway. The local
humane society thrift store to whom the city had given salvage rights, had
explained to us that the Amish had already been through many of the
houses. One house had sections of its roof removed. Perhaps the roof
had skylights. It is interesting to note that no one had salvaged the air
conditioner from this house or any of the relatively "modern" looking
windows. The former might make sense if the salvagers were Amish (who
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might not have had any use for an airconditioner). I am not sure why the
windows were left behind. Maybe they were too difficult to remove? <a
bottom: 0px" height="272" alt="House Roof"
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> Doors appeared to be
popular objects for salvagers. Next door to the house with holes in its
roof was (what appeared to me to be) an early 20th century house which had had
doors and windows removed, but then the front door was curiously boarded
closed. It's hard to understand this practice considering right next to
the boarded up door was the gaping hole left by the removed front window. <a
bottom: 0px" height="272" alt="Doors and Windows"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2012876236db5970c
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> Further down the street, a more ambitious salvage project had
occurred. This house had its siding removed. The presence of black tar
paper under the siding (rather than the typical, modern house wrap) suggests
that this siding was not of the very recent vintage. The house next to it
seemed to be sided in metal. Bizarre. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2012876236db9970
bottom: 0px" height="272" alt="Stripped Siding"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2012876236dbe970c
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> Interestingly, they did
not remove the satellite television dish from the house. If this as the
work of the Amish, I guess that makes sense. I can also hear my wife
saying something about disposable technology. Since these dishes are
typically part of a service, it may not have been worth the effort to remove
it. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2012876236dc2970
bottom: 0px" height="271" alt="Stripped Siding w Dish"
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> We arrived at our
destination after this impromptu tour of local abandonment practices. For
our contribution to the salvaging of this houses (a kind of experimental
archaeology), stay tuned tomorrow. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2012876236dcd970
bottom: 0px" height="272" alt="Crookston House"
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> For some Crookston on the
web, check out <a href="http://www.lakesnwoods.com/CrookstonGallery.htm">this
page of olde tyme photos</a>, <a href="http://prairieskyline.blogspot.com/">this
interesting blog</a>, <a href="http://www.mycrookston.blogspot.com/">this one
too,</a> and the work of the <a href="http://www.prairieskyline.com/">Prairie
Skyline Foundation</a>.
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COMMENT:
IP: 71.175.115.108
DATE: 12/07/2009 09:45:53 AM
Very nice. BTW, I just clipped a photographic essay on abandonment in Detroit(in
Harper's) and one of the images highlights a satellite dish on a 19th c home.
And you're right. Dish Network installs satellite dishes but only takes back the
expensive part, which is a little white plastic thing that gets attached to the
dish. Most of the time, people don't even bother with that.
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COMMENT:
IP: 71.175.115.108
DATE: 12/07/2009 09:51:52 AM
... and I hope you're listening to "Rag and Bone" by the White Stripes during
the project
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DATE: 12/04/2009 10:18:40 AM

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Just a little gaggle of links for a snow Friday: <ul> <li>I just
discovered <a href="http://www.google.com/trends">Google Trends</a> and <a
href="http://www.google.com/insights/search/#">Google Insights for
Search</a>. They provide cool methods for collecting data from websites,
comparing their visibility, and the relative frequency of search terms.</li>
<li>President the University of North Dakota's President R-Kelley gave his State
of the University Address this past week. <a
href="http://undpresidentsblog.wordpress.com/">Here's the text</a>.
Comments off, though. Booo.</li> <li><a
href="http://www.cricinfo.com/ausvwi09/engine/match/406190.html">This could
still be an interesting an interesting test</a>. It's nice to see the
Windies off to a good start.</li> <li><a
href="http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/30/showcase-85/">Some cool images of
abandonment in Dubai</a>. I am off to photograph and salvage a turn of the
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century house that will be bulldozed in Crookston, Minnesota this

afternoon. </li> <li><a
href="http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2009/11/the-death-of-uncool/">Brian Eno
gets archaeological about culture</a>.</li> <li>Richmond Spiders versus
Appalachian State. Epic.</li> <li>A Terrific Trifecta on Teaching
Thursday: <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/2009/12/03/three-thursday-
thoughts-on-teaching-1-lexical-analysis/">one</a>, <a
href="http://teachingthursday.org/2009/12/03/three-thursday-thoughts-on-
teaching-2-more-on-cheating/">two</a>, <a
href="http://teachingthursday.org/2009/12/03/three-thursday-thoughts-on-
teaching-3-are-you-running-out-of-time/">three</a>.</li> <li>Some public love
from Cyprus Airways' Sunjet in-flight magazine (thanks to <a
href="http://millinerd.com/">millinerd</a>!)</li></ul> <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20128761079ae970
bottom: 0px" height="636" alt="Cyprus Air Magazine"
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> Have a great
weekend. 
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Kay Hegge
EMAIL: khegge@gmail.com
IP: 174.39.170.249
URL: http://prairieskyline.blogspot.com
DATE: 12/05/2009 08:11:09 PM
Bill, I believe you will have found out that the turn of the century home has
been salvaged except for the woodwork upstairs. The Prairie Skyline Foundation,
a historic preservation group salvaged some, but lack of volunteer help
prevented us from getting all the woodwork out in time. Please join us, we need
people like you who like to salvage! check out our website and or email me!
Hope to hear from you!
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TITLE: Teaching Thursday: Are You Running Out of Time?
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: teaching-thursday-are-you-running-out-of-time
CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 12/03/2009 07:47:53 AM

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I often have trouble communicating the notion of time to students. For
example, it is hard to convince them how long it will take to, say, write a
paper. The notion of a timed test is also a challenge as, without fail, a
student will tell me that he or she ran out of time. E. P. Thompson in
‚Äú<a href="http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/%7Esalaff/Thompson.pdf">Time, Work
Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism</a>,‚Äù (Past and Present 2
(1967), 56-97) suggested that this is because students are one of the groups who
still exist in pre-capitalist modes of production (p. 73). Time and its
accompanying ‚Äúwork discipline‚Äù have not extended their grasp to embrace the
docile student body. Instead, they proceed with their studies as artisans
or crafts-people, taking every opportunity to enjoy life and then frantically
working to complete piece-work goals. This is even more challenging for an
online class where the relationship between the overseer and the artisan is the
most attenuated. The only motivation, in this case, is the distant and
somewhat mystical end of the semester. This clearly will not do. As
part of our job is to complete the process of transforming our fun-loving
artisan class into good capitalist automatons, I have discovered a simple trick
to impart a sense of foreign (to them) urgency to my online class: a countdown
timer. <a href="http://www.oneplusyou.com/bb/countdown">This one doesn‚Äôt
let you set the hours</a> so according to this countdown timer, grades are due
at midnight on December 22nd. It doesn‚Äôt hurt to get them in early,
right? <object type="application/x-shockwave-flash"
height="100" width="313"
data="http://www.oneplusyou.com/bb/files/countdown/countdown.swf?co=000000&b
gcolor=FFFFFF&date_month=12&date_day=22&date_year=0&un=GRADES
ARE DUE&size=big&mo=12&da=22&yr=2009"></object><img
style="display: none" height="1" alt=""
src="http://www.oneplusyou.com/q/img/bb_badges/countdown.jpg" width="1"> <div
align="center">Created by <a
href="http://www.oneplusyou.com">OnePlusYou</a></div>
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: bathmateus
EMAIL: bathmateus09@gmail.com
IP: 113.11.6.117
URL: http://www.bathmateus.com
DATE: 12/17/2009 04:32:30 AM
it was just happens when you will look my comments.
Bathmate
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TITLE: New Views on Old Data: First Draft
STATUS: Publish
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DATE: 12/02/2009 07:11:13 AM

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Find below my first effort at an AIA paper that I will be co-
writing with Tim Gregory. It's rough around the edges, but I think on the
right track. For more on this research: <a
claiming-thisve-data.html">Reclaiming Thisve Data</a> <a
isve-basin-archaeological-visualization-and-curating-digital-data.html">Thisve
Basin, Archaeological Visualization, and Curating Digital Data</a> <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2009/11/fi
rst-out-a-first-draft-of-an-intro-for-new-views-on-old-data.html">First Out: A
First Draft of An Intro for New Views on Old Data</a> <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2009/11/su
rvey-archaeology-finds-as-data.html">Survey Archaeology Finds as Data</a> <a
re-on-thisvi-in-boeotia.html">More on Thisvi in Boeotia</a> <a
ne-ware-and-function-at-boeotia-thisvi.html">Fine ware and Function at Boeotia
Thisvi</a> New Views on Old Data: Reinterpreting Intensive
Survey Results After 30 Years William R. Caraher, University
of North Dakota [first draft] It seems natural to include a paper on
survey archaeology on a panel entitled ‚ÄúFirst Out‚Äù. After all, the surface
assemblage is, by necessity, the first out for any excavation. At the same time,
the study of surface assemblages has fit into the definition of ‚ÄúFirst out‚Äù
intended by the organizers of this panel by contributing significantly to our
understanding of post-Classical periods in Greece over the past four decades. In
fact, the ground breaking work of many of the participants on this panel has
made clear that the rigorous documentation and analysis of surface finds has
expanded our notion of what constitutes an archaeological site to well beyond
the built up centers of ancient polis and across every century from the end of
antiquity to the modern era. Intensive surveys in Boeotia, Laconia, Messenia,
and the Corinthia are rewriting both the ancient and post-Classical landscapes
of these well-studied regions. If I can continue to play with the idea of
‚Äúfirst out‚Äù, it is also clear that this phrase could apply to the first
generation of intensive, pedestrian ‚Äúsiteless‚Äù surveys in another way. Like
the first phase of excavation at major sites across the Mediterranean, the first
efforts at intensive survey often relied upon assumptions and methods that were
unrefined or unsophisticated in comparison with more recent work. In fact, the
constant refinement of survey techniques and the ever more robust datasets that
they produce often include explicit and implicit critiques of earlier survey
methods. This continuous critique has not only weakened the status of survey
among a sometimes skeptical archaeological establishment, but also served as a
tacit justification for neglecting the results of earlier surveys. Technological
barriers, irregular recording practices, and the incomplete publication of data
sets have further impaired archaeologists‚Äô ability to redeploy data collected
from the first wave of surveys for newly formed hypothesis. While the
443
methodological concerns associated with revisiting early ‚Äúsecond wave‚Äù

survey data prose problems, this data nevertheless preserves evidence for the
ephemeral surface record in Greece. Both ever-expanding development of the Greek
countryside and the irregular patterns of surface visibility, agricultural
practices, and erosion patterns obscure and threaten the surface record. As
Albert Ammerman famously observed based on the results of several seasons of the
systematic resurvey in Italy, sites tend to blink on and off in the landscape
like traffic lights. What a project documents one season may not be there the
next. Consequently, intensive survey data often captures a single distinct and
unique view of the landscape which is not susceptible to reproduction even using
similar methods. This paper will use the data collected from the Ohio Boeotia
Expedition between 1979 and 1982 from the (modern village and) Boeotian polis of
Thisvi. The results of this survey were published in a series of short articles
between 1980 and 1992. While these articles provided for a broad discussion of
method and a basic report on the project‚Äôs finding, they did not publish finds
or quantitative data extensively. Our goal with this paper is to take the first
step in re-introducing data from the OBE into the broader conversation about
settlement and survey data in both in Boeotia and across Greece more broadly. To
do this, we would like to first discussion briefly the process of curating the
survey data produced by the OBE and then go on to analyze this data in the
context of some recently published survey work from Greece. The first step in
preparing the OBE data for analysis was the keying of records preserved in a
series of notebooks and binder pages. These records included counts of artifacts
from survey units, which were generally 1 meter square total collection circles
as well as from more robust collection procedures conducted at a number of sites
across the survey area. We also keyed the finds data from both survey units and
the sites into an access database. The finds tables were in turn normalized.
Here it is interesting and perhaps valuable to recognize that the quality of
data recorded over the course of original fieldwork was quite high, but it was
hardly normalized and consequently unsuitable for systematic, quantitative
analysis. The lack of normalization was perhaps, in part, the result of the
novel character of desktop-level tools for quantitative analysis (e.g. SPSS-X
and IBM‚Äôs iconic SQL-powered DB2 debuted the year after OBE competed its
fieldwork ‚Äì 1983; the Macintosh personal computer was introduced in 1984.).
This is not to suggest that quantitative analysis of archaeological data did not
occur prior to the early 1980s, but rather to point out that the creation of
normalized practices of data-recording and well-defined hierarchies of object
identification became a higher priority after desktop database and statistical
tools became more common. By normalizing the robust data sets produced by
intensive survey, the database became as important as the traditional artifact
catalog for analyzing the chronology and function of sites across the landscape.
At the same time as we keyed data from notebooks and binder pages, we also
sought to remap the location of the transects using GIS software. At some point
in the 1980s [some additional historical clarity here would be helpful], the
artifact counts and location of transects was entered into the Surface II
software program which produced a contour map of the artifact densities across
the Thivi basin. While versions of these maps were published, the data behind
these maps appears to be lost. Unfortunately, at present the disappearance of
this spatial data has made it difficult at this point to place the western-most
transects on the ground. The written description of the locations of the western
transects relies upon points of reference that are not visible on the Greek Army
Mapping Service 1:5000 maps and have been destroyed on the ground as a result of
the construction of a massive pipemaking factory. There is hope that we can find
the location of these transects from older aerial photographs of the area.
The final step in the production of this data is recording comprehensive
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metadata for the all of the data that we entered. Once the keying of the data
and metadata is complete we plan to make this data available to the public via
the internet. This step is especially important for small projects because it
distributes of digital data expands the curation process from the purview of the
creator of the data to the community of users who want to make use of the data.
Disseminating the data to end users, with the proper metadata, we make it
possible for others to use our material and make it far more likely to be kept
compatible with changes in technology. _____ There have been significant
changes in our understanding of post-Classical countryside since the Ohio
Boeotia Expedition published their results in the 1980s. The work of both
excavations and survey in Boeotia and elsewhere in Greece alone has produced a
foundation for the reinterpretation of our survey data. Recent work by Archie
Dunn and a team from the University of Birmingham has begun to document the
post-Classical finds at Thisvi itself and Jonita Vroom‚Äôs study of the post-
Classical ceramics from the Cambridge-Bradford Boeotia Project has shed
important light on the relationship between post-ancient ceramics and settlement
patterns across Boeotia. The OBE team produced the current dataset through a
number of different methods. The diversity of methods reflected the early stage
in the development of field procedures and an avowedly experimental approach to
documenting the landscape. The area closest to the city walls, Area A, were
surveyed using a series of 11, randomly placed, 30 m radius circular survey
areas from which samples were taken. The team surveyed the plain itself using a
series of long transects (Areas, C, D, and E) from which they typically took 1
sq meter samples for density and diagnostic artifacts. Finally, the teams also
collected samples for area of particularly high density which they designated
sites. They surveyed these areas using a flexible methods best suited for
documenting the extent, chronology, and function of the material on the ground.
In addition to these survey areas, the OBE team also conducted intensive survey
on two nearby islands in the Gulf of Corinth, Kouveli and Macronisos, which I
have not included in the aggregated totals produced in the analysis below.
The survey of the mainland counted over 8700 artifacts and documented over
1700 batches of unique artifacts from the four areas of the survey. The
artifact density data from the OBE shows a decline in the number of artifacts
from the units closest to the city across the central part of the Thisvi basin.
This pattern, noted in the original publication of the survey, may be at least
in part a product of the erosion patterns. In antiquity, an ancient barrage,
described by Pausanias, controlled the flow of water and sediment into the
basin. In more recent times, the lack of ability to control the flow of water
may have either covered some of the sites or, at very least, discouraged
habitation there. The density of artifacts, however, clearly increases on the
gently sloping, stony ground the along the south side of the basin. Against
the backdrop of overall artifact density we can show the distribution of post-
Classical material across the survey area. In general, the survey area is
dominated by Classical to Hellenistic and Roman periods which accounted for 2/3
of the datable ceramics. There were, however, several concentrations of both
Late Roman and Byzantine to Medieval pottery which represented about 10% of the
overall assemblage of datable material collected from survey. Modern material
and a thin scatter of pre-Classical material accounted for the other 20% or so
of material from the survey. Area A encompassed the highest density areas
immediately south of the plateau upon which the ancient city and the modern
village stand. The post-ancient material from this area were very focused with
most of the material deriving from three units. Unit A2 contained an abundance
of post-Classical material including Middle Byzantine material. It is situated
immediately to the west of one of the Hellenistic fortification‚Äôs towers which
appears to have undergone some modification in the post-Classical period. Units
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A5 and A8 produced significant quantities of Late Roman ‚Äì Early Byzantine

coarse wares including the ubiquitous combed ware. The transects immediately
to the south of the urban center of Thisvi, Area D, show diminishing quantities
of post-Classical material with distance from the Hellenistic walls and the
presumed center of post-Classical habitation. Overall only 12% of the material
there was post-Classical as compared 77% of the datable material dating to the
Classical-Hellenistic period. Area C, which extends south of the city walls to
the west of area D, showed a similar distribution of Late Roman and post-
Classical material. In fact, the only variation between Area D and C was the
rich assemblage of Late Roman material collected from the habor at Vathy which
fell within Area C. This collection of pottery pushed the total quantity of
post-Classical material from Area C to close to 18%; without this material, the
total percentage of Late Roman material was 13% or only slightly higher than
found in the neighboring Area D. Unfortunately, we have not yet been able to
place the some of the transects from area C. It is clear, however, that
significant quantities of material came from the southern edge of the Thisvi
plain where a large pipe factor stands today. The harbor area at Vathy has been
completely destroyed by an industrial harbor serving that factory. Area E to
the east of the ancient city tells a similar story to areas C and D. It is
notable that the overall assemblage produced by these units was smaller than
either D or C (as was the overall area surveyed), and that Late Roman material
accounted for close to 25% of all the material collected from this area and
post-Classical material represented 27%. Much of this material, however, derived
from substantial site situated along the southern edge of the basin and
designated E1. Like Vathy, this single concentration of material exerted a
substantial influence on the overall character of the assemblage from Area E.
Without the material from this site, the overall percentage of post-Classical
pottery declines to under 10%. Since the most significant quantity of post-
ancient pottery from the Thisvi basin can be dated to the Late Antiquity, it is
perhaps most useful in this short paper to explore how we can reinterpret this
distribution of Late Antique material in the countryside in light of the
significant new analyses of material from this period in Boeotia and across
Greece and with the help of more pliant dataset. It is significant, on first
glance, that the distribution of material around Thisvi is similar to that
recently published around the city of Thespiai to the east. The team from the
Cambridge-Bradford Boeotia Project argued that the overall population of the
city of Thespiai declined during Late Antiquity and, as a result, the residents
of the city progressively abandoned the immediate hinterland of the city to
intensive cultivation. In particular, this meant that the residents of Thespiai
stopped the practice of regular manuring the fields near the city which,
Bintliff and others argued, deposited ceramic material in a tell-tale halo
around the urban core. In place of manuring, Late Roman farmers adopted less
intensive agricultural practices and, at the same time, large tracts of land
previously dedicated to feeding the urban population became part extra-urban
agglomerations ranging from agricultural villas to self-sufficient hamlets.
The decline in artifact density visible for the Late Roman period in the
Thisvi basin would fit well with this hypothesis as Late Roman (and more
generally post-Classical) densities declining away from the city itself not
simple as evidence for contracted habitation, but as the relationship between
contracting populations and changing land-use patterns. The work of the CBBP
also revealed large extramural concentration of Late Roman material like those
at the southeastern corner of the of the survey area, E1, and at the harbor at
Vathy. The former coincides particularly well with kinds of developments
documented by the Cambridge Boeotia Survey around Thespiai as villas. The
assemblage from the site contained storage vessels consistent with some kind of
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agricultural installation as well as beehive sherds so common at Late Roman

agricultural sites around Thespiai. Moreover, the site was outside the densest
areas of ceramics around Thisvi even at its Classical-Hellenistic peek, and this
too paralleled the findings of the work at Thespiai. The harbor at Vathy was
a more complex phenomenon. The material at this site was more diverse than a
simple agricultural installation and included some of the few example of Late
Roman fineware from the survey area in addition to a significant complement of
transport vessels which would be expected at a coastal site. Vathy resembles
more closely the assemblages present on the islands of Kouveli and Macronisos
than the material present inland in the Thisvi basin or even neighboring
Thespiai which likewise lacked significant quantities of Late Roman finewares.
In contrast, at the Eastern Korinthia Archaeological Survey in the immediate
hinterland of the important Late Roman city of Corinth some xx km to the
southeast, fineware made up almost 10% of the total assemblage of Late Roman
artifacts, and this is despite a collection strategy that would tend to under
represent the proportion of fine ware to coarse ware. It is the comparative
context that allows us to begin to make sense of assemblage presented around
Thisvi. When first documented and published in the mid-1980s the presence of
Late Roman and post-Classical material in the countryside of Thisvi was worthy
of remark. Now as ‚Äúthe busy countryside‚Äù of Late Antique Greece comes into
sharper focus, the dearth of pottery present in the Boeotia countryside and its
decidedly functional and non-cosmopolitan character gives pause. There is no
question that southeastern Boeotian countryside continued to see investment in
post-antique period with Late Antique fortifications extant at Thisvi, Thespiai,
Khostia and on Mavrovouni. On the other hand, the lack of imported fine ware for
Late Antiquity suggests a particular kind of investment in the countryside. The
countryside around both Thisvi and Thespiai during Late Antiquity would appear
to be less substantially invested in the kind of prestige rural habitation that
is often associated with the concomitant decline in the urban core of the
ancient world. The title of today‚Äôs panel was ‚ÄúFirst Out‚Äù and we hope
that our paper today extended the potential meaning of that phrase to include
the post-Classical material from the first generation intensive pedestrian
survey. Our paper today represents a point of departure for further study of
both the material produced by the OBE across the Thisvi basin and the growing
body of ‚Äúsecond wave‚Äù survey material from Greece. While much second wave
survey material has seen initial publication and has contributed to the present
body of knowledge regarding the post-Classical landscape, we have shown the
potential in returning to this material. For the Late Roman period, in
particular, with think that returning to this material will allow us to move
beyond the juxtaposition of rural prosperity to abandonment (a version of the
old continuity or change question) and tease out indications of regional
difference present in across the Late Roman landscape of Greece. The potential
present in returning to the first sherds collected from the Greek landscape in
an intensive and systematic way demands that we make the results of these early
intensive surveys available in flexible digital formats. It seems like that a
return to these survey projects will put an end to any lingering skepticism
regarding the long-term archaeological significance of survey data and, in the
processes, confirm the continued value of ‚Äúfirst out‚Äù. 
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TITLE: Zahi Hawass in the New Yorker
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: zahi-hawass-in-the-new-yorker
CATEGORY: Popular Archaeology
DATE: 12/01/2009 07:59:30 AM

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Two weeks ago there was a longish article on Zahi Hawass, the outspoken
secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, in the New Yorker
(I. Parker, "The Pharaoh" New Yorker (November 16, 2009), 52-
63). I had expected it to create more of a buzz in the blogosphere (and
maybe I missed it over the holidays and all), if for no other reason that Hawass
seems to be a polarizing figure. I neither work in Egypt professionally nor have
a professional interest in Egyptology, but I still found this report on Hawass
to be interesting because of how it understood archaeology as a
discipline. Perhaps the most intriguing thing about the article is
how little it talks about Hawass as a practicing archaeologist. While I
hardly think that the New Yorker is the place for an in-depth critique of his
archaeological procedures and methods almost nothing in article discussed
archaeological methodology at all. This struck me as quite odd since
within the discipline of archaeology the most regular critique of any scholar
typically centers around his or her competence in the field and in almost all
cases this involves a comment on their methods and practices. In fact,
there are plenty of overbearing, pretentious, outspoken, popularizing, self-
promoting, funny hat wearing archaeologists who are quite good in the field or,
on a larger scale, run sophisticated archaeological projects. The
critique of Hawass focused mainly on his personal management style and his
propensity to promote his own projects. The former is relatively
uninteresting to me (and I felt some of the critique tapped delicately into
longstanding colonialist (or even Orientalist) attitudes about the role and
attitude of civil servants in countries which contain archaeological material of
"global" (read: Western) significance). The latter, of course, could be
more problematic, except that in a place like Egypt (and across the
Mediterranean more generally) there are almost an infinite number of potential
project (almost!) and a distinctly finite amount of resources (both intellectual
and economic). In such an environment, it is difficult to prioritize any
one project about another in an absolute and definitive way. As a clever
friend of mine is prone to remind me: there is always more archaeology.
While it is frustrating to scholars with professional aspirations that one
project is privileged over another, it is so common in archaeology that this is
hardly worth comment, particular in a country where there will always be field
work that needs to be done, always architecture, objects, and landscapes at
risk, and always eager foreign and domestic archaeologists wanting to
participate. A few of the seemingly oblique references to how archaeology
has been carried out in Egypt did not exclude the possibility that these
projects were methodologically sound and capable of producing valid historical
448
and archaeological knowledge. Hawass's dig at Taporis Magna, for example,

was done in collaboration with an amateur archaeology enthusiast and often
featured enormous numbers of excavators. Nothing in this seems inherently
problematic to me, which is not to say that something funny or irregular isn't
going on. The moving of villages upsets my sensibilities somewhat, but
these kinds of practices continue wherever archaeology is practiced (and I know
for a fact many archaeologists would move parts of villages in search for
important finds if it was practical). In fact, later levels have to be
removed to get to earlier periods! And excavation "excavating down to the
bedrock" in search of new tombs does not necessarily equate to archaeology being
a treasure hunt (as Parker quotes one critic of Harwass as saying on page
63) What I am trying to say here actually has nothing to do with
Hawass. I was just struck by how foreign this article was to how
archaeologists critique one another. It seems to reflect that
archaeological method remains subordinate to the objects discovered. The
production of archaeological knowledge is rooted in a well-considered method,
consistent field procedures, and careful documentation of every step of the
process. The author does not even reference any of this tedious, but
essential archaeological nitty-gritty throughout the article. The article
seems intent on portraying Hawass as a larger-than-life individual seeking
larger-than-life archaeological achievements, and the principle critique seems
to be that his achievements do not correspond with his personality. One
almost feels that if Hawass made some great discovery all will be forgiven and
his personality validated. Among archaeologists, the care with which
Hawass achieved even the most modest discovery will likely weigh just as heavily
as the magnitude of any discovery in the popular imagination.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Pierre MacKay
EMAIL: pierre.mackay@comcast.net
IP: 76.104.197.147
URL: http://angiolello.net
DATE: 12/01/2009 09:50:09 PM
One point that is barely mentioned in the New Yorker article is that Z. H. has
now achieved total authority over the entire antiquities service. For those of
us who love Mediaeval Cairo, this is, at very least, disturbing. It suggests
that we can expect the neglect and destruction of Tulunid, Ikhshidid, Fatimid,
Ayyubid, Mamluk and even Ottoman Cairo to go on inexorably. In 1965, it was
pointed out to me that for any given year of the 1960s, the budget for Pharaonic
archaeology and preservation was larger than the entire sum of all annual
budgets for mediaeval archaeology and preservation since that service began. The
results are obvious to anyone who visits Cairo with the Cresswell map of the
city in hand. (Even if this is out of date, it is the only well constructed
guide to Cairo.)
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As an example, Cresswell made a start on the recovery of the great bath of

Muayyad Sheikh, near Bab Zuweyla in the 20s or 30s, but try and find it now.
Visitors to Cairo rarely discover any part of the non-Pharaonic heritage of the
city except the dully conventional mosque of Mehmed Ali in the citadel. They
need help and guidance for the rest. Does anyone think they will get such help
from a service dominated by the crowd-pleasing juggernaut of Pharonic
archaeology that Z. H. seems to favor.
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TITLE: Blogging at 70,000
STATUS: Publish
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DATE: 11/30/2009 07:59:18 AM

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I should have linked to <a href="http://millinerd.com/2009/11/blogging-c-
2010-state-of-art.html">Matt Milliner's excellent review of blogging before
today</a>, but I guess my mind was too caught up in thinking about my own blog
and where it is going. In any event, this past weekend, I passed 70,000
page views and the week before I made my 600th post. I still use both
numbers to gage the relevance and vitality of my blog, although I'll conceded
Matt's point that page views probably only reflects a portion of my overall
visits; some of my visitors may prefer to read my blog on RSS Readers which do
not appear as page visits. I suspect my hit count remains a fairly
accurate gage of my blog's visibility, if only because the number of page views
continues to increase with each passing week. I have about 300 comments so
far and they might be a better measure of how my readers engage with my blog.
 These are some random thoughts that came to my mind thinking about my
blog this past weekend after reading Matt's post: One area where I have
been struggling is the link between my blog and the wider world of the social
media. I Twitter regularly and use Facebook, but I almost never post a
link to this blog to those forums. On the other hand, I regularly post
links to the Teaching Thursday blog, which I moderate for the Office of
Instructional Development at UND. I tweet the weekly posts on this blog
(which makes them appear as Facebook status updates) and direct the tweets to a
few other serious campus tweeters. Since I've begun this practice, I've
had a pretty steady flow of hits from Facebook and Twitter. So, it seems
clear that "social network integration" does increase a blog's visibility and
attract readers. Matt Milliner, however, rightly points out that there
appears to be a real divergence in function between the world of <a
href="http://twitter.com/BillCaraher">Twitter</a> (<a
href="http://twitter.com/BillCaraher">follow me!</a>) and Facebook and the world
of blogging. If many of the earliest bloggers used the platform to make
public their inner selves, blogging's move to the mainstream has pushed all but
the most sophisticated solipsistic bloggers to the margins (a few persist on the
<a href="http://technorati.com/blogs/top100/">Technorati Top 100</a>, but fewer
and fewer). In their place has emerged the professional blogger who focus
beyond themselves onto the world of politics, technology, celebrity gossip, or
450
the development of a particular product (e.g. #1 The Huffington Post, #2

TechCrunch, #6 Gawker, #16 The Official Google Blog, et c.). This list, of
course, does not even consider the numerous non-bloggish sites that use the same
technology as bloggers, Wordpress or Typepad to manage a flow of rapidly
updating content. In keeping with these trends, I think that my blog has
become less overtly personal and more of a window into my professional world
(although to the chagrin of my wife, I refuse to put up firm barriers between my
professional self and my essential self. I am what I do.) As Matt points
out, "blogging is about writing well or at least learning to write
better". Since my career depends in large part on my ability to write,
this blog has become increasingly an extension of the professionalized aspects
of myself. I am fairly sure that my writing has improved some because of my
blogging habit. Even if I don't write better, I certainly write quicker which
leaves more time for revision. During my time managing Teaching
Thursday, I've found that the most common response from my colleagues to my
invitation to blog is that they do not feel confident writing quickly for a
public audience. I usually press that this as much like a conversation as
an academic paper. It's a lunchtime chat among scholars or the informed
discussion of conference participants after the panel has concluded.
By attempting to start this kind of conversation, blogging represents an
attempt to extend and influence the center. I know that I have a romantic
idea of the center as the place where real ideas are exchanged daily because the
community of like-minded (or at least similarly minded individuals) has reached
a certain critical mass. This exchange of ideas makes the center a place
of soft power. The circulation of ideas and network of professional
collegial relationships gives the center an undeniable influence over academic
disciplines and academia in general. This is not to suggest that the
center has a kind of real or hard power influence. I think, all cynicism
aside, that the practices of anonymous peer review mitigates any real control
over the most obvious manifestations of the academic discourse. It's all
about the soft power that the center exerts. To put this in perspective: I
am the only trained, historian of the ancient Mediterranean in the state of
North Dakota. My goal with this blog is not to necessary
infiltrate the center, but to exert a gentle influence, to broaden it gently by
attempting to engage it from afar. This hope represents my feeling of
geographic isolation out here at the edge of the known world in North Dakota as
well as my professional sense of isolation as a teaching professor at a school
that hardly ranks among the elite research universities. My blog
represents an antidote to my own marginal position in the field, and any modest
success allows me to at least imagine that the margins of the field and the
profession can exert an influence on the center. Nothing brings we more
pleasure than to present my ongoing research and speculative musing. By putting
ideas, half-baked or otherwise, out into circulation, I hope that I stimulate
other people to think along similar lines or to see productive opportunities
that I may have overlooked. Finally, it is the discipline of
blogging that I have grown to cherish more than anything. The idea of
writing each day -- even for just a half an hour -- in energizing. The
requirement of finding enough time to think up something to write pushes me to
find at least a moment to think (perhaps carefully) about something each
day. 
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Amalia
IP: 75.22.162.80
URL: http://hellia.blogspot.com/
DATE: 11/30/2009 10:08:40 AM
"Nothing brings we more pleasure than to present my ongoing research and
speculative musing. By putting ideas, half-baked or otherwise, out into
circulation, I hope that I stimulate other people to think along similar lines
or to see productive opportunities that I may have overlooked."
That's exactly the reason that I write and blog as well. And for myself, daily
writing has been the key to success and growth as a writer.
I definitely agree with you that blogging is about starting a conversation, too.
It isn't about being perfect, it's about engaging in a discussion.
Great Post.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Dr. James Stathis
EMAIL: J.Stathis@CelebrateGreece.com
IP: 72.194.199.127
URL: http://www.celebrategreece.com/media.aspx?ID=109
DATE: 12/03/2009 10:19:45 AM
Congrats on hitting 70,000! You look good for your age!
Seriously, keep up the good work.
On your recent topics of new media, running out of time, etc.,

CelebrateGreece.com has started to make short videos on ancient Greek
historical/archaeological topics.
This weekend we're holding the Santa Barbara International Marathon, so we put
up a video commemorating the 'original' Marathon: a video 'celebrating' the
beginning of the 2500th Anniversary of the Battle of Marathon (490 BC-2010).
The video, in one minute, explains to anyone quickly, the importance of the
battle of marathon and the saving of Western Civilization. The clip is a
snippet of a larger documentary called Greece: Spirits of the Ancients.
Thanks.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: millinerd
EMAIL: millinerd@gmail.com
IP: 91.184.212.170
URL: http://millinerd.com
DATE: 12/03/2009 02:29:19 PM
This are some nice insights, especially the "gentle influence" part. In defense
of your notoriety, you are the only archaeologist who appeared in the Cyprus Air
452
magazine this month. If you haven't seen it let me know and I'll send you a
photo of the blurb.
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TITLE: Costa-Gavras's Parthenon
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: costa-gavrass-parthenon
DATE: 11/27/2009 06:55:36 AM

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I made a post a few months ago entitled <a
e-destructive-power-of-the-athenian-acropolis.html">The Destructive Power of the
Parthenon</a> (see also <a
re-on-the-post-classical-parthenon.html">my brief review of Anthony Kaldellis'
book about on the Christian Parthenon</a>). It has become one of my most
frequently viewed posts. I was prompted by the controversy over Costa-
Gavras's short film for the New Acropolis Museum in Athens. The
controversy stems from the depiction of black glad Christian's defacing the
Parthenon sculptures in (apparently) A.D. 438. As I said in my previous
post, I have my doubts about the historical and archaeological veracity of this
claim - or at least the systematic extent of damage inflicted by iconoclastic
Christians - but I'll leave the archaeological arguments to folks like <a
href="http://www.iconoclasm.dk/">Troels Myrup</a> who specialize in the
phenomenon. I'll refrain for analyzing the film further (taking a
colleague's advice: it's just a cartoon!), except to say that the only depiction
of figures in the film are folks being destructive to the building (namely
Christian Athenians and Lord Elgin). It seems like a missed opportunity
not to have shown early archaeologists to whose vision we owe so much of our
current view of the Acropolis and its temple. <div align="center"> <div
class="wlWriterSmartContent" id="scid:5737277B-5D6D-4f48-ABFC-
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display: inline; padding-left: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; margin: 0px; padding-
top: 0px"><div id="8211113d-70b5-4641-b1a0-6a93150e0afe" style="margin: 0px;
padding: 0px; display: inline;"><div><a
href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbkgtsHGDJc&hl=en_US&fs=1&"
target="_new"><img
-pi" galleryimg="no" onload="var downlevelDiv =
document.getElementById('8211113d-70b5-4641-b1a0-6a93150e0afe');
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COMMENT:
IP: 99.168.83.124
DATE: 11/27/2009 07:19:50 PM
The saddest thing is that Manolis Korres and Charalambos Bouras were scientific
advisers. If I were a classicist, I would have objected to not seeing the
clutter of dedications that would have surrounded the monument. I agree, one
cannot really be serious by such a fundamentally postmodern document (just as
one cannot really be serious about the postmodern Acropolis Museum). Seeking for
truth or criticism would mean being duped. Oh, and see how the youtube video is
linked to a "call for action." <a
href="http://media.causes.com/523562?p_id=6346518">http://media.causes.com/52356
2?p_id=6346518</a>
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TITLE: Happy Thanksgiving!
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: happy-thanksgiving
DATE: 11/26/2009 10:52:07 AM

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Happy Thanksgiving to all my U.S. readers. And thanks to everyone all
the same for making my blogging hobby seem worthwhile!What you thought I
wouldn't post today for some reason?
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TITLE: Fine ware and Function at Boeotia Thisvi
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BASENAME: fine-ware-and-function-at-boeotia-thisvi
DATE: 11/25/2009 09:18:51 AM

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For those who are regular readers here, you know that I've been working on
re-analyzing the data produced by the Ohio Boeotia Expedition around the site of
Thisvi in southwestern Boeotia. My focus has been on the post-antique
material and the Late Roman material in particular. This is both because
the post-antique material is the focus of the panel for which I am preparing
this paper and because there has been so much work done in on understanding the
Late Antique landscape of Greece since the completion of the fieldwork component
of the OBE in 1984. One of the most interesting characteristics of the
main assemblage produced by the OBE from the Thisvi basin is the dearth of Late
Roman fine wares. Both the transect survey and the site based survey of
the Thisvi basin proper (this is the area immediately to the south of the city
of Thisvi) produced virtually no fine ware. Only at the harbor site of
Vathy was any substantial concentration of fine ware found (and this area only
produced a few sherds of Phocaean (LRC) Ware and a Late Roman lamp). 
The absence of any considerable quantity of Late Roman fine ware is more or
less consistent with the finds of the Cambridge Boeotia Project to the
east. One of the absolutely fantastic things included in <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/144525077">the publication of their survey
around Thespiai</a> were a series of data sets. This data included the
finds data from the sites discussed in the volume. They easily imported
into an Access database and could be queried and quantified. The striking
thing is that the villa sites around Thespiai (LSE 7, THS 2, 12, 13, 14 for
those with a scorecard) likewise produced almost no imported fine wares.
Now it may be that these villas are "industrial" villas focused on agriculture
rather than the luxurious rural estates often associated with the new class of
Late Roman aristocrats who looked beyond participation in the local, urban unit
to sources for provincial or even imperial prestige. The relative
dearth of Late Roman fine wares from the countryside of Thisvi and Thespiai can
also be compared to the conditions on the islands in the Gulf of Domvrena.
The finds from the islands of Kouveli and Macronisos produced far greater
quantities of imported fine ware than the inland sites (for these see T.
Gregory, DXAE 12 (1986), 287-304 and T. Gregory, BS/EB 2
(1986), 155-175). This may well be credited to the status of these island
sites as emporia or transshipment points for goods either being manufactured
locally (presumably at the "industrial villas") or being imported from
abroad. It is curious, however, to see so little evidence of for the fine
ware in the local landscape. Another useful point of contrast is
the distribution of fine wares across the Late Roman landscape in the
Corinthia. David Pettegrew's recent analysis of this data (Pettegrew, <a
href="http://www.atypon-
link.com/ASCS/doi/abs/10.2972/hesp.76.4.743">Hesperia 76 (2007), 743-
784</a>) showed that close to 10% of all Late Roman material collected from the
455
intensive survey was fine ware most of which was imported. Likewise,
Pettegrew's summary of work at rural villas in the immediate hinterland of the
city of Corinth revealed sites that we luxurious in appointment with private
baths, colonnaded courtyards, and mosaic floors. These were the types of
buildings likely to produce assemblages including imported fine wares. In
fact, the villa at Akra Sophia suveyed by Gregory at essentially the same time
as the sites in the Thisvi basin produce both proper Phocaean (LRC) wares as
well as local imitations (<a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/147922">T.
Gregory, Hesperia 54 (1985), 411-428</a>). Even if we
must observe some caution in assigning function to a building based on surface
assemblage alone, the dearth of fine ware in both the Thespiai and Thisvi
assemblages suggests that the Late Roman landscape of southwestern Boeotia is
considerably different from that of the Corinthia. The results of survey
and excavation over the last 20 years has not necessary produced a Boeotia
countryside that is any less busy (for a nice summary see <a
href="http://books.google.com/books?id=q0hMf5vu7kgC&lpg=PA2&dq=Byzantine
%20Style%2C%20Religion%2C%20and%20Civilisation&pg=PA38#v=onepage&q=&
f=false">A. Dunn, in Byzantine Style, Religion and Civilization in Honour of
Sir Steven Runciman. (Cambridge 2006), 38-71</a>). Fortifications,
possible Early Christian architecture, rural and urban installations of various
types, harbor works and the distribution of Late Roman in general across the
countryside point to the continued habitation and, broadly speaking,
"usefulness" of the region through the 5th and 6th centuries (if not
later!). At the same time, the absence of wide spread indication of
imported fine wares -- a typical and wide spread indicator of not only of
prestige installations, but of domestic activities in general -- make it hard to
imagine that this area is a deeply connected to the bustling world of Late Roman
commerce than even the "deserted" islands found immediately offshore in the Gulf
of Domvrena, much less <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/pylakoutso
petria_archaeological_project/">the cosmopolitan assemblages found at our
coastal site on Cyprus</a> or the villas of the Late Roman Corinthia. 
This reading of the Late Roman countryside of southwestern Boeotia is
important because it represents a more qualified reading of the prosperity
characteristic of the Late Roman world in general. This is not meant to
return to the outdated notions of the Late Antiquity as a time of poverty,
dissolution, and decline, but rather to demonstrate that the hallmarks of Late
Roman prosperity -- namely trade, the wide distribution of prestige goods, and
the continued investment in the architecture of display in domestic, urban, and
ecclesiastical context -- may have been distributed unevenly across the
landscape of Late Roman Greece. For more on this research: <a
rvey-archaeology-finds-as-data.html">Survey Archaeology Finds as Data</a> <a
re-on-thisvi-in-boeotia.html">More on Thisvi in Boeotia</a>
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TITLE: Teaching (with Twitter) Tuesday
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BASENAME: teaching-with-twitter-tuesday
CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 11/24/2009 08:15:09 AM

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<a href="http://chronicle.com/article/Teaching-With-Twitter-Not-
for/49230/">The Chronicle of Higher Education this weekend ran a story
on Teaching with Twitter</a>. Aside from its appealing alliteration, the
story presented two case studies of faculty who use Twitter in the classroom.
One was from a consumer science class at Purdue and the other <a
href="http://www.utdallas.edu/~mrankin/usweb/twitterconclusions.htm">a history
class at University of Texas at Dallas</a>. Both used Twitter as an
official back channel for their classes providing students with another
opportunity to ask questions, interact with one another, and archive these
remarks (organized through <a href="http://twitter.pbworks.com/Hashtags">twitter
hashtags</a>) so that students could return to them later. The faculty
members report more or less positive experiences from setting up these Twitter
back channels, although the Chronicle story and the faculty members themselves
admitted that there was some risk involved. Students could, for example,
use Twitter as a place to snipe at the professor or other students in a semi-
anonymous setting. On the other hand, Twitter could serve as a platform to
engage students more fully in the classroom experience -- especially students
who are too shy or reserved to speak out. Longtime readers of <a
aching-thursd.html">my blog know that I experimented with Twitter in a graduate
seminar</a>. In my experiment, I hoped to encourage the students to "read
actively" and tweet their impressions of the various books as they read
them. These impressions could range from quotes to questions, visceral
responses, or even complaints. I had hoped that the Twitter feed would
make the exercise of reading -- typically an intensely private, personal, and
reflective time, into something that was public, social, and dynamic. The
goal was to break down some of the intellectual isolation (first year graduate)
students sometimes experience when reading a challenging text and encourage them
to formulate ideas while reading to break through the tendency to read a book
passively. Using social networking applications to increase
student engagement is an interesting example of how technology as technology can
engage students in new ways. My History 101: Western Civilization class
this fall is relatively large (150 students) and meets once a week, at night, in
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a large theater style room. The basic content driven lectures are
available online (here). The classroom time focuses on "primary source"
texts (i.e. texts from Antiquity and the Middle Ages), recapping the major
points in the content driven lecture, inclass writing assignments, testing
various models for understanding the past, and informal question-and-answer
sessions that focus, generally, on more difficult concepts. I playfully
refer to the classroom time as a live concert environment and the podcast
lectures as the studio album. While this can produce an exciting,
improvised, and responsive environment, the class tends to become dominated by a
relatively small faction (10%-20% (i.e. 20-30) students). Many of
the students in the class are freshman from smaller high school who find the
large classroom to be a very foreign and maybe intimidating environment. At the
same time, <a
href="http://www.utdallas.edu/~mrankin/usweb/twitterconclusions.htm">as Monica
Rankin points out</a>, many students are comfortable with the social-networking
environment native to Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter. The plan would be to
use the familiar and more intimate environment of the social media to bridge the
gap between the student and their classmates (and teacher) in the large lecture-
style classroom.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Kostas
EMAIL: kostas.arvanitis@manchester.ac.uk
IP: 88.218.86.188
URL: http://digitalheritage.wordpress.com
DATE: 11/24/2009 03:22:26 PM
Hi Bill, very interesting...May I ask, did your experiment with Twitter work
after all?!
!
Thanks,!
!
Kostas.
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TITLE: More on Thisvi in Boeotia
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: more-on-thisvi-in-boeotia
DATE: 11/23/2009 09:12:48 AM

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The plan is to wrap up a draft of the Thisvi paper by the end of today, and
it looks vaguely possible. This weekend, I ran a bunch of queries on the
finds data to attempt to determine the relationship between the ancient and
post-ancient material on the site. As our Archaeological Institute of
America panel is supposed to focus on the post-Classical levels at well known
sites, then it seemed better to focus on the post-Classical material from Thisvi
(and ignore, mostly, the idea that surface material, no matter what the
chronology is always "first out"). The first step to my
chronological analysis was simply to look at the distribution map generated by
plotting the artifacts by period across the sites and known transects.
I've put up versions of these maps before in a slightly modified
form. The maps below include data from the more intensively collected
sites (these are dots that do not appear in any survey transect) and in the
circular collection units surveyed in the first year of fieldwork near the
Hellenistic walls of Thisvi. Each dot represents one artifact. Their
location within survey transect is arbitrary. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a6c89d0f970
bottom: 0px" height="404" alt="Thisvi2009ClassicalHellArtifacts"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2012875ca55b0970c
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2012875ca55b4970
bottom: 0px" height="404" alt="Thisvi2009LRArtifacts"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2012875ca55bd970c
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2012875ca55c1970
bottom: 0px" height="404" alt="Thisvi2009ByzArtifacts"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a6c89d1f970b
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> The first map (blue
dots) represents Classical-Hellenistic material, the second (red dots) Late
Roman material, and the third (gold dots) Byzantine-Medieval material.
They clearly show that by the Late Roman period, a significant contraction in
the distribution of material occurred around the city of Thisvi. The
southern slope of the basin which were quite a busy place in the Classical to
Hellenistic period appear to be used far less intensively in subsequent
periods. This seems to represent an overall contraction in the intensive
activity areas of the city of Thisvi and parallels to a certain extent the
results of the survey at Thespiai to the east. Unfortunately, the maps which appear above are incomplete. I
have not yet been able to plot several of the transects from the western most
area of the survey (Area C in the map below). <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a6c89d2f970
width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px" height="404" alt="Thisvi2009SurveyAreas"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a6c89d36970b
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> While I think that there
is a good chance that I'll be able to place these survey transects in the future
(with the help of aerial photographs), at present the best I could do for the
purpose of analysis is to compare the distribution of material in each of these
sections to determine whether the distributional maps show a contraction of
activity or simply a shift in the main area of activity from one part of the
region to another. These charts are based on the almost convincing
459
assumption that the total sample of each area is roughly equivalent and thus the
proportions of various types of material is roughly comparable. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a6c89e58970
width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px" height="133" alt="image"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a6c89e62970b
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a6c89e68970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a6c89e6f970b
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2012875ca5721970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a6c89e8d970b
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2012875ca5725970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a6c89eb5970b
-pi" width="220" border="0"></a> A first glance it would
appear that Area E and Area C produced substantial more post-ancient material
than either Area A or Area D. This is large due to two significant Late
Roman sites in each of these areas. In the case of area C, the significant
concentration of Late Roman material at the beach at Vathy accounted for close
to 7% of the overall percentage of Late Roman material from the area. In
Area E, the result was even more dramatic with a single site (E1) producing
close to 20% of the Late Roman (and post-Classical material). Eliminating
these concentrations, however, produces a fairly even distribution of post-
Classical material across the entire survey area ranging from 7% in Area A to
just over 13% in Area E. As a result, I feel comfortable stating that the
distribution of what an earlier generation of survey archaeologists might call
"off-site scatter" is relatively consistent across the entire survey area.
This is significant because at the site of Thespiai to the east, the survey team
has argued that most of the material in the fields around Thespiai was deposited
as the residents of the city spread manure (and broken bits of pottery discarded
in trash piles) to fertilize crops. Thus the distribution of "off-site
material" could reflect the intensity of agricultural activity in the basin and
the density of settlement at the central site of the survey area, Thisvi
itself. For more on this research: <a
rvey-archaeology-finds-as-data.html">Survey Archaeology Finds as Data</a> 
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TITLE: Friday Awesomeness
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: friday-awesomeness
CATEGORY: Weblogs
DATE: 11/20/2009 10:00:14 AM

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Some quick Friday awesomeness for the weekend.
First, if you're in Toronto, check out <a
href="http://individual.utoronto.ca/nakassis/index.html">Dimitri Nakassis</a>'s
talk at the Royal Ontario Museum. Dimitri is a valued member of the <a
href="http://www.pkap.org/" title="Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological
Project">Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project</a> and helps us connect the
Aegean Bronze Age with the evidence for the same period on Cyprus.
 
<img
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a6bb443b970b
</div>
A second burst of awesomeness comes from this photo of a poster at Indiana
University of Pennsylvania's Stapleton Library. <a
href="http://www.chss.iup.edu/rsmoore/">Scott Moore</a>, PKAP co-director and my
co-editor of the volume, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Archaeology-History-
Medieval-Post-Medieval-Greece/dp/0754664422">Archaeology and History in
Roman, Medieval, and Post-Medieval Greece,</a> was a bit miffed that the
book had dropped below the 3,000,000 sales rank on <a
href="http://www.amazon.com/Archaeology-History-Medieval-Post-Medieval-
Greece/dp/0754664422">Amazon</a> (3,082,125 to be exact), so he fired up the ole
Scott-Moore-IUP-PR machine. Ashgate should be braced for the influx of new
orders. I just ordered two more myself.
</div>
 

<img
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a6bb4438970b
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</div>

 
</div>

Go read <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/" title="Teaching
Thursday">Teaching Thursday</a>, <a href="http://mygradspace.wordpress.com/"
title="Graduate School Blog">UND's Graduate School blog</a>, and <a
href="http://pretexts.blogspot.com/">(pre)texts</a>.
</div>

 
</div>

Finally, it's Ohio State - Michigan weekend and Richmond - William and Mary
weekend. Two great rivalry games and three schools playing good football right
now (sorry, Michigan). <a href="http://chronicle.com/blogPost/No-1-Problem-at-
Mirror-Lake/8916">This story about Mirror Lake on OSU's campus is just
gross.</a> Go Spiders and Buckeyes!
</div>

 
</div>

Have a great weekend!
</div>
</div>
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Brandon Olson
EMAIL: bro118@psu.edu
IP: 98.172.60.23
URL: http://www.personal.psu.edu/bro118
DATE: 11/20/2009 01:19:09 PM
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA, I love that picture.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Dallas
462
IP: 65.60.192.124
URL:
DATE: 11/20/2009 03:12:15 PM
Can you make that the official PKAP logo or something?? it's just hilarious.
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TITLE: Teaching Thursday: Some Practical Thoughts about Online Teaching
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BASENAME: teaching-thursday-some-practical-thoughts-about-online-teaching
CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 11/19/2009 07:53:26 AM

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Cross-posted to <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/" title="Teaching
Thursday">Teaching Thursday</a>.
Yesterday at noon, the <a href="http://www.und.edu/dept/histdept/"
title="Department of History">Department of History</a> here at the <a
href="http://www.und.edu/" title="University of North Dakota">University of
North Dakota</a>, held a roundtable discussion on online teaching. We invited a
group of experienced online teachers to join the round table from different
fields. Mick Beltz (<a href="http://teachingthursday.org/category/michael-
beltz/" style="text-decoration: underline; color: #003366;">a regular Teaching
Thursday contributor</a>) from Philosophy and Religion, <a
href="http://teachingthursday.org/category/bill-caraher/" style="text-
decoration: underline; color: #003366;">Bill Caraher</a>, from History, Tim
Prescott, from Math, and Bret Weber (<a
href="http://teachingthursday.org/category/bret-weber/" style="text-decoration:
underline; color: #003366;">another Teaching Thursday regular</a>), from the
Department of Social Work. The group focused on the differences between online
teaching and classroom teaching. Moreover, the discussion was intensely
practical. The Department of History, like many departments across campus, is
exploring the potential and pitfalls of online teaching. The audience of
graduate students and faculty enthusiastically engaged the panelists and the
conversation spilled into the hall after the workshop was over.
I offer the following brief summary of the teaching roundtable and I
encourage the conversation to continue in the comments section over on <a
Thursday</a>.
Bret Weber, of the <a href="http://www.und.edu/dept/socialwo/">Department of
Social Work</a>, offered a number of points which emphasized that teaching and
learning need to be at the core of online classes. It's not just about the
technology! And it's not an online class, it's a class online. To go along with
this observation he stressed that teaching online must be interactive both
between students and between teacher and student. The more the students interact
with each other and the instructor the more likely they are to achieve the
course's objectives. In fact, recent students have shown that the quantity of
discussion posts, for example, correlates more strongly with learning than the
quality of the posts. Finally, Bret emphasized that teaching online can be
enormously time consuming in the course planning, set up, and the maintenance of
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an online class, but most importantly in terms of the amount of time that needs
to be afforded all students especially during the early weeks of the
semester.
Tim Prescott of the <a href="http://www.und.edu/dept/math/">Department of
Math</a> emphasized the need for more steps in weekly assignments to make up for
the lack of regular interaction. He said that this extended from actual content
based assignments to the logistics of making sure the students set up proctored
tests, completed assignments on time, and understood the basic mechanics of a
class. Finally, Tim reinforced the difficulty of ascertaining whether a student
understood complex material. Teaching online requires that we develop ways to
ascertain how well our students are moving through material in the class so that
our first indication of a problem is not a high-value assignment.
Mick Beltz, who teaches in the <a href="http://www.und.edu/dept/philrel/"
title="Dept of Philosophy and Religion">Department of Philosophy and
Religion</a>, talked about how online classes followed a different rhythm from
classroom courses. There was more weekly attention necessary to ensure that an
online class functioned properly. The work also tends to be greater at the very
beginning of the semester because the majority of assignments and activities
need to be available to students at the first day of the semester.This different
work rhythm sometimes made the workload feel more substantial than a classroom
based course, which might experience hectic moments, like grading midterm exams,
while requiring less daily attention. Mick also pointed our that online courses
need to communicate the instructor's expectations to students clearly and
regularly. Unlike classroom taught courses, most students will be unfamiliar
with the online learning environment. The irregular schedule of online courses,
the different forms of peer interaction, and a perceived distance between
instructor and student would sometimes lead students to neglect online courses
more than they would classroom taught ones. The result of this was more MIA
students who drift away from the class and do not succeed.
I added that teaching online retained elements of very tradition instruction
with its emphasis on lectures (as a formal means of instruction, information
dissemination, and modeling of good practice). I also noted that the online
environment is particularly suited to intensive writing because writing becomes
the key means for interacting between the student and faculty member. Finally, I
urged the group to embrace the panopticon of online teaching (with thanks to
Mick Beltz for introducing me to the link between <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/3328401">Foucault's idea of the
panopticon</a> and the online teaching environment). The online environment
presents to the faculty member these decisively partitioned reports on student
achievement on the computer screen. The students, on the other hand, can see far
less of their fellow students achievements and, as Mick pointed out, tend to
focus their interaction with the instructor far more than in a regular classroom
where the physical presence of other students demands some, often non-verbal,
form of engagement.
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TITLE: Teaching Wednesday: Teaching with PKAP Data
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BASENAME: teaching-wednesday-teaching-with-pkap-data
CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 11/18/2009 07:38:26 AM

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I've been asked a few times over the last few years about whether I use our
archaeological video, data, and analyses in teaching. Since I've been out of the
upper-level teaching racket for a few years now, I have to honestly answer "no".
Every now and then, however, I hear from a colleague elsewhere who used some of
the material that we made available on the web in their classes. This fall, for
example, I heard from <a
href="http://www.luc.edu/classicalstudies/faculty.shtml#Gawlinski">Laura
Gawlinski at Loyola University - Chicago</a> who used our documentary <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/DocuScript/DSHomePage.html">
Survey on Cyprus</a> in her introduction to archaeology class and passed
along some great questions from her student regarding our methods and fieldwork
procedures.
This past week, I've been helping <a
href="http://www.mcgill.ca/history/faculty/faculty/fronda/">Michael Fronda of
McGill University</a> to use PKAP's interactive map and documents from our
website in his Ancient History Methods class. He graciously agreed to pass along
the assignment and let me post it here:
HIST 450: Ancient History Methods 
</div>
Fall 2009 
</div>
Final Project 
</div>
Assignment: You will analyze some of the archaeological data from the
Archaeological Project (PKAP) and synthesize this with other historical
information (from primary sources, inscriptions, coins, etc.) and modern
scholarship, to draw historical conclusions about the Cyprus (especially the
site of Koutsopetria) during the Roman (especially Late Roman) period. Your
report should be 10 pages NOT INCLUDING bibliography, maps, diagrams, etc. It
may not longer than 20 pages in total.
For this report, you MUST consult and make use of the following:
‚òû The 2004 preliminary report from PKAP, especially any maps, charts and
diagrams. 
‚òû The PKAP webpage (<a href="http://www.pkap.org/"
title="PKAP">http://www.pkap.org</a>), which has general information on the site
as well as some photos, giving an idea of the landscape and topography. 
‚òû The PKAP online interactive map (<a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/disk_PKAP.html">http://www.und.
465
nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/disk_PKAP.html</a>). This is vitally important,

since it contains information on the location of walls and other features
discovered at the site (such as cut blocks, gypsum blocks, walls, etc.).
Some Background Information: Pyla-Koutsopetria is located on the
southern coast of Cyprus, not far from the important ancient city of Kition
(Citium; modern Larnaca). The main site lies along the sea on a narrow coastal
strip. To the north are two very steep plateaus: Vigla (directly north of the
main surveyed area) and Kokkinokremnos (to the northeast).
The project has surveyed much of the coastal strip (see the maps), but also
the heights; we will concern ourselves mostly with the lower site. It is worth
noting, however, that high densities of artifacts have been found on both
plateaus; as well, Kokkinokremnos was the site of a neolithic-Bronza Age
settlement.
The great majority of ceramic artifacts come from the Late Roman period, with
later periods also represented (Medieval, Ottoman, Modern). The site was,
however, probably occupied throughout antiquity.
A large area was excavated, revealing cut blocks, gypsum (a stone with a
marble-like appearance, used decoratively) and a great many fragments of wall
paintings. It has tentatively been identified as a church. A significant number
of "features" are strewn about the site, including numerous worked stones,
architectural features (stone door pieces, pediment fragments, marble revetment,
gypsum blocks, etc.).
Answer these questions: Analyze the available data, focusing on the
lower surveyed and excavated area. Look especially at the distribution of
artifacts found: consider chronological, topographical, and typographical (ie,
what sorts of artifacts) distribution. Consider also the geomorphological
information provided. In your report, be sure to answer the following
questions:
‚òû What type of site was Pyla (small town, big city, fortress, resort area,
industrial town, cult center, etc)? 
‚òû How do you explain the distribution of artifacts? Consider both historical
processes and methodological considerations. 
‚òû What happened to the site at the end of the Roman period, and why?
I expect that you will:
‚òû thoroughly utilize the online interactive map. 
‚òû consult outside sources, both modern and ancient. L'Ann√©e Philologique will
be an important tool, no doubt. 
‚òû include a proper bibliography. 
‚òû try to impress me by utilyzing different research tools and integrating
different sorts of evidence. 
‚òû write the report as a proper report--do not break it up into separate
questions. Thanks. 
‚òû draw your own conclusions. I do not want lots of "maybes" and "could bes"--
you have the data, use it as an ancient historian and say something about the
site.
_______________________________________________
And for the record, I do know that Teaching Wednesday is nowhere near as
alliterative as <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/" title="Teaching
Thursday">Teaching Thursday</a>. Rest assured though that my inner poet will
make a Teaching Thursday available tomorrow.
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TITLE: Survey Archaeology Finds as Data
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One the small arguments that I make in our paper on re-analyzing the survey
finds from the <a
orion_archaeological_project/">Ohio Boeotia Project</a> is that the changes in
technology have influenced the way that data were recorded in archaeology. One
thing that is particularly noticeable in the data is that little effort was made
to normalize the finds data. This is not because the project was not imagining
that their data could be analyzed quantitatively. In fact, the density or
distributional data was collected on paper forms that were suitable for direct
entry into a spreadsheet type program.
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2012875acb121970
bottom: 0px" height="400" alt="image"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2012875acb127970c
-pi" width="315" border="0" /></a> 
OBE Field Recording Sheet
The finds data on the other hand was collected in a way suitable for a text
type catalog. Such catalogues have been a standard part of archaeological
documentation for a century. They are typically include measurements for the
object and then a textual description of the fabric, shape, decoration, and date
of the object with some notes on comparanda. Such thorough textual descriptions
of objects is useful for establishing the identity of fossil types in an
excavation context. In other words, these objects serve to date stratigraphic
layers in excavation and describing them accurate is important for establishing
the validity of the identification of the object.
With the introduction of "New Archaeology" (or processural archaeology) in
the early 1960s, there emerged a greater interest in quantification and
quantitative methods for documenting past human activities. The tools to perform
these kinds of quantitative analysis, however, were expensive and time consuming
(often involving processing punch cards, expensive mainframe computer time, or
even tedious and error prone hand calculations). The increasing availability of
personal computers in the first years of the 1980s paralleled the development of
important software packages for organizing data on desktop computers. IBM's
iconic DB2 came out in 1983 as represented the first SQL driven desktop
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database. The same year saw the introduction of a powerful new version of the
longstanding statistics package SPSS (SPSS-X). Moreover, the portability of both
hardware and software made it possible to enter data in the field. This
undoubtedly shed light on the practice of data collection in direct contact with
data entry (if not on the fly analysis). The desktop computer, SQL driven
database software, and new statistics packages put complex statistically driven
archaeological research in the hands of even the smallest intensive survey
project.
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a6aac20c970b
-pi" width="400" height="618" alt="cherry_apple-ad_cropped.jpg" /> 
Apple Computer Advertisement from 1985
The Ohio Boeotia Expedition worked on the cusp of these significant changes
concluding in 1982. As a result, they collected quantitative data on artifact
densities (which could be easily calculated by hand), but did not collect the
finds data in rigorously normalized way. This is not to say that the data was
not collected systematically. In fact, the systematic and robust collection of
finds data has made it possible to normalize significant parts of the finds
notebooks. The results can then be projected across the transects that were
remapped into our GIS.
bottom: 0px" height="400" alt="Thisvi2009ClassicalTransects"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a6aa5f0a970b
Classical Period Finds
bottom: 0px" height="400" alt="Thisvi2009HellenisticTransects"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2012875acb14b970c
Hellenistic Period Finds
bottom: 0px" height="400" alt="Thisvi2009LateRomanTransects"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a6aa5f1d970b
Late Roman Period Finds
With time and creativity these data could be translated into
chronotype data. The chronotype system is the systematic recording system that
we used to document finds from the <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/EKASPage/EKASHome.html">Eastern
Korinthia Archaeological Survey</a> and in the <a
href="http://www.pkap.org/">Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project</a> (as
well as several other significant survey projects). We are gradually translating
the context pottery from the Ohio State Excavations at Isthmia into this same
system. This will create a foundation for some kinds of cross project analysis.
At the same time, it will not eliminate the need for careful catalogue entries.
The practice of recording careful descriptions of artifacts central to
chronological and functional arguments will continue to remain central to
archaeological documentation. In fact, the improved ability of desktop database
software and "natural language" search engines will make these descriptions
468
increasingly susceptible to the same kind of quantitative analysis as more

standardized (and in most cases abbreviated) forms of notation.
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TITLE: First Out: A First Draft of An Intro for New Views on Old Data
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To provide some context, this is a first draft of my introduction to a paper
that Tim Gregory and I will present at this winter's Archaeological Institute of
America's Annual Meeting. The paper deals with survey data produced by the Ohio
Boeotia Project in the Thisvi Basin in Boeotia. <a
orion_archaeological_project/">You can read more on our work to re-habilitate
and re-analyze this data here</a>. The paper will be in a session called "<a
href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/2009/03/first-out-late-levels-at-early-
sites.html">First Out: Late Levels at Early Sites</a>".
For our paper, I plan to tweak the meaning of first out a bit. To begin, the
surface assemblage, no matter what the chronological range of the pottery
present, is always first out. The systematic documentation of surface
assemblages provides a means to apprehend the over all site formation process in
which the surface of the ground will invariably the most recent events in the
history of the site. First out, in terms of survey, data represents the boundary
between the work of the archaeologist and the layer formed by "archaeological
processes".
For the survey data gathered over the course of the Ohio Boeotia Project from
the Thisvi Basin, first out has another meaning as well. The OBE was among the
earliest "siteless" style intensive surveys typically associated with the Second
Wave of intensive survey in Greece. These projects sought to document
systematically the distribution of ceramics across the landscape rather than
simply focusing on individual sites. The focus on the distribution of artifacts
both "on site" and "off site" produced more robust and complex datasets that
pushed the limits of quantitative and GIS technology of the day. The tools that
we have now, on desktop computers, provide us with new ways of analyzing the
data from these early siteless projects. More importantly, however, these
projects capture a layer of an ephemeral landscape. Survey archaeologists have
469
come to realize that the landscape documented by intensive pedestrian survey

represents a distinct moment in the history of the surface of the ground.
Changes in erosion patters, surface visibility, and cultivation practices
significantly influence recovery rates which, in turn, affect the chronological
character of the assemblage produced. In a bigger picture sense, the continued
development of the Greek countryside (particularly in areas with easy access to
the coast like the Thisvi basin) further endangers surface assemblages. Since
the overall distribution of material across an area rarely warrants the status
of "site", there are few protections in place to prevent the destruction of
surface scatters which preserve evidence for both subsurface activity as well as
more "low intensity" uses of the ancient and modern countryside.
It's important to recognize that our efforts to re-analyze the survey data
from the Thisvi basin is a key step in preserving the results of an effort to
document the disappearing landscape. These efforts run counter to the highly-
critical stream in the methodological discourse associated with intensive survey
which tends to see the results of earlier field work to be methodological
unsophisticated, problematic, and potentially misleading. Each new survey
purports to make significant contributions both to the survey method and the
more general body of archaeological knowledge. The drive to innovate has had
produced ever more robust datasets, but has also led to a relative neglect of
earlier work. This in turn, has made the task of curating "early" siteless
survey data less appealing: despite its potential for capturing disappearing or
ephemeral landscapes, it is seen as being too methodologically problematic to
reward the efforts of re-analysis.
Finally, we can address first out in the way meant by the organizers of this
panel. Perhaps no area has seen greater advances through the work of siteless
survey than later periods. The growth of intensive survey coincided, roughly,
with John Hayes' landmark works on the chronology of Late Roman ceramics. At the
same time, survey archaeology has become an important tool for documenting less
visible periods at traditional sites including the Byzantine, Medieval, and
Ottoman periods in Greece. Shifts in settlement pattern and the continued
privileging of the antiquity in both the historical and archaeological discourse
of Greece has made the work of survey archaeology in documenting post-antique
levels particularly valuable.
That's my first draft of an introduction. Stay tuned for more on this project
over this week as I get to writing up the analysis of the survey data...
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DATE: 11/13/2009 09:38:05 AM

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Some links on a cloudy Friday morning.
<ul>
<li>A long time ago, I wrote an online article on <a
href="http://www.archaeology.org/online/features/blogs/">Blogging
Archaeology</a>. Now I wonder whether I should write an article on archaeology
and the new(er) media. It's exciting that projects are beginning to use Twitter
to keep stakeholders and the general public interested in their work. Check out
the <a href="http://sitemaker.umich.edu/gabiiproject/home">Gabii Project</a>'s
<a href="http://twitter.com/gabiiproject">Twitter feed</a> followed <a
href="http://twitter.com/BillCaraher">me</a> the other day, and I'm glad they
did! They continue a tradition a practice we used during the PKAP season and the
<a href="http://twitter.com/OstiaAnticaDig">Ostia Antica excavations</a> used to
chronicle their fieldwork. I love my tweets from <a
href="http://twitter.com/researchnewsinl">Research News in Late Antiquity</a>
and <a href="http://twitter.com/chuckjones2000">Chuck Jones' ISAW Tweets</a>.
Anyone have any idea who was the first project to Tweet from the field?</li>
<li>It would be fantastic to produce an index of good archaeological video on

YouTube.</li>
<li>The effort to save Michigan State's Classic's Department has moved to <a
href="http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/Save-Classical-Studies-at-MSU">petition
stage</a>. Over 800 signatures so far. I wish I understood the situation there
better.</li>
<li><a href="http://gracecheow.com/">This is a cool blog design</a>.</li>
<li>Really busy day on <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/" title="Teaching

Thursday">Teaching Thursday</a> yesterday. Check it out.</li>
<li>Firefox is 5 years old. T<a

href="http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2009/11/09/happy-birthday-firefox/">he
Wordpress folk noted Firefox has crept up on Internet Explore</a> consistently
over the last few years. Now it accounts for 45.7% of visitors to their blog.
This is up from 32.8% in 2008 and 30.7% in <a href="http://ma.tt/2008/07/ie6-
independence/">2008</a> and <a href="http://ma.tt/2007/08/browser-
stats/">2007</a> respectively. (via <a
href="http://www.ancienthistory.typepad.com/ancient_history_ramblings/">Scott
Moore</a>)</li>
<li><a
html">This is how you teach</a> (via <a href="http://cyreynolds.com/">Chuck
Reynolds</a>)</li>
<li>It's so cool that <a href="http://www.thefee.net/delirium/">Arranged

Delirium</a> is back.</li>
</ul>
Have a good Friday and weekend. 
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TITLE: Teaching Thursday: Three Year College
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CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 11/12/2009 08:06:24 AM

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Check out Teaching Thursday this week, where Joan Hawthorne, the University
of North Dakota's Assistant Provost for Assessment and Achievement, <a
href="http://teachingthursday.org/2009/11/12/teaching-thursday-critiquing-the-
three-year-solution/">considers Lamar Alexander's recent suggestion</a> in
Newsweek magazine that we should consider making a three-year B.A.
program available for students.
<a href="http://www.newsweek.com/id/218183">Alexander's suggestion that</a>
university education could be completed within three years if universities used
space and manpower more efficiently is appealing especially if it could be made
to save students a 25% of their tuition. I am skeptical of his math however.
Many faculty members work 9 or 10 month salaries that more or less coincide with
their teaching loads. It would be necessary, most likely, to increase their
compensation in a way that is consistent with their current contractual
situation. So some savings would be lost on faculty and presumably staff
salaries. Since students would be using facilities for approximately the same
duration (that is to say for approximately 36 months of use, simply distributed
over 3 instead of 4 years), the percentage of tuition that goes toward
maintenance would not be cut in any substantial way. There might, of course, be
some initial, perhaps even on-time savings as some facilities -- like residence
hall or dinning halls -- could be shut down since the student body would be
smaller. 
More significantly, however, the university is part of a larger economic
system. As we watch unemployment rates push up over 10%, one wonders whether
this very moment would be an ideal time to increase the American full-time
workforce by releasing a cohort of able bodies, agile minded young go-getters
into the economy one year earlier. In fact, a more intensive university
experience would effectively withdraw the ability of college students to
participate in the less formal, part time, and relatively unskilled economy that
characterizes their employment throughout their 4 or 5 year degree programs and
thrust them into the adult job market with expectations of full, formal
employment.
472
Finally, it is interesting to note that Alexander celebrates the unique

character of US Higher Education while at the same time arguing that we should
be more like other, frankly, less successful models. Globally, the 3 year degree
must be almost as common as the American 4 year model. These 3 year degrees tend
to focus less on a broad-based humanities-centered education and more on
practical, focused training in a given field. While in many ways these programs
rely upon more robust secondary eduction systems, they nevertheless reflect a
far less serious commitment to the breadth of education common to American
universities. I'm all for tweaking or even "rethinking everything" about
American higher eduction, but I am skeptical of any plan that involves modeling
our university system on systems that we have already determined to be less
successful.
In any event, don't just read my post, click on through to <a
Thursday</a>, and as Prof. Hawthorne asks "bring on the conversation"! 
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IP: 129.133.203.164
DATE: 11/13/2009 02:56:12 PM
Interesting. In a faculty meeting at F&M about a month ago, this very question
was raised receiving intense debate. Basically, some students have already
figured out how to do this, and the administration is wondering whether they
should make it more official (to attract more economically diverse students).
They're thinking of a pilot.
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I'm thinking out loud again. I've been invited to contribute a paper to a
conference next fall in Austin and this week one of the organizers asked me for
a title of my paper. I thought about it for about an hour and offered: "The
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Ambivalent Landscape of Christian Corinth: The Archaeology of Place, Theology,

and Politics in a Late Antique City".
I'm not entirely convinced that I have the ability to write a paper that
coincides with this title, but a title is a start.
My initial thought was to write an article that captures some of the vexing
ambiguities present in the Corinthian landscape of the 5th-6th centuries A.D. To
do this, my paper would begin with two of my favorite examples of ambivalence in
the Corinthian landscape:
1. I'd start with the ambivalent language of the two Justinianic texts from
the Isthmus (<a
igraphy-litur.html">that many veteran readers of this blog know and love so
well</a>).
2. Then I'd talk a bit about the unusual and decidedly ambivalent
architecture of the massive Lechaion basilica. Its prominent transepts have long
been seen to invoke the architecture of the Epirus, particularly the relatively
well-documented group of churches in the immediate vicinity of Nikopolis in
Epirus. At the same time, the central ambo and abundant use of Proconnesian
marble suggests imperial patronage and the liturgical influence of the Eastern
capital. (<a
rly-christian.html">Again readers of this blog, know this argument</a>)
I'd like to expand these two points with a few other observations:
3. I'd like to do something with the Nymphaion near the Lechaion Basilica.
This building was excavated by Stikas in the mid 1950s and published in a fairly
preliminary form in 1957 (PAE 1957, 89-94). This building is notable because it
was modified extensively in the 6th century. These modifications include the use
of opus sectile floors and architectural sculpture that have clear parallels in
the Lechaion basilica nearby. The nymphaion, however, does not appear to have
any clearly defined religious function. The use of decorative elements that tied
the building to the Lechaion church suggested that the basilica extended either
liturgical, or perhaps simply symbolic, influence into the larger Corinthian
countryside. This influence, however, created ambiguous spaces like the modified
nymphaion which was neither strictly religious in function, nor entirely
disengaged from the Christianization process
4. The Fountain of the Lamps and the Ascleipeion also represent ambivalent
spaces in the Corinthian landscape. Both sites show clear evidence for both
Christian and pagan use over the 4th and 5th (and perhaps even 6th) centuries.
While the evidence continues to be murky and problematic, it would seem foolish
not to discuss the relationship between Christians and pagan in a paper on the
ambivalent quality of the Corinthian landscape.
The more pressing issue, of course, is how does identifying ambivalence in
the Corinthian landscape contribute to how we understand pressing historical
problems. While I have not thought this out entirely at this stage, I'd argue
that embracing the ambiguous position of the Corinthia sheds light on it
character as contested space in Late Antiquity. Justinian's efforts to skirt
contentious Christological issues and to invest in the construction of
monumental Christian churches intentionally subverted ecclesiastical authority
of Papacy in the west (under whose authority religious matters in the Corinthia
resided). The tentative and ambivalent nature of Justinian's efforts, however,
hint that the local residents of the Corinthia were not willing simply to buckle
under his political authority, but offered a sufficient threat to warrant
Justinian's ambivalent approach to expressing political authority.
 
474
A parallel perhaps appears between the imperial policy in the 6th century and
the relationship between Christians and Pagans earlier in Late Antiquity. While
few scholars continue to embrace Christianity and paganism as mutually exclusive
categories in terms of Late Antique religious practices, the triumphalizing
narrative of Christianization which was so prevalent in Late Antiquity,
continues to cast a shadow over how we understand Late Antique religion. In
fact, one could argue that the our willingness to accept the narratives of
Christianization from antiquity lies in part with their neat correspondence to
our own practical categories of religious behaviors. Christians and pagans,
sacred and secular space, religious power and secular power, east and west, all
form defining polarities in our late modern methods of understanding the
world.
These polarities coincide well with archaeological practice in particular
which tends to categorize evidence in exclusive ways. While the formation of
hierarchical typologies of, say, ceramics has been an immense benefit to how we
understand the function and chronology of ancient objects, the tendency to
create such interpretative categories continues even as the categories
themselves become more complex. Thus, for generations archaeologists talked
about sacred space or Christians in the archaeological record. Such neat
distinctions (which are largely rarely received uncritically by scholars today)
often overwrote evidence for more complex and ambiguous definitions within the
archaeological record. In this complexity, ambiguity, and ambivalence, once can
perhaps find evidence for Corinthian resistance to imperial policy, their opaque
and highly practical engagement with religious practices and authority, and
their willingness to understand the polysemic character of their built
environment.
Well, it's at least a start.
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AUTHOR: Cassandra
EMAIL: editor.fluwikie@gmail.com
IP: 69.127.12.5
URL: http://www.fluwikie.com
DATE: 11/24/2009 01:08:31 PM
Fluwikie.com is in the progress of choosing some of the top blogs(which have
adequate information) to receive recognition from Fluwikie.com as a Featured
Blogger. This award is not meant to be anything other than a recognition that
your blog gives adequate information about tactics that directly or in directly
raise disease awareness and prevent the transmission of Disease. Simply place
the award banner code on your site and your blog will be listed as a Featured
Blogger on Fluwikie.com. Flu Wikie is a Private Global Health Watch Group, whose
goal is to promote healthy living though the spread of FREE information
globally. Thank you for your time and dedication to your blog! Please reply me
back with the subject line as your URL to avoid spam and to make sure that you
only get the award banner.
475
If your Believe in our Goal of Global Health Text link to use for your readers.
Text Link: FluWikie Url: <a

href="http://www.fluwikie.com">http://www.fluwikie.com</a>
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TITLE: Pagans and Christians in the Journal of Late Antiquity
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DATE: 11/10/2009 08:08:16 AM

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The newest number of the <a
href="http://www.press.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_late_antiquity/">Journal
of Late Antiquity</a> has hit newstands (only if you live in a very dorky
community) or, better, the RSS feed. This is only the second year of this
ambitious new journal's existence, and as the only major English language
journal dedicated to the study of Late Antiquity, I've looked to it with a
particularly critical eye. It's clear that the editors have sought papers from
both established scholars and "up-and-coming" graduate students and recent
Ph.D.s as well as the representing the Eastern and Wester halves of the Roman
Empire. This is a good sign. The journal also seems to have a distinctly
international character representing well the common ground within the
international field of Late Antique Studies.
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a66e3db0970b
-pi" width="120" height="174" alt="200911100804.jpg" style="margin-right:5px;"
/> 
The current number has two articles that immediately caught my eye. First, <a
.foschia.html">L. Foschia offers a short article</a> entitled: "The
Preservation, Restoration, and (Re)construction of Pagan Cult Places in Late
Antiquity, with Particular Attention to Mainland Greece (Fourth-Fifth
Centuries)". Foschia argues that the 4th and 5th century saw continued attention
to pagan cult places in Greece and drew upon evidence from Argos, Athens, and
Kenchreai, the Port of Corinth. At each site, there was evidence for some
significant reconstruction of a pagan cult site. This is unlikely to surprise
scholars of Late Roman Greece, but is nevertheless a good reminder that some
form of large scale, perhaps even institutional, support for paganism persisted
into 5th century. The late (and getting later) date of many Early Christian
basilicas in Greece reflects that rather belated shift of resources from the
sphere of pagan (and in some of the examples used by Foschia, civic) monumental
architecture to Christian architecture. The biggest weakness of this paper
(which, unfortunately has many small issues that one might hope not to see in a
top tier scholarly journal) is the absence of many examples that show how the
practice of paganism in Greece represented a broad continuum of behavior from
476
formal cult practices (at major sites) to informal, highly ambivalent practices,
as seen in late cave sanctuaries or places like the Fountain of the Lamps in
Corinth (see, in particular, the work of Tim Gregory, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/43615467">Richard Rothaus</a>, and <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/26396887">Frank Trombley</a> here) . The
evidence from many pagan sites in Greece suggest that the maintenance of more
monumental expressions of cult practice may have been the manifestation of
something far more "Late Antique" in character than earlier civic or even
imperial supported pagan cults. This distinction is important because it
understands "late" paganism as part of the same cultural milieu as "early"
Christianity and insists that the public expression of religious practice,
ritual, and identity is meaningless outside of a view of Greek (or Late Antique)
society that does not include all shades of pagans and Christians.
The second article worth reading is (<a
href="http://www.iconoclasm.dk/">veteran blogger) Troels Myrup Kristensen</a>'s,
"<a
.kristensen.html">Embodied Images: Christian Responses and Destruction in Late
Antique Egypt</a>". His article looks at the relationship between attacks on
pagan images (and sometimes pagans themselves!) and Christian (and more broadly
Late Antique) ideas of the body. It's a thought provoking read, and contributes
to the discussion of Christianization as a profoundly "embodied" phenomenon
which saw its roots in <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/16981598">P.
Browns, Body and Society</a>. Troels does good job of thinking about how
bodies worked in the context of both Egyptian monasticism and, to a less extent,
Early Christianity and Late Paganism. The only reservation that I had when
reading his article was how he dated some of the episodes of destruction to Late
Antiquity. The archaeologist in me (and someone who has periodically pondered
the seemingly ritual destruction of statues in Greece) has confronted how
difficult it is to date episodes of ritual destruction. This is particularly
important, as in Egypt (like Greece) the centuries long presence of a powerful
and equally iconoclastic Muslim population expands the potential context for
ritual destruction of ancient images up until almost the present day. As I know
that Troels sometimes reads this blog, I'd love to understand more fully how he
dates his destroyed statues to the impulses of such Late Antique Christians as
Shenoute rather than later Christian or Muslim practices.
 
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AUTHOR: Troels Myrup
EMAIL: klatmk@hum.au.dk
IP: 192.38.32.3
DATE: 11/11/2009 08:25:35 AM
Thanks for reading my article, Bill!
477
Regarding the issue of dating: I deal with this quite extensively in my

dissertation, as it is a question of great complexity. You have to look very
carefully at the chronology of use and re-use, something that is often difficult
because of poor documentation of the late antique and post antique phases, as
you of course know very well. In the case of Kom el-Dikka, however, the Polish
excavations have provided stratigraphical evidence to date the deposition of
statues, which is very helpful.
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TITLE: Thisve Basin, Archaeological Visualization, and Curating Digital Data
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: thisve-basin-archaeological-visualization-and-curating-digital-data
DATE: 11/09/2009 08:28:53 AM

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For the past couple of weeks, I've been working on preparing the data from
the Ohio Boeotia Expedition (1979-1982) for re-analysis. This is all
working toward presenting an expanded interpretation of the results from this
field work at a panel put together by Kostis Kourelis and Sharon Gerstel at the
2010 Archaeological Institute of American Annual Meeting. The panel is
called <a href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/2009/03/first-out-late-levels-at-
early-sites.html">"First Out: Late Levels at Early Sites"</a>. The site of
Thisve is primarily known for its relatively well preserved Hellenistic
fortification wall and substantial corpus of published Greek inscriptions.
My paper will focus on the surface remains from across the broader region with
particular attention to Late Roman and later material (although the surface
assemblage no matter how you excavate, is the first out.) As of this
weekend, I finished keying all the density data from the survey transects that
can be reasonably mapped. There were three or four transects which I've
not been able to map in accurately in the GIS. Despite this missing data,
I think that the mapped transects reveal something about the distribution of
ceramics across the plain south of the ancient city of Thisve (and the modern
villages of Thisvi and Doubrovna). <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201287566aaac970
width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px" height="400" alt="Thisvi2009Working"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a665e1b3970b
-pi" width="400" border="0"></a> One of the interesting things is that
this was not the first time that this data was mapped. Three maps of the
archaeological "topography" of Thisve appeared in <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/221569704">T. Gregory, "Archaeological
Explorations in the Thisbe Basin" in the Boeotia Antiqua II: Papers on
Recent Work in Boiotian Archaeology and Epigraphy (Amsterdam 1992), pp. 17-
34</a>. The OBE team plotted these maps using Surface II software against
a digitized map of the Thisve plain. Unfortunately, from what I can
gather, this original map of the basin no longer exists. So I've had to
478
reconstruct the location of the transects from the notebooks in which the data
was originally recorded. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201287566aaba970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201287566aac1970c
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a665e1d2970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a665e1ee970b
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201287566aadd970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201287566aae3970c
-pi" width="400" border="0"></a> The comparison of these
two images and the processes that created them is a nice, small case study both
for archaeological visualization and for the curation of digital media. I
think that my more recent map of artifact densities and transect presents a more
accurate picture of the distribution of ceramics across the landscape.
That being said, even my plan has generalized. The samples from most of
the individual survey units, mapped as squares in my plan, were taken from a 1 m
sq area. I've extrapolated them across the entire unit (i.e. the width of
the transect x the sampling interval). The lower images, generated by
Surface II plotting, have simply extrapolated the density of artifacts across
the entire Thisvi plain. I suspect that the linear arrangement of survey
units (an early form of the <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/51460580">Sydney Cyprus Survey Project</a>'s
"Souvlaki method" of surveying the landscape) exposed the distribution plots to
various kinds of "edge effects" as the software was asked to extrapolate
artifact densities farther and farther from known or established data
points. Moreover, the jagged abstraction of these figures makes it
difficult to assign the surface densities to real space on the map (note the
lack of scale or even a north arrow on figure 3.6!). The
disappearance of the Surface II data is another important issue. While it
is easy to criticize a project for failing to responsibly curate their data, in
fact, the field notes books and survey sheets from the project are well-
maintained and organized. The maintenance of data produced over the course
of secondary analysis is a challenge for a small project like the OBE which
worked in the area for only three years and published their analysis and then
dispersed. Survey projects, in particular, suffer from rather ephemeral
constitutions (as opposed to the usually more permanent relationship between
excavators and a particular site). If the relatively low impact of survey
archaeology on the landscape tends to attenuate the link between the
archaeologist and a particular place, then the combination of paper and high
tech applications ranging from relational databases to GIS mapping applications
adds a layer of complexity to curating the digital data that these projects
produced. In most cases, data was (and I'd argue still is) collected from
the field in paper form and then keyed and plotted into digital databases of
various descriptions. So the digital data represents the first phase of
analysis rather than a primary data collection. Perhaps this is part of
the reason for failing to maintain the digital data as carefully as the paper
forms and notebooks. In recent years, a more serious approach to the
practices involved in curating digital data (and survey data more generally)
479
will undoubtedly change future practices. Hopefully our work with the data
from Thisvi will represent an important case study for the curation of digital
data in the context of re-analysis.
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BASENAME: varia-and-quick-hits
DATE: 11/06/2009 10:38:55 AM

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A few random quick hits on a sunny and warm fall midmorning:
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.tegea.uib.no/">A real nice excavation website by the
Norwegian team working at Tegea in Arcadia.</a> Word is that they will be
working around the Thyrsos basilica this next summer.</li>
<li>This week the "Big Digs" Go Digital Symposium happened in Athens. It's a
symposium co-sponsored by the Deutsches Arch√§ologisches Institut (DAI) and the
American School of Classical Studies at Athens:</li>
</ul>
<blockquote>
" to explore shared opportunities and challenges for large-scale German and
American excavations in the Mediterranean in the digital age. The project is
supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Germany) and the National
Endowment for the Humanities (USA). Initially, this website will act as a forum
as private collaboration but, as the project progresses, it will also become a
tool for publicly disseminating the results in the hope that lessons learned
will benefit other institutions investigating collaborative ways to support
digital scholarship."
It's a cool program and initiative, but I wish they would make the
proceedings of their symposium more public. Those of us struggling with the
process of digitizing "little digs" and surveys would love to see and understand
more clearly how the big boys do it.
</blockquote>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://teachingthursday.org/2009/09/17/the-cost-of-cheap-
education/">Anne Kelsch's piece on Teaching Thursday</a> was linked to from an
article in the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/07/us/07iht-
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currents.html?_r=1&ref=world">New York Times</a>. Teaching Thursday is now

global and world wide.</li>
<li><a
href="http://www.cricinfo.com/indvaus2009/engine/current/match/416240.html">The
Australia v. India one-day international yesterday was pretty exciting</a>.</li>
</ul>
Now back to preparing the data for the Ohio Boeotia Expedition.
Have a great weekend.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Chuck Jones
IP: 24.199.91.113
DATE: 11/06/2009 03:50:47 PM
Ther is a bit, but not much, about the Big Dig event here.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Chuck Jones
IP: 24.199.91.113
DATE: 11/06/2009 03:52:18 PM
here: <a
href="http://www.dainst.org/index_07b7ebf4468914ac4482001c3253dc21_en.html">http
://www.dainst.org/index_07b7ebf4468914ac4482001c3253dc21_en.html</a>
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TITLE: Teaching Thursday: Cheating and Byzantium
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BASENAME: teaching-thursday-cheating-and-byzantium
CATEGORY: Byzantium
CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 11/05/2009 07:43:42 AM

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Just a short post today because I want to leave my loyal readers plenty of
time to digest <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/2009/11/05/on-the-habit-of-
cheating/">Mick Beltz interesting and important arguments about cheating over on
481
the Teaching Thursday</a> blog. That being said, I can't resist commenting on <a
href="http://www.theweeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/017/131">
a recent article in the Weekly Standard</a> (forwarded to me by <a
href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/" title="Kostis Kourelis">Kostis
Kourelis</a>). This short article summarizes the arguments of E. Luttwak in his
new book, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/317361758">The Grand Strategy
of the Byzantine Empire</a>, and casts them in the light of U.S. diplomacy
and foreign policy. Luttwak himself summarized many of the arguments in an
article in Foreign Policy entitled "<a
href="http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/10/19/take_me_back_to_constanti
nople">Take me Back to Constantinople: How Byzantium, not Rome, can help
preserve the Pax Americana</a>".
In the article, he suggests that the often-embattled position of the
Byzantine Empire is a good parallel for the US in the 21st century. Like
Byzantium, the US is surrounded by a variety of enemies using a wide range of
tactics, with a wide range of political, military, and, ideological goals.
Moreover, the economic foundation of the Byzantine state, like the US today, was
often variable making long term strategic decisions difficult to implement (if
not to contemplate). Luttwak's observations regarding the Byzantium represent
another example of recent intellectual efforts to see Byzantium as a useful lens
through which to view a post-Modern 21st century. (My favorite being <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/61123208">J. Kristeva's Murder in
Byzantium</a>).
To get back to cheating, Luttwak argues that we can learn from the
Byzantine's is that "subversion is the cheapest past to victory. So cheap, in
fact, as compared with the costs and risks of battle, that it must always be
attempted, even with the most seemingly irreconcilable enemies." Subversion is
often seen as means to gain an "unfair" or at best, unseemly victory. It
undermines the ethical nature of battle and threatens on fundamental grounds
some of the most widely held arguments for just wars. The morally ambivalent (to
our 21st century eyes) Byzantines (read: Oriental Byzantines) could get away
which such practices, whereas the U.S. as practitioners of the "<a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/18961316">Western Way of War</a>" must play
by a more restrictive set of rules or run the risk of undermining the very
values that justified military actions from the start. In other words, cheating
in warfare is wrong.
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TITLE: Twittering to Byzantium
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BASENAME: twittering-to-byzantium
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CATEGORY: Byzantium
DATE: 11/04/2009 07:57:21 AM

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Tim Gregory sent me a link to this curious Twitter feed <a
href="http://twitter.com/CryForByzantium">Cry for Byzantium</a>. The feed
reports sequentially on events in Byzantine history as if they were being
twittered by the Byzantine Emperor (currently Anastasius I). The entire
scheme is explained in the <a href="http://cryforbyzantium.blog.com/">feed's
companion blog</a>. To create the feed, the author of the Twitter feed
draws upon the work of <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/18164817">Julius
Norwich</a> and <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/44039354">Warren
Treadgold</a> to create his first person narrative. According to the blog,
it is basically a labor of love. This is not the first instance of
Byzantium in the new media. The most famous example was <a
href="http://www.12byzantinerulers.com/">Lars Brownworth's 12 Byzantine Rulers
series of podcasts</a>. The popularity of these podcasts resulted in <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/31/education/31education.html">an article
in the New York Times</a> and eventually <a
href="http://www.openculture.com/2007/09/the_digital_tipping_point_the_wild_ride
_from_podcast_to_book_deal.html">a book deal</a> (he also maintains <a
href="http://www.losttothewest.com/">a blog</a>). Cry for
Byzantium and other new media experiments in Byzantine history got me
thinking about the relationship between scholarship and the new media. At
the same time, my graduate historiography seminar is reading <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/301314246">Hayden White</a> and <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/60966902">Dominick LaCapra</a> this
week. While these two scholars have not said anything in particular about
history and the new media per se, they have both written about the
largely uncritical acceptance of traditional forms of historical writing.
They have singled out the uncritical assumptions that undergird most historian's
adherence to traditional forms of narrative pointing out that the basic
structure of most historical narratives remains rooted in early 19th century
forms which drew heavily on the conventions of "realist" fiction. Since
that time, of course, attitudes toward the fictional narrative have changed, but
history has not. Our approach to narrating a "realistic" past continues to
look to a 19th century style for validation. As styles and practices of
narration have changed to accommodate and capture the dynamism of a changing
world more successfully, the book as the medium to communicate, narrate, and
critique has come under increasing criticism (<a
href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/blogs/in-other-words/shop-talk-with-
michael-turner/article1343483/">e.g. for a very recent one</a>). No one
would deny that recent efforts to create a paperless book (or eBook) are not at
least a little absurd. New forms of writing, technics of constructing
narrative, and communicating information such as those most obviously visible in
the internet (and new media) run the risk of making historian's long standing
commitment to the book as quaint as the 19th century narrative practices that
White and LaCapra have critiqued. While historians are trying to embrace
the new media and the potential of a "bookless future", it still seems that
practicing, academic historians are a step behind the interested public in our
willingness to experiment. On my walk home last night, I thought
about what it would mean to use Twitter to write an article, for example.
I regularly serialize my research here on my blog (in most cases writing blog
483
posts as I am doing the scholarship as sort of proto-working papers). Blog

posts are much shorter than the finished articles, but nevertheless contain at
least some basic scholarly apparatus (hyperlinks rather than footnotes in many
cases) and often help me formulate an idea before having to compose it in its
full academic form. A tweeted article could look the same way except
limited to 140 character expressions. Cry for Byzantium approaches this by
narrating an "emperor's eye" view of Byzantine history in such short passages,
but the author admits to composing his tweets before hand and preloading them
into an application that posts them regularly. Tweeting an article, as I
imagine it, would require the author to be more spontaneous and actually compose
the article in twitter over the course of a stretch of time (perhaps a
month?). The intervals between tweets, like the moves in a game of <a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correspondence_chess">correspondence
chess</a>, would allow an author to think carefully about his next move.
At the same time, the audience for the article could respond and critique, or
not, to the various ideas and arguments that emerge before their eyes.
(One downside of Cry for Byzantium is that it does not do much with the
social media aspects of Twitter. For example, neither the Ostrogothic King
Theodoric nor Pope Symmachus respond to Anastasius tweets.) This would put
some pressure on the author to articulate arguments concisely and clearly.
This focus on language is a good thing for any writer and the limit of 140
characters is not much more arbitrary than word limits imposed on various other
forms of academic writing (or works of literature in general, particularly
poetry). While it's unlike that I will run out and start Twittering an
academic article, the thought of it and the potential of such new media
experiments as Cry for Byzantium is intriguing. It serves us well
to keep an eye on these kinds of things (and that means following the <a
href="http://twitter.com/CryForByzantium">Cry for Byzantium Twitter feed</a>!)
and consider the potential of these experiments as real critiques of our
tradition-bound scholarship.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Amalia
IP: 68.95.199.218
DATE: 11/04/2009 12:47:05 PM
Someone really should take up the mantles of the Popes and King Theodoric and
start engaging. I think that would be hilarious and awesome! It might even be
enough to tempt me to twitter, just to observe it.
I have to say that I think it would be really difficult for me to critique

pieces of an article that were composed via twitter. It would be kind of like
judging a book by the first sentence, or workshopping one sentence at a time in
a novel with no context.
484
Or, perhaps I'm just overlooking the obvious--we've been using short coded
bursts of information to convey things for years in Newspaper Headlines, and I
have no trouble judging an article in the paper as worthy or not based on that
text.
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TITLE: City, Village, Monastery Podcasts from the Modern Greek Studies
Association Meeting
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BASENAME: city-village-monastery-podcasts-from-the-modern-greek-studies-
association-meeting
DATE: 11/03/2009 08:01:32 AM

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I've posted <a href="http://www.squinch.und.edu/PodcastMGSA.html">podcasts
from our panel at the Modern Greek Studies Association Meeting</a> at our <a
href="http://www.squinch.und.edu/Homepage.html">Squinch page</a>. Since I
haven't blogged about Squinch much lately, it's probably useful to remind my
readers that it is the official website of the <a
href="http://www.archaeological.org/webinfo.php?page=10209&ignum=11">Archaeo
logy of the Medieval and Post-Medieval Mediterranean Interest Group of the
Archaeological Institute of America</a>. We post our meeting minutes there,
maintain (or not) a very out of date membership list, and post other bits of
interesting new for interest group members. The most valuable thing about the
site, however, is a little section of podcasts.
We could do better with these. In fact, since our interest group was founded,
we have organized panels at the annual meeting of the <a
href="http://www.archaeological.org/">Archaeological Institute of America</a>
three times (counting this coming year), at the <a
href="http://www.bsana.net/conference/">Byzantine Studies Conference</a> (in
2007), and now at the MGSA meeting, but have only prepared podcasts for a few of
these events. Moreover, members of the interest group have undoubtedly given
numerous lectures around the world and only one, <a
href="http://www.squinch.und.edu/GregoryPodCast.html">Timothy Gregory's lecture
at the Gennadius Library</a> in 2008 appears on the page.
As the acting web master for Squinch and the Medieval and Post-Medieval
Interest Group, I'd encourage any member who gives a public talk to consider
recording it and sending it along so that we can continue to expand our
collection of podcasts. The only equipment that you need is a little hand held
recorder (generally costing less than $80). I generally edit the podcasts using
<a href="http://audacity.sourceforge.net/">Audacity</a>, a free audio editing
program that is nearly intuitive to use.
For those of you too busy to follow <a
href="http://www.squinch.und.edu/PodcastMGSA.html">the link to the podcasts</a>
in this blog post, I've made the talks available here:
1. Athens in the 19th Century:
Archaeological Landscapes and Competing Pasts 
485
Effie Athanassopoulos, University of Nebrask-

Lincoln 
<a href="http://www.squinch.und.edu/MGSA2009Talks/Athanassopoulos_Abstract.htm"
target="_blank">Abstract</a> 
<embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash"
player.swf?audioUrl=http://www.squinch.und.edu/MGSA2009Talks/Athanassopoulos.mp3
" width="400" height="27" allowscriptaccess="never" quality="best"
bgcolor="#FFFFFF" wmode="window" flashvars="playerMode=embedded" />
2. Ancient Corinth from the Ottoman
Empire to the Archaeologists 
Amelia Brown, Princeton University 
<a href="http://www.squinch.und.edu/MGSA2009Talks/Brown_Abstract.htm"
player.swf?audioUrl=http://www.squinch.und.edu/MGSA2009Talks/Brown.mp3"
width="400" height="27" allowscriptaccess="never" quality="best"
bgcolor="#FFFFFF" wmode="window" flashvars="playerMode=embedded" />
3. Between Sea and Mountain: The
Archaeology of a 20th-Century ‚ÄòSmall World‚Äô in the Upland Basins of the
Southeastern Korinthia 
William R. Caraher, University of North Dakota, David K. Pettegrew,
Messiah College, Timothy E. Gregory, Ohio State University Excavations at
Isthmia and Lita Tzortzopoulou-Gregory, Ohio State University Excavations at
Isthmia 
<a
href="http://www.squinch.und.edu/MGSA2009Talks/Caraher%20et%20al_Abstract.htm"
target="_blank">Abstract </a><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash"
player.swf?audioUrl=http://www.squinch.und.edu/MGSA2009Talks/Caraher,%20Pettegre
w,%20Gregory,%20Tzortzopoulou-Gregory.mp3" width="400" height="27"
allowscriptaccess="never" quality="best" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" wmode="window"
flashvars="playerMode=embedded" />
4. The Sacred Grip: Landscape, Art and
Architecture in Mount Menoikeion (19th-20th Centuries) 
Nikolas Bakirtzis, The Cyprus Institute, Kostis Kourelis Franklin and
Marshall College, and Matthew Milliner, Princeton University 
<a
href="http://www.squinch.und.edu/MGSA2009Talks/Bakirtzis_Abstract.htm"
player.swf?audioUrl=http://www.squinch.und.edu/MGSA2009Talks/Kourelis,%20Bakirtz
is,%20Milliner.mp3" width="400" height="27" allowscriptaccess="never"
quality="best" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" wmode="window" flashvars="playerMode=embedded"
/>
Next time you give a talk some place, consider recording it
and passing it along to me to post at the Squinch website!
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: millinerd
EMAIL: millinerd@gmail.com
IP: 91.184.215.220
URL: http://millinerd.com
DATE: 11/08/2009 01:10:03 PM
I thought it worth pointing out the fact that these podcasts reveal that Bill's
presentation is just 7 seconds over the officially allotted 20 minutes. That's
both very rare and quite impressive.
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BASENAME: reclaiming-thisve-data
DATE: 11/02/2009 07:39:41 AM

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Long time readers of this blog will remember that some very long time ago, <a
orion_archaeological_project/">I was working on digitizing and ultimately
publishing the data from the Ohio Boeotia Expedition</a>. This was a very
early "second generation" intensive, siteless pedestrian survey conducted around
the ancient city of Thisve in Boeotia directed by <a
href="http://isthmia.osu.edu/teg/">Tim Gregory</a>. Recently <a
href="http://www.arch-ant.bham.ac.uk/staff/dunn.htm">Archie Dunn at the
University of Birmingham</a> began a new project there designed to document the
Late Roman and Byzantine remains from the town. He invited us to re-
examine the survey data in the context of his new work with the hope of
producing a more thorough publication of the O.B.E.'s work as well as to
complement the more recent work both at Thisve and throughout Boeotia. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a69fcb2b970
bottom: 0px" height="271" alt="2006-06-02_0041"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a64a46b8970b
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> The Thisve basin I started
work on this project about two years ago in Athens, but quickly moved it to the
back burner when I was confronted by very difficult mapping and digitization
issues. In short, I had a terrible time mapping into my GIS the transects
that the O.B.E. walked in the landscape. This was primarily because I was
deferring to some published maps of the project's work. I simply could not
get my maps (based on some newly collected GPS data, the Greek Army Mapping
Service 1:5000s, and augmented by Google Earth images) to coincide in any
recognizable way with the published drawings of the survey area and the location
487
of the sites. As I returned to the data this fall -- in preparation for a

paper at the Archaeological Institute of America's annual meeting -- I decided
to scrap the published maps and attempt to build my own new map. That was
a much easier approach and quickly demonstrated that the published maps were,
for lack of a better word, wrong. The other decision that I had to
make was to accept that I would not be able to map some of the transects.
The recorded data was simply too flawed (and the equally, but differently flawed
published maps did not help) to allow me to reconstruct all the transects that
the O.B.E. surveyed. This was disappointing, but also liberating as many
of the project's transects digitize quite easily. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a64a46bd970
bottom: 0px" height="404" alt="Thisvi2009Working"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a64a46c6970b
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> I also began to key the finds data from
the project. The density data, as shown in the image above, produces some
recognizable trends. Artifact densities appear to be higher in the
immediately vicinity of local (and presumably ancient and Byzantine) villages,
decline across the open agricultural plain, and pick up again along the southern
boundary of the plain. The reasons for this might be
geomorphological. There is evidence, in fact, for an ancient water
management system in the plain which Pausanias described: <blockquote>
Paus. 9.32.3. Nothing would prevent the plain between the mountains becoming
a lake owing to the volume of the water, had they not made a strong dyke right
through it. So every other year they divert the water to the farther side of the
dyke, and farm the other side. Thisbe, they say, was a nymph of the country,
from whom the city has received its name.</blockquote> So, it may be that
the sediment from the flow of water through the plain was covered ceramic
evidence there (although there is some evidence for ancient material in the
Thisve plain). It could also mean that this was largely agricultural
ground and did not see the kinds of activities that deposited large quantities
of ceramics. The only problem with this is that the Cambridge/Bradford
Boeotia Project which along with its various spin-offs has surveyed numerous
cities in ancient Boeotia, has argued that fields around Boeotian cities were
often filled with ancient ceramics deposited through the process of distributing
manure in the fields nearest to the town. A more sophisticated and careful
comparison of the distribution of material outside of Thisve and outside of the
neighboring city of Thespiae may shed some light on this practice. More
importantly, the quality of the finds data is actually quite good. I am
confident that digitizing the finds collected and analyzed by the O.B.E. will
produce a nice corpus for comparison with other survey projects both in Boeotia
and in the "suburbs" of other cities in Greece. Over the next few weeks,
I'll update my progress and analysis of this data more or less regularly.
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Some quick hits on a cold and blustery Friday morning:
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.spatialecology.com/htools/index.php">Hawth's Tools</a>
and <a href="http://gaialab.asu.edu/Jordan/Reproject.php">Doc Savage's
ReprojectMe!</a> are becoming more and more important tools in my GIS tool kit.
Both are great boons to any archaeological GIS work.</li>
<li><a href="http://teachingthursday.org/" title="Teaching Thursday">Teaching

Thursday</a> this week garnered an almost record number of hits. Check it out.
And if you're at the University of North Dakota and have something to say...
drop me a line!</li>
<li>I am beginning work again on digitizing the results of the <a

orion_archaeological_project/">Ohio Boeotia Project (1979-1982)</a> around the
town of Thisbe in Boeotia (oddly enough). I am writing this blog to avoid
commencing with data entry.</li>
<li>This is a week late, but T<a

href="http://technorati.com/blogging/feature/state-of-the-blogosphere-
2009/">echnorati's State of the Blogosphere 2009</a>, came out. Academic
bloggers feature almost not at all. So much for being important.</li>
<li><a href="http://www.pkap.org/" title="PKAP">PKAP</a> Alumna makes good.

This is <a href="http://www.iup.edu/newsItem.aspx?id=86729&blogid=4991">a
nice article about Sara Fortnam's</a> continued involvement in the Pyla-
Koutsopetria Archaeological Project.</li>
<li>This is either super strange or transcendently wonderful: <a

href="http://cryforbyzantium.blog.com/">Cry for Byzantium</a>. You can follow
the 5th century A.D. via a <a href="http://twitter.com/CryForByzantium">Twitter
feed</a>. As of now, it has 172 followers, which is pretty good!</li>
<li>This is a follow up. You can now own a piece of history: a <a
href="http://www.grandforksherald.com/event/article/id/139024/">motorized La-Z-
Boy used by a Minnesota drunk driver</a>.</li>
<li>Be sure to cheer on the Phillies tomorrow night.</li>

</ul>
That's all for today because I have to get onto data entry!
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TITLE: More on Cheating at Teaching Thursday
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CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 10/29/2009 07:56:28 AM

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Check out the latest posting over at <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/"
title="Teaching Thursday">Teaching Thursday</a>. We're continuing the
conversation about cheating in American universities with a thoughtful post on
how changes in American society, particularly online culture have influenced how
students value originality. <a
href="http://teachingthursday.org/2009/10/29/online-cheating/">Cindy Prescott
notes that</a> the tendency for bloggers, in particular, simply to parrot ideas
(often without attribution) from other bloggers or more traditional news
sources, is but symptomatic of a growing disrespect for original thinking in
American society. While I'd quibble with Cindy's characterization of bloggers --
after many of the most successful and popular bloggers do offer unique
perspectives on the world and often produce original reporting on events far
ahead of traditional news venues -- I do wonder how the echo chamber of the
internet clouds confuses the uncritical readers.
In many cases the lines of attribution and authority become blurred in open
challenge to the exclusive practices promoted by a professional creative class.
The idea of legally and economically defined rights to ideas (meant to defend
the ability of a creative class to earn a living from those ideas) has earned
the ire of more radical voices on the web who view the open copying,
repackaging, and redistribution of ideas, intellectual products, and creative
projects as a means of resisting capitalism's hold over creativity and
complementary to radical critiques in the academy which argue for "the death of
the author" and see creativity as no more than the fortuitous interplay of texts
and meanings. And while it is too soon to say that these more radical voices are
winning, it is striking that they have won some crucial battles. The slow death
of DRM (digital rights management) protected music and the rise in open source,
open content, and the various legal protections offered by the <a
href="http://creativecommons.org/">creative commons</a> have all sought to
establish new lines in the battle to protect creativity.
Of course, when pressed, many academics would say that the fight against
cheating -- particularly using someone else's work without attribution -- is
rooted in fundamental moral and ethical concerns. But it's also worth
contemplating how much of our fight to preserve the sanctity of creativity
derives from (more base?) economic motivations. These motivations, on the one
hand, ensure that creative work in society is recognized (in order to be
rewarded and sustained). At the same time, a naive pressure on originality and
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fetishizing practices of attribution and intellectual property runs the risk of

paralyzing academic discourse. Proper attribution of ideas is a cherished
practice that personalizes the intellectual and academic ecosystem, but it is
rarely exhaustive and universal in tracing the roots of ideas and arguments.
Scholars regularly make decisions as to how and sometimes whether to attribute
fragmentary ideas, idiosyncratic readings of canonical texts, and seemingly
well-known "statements of fact".
This is a long way from working to prevent the crude, basely pragmatic, and
frankly un-ideological, cheating that takes place on most university campuses.
But it does speak, to some extent, to the blurry moral and ethic grounds at the
core of the discourse of originality in American culture today. I wonder how
much these conversations have undermined our efforts to enforce academic honesty
by laying bare some of the coarseness present foundations for our arguments.
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AUTHOR: Elucidarian
IP: 134.129.193.249
URL:
DATE: 10/29/2009 11:46:52 AM
Perhaps it would benefit the curriculum to revert to pencil and paper for most
work that could easily be copied from an internet source. Even if the student
is still plagiarizing, they would have to write out the text and, in the
process, become familiar with the material. Such "extra" work would be a
service to the student's education, though it would decrease the ease of an
instructor to copy and paste to google in search of stolen phrases.
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TITLE: Some New Work on Historic Corinthian Lithics
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DATE: 10/28/2009 08:24:36 AM

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The most recent volume of Hesperia <a
urists-and-photos-in-hesperia.html">also</a> has a nice article by my favorite
stone tool expert, <a href="http://www.wooster.edu/en/Academics/Areas-of-
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Study/Sociology-Anthropology/Faculty-and-Staff/P-Nick-Kardulias.aspx">P. Nick
Kardulias</a>. Nick is a long-time colleague from <a
href="http://isthmia.osu.edu/">Ohio State Excavations at Isthmia</a> (and the <a
Korinthia Archaeological Survey</a>) and is publishing our lithics from the <a
href="http://www.pkap.org/">Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological
Project</a>. His article, "<a href="http://www.atypon-
link.com/ASCS/doi/abs/10.2972/hesp.78.3.307">Flaked Stone from Isthmia</a>"
emphasizes (in particular) flaked stone from post-prehistoric contexts at
Isthmia. He also includes a brief discussion of lithics found in the
Kromna excavations and associated with some other areas in the Eastern Corinthia
surveyed by the Eastern Korinthia Archaeological Survey. Nick makes the
useful and interesting point that lithic technologies persisted into the
historic period (following on his and others important work along similar lines
in the Southern Argolid and in the study of doukani (or threshing floor) blades
on Cyprus). Nick's arguments for the use of lithics into the historical
period is important for survey archaeologists. EKAS found hundreds (if not
thousands) of chert and obsidian objects over the course of its intensive survey
in the general vicinity of Isthmia. He makes some off hand observations
regarding the cautious tendency for survey archaeologists to assign lithic
artifacts prehistoric dates (pp. 333-336) especially when they appear in
multiperiod sites. The result of this caution is that we may be
underestimating the number of lithic artifact datable to the historic
period. There is reason to think that the large assemblage of material
from EKAS (which I think Nick is studying) may provide some evidence for the use
of lithics in historical periods. Of the 222 units which produced obsidian
or chert objects, only 95 of them (43%!) produced clearly datable perhistoric
pottery. While the problems with recovering and identifying prehistoric
pottery in a survey context are well known and my hasty analysis is a simply
count of units (rather than a more useful analysis of their spatial distribution
across the site (i.e. it may be plausible to argue for the prehistoric date of
lithics found in units adjacent to those with prehistoric pottery), it
nevertheless suggests that a careful study of the distribution of lithic
artifacts across the survey area might lead to some suggestive
observations. (I'll try to do a spatial analysis of this data sometime
over the weekend...) <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a62858fc970
bottom: 0px" height="304" alt="June 2009 141"
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> Nick Kardulias looking at one big lithic in
<a
upland-basin-of-the-southeastern-korinthia.html">Lakka Skoutara</a> One
of the more interesting things about the historic use of lithics is that
obsidian (and maybe chert) blades could be reused long after their original
production. This is interesting because Kardulias argues that the initial
energy needed to produce lithic blades and other tools was not excessive nor did
it require a particularly high level of expertise. Moreover there were
good chert sources throughout the Isthmia plain most notably on
Acrocorinth. This is all to ask why would people re-use lithics in the
historic period (other than shear convenience or some accident of survival) if
they are relatively easy to acquire and manufacture? 
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TITLE: Selling the Working Group in Digital and New Media
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DATE: 10/27/2009 08:17:19 AM

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Over the last month or so a bunch of university development, marketing, and
external relation types have asked me to describe what the <a
Media</a> is. I go through my usual boilerplate on the importance of digital and
new media in our world and how the convergent space carved out by digital
technologies is not only making it easier for academic to collaborate, but it is
making it absolutely necessary. I usually go into detail about how the new
currency is information and access to information provides certain important
structures for new community oriented most obviously around social media
applications, but implicit in many of the basic interaction that we have in
digital space (for a brief and nice meditation on this same idea see <a
href="http://gracecheow.com/2009/10/26/unexpected-confluences/">here</a>). In
response to my impassioned plea for our new digital utopia, I usually get a
response like "so, this is really about building better webpages." This is not a
good sign that my university is prepared to embrace its digital future. Or,
alternately and perhaps more optimistically, this response reflects my inability
to articulate that digital future in a compelling way!
So, out of frustration I volunteered to write up for "the public" an overview
of the <a href="http://digitalgateway.und.edu/About.html">Digital and New Media
Working Group</a>.
Here it is:

The Working Group 
in Digital and New Media
We live in a world saturated with digital media. It forms a
medium through which we engage in all sorts of basic interactions. We
communicate with friends and family via email, text-messaging, and social
networking sites like Facebook or Twitter. At the same time, we find common
cause with strangers by following blogs, listening to podcasts, and celebrating
the bizarre world created by user-generated YouTube video. The digital and new
media has arrived and is shaping our world daily and producing new kinds of
communities that transcend traditional barriers of space and social identity.
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Web pioneers have become cult heroes and digital entrepreneurs have become a new
kind of intellectual and economic elite.
As recently as 10 years ago, most of would rank as mere
consumers of the web content, and the communities organized around content on
the web were mainly passive consumers of pre-packaged commodities. Today,
however, things have changed. More and more people have become producers of
digital and new media by writing their own blogs, uploading YouTube videos,
recording podcasts, and producing new works of fiction, music, and art. The most ambitious and creative
members of so-called Generation X and Y have found ways to ‚Äúmash-up‚Äù or
combine date, text, music, and video from different sources to create unique
experiences. This ability to create art, literature, music, scholarship, or any
other of the myriad of novel and bizarre experiences on the web has enabled a
new generation of digital natives to crash through the barriers that
traditionally separated the consumers and producers of media content. In the
process, this expanding group has created new communities whose identities and
space for interaction extends across a whole range of new digital devices that
have become common in our everyday life. Over the past decade, digital media has
gone from being the basis for a whole range of new information, to the
foundation for new forms of community, social and intellectual interaction, and,
of course, economic life.
Academia has not been spared from this digital media
revolution. The flexibility, dynamism, and ever-changing capabilities of our
digital world has made it a potent platform for cross disciplinary collaboration
and communication. At the University of North Dakota, the Working Group in
Digital and New Media is at the forefront of using digital technologies to break
down the traditional barriers that have separated art from science, the
humanities from the social sciences, and research from teaching. In this effort,
they deploy many of the same tools that the high-tech industry, new media
moguls, and internet entrepreneurs use to create new and digital media
experiences that regularly influence our everyday experiences. Drawing on the
power of cloud and cluster computing, powerful multi-media desktops machines,
social networking, a wide range of digital and new media theory, and rapidly
developing software infrastructure, the Working Group is committed to the
production of innovative digital media which both produces and stands at the
core of new forms of community and social space. The media truly becomes the
message as the group collaborates and shares technological expertise, digital
aesthetics, and high-tech infrastructure on campus. This groups efforts, in
turn, hope to produce a space for collaboration for other scholars, students,
and colleagues both on campus and around the world.
The overall goal of this Working Group is to capture the
entrepreneurial spirit of the dot.com generation and funnel these creative
energies to a new integrative, transmedia scholarship. The Working group
laboratory is the place where disciplinary walls collapse and digital and new
media becomes the space for innovation and collaboration. This is not just the
kind of collaborative efforts that results in scholarly articles or learned
conference papers, but a kind of public collaboration where the results of
faculty and student discussions become visible, almost instantly, in the
internet to the entire world.
Digital Video
Anyone who has watched a movie in the past five years has
noticed the amazing development of digital animation both to enhance live action
films as special effects as well as to carry the entire visual experience and
plot. When filmmakers first introduced these effects they took hours and hours
to produce and render on high-powered mainframe type computers. At the
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intersection of science, technological expertise, and art, Prof. Joel Jonientz,

of the Department of Art and Design is using the high power desktop computers in
the Digital and New Media lab to create the basic imagery for the next
generation of animate films.
These images are converted into moving images using the
computer power of the high performance computing cluster here on campus in a
technical alliance with the Digital and New Media lab. The high performance cluster is one of the newest
generation of super computers that marshals the power of a series of linked
processors working together to execute complex functions at remarkable speed.
The alliance between arts, science and technology at the lab allows faculty and
students to produce new creative projects and refine the processes that allow
these projects to become reality. What was once the realm of multi-million
dollar studios is now within reach of students and scholars here at UND.
Digital Texts
Whenever we search the web, we are familiar with the all
too common experience of bringing up masses of irrelevant information for even
the simplest and most straightforward search. Even as search engines become
better able to sort the wheat from the chaff, researchers have become
increasingly determined to make the text themselves more easy to search not only
by standard search engines like Google, but by the next generation of faceted
search engines that will allow you to conduct more focused searches directed
toward specific bodies of text. Faceted search engines depend upon various kind
of mark-up languages, like XML (Extensible Mark-up Language) which are largely
invisible to the general public, but organize information behind the scenes.
Prof. Crystal Alberts of the English Department, another scholar in the Working
Group, is working to encode historical texts with XML mark-up. This time
consuming and technical task opens important texts are searchable by researchers
and students. For example, Crystal is working with a team who is encoding the
both video and transcriptions of the famous University of North Dakota‚Äôs
Writers Conference. She is also encoding the ‚ÄúNorwegian Transcript
Collection‚Äù which documents the Nazi occupation of Norway. Alberts is opening
the remarkable archival collections here at UND to a wider world of scholars and
students and playing an even more important role in a wide rang of global
conversations on topics from fascism to literature.
Digital Archaeology
For the past decade Prof. Bill Caraher, a professor in the
Department of History, has been collecting digital data from his archaeological
work in Greece and Cyprus. This data comes in many forms ranging from databases
to digital photos and maps in Geographic Information Systems databases. The
Working Group lab has become the place where a team of undergraduate and
graduate interns work to publish this wide range of archaeological media both on
the web and in print form.
The real novelty, however, is their efforts to combine the
science and art of archaeology by integrating digital descriptions of
stratigraphy, artifact typology, and surface densities to an array of video,
audio, and fine art photographs collected from his site in Cyprus. This
combinations provides creates an archaeological experience that has something to
offer empirical scholars, artists, beginning students, and the general public
without compromising the rigor of the field research. A web interface introduces
students and scholars to the experience of Mediterranean archaeological without
specialized knowledge, expensive airfares, and costly stays away from home.
Digital Music
Digital Music has become a mainstay in American culture. As
digital music has become more sophisticated and complex, it has required
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additional levels of technical expertise and computing power. Composition of

music in a digital environment goes far beyond drum machines and keyboards to
involve complex software suites and high-powered computers. UND‚Äôs Award
Winning Composer, Prof. Michael Wittgraf participates in the Working group and
uses the laboratories facilities as a base for his research and teaching in
music composition. By combining the art of music composition with his background
in mathematics and the technologies available at the lab, Wittgraf‚Äôs work is
the embodiment of the shared space made available by digital media.
The Future of Digital and New Media
The Working Group in Digital and New Media leverages
digital media to break down barriers and form new communities across campus,
across the state, and around the world. A strong commitment to cultivating both
the intellectual and technological infrastructure ensures a place for the
University of North Dakota to the forefront of ongoing and rapidly expanding
digital revolution.
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TITLE: Tourists and Photos in Hesperia
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BASENAME: tourists-and-photos-in-hesperia
CATEGORY: Travel
DATE: 10/26/2009 08:17:56 AM

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Last week, I pulled down a box full of slides that I had taken between 1997
and 2003. I was looking for photographs of <a
upland-basin-of-the-southeastern-korinthia.html">Lakka Skoutara</a> in 2001 and
2002 (and found them, for all you who doubt my filing system), but I also found
my pictures of my first trip to Greece and my two years as an associate member
at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. I looked through box
after box of them with a combination of nostalgia and amazement as I realized
the completely clinical character of my pictures. My photos focused almost
totally on ancient and Byzantine monuments with almost no shots of my friends,
traveling companions, or the physical surroundings. As I thought about this
more, I remembered how expensive slide film and processing was (particularly for
a graduate student) and how important I thought it was to produce a teaching
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collection of images (in the days before Google Image), and this helped me relax
a bit.
It was pleasant surprise to see an article in the most recent volume of
Hesperia that looked at the 19th century equivalent of my touristic
perambulations and their photographic record. D. Harlan's "<a
href="http://www.atypon-link.com/ASCS/doi/abs/10.2972/hesp.78.3.421">Travels,
Pictures, and a Victorian Gentleman in Greece</a>" continues Hesperia's
recent interest in articles on early travelers and tourists to the Mediterranean
and the role that they played in shaping our archaeological expectations and
perceptions of Modern Greece. Harlan's article focused on the slides of T.R.R.
Stebbing who traveled to Greece and Turkey at the end of the 19th century. He
took a series of glass-plate lantern-slides of famous monuments and well-known
scenes, like the harbor at Smyrna. These slides came eventually to reside in the
archives of the Institute of Archaeology of Oxford and some of them may have
contributed to a published series of educational slides distributed by Society
for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies. These slides, then, provide insights into
not only the itinerary and values of a late 19th century tourist in the Eastern
Mediterranean, but also the development of well-known educational collections
that circulated on lantern slides widely in the the UK and the US.
The University of North Dakota has a small collection of these slides
distributed by The Keystone View Company -- one of the standard American firms
distributing such lantern slides. <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/dept/library/Collections/og49.html">Orin G.
Libby</a>, the long-time chair of the Department of History lobbied continuously
for new and updated Lantern slide projectors. At the same time, <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/dept/library/Collections/og146.html">Webster
Merrifield</a> the president of the University of North Dakota and, more or
less, a contemporary of Stebbing traveled regularly to Europe and the
Mediterranean. While there is no record of him taking slides photographs,
Merrifield's Classical training would have made it a likely possibility. After
all, we know that he returned with a small number of objects purchased from
across the Eastern Mediterranean and destined for a small (and now mostly lost)
collection of University antiquities.
As Harlan argues, these slides served to link the tourist itineraries of the
early guide books, like Murray's, Cook's, and Baedeker's, to classroom
instruction in the US. There is a direct parallel between these early tourist
itineraries and the modern day itinerary of the American School of Classical
Studies which, in turn, continues to reproduce and reinforce a standardized view
of Greece as captured by the camera's eye. (<a
href="http://montgomery.cas.muohio.edu/nimissa/jakegreece/index.html">Check out
this collection of images</a> and compare them, broadly speaking, to the
Stebbing's pictures) The persistence of such structured engagements with both
Ancient and Modern Greece is nothing short of remarkable. The distribution of
such "tourist" photos (that is photos linked directly to a tourists itinerary)
serve to condition particular engagements with the Greek landscape that, in
turn, shape the itineraries of future tourists. One goes to Greece, according to
this kind of structured engagement, less to see the country, per se, and more to
reproduce images, vistas, and scenes burned into your memory through the wide
distribution and use of images. This likely accounts for the slow rate of change
in tourist itineraries (and the itinerary of the American School and other study
tours to Greece) and the persistent (if slowly dissipating) view of Greece as a
place of history rather than a dynamic society with its own character, problems,
and potentials.
More on this exciting fascicule of Hesperia later in the week!
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COMMENT:
IP: 155.68.29.254
DATE: 10/26/2009 03:22:11 PM
The Keystone company also made box sets that they tried to sell to schools
throughout the US. There's a nice catalog of them (if you're ever in a
cataloging mood). I have images of traveling salesmen knocking on the doors of
schools. The promotional material had "authoritative" quotations by University
professors. They're also pretty cheap on eBay.
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IP: 134.129.203.199
DATE: 10/27/2009 08:30:06 AM
your post made me think of the magnum photographer martin parr who has done a
fabulous series of photographs of tourists at a variety of sites around the
world. his work often deals with ideas of consumption and with this series in
particular looks at how tourists search for authentic cultures may end up
destroying them in the process. his images are full of wit and humor...one of
my favorites. Below are a few examples...
<a href="http://www.aperture.org/exposures/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/2008-
auction-parr-ma2e30991.jpg">http://www.aperture.org/exposures/wp-
content/uploads/2008/10/2008-auction-parr-ma2e30991.jpg</a>
<a href="http://thelightofmanydays.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/photograph-by-
martin-
parr.jpg">http://thelightofmanydays.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/photograph-by-
martin-parr.jpg</a>
<a href="http://www.canadianart.ca/online/see-
it/2008/05/01/martin_parr1_1000.jpg">http://www.canadianart.ca/online/see-
it/2008/05/01/martin_parr1_1000.jpg</a>
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DATE: 10/23/2009 09:50:55 AM

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A sunny, but cold Friday and just a little assortment of odds and ends:
<ul>
<li>Everyone should follow the <a href="http://twitter.com/NDMOA">North Dakota
Museum of Art on Twitte</a>r.</li>
<li>I Tweeted this article yesterday, but it deserves to be blogged: <a

href="http://www.grandforksherald.com/event/article/id/138131/">"Minnesotan
admits to drinking, then driving motorized La-Z-boy".</a> It's stories like this
that cause my wife to ask "where have you taken me to live?" (but there is
nevertheless something vaguely Australian about this story).</li>
<li>A new blog, by an old friend. Check out <a

href="http://gracecheow.com/">Grace Cheow's blog on design and Chicago</a>.</li>
<li>Check out the inside workings of the <a

href="http://mygradspace.wordpress.com/">UND Graduate Schoo</a>l.</li>
<li><a href="http://www.engadget.com/2009/10/22/burger-king-selling-a-windows-
7-whopper-in-japan/#continued">This is gross</a> and super strange.</li>
<li>The population of Rome from the perspective of a tech-dude. "<a

href="http://davidgalbraith.org/trivia/graph-of-the-population-of-rome-through-
history/2189/">Rome at its nadir was about the size of Google (20k
employees)</a>."</li>
<li>A very quick note about <a href="http://omeka.org/">Omeka</a>. There is no

batch delete. So don't upload 900 photos and then decide that you need them to
not be there.</li>
</ul>
Stay tuned for podcasts from our panel at the Modern Greek Studies
Association meeting, an effort at describing the future work of the Working
Group in Digital and New Media, and some more GISing next week.
And Go Phils!
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AUTHOR: Amalia
IP: 68.95.199.218
499
DATE: 10/23/2009 10:32:37 AM

Is 7 a lucky number in Japan, and they're capitalizing on it at BK? Weird. And
kind of gross.
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TITLE: Teaching Thursday: Cheating
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BASENAME: teaching-thursday-cheating
CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 10/22/2009 08:17:49 AM

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Cross-posted to <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/">Teaching
Thursday</a>
The past few months have produced the typical batch of articles bemoaning
cheating in American universities. From blatant acts of plagiarism facilitated
by the proliferation of online materials to technologically assisted cheating on
math and science tests, the popular press has decided that university life is
overwhelmed by a culture of academic dishonesty.
I have my doubts, but I nevertheless recognize that academic dishonesty does
occur more often than it should and, as a result, I spend more time tweaking
writing assignments and changing tests and quizzes in recent years than I did
before.
One issue that I put before my esteemed readers of <a
Thursday</a>, is what are the causes of this academic dishonesty? Is it the
break down in civil society as some have suggested. Or is it simply a change in
the values associated with higher education? What role do increased economic,
social, and even political pressures put on students to complete their degrees
successful and quickly? And do these pressures cause students to cheat? At the
same time, has the current generation of university educators so fetishized
originality that students are actually paralyzed by these expectations and
driven to resort to profoundly unoriginal practices in desperation? Or has the
culture of academic cynicism, post-everything nihilism, and radical relativism
created such a confused moral zone in higher education that students lack the
moral compass necessary to avoid cheating?
On the other hand, are cheating and plagiarism simply more visible now than
they were before because we have better ways of catching students in the act?
Search engines like Google (not to mention purpose built anti-cheating services
like <a href="http://turnitin.com/static/index.html">Turnitin</a>) have made it
easier to catch the most blatant acts of plagiarism and easier to check up on
more subtle forms of unattributed "borrowing".
What role have recent changes in universities as an institutions and as
university teaching and learning as practice played in presenting a different
set of challenges to faculty committed to designing classes that thwart efforts
at academic dishonesty? Online classes are particularly challenging in this
regard even with established proctoring arrangements and the like. The influx of
students from outside the U.S. also pose challenges, as the academic standards
and practices vary considerably between cultures.
500
It is easy enough to write unique paper assignments that short circuit all
but the most ambitious strategies, but what cost do we incur when we concoct
these assignments. In other words, has cheating brought an end to the classic
"Moby Dick" paper?
So, for the next few weeks (depending on the enthusiasm of our readers!), I
invite contributions to <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/" title="Teaching
Thursday">Teaching Thursday</a>'s exploration of cheating.
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TITLE: Landscape(s) of Time
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DATE: 10/21/2009 08:23:26 AM

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One of the goals of <a
_Gregory_Tzortzopoulou_MSGA2009.pdf">our paper for the Modern Greek Studies
Association meeting</a> was to experiment some with the notion of landscape. We
juxtapose four different ways of thinking about the place called Lakka Skoutara.
By contrasting various methods for documenting Lakka Skoutara -- ranging from
intensive pedestrian survey to formation process archaeology and oral history --
we sought to problematize the link between method and place in the Greek
countryside. In particular, we focused on how different methods and perspectives
produced meaning on different chronological scales and appealed in the
conclusion to folks like Braudel and his fellow Annalistes who sought to
document history with a similar sensitivity to scale.
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a60cb461970b
One issue that I am struggling with is whether to consider the notion of
landscape as the space that encompasses all possible methods, interpretations,
time scales, and meanings. Or, on the other hand, whether methods,
interpretations, and time produce different landscapes which can be juxtaposed
and compared as discrete entities. If the former, the landscape becomes a place
where different regimes of knowledge interact. The physical reality of place
becomes the common ground for these different ways of understanding our
environment and history. Landscape archaeology represents the study of the
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landscape as a place where different ways of understanding the lived environment

interact and overlap.
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If it is the latter, we allow for the physical place of archaeological work
to dissolve or even collapse into notions of landscape that vary as much
physically as methodologically. Thus landscapes have different physical,
experiential, and epistemological realities that have little common ground. In
this assessment landscape archaeology becomes the work of documenting the
various landscapes present (as much as this is possible) and creating the
conditions necessary for them to share the space of the archaeological document.
 
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a60cb45e970b
This may just represent a tiny crisis in terminology, but it may also
represent something larger. The way that I am thinking about it, the former
appraisal of landscape makes it possible for individuals to comprehend and live
in a landscape that relies upon various discrete disciplines, methods, regimes,
and experiences to create meaning. If the latter, I wonder if the idea of
landscape becomes so highly individualized that they can only intersect within
the realm of archaeological documents (both in the sense of real, dirty-nails,
archaeology as well as the more Foucauldian variety).
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TITLE: One Last Plan and a Final Report
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BASENAME: one-last-plan-and-a-final-report
CATEGORY: Web/Tech
DATE: 10/20/2009 07:47:30 AM

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I digitized the last trench plan for the <a href="http://www.pkap.org/"
title="PKAP">Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project</a> field season
yesterday. In general, we digitize trench plans on the fly in the field directly
502
into our GIS. This allowed us to produce publication quality illustrations (or
close to it) while still excavating and allow us to make sure that we have the
detail in the trench plans correct and identify problems while the trench is
still fresh in everyone's mind. This year, however, we experienced some
complicated trench plans that simply defied quick digitization. So the
digitizing process was put off until now, when I was finally able to digitize
the last trench plan. The plan below shows a trench at the southwest corner of
an annex building of an Early Christian basilica. The majority of the annex room
was excavated over 10 years ago by a team from the Department of Antiquities. We
excavated a trench to the southwest of the main excavated area to both clarify
some stratigraphic issues and to determine whether there was more architecture
to the west of the annex room.
 
<img
-pi" width="480" height="480" alt="EU12Plan 2.jpg" /> 
</div>
 
</div>
As you can tell, this plan represents a tremendously complex trench with
multiple features and a wide array of material still embedded in the soil. From
this confusion, however, the excavator, Sarah Lepinski, was able to discern
multiple episodes of destruction and several obvious (if somewhat careless)
attempts at repair. In addition to this final trench plan, we now have digitized
plans of every stratigraphic unit removed from this trench and these will serve
to illustrate many of the episodes in this buildings history.
</div>
 
</div>
This plan will be inserted into the final reports that we produce at the end
of each field season for distribution to the various organizations that fund our
project. Our ability to digitize on the fly directly into our GIS program means
that our plans are accurate both to themselves and on the face of the earth
(i.e. to other plans on the site). The technology and the cooperation of a great
group of trench supervisors has allowed us to produce high quality digital
images almost (almost!) instantaneously. The fact that the last trench was
digitized in November (rather than years later as is not uncommon) is a
testimony to our trench supervisor's diligence and the remarkable pace of
technology.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: MA Dissertation
EMAIL: marryjohn4@gmail.com
IP: 221.132.118.230
URL: http://www.ukdissertation.co.uk/MA_Dissertation.htm
DATE: 10/21/2009 01:13:09 AM
Blogs are so informative where we get lots of information on any topic. Nice job
keep it up!!
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TITLE: Modern Greek Studies Association in Vancouver
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BASENAME: modern-greek-studies-association-in-vancouver
CATEGORY: Travel
DATE: 10/19/2009 08:14:01 AM

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I attended the <a href="http://mgsa.org/">Modern Greek Studies
Association</a> conference in Vancouver, B.C. over the last few days. It was a
great show. Our panel on the archaeology of modern Greece was sparsely attended,
but the discussion was vigorous and the feedback good. It was great to reconnect
with <a href="http://www.unl.edu/anthro/afaculty/athanassopoulos.shtml">Effie
Athanassopoulo</a>s, <a href="http://romangreece.com/">Amelia Brown</a>, and <a
href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/">Kostis Kourelis</a>. It was also fun to
meet Matthew Milliner, blogger at <a
href="http://millinerd.com/">millinerd.com</a>. and <a
href="http://northamericanchurches.blogspot.com/">northamericanchurches</a>
which I have now happily added to my delicious blogroll and will link to
regularly. (His Wordless Wednesday feature is the kind of alliterative
brilliance that I can truly appreciate).
<a
_Gregory_Tzortzopoulou_MSGA2009.pdf">Here's a link to our paper</a>. My
understanding is that Kostis Kourelis has recorded the session and I hope to
make these links to our papers as MP3s available soon. As a preview, the papers
captured the variety of methods employed to come to grips with modern Greece
with an archaeologist's tools. These methods ranged from diligent work in paper
archives to field work rooted in the best practices of processualism to post-
processual practices that sought to reconcile the varieties of relationships and
experiences recoverable within the modern landscape. What was perhaps striking
is that none of our methods were particular to the Greek
national experience. This is perhaps good in that it avoids reifying
age old arguments for Greek exceptionalism (rooted in the archaeological
practices derived in large part from the study of ancient Greece), but it was a
bit disappointing as well in that the unique history of Greek archaeology and
504
its institutions must contribute more than just a particularly well-curated body
of knowledge, but also distinctive ways of understanding the landscape, the
place, and the people. 
Vancouver was a great city. The trip to the <a
href="http://www.moa.ubc.ca/">University of British Columbia's Museum of
Anthropology</a> was a particular highlight. Much like our panel and the project
of archaeology more generally, this dramatic building sought to wrap the
material culture of the first nations peoples of the Pacific Northwest in a
modern setting. The interplay between the elaborately carved, yet functional
house posts and totem polls and the austere economy of the poured concrete
building made obvious the act of translation performed at the museum. The
artifacts of the various local tribes found themselves recontextualized within
the museum of the colonizer. The relationship between the vertical lines of the
museum and the dimensions and functions of the architectural fragments and
objects housed within it proved that some cross-cultural understanding is
possible, and while it would be neither precise nor value free, it could at
least be dramatic and emotionally evocative.
 <img
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a5f4d9df970b
-pi" width="480" height="359" alt="UBCAnthroMuseumInterior.jpg" />
 
</div>
<img
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a64bf90d970c
-pi" width="480" height="359" alt="UBCAnthroMuseumExterior.jpg" /> 
</div>
 
</div>
<img
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a64bf915970c
-pi" width="359" height="480" alt="UBCAnthroMuseumExhibit.jpg" />
</div>
The scenery around Vancouver was simply ridiculous. The rain, the coastline,
the diversity of the city's neighborhoods, and the company made the entire
experience memorable (and how often can we say that about an academic
conference?).
<img
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a64bf910970c
-pi" width="480" height="359" alt="VancouverCoast.jpg" /> 
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TITLE: Traveling Thursday
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BASENAME: traveling-thursday
CATEGORY: Travel
DATE: 10/15/2009 06:43:11 AM

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I'm off to the <a href="http://mgsa.org/">Modern Greek Studies
Association</a> meeting in Vancouver, B.C. today.
Here's my reading for the flight:
A. Mailis, "<a
href="http://brepols.metapress.com/content/d71410475102rl03/">The Early
Christian Baptisteries of Crete</a>," AnTard 14 (2006), 291-309.
Y. Hamilakis and A. Anagostopoulos, "<a
href="http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/maney/pua/2009/00000008/F0020002/art
00003">What is Archaeological Ethnography?</a>" Public Archaeology 8 (2009), 65-
87.
M. Sahlins, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/10996810">Islands of
History</a>. Chicago 1985.
Be sure to check out <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/">Teaching
Thursday</a> tomorrow when we live-blog the Reflecting on Teaching
Colloquium!
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I'm off to the Modern Greek Studies Association meeting in Vancouver, B.C.
today. ... Be sure to check out Teaching Thursday tomorrow when we live-blog the
Reflect
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TITLE: Between Sea and Mountain: The Archaeology of a 20th Century "small
world" in the upland basin of the southeastern Korinthia
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BASENAME: between-sea-and-mountain-the-archaeology-of-a-20th-century-small-
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506
DATE: 10/14/2009 08:27:42 AM

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This weekend, David Pettegrew and I are off to Vancouver, BC to give a paper
at the Modern Greek Studies Association conference. Our paper will focus
on our work with Tim Gregory and Lita Tzortzopoulou-Gregory at the upland basin
of Lakka Skoutara in the southeastern Korinthia. While we have been
preparing a proper empirical study with lots of mico-historical detail for a
formal archaeological report, David and I decided to take a bit more of a
methodological approach to the paper at the MGSA meeting. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a63b7f8d970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a5e50ac3970b
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> We focused on four scales of analysis
at the site produced by the various methods that we used to document the
material evidence present at Lakka Skoutara. We used diachronic intensive
pedestrian survey to document long term changes at the settlement. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a5e4ad5a970
width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px" height="169" alt="LSPrehistoricPottery"
width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px" height="169" alt="LSRomanPottery"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a5e4ad65970b
width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px" height="169" alt="LSMedievalPottery"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a63b228c970c
width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px" height="169" alt="LSModernPottery"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a63b229e970c
-pi" width="204" border="0"></a> We placed the results of this survey
work in a broader regional and national context to demonstrate how this material
is the evidence for a dynamic set of interconnected local, regional, and
national economic and political processes. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a63b22a8970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a5e4ad8a970b
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> We also returned to the site every
other year for a decade and documented the changes to individual buildings at
the site. Most of the buildings at Lakka Skoutara are abandoned or only
kept up in a very superficial way, so documenting their deterioration or
curation allows us to understand the processes that produced the archaeological
landscape documented through intensive survey. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a63b22c0970
507

src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a5e4ad9f970b
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a5e4ada8970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a5e4adb6970b
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a63b22d9970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a63b22eb970c
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a5e4addc970
-pi" width="204" border="0"></a> Finally, our team collected oral
history interviews from people who used the Lakka in various ways. These
interviews allowed us to put formation processes within a social context. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a5e4adeb970
width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px" height="138" alt="DSC_1016"
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a5e4ae05970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a5e4ae10970b
-pi" width="204" border="0"></a> The goal of this approach is not to
attempt to reconcile the interpretations or analysis produced by various
methods, but rather to produce parallel narratives that are linked through their
common reference to the landscape. The interplay of these references to
the landscape (i.e. signifiers) is not meant to compile a "total history" of the
landscape but to capture the dynamic nature of the landscape as a product of
experience and methods. The key to this approach is recognizing the
modern period as an important lens for viewing the landscape. An older
generation of archaeologists often tended to ignore the modern landscape as they
sought to reconstruct the ancient one particularly for rural areas. One
result of this approach was an understanding of the Greek countryside, both in
antiquity and in modern times, as a static place. More recent work on the
Greek landscape, however, has emphasized the dynamism of the 19th and 20th
century Greek countryside. Using finer resolution documentary sources than
are available to scholars of antiquity and observing more carefully the living
archaeology of Greek village life, archaeologists of modern Greece have managed
to uncover a vitality in the countryside that less critical observers
missed. By ascribing this reality as much to a method uniquely applicable
to the modern period (that is, interviews, easy examination of a whole range of
ongoing formation processes, documentary evidence) as to the dynamic nature of
the modern Greek landscape in particular, we argue that the archaeology of
modern Greek landscape emerges as a vital interpretative lens for reconsidering
ancient landscapes. This isn't to simply turn the traditional method for
understanding landscapes on its head (or resort to a clumsy ethnoarchaeology)
508
and argue that ancient landscape are similar as the modern landscape but for our
ability to document the processes that created them. Instead,
incorporating the modern landscape into our analysis of landscape more generally
allows us to problematize the methods used to create archaeological landscapes
and show that the idea of landscape requires reading methods across
periods. Thus the landscape becomes a product of our knowledge as
archaeologists and the tools that we have at our disposal to document the
material culture present for any period. Hopefully we'll have a
draft of the paper posted by the weekend. For more on our work at
Lakka Skoutara see these posts: <a
Skoutara</a> <a
Skoutara</a> <a
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COMMENT:
IP: 24.18.253.230
DATE: 10/14/2009 12:05:16 PM
I am so glad you are doing this kind of work. I was so frustrated on ASCSA
trips last fall. I could not get one person interested in looking at how
structures deteriorate -- and once we had to walk around three sides of a doozy,
or at successive constructions added to the original "old" building.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: buy viagra
EMAIL: josevjar@hotmail.com
IP: 74.55.186.151
URL: http://www.xlpharmacy.com/
DATE: 03/05/2010 10:30:07 AM
509
Hi friends I really enjoyed this post called The Archaeology of a 20th Century,
is very good!
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TITLE: Teaching Tuesday: Re-imagining the M.A. Thesis
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BASENAME: teaching-tuesday-re-imagining-the-ma-thesis
CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 10/13/2009 07:59:09 AM

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Our department has begun a discussion about our M.A. degree in history. This
has led me to think a bit about the potential of a non-thesis M.A. and the
nature of the M.A. thesis itself. It seems to me that the M.A. thesis today is
neither fish nor foul. Years ago, the M.A. was enough to teach at some
universities and represented the mastery of some content and some of the basic
research skills of the Ph.D. (Although it is interesting to note that even in
the late 19th century, folks regarded the M.A. as a bit worthless. As <a
href="http://www.historians.org/projects/cmd/2005/Report/ch1.cfm">Philip Katz's
recent survey of the M.A. degree</a> in history has recounted). Many Ph.D.
programs award the M.A. now, in passing, or designated as a kind of honorable
discharge for students who do not make the grade for Ph.D. level work. Other
places see the M.A. as a specialized, terminal degree for teachers or even
public historians. In general, these two options for the M.A. do not require the
completion of the traditional Master's Thesis.
Places like the <a href="http://www.und.edu/">University of North Dakota</a>,
however, who specialize in the M.A. in history and regard is as a stepping stone
toward admission into a Ph.D. program, continue the practice of encouraging
students to write an M.A. thesis. In general these theses are 70-100 pages in
length, make an original contribution to the discipline, and demonstrate a basic
mastery of historical methods, academic writing, and vaguely defined "historical
thinking". It's a pretty standard approach to the thesis.
The only thing is that these theses are basically exercises in method. At
half to a third of the length of a proper dissertation, they often involve far
less original research -- our M.A. program is designed to be completed in 2
years. Consequently, a Ph.D. dissertation can metastasize into a book with just
the right amount of low level intellectual radiation, the M.A. thesis can rarely
produce more than a decent article. To extract a 8,000-10,000 word article, it
is common to discard 70%-80% of the material from the M.A. thesis. This seems to
me to be a frustratingly inefficient use of time, paper, and intellectual
energy. On the other hand, graduate education in history has never been
predicated on efficiency. Students are more artisans than assembly line
workers.
The real question, however, is not whether that 80% of the thesis that is
discarded when a thesis is converted to a scholarly article is a useful
component of the process, but whether it is a useful component of the thesis.
Most of this material in the M.A. is dedicated to the careful documentation of
process. This includes extensive (and frequently over-wrought) historiographic
introductions, digressions on method and methodology, and extraneous narrative
510
or interpretive chapters designed primarily to pad out length and show

additional competence in the historical idiom. In other words, most of the
material in the M.A. thesis is dedicated to documenting the research and
composition process in a transparent way. For some students, this material
validates their ability to work like a historian, even if the final results of
the thesis do not necessarily make a substantive contribution. In my experience,
however, and for most students, these pages represent additional editing work,
citation work, and busy work which often (but not always) detracts from the
overall quality of the main argument in the text by channeling time and energy
to less significant exercises. If the goal of the M.A. is to demonstrate basic
competence as a historian, the canonical length and standards of a publishable
article should satisfy these requirements. Moreover, it would ensure that the
student would have the time and energy (especially in a two year degree) to
focus attention on the arguments that matter rather than the assorted flotsam
that M.A. thesis often attract. Finally, history is a massive competitive field.
Finding a job and establishing one's academic credentials are becoming more and
more difficult with each passing year. An more professionally oriented M.A.
thesis could contribute to a student's developing profession credentials
(especially when in a thesis-based M.A. program that is complemented by a non-
Thesis M.A. option. The latter could be geared toward professionals in public
history, teachers, and others who regard Master's degree as something other than
a stepping stone to advanced graduate work in history). So, a re-imagined M.A.
would be 8,000-12,000 words of publishable quality work, focused on an original
thesis, and bearing the efficiency of prose that marks the best kind of
published articles.
Some of the first, M.A.'s produced by <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/dept/histdept/">Department of History</a> at the
University of North Dakota appeared were supervised by <a
href="http://www.library.und.edu/dept/library/Collections/og49.html">Orin G.
Libby</a> and appeared in the early volumes of the North Dakota Historical
Quarterly. So a re-imagined M.A. thesis could even carry the imprimatur of
the father of historical research here at the University of North Dakota.
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AUTHOR: Bryaxis
EMAIL: bryaxis@gmail.com
IP: 164.15.135.34
URL: http://www.bryaxis.be
DATE: 10/13/2009 09:02:26 AM
Here in Brussels (Belgium) and most other universities in Belgium the M.A.
thesis is mandatory for all students in all orientations (be it history of
journalism, computer sciences or cognitive sciences...). Our masters can have
one of three finalities (profesionnalizing, in depth study or didactical for
either access to the professional world outside of academia, training for PhD
training or teaching in secondary schools) and the thesis may or may not put
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special emphasis on the finality's theme. They can also be the product of a
stage in professionnal environnement (in our disciplines it could be
archeological field or laboratory work, museum's work, ...). From what I hear it
is one of the most prevalent model in Europe and I've not heard any attempt to
reform the concept here (at least at ULB) despite the fact we now have 1 year MA
which do still require a 75 to 80 pages thesis for about 1/3 of the years'
credits ( and about 1/4th of the credits of the 2 years MA)
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DATE: 10/12/2009 08:00:06 AM

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I was privileged to hang out with Richard Patterson last week when he visited
the University of North Dakota. Rich is a UND alumnus, but prior to his time
here in Grand Forks, he was one of the leading lights in the New York City
graffiti underworld where he went by Rich2, Provide133, and others. It was
fantastic to watch him work and talk at length about the process of creating
graffiti in New York in the late 1970s and 1980s.
<img
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a632cb71970c
-pi" width="480" height="360" alt="RichStep1.jpg" />
One of the most striking aspects of our conversations was the process of
graffiti production in New York. Far from being a spontaneous work of creativity
(or a crime of opportunistic vandalism), graffiti art was carefully planned and
choreographed. The process of planning the art was as much, if not more
important, than its actual execution. Major works were always done in teams of
painters who regularly worked together and sought to exert influence over
particular train lines or sections of town.
A key element in painting was the acquisition of paint. The various types of
high quality paints that were preferred by graffiti painters were often hard to
find in their own neighborhoods. Consequently, they had to go to New Jersey or
more affluent areas to get these paints. This could involve trips to multiple
locations in search of particular brands and colors needed to make their work
distinct. The distinct colors in the art work, then, represented the time,
energy, and inventiveness of a particular group of painters.
<img
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a632cb8d970c
512

src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a5dc2f16970b
-pi" width="480" height="360" alt="RichStep4.jpg" /> 
Another fascinating element of graffiti art that Rich and I discussed was its
gradual emergence in mainstream consciousness. He talked about preparing
canvasses for the likes of Andy Warhol and Keith Haring and, in retrospect, how
they felt exploited by these figures in the art world. Today, of course,
graffiti artists have become increasingly clever at promoting and selling their
own art, but in the 1970s and 1980s, Rich talked about how their art represented
a call for recognition and access to opportunities. Rich and many of the early
artists who contributed so much to establishing the artistic cannon for graffiti
art were never able to reap any long term benefits of their work.
 
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a632cb7c970c
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a632cb9d970c
-pi" width="480" height="360" alt="RichStep6.jpg" /> 
Despite these disappointments, Rich found other ways to make opportunities
for himself. After playing professional basketball in Europe and Asia, he
returned to school here at the University of North Dakota where he earned both a
B.A. and an M.Ed. He currently teaches in North Carolina and paints only
occasionally spending most of his time talking to kids about how to get their
lives on track through hard work and discipline.
I was lucky enough to catch him at a moment of weakness and he produce this
canvas for my new office. Called "Archaeological Dig", it's done in hand style
and captures (only a tiny bit) of the vitality and dynamism that Rich Patterson
brings to his art.
<img
-pi" width="480" height="360" alt="Rich2ArchaeologicalDig.jpg" />
For more examples of Rich's amazing work, check out
<a href="http://axisofaccess.blogspot.com/2009/10/rich-2-visit-to-und.html">Ryan
Stander's Axis of Access</a>. For more on his contributions in particular, check
out these two interviews, <a
href="http://www.at149st.com/rich2int.html">here</a> and <a
href="http://www.subwayoutlaws.com/Interviews/rich2%20rh.htm">here</a>.
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COMMENT:
IP: 24.18.253.230
DATE: 10/12/2009 03:43:08 PM
Those were great days & some wonderful graffiti. The subway trains looked like
dragons, racing past, and you could get tremendous fights going at dinner
parties by bringing up the topic of graffiti. There is an amazing artist at
work in the University district of Seattle now,
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CATEGORY: Web/Tech
DATE: 10/09/2009 10:00:30 AM

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Some quick hits on a sunny and cold Friday morning:
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.grandforksherald.com/event/article/id/136187/">The
famous smiley water tower in Grand Forks met its end this week</a>. The local
water tower painted with a smile and wink in 1977 was dismantled despite the
controversy surrounding its importance to the local community.</li>
<li>I've begun to experiment with <a href="http://omeka.org/">Omeka</a> and

hope to have some kind of exhibit of material from the <a
href="http://www.pkap.org/">Pyla-Koustopetria Archaeological Project</a>
available by early next year.</li>
<li>I've also started blogging with <a

href="http://illuminex.com/ecto/">ecto</a>. So far, so good.</li>
<li>Finally, Ryan Stander and I received an invitation from <a

href="http://www.kickstarter.com/">Kickstarter</a> and hope to have something up
and ready to go by the end of the month.</li>
<li>If you haven't read <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/">Teaching

Thursday</a>, you should.</li>
<li>Via, <a href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/2009/10/post-byzantine-art-in-

athens.html">Objects-Buildings-Situations</a>, the <a
href="http://www.byzantinemuseum.gr/">Byzantine and Christian Museum</a> in
Athens has opened its reinstalled Post-Byzantine collection.</li>
514
<li>It's fantastic to see the new home of the <a

href="http://digitalgateway.und.edu/">Digital and New Media Working Group</a>
coming together. Photos soon.</li>
</ul>
More soon, but in the meantime, have a good weekend!
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TITLE: Teaching Thursday: More on the cost of a cheap education
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BASENAME: teaching-thursday-more-on-the-cost-of-a-cheap-education
CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 10/08/2009 07:23:52 AM

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I'll defer today to a smart post over at our <a
href="http://teachingthursday.org/">Teaching Thursday</a> blog. <a
href="http://teachingthursday.org/2009/10/08/the-cost-of-cheap-education-
another-perspective/">Michael Beltz of the Philosophy and Religion Department at
UND considers</a> the fundamental organization of the university ecology (or
economy) and wonders whether our present model of using introductory level
classes to support, in effect, upper level teaching and research is fair to
students on both a pedagogical and an economic level. Beltz notes that not only
does the university put the fewest resources into these lower level courses as
an institution but also students in the lower level classes stand to benefit the
least from the resources that these classes provide for upper level courses (in
that they benefit no more than any other citizen of the world by the research
and expertise of the scholars who take and teaching upper level courses at the
university). He argues that the fundamental iniquity of the model employed by
most universities has led to the emergence of companies like Straighterline
which offer lower divisions courses for much cheaper because they are able to
eliminate much of the university overhead.
<a href="http://teachingthursday.org/2009/10/08/the-cost-of-cheap-education-
another-perspective/">So, read his post</a>!
While this post is certainly food for thought, I'd point out that most
students do benefit from some upper level courses whether or not they are in the
field in which they take an introductory level course or not. That is to say,
you might take a lower level course in biology and may not directly benefit from
an upper level biology class, but you would benefit from an upper level course
in, say, political science or history (and these courses are sustained, at least
in theory, by faculty research). So the ecosystem, so to speak, is somewhat more
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complex than Beltz's model. But his point still stands. There is a disconnect
between the economics and philosophy of teaching at many universities.
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IP: 24.18.253.230
URL: http://angiolello.net
DATE: 10/08/2009 10:03:42 AM
Even worse, when there is a department like the Near Eastern Languages
department i used to belong to, where the senior faculty are very concerned to
spend time teaching lower division courses, the bean-counters beat them around
the head and shoulders for using "high-cost resources" on low value effort.
There was one year my chairman taught 5 scheduled courses in a quarter, while
still taking care of research and of departmental administration, because there
were not enough facult otherwise. He was roundly condemned by the bean-counters
for doing so.
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Out Loud 3
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thinking-out-loud-3
DATE: 10/07/2009 08:08:29 AM

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Last week, I looked at surface visibility and artifact densities. This
week, I want to look at two issues when considering the analysis of
distributional data across the Pyla-Koustopetria Archaeological Project's study
area. First, the distribution of ceramic material and the topography of
our site recommend that we divide our site into zones for analysis. I
decided to divide the survey area into zones to attempt to isolate some
variables influencing the distribution of material across the site. In
particular, these zones capture areas with distinct patterns and levels of
artifacts. Zone 1 -- the area around Koutsopetria -- has a ceramic density
of over 4000 artifacts per hectare. Zone 2 -- the coastal plain to the
east of Koutsopetria -- has an overall artifact density of barely 700 artifacts
516
per hectare. Beyond that the areas capture very different environmental
conditions. Zone 1 consists largely of grain stubble fields with an
average visibility of around 48%; Zone 2 units are usually sandier soils only a
few of which are under cultivation. The average density in Zone 2 is over
70%. Zones 3 and 4 are defined as much by topography as by artifact
densities. Zone 3 centers on the prehistoric site of Kokkinokremos and
featured units shaped to take into account the plowed top and unplowed slopes of
this. Zone 4 is the top of the Kazama ridge which extended north from the
height of Vigla. I have isolate Vigla from any zone since the densities
there were so high and the environmental conditions in that hill were
distinct. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a61fec54970
bottom: 0px" height="404" alt="PKAPZones"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a61fec6b970c
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> Despite the fact that these zones are
the creation the archaeologist and archaeological methods, they nevertheless
provide a way to limit some of the known variables (significant variations in
artifact density, for example, or clear differences in land use or environmental
conditions) in order to isolate other variables which may have had locally
significant influences on the distribution of artifacts. Of course, this
assumes that the characteristics that formed the basis for the zones are not the
main factors on our ability to map ceramics across the survey area. To
test that I isolated a number of variables that we have seen influencing our
ability to document the material on the surface and look at whether they
coincided with the zone divisions. First, I mapped the distribution of
grain stubble fields across the site. Grain stubble can be the survey
archaeologist's worst nightmare as it typically accompanies the remains of cute
wheat which can obscure the surface of the ground almost entirely. The
darker units had grain stubble. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a5c94ddb970
bottom: 0px" height="404" alt="PKAPZonesGS"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a61fec91970c
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> In units without grain
stubble there was frequently some standing vegetation. We recorded the
height of standing vegetation across the entire survey area. The darker
the color the higher the vegetation. Note that the height of the
vegetation doesn't influence visibility in a predictable way. Sometimes
waist height vegetation actually makes the surface easier to see. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a61fecaa970
bottom: 0px" height="404" alt="PKAPZonesVH"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a5c94dec970b
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> Another factor that plays
into the distribution of ceramics is whether the fields show signs of recent
plowing. The plow often bring material to the surface from deeper with the
plow-zone, but it can introduce background disturbance (see below) and break
pottery into small fragments that increase the number of artifacts without
increasing the amount of material (say, by weight) in the unit. At the
same time, it tends to limit vegetation across the area. The darker areas
are plowed fields. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a61fecbf970
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bottom: 0px" height="404" alt="PKAPZonesPl"

src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a61fecd8970c
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> I also mapped background
disturbance across the zones. Background disturbance is a survey
archaeology term that describes the amount of non-archaeological material in the
surface soil that confuses the eye of the archaeologist. The most common
form of background disturbance are fragments of bedrock chipped by the plow and
turned into the soil. This material often looks like pottery and makes
identifying ceramic material in the soil more difficult. Some analyses of
the data from the Eastern Korinthia Archaeological Survey has suggested that
background disturbance often influenced the ability of fieldwalkers to document
material on the ground to a considerable degree. The darker the color the
more background disturbance there was recorded. Note the consistent
moderate to heavy background disturbance across Zone 4. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a61fecf8970
bottom: 0px" height="404" alt="PKAPZonesBG"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a61fed15970c
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> These basic environmental
characteristics can now be compared to artifact distribution both across the
site and in the individual zones. Stay tuned for more! For more Thinking Out Loud see: <a
loud.html">Preliminary Analysis of Pyla-Koustopetria Archaeological Data or
Thinking Out Loud</a> <a
loud-2.html">Preliminary Analysis of Pyla-Koustopetria Archaeological Data or
Thinking Out Loud 2</a>
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TITLE: Teaching Tuesday: Syllabus as Contract
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CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 10/06/2009 07:58:49 AM

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A student confronted me this week with an old
chestnut: the syllabus is a contract. I hadn't heard this argument for many
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years and, perhaps naively, thought that it might have fallen out of
circulation. The context for this argument is my graduate historiography
seminar. In this class, I've revised the syllabus to take into account a
slightly different class dynamic than I have experienced in other classes. In
some cases, I reduced the length of some readings, swapped in alternate readings
elsewhere, and opened a discussion as to whether the assignments as I have drawn
them up in the syllabus are suitable for this particular group. Graduate
historiography can be a frustrating class, so I'll assume that the "syllabus is
contract" response is in part linked to that frustration.
On the other hand, the notion of syllabus as
contract is an interesting one. In fact, it ties into some of the discussions
that we have been having over on <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/">Teaching
Thursday</a> (especially <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/2009/09/17/the-
cost-of-cheap-education/">here</a> and <a
href="http://teachingthursday.org/2009/09/24/the-cost-of-cheap-education-
another-view/">here</a>). Over the last month, we've been discussing the rise of
for-profit online eduction companies which offer courses at amazingly low
prices. In general, they offer introductory level courses that have a strong
emphasis on content (as opposed to methods or even less tangible goals like
"critical thinking skills"). Presumably the relationship between the student and
the "content provider" is dictated by some kind of contract. That is to say, if
the student successfully completes the course, he or she should expect to have
command over the content that the course purports to provide.
In upper level courses, however, or in courses where
the goal is more methodological, the neat contractual obligation of the syllabus
writer (and the students who accept the syllabus) breaks down. On the one hand,
it is more difficult to determine whether the goals of the syllabus have been
achieved; mastery of a method, for example, relies on a level of understanding
that is notoriously difficult to evaluate. So to some extent successful
completion of the course will never be precisely concomitant with the mastery of
the material that the course presents. On the other hand, certain aspects of the
syllabus should be expected to remain more or less stable over the course of the
class. The instructor probably shouldn't change the value of assignments ex
post facto (at least to the detriment of the students) or change the
frequency of course meetings or topic of the class in a gross way. The syllabus
should, in other words, reflect fairly the nature, expectations, and content of
the class.
These vague criteria, however, are hardly the stuff
of an enforceably contract (although, it goes without saying that there are many
different kinds of contracts in the world and I am sure that there is a kind of
contract that could satisfy these vague criteria). I suppose faculty should be
able to argue that any changes to a syllabus must be changes in form rather than
changes in substance. And I suppose the syllabus could be a tool to hold
students to certain expectations and in that regard it benefits from some kind
of contractual or pseudo-legal force.
What's more disturbing to me is that there should be
a contractual mindset between faculty and student at all. Perhaps what bothers
me is that this evokes the current rage transforming academia into a vendor-
customer environment. In other words, it marks out the most blatant examples of
market capitalism coming rest in the academic world. For this week in our
seminar we've read a few articles by the British Marxist historian E.P.
Thompson. In several places, he distinguishes between the "moral economy" of the
pre-industrial period and the market economy of the industrial period. For
Thompson the moral economy was based upon a set of expectations that did not
necessary coincide with the tenants of capitalism. For example, the moral
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economy stipulated that grain be sold at a fair price by landlords and those
dependent on this grain had the right to protest unfair prices (in both violent
ways and with the threat of violence). This tacit agreement made it difficult
for landowners to pocket significant profits at the expense of the poor and also
created a set of expectations which the poor tended to follow to articulate the
limits of their tolerance.
The ritualized interaction of the moral economy has
long been a staple in the classroom. It has always been the right of students
"to vote with their feet" and abandon courses that they regarded as unfair. Our
university sanctions this particular power of students through late drop periods
and the ability to withdraw from classes without significant consequences.
Students also have means of protesting. They can complain in and outside of
class. Intentionally do poorly on assignments or refuse to cooperate in
classroom discussions. Faculty can, and do, lash out by pushing the syllabus to
its limits, but generally this kind of exchange ends poorly. In most cases,
there is a resolution or compromise struck between students and faculty and
balance is restored.
The need to view a syllabus as a contract, however,
suggests perhaps that some of these old methods of the moral economy are
breaking down and methods influenced by more formal, market driven
understandings of the relationship between faculty and students are replacing
them. Thompson alluded to the idea that students represented one of the last
remaining bastions of the pre-industrial way of life. Perhaps these days are
ending.
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TITLE: Metadata and Macintosh
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Last week, a few high-volume blogs made note of the operating systems and
browsers that their visitors used. Of particular interest was the
significant increase in number of users using Macs over a two year time
span. While my blog does not even receive a fraction of the traffic of <a
href="http://kottke.org/09/09/kottkeorg-visitor-trends-and-
statistics">kottke.org</a> (for example), I thought that I'd run the same
analysis on my data. <img
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src="https://www.google.com/analytics/reporting/pie?p=6671es03900s00e00a00100100
1001&w=340&h=240" align="right"> This is the overall distribution
of operating systems: 1. Windows: 79.99% 2. Macintosh: 18.28% 3.
Linux : 1.17% 4. iPhone: 0.24% 5. Sony: 0.01% Obviously,
Archaeology of the Mediterranean World readers are overwhelmingly PC users.
One Year Ago: 1. Windows: 82.08% 2. Macintosh: 16.50% 3. Linx:
1.05% 4. iPhone: 0.13% 5. FreeBSD: 0.01% This year: 1.
Windows: 78.06% 2. Macintosh: 19.90% 3. Linux: 1.28% 4. iPhone:
0.46% 5. Sony: 0.03% Last three months: 1. Windows:
76.83% 2. Macintosh: 19.93% 3. Lixux: 1.77% 4. iPhone: 0.62% 5.
Sony: 0.10% <img
src="https://www.google.com/analytics/reporting/pie?p=3it3170mo08106y01i01d00b00
9007&w=340&h=240" align="right"> As for browsers, this is the
overall distribution: 1. Firefox: 45.65% 2. IE: 39.32% 3. Safari:
8.16% 4. Opera: 2.89% 5. Crome: 2.50% One year ago: 1. IE:
45.05% 2. Firefox: 42.52% 3. Safari: 7.65% 4. Opera: 3.08 5.
Monzilla: 0.66% This year: 1. Firefox: 48.60% 2. IE:
33.92% 3. Safari: 8.65% 4. Chrome: 4.47% 5. Opera: 7.71% Last
three months: 1. Firefox: 51.24% 2. IE: 31.86% 3. Safari:
8.59% 4. Chrome: 4.16% 5. Opera: 2.14% But what does this all
mean? Compared to kottke.org and other high-volume blogs, my blog is
behind in visits by Macs. I'll offer a few mundane observations: 1.
Over 45% of my visitors are not from the U.S. Macintosh may have gained
popularity in the US particularly over the last year or so, but overseas, the
world is still overwhelmingly PC oriented. So some of the strong Windows
showing probably derives from the international visitors to this blog. I
suspect that archaeologists slightly prefer PCs (my friends at the University of
Cincinnati aside) especially those who run Microsoft Access databases and ESRI
GIS programs. 2. More Macs than ever. From totally anecdotal
evidence, I have seen more Macs on campus this year than ever before. In
fact, in my class that is an introduction to the history major (History 240, for
those of you who read this blog regularly), I'd guess that 20% of the class are
Mac users. So the upsurge in the number of Mac users in the last three months
(when people tend to buy their shinny new back-to-school computers) is not
completely surprising (nor is the uptick in Safari users). 3. Where are
the netbooks? I've also seen a huge increase in the number of netbooks on
campus. Most of those run Windows, but apparently these folks don't visit
my blog. Perhaps enough of these new netbooks run Linux that they account for
the increase in number of Lixus OS visitors (and most likely account for some of
the increase in number of Firefox users). 4. People are using
Chrome, apparently at the expense of Internet Explorer (since there is still no
Chrome for Mac). It's remarkable to see how precipitously the number of IE
users have fallen over the past two years Bloggers seems to love
Macs. I admit to using a Mac to post on this blog probably 60% of the
time, but for the record, I prefer my Windows computer for blogging. As
far as I can tell, there is no Mac rival to Windows Live Writer, which is the
best blogging software around. It lets me compose and lay-out my post in a
word processor-like interface, decent spell checking, allows me to produce a
glossery of links and to drag-and-drop pictures and data produced by other
Microsoft programs. I can post to my various blogs by a simple menu making
it easy to cross-post (without cutting and pasting) and even saves drafts of my
blog posts making it easy for me to update a post. And best of all, it was
free! The only inconvenience is that I tend to write on my Mac, so I'd
love to find a decent blogging program for that OS... any advice on one?
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AUTHOR: Sam Wise
EMAIL: sam@sortingoutscience.net
IP: 192.35.35.34
URL: http://sortingoutscience.net
DATE: 10/05/2009 11:33:12 AM
If you're looking for Mac blog software, you should definitely check out ecto:
<a href="http://illuminex.com/ecto">http://illuminex.com/ecto</a>
Works with pretty nearly all blog CMSs, has a 21 day free trial, is pretty
stable / reliable, lets you do rich text editing.
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A gray and cold Friday for some quick hits: <ul> <li>Some really good
posts from <a href="http://tenured-radical.blogspot.com/">Tenure Radical</a>
lately.</li> <li><a
href="http://electricarchaeologist.wordpress.com/2009/09/29/70-000-
views/">70,000 hits at Electric Archaeologist</a>... congrats! And it's
nice to see that Archaeology of the Mediterranean World did its part.</li>
<li>New York graffiti artist and University of North Dakota alumnus Richard
Patterson (of the famed <a
href="http://axisofaccess.blogspot.com/2009/08/contested-spaces-unds-okelly-
hall-and.html">O'Kelly Graffiti Wall</a>) will be on campus October 5th to do
some new work and talk about it in the Anna Mae Hughes Room in the Hughes Fine
Arts Building.</li> <li>Congrats to the NL East Winning Phillies.</li> <li>Be
sure to check out <a href="http://www.teachingthursday.org/">Teaching
Thursday</a> and the schedule for the Reflecting on Teaching Colloquium on
October 16-17 at the Memorial Union on campus. We are looking for someone
to live blog parts of the conference. If you're interested drop me a
line!</li> <li>Check out <a href="http://kottke.org/09/09/kottkeorg-visitor-
trends-and-statistics">kottke.org's user stats</a> and follow the links to
similar stats from other blogs. I'll put together some for my blog on a
Metadata Monday.</li></ul> So, it felt like a slow week in blog world... and
maybe it was. Have a good weekend!
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AUTHOR: Dallas
IP: 65.60.192.124
URL:
DATE: 10/02/2009 04:32:42 PM
...and their fine closer, Brad Lidge, er, Ryan Madson--or whoever it is today.
Best of luck in October to the Phils.
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IP: 134.129.203.199
DATE: 10/05/2009 09:25:23 AM
i will have picts from the Rich 2 visit up today or tomorrow over at AoA
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I assigned Herbert B. Adams' "Special Methods of Historical Study" from <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/34908853">G. Stanley Hall ed., Methods of
Teaching History. (Boston 1902)</a> this week for my History 240: The
Historians Craft class. It's an amazing, disorganized, bundle of
observations, ideas, and arguments. He reports on everything from the
texts used by freshman as Smith College, where Adams taught in the late 1870s
and early 1880s, to the methods employed in his famous seminar at Johns
Hopkins. Many of his observations are quite modern and could well appear
in a more modern teaching manual. In particular, Adams rails
against the use of lecture in teaching history. <blockquote>
"[lectures or dictations], though good to a certain extent, become deadening
to a class when its members are no longer stimulated to original research, but
sink back in passive reliance upon the authority of the lecturer. That
method of teaching history which converts bright young pupils into note-taking
machines is a bad method. Its the construction of a poor text-book at the
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expense of much valuable time and youthful energy... The simple minded student
assents to this counsel, and says, that it is a great comfort to have everything
in black and white, so that he can carry it all home. But no scrap-book of
facts can give wisdom, any more than a tank of water can form a running
spring. It is, perhaps, of as much consequence to teach a young person how
to study history as to teach him history itself." (p. 120)</blockquote>
Adams goes on the sing the praises of the seminar system where students work
independently on research projects and meet periodically to share ideas,
citations, and criticisms. He notes that the seminar is well-suited for
work in local history as considerable local resources exist at hand and can be
brought together in a seminar library. Moreover, according to Adams, there
was a great need for local history in the U.S. from works of basic analysis of
governmental structures to the arduous task of accumulating documents and
preparing archives which would ultimately sustain the work of seminar students
into the future. What is remarkable, of course, is that much of Adams
advice continues to echo the halls of departments today. The relatively
recent push for public history (which almost invariably involves a local
component) and its emphasis on method updates and complements century-old
invectives against content-driven lecture classes. The internet has
emerged as a kind of global archive of historical documents and data and
producing a kind of universal seminar library accessible to students from their
laptops in the classroom. At the same time, many of our students continue
to resist the risks and effort involved in original research and prefer lecture
driven classes, the clear "black and white" content, and routine of memorization
and reproduction to the unpredictable, syncopated rhythms of archival
research. It's sort of discouraging when you think too hard about
it. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a5b0ac8c970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a6078a4c970c
-pi" width="400" border="0"></a>
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I am continuing to work on analyzing the survey data collected from 4 seasons
of intensive survey at Pyla-Koutsopetria in Cyprus. On Monday, I did
focused on the relationship between artifact density data and surface
visibility. The survey area for PKAP was particularly uniform in ground
cover and field conditions. Most of the survey units had been under
cultivation with cereals and were covered with grain stubble or were recently
fallow. <a
bottom: 0px" height="400" alt="GrainStubbleFields"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a5acdfbe970b
-pi" width="400" border="0"></a> Average visibility across the entire
survey area was around 60%. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a603b83f970
bottom: 0px" height="400" alt="SurfaceVisibility"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a5acdfca970b
-pi" width="400" border="0"></a> Average density of ceramic objects per
area walked across the entire site is 2183 ceramic artifacts per hectare. 
bottom: 0px" height="400" alt="OverallArtifactDensity"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a5acdfcd970b
-pi" width="400" border="0"></a> One of the key discussions in the
analysis of surface density data is how to compensate for variable
visibility. Our survey area consisted of only 471 units -- hardly a robust
sample. The highest density areas of the site coincided with units of
middling visibility and (to make matters worse) there were a significant number
of very high visibility units that produced almost no artifacts (predominantly
from an area that was an infilled ancient embayment and a coastal marsh drained
in relatively recent times). So, the small sample size and these
topographical and archaeological patterns make doing any analysis of artifact
density and surface visibility across the entire site difficult. I did,
however, run a small analysis on the artifact densities and visibilities from
the area of the Koutsopetria plain. We have reason to think that the
distribution of ceramics across this area could be relatively uniform as most of
these fields overlay buildings from the Late Roman period (if not other periods
as well). At the same time, the units had some variation in visibility
with the lowest visibility units being 20% and highest visibility units being
around 60%. Most units had 30%-50% visibility. While the sample size is
disturbingly small, it is interesting that there is a nice linear relationship
between artifact densities and the surface visibility in Koutsopetria with an R-
squared of 0.9229. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a5acdfd0970
-pi" width="400" border="0"></a> This does not hold up across the entire
survey area where for the same range of surface visibility there is no evidence
of a linear relationship at all and the R-squared is a laughable 0.5475.
(Note that since the following graph compares units of different sizes, I
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compared them using density per area walked (per ha). The graph above
compares units of identical size, so I can compare raw ceramic counts.) <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a5acdfdc970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a603b85e970c
-pi" width="400" border="0"></a> For more installments
of Preliminary Analysis of Pyla-Koustopetria Archaeological Data or Thinking Out
Loud: <a
loud.html">Preliminary Analysis of Pyla-Koustopetria Archaeological Data or
Thinking Out Loud</a> More as I continue to work through the
data.
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It's been pretty interesting (in a bit of a train-wreck kind of way) to watch
the tense fall as a group of bloggers sought to get their blogging group,
Bibliobloggers, associated formally with the <a href="http://www.sbl-
site.org/">Society of Biblical Literature</a> (SBL). The upshot of this
was that their group did become affiliated with the SBL, but not before some
serious ruffled feathers, tense comments, and at least one blogger quitting
blogging entirely. I don't know any of the participants in this dispute
and detect a certain amount of personal animosity among them. Putting
aside the interpersonal tensions that are likely to be the part of any social
network, it is interesting to see some of the standard issues of the blogging
discourse emerge once again. I am not going to link to specific posts in my
observations here -- out of only laziness and the fact that I read the various
perspectives in an unsystematic way (or until I decided that most folks were
making arguments that I had heard before in other contexts). For a general
recap, check out <a href="http://danielomcclellan.wordpress.com/2009/09/12/sbl-
affiliation-posts-consolidated/">this post on Daniel O. McClellan's</a> blog
(via Chuck Jones at the <a
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href="http://ancientworldbloggers.blogspot.com/2009/09/sbl-affiliation-with-
bibliobloggers.html">Ancient World Bloggers Group</a>), and if you can only read
one post be sure to read Chris Heard's "<a
href="http://www.heardworld.com/higgaion/?p=1481#more-1481">Blogging, SBL
affiliation, and academic respectability</a>", it's hilarious: 1.
Bloggers like to think of themselves as voices calling out in the desert (or at
least mildly subversive). I must admit that much of the initial appeal of
blogging to me was to find a medium that allowed me to work around the
traditional barriers of the academic world. That is to meld (such as I
can) the intellectual with the academic. I can explore my interests here
in a public forum, offer up working papers, comment on various academic and
intellectual issues, and watch the world go by without the limitations imposed
by peer review (and, of course, without the benefits of peer review
either). The formal association with a group and then the formal
association with a professional academic organization (like the SBL or the AIA
or even for that matter a university) would certain undermine any subversive
street cred that I imagine myself possessing, not to mention run the risk of
imposing some standards or limits external to my blog. While this wouldn't
be a bad thing (a copy editor would be great, in fact), it's not why I blog and
would hate to have to worry about my ties with a professional body when I begin
to compose a post. 2. Blogging and professional credit. Of course, there
has long been a group of bloggers who have sought to make blogging a more
recognized form of academic discourse and it is easy to see how earning an
official professional association would not help Invariably this
group is attacked by folks who seem to think that tenure credit should only be
given for peer reviewed achievements. This is a silly position to hold, of
course, since most of us earn tenure credit for a wide range of activities from
community and university service to teaching that are not subjected to the
standard strictures of peer review. Moreover, we all know that the notion
of peer review varies greatly across a wide range of academic publications
which, in all but the most research focused departments, earn something toward
tenure (e.g. book reviews, encyclopedia articles, invited contributions, et
c.). While I can completely understand how professional pressures can lead
us to reading academic activity as a zero-sum enterprise (i.e. if I am blogging
then I am not working on a peer reviewed article, a monograph, et c.), I also
like to think that blogging evokes some of now-extinct forms of scholarly
communication such as the learned communication or the academic correspondence
(a public statement regarding a particular issue that would be circulated among
a group or published in a journal). These forms of communication
circulated in intellectual and academic communities and served to inform like-
minded individuals and stimulate debate. The benefit to one's professional
status, then, doesn't come from the overly bureaucratized tenure process, but
from working to enrich the academic discourse more broadly. In other
words, you are benefiting the field of which you are a part. (And for the
record, I include my blog in my c.v. under the heading "other publications"
where I include non-peer reviewed articles, multimedia projects, and the
like). 3. Blogs and Incomplete Truths. There are still folks out
there who worry that blogging is just another way to fill the internet with
incomplete ideas, flights of fancy, and just plain rubbish. Typically, these
people are concerned that the general public or students will struggle to
separate the good, high-quality stuff, from the low quality trash. The
interest in getting the SBL or any formal affiliation is that it will mark a
blog out as a legitimate contributor to conversation and not just another source
of dubious quality internet drivel. While I appreciate the concern that
blogs have often become the medium for cranks or conduits for misinformation,
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there is no reason to confuse the medium with the message. I am tiring of

folks who do not seems to expect our colleagues, students. and the general
public to be able to read critically on the web. 4. Are we still
talking about blogging? It's funny to think that blogging as a medium is almost
15 years old at this point. Let's shift the conversation the conversation to
more dynamic places within the new media-sphere. How does YouTube,
Twitter, and other highly social media outlets contribute or subvert the core
missions of our professional organizations? Oh, and do we need an <a
href="http://www.archaeological.org/">AIA group</a> dedicated to
Archaeobloggers?
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TITLE: The Flu, The University, and the Department of History
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We've recently been barraged by university communications regarding prospects
of a serious outbreak of the H1N1 Swine Flu. This is not the first time
that the <a href="http://www.und.edu/">University of North Dakota</a> has had to
deal with an outbreak of the flu. In 1918, UND endured a particularly
tragic outbreak of flu as the campus transformed itself into a base for the
Student Army Training Corps (SATC). Similar to our current situation, the
flu crisis was managed by a new university president, <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/dept/library/Collections/og41.html">Thomas
Kane</a>, who had been inaugurated just a year earlier. Unlike our current
leader, <a href="http://undpresidentsblog.wordpress.com/">Robert Kelley</a>,
however, Kane had had a controversial first few months in office including the
botched handling of a student drinking case, a flip-flopping attitude toward the
tense political situation in the state, and an inflammatory inaugural address
that rankled the sensitivities of many longtime university faculty members
including the irascible Orin G. Libby. <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1107281">Louis Geiger's The University of the
Northern Plains</a> provides the best summary of the flu's decent on campus
in October of 1918. The university had just re-organized itself to take on
the training of over 400 army cadets who greatly outnumbered the small
body of regular students on campus. The campus moved to a quarter system,
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<a href="http://www.library.und.edu/Collections/temporary/Davis.html">Davis
Hall</a>, <a
href="http://www.und.edu/dept/our/html/factbook/b.html#budgeHall">Budge
Hall</a>, the dinning hall of the Commons, and the Phi Delta Theta Fraternity
house were turned over to military use as barracks and headquarters for the
cadets and money was allocated for the construction of <a
href="http://www.und.edu/dept/our/html/factbook/a.html#armory">an
Armory</a>. Despite what would have appeared to be significant
preparations for the arrival of these new students, the university was
unprepared for the influenza epidemic when it struck campus in October. By
October 9th, the university had suspended classes and placed the entire campus
under a quarantine. Training and classes for the SATC abruptly stopped as
growing numbers of the corp became ill and parts of Budge Hall and the Phi Delta
Theta house were converted to make-shift hospitals to serve the increasing
number of sick students. The hospitals, however, lacked proper equipment,
toiletries, and bedding making them poorly suited to care for the sick.
Moreover, the Grand Forks community, an important support network for the
university, suffered at least as grievously as the university campus. By
mid-October Grand Forks reported over 3000 cases of the flu and on campus 320 of
the 470 cadets were ill. Tragically, 29 of these students would die and
Geiger reports that no other university campus had a worse record (p.
298). In contrast, the Agricultural College in Fargo had far fewer cases
and deaths despite having a larger number of SATC students; the quick acting
Dean of the Medical School, <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/dept/library/Collections/og142.html">Harley E.
French</a>, took decisive measures to prevent the spread of the flu among campus
women (who were organized and housed separately from the SATC). One died,
but far fewer were ill. The upshot of the flu tragedy on the University
of North Dakota's campus was significant. Orin G. Libby, the noted historian,
had served as the chair of the University's War Committee and had worked
alongside President Kane to bring to make the arrangements necessary to
accommodate the SATC on campus. Libby, whose feathers had been ruffled
already by Kane's impolitic speech at his inauguration, placed the blame for the
tragic student deaths squarely on Kane's shoulders. In 1920, Libby
joined a group of faculty members including John M. Gillette, perhaps the most
well-regarded and influential member of the university faculty during the first
half of the 20th century, to call for Kane's removal. Kane for his part
rallied support from Vernon Squires (who would later write the first history of
the university) and, perhaps significantly, Dean French of the Medical
School. The precise details of this conflict have been lost, but it
attracted sufficient attention from various university stakeholders to
compromise in a serious way both Kane's and Libby's ability to serve as campus
leaders. Libby and the Department of History, in particular, suffered at
the hands of Kane as they clashed repeatedly throughout the early years of the
1920s (for more the Kane-Libby clashes see my three-part series: <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2008/03/po
litics-and-th.html">Politics and the Presidency at UND: Reflections on the Past
at the Dawn of a New Era, part 1</a>, <a
litics-and--1.html">part 2</a>, <a
litics-and-th.html">part 3</a>) Stay healthy, UND!
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It's been a busy week! But too many fun web discoveries to pass up on
a quick hits and varia. <ul> <li><a
href="http://www.staffordshirehoard.org.uk/">The Staffordshire Hoard</a>.
Pretty amazing stuff and with all the recent interest in Late Antique/Early
Medieval trade, this hoard is certain to contribute in some way to broader
conversations about the earliest European economy.</li> <li><a
href="http://makingmaps.net/">Making Map: DIY Cartography</a>. <a
href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/">Kostis Kourelis</a> turned me onto this
blog with it's slight edge of punk-ness via the DIY ethos.</li> <li>The <a
href="http://radio.soundwalk.com/">Sound of Phillippe Starck</a> as a 24 hour
stream. </li> <li>The <a href="http://mygradspace.wordpress.com/">Graduate
School Blog here at UND</a> has been particular productive lately. They
have embraced blogging better than any <a
href="http://undpresidentsblog.wordpress.com/">other division</a> on
campus.</li> <li>The photographs coming from the Australian dust storm are
amazing. <a
href="http://www.monstersandcritics.com/science/features/article_1503028.php/In-
Pictures-Australia-Dust-Storm-Satellite-Imagery">As is this satellite
image</a>.</li> <li>Be sure to check out <a
href="http://www.teachingthursday.org/">Teaching Thursday</a>.</li> <li>Things
are coming together for the exhibition of <a
href="http://axisofaccess.blogspot.com/">Ryan Stander</a> photographs.
Keep your eyes on this spot.</li></ul> Have a good weekend!
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TITLE: Teaching Thursday: Another View on the Cost of Cheap Education

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Crossposted with <a href="http://www.teachingthursday.org/">Teaching
Thursday</a>. It was really exciting to see <a
href="http://teachingthursday.org/2009/09/17/the-cost-of-cheap-education/">the
interaction between John Tagg and Anne Kelsch</a> who are two of the most
thoughtful commentators on higher education to grace this humble blog.
Their discussion revolved around <a
href="http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/college_guide/feature/college_for_99_a_mo
nth.php?page=all&print=true">a recent Washington Monthly article entitled
"College for $99 a Month"</a> which reviewed the education model
offered by companies such as <a
href="http://www.straighterline.com/">Straighterline</a>. My post today
is less of a critique of their posts and more a complement to it. I want
to offer a slightly different perspective on the same article. First, one
aspect of the original article that was not noted by either Tagg or Kelsch was
that introductory level classes have evolved over a particular trajectory in
part to satisfy the changing needs of university faculty. Introductory
level classes play a key role in the university ecosystem, according to the
Washington Monthly article, by providing income that supports upper level
courses, research (particularly in the humanities where external funding
opportunities are relatively scarce), and even the physical facilities and
services which have become synonymous with university life. So, the
nature of these lower division courses and, in particular, their size has become
an important feature in university fiscal ecology; changing one part of the
ecosystem will necessitate changes across the ecosystem. This is not say
that this is a bad thing, but we are all probably aware that the balance
between teaching and research is one of the key issues at stake.
Introductory level courses are frequently taught by non-research faculty (often
adjuncts). Redesigning introductory level courses, making them smaller,
or changing their relationship to the rest of the curriculum are expensive and
potentially time consuming tasks that take time away from research, writing, and
other faculty tasks. The university ecosystem is a delicate thing!
The advantage that companies like Straighterline have is that they employ
individuals who are charged only with teaching. They can offer courses so
cheaply because they don't have to manage the complex ecosystem of the
modern university. Next, if changes in the way that we teaching lower
level classes will be this expensive and disruptive process within the
university ecosystem, we have to consider quite seriously who will bear the
costs. The democratization of higher education represents one of the
great myths of the American success story. At the same time, higher
education likes to cling to its elite roots. Many of the expectations
surrounding university life redound with ideals from the earliest days of the
modern university. As Tagg points out when he asks "what is college
for?", there is not a single answer that describes the role of college in
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the development of all students. Our calls for a university that develops
students in accordance with the age old principles of humanism will not
necessarily ring true with our entire student body. In many ways,
companies like Straighterline which offer bargain basement higher education
packages cater to students who have radically different expectations of their
college education. Universities have long ago absorbed crucial aspects of
vocational education which practices across the world have demonstrated can
achieve some degree of success without placing emphasis on critical thinking or
intellectual development and focusing on the mastery of a set of practices or
body of content. While we can argue that there are better and worse ways
to communicate and teach content, the basic goals of these degrees and
experiences are substantially different from the goals of fields like history,
English, or math. My point here is that universities have pulled together
a wide range of disciplines under a single roof. At some point in the
past, this may have led to economies of scale where facilities and certain core
resources could be shared among these divergent disciplines; today, we might
argue that this forced marriage of vocational, practical, theoretical, and
philosophical education works counter to the basic democratization of higher
learning. Maybe Straigherline can do as well, if not better, than
tradition bound university practices which, and here's the catch, are
expensive, rooted at least partially in lingering elitism, and perhaps
maintained as much for their place within the university ecosystem as any
genuine concern about producing a sustainable, well-educated society.
 Part of my evidence for this (and it's a bit circular) is the
growing Luddism of many university faculty. (This critique does not
apply, obviously, to Anne's and John's posts; they both demand that we
reformulate the very nature of college education which would, in part, undermine
the position of companies like Straighterline.) When I use the term
Luddism, I don't mean it to describe an irrational response to technological
change, but rather in terms of <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/300752543">E.P. Thompson's</a> reading of
Luddite radicalism in 18th century England. He argued (bear in mind
I'm an Ancient Historian) that the Luddites were less concerned with the
industrial revolution and the mechanization of the cloth production, per se, and
more concerned with the incredibly deleterious effects of these changes on the
social fabric of their communities. The violent and superficially futile
protests were socially calculated acts meant to highlight the plight of
communities which were suffering grievously as a result of
industrialization. Today, I often wonder whether our protests against
changes within academia represent a kind of Luddite response to an increasingly
dynamic educational environment. The coming of the $99 university degree
may not be inevitable, but university much face the changes brought about by
technology, the increasingly challenging global economy, and a dynamic workforce
which struggles to relate to the elitist rhetoric that has come to dominate the
discourse of higher education. What I am suggesting is that the response
to challenges from places like Straighterline tend to be geared more toward
shoring up the existing university ecosystem rather than understanding how such
challenges (which are basically symptomatic of larger changes in how education
and information is understood in the global economy) will inevitably produce a
radical restructuring of university life. To return to my first
observation: that companies like Straigherline do not simply offer a new model
for teaching university level classes, but threaten to disrupt the institutional
fabric of university life by separating teaching from research, undermining long
held faculty privileges (office space, access to libraries, relatively generous
pay, support for humanities research, et c.), and repositioning higher education
532
to serve students who view the college degree as a kind of vocational or

practical training. These seismic changes are equal parts terrifying
(hence the Luddism) and exciting (hence the quality of Anne's and John's
response), but above all demand wide ranging discussions of the kind that our <a
href="http://www.teachingthursday.org/">Teaching Thursday</a> blog seeks to
encourage and support. So, if you have an opinion, idea, or comment, post
it here or drop me or Anne Kelsch a line and we'll make sure that your post
appears on <a href="http://www.teachingthursday.org/">Teaching
Thursday</a>. 
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Out Loud
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thinking-out-loud
DATE: 09/23/2009 11:14:21 AM

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 I have a whole day set aside for data analysis and number crunching of PKAP
Survey data. This is the first step in writing up the definitive analysis
of the distributional data from PKAP for the planned monograph. We have
imposed a deadline of January 15th for producing a set of basic chapters focused
on the survey data. Today, I am working on getting an overall sense of
the chronological and spatial distribution of material at the site. While
we understand this in an impressionistic way, we have done very little second
phases analysis to challenge or test our impressions. This kind of
analysis involves testing our general and largely impressionistic observations
against the actual data parsed in different, more systematic and critical
ways. So, to begin, a random map. This map shows the toponyms
assigned in the field to various areas in the PKAP survey area. I didn't
include the names of the toponyms, in part because they don't matter here.
What is interesting is when the various toponyms overlap each other in ways that
cartographically do not seem to make sense, but sure reflect some reality on the
ground as our team leaders (who recorded toponyms in the field) sought to
associate spaces in our survey universe with known features in the
landscape. Since our survey world was essentially an abstract grid
superimposed on the landscape arbitrarily, it was difficult to assign spaces to
features -- especially when we found ourselves in the open coastal plain.
 <a
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bottom: 0px" height="400" alt="PKAPToponyms"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a591f84f970b
-pi" width="400" border="0"></a> My next challenge was to determine
whether these toponyms had any correlation with the distribution of material on
the ground. The notion is that our in-field observations reflect something
and they seem to coincide fairly clearly with topographic differences across the
site. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a591f855970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a591f85f970b
-pi" width="400" border="0"></a> This chart shows the
chronological distribution of material across some of the toponyms above.
Although I did need to aggregate some of the areas together to produce
sufficient samples to form the basis of comparison, the results,
nevertheless show that the toponyms do tend reflect different chronological
distributions of material. This, in turn, suggests that a unitary view of
the site would likely distort some of the less pronounced periods that only
become visible when compared to material present in their immediate areas.
Of course, the areas compared in this chart could be reconstituted and compared
using more sophisticated groupings than simply toponyms. For example, some
of the areas are topographically district from others either on the top of
ridges or physically distant from other areas. Artifact densities vary
across the site as well. Some types of material might be more present in
higher or lower density sites -- suggesting that parts of the site saw
occupation for only particular periods. We can also plot the
chronological distribution of material across the entire site filtering for
various kinds of artifacts. In this case, I offer the chronological
distribution of ceramics across the entire site and compare it to the
chronological distribution of feature sherds (not body sherds) and fineware.
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a59202cc970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a5e88e7e970c
-pi" width="400" border="0"></a> More soon!
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TITLE: Teaching Tuesday: A non-thesis M.A. degree in history
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BASENAME: teaching-tuesday-a-non-thesis-ma-degree-in-history
CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 09/22/2009 08:16:14 AM

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I spent part of yesterday afternoon thinking about the prospects for a non-
thesis M.A. degree in history here at the University of North Dakota. At
present, we have a traditional thesis based M.A. in a graduate program where
most of our students go elsewhere to continue their graduate education or regard
the program as a terminal M.A. Many of the terminal M.A.s plan to teach
secondary school in the area, although some reveal a wait-and-see attitude
toward graduate education; that is, they complete their degree and plan to wait
and see what opportunities arise before deciding whether to continue their
degree. Over the past four or five years, we've produced some top rate
M.A. degrees. Several of my students have moved from our M.A. program to
decent Ph.D. programs and most of these students have produced very fine M.A.
theses and completely their M.A. degree within two academic years (around 6
semesters including summer). These theses tend to be between 70 and 100
pages, are filled with the typical scholarly apparatus, and make some unique
contributions to the discipline. We have also had a number of students
who really struggled to complete their Master's Theses despite performing
admirably in the classroom. This is partially a product of our willingness
to take risks on marginal or non-traditional students who would not have a
chance to pursue graduate education at a traditional, top-tier program.
Some of these students have time limits or family obligations that make it
difficult for them to complete a good thesis within the time available.
Others struggle intellectually to complete a sustained research project or
discover at some point during their M.A. program that graduate work simply isn't
for them. These students are often good students and are capable of
performing well in seminars style classes, but for whatever reason come apart at
the seams during the thesis writing process. As faculty, we are then left
in the difficult position of deciding how to do with good students who are
either stalled in their thesis writing process or in such a rush that they can't
produce a good quality thesis for a proper defense. In the past few years
this situation has produced some poor quality M.A. theses and has led the the
attrition of some good students. Neither of these results reflects
accurately the ability and dedication of either the students or the faculty who
have worked with them. It took less than an hour to collect a
considerable number of examples of non-thesis M.A. programs in history from
across the interwebs. Many schools with the non-thesis option are similar
to UND. They have small departments with small Ph.D. programs and
presumably accept a wider range of students than we might expect at a larger,
top-tier graduate program. In some cases, however, even better programs
have non-thesis M.A. programs geared toward students who are leaving the
graduate programs before achieving a Ph.D. or geared toward local teachers.
In any event, these programs tended to have 4 characteristics: 1. Many
of the non-thesis programs required students to demonstrate research proficiency
through seminar papers. It seemed common for students to have to produce
two research papers over the course of two seminars. In some cases these
papers had to be submitted to the department for review; in other cases, the
student was required to defend one of these papers publicly. Since any
graduate degree in history requires the student to demonstrate some advanced
competence in research, these papers provide a good opportunity to demonstrate
535
such abilities. Moreover, they allow a student to "double dip" so to speak

and use papers that had been developed over the course of their course work
rather than to create a separate research paper for the completion of the
M.A. One program required that non-thesis students prepare an "article
length" manuscript (10,000). I thought that this was a particularly smart
idea as the traditional M.A. thesis -- which can run as long as 50,000 words --
is neither sufficiently long (or developed) to stand as an independently
publishable manuscript and too long to for publication in a scholarly
journal. An article length manuscript for a non-thesis student would give
them a chance to demonstrate a level of professional ability that is consistent
with the most common form of peer-reviewed scholarship. 2. Many non-
thesis M.A. programs require additional course work. Like many M.A.
programs, we require students to take 6 "thesis credits". These are
"empty" courses which allow the students time to do research on their thesis
while still remaining a full-time student. If a student isn't writing a
thesis, these credits become available for additional coursework. I could
imagine a non-thesis program requiring the student to demonstrate an additional
level of content mastery. These credits might also become available for
new programs, like Public History, which could, perhaps, replace a thesis with
an internship or some other form of professional development. Several of
the programs that I surveyed actually required students to take more credits for
a non-thesis option. While I like the idea of making sure that a non-
thesis option had a similar level or rigor to a thesis based program, I worry
that adding another layer of course work would be unfair. 3. Many non-
thesis M.A. programs in history had some form of comprehensive
examination. I like the idea of some kind of culminating experience for
any non-thesis student and the idea of a comprehensive exam based on a selection
of courses is appealing. But I wonder whether thesis kind of exercise will
end up being redundant. I would like to assume that the completion of a
graduate level course with an acceptable grade is sufficient to demonstrate the
mastery of that course material. I suppose a comprehensive exam could
include material that was not presented over the course of typical graduate
course work, but such an option might come at the expense of additional course
work or a revised and refined seminar paper. That is to say, any exam
based option would have to take into account workload and any additional
requirements in terms of coursework or research. 4. Many of the non-
thesis M.A. programs had explicit ties to either public history programs or
education programs. Since most of our non-thesis students will consider the M.A.
degree their terminal degree in the field of history, it only makes sense that
they dovetail their degree with training in a more practical direction.
Education is the traditional partner for history and public history,
archival/library studies are increasing in popularity. One might also want
to consider a certificate in Geographic Information Systems or certification in
editing. Building partnerships across the curriculum (they call these
synergies here at UND) might attract new students to our M.A. program while at
the same time expanding the influence of history across the curriculum.
One might even see a non-thesis M.A. as a stepping stone into our one-of-a-kind
Doctor of the Arts in History program. These are just my preliminary
thoughts regarding the non-thesis M.A. and in now way reflect anything official
from our department. We are still in the early moments of an exploratory
phase. Let me know if you have experiences with these kinds of degrees or
in these kinds of programs.
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IP: 208.107.115.6
DATE: 09/22/2009 09:43:18 PM
I like the idea, but one question that needs to be answered is would a student
have to decide at application to the program or sometime during the program
which option they want to pursue. Also, would students have the option late in
their career to switch to the non-thesis option if they realize a thesis was too
much? I think something that is not stressed enough is just how much work goes
into a thesis, with many of the students struggling underestimating what they
need to commit in terms of time to research and writing.
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COMMENT:
EMAIL:
IP: 134.129.192.74
DATE: 09/23/2009 02:40:20 PM
Daniel,
This is, of course, something that would have to be worked out. We are still in
the exploratory phase.
Bill
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Kate
EMAIL: kateslemay@gmail.com
IP: 124.168.165.112
URL:
DATE: 09/23/2009 06:18:11 PM
I am aware that the American and Australian University systems are quite
different. However, I am currently undergoing a Master of Arts in Ancient
History by coursework at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. I am
required to do 8 subjects to achieve this degree. Some of the subjects are co-
taught with undergraduates but have different requirements for the Masters
students (e.g. a 5000 word instead of 3000 word essay). I also have the option
of writing a thesis as part of this degree. I can take two subjects over two
semesters to write a 15,000-20,000 word 'minor research project'. If I want to
go on to do a PhD then this research project/thesis is a requirement (and if you
don't do it in your Masters you can do it separately as a Postgraduate
Certificate in Research Preparation).
I find this progam enjoyable, as I like the classroom environment and structured
learning. Yet it also allows me the flexibility to do a larger piece of research
and possibly progress on to a PhD.
I hope this is helpful in some way. I enjoy reading your blog :)
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Kim Gasparini
EMAIL: kgaspo@yahoo.com
IP: 134.129.161.186
URL:
DATE: 09/25/2009 08:26:48 PM
I think this is a wonderful idea, especially for those of us who are teachers
but wanted a "real" masters degree. That is, we chose not to pursue a generic
masters of education and went subject specific instead. I can think of several
projects and courses that would benefit my education and the education of my
future students much more than a tradition thesis. This is something that needs
to be carefully considered if you want to draw more teachers into the program.
As it stands now, most of my colleagues thought I was insane to take on this
particular program.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Sociology Dissertation
IP: 221.132.118.230
URL: http://www.ukdissertation.co.uk/Sociology_Dissertation.htm
DATE: 10/22/2009 12:37:33 AM
keep it up!!
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TITLE: Michael Fronda's "Anarchy, Rivalry, and the Beginnings of the Roman
Empire"
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BASENAME: michael-frondas-anarchy-rivalry-and-the-beginnings-of-the-roman-
empire-1
DATE: 09/21/2009 08:02:11 AM

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For all of you who were unable to attend Michael Fronda's lecture on
Thursday, I have made a podcast of the lecture available. <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/PodCasts/CRF/Fronda_Lecture.mp3
">Click here to download the Fronda Lecture</a>. Three things really
stand out about Fronda's lecture: 1. Modern Models and Ancient Evidence.
The model that he used to understand the expansion of the Early and Middle Roman
Republic called for the identification of so-called "enduring rivalries" between
states that Rome exploited to enforce her hegemony over the Italian
peninsula. This model derived from international relations theory and had
clear roots in the Cold War efforts to not only understand but also the justify
the binary world of Soviet - US relations. Despite the very clear
historical context for the model's development, it suited the ancient evidence
538
admirably. This was a remarkable example of how history draws upon the
present to understand the past. While this may seem like an obvious
observation, it will be an excellent point of departure for our undergraduate
methods students who often struggle to understand how the present molds the past
without slipping into a kind of simplistic presentism. 2. Text and
Landscape. Mike's talk on Thursday (as well as his less formal talk on Friday
afternoon in the Department of History) emphasized the role of texts in
revealing the political landscape of Italy. While Mike did not explicit
use the word "landscape" in his talk and certainly did not employ the various
models that scholars of the ancient landscape have recently come to favor, he
nevertheless read the political topography of Italy in a way that linked very
local relationships to regional (or even global) regimes of power. He gave
several examples of how the Romans became involved in adjudicating very local
territorial disputes and highlighted how the looming threat of Roman political
and military power could exacerbated or even produced local rivalries. The
projection of Roman power on the local level and typically mediated through
local concerns is surely a topic which would reward post-colonial
theorizing. More importantly, it showed how local landscapes could be
shaped and "distorted" by the regional powers in ways that might not necessarily
be apparent on the ground. 3. The crowd! As I noted on Friday,
Mike's lecture attracted over 70 people and it is clear that others turned away
at the prospect of standing throughout. While we did what we could to
promote the talk on campus, it was great to see folks in attendance who I would
not have thought to be interested in Ancient Rome. Enjoy the
lecture and thanks to everyone who helped make the talk a success.
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AUTHOR: Dissertation Abstract
IP: 221.132.118.230
URL: http://www.ukdissertation.co.uk/dissertation_abstract.htm
DATE: 11/02/2009 05:03:49 AM
keep it up!!
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TITLE: Michael Fronda's "Anarchy, Rivalry, and the Beginnings of the Roman
Empire"
STATUS: Draft
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DATE: 09/21/2009 07:59:58 AM

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BODY:
For all of you who were unable to attend Michael Fronda's lecture on
Thursday, I have made a podcast of the lecture available. <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/PodCasts/CRF/Fronda_Lecture.mp3
">Click here to download the Fronda Lecture</a>. Three things really
stand out about Fronda's lecture: 1. Modern Models and Ancient Evidence.
The model that he used to understand the expansion of the Early and Middle Roman
Republic called for the identification of so-called "enduring rivalries" between
states that Rome exploited to enforce her hegemony over the Italian
peninsula. This model derived from international relations theory and had
clear roots in the Cold War efforts to not only understand but also the justify
the binary world of Soviet - US relations. Despite the very clear
historical context for the model's development, it suited the ancient evidence
admirably. This was a remarkable example of how history draws upon the
present to understand the past. While this may seem like an obvious
observation, it will be an excellent point of departure for our undergraduate
methods students who often struggle to understand how the present molds the past
without slipping into a kind of simplistic presentism. 2. Text and
Landscape. Mike's talk on Thursday (as well as his less formal talk on Friday
afternoon in the Department of History) emphasized the role of texts in
revealing the political landscape of Italy. While Mike did not explicit
use the word "landscape" in his talk and certainly did not employ the various
models that scholars of the ancient landscape have recently come to favor, he
nevertheless read the political topography of Italy in a way that linked very
local relationships to regional (or even global) regimes of power. He gave
several examples of how the Romans became involved in adjudicating very local
territorial disputes and highlighted how the looming threat of Roman political
and military power could exacerbated or even produced local rivalries. The
projection of Roman power on the local level and typically mediated through
local concerns is surely a topic which would reward post-colonial
theorizing. More importantly, it showed how local landscapes could be
shaped and "distorted" by the regional powers in ways that might not necessarily
be apparent on the ground. 3. The crowd! As I noted on Friday,
Mike's lecture attracted over 70 people and it is clear that others turned away
at the prospect of standing throughout. While we did what we could to
promote the talk on campus, it was great to see folks in attendance who I would
not have thought to be interested in Ancient Rome. Enjoy the
lecture and thanks to everyone who helped make the talk a success.
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DATE: 09/18/2009 10:23:27 AM

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First, thanks to all the folks who showed up yesterday at Michael Fronda's
lecture. We had a great crowd (>70 people!), a great talk, and a nice
reception afterwards. Special thanks go to the Department of History, and
the Department of Political Science and Public Administration and the University
of North Dakota Chapter of Phi Alpha Theta who helped with the
preparations. I hope to have a podcast of the talk posted soon. Now
a handful of quick hits on a beautiful Friday morning: <ul> <li>This is a
cool post at <a
href="http://electricarchaeologist.wordpress.com/2009/09/15/some-top-ten-tips-
for-online-instructors/">the Electric Archaeologist on teaching online</a>.
<li>The blog revolution continues at the University of North Dakota. I
just discovered that the <a href="http://undarts.wordpress.com/">College of Arts
and Science has a blog</a>. <li>This is a <a
href="http://www.scoutingny.com/?p=1026">pretty neat installation</a>. <li><a
href="http://www.bronzeboot.com/">Dinner tonight</a>. <li><a
href="http://teachingthursday.org/2009/09/17/the-cost-of-cheap-education/">This
may be the best post</a> on <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/">this
blog</a>. <li><a href="http://www.thefee.net/delirium/">Arranged Delirium is
back</a>. <li>Phyllis Graham passed onto me two nice links related Pikionis and
his work around <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2009/09/ju
st-a-bit-more-on-post-classical-athens.html">the Acropolis in Athens</a>.
One was a short note on an effort <a
href="http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_politics_1_10/02/2007_79957"
>to reopen a cafe on the Philopappou hill designed by Pikionis in the 1950s</a>;
the other is <a
href="http://www.eikastikon.gr/arxitektoniki/pikionis/en_txt_cv_self.html">a
brief autobiographical excerpt</a> from his work <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/256027817">A Sentimental
Topography</a>.</li></ul> Have a great weekend!
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TITLE: Teaching and Lecture Thursday
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DATE: 09/17/2009 06:50:08 AM

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Two quick posts today rolled into one. First, a <a
href="http://www.teachingthursday.org/">Teaching Thursday</a> must read: Anne
Kelsch's thoughtful post on <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/2009/09/17/the-
cost-of-cheap-education/">the Cost of a Cheap Education</a>. Her post is a
critical response to a recent article in Washington Monthly which speculated on
the disruptions to American systems of college and university education if it
became possible to offer "<a
href="http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/college_guide/feature/college_for_99_a_mo
nth.php?page=all&print=true">College for $99 a Month</a>". Anne's post
is a call to reconsider the purpose of higher education in the U.S. Join the
conversation by posting a comment! Or, if you have a bigger idea, drop me a line
about authoring a post on <a href="http://www.teachingthursday.org/">Teaching
Thursday</a>. Second, if you haven't succumbed to media saturation, then
you probably know that Michael Fronda of McGill University will be speaking
today at 4 pm, in the East Asia Room of the Chester Fritz Library. His
talk is entitled "<a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a563f4ee970
b-pi">Anarchy, Rivalry, and the Beginnings of the Roman Empire</a>". A
small reception will follow the talk. My sense is that there will be a
good crowd on hand, so, it wouldn't hurt to come early, just in case. The
talk is sponsored by the <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/dept/histdept/">Department of History</a>, <a
href="http://business.und.edu/pols/">The Department of Political Science and
Public Administration</a>, and the title sponsor is the <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/CyprusResearchFund/Donors.html"
>Cyprus Research Fund</a>. The talk fits into the goals of the Cyprus
Research Fund by working to introduce students and faculty to cutting edge
research in the study of the Mediterranean World. Complementing, Prof.
Fronda's talk will be a preview exhibition of photographs taken the <a
href="http://www.pkap.org/">Pyla-Koustopetria Archaeological Project</a>''s
Artist-in-Residence, Ryan Stander entitled <a
href="http://axisofaccess.blogspot.com/2009/08/toposchora-pkap-artist-
statement.html">Topos/Chora</a>. For information on how to contribute to
the fund and support these and other events both in Cyprus and in North Dakota,
<a
>check out our support page</a>. See you at the talk!
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TITLE: Just a bit more on Post-Classical Athens
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DATE: 09/16/2009 07:40:14 AM

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I blogged a bit last month about the Post-Classical Acropolis (in the
context, first, of <a
e-destructive-power-of-the-athenian-acropolis.html">the controversy surrounding
Constantine Costa-Gavras film for the new Acropolis Museum</a> and then about <a
re-on-the-post-classical-parthenon.html">A. Kaldellis new book on the Post-
Classical Parthenon</a>). That writing and reading (and the suggestion of
Kaldellis) led me to <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/137325143">A.
Loukaki's Living Ruins, Value Conflicts</a>. It's a very
thoughtful exploration of the complex interplay of issues surrounding the
preservation, restoration, and reconstruction (anastylosis) and the various
values associated with these processes in a Greek context. In particular,
Loukaki explores not just the intellectual roots of heritage management
decisions, but the political and, to a lesser extent, economic processes as
well. Her chapter on the Central Archaeological Council (CAC) of Greece
is worth reading as a stand alone chapter. And his final chapter, a case
study of the Athenian Acropolis, is fascinating. I've read many,
many, books on the Athenian Acropolis and environs over the past 10 years (and
not nearly as many as I could have read). As an Associate Member and,
later, junior faculty at the <a href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/">American School
of Classical Studies at Athens</a>, I've visited the "sacred rock"
many times as well listening to both student and professional explanations of
the architecture, rituals, and efforts to preserve and reconstruct the buildings
there. Despite this background (and I am not claiming by any means to be an
expert, just an interested observer), I learned more about the Acropolis from
Loukaki's short chapter than from almost any other recent work. 
As per usual, I won't attempt a formal or comprehensive review (although
I will be very interested in seeing how this book is received). Instead,
I'll highlight three area where I particular appreciated his discussion of
the Acropolis: 1) She does a nice job in putting the Plaka in
context. Any visitor to Athens -- even for professional reasons -- is
inevitably drawn at some point the Plaka. Clinging to the northern slopes
of the Acropolis, this picturesque neighborhood is the center of the Athenian
tourist industry. I suppose that I've always been aware of the
various policies that sought alternately to preserve the Plaka as a picture of
Old Athens or reclaim it for the study of the ancient ruins that lay beneath the
tourist tavernas and souvenir shops. Loukaki does a good job laying out
the various shifts in policy and places the gentrification of the Plaka over the
past 15 years in an administrative context. 2) The center of Athens is
543
under constant construction. Syntagma, Makryanni, Monasteraki Square,

Psiri, the vicinity of the Kerameikos, and Gazi are particular hives of recent
activity. The chaotic nature of downtown Athens, however, has potential
to make even a careful observer of the urban form doubt any real plan or
comprehensive vision to the bustle (other than the standard sprucing up of
Athens most commonly associated with 2004 Olympics). Loukaki outlines the
plan behind these renovations (p. 280-282) both on a practical level and on an
aesthetic and ideological level. The goal is to produce a "open
museum that unites the most important archaeological sites of the historical
centre of the city." I suspect that my failure to perceive such a
plan is tied to my practice of make surgical strikes into the city center to
look at specific monuments or museums rather than engaging the area as a unified
whole. In fact, my mental map of the area is so flawed that I regularly
resort to maps or Google Earth when I need to describe the physical relationship
between, say, the Roman Agora and the Kerameikos or the Library of Hadrian and
the Ilissos basilica. So, Loukaki's explanation and critique of the
plan to unify the ancient sites in the city center runs counter to my
experiences in Athens, but at the same time provides me with new mental map,
complete with new boundaries and paths, to superimpose on what has become
familiar space. 3) <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a5caae66970
c-pi"><img align="right" alt="pikionis_acropolisPavement" border="0"
height="192"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a5caae6b970c
-pi" style="border-width: 0px;" width="244" /></a>The landscape of the
Acropolis. While my time at the <a href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/">American
School</a> taught me about R. Griswold's plans to landscape the Agora in the
1950s, I was not particularly familiar with the details and shamefully knew
nothing of D. Pikionis work to landscape the Acropolis, Philopappos, and Pnix
areas. The work of the latter, frankly, blew my mind.
Loukakis' discussion of Pikionis pavements (p. 270-274) which drew upon
ancient, Byzantine, and Modern(ist) influences floored me. How could I
have walked these sites for so long and not noticed the pavement? In
fact, I had to pilfer the interwebs just to find photographs (and these do not
do the pavement justice). <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a5742ef9970
b-pi"><img align="right" alt="PikionisPavements2" border="0" height="183"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a5caae71970c
-pi" style="border-width: 0px;" width="244" /></a> More importantly, than
just the pavements Loukaki's articulates Pikionis effort to unify the sites
around the Acropolis in a way that accentuated their modern, ancient, and
natural settings. He sought to lead the visitor to the sites in a way
that played on the visual dominance of the Acropolis by presenting it from a
variety of perspectives. This worked to accentuate the fragmented nature
of archaeology (and reality evoking cubist notions of perspective (p. 274))
while at the same time unifying the archaeological and natural to reinforce the
sanctity of the Acropolis. Loukakis describes Pikionis efforts "yet
his landscape seems eternal, as if it were there from time immemorial.
Still he manages to remain coherent in a modern, not post-modern way, because of
his approach to historical time: he respects its flow and continuity, and
enhances them wisely, not arbitrarily." I've <a
e-destructive-power-of-the-athenian-acropolis.html">blogged in the past about
the modern character of the Acropolis</a>, and now I wonder how much of that
544
perspective on the monumental core of the city of Athens derived in part from my
naive engagement with Pikionis' landscape.
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AUTHOR: ŒôœÜŒπŒºŒ≠Œ¥ŒµŒπŒ±
EMAIL: cerameia@yahoo.com
IP: 62.38.116.47
URL: http://www.iphimedea.blogspot.com
DATE: 09/16/2009 08:17:00 AM
Just a short note to say that Argyro is a "she" not "he". ;)
-----
COMMENT:
EMAIL:
IP: 208.107.184.168
DATE: 09/16/2009 08:32:59 AM
Iphimedeia,
Yikes! Transnational gender slippage.
Thanks!
Bill
-----
COMMENT:
IP: 155.68.29.254
DATE: 09/16/2009 09:49:03 AM
Don't worry about not having known about Pikionis. He's a bit of a national hero
(among Greek artists, architects, writers) but the rest of the world discovered
him through Kenneth Frampton a leading American architectural historian (teaches
at Columbia). In the 1980s, Frampton wrote a MOST influential essay on "Critical
Regionalism" (a term that was in fact invented by a couple of Greeks). The essay
was added onto the 2nd edition of his standard Modern Architecture textbook. In
short he used Pikionis as a prime example of this new influential (and global)
paradigm. Pikionis then became extremely popular at the Architectural
Association in London that published the first English language book on him. The
AA at this time was the haven of experimentation, where people like Rem Koolhaas
and others grew out of.
-----
COMMENT:
545
IP: 24.18.253.230
DATE: 09/16/2009 12:30:15 PM
Most weekends last year, when I was in Athens, I would go to a neighborhood and
simply walk, follow its organic contours. I have a bad knee so I have to pay a
lot of attention to surfaces. So I have now developed a great kinesthetic
knowledge of the oldest areas of the city -- Omonio-Keramikos-Acropolis-
Nekrotafion-Stadium, and almost no formal information on column capitals. But
the underlying -- logic -- begins to emerge. I can also tell you where there is
a Roman courtyard with arches behind the walls of what appears to be the
property of a neighborhood schizophrenic.
-----
COMMENT:
AUTHOR: buy viagra
EMAIL: oceanic.oceanic@hotmail.com
IP: 74.55.186.136
URL: http://www.xlpharmacy.com/
DATE: 05/14/2010 08:15:58 AM
So here's the deal. I have a camera with a memory stick and deleted some
pictures. After I deleted the pictures, I uploaded the pictures that I left on
the camera into the computer. Can I recover the deleted pictures on the
computer, or would I have to have my camera plugged in and find the deleted
pictures on that? By the way after I put the pictures on the computer I filled
up the memory stick with other pictures. Can you even recover deleted pictures
with memory sticks? I know you can with SD cards but what about memory sticks?
Thanks!
-----
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TITLE: From Merrifield to O'Kelly
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: from-merrifield-to-okelly
DATE: 09/15/2009 08:06:26 AM

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Late this past summer, the big move finally happened. Decried as an act
of fundamental injustice by some and accepted as the irresistible hand of fate
by others, the administrators of the College of Arts and Sciences moved the
Department of History from its traditional digs in Merrifield Hall across the
quad to O'Kelly Hall. The move is still a work in progress with aesthetic
and practical matters still outstanding. On the whole, however, I think
that whatever our new digs have lost in dignity, they have more than made up for
in character. First, if Merrifield Hall was rough around the edges,
O'Kelly is positively jagged. For Merrifield Hall's neglected dignity,
O'Kelly provides a kind of genuine, authentic, urban-type neglect. The
building itself was built in the mid-1950s as the home to the Medical
School. It was the first major post-war construction project initiated on
campus. Like most of the central campus, the building is in College Gothic
style, although it lacks the refinement and attention to detail of Merrifield
hall. <a
546
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a5c73f85970
bottom: 0px" height="304" alt=""
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a5c73f8f970c
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a5c73f9a970c
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> There are remnants of its past use as a
space for laboratories and other medical facilities (although these are fast
disappearing). One of my favorite new rooms that the Department of History
acquired was clearly a "wet" lab. (I lobbied unsuccessfully to have this
as my office primarily so I could call my office my "Laboratory"). The
brown tile walls pierced by various ducts complement a a battered Formica floors
complete with drains and rusted pipes. For the time being, the space is
filled with cast-off furniture and, for lack of a better phrase,
undifferentiated crap. It is destined to become a lounge of some sort, but
for now, it's a place for the imagination. <a
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> The halls of O'Kelly stand out as
well. Cheerful yellow lockers alternate with ratty and disused display
cases. I can imagine the lockers serving the needs of medical students
with their lab coats and stacks of thick books. The display cases
apparently replaced the lockers at some point and they displayed the triumphs of
the now defunct school of communication. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a570a65d970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a5c73fb5970c
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a5c73fb8970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a5c73fbb970c
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a5c73fc3970c
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> The most famous wall-treatment in
O'Kelly is the Rich2 painted graffiti wall. A miscalculated plan to paint
over this wall created a minor splash across the blogosphere. Apparently calmer
heads prevailed and the wall still graces our building. It adds to the
more urban, more provisional feeling of O'Kelly especially compared to the
traditional and rooted feeling of Merrifield. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a5c73fca970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a5c73fd1970c
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> My office is just short of
palatial. I've imported most of my old Merrifield style furniture rather
547
than succumbing to the temptation to upgrade to latest particle-board

masterworks like many of my colleagues. I have a solid wall of tables and
desks suitable for Rankian ruminations over dusty tomes, stacks of important
archaeological documents, and, of course, my happy gaggle of computers. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a570a68f970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a5c73fe9970c
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a570a6a5970
bottom: 0px" height="304" alt="DSCN1975"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a5c73ffa970c
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> The classroom space is
adequate. The seminar room, the heart-and-soul of any Department of
History, is still a work in progress. They've made it a "smart classroom"
by adding a digital projector and computer, but they've neglected to install a
blackboard or white board. We've been promised one, but it's four weeks
into the semester and I haven't seen it yet. My favorite aspect of the new
seminar room is the obstructed view seat. It's just like an old ball-
park! <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a570a6b0970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a5c74005970c
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a570a6bb970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a570a6c6970b
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> We've been promised, many, many
upgrades over the course of the semester, but I've already come to like the
ratty, urban, and disjointed feeling of our new digs. For some reason
(perhaps it's the palatial office), I feel relaxed and creative in this
space.
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TITLE: Meta-data Monday
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548
DATE: 09/14/2009 07:56:26 AM

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I haven't run a meta-data Monday for some time now in large part because my
blog hasn't hit any notable landmarks. As a blog lives longer, those
landmarks became fewer and farther between, I guess. The reason I am
posting a meta-data Monday post now, is that I have heard several times over the
past weeks someone quip that no one really reads academic blogs or, more
agnostically, that there is no way to know whether anyone reads academic blogs
or the like. Of course, on some level there is no way to know whether
anyone reads anything, but putting aside that relatively extreme position, I
thought that making a post that includes some of my blog's data would at least
put my mind to rest. My blog has been in existence for about 2 1/2 years
and over this time, I've had about 62,000 page views. While this pales in
comparison to high volume, professional blogs which might see page view numbers
like this for a single day, these numbers nevertheless make it hard to deny that
someone reads or at least looks at my blog. The 62,000 + page views are
over the blogs 549 posts (I guess I could have waited a day and posted this in
celebration of my blog's 550th post!). Lamentably, there are only 265
comments on these 549th posts. Using Google Analytics, I can show
that I have had visitors from 141 countries. My blog has received the most
hits from: <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a56c16ea970
bottom: 0px" height="178" alt="WorldMap"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a56c16ef970b
-pi" width="304" align="right" border="0"></a> 1. United States 2.
Greece 3. U.K. 4. Canada 5. Italy 6. Australia 7. France 8.
Germany 9. Cyprus 10. Turkey I've had visits from every U.S. state
with the most popular states being: <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a5c2b520970
bottom: 0px" height="194" alt="USMap"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a56c16f4970b
-pi" width="304" align="right" border="0"></a> 1. California 2. North
Dakota 3. Pennsylvania 4. Minnesota 5. New York 6. Ohio 7.
Illinois 8. Florida 9. Texas 10. New Jersey Google Analytics
allows us to mine all sorts of interesting data. For example, the ever
popular browser profile of my readers: 1. Firefox (45%) 2. I.E.
(39.57% with 27.73% on I.E. 6.x for those of you who get upset about that kind
of thing!) 3. Safari (8.13%) 4. Opera (2.93%) 5. Chrome (2.47%) 6.
Camino (<1) 7. Monzilla (<1) 8. Netscape (<1) 9. Konqueror
(<1) 10. NetFront (<1) Windows users account for 80% of my
traffic with Macintosh representing 18% and Linux 1%. The top referring
domains (i.e. how do folks find my site): 1. Google 2.
Typepad.com 3. und.edu 4. pkap.org 5. yahoo.com 6.
Kourelis.blogspot.com (<a href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/">Objects,
Buildings, Situations</a>) 7. archaeology.org (the web-domain of the
Archaeological Institute of America) 8. Iconoclasm.dk (<a
href="http://www.iconoclasm.dk/">Troels Myrup's excellent blog</a>) 9.
grandforkslife.blogspot.com (the <a
href="http://grandforkslife.blogspot.com/">Grand Forks Guy's local
blog</a>) 10. twitter.com (largely via <a
href="http://twitter.com/BillCaraher">my Twitter feed</a>, which you should
549
follow, by the way!) To round out this list, here are the top referring
blogs: 4. <a href="http://westmelrose.blogspot.com/">Thoughts from West
Melrose</a> 5. <a href="http://rogueclassicism.com/">Rogue
Classicism</a> 6. <a
href="http://electricarchaeologist.wordpress.com/">Electric
Archaeologist</a> 7. <a
href="http://ancientworldbloggers.blogspot.com/">Ancient World Bloggers
Group</a> 8. <a
href="http://historicalarchaeologyintheancientmediterranean.typepad.com/historic
al_archaeology_in/">Historical Archaeology in the Ancient
Mediterranean</a> 9. <a href="http://researchnewsinla.blogspot.com/">Research
News in Late Antiquity</a> 10. <a
href="http://antiquatedvagaries.blogspot.com/">Antiquated Vagaries</a>
The top ten posts based on page views: 1. <a
rly-christian.html">Early Christian Architecture and Hybrid Space</a> 2. <a
al-snow-in-at.html">Real Snow in Athens</a> 3. <a
walk-through.html">A Walk through Byzantine Athens</a> 4. <a
e-byzantine-a.html">The Byzantine and Christian Museum</a> 5. <a
ogging-archae.html">Blogging Archaeology or the Archaeology of Blogging:
Metablogging the Ancient World</a> 6. <a
e-early-chris.html">The Early Christian Ecclesiastical Architecture of Cyprus:
First Impressions</a> 7. <a
nk-archaeolog.html">Punk Archaeology: Some Preliminary Thoughts</a> 8. <a
burban-archaeology-a-detroit-jewel-in-the-attic.html">Suburban Archaeology A
(Detroit) Jewel in the Attic</a> 9. <a
rvey-archaeol.html">Survey Archaeology, Pottery, and the Chronotype
System</a> 10. <a
erging-
cyprio.htmlhttp://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2008/
02/emerging-cyprio.html">Emerging Cypriot: An Archaeological Documentary</a>
And just for fun, here's my Wordle Cluster: <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a56c16fc970
bottom: 0px" height="287" alt="WordleSept2009"
-pi" width="450" border="0"></a> So, thanks to all my
readers and referrers! 
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DATE: 09/11/2009 09:46:27 AM

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Some quick hits on a rainy Friday morning: <ul> <li>If there was any
doubt that R. Scott Moore is the Gigapanda, then this spectacular photo should
dismiss them forever. Check out his <a
href="http://share.gigapan.org/viewGigapan.php?id=32533">gigapan of the Larnaka
Salt Lake</a>. <li>I rushed out and purchased a <a
href="http://www.pogoplug.com/">Pogoplug</a> for all my internet based storage
and distribution needs. Cute package, seemingly easy set-up, but it might
not run on my university's internet. This is a bummer. <li>Both <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/">Archaeol
ogy of the Mediterranean World</a> and <a
href="http://punkarchaeology.wordpress.com/">Punk Archaeology</a> got shout-outs
from <a href="http://middlesavagery.wordpress.com/">Middle Savagery which was
nice.</a> <li>The blog at <a href="http://mygradspace.wordpress.com/">The
Graduate School at UND</a> and from the <a
href="http://undpresidentsblog.wordpress.com/">President's Office</a> still seem
to be alive. That's a good sign. It's disappointing, however, to see
that few folks have taken advantage of the comments section on either blog.
<li>Mashable has a short post on "<a
href="http://mashable.com/2009/09/10/firefox-extensions-students/">10 Must-have
Firefox Extensions for Students</a>". <li>You can follow me <a
href="http://twitter.com/BillCaraher">on Twitter</a> or <a
href="http://lifeanddeeds.tumblr.com/">on Tumblr</a>. <li>Make plans, like now,
to attend the inaugural Cyprus Research Fund lecture co-sponsored by the <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/dept/histdept/">Department of History</a> and the
Department of <a href="http://business.und.edu/pols/">Political Science and
Public Administration</a>. It's next Thursday at 4 pm in the East Asia
Room of the Chester Fritz Library. It will be delivered by Michael Frond
and entitled "Anarchy, Rivalry, and the beginnings of the Roman Empire".
Who doesn't like anarchy. Here's the flier:</li></ul> <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a563f4ee970
width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px" height="540" alt="FrondaTalk"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a5ba6dbb970c
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AUTHOR: BrianB
IP: 134.129.193.249
URL:
DATE: 09/16/2009 09:16:34 AM
It appears the President doesn't want to hear anyone's opinions on his blog, as
each post is noted "Comments off."
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TITLE: Teaching Thursday: Building Communities
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: teaching-thursday-building-communities
CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 09/10/2009 07:56:13 AM

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Cross-posted to <a
href="http://www.teachingthursday.org/">Teaching Thursday</a> As
I reflected on the series of posts grouped loosely around the idea of the "new"
future of teaching, I was struck by their common focus on defining, building, or
structuring community at the University. <a
href="http://teachingthursday.org/2009/08/27/the-new-future-of-teaching-social-
networks-changing-expectations-and-perils-of-access/">Bret Weber and my post on
the 24/7 professor</a>, <a
href="http://teachingthursday.org/2009/09/01/teaching-thursdays-boundaries-and-
manners/">Cindy Prescott's response on boundaries and manner</a>, and <a
href="http://teachingthursday.org/2009/09/03/the-new-future-of-teaching-
graduate-student-mentoringdeconstructing-framework/">Dean Benoit's post on
mentorship</a> all reflect the desire to evaluate and forge productive social
relationships at the modern university. Several of the responses share a similar
focus: particularly Anne Kelsch's response to Dean Benoit's post, but also a
response offered by Mark El-Dweek show that the call for an increased focus on
mentorship is neither limited to the faculty-graduate student relationship nor
without challenges. Other graduate student responses to Prescott's post on
boundaries and manners (which itself originated as a response to our post on the
24/7 professor) likewise showed that both social and professional boundaries
required constant negotiation and a keen eye for context. When I proposed
the topic for the first series of posts this year, I had half expected a gaggle
of posts on new teaching lingo or technological innovations (and, of course,
such posts are still welcome). It is interesting to see that most of the
concerns that contributing faculty and administration have are with very basic
issues of social and community organization on campus. My impression is
that a concern for community is a longstanding one both at American universities
in general and at the University of North Dakota specifically. A quick
perusal of <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1107281">L. Geiger's
552
University of the Northern Plains</a> or any subsequent works on the

University's history shows that throughout its history the <a
href="http://www.und.edu">University of North Dakota</a> has represented a
kaleidoscopic amalgam of different groups ranging from early student
organization like the Adelphi Literary Society to factions of faculty like the
influential band of "Young Turks" who exerted such a key influence on University
affairs throughout the 1960s. In many ways, the history of the University
was the history of these groups. The sense of community achieved by these
informal or formal groups represented a way that students and faculty warded off
the feeling of alienation and dislocation when they moved from tight-knit and
sometimes distant communities to the challenging climate and often transient,
artificial culture that characterized university life in North Dakota.
(The inability of the University to retain faculty throughout its history was
legendary to the point that some senior faculty around mid-century would quip
that certain young scholars were "only camping" during their short stays on
campus.) So, the challenges of alienation, dislocation, and fractured
communities are not new in American academia (nor unique to our campus), but
perhaps their effects are particular heightened at this time and at our
university which represents the best elements of democratized higher-education
while at the same time embraces its increasingly globalized character and
confronts dynamic changes in many academic professions. Efforts by the
<a href="http://www.und.edu/dept/oid/">Office of Instructional Development</a>
to foster community among faculty members through the Alice Clark New Faculty
program in recent years complemented the work by Greek and other fraternal
organizations on campus to make the trip to the University in Grand Forks less
socially disruptive. There is still work to do, it would seem, to
structure the kind of complex communities that can function across an
increasingly diverse body of students and faculty members in a time when new
social challenges, opportunities, and tools make traditional communal bonds
increasingly tenuous and, in some cases, obsolete. The need to establish the
kind of common expectations that undergird social order and facilitate
productive communication remains a central concern for good teaching, while at
the same time these concerns extend well-beyond the the four walls (or
Blackboard webpage) of the classroom. These posts have shown that teaching
at the University involves as much responding to the changing expectations of
the professional, student, and administrative communities that form the
foundation for the University as influencing these communities by changing
student, faculty, and administrative expectations.
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TITLE: The Mysterious Theft of a Column Capital from Olympia
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BASENAME: the-mysterious-theft-of-a-column-capital-from-olympia
DATE: 09/09/2009 08:06:55 AM

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This weekend, apparently, someone stole a column capital from the Early
Christian basilica at the site of Ancient Olympia (in Greece). This
alarming theft has led to the suspension of the local ephor (the official in
charge of antiquities for the region) and made <a
href="http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_politics_100012_07/09/2009_1
10478">the national</a> and <a
href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ij6owvrVSruKDNENg_0CT8PP
JxSgD9AHUEFO2">international press</a>. <a
ip-2-part-2-o.html">I've visited the site of Olympia</a> and checked out this
church many, many times. The press has not made clear which capital was
stolen from the building and whether this was an ancient capital used as spolia
in the building or an Early Christian capital (<a
href="http://www.ana.gr/anaweb/user/showplain?maindoc=7931864&maindocimg=793
1723&service=102">this short article makes it seem like it is a 6th century
column capital</a>). I do not recall any particularly dramatic column
capitals from the building -- to be perfectly honest -- although the church is
known for its abundant architectural sculpture which was presumably carved from
the vast quantity of marble available from the ancient site itself. 
The interesting (and perhaps ironic) thing about this story is that the Early
Christian church is built into the so-called Workshop of Phidias. This is
an ancient structure (the visible brick superstructure, from what I understand
is 3rd century A.D., but it may have been built on earlier foundations) built to
the same dimensions of the cella of the Temple of Olympian Zeus. The
excavators apparently found in the area molds for terracota antefixes and other
evidence for construction so the building is thought to have been where the
sculptor Phidias created his famous statue of Olympian Zeus. Because of
these ancient associations, its proximity to the most prominent ancient ruins on
the site (it is right outside the ancient Altis), and its well-preserved
condition, the basilica in the Workshop of Phidias is among the most visible and
visited Early Christian churches in the Peloponnesus (note <a
ip-2-part-2-o.html">my clever humor in this post</a>). Its visibility
alone would make its assemblage of architectural sculpture particularly well-
known, and its presence within the well-maintained and heavily visited tourist
site of Olympia makes this church also particularly accessible to the casual
tourist. Most Early Christian basilicas in Greece remain off the beaten
path, protected by rusty and collapsing fences, overgrown and neglected.
Like the Workshop of Phidias basilica, many of these less-visible churches
preserve both ancient and Early Christian architectural sculpture. While I
obviously do not condone the theft of antiquities, it's difficult to imagine a
less suitable Early Christian basilica to loot than the Workshop of Phidias
basilica. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a5b2569c970
c-pi"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 0px 10px;
border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="357" alt="OlympiaCitations"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a5b256b1970c
-pi" width="304" align="right" border="0"></a>Of course, the presence of the
church within the site of Olympia certainly adds prestige to the material within
the church whether it was re-used or carved new. Moreover, for a real
554
connoisseur the site represents one of the more important sites for the Early
Christian period in the Peloponnesus. While much of the Late Antique
settlement on the site itself was removed during the 19th century excavation,
scholars -- particularly the late Thomas V√∂lling -- have made important strides
in cobbling together the fragmentary record of the hastily excavated Late
Antique phases and combining with important, relatively recent discoveries like
the extensive "Slavic" cemetery excavated during the construction of the new
museum at the site in the 1970s. For the 4th-6th century, the church
seems to have been at the center of a substantial settlement which included
several larger houses and a maze of smaller houses. The church would have
been important for the folks who lived at the site of Olympia in the Early
Christian period, but it hard to imagine that the looter of the column capital
knew that. For more information on Early Christian Olympia, here's a <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/Docs/OlympiaCaraher2007.pdf">ha
ndout that I created a few years back</a> when asked to talk about the Early
Christian phase at the site and in the right sidebar I've included some
citations to the church at the Workshop of Phidias for the truly ambitious.
It will be interesting to follow this story develop. The suspension of
the local archaeological representative suggests that something more has
happened here than the press has reported. I'll keep an eye on the press
and <a href="http://lootingmatters.blogspot.com/">David Gill's blog
Looting Matters</a> over the next few weeks to see if more comes out.
Update 1: <a
10547">This brief note (Archaeologist's Horde)</a> has transformed the column
capital from 6th c. A.D. to 6th c. B.C. That's a big difference!
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COMMENT:
IP: 155.68.29.254
DATE: 09/09/2009 08:27:39 AM
I imagined that the news might be referring to an impost capital. I remember one
or two were set up on a shaft or others scattered around in usual disregard.
-----
COMMENT:
EMAIL:
IP: 134.129.192.225
DATE: 09/09/2009 08:36:55 AM
Kostis,
555
That's what I'd guess as well, but it's odd that none of those impost capitals
made into Vemi's catalog so I began to doubt my memory. But still, I can't
imagine a worse place to take an impost capital from.
Bill
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COMMENT:
EMAIL:
IP: 208.107.184.168
URL: http://profile.typepad.com/6p0120a5b338b2970c
DATE: 09/09/2009 11:08:40 AM
I still find it incredible that someone could manage to remove something of that
size without being noticed....hmmm... I look forward with interest to finding
out more.
-----
COMMENT:
AUTHOR: ŒôœÜŒπŒºŒ≠Œ¥ŒµŒπŒ±
EMAIL: cerameia@yahoo.com
IP: 79.167.6.199
URL: http://www.iphimedea.blogspot.com
DATE: 09/09/2009 11:08:57 AM
"The suspension of the local archaeological representative suggests that
something more has happened here than the press has reported."!
!
Indeed this can be inferred also by the announcement of the SEA !
!
<a href="http://sylellarxeol.blogspot.com/2009/09/blog-
post.html">http://sylellarxeol.blogspot.com/2009/09/blog-post.html</a>
-----
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TITLE: Teaching Tuesday: History 101 Podcasts and Indices
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
ALLOW PINGS: 1
BASENAME: teaching-tuesday-history-101-podcasts-and-indices
CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 09/08/2009 07:33:07 AM

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I have this advertising campaign idea to attract attention to the <a
href="http://www.und.edu">University of North Dakota</a>'s online
offering. It would be called: UND for Free!
 So far, it hasn't gotten much traction here (except, of course, in
my own head). But, on this blog, an idea only has to have traction in my
own head for it to become a reality. So without further ado, here is the
basic content of my 101 class for free. As I get more time, I'll
hopefully return to this and add links to readings and the like, but for now,
you should feel free to check out, mash-up, openly mock, or (for former
students) re-experience the energy, excitement, and brilliance that is one of my
101 lectures. The point of my lectures are to produce basic
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"textbook" style information (that is my synthesis and

analysis). And for a limited time
only, it is complementary. (I've been told that
saying "For a limited time only" makes any product more
appealing!) The first link is to a podcast lecture. They run
around a hour to an hour-and-a-half each. The link labeled
"Index" is an index to the podcast with links to various pages on the
web that either clarifies and expands issues that the podcast did not treat
extensively. I discuss some of the issues surrounding the building of
this class in posts <a
aching-thursday-the-instability-of-hybrid-learning.html">here (for my initial
goals in creating the podcasts)</a> and <a
aching-thursday-wikipedia-the-new-history-textbook.html">here (for my creating
of indices)</a> and <a
aching-online-a-report-on-history-101-after-one-week.html">here (for my
discussion of the class after the first week).</a> I omitted the Week 1
lecture because it mainly deals with the mechanics of the class. Week 2:
<a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/WestCivPodCasts/2%20Early%20Civ
ilization.mp3">Early Civilization</a> | <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/WestCivIndices/Week%202%20Key%2
0Terms%20and%20Errata.htm">Index</a> Week 3: <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/WestCivPodCasts/3%20Early%20Gre
ece,%20Athens,%20and%20the%20Peloponnesian%20War.mp3">Early Greece, Athens, and
the Peloponnesian War</a> | <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/WestCivPodCasts/4%20The%20Helle
nsitic%20World.mp3">The Hellenistic World</a> | <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/WestCivPodCasts/5%20The%20Roman
%20Republic.mp3">The Roman Republic</a> | <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/WestCivPodCasts/6%20Augustus%20
and%20the%20Roman%20Empire.mp3">Augustus and the Roman Empire</a> | <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/WestCivPodCasts/7%20Christians%
20and%20Romans%20Part%201.mp3">Christians and Romans Part 1</a>, <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/WestCivPodCasts/7%20Christians%
20and%20Romans%20Part%202.mp3">Christians and Romans Part 2</a> | <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/WestCivPodCasts/8%20The%20Merov
ingian%20and%20Carolingian%20Era.mp3">The Merovingian and Carolingian Era</a> |
<a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/WestCivPodCasts/9%20Feudalism%2
0and%20Manorialism.mp3">Feudalism and Manorialism</a> | <a
557
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/WestCivPodCasts/10%20The%20Inve
stiture%20Controversy.mp3">The Investiture Controversy</a> | <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/WestCivIndices/Week%2010%20Key%
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/WestCivPodCasts/11%20The%20Crus
ades.mp3">The Crusades</a> | <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/WestCivPodCasts/12%20The%20Worl
d%20of%20the%20Town.mp3">The World of the Town</a> | <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/WestCivPodCasts/13%20The%20Impe
rial%20Papacy.mp3">The Imperial Papacy</a> | <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/WestCivPodCasts/14%20The%20Blac
k%20Death.mp3">The Black Death</a> | <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/WestCivPodCasts/15%20The%20Hund
red%20Years%20War.mp3">The Hundred Years War</a> | <a
20Terms%20and%20Errata.htm">Index</a> As for Teaching Tuesday, I wanted
to make sure that I wasn't competing with the wildly successful <a
href="http://www.teachingthursday.org/">Teaching Thursday</a> weblog. So,
I'll post my thoughts on teaching on Teaching Tuesday and let my colleagues
continue to enlighten and amaze on Thursdays over at <a
href="http://www.teachingthursday.org/">Teaching Thursday</a>.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Amalia
IP: 75.28.150.67
DATE: 09/09/2009 10:26:05 AM
Hey,
Just a heads up-- your week 3 podcast returns a Page Not Found error. The rest
of them worked just fine for me though. Thought you'd like to know!
-----
COMMENT:
EMAIL:
IP: 134.129.192.225
558
DATE: 09/09/2009 10:54:17 AM
Amalia,
Thanks for the heads-up. It should work now.
Let me know what you think of them!
Bill
-----
COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Amalia
IP: 75.28.150.67
DATE: 09/11/2009 09:53:26 PM
Bill,
The first one was fairly excellent-- it answered all my questions about two
seconds after I thought of them, but mostly I was just excited that I remembered
99% of what you covered in it. I always feel a little bit short-shrifted in
regard to Ancient Egypt though.
I know it isn't your area of expertise, but I was looking at some information on
the Nordic Bronze Age, and I was kind of floored. I wasn't sure what to make of
the fact that the region was apparently involved in trade with central Europe
that far back. I also read that the climate in the north was so mild they were
growing grapes for wine, similar to Spain or France, presently. Did whatever
climate shift that hit there (~800 BCE) have an impact on the rest of Europe?
(Should I not be asking historical questions when I'm not actually one of your
students anymore? Or is occasional discourse permitted under your "UND For Free"
limited time only bargain podcast extravaganza?)
Amalia
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TITLE: Performing the Margins: Punk and Place
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
ALLOW PINGS: 1
BASENAME: performing-the-margins-punk-and-place
DATE: 09/07/2009 08:19:41 AM

-----
BODY:
Cross-posted to <a
href="http://punkarchaeology.wordpress.com/">Punk Archaeology</a>
Even as Kostis was conjuring his posts on <a
href="http://punkarchaeology.wordpress.com/2009/09/03/pink-floyd-in-
pompeii/">Pink Floyd at Pompeii</a> and the <a
href="http://punkarchaeology.wordpress.com/2009/09/03/scorpions-in-
mytilene/">Scorpions at Mytilene</a>, another iconic locus of punk rock magic is
reaching the end of its life. The <a
href="http://www.startribune.com/entertainment/music/54639857.html?elr=KArksLckD
559
8EQDUoaEyqyP4O:DW3ckUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aULPQL7PQLanchO7DiUss">Uptown Bar & Cafe in

Minneapolis</a> is apparently slated to close sometime this year. Its
octogenarian owner, Frank Toonen, is looking to sell the bar to secure the
financial future for his family (a noble cause, if there ever was one).
The bar hosted virtually every major punk(ish) rock band to come out of
Minneapolis (Soul Asylum, The Replacements, H√ºsker D√º) and ranked as a local
CBGBs or Max's Kansas City. Ironically, the bar will be torn down for
a three story retail space as the Uptown neighborhood continues a process of re-
gentrification (for <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uptown,_Minneapolis">a
nice history of the neighborhood</a>). To be honest, I've never been
to the Uptown Bar & Cafe (nor Uptown, for that matter), but the story of the
Uptown Bar & Cafe caught my eye in the context of our ongoing conversation
about punk and place. Many of the most storied punk establishments
established themselves in seemingly marginal urban spaces made available by
white flight and the post-war growth of suburbs and now confront the reopening
of the urban center to economic development which in many ways challenged both
economic opportunities made available by the marginal status of various
neighborhoods and urban locales as well as the gritty and explicitly anti-
suburban ascetic that punk cultivated. The creative risks exploited by punk
rockers as they returned to the urban center from the security of suburban
"garage" demanded an authenticity of the punk experience that cannot
be maintained when surrounded by boutique shopping spots and chain clothing
retailers who seemingly revel in the make-believe character of the consumer
experience. The authenticity of the urban experience is not just a
hallmark of punk music. Today, it is seen most visibly in hip-hop music where
credibility is tied a performer's ability to maintain their ties to
economically and socially marginalized segments of urban areas. (As hip-
hop has globalized, it has shown that the performance of authenticity has
transferred from marginalized areas within the American city to marginalized
areas of the globe. Take, for example, the Somali-Canadian rapper
K'naan who mocks the urban posturing of North American rappers by
contrasting their claims and experiences to his upbringing in Somalia).
 Common's song "The Corner" is a another great meditation
on the space of performance in contemporary hip-hop. The song juxtaposes
Common's lyrics about his experiences on "the corner" with
nostalgia tinged lyrics of the radical spoken-word poetry collective "The
Last Poets" who note: ...The corner was our Rock of Gibraltar, our
Stonehenge Our Taj Mahal, our monument... Of course, in hip-hop the
corner invokes more than just an urban space associated with drug dealing,
informal social gatherings, and, perhaps more properly, the performance of
dozens between rappers that formed the basis for the combative aspects
of modern hip-hop music. The corner invokes the crossroads which was an
iconic symbol in American Blues music. Most famously, the crossroads was
where Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil in exchange for musical
talent. Crossroads represent both central places where diverse paths
cross, but also liminal sites where clearly-defined spheres of control and
authority break-down or lapse entirely. It is not surprising, for
example, that Oedipus met the Sphinx at a crossroads (see: S. I Johnston,
"Crossroads," ZPE 88 (1991)217-24) . To return, then to punk
and place, the impending loss of the Uptown Cafe & Bar (and other punk
landmarks) stands out as the return of marginal spaces to the control of the
center. In many cities in the US, this has manifested itself as
reclaiming the marginalized zone of an urban core neglected in the post-war
migration to the suburbs for the commercial, capitalist, gentrified space of the
new suburban centers (i.e. let's make the cities look like we imagined them
560
when we built those surrogate cities: suburban shopping malls). To bring
my archaeological interests more fully into the conversation, I'll just
point out that for the last 7 years I've been working with the team of the
<a href="http://www.pkap.org/">Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project</a> to
study a community situated at a crossroads along the coast of southeastern
Cyprus. Peripheral to the main centers of power on the island, there is
reason to think that the ancient community situated in what is now the coast
zone of the village of Pyla (another liminal space!) served as a local
crossroads community. <a
href="http://home.messiah.edu/%7Edpettegrew/">David Pettegrew's</a> work at
a similar site in the Eastern Corinthia commonly referred to as
"Cromna" is another example of a crossroads community. These
liminal spaces situated neither clearly within an urban core or in the
romanticized space of the rural periphery defy categorization. The
complexity and density of the artifact assemblages found in these areas press to
the limit methods devised to document more dispersed kinds of activity in the
countryside. At the same time, the absence of a built up center with
known, monumental architecture, makes it challenging to justify large scale,
systematic excavation. The marginal status of crossroads places have
made them a kind of improvisational space for archaeological fieldwork.
In this way, they echo the marginal spaces of desiccated, post-war, urban core
which became the places of punk performance, or the ill-defined and marginal
space of the corner which became a zone dominated by ancient and modern
sphinxes. Punk archaeology revels in the marginal, ambiguous,
ambivalent and, in many ways, dangerous spaces that only become central through
the ephemeral performance. 
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COMMENT:
IP: 155.68.29.254
DATE: 09/07/2009 03:53:29 PM
Fantastic. And thanks for the hip-hop cues. One thing that came to mind
regarding Minneapolis: a comparison of the spaces associated with Bob Dylan's
tenure as a Freshman at U of Minnesota (Dinkytown, the 10 O'clock Scholar cafe)
and the spaces associated with Prince (the nightclub Glam Slam that he opened in
1989). Funny thing is that I've never lived in Minneapolis and I have only
visited to do work for MARWP (Minnesota Archaeological Researches in the Western
Peloponnese)
-----
COMMENT:
EMAIL:
IP: 134.129.192.225
561
DATE: 09/08/2009 07:42:13 AM

Kostis,
Another Punk Archaeologist, Aaron Barth, directed me to this article about Bob
Dylan and his voice. The Voice as it were:
<a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200908u/bob-
dylan">http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200908u/bob-dylan</a>
Bill
-----
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STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
ALLOW PINGS: 1
CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 09/04/2009 09:47:54 AM

-----
BODY:
A late Friday post on a sunny Friday morning (in my new office): <ul>!
<li>I can't help but wonder how long we're going to see articles on the
role of Facebook (and other social networking sites) in the construction of
academic careers. <a href="http://chronicle.com/article/Facebooking-for-
the-Tenure/48218/">Here's another</a>.</li>!
<li>Ok, I know that I am rather late on this, but <a
href="http://www.kickstarter.com/">Kickstarter</a> is a really cool idea.
I wonder if it's worth the effort to try to get an invitation.</li>!
<li>Credit where it is due. <a
hall-and.html">The ISP wall is still standing in O'Kelly hall in all
it's glory</a>. Perhaps the dean has reconsidered?</li>!
<li>I am now in my spacious and spectacular new office. More on that
next week!</li>!
<li>Opera 10 is great. Recently Firefox 3.5 and Blackboard 8 have not
played well together on my Mac. So, I've adopted <a
href="http://www.opera.com/">Opera 10</a> as my new browser for
Blackboard. Not only does it speed up our sluggish Blackboard interface,
but so far, it has eliminated all the problems that I had on Firefox.</li>!
<li>When the Dean of <a href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/dept/grad/">The Graduate
School</a>, <a href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/dept/grad/html/welcome2.html">Joey
Benoit</a> blogs, people listen (and read!). Yesterday, <a
graduate-student-mentoringdeconstructing-framework/">Dean Benoit's post on
Teaching Thursday</a> blew up with close to 70 page visits to read our weekly
post. I hope some of this momentum carries forward and readers come back
every Thursday!</li>!
<li><a href="http://scores.espn.go.com/ncf/preview?gameId=292482641">University
of North Dakota versus Texas Tech</a>. Welcome to Division I.
562
(Let's put it this way: it won't even be on TV here in Grand

Forks). If you want, you can listen to it LIVE <a
href="http://www.fightingsioux.com/liveEvents/liveEvents.dbml?&db_oem_id=135
00">on the internet radiophone</a>.</li>!
<li>If you haven't celebrated the 50th Anniversary of Miles Davis'
Kind of Blue by listening to it rendered in <a
href="http://kindofbloop.com/">8-bit electronic tones as </a><a>Kind of
Bloop</a>, then you are really missing something special.</li>!
<li>Follow one of our Ph.D. students in History here at UND through his blog <a
href="http://doctoralbliss.wordpress.com/">Doctoral Bliss</a>.</li>!
<li>If you aren't following me <a href="http://twitter.com/BillCaraher">on
Twitter, you really should</a>.</li>!
</ul>
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COMMENT:
IP: 208.107.115.6
DATE: 09/14/2009 09:08:30 PM
Thanks for the plug Bill.
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TITLE: Teaching Thursday: Historiography
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
CONVERT BREAKS: 1
ALLOW PINGS: 1
BASENAME: teaching-thursday-historiography
CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 09/03/2009 08:01:29 AM

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I am teaching both a graduate historiography class this semester and our
undergraduate methods and historiography class (cleverly named The Historians'
Craft). I've modified both classes over the past year. In my
graduate historiography class, I've beefed up the "background" section of the
course using three books to introduce the students to broader discourse of
historiography: <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/426258335">R. G.
Collingwood, The Idea of History</a>; <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/28377649">J. Appleby, L. Hunt, M. Jacob,
Telling the Truth about History</a>; <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/54826159">E. Clark, History, Theory,
563
Text</a>. I open with these three books over the first three weeks to
give the students a basis for reading a more traditional gaggle of books central
to how we conceive of history as a discipline today. <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/Syllabi/History%20502_Syllabus_
AU2009.htm">Here's the syllabus</a>. For my Historians' Craft class, I've
decided to move it away from a standard undergraduate style seminar. I
outline my thinking about revisions <a
aching-thursday-revising-the-historians-craft.html">here</a> and <a
aching-thursday-capstone-classes.html">here</a>. <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/Syllabi/History%20240_3.htm">He
re's the syllabus</a>. This being Thursday and all, there is more.
It's Teaching Thursday, right? We got the <a
graduate-student-mentoringdeconstructing-framework/">Dean of The Graduate School
over at the Teaching Thursday Blog, Joseph Benoit, talking about graduate
mentoring</a>. Check it out. 
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TITLE: Three Little Birds: Pyla-Koutsopetria, Photos, and Ubuntu
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
CONVERT BREAKS: 1
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BASENAME: three-little-birds-pyla-koutsopetria-photos-and-ubuntu
CATEGORY: Web/Tech
DATE: 09/02/2009 08:24:25 AM

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BODY:
The second week of classes is upon us and the excitement of the first week
has given way to the somewhat uninspiring bustle of the semester's
routine. But sometimes there are moments, challenges, and successes that
seem to propel the week forward and cut through some of the routine. Here
are three such "Little Bird" moments (after the Bob Marley song):
Rise up this mornin, Smiled with the risin sun, Three little
birds Pitch by my doorstep Singin sweet songs Of melodies pure and
true, Sayin, (this is my message to you-ou-ou:) Singin: dont
worry bout a thing, cause every little thing gonna be all right. Singin:
dont worry (dont worry) bout a thing, cause every little thing gonna be all
right! 1. We had our first meeting to plan the 2010 <a
href="http://www.pkap.org/">Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeology Project</a> season
yesterday. Every year, it starts a week or two earlier. I fully
564
expect our 2011 planning meeting to take place in Cyprus or perhaps even before
the 2010 season. <a href="http://home.messiah.edu/~dpettegrew/">David
Pettegrew</a>, <a
Moore</a>, and I convened by conference call and in an efficient hour meeting
charted a course of action (subject to change, of course, or at least
redirection). It was such an efficient and focused meeting that it made me
glad to work with such capable folks. In a nutshell here is where we
stand. We decided that we would run a hybrid study season/field
school/study tour this year drawing undergraduates from Messiah College, Indiana
University of Pennsylvania, and graduate students from UND and elsewhere.
We also set some deadlines for our work to compile a complete inventory of our
paper and digital data for the projects. We started this considerable
undertaking last spring, but it was interrupted (at least on my end). Now
is the time to finish this work. Our data inventory will be the foundation
for writing the monograph. To that end, we even set deadlines for
monograph sections. We want to have the basic text of our catalog of
survey finds, methodological discuss, and our analysis of distributional data
from the survey complete by January 15th next year. 2. One small
crisis is our PKAP photograph collection. We have thousands of field and
artifact photos that need to be checked, (re)labeled, and available for study to
the directors of the project and their senior collaborators. We have not
developed an image database, but, instead, use the photo's filename to identify
the object. It's not a particularly powerful identifier, but for artifacts our
unique numbering system locates it spatially and keys it to a proper description
in our finds database. In most cases, the artifact number (and the file
name) are visible physically in the photograph. We feel that the system is
pretty ironclad and stable. The only issue is that because the photo
itself contains the artifact number (i.e. the file name) we have allowed
ourselves to fall behind in labeling the actual files. This isn't the
mini-crisis, however. The crisis comes when we have the photos all labeled
and checked. How do we make them available to the team? We need to
be able to download them individually or in batches (e.g. for a trench or a
particular area in the survey). We need our solution to be
inexpensive. And if it is server side software, we need to be able to run
it on fairly simple and limited equipment. In other words, our server
folks while helpful and generous, do not want to have to radically restructure
their hardware and software infrastructure to accommodate our needs. Any
thoughts on this would be great. 3. <a
href="http://www.ubuntu.com/">Ubuntu</a>. This is just one of life's small
triumphs. I am now running a Ubuntu powered Dell XPS. Ubuntu has breathed
new life into a 4 year old laptop. After I figured out that the ailing optical
drive would not function as a port for booting and installing the new OS, I
figured out that with a minimum of effort I could boot from a USB drive.
10 minutes later (and one false start, hang, crash, beeping issue), I had Ubuntu
running. It boots in less than 25 seconds. Seems stable. Runs
<a href="http://www.openoffice.org/">Open Office 3.0</a>, <a
href="http://www.gimp.org/">Gimp</a>, and <a href="http://www.mozilla.com/en-
US/firefox/personal.html">Firefox</a> (and soon my new favorite toy <a
href="http://www.opera.com/">Opera 10</a>) without a hiccup. When something that
everyone tells you actually works and works just like people tell you that it
will... well, it's just a nice thing.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: christian louboutin
EMAIL: oubowork@sina.com
IP: 120.33.202.246
URL: http://www.christianlouboutinstores.com/
DATE: 01/20/2010 12:36:40 AM
It's so lucky for me to find your blog! So shocking and great! Just one
suggestion: It will be better and easier to follow if your blog can offer rrs
subscription service.
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TITLE: Teaching Online: A Report on History 101 after One Week
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BASENAME: teaching-online-a-report-on-history-101-after-one-week
CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 09/01/2009 08:10:25 AM

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There have been quite a few reports on online teaching in the last month, <a
href="http://www.aplu.org/NetCommunity/Page.aspx?pid=282">the most significant
of which is probably this massive 2 volume study produced by the American
Association of Land-grant Universities</a> (here's <a
href="http://chronicle.com/article/Professors-Embrace-
Online/48235/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en">an article about it in
the Chronicle</a>). And, no, I haven't read it all, but I thought
that I should still chime in on the subject as I am teaching my very first
online class this fall and have a week of experience under my belt. (That
should provided a different perspective to the extensive and sophisticated study
by the AALU). First things, first. <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/Syllabi/History101SyllabusONLIN
E_RVD.htm">Here's a link to my syllabus</a>. I'd offer you a link to the
entire class (and I will make much of the content available as soon as I get the
time). Five points: 1. The prep time was enormous. I have
talked on this blog and over at Teaching Thursday about the time involved in
preparing lecture style podcasts. The 17 podcasts that make up the core of
my class took at least 70 hours to prepare. The smaller, quick hit,
podcasts took about 15-30 minutes each to account for an additional 4 or 5
hours. Lecturing to a notional audience is bizarre and every pregnant
pause or misspeak appears more glaring when converted to an MP3. From the
lectures, I also compiled a set of 15 indexes. Each index was composed of
key terms that the student would encounter during the podcast. These
ranged from places (e.g. France or the Levant) to people (e.g. Julius Caesar,
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Hammurabi) and concepts (primogenitor, subinfeudaton). Each index took

about 3 hours to produce and link. So that was another 50 hours or
so. Then came the quizzes. I include weekly objective (i.e. multiple
guess) quizzes designed primarily to keep the students honest. I had
prepared a substantial test bank over the previous few years of teaching, but
converting them into the proper format to be integrated into Blackboard (our
online teaching interface -- more on that below) and adding questions to weeks
where I did not have an extensive quiz bank took, on average, about 2 hours a
quiz. That's another 30 hours. Various other formatting issues and
the like took probably another 10 hours. So at the end of this all I
estimate that preparing an online class took around 170 hours. And that's
for a class that I had already prepped for lecture. In other words that's
a 170 hours ontop of the basic course construction. But I'll admit that I
am fussy and to be fair, I was paid extra by my University to prep the class.
 2. Lecturing to the void. One of the key aspects of my lecture
style is constant interaction with the class. This is crucial to how I produce
and deliver my lectures. In general, I lecture from an outline rather than
a prepared text. I then adjust my presentation in response to the
class. I suppose I have a rather approachable style, in that students feel
quite comfortable interrupting me and asking questions. So if there are
lots of questions, I slow down. If there aren't many questions, I ask:
"Does this make sense to everybody?" If there is convincing silence (i.e.
no non-verbal cues like looking down or restless fidgeting), then I move on
along to my next point or argument. In my online lecture, there are no
cues, no questions, no hints as to how much what I am saying is making
sense. Sure, at the end of a particular week, I might notice that the
class discussion board is filled with queries, but by then, the lecture is
over. And, of course, I realize that I can prepare my lectures in ways
that allow students to respond in real-time, but these all defeat some of the
benefits of online teaching. 3. In the real world, I am on time. I
don't mind due dates (and, in fact, I often set them for myself and then keep
them!). And whatever I lack in creativity or intellect, I desperately
attempt to make up for in discipline (e.g. this blog). My students on the
other hand, seem to be almost resistant to due dates. Providing a due date
almost ensures that grandparents die, best friends get sick, cars break down,
computers crash, et c. Considering the economically and emotionally
devastating consequences of due dates, I have generally phased them out of my
larger classes. Or set up a series of due dates to spread the disaster out
(and prevent a run on laptops or the horrendous stories that you read in
Thucydides about the Plague in Athens where the bodies of deceased relatives
piled up the streets because of a universal due date). In any event, my
online class is completely asynchronous; all of the course material is visible
and accessible from the first day. There are two due dates. A due
date for an optional midterm and a due date for the final. If you take the
midterm, you don't need to take the final and vice versa. Students can
engage the class at whatever rate they want. It's not only more humane,
but I think (kidding aside) better for the students. It gives them a
better chance to take the class on its own terms. If you have three exams
on one day, it is fair to think that none of the tests reflect accurately how
much a student could know about a given body of material. What that kind
of environment tests is how well a student can juggle responsibilities. An
important skill, to be sure, but not as important as learning the material that
I present in my class. 4. Less time in the classroom, more time
evaluating work. When I teach three classes a semester, I generally
research 10 hours a week per class. That typically involves 3 hours in the
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classroom, an hour or so (on email or in person) dealing with students, a couple

of hours preparing material, and a couple of hours grading (more when there are
major assignments). Teaching online has allowed my to reclaim about 5 of
these hours. I don't lecture in real time and I have all my course
material prepared and deployed (see point 3). As a result, I have twice as
much time to deal with particular student problems (and with an online class
there are many) and to evaluate written work. Evaluating written work is
the most time consuming part of any class that I teach. Having more time
to comment on writing, is a great benefit to me as an instructor. More
importantly, I pass that on to my students by spending more time evaluating
their work. In effect, I lose some of the classroom teaching experiences,
but make up for this through having more time to comment and evaluate written
work. 5. Finally, (and you knew this was coming), there is
Blackboard. On some levels, it's very, very good. The automated
grade book and quizzes are wonderful. It's ability to handle almost any
kind of material from podcasts, to text, to images, to webpages, and video is
great. And, it's seemingly bug free interface (except on a Mac with
Firefox 3.5) is remarkable. But it's super ugly. The interface is
inflexible from a design stand point. As you can tell by this blog, design
might not necessarily be my highest priority, but it is important
nevertheless. For example, my class is divided into 15 weeks. Each
week is a folder. I wanted to arrange these folders into a nice grid so
that they'd all be visible at once on the screen. This is hardly a
revolutionary design. But the clunky, frames-based, interface of
Blackboard forbade it. Or made is sufficiently difficult that I could not
work out how to do it. I would love a Wordpress style "template"
collection for Blackboard. A more significant criticism is that
Blackboard is so self-contained that it makes it difficult to make even parts of
a class publicly accessible. Of course, you can do what I do, which is put
large parts of my class on an external server and just link them into Blackboard
(and since Blackboard is fugly, you might ask why would I want to make my class
visible to the public... yes, not only was the food bad but the portions were so
damn tiny!). As the web is becoming more and more concerned with access,
mashups, and convergence, Blackboard remains firmly entrenched in its frame-
driven, un-mash-up-able web 1.0 interface (with a host of Web 2.0-like options
that are basically what Velveeta is to cheese). Maybe Blackboard 9 will be
better. Ok. I promise that I won't provide weekly updates on my
History 101 Online course, but do stay tuned for how it turns out.
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TITLE: Writing the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project
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As the semester is finally underway and I have returned to a regular routine,
my <a href="http://www.pkap.org">PKAP</a> colleagues and I are beginning to
think about the least glamorous part of archaeological fieldwork: writing up the
results. Writing up the results has two components, to my mind.
First, we need to finalize as much of our data as possible. Over the
last two seasons of intensive fieldwork, we have let our data -- from paper
forms to digital photographs and databases -- get a bit rough around the
edges. Last spring we started a massive data inventory and were able to
make good strides in pulling it all together. Now, we need to get the
missing pieces sorted so that we can be sure that we are all have access to and
are analyzing the same set of information. This is tedious, behind the
scenes work that larger projects often leave to designated data managers
(professionals no less), but we will have to do on our own. The temptation
of course, is to declare the data "inventoried enough" and start on analysis,
but this almost always ends in tears. Then, we need to start to
write. Fortunately, PKAP has a head start on this. Since 2003, PKAP
has published 2 report articles in the Report of the Department of
Antiquities of Cyprus and a couple of interpretative pieces (in Near
Eastern Archaeology and in a <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/191758469">Festschrift for Timothy
Gregory</a>). We have also given close to a dozen conference papers of
various descriptions. So we have a nice foundation of description and
analysis from which to proceed. As a final contribution to our regular
preliminary publications, I am writing a final preliminary report for the
RDAC right now. This report will documents the results of our
excavations in 2008 and 2009 and the results of geophysical work carried out
from 2007-2009. It will be superficial, but will ensure that some prompt
publication has appeared from our project in the event that our final monograph
length publication is delayed. The final preliminary report for the RDAC
will present the results of our geophysical work -- particularly the two seasons
of electrical resistivity -- and explain how this work along with the 4 previous
seasons of intensive survey established the basis for the excavation at the
sites of Vigla, Koutsopetria, and Kokkinokremos. The article will then
briefly summarize the results of the excavation at these three sites.
Unlike the final publication, there will only be a brief treatment of finds and
no proper catalogue. The writing process blends description and analysis
and will set the stage for at least one study season where we can fill in any
gaps that have appeared over the course of writing. When we have a working draft
available, I will post a working paper here. 
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Some quick hits on a cloudy Friday morning: <ul>!
<li>The first Latin Friday Morning of the year is this morning. We need
to decide on a text. It looks like we're leaning toward something
Late(ish) and Christian. </li>!
<li>The <a href="http://mitpress.typepad.com/mitpresslog/2009/08/naked-lunch-at-
50.html">50th Anniversary of the publication</a> of the William S.
Burroughs' <a
href="http://books.google.com/books?id=MlvMaAKiobgC&lpg=PP1&dq=The%20Nak
ed%20Lunch&client=firefox-a&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q=&f=false">The
Naked Lunch</a> or the the <a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naked_Lunch">Wikipedia entry here</a>.
<a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/5852/covers/">Check out all the
different covers for this book over the last 50 years</a>. Here's an
interview <a
href="http://www.stopsmilingonline.com/story_detail.php?id=1268">with Burroughs
about The Naked Lunch</a>.</li>!
</ul>!
<a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a5813f06970
c-pi"><img alt="NakedLunchCovers" border="0" height="492"
-pi" style="border-width: 0px;" width="400" /></a> <ul>!
<li>There was an amazing response to <a
networks-changing-expectations-and-perils-of-access/">our most recent Teaching
Thursday blog post</a>, including some lengthy comments. Now, we just
have to get those folks to post their comments in the comment section! </li>!
<li>The UND's <a
href="http://undpresidentsblog.wordpress.com/">President's blog</a> seems to
have become dormant, but <a href="http://mygradspace.wordpress.com/">The
Graduate School blog at UND </a>has sprung triumphantly back to life! As
the administration at UND tries to determine how best to engage the new and
social media opportunities, the Graduate School appears to be at the forefront
with a blog, a Twitter feed, and, from what I understand, a new media
strategy. </li>!
<li>It's <a
href="http://store.apple.com/us/product/MAC_OS_X_SNGL?mco=NzgxMDc2NA">Snow
Leopard</a> day!</li>!
<li>Check out <a href="http://www.undalumni.org/Page.aspx?pid=1063">the UND Day
at the [Metro]dome this weekend</a>.</li>!
</ul>
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TITLE: Teaching Thursday: Social Networks and Student Expectations
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BASENAME: teaching-thursday-social-networks-and-student-expectations
CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 08/27/2009 07:59:41 AM

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As is becoming my habit (and I promise it won't continue for too long), I'll
redirect you to <a href="http://www.teachingthursday.org/">Teaching Thursday</a>
for today's blog post. The number of visits to <a
href="http://www.teachingthursday.org/">Teaching Thursday</a> have consistently
increased, so please, take a minute to check it our and show <a
href="http://www.teachingthursday.org/">my latest collaborative blog project</a>
some love! And, if you are UND faculty think about joining the
conversation. Today, <a
href="http://www.und.edu/dept/socialwo/html/facultystaff.html#Bret">Bret
Weber</a> and I bantered back and forth about <a
networks-changing-expectations-and-perils-of-access/">the 24/7 professor and the
role of social networks in changing student expectations</a> regarding access to
information and individuals. I argue that the ubiquity of social
networking applications makes constant contact with people and information a
reasonable expectation. And it only goes to reason that faculty, who
constantly demand greater commitments from students to their academic pursuits,
would exist to some extent within the the web of networking applications. 
Check out our banter.
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TITLE: Modernity and Knossos
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BASENAME: modernity-and-knossos
CATEGORY: Books
CATEGORY: Byzantium
CATEGORY: Religion
DATE: 08/26/2009 07:54:11 AM

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<img style="margin: 0px 0px 0px 10px" alt="Knossos & the prophets of
modernism" src="http://coverart.oclc.org/ImageWebSvc/oclc/+-
+699479717_140.jpg?SearchOrder=+-+AV,GO" width="152" align="right" border="0">On
the recommendation of Phyllis Graham (archaeological librarian/archaeologist
extraordinary), I picked up <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/262429441">Cathy Gere's Knossos and the
Prophets of Modernism</a>. It was officially the last book of my
summer reading season, and it left me with much food for thought. In
particular, the book brought into focus the influence of modernism on
archaeological practice outside of the context of the archaeology of nationalism
where the most pronounced tendencies of modernist paradigms tend to
appear. This was useful to me in three ways. First, it helped me
understand what I meant when I quipped that the Parthenon on the Athenian
Acropolis might be one of the most modern archaeological sites in the
Mediterranean. In saying this, I didn't simply mean that the temple set
atop the "sacred rock" lacked obvious ties to the past (they had been stripped
away gradually over the course of numerous intellectual, archaeological, and
architectural reconstructions), but that it forms the center point of a whole
range of irrational feelings ranging from expressions of passionate nationalism
to transferred affections of poets and thinkers ranging from Henry Miller to
Freud. Gere makes a compelling case for the place of Arthur Evans' Knossos
in the modernist imagination by going well beyond the excavator's fantastic
reconstructions to the sometimes dizzying thought-world that the palace and its
Minoan inhabitants evoked across Europe. Second, the book pushed
me again to return to my rather unformed work on Dream Archaeology. In
particular, Gere's arguments has encouraged me to return to some of my
episodes of Dream Archaeology in the 20th century and consider their
relationship to the modernist moment in archaeology (for more on Dream
Archaeology see <a
vising-dream-archaeology.html">here</a> and <a
eam-archaeology-working-paper.html">here</a>). This will likely go back to
Freud and also to the modernist movement in Greece, since some of my Dream
Archaeologists are Greek. (As an aside, it is interesting to note that
Gere's book deals very little with modernism in a Greek context -- outside the
almost requisite reference to Kazantzakis -- and it would have been interesting
to see how Greek intellectuals engaged Evans' work on Knossos.) I will
certainly have to press <a href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/">Kostis
Kourelis</a> to read Gere's book and chat with him at the Modern Greek Studies
Association meeting this fall about how <a
href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/2009/01/angelos-tanagras.html">Angellos
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Tanagras</a> fits into a broader modernist movement which sought to bridge the
gap between the rational and irrational and, in the process, validate the
experience of a distinctly Greek past in the language of an pan-European
intellectual movement. Tanagras work to understand the power of seemingly
"supernatural" Greek folk practices, like the evil eye or malevolent dreams,
within a psychoanalytical perspective represents a kind of Greek counterpoint to
Evans' mystical engagement with the site of Knossos. Finally, Gere's work
is going to take me back to Kourelis' <a href="http://www.atypon-
link.com/ASCS/doi/abs/10.2972/hesp.76.2.391">"Byzantium and the Avant-Garde:
Excavations at Corinth 1920s-1930s"</a> to explore again how the broader
modernist movement made room for the emergence of Byzantine and Early Christian
archaeology within Greece. Modernisms rejection of the overly-
rationalistic Christianity of Western Protestantism must have led some to seek
spiritual satisfaction in the familiar, yet challenging experiences of mystical
Byzantine and Early Christian thought just as Evans took refuge in the world of
the ancient Minoans. In the context of Gere's work, <a
href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/2009/04/iraq-sikyon-orlandos.html">A.
Orlandos</a>, perhaps the most important archaeologist of the Athenian Acropolis
and a scholar who reported without comment <a
eams-inventio.html">on an episode of Dream archaeology</a>, makes a little more
sense.
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AUTHOR: Dean
EMAIL:
IP: 128.135.204.109
URL: http://profile.typepad.com/dblobaum
DATE: 08/27/2009 12:35:09 PM
The introduction to Knossos and the Prophets of Modernism by Cathy Gere is
available on the University of Chicago Press website.
<a
href="http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/289533.html">http://www.press.u
chicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/289533.html</a>
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The big news this week is that Professor <a
href="http://www.mcgill.ca/history/faculty/faculty/fronda/">Michael Fronda of
McGill University</a> has agreed to come and present the inaugural <a
>Cyprus Research Fund</a> lecture here at the <a
href="http://www.und.edu">University of North Dakota</a>. The talk will be
at 4 pm on September 17th in the Chester Fritz Library's East Asia Room.
The title of his talk is "Anarchy, Rivalry and the beginnings of the Roman
Empire". Here's an abstract for it: <blockquote> Professor
Fronda's paper will examine the growth of Roman power in the ancient world by
focusing on how the city of Rome came to dominate the Italian Peninsula.
Through an innovative use of contemporary international relations theory, Prof.
Fronda argues that Rome capitalized on the tendency for ancient state relations
to be anarchic, on the one hand, but in some way limited by enduring rivalries
between particular states, on the other. Rome‚Äôs ability to exploit these
fundamental characteristics of ancient, and perhaps all, states led ultimately
to the city‚Äôs domination of Italy and provided important lessons for the
city‚Äôs conquest of the Mediterranean world. </blockquote> The talk is
open to the public and a reception will follow. Mike is my oldest friends
in academia and it's great that he's agreed to come and present this talks. It's
also exciting that the talk is sponsored by the Cyprus Research Fund and will be
the first in a series of annual talks which seek to introduce the Mediterranean
world to University of North Dakota community. Mike is particularly
suitable candidate for the inaugural lecture because he has not only spent time
working with us on Cyprus, but because he returns each year to the Mediterranean
as both a scholar and a teacher. <a
>For more information on the Cyprus Research Fund and, in particular, how to
give to this fund, click here</a>. Support for the talk has also been
provided by the <a href="http://business.und.edu/dept/pols/">Department of
Political Science and Public Administration</a>. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a51b50a9970
bottom: 0px" height="536" alt="FrondaTalk"
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TITLE: Slopes and Terraces at Lakka Skoutara
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I usually plan my blog post as I am waking up (or, if I am running late, in
the shower), but today, the post almost planned itself when I received 6 email
pertaining to our ongoing research at Lakka Skoutara. Our work at Lakka
Skoutara in the southeastern Corinthia is a collaborative effort between <a
href="http://home.messiah.edu/~dpettegrew/">David Pettegrew</a>, <a
href="http://isthmia.osu.edu/teg/">Tim Gregory</a>, and Lita Tzortzopoulou-
Gregory. I've been working from a set of GIS maps created for the <a
Korinthia Archaeological Survey</a> (EKAS) and filled in with GPS points from
2001. It's remarkable to see how much our ability to map the landscape has
improved over the years. GPS points are more accurate and the tools
available to process large or complex datasets like regional level Digital
Elevation Models (or DTMs) is remarkable. Here's a cool example.
(<a
ewsheds-in-the-eastern-corinthia.html">Here's another</a>). This past
summer, David, Tim, Lita, and I became curious about the terrace walls at Lakka
Skoutara. They aren't particularly interesting on their own. In
fact, they reflect what we though was typical terracing procedure. The
walls creep up the southern face of the hill that marks the northern boundary of
the Lakka (a lakka is basically a valley surrounded by relatively steep hills
with <a
ewsheds-in-the-eastern-corinthia.html">a polje</a> at its bottom). 
In any event, as we looked at these terraces, we began to wonder at what
point the terrace builders decided to build a terrace or, perhaps more
importantly, decided that the slope was too steep to build a terrace.
Andrew Bevan, one of the most clever practitioners of archaeological GIS, had
posed a similar question based on the terraces on the island of Kythera where he
noted that terraces become the norm in terms of field management as the hill
slopes approached 10 to 15 degrees of slope (<a
href="http://www.bu.edu/jfa/Abstracts/B/BevanA_29_1-2.html">see here</a>).
We conducted a similar analysis using a far less robust dataset derived from
our work around Lakka Skoutara. At our site in the Corinthia, we found
that terraces begin to appear when the slope exceeds 8 degrees and stop when the
slopes exceed 16-18 degrees. Here's a maps of the slopes and
terraces. Note that some of the terraces function as check dams and that
accounts for their position at lower elevations and lower slopes. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a56ddce7970
bottom: 0px" height="404" alt="LakkaSkoutara2009SlopesTerraces"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a56ddcee970c
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> And here's a map of the slopes with the
yellow color representing the slope range associated with terraces. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a56ddcf7970
575
bottom: 0px" height="404" alt="LakkaSkoutara2009SlopesTerraces2"

src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a56ddcfc970c
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> For more on our work at Lakka Skoutara
see these posts: <a
Skoutara</a> <a
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CATEGORY: Teaching
CATEGORY: Web/Tech
DATE: 08/21/2009 07:38:49 AM

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A little klatch of quick hits on an overcast Friday morning: <ul> <li><a
href="http://www.beloit.edu/mindset/2013.php">Beloit College's Mindset list for
the Class of 2013</a> is a great read. And it makes you think carefully
about any common ground that you imagine will exist between students and and
faculty.</li> <li><a href="http://personas.media.mit.edu/">The Personas Project
at MIT</a> is pretty cool. From what I can tell, Bill is much more
interesting than William. Here are my results:</li></ul> <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a50c1aac970
bottom: 0px" height="73" alt="Persona1"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a50c1aae970b
576
-pi" width="400" border="0"></a> <img style="border-right:

0px; border-top: 0px; border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="73"
alt="Persona2"
-pi" width="400" border="0"> <a
-pi" width="400" border="0"></a> <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a50c1ac5970
-pi" width="400" border="0"></a> <ul> <li> <div align="left"> If you
haven't checked out my other new media experiment, you could <a
href="http://lifeanddeeds.tumblr.com/">by clicking here</a>. <a
href="http://twitter.com/BillCaraher">You should probably follow me on
Twitter</a>.</div></li> <li> <div align="left">This is something to think about,
I mean, if you are into that kind of thing:</div></li></ul> <div class="wlWriterSmartContent"
id="scid:5737277B-5D6D-4f48-ABFC-DD9C333F4C5D:b905f050-f770-4988-be9f-
3f7a20fae0c3" style="padding-right: 0px; display: inline; padding-left: 0px;
padding-bottom: 0px; margin: 0px; padding-top: 0px"><div id="275c7688-9753-42b2-
b763-de319bb544d9" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; display: inline;"><div><a
href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIFYPQjYhv8&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=
0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1" target="_new"><img
document.getElementById('275c7688-9753-42b2-b763-de319bb544d9');
value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/sIFYPQjYhv8&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2
=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1\"><\/param&g
t;<param name=\"wmode\"
src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/sIFYPQjYhv8&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0
xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1\"
type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" wmode=\"transparent\"
width=\"425\"
alt=""></a></div></div></div> <ul> <li> Fortunately, our <a
href="http://undpresidentsblog.wordpress.com/">University president has a
blog</a>, at just about the time when other university presidents have twitter
feeds (<a href="https://twitter.com/presidentgee">Gordon Gee (OSU)</a>, <a
href="http://twitter.com/kstate_pres">Kirk H. Schulz (K-State</a>), <a
href="http://twitter.com/johnmaeda">John Maeda (RISD</a>)). Someone might want
to point out: if you're in most of the photographs posted on your blog, it sorta
undermines the illusion that you are generating the content. Just
sayin'.</li> <li>Go read <a href="http://www.teachingthursday.org/">Teaching
Thursday</a> and join the conversation </li> <li>And some love for the only PR
Machine at the University more powerful than the Pyla-Koustopetria
Archaeological Project: The Institute for Philosophy in the Public Life.
<a href="http://www.philosophyinpubliclife.org/Instute/filmseries.html">They're
showing Casablanca at the Empire Theater on Wednesday</a>.</li> <li>Word is that
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I'll be in my new office sometime next week. That's the first week of
classes. Yikes.</li> <li><a
href="http://www.cricinfo.com/engvaus2009/engine/current/match/345974.html">Rain
at the Oval just as the Australian side got their feet under them</a>. My
new opinion is, if you live in a country where it rains all the time, you should
not be allowed to host a Test series.</li></ul>
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TITLE: Teaching Thursday: Go Check out the Teaching Thursday Blog!
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BASENAME: teaching-thursday-go-check-out-the-teaching-thursday-blog
CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 08/20/2009 07:07:27 AM

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As I am up to my something in prepping my two new classes right now, I am
going to simply direct you over to our Teaching Thursday blog where my
colleague, <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/2009/08/20/the-new-future-of-
teaching-active-learning/">Cindy Prescott, has made the first post</a> in our <a
href="http://teachingthursday.org/2009/08/13/teaching-thursday-new-academic-
year-new-future-for-teaching/">"New Future of Teaching" series</a>. 
<a href="http://teachingthursday.org/2009/08/20/the-new-future-of-teaching-
active-learning/">She looks asks some key questions about the academy's new
found fascination with active learning</a>: <blockquote> <a
href="http://teachingthursday.org/2009/08/20/the-new-future-of-teaching-active-
learning/">...</a>did they truly come away from that class activity with a
greater understanding of the impact of the market revolution on rural and urban
women‚Äôs lives? Or do they simply remember that it was fun to argue with
their classmates, and take a break from taking lecture notes? Does a fun
or memorable activity necessarily lead to deeper learning? Are these
activities sufficiently superior to more traditional classroom learning styles
that it justifies devoting not only class time to completing the activities, but
also the preparation time required to develop them? Time that I could be
spending on guiding the students‚Äô independent research projects, reading the
latest scholarship on the topic, or making progress on those pressing
publication deadlines?"</blockquote> And she puts these questions not
just in the context of educational outcomes, but in the context of our
increasingly busy schedules as researchers as well as teachers. And here
she makes a particularly important contribution to the conversation. What
distinguishes university professors from other professionals committed to
teaching is that teaching represents just one facet of our professional
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identities. We are also expected to do original research (not to mention

share in the governance of the university) which gives us access to state-of-
the-art knowledge, distinct, original (if not idiosyncratic) perspectives, and a
depth of knowledge about a field that is not necessarily expected in other
teaching professionals. Check out Cindy's blog at <a
href="http://www.teachingthursday.org/">Teaching Thursday</a>! If you have
an idea for a blog post either on the <a
href="http://teachingthursday.org/2009/08/13/teaching-thursday-new-academic-
year-new-future-for-teaching/">New Future of Teaching</a> (and I am
looking at you UND faculty!) or anything else for that matter, drop me a
line!
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DATE: 08/19/2009 07:23:01 AM

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I am always keen to try something new. So as the buzz around Tumblr
grew over the past year or so, I was curious about whether this might be a fun
thing to play around with. I watched and waited (to make sure that it
wasn't too new) and then plunged in. So now <a
href="http://lifeanddeeds.tumblr.com/">I have a Tumblr page</a>. Two
features have captured my attention so far. First, I like Twitter (and <a
href="http://twitter.com/BillCaraher">you should follow me</a>), but I the
historian in me has always been frustrated by the hyper-ephemeral nature of
these little tweets. You fire them out into space and they linger on the
breeze for a week, and then they are gone. On the one hand, this is good
as a recent study determined that <a
href="http://www.pearanalytics.com/2009/twitter-study-reveals-interesting-
results-about-usage/">40% of tweets are pointless babble</a>. We don't
need pointless babble preserved beyond a week. On the other hand, tweets
do provide a kind of running commentary on the world and its claim to be a
micro-blogging service indicates that some of its intellectual DNA is rooted in
the practice of keeping a log (that's the -log part of the word weblog).
Logs traditionally have an archival purpose and nature. So I began to
think about how I could save and "log" my tweets. I am not suggesting that
these tweets have some kind of long-term archival value, but simply that their
value could exceed the span of a week. Tumblr lets me capture my tweets
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from an RSS feed and post them to my Tumblr blog. (Tumblr does not yet
allow you to export a Tumblr blog into a real archive, which would make it even
more useful as an archive for tweets, but, then again, I don't need my tweets
forever, just for more than a week!) The other thing that caught my
interest is that Tumblr makes it really easy to upload pictures from my mobile
phone. The only reason that I have a Samsung Omnia is because it has a
decent 5 megapixel camera in it. I am not planning on replacing my DSLR
with a camera phone, but I do like the convenience of almost always having a
decent camera with me. And I like to take snap shots. And for a
while, I was posting these snapshots here to my "proper" blog. But these
snapshots seemed a bit informal or odds and ends-y for this blog. So, I
have decided to post my informal snapshots to my Tumblr blog. I want to
see if I have the energy and discipline to post a picture a day to document some
little part of my world. So, my Tumblr will become the repository
of my tweets and random photos of my day. (It will also post links to my
proper blog via an RSS feed). I plan to tweet my graduate course from a
separate twitter account this next fall, and I suspect that I will capture these
tweets as well. 
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Vincent
EMAIL: vincent@pyramidtextsonline.com
IP: 121.45.223.48
DATE: 08/19/2009 04:52:43 PM
Tumblr is excellent, nice and easy to use as you pointed out. Even easier to
use is Posterous. Have you seen this one? It's the easiest way to get your
stuff out there that I have ever seen. You don't even have to set anything up.
Simply email soemthing to post@posterous.com and that is it. Done.
Check it out:
<a href="http://www.posterous.com/">http://www.posterous.com/</a>
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TITLE: More on the Post-Classical Parthenon
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DATE: 08/18/2009 07:22:14 AM
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<a
b-pi"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 0px 10px;
border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="204" alt="ChristianParthenon"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a500b486970b
-pi" width="144" align="right" border="0"></a> If you want more traffic to your
archaeology blog, just post with the words Acropolis, Parthenon, or Athens in
the title! I posted a couple of weeks ago on what I termed <a
e-destructive-power-of-the-athenian-acropolis.html">the "destructive power" of
the Athenian Acropolis</a> and declared it to be one of the most
unapologetically modern of all ancient monuments. This past week, while
frantically preparing for classes, I used my down time to read <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/286433690">A. Kaldellis new little book on
the Christian Parthenon</a>. As per my usual practice, I am not going to
review this book. And in the interest of full disclosure, he allowed me to
read an early draft of his manuscript. The book is an exciting one.
Kaldellis combs the difficult and dispersed Byzantine sources for the Parthenon
and argues (among other things) that the Parthenon was more important as a
church than it ever was as an ancient temple. Dedicated to the Mother of
God, the temple was the Cathedral of Athens, an important pilgrimage site, and
the location of a persistent miracle involving some kind of mysterious
light. I'll make three short observations about this book and how his
thinking about Byzantine views of antiquity is so enriching: 1. He is
subtle in his argument, but he suggests that some of the Parthenon's modern fame
is rooted in its Byzantine renown. While the lines of transmission can not be
precisely defined, the long Frankish occupation of Athens and some continuity of
practice between the Frankish and Byzantine period would have exposed the
Crusaders to the temple's reputation as a church. The Western suppression
of the Byzantine period at the Parthenon, then, not only physically eliminated
and historically vilified the Byzantine contributions to the building itself,
but overwrote the Byzantine source for the temple's architectural and historical
significance. After all, how could the "Oriental" Byzantine have
appreciated the Classical glory of the Parthenon? This argument adds sting
to Kaldellis observations "the Byzantines had done far less damage to the
monument than had Elgin and the Venetians" (p. 4). 2. He
problematizes the Byzantine relationship to the past in a far more complex way
than previous scholarship. In doing so, he offers the suggestion that
spread and importance of the cult of the Panagia Atheniotissa represented a
sublimated knowledge of the city's glorious Classical past as embodied in the
Parthenon which could not be expressed within the rhetorical and intellectual
structures of Christian Byzantine rhetoric or, perhaps, even Byzantine society
more broadly (p. 175). This Freudian reading of the deep conflict between
the pagan Classical past and the Byzantine present explain the emergence of the
Parthenon as an important site by representing it as the manifestation of
suppressed desire. In other words, the Parthenon and the Classical past of
Greece continued to function in societies unconscious (especially among the
Byzantine intellectual elite). It's a small leap to understand the
historical and archaeological character of Greek dream life in the same way (for
more on that see <a
vising-dream-archaeology.html">here</a> and <a
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eam-archaeology-working-paper.html">here</a>). The suppressed wish for a

glorious Classical past (especially during challenging times faced by bishops
like Michael Choniates) finds expression through the exaltation of the Byzantine
temple. 3. For a while, I was looking serious at Byzantine saints lives
from Greece and I was told, perhaps flippantly, by a senior archaeologist that
he thought these texts had little value and were, more or less, all the same.
While this did not cause me to give up on them entirely, it probably discouraged
me from thinking that there would be much potential in attempting to bring
together Byzantine hagiography (or Byzantine texts more broadly) and the
systematic archaeology of the Byzantine period. Kaldellis's work is a
great model for any efforts in that directions and suggests that the integration
of Byzantine texts and monuments is not only possible for Greece, but can be
profitable. Oh, one last thing in this non-review. Kaldellis prose is
great. He manages to combine analytical precision with an casual and
readable diction. A few of my colleagues can pull this off. I
can't. I'm jealous.
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TITLE: Topos/Chora: Photographs of the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project
by Ryan Stander
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DATE: 08/17/2009 07:00:07 AM

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It's my pleasure to announce a new contribution to the work of the <a
href="http://www.pkap.org">Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project</a>.
If you followed <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/PKAPBlogAggregator.html">our
various blogs this summer</a>, you are likely already familiar with <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/pylakoutsopetria_graduate/">the
contribution of Ryan Stander, a M.F.A student focusing on photography who served
as our Artist-in-Residence this past field season</a>. He has begun
processing and printing the photographs that he took this summer and we are
discussing how best to disseminate them to a wider audience. As
the first step, Ryan created this poster and offered the following description
of his work. While the specific details of our presentation of Ryan's work
are still being worked out, it will almost certainly involve a gallery show, an
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online show, and some kind of publication. As his artist's statement represents
an interplay between his vision as a photographer and the project's
archaeological goals, we are planning to include the voice of archaeologists in
the final presentations of his photographs. Watch this space for more
information on Ryan Stander's Topos/Chora. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a4fd7b70970
bottom: 0px" height="604" alt="topos-chora cover 100"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a4fd7b7d970b
-pi" width="454" border="0"></a> Ryan Stander
Topos and Chora
 Photographs of the Pyla-Kousopetria Archaeological
Project <blockquote> ‚ÄúThe Pyla-Koutsopetria
Archaeological Project (PKAP) has investigated the 2 sq. km coastal zone of Pyla
Village in Cyprus since 2003. The project is a transdisciplinary,
landscape-oriented investigation that has drawn upon an international team of
archaeologists, historians, geologists, illustrators, and other specialists to
produce a vivid, diachronic, archaeological history of a significant coastal
site.‚Äù ‚ÄúSince its inception, photography has played a key role in
archaeological research. Tendencies to view the camera's eye uncritically as an
objective representation of material reality have gradually given way to more
sophisticated understandings of the camera's role in producing the kind of
illusive objectivity that formed a compelling foundation for archaeological
knowledge. While photographs of artifacts, architecture, and even
topography will continue to appear as evidence for archaeological arguments,
there has been less attention to work of photographers in creating the same kind
of dynamic, discursive landscapes that archaeological knowledge imagines.
By incorporating an experienced landscape photographer into a landscape
archaeological project, we seek to problematize in an explicit way the role of
photography in the creation of archaeological knowledge.‚Äù
 &nbsp
; - From the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project
Artist-in-Residence Invitation </blockquote> Ancient conceptions of place
varied widely between Aristotle‚Äôs preference for topos and Plato‚Äôs emphasis
on chora. Aristotle‚Äôs topos suggests objective point on a map that
exerts no actual influence upon those who enter. Whereas Plato‚Äôs
preference for chora, which draws upon the etymological root of
‚Äúchoreography,‚Äù as the reciprocal dance between humanity and environment.
While topographic mapping and Global Positioning Systems are remarkably helpful
to research and convenient for day-to-day living, it is through continued
presence and interaction in the landscape that allows the intimacy of chora to
emerge from the plotted points and coordinates. While archaeological work relies
upon topos, it cultivates chora. My work for the PKAP residency functions on
several levels: documentary, landscape, and archive of topos and chora. By
drawing upon both ancient conceptions of place, I was keenly aware of our
contemporary presence in the landscape as researchers. This reflexive stance
guided my efforts to document this emerging diachronic perspective of the
historical landscape. As human presence transforms topos to chora it becomes
archaeological evidence. Similarly, the photographic project provides a document
of ongoing human presence and an alternative archive of evidence of the 2009
PKAP field season in this Mediterranean landscape.
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DATE: 08/14/2009 07:22:31 AM

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A gaggle of links on a balmy Friday afternoon. (As my wife would say,
this is cricket weather). <ul>!
<li>Introducing the work of Daniel Sauerwein, UND M.A. and Ph.D. student and
blogger extraordinary: <ul>!
<li><a href="%20http://civilwarhistory.wordpress.com/">Civil War
History</a> </li>!
<li><a href="http://frontierbattles.wordpress.com/">Frontier Battles (a colonial
history blog</a>) </li>!
<li><a href="http://militaryhistoryblog.wordpress.com/">Military History
Blog</a></li>!
</ul>!
</li>!
<li>For any of my coastal friends out there, if you want to get a feeling for
where I live, <a href="http://abesauer.com/">read this guys blog</a>, which has
not become <a href="http://www.theawl.com/tag/abram-sauer">syndicated (so to
speak) at The Awl</a>. </li>!
<li>For another view of my colleagues, go over to the <a
href="http://www.philosophyinpubliclife.org/">Institute for Philosophy and
Public Life</a> <a href="http://www.whyradioshow.org/">Why? Radio Show
page</a> and listen to the last three episodes: <ul>!
<li><a
href="http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/ndpr/.jukebox/media/ndpr/848681/mp3/why/
podcast/17538/848681.mp3">Paul Sum</a>: My faculty mentor during my first year
at UND. </li>!
<li><a
podcast/17538/843118.mp3">Mark Jendrysik</a>: My "go to" guy for all
things political theory related. </li>!
<li><a
podcast/17538/852883.mp3">Crystal Alberts</a>: The center of the <a
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Media</a>.</li>!
</ul>!
</li>!
<li>Another colleague rapidly achieving rock-star status is our Civil War
historian, Eric Burin, who will appear in PBS's History Detectives on Monday
night at 8 pm (CST). <a
href="http://www2.und.edu/our/news/story.php?id=2776">Here's more</a>.
</li>!
<li>For all my UND Faculty readers out there (and everyone else as well) go
check out <a href="http://www.teachingthursday.org/">Teaching Thursday</a> as
you <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/2009/08/13/teaching-thursday-new-
academic-year-new-future-for-teaching/">put the finishing touches on your Fall
2009 courses</a>. </li>!
<li>If you don't already, you should <a
href="http://twitter.com/BillCaraher">follow me on Twitter</a>.</li>!
</ul>!
Some exciting announcements next week (well, <a
href="http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=4397938">maybe not this
exciting</a>, but still).
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Steve
EMAIL: sgarner@gmail.com
IP: 121.45.23.67
URL:
DATE: 08/15/2009 12:39:30 AM
Hey Bill,
You might like to make it easier for us to follow you on Twitter by giving your
username.
I tried every variation I could think of but still couldn't find you.
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COMMENT:
EMAIL:
IP: 208.107.184.168
DATE: 08/15/2009 09:28:54 AM
Steve,
Yikes. It's now fixed.
Thanks!
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Bill
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TITLE: Teaching Thursday: New Academic Year, New Future for Teaching
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BASENAME: teaching-thursday-new-academic-year-new-future-for-teaching
CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 08/13/2009 08:02:45 AM

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Crossposted to <a href="http://www.teachingthursday.org/">Teaching
Thursday</a>. As we stand on the brink of a new academic year
frantically working on syllabi, tweaking readings lists, and refining or
rewriting lectures, I am positive that most of us are thinking at least a tiny
bit about the challenges and opportunities of teaching in 2009-2010. 
I've invited a group of colleagues to write about the future of teaching over
the next few weeks, when that future and its practical implications are freshest
in their mind. Here are a few of my musings: <blockquote> As I
work through the development of a new online version of the History 101: Western
Civilization class, I wonder how my university's growing support of online
teaching will effect the way that we teach in the classroom. I
check my twitter feed at least 5 times a day. Last fall, I attempted to
use it (in an awkward naive way) in my graduate historiography course.
Even as we are told that students don't tweet and that blogs have reached a kind
of grizzled maturity, it is clear that social media applications are changing
they way that we communicate on the internet. It's clear that the once
static world of html driven webpages has given way to spaces of
interaction. The content generators are no longer clearly delineated from
the content consumers. What are the implications for teaching? Over
the past year the seeming invincibility of the American economic system has
evaporated rather abruptly. Once blue-chip companies like GM and the New
York Times which provided touchstones from transgenerational identities, are in
serious trouble (or have even passed the point of serious trouble). I feel
like I've missed out on a Caraher family tradition because I cannot buy a brand-
new Oldsmobile). How will this economic "adjustment" change the way
that we approach our own place in the economic food chain? How do massive
political, social, and economic changes influence our attitude toward what is
important? Recent political events have manifest a shocking breakdown in
civility and, once again, called into question the status of sincere and
sustained discussion in the public sphere. As so much of university
education is rooted in a kind of sincerity and a willingness to engage debates
in a focused and concentrated way, how do the prevalence of outbursts such as
those witnessed on an almost daily basis on television influence how we
understand the relationship between the processes that we champion in high
education and those central to a properly functioning democracy? How will
recent calls across higher-education for <a
aching-thursday-the-rise-of-a-new-luddism.html">a kind of voluntary,
technological luddism</a> shade and condition our use of technology in the
classroom? How will changes in assessment, university administration, and
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general education priorities change the content and methods of our classes?
If I could have a new classroom, what would it look like?</blockquote>
I am sure that many of us thought about things like this (or other things
entirely) based on our experiences over the past year, our engagement with the
political, pedagogical, and technological discourse, and, of course, the
practical time constraints that we all face when we stare down the reality of
the semester. So, I call out to any UND faculty who are thinking ahead toward
the new semester to share their views on the future opportunities, changes, and
challenges waiting just around the corner in the new academic year.
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There has been quite the stir around here this past few weeks as the
Department of History's new office space in O'Kelly Hall is being
prepared, and the last of us in <a
e-merrifield-move.html">Merrifield Hall</a> are anxiously awaiting access to our
new digs. Much of the buzz about our new space has centered on the idea
that it must look "professional". Whenever there is any
conversation surrounding professionalism in the discipline of history, I'm
interested -- as both my History 240: The Historians Craft and my graduate
historiography class have a section on the development of the discipline of
history as a profession. Like many academic professions, history
has always had an awkward relationship with the professionalization
process. We have the requisite institutional components: the <a
href="http://www.historians.org/index.cfm">American Historical Association</a>,
the <a href="http://www.historians.org/pubs/ahr.cfm">American Historical
Review</a>, et c. which all have esteemed and glorious pedigrees. (For
example, the AHA was actually founded by an act of congress). On the
other hand, unlike archaeology (for example) or other professional disciplines
(like Law), <a
href="http://www.historians.org/pubs/Free/ProfessionalStandards.cfm">history
does not have frame the values and standards of the profession precisely in
terms of ethics</a>. There are, of course, ethical statement surrounding
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matters such as <a

href="http://www.historians.org/pubs/Free/ProfessionalStandards.cfm#Plagiarism">
plagiarism</a> and <a
href="http://www.historians.org/pubs/Free/ProfessionalStandards.cfm#Employment">
practices of employment</a>, but these are rather universal rules that would be
more or less at home in any academic profession. What I am trying to say
is that history has few professional standards that are distinctive or unique to
history as discipline. There is no professional obligation to belong to
the AHA, there is no professional certification processes, there is no
accrediting body for department (although departments do evaluate one another
periodically), and there are no formal standards for what constitutes a B.A. or
M.A. or even Ph.D. in history (outside of what the universities provide and what
is expected for accreditation of the university and graduate program in a very
general way). Moreover, as <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/17441827">P. Novick has made abundantly
clear</a>, debates over issues of methodology and capital "T" truth
have produced more conflict than consensus. So, from the perspective of
history as a discipline, there is some irony that we are being moved into
"more professional" offices. The appearance of professionalism
and professional substances should not in this case be confused with the real
thing in the eyes of the public. Even if all of our offices are a lovely
blue color and the floors clad in state-of-the-art carpet squares, we will still
represent a cross section of the motley "professional" agglomeration
that is the discipline of history. Another concern, of course, is that
the days of the traditional, homogenized, professional identities are on the
wane more generally. The University has recently unveiled a series of new
"branding" words which include "innovative",
"creative" and "entrepreneurial". In today's
economic and professional climate, these words evoke the opposite of blue walls
and carpet tiles. In fact, the corporate interpretation of
"professionalism" has fallen into deep repute as "perp
walks" and congressional hearings increasingly involve individuals decked
out in uniforms associated with the professional world. The teetering
global economy challenges the traditional white-collar standards of
professionalism as the traditional professional styles come to be associated
with unethical or even illegal behavior, mismanagement, and violations of the
public trust. Ironically (perhaps), the saviors of our current crisis
and the bastions for innovation, creativity, and the entrepreneurial spirit are
the free-wheeling tech start ups with their chaotic, open offices, hipster
presentation, and decentralized, bi-coastal, workspaces. Carpet squares
give way to graffiti art and mismatched furniture. The future of American
professionalism is not in institutional colors and homogeneity (specifically
designed to promote the public trust and to hide the obscure and sneaky white-
color criminals), but the bright, chaotic, informal spaces of tech start ups
whose office space reveals the flexibility, edginess, and dynamism required to
stay ahead of the current curve. (See for example, <a
href="http://www.officesnapshots.com/2007/07/24/twitter-hq-obvious-
corp/">Twitter Headquarters</a>, <a
href="http://www.officesnapshots.com/2008/02/04/apple-hq-cupertino-
campus/">Apple</a>, <a
href="http://www.officesnapshots.com/2007/07/24/craigslist-hq/">Craiglist</a>,
<a href="http://www.officesnapshots.com/category/friendfeed/">Friendfeed</a>
(recently acquired for an undisclosed amount by Facebook), et c.) As
universities remain one of this country's greatest assets, and there is
optimism that universities will also contribute significantly to finding
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solutions for future economic, social, and technological problems. The

intellectual life, opportunities to experiment, and innovation cultivated in
American universities represent an important and powerful impetus for global
creativity. So, it is reasonable to wonder whether the iconic models of
professionalism represent the way forward? This question is all the more
salient for a profession such as history which has always cultivated a dynamic
professional foundation To put this question another way, <a
hall-and.html">can we afford to paint over creativity</a>?
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Crosposted to <a
href="http://punkarchaeology.wordpress.com/">Punk Archaeology</a>.
A few weeks ago Kostis mentioned that he thought that archaeology was "a post
hippie" discipline. A certain tendency to emphasize rural places, the
integrated, almost spiritual, character of landscapes, community engagement, and
political activism would seem to evoke many of the central ideals of the hippie
movement, albeit within a far more structured environment. (It's an open
issue whether punk shared the celebrated spontaneity of the hippie movement or
parodied it). This weekend, the New York Times offered a shortish
article: "<a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/arts/music/09pare.html">Woodstock: A
Moment of Muddy Grace</a>". Aside from well-worn ironic observation that
the memory of Woodstock became a commodity almost as soon as the festival was
over, there was a short paragraph that included one interesting line:
<blockquote> With the 40th anniversary of Woodstock looming ‚Äî so soon? ‚Äî
the commemorative machinery is clanking into place, and the nostalgia is strong.
There‚Äôs a Woodstock Festival museum now at the Bethel Woods Center for the
Arts and a recently built concert hall at what was the concert site, Max
Yasgur‚Äôs farm (though the original Woodstock hillside has been left
undeveloped).</blockquote> The notion that the original hillside
would be preserved is an interesting example of how the absence of development
could nevertheless represent the commidification of a particular
landscape. Paralleling the desire to preserve battlefields, archaeological
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landscapes, and other places of cultural significance, the archaeology of

absence evokes both the notion of a sacred precinct as well as haunting ideas of
ritual abandonment. In the hyper-commodified world of Woodstock nostalgia,
the protected hillside stands out both as an ironic and highly structured place
of commemoration. Perhaps this is another characteristic that separates
Punk Archaeology from its post-hippie variants. The hippie movement, for
all its energy, has long been overrun by a kind of crude commercialism so even
an archaeologically motivated decision like preserving the famous Woodstock
hillside cannot stand outside the discourse of capitalism and gain. Has
Punk remained more authentic? Certainly the battle to save Punk landmarks
like CBGBs <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ExCBGB.jpg">has been less
successful</a>. The <a
href="http://punkarchaeology.wordpress.com/2008/02/18/101ers/">urban foundation
of Punk perhaps</a> created landmarks in an environment which had a more
ephemeral character. Change was anticipated and expected in urban
landscapes. The countryside was idealized as unchanging and efforts to
commemorate the countryside typically involve limiting the impact of human
activities or even marking it off entirely. Archaeology, however, relies
upon the traces of change through time to document human culture. The
urbanism of Punk contributes to its resistance to commodification (and makes its
appeals to <a href="http://punkarchaeology.wordpress.com/2009/01/23/punk-
nostalgia-and-the-archaeology-of-musical-utopia/">nostalgia more ironic
still</a>) and preserves it for a different method of documentation later.
Punk Archaeology.
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TITLE: Working Paper II: Towers and Fortifications at Vayia in the Southeast
Corinthia
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This summer, David Pettegrew and I have been revising an article that we
submitted last winter to Hesperia. The article documents three new rural
sites in the southeastern Corinthia. Our initial approach was to submit a
rather bare-bones site report that simply made the world aware of these
sites. When we submitted such an article to Hesperia, however, we
received some good criticism from our reviewers who required that we make some
590
not-insignificant changes before it would be considered for publication (this is

usually called a revise and re-submit, but for Hesperia it's called a
conditional acceptance (the condition being, it would seem, that we revise it
and resubmit it). The most substantial revision stems from the
skepticism surrounding our interpretation of the sites. We argued that
our sites were most likely fortifications; our reviewers were not
convinced. This criticism evokes a long-standing controversy in how we
understand rural installations. Traditionally, they were all assigned
military functions, by the 1970s, these identifications were coming under
scrutiny and many fortifications became fortified rural farmsteads. Our
research began under the assumption that our sites were agricultural
installations of some description, and only after we were knee-deep in fieldwork
did we revise our thesis to argue more forcefully that the towers at Lychnari
and Ano Vayia only make sense as fortifications (or military installations of
some description) and, perhaps more importantly, are hardly plausible as
farmsteads. Along these same lines, we provided a more robust set of
regional comparanda for our sites We also beefed up our analysis of the
distributional data from the small scale intensive survey conducted at the site
of Ano Vayia. This includes not only a more detailed treatment of our
methods, but also a comparison of our material collected at Ano Vayia to the
assemblages present at other sites. The expanded discussion of the
assemblage provided a nice complement to our function arguments (not a
farmstead) as well as provided a traditional basis for our Late Classical to
Hellenistic date. Finally, we beefed up the historical discussion.
One thing that both reviewers wanted to see was a more substantial description
of the historical context for fortifying this area in the Corinthia.
While the sources for the Late Classical and Hellenistic Corinthia remain
problematic, we were able to point toward several possible motivations and
occasions mostly from the 4th century which was not incompatible with the
material present at the site. I favor our sites being built by either
Corinthian or Athenian forces stationed in the countryside in the volatile 360s
(Xen. Hell. 7.4.4-5.). The additional walls at Ano Vayia suggest
that the site was modified or repaired at some point. The small quantity
of material present from the site generally and the almost total absence of any
significant material from the post-Hellenistic period suggests that the site may
have been used intermittently throughout the Hellenistic period in response to
the tumultuous politics of the day. I think that you'll see that the
criticism of the peer reviewers and the Hesperia editorial staff has made our
paper better and more substantial. All the lingering problems are the
responsibilities of the stubborn authors. So, in the interest in keeping
our public informed, here is the most recent version of our paper: 
Towers and Fortifications at Vayia in the Southeast Corinthia William R. Caraher, University of North Dakota David K.
Pettegrew, Messiah College ¬© 2009 As the paper says, please do not
cite without the authors' permission. For the first version that we
submitted see: <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2009/02/wo
rking-paper-towers-and-fortifications-at-vayia-in-the-southeast-
corinthia.html">Working Paper: Towers and Fortifications at Vayia in the
Southeast Corinthia</a> For more info on our work at these sites see:
<a
Microregion</a> <a
591
e-corinthian.html">The Corinthian Countryside: The Site of Ano Vayia</a> <a

of Ano Vayia</a> <a
e-corinthia-1.html">The Corinthian Countryside: The Lychnari Tower</a> <a
Corinthia</a> <a
e-corinthia-3.html">The Corinthian Countryside: Classical Vayia</a> <a
e-corinthian.html">The Corinthian Countryside: History and Archaeology</a> <a
Thoughts</a> <a
Corinthia</a> (W. Caraher and D. Pettegrew) <a
mmer-research-on-the-fortification-of-the-southeastern-corinthia.html">Summer
Research on the Fortifications of the Southeastern Corinthia</a> <a
ewsheds-in-the-eastern-corinthia.html">Viewsheds in the Eastern
Corinthia</a>
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Just a gaggle of quick hits for your enjoyment: <ul> <li><a
href="http://www.legacy.com/TUCSON/Obituaries.asp?Page=Notice&PersonID=13095
7640">News came this week that John Mering has passed away</a>. Mering
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taught in the Department of History from 1968-1970. He received his Ph.D.

at the University of Missouri which had strong ties to UND. A UND History
alumnus served as Missouri's president from 1955-1963 and had already produced
Louis Geiger, one of the most important faculty members in the Department of
History and at the University in the postwar period. Mering taught 19th
century U.S. history at UND before moving on to the University of Arizona in
1969. He was replaced by Thomas Howard, an IU graduate who would serve on
UND's faculty for many years.</li> <li>Last month the Princeton Review released
its various lists. The University of North Dakota appeared on two of the
better known; it ranked 18th on the list of <a
href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/27/top-party-schools-list-
pr_n_245601.html">the top party schools</a> and 5th on the list of <a
href="http://spotlight.encarta.msn.com/Features/encnet_Departments_College_defau
lt_article_TPRStudyLeast2010.html">schools where students study the
least</a>. While on the surface, these are not particularly promising
areas to receive high marks. But when we look at our peer institutions on
this list, it is really quite striking. First, the top 20 party schools
list is made up 3 types of institutions: major state universities (Penn State
(1), Florida (2), Georgia (4), West Virginia (6), Texas (7), Wisconsin
(8)). In any other context many of these schools would be good schools to
find as one's peers. These schools have powerful Division 1 sports
traditions, stand as the "flagship universities in their respective states, have
good academics and graduate programs, have Carnegie Basic Classificiation of
Research University/Very High Research (UND, West Virginia (6), Ohio University
(5)and UCSB (10) have basic classifications of Research University/High
Research) , and have large and vibrant student bodies. In fact, the
top 10 party schools are all at least 50% larger than UND. The
second group of schools are the three liberal arts colleges: Union College (NY),
DePauw University (IN), Sewanee: The University of the South (TN). These
are all competitive and well-established liberal arts colleges with student
bodies under 2,500. Again, if this were any other list, it would be an
honor to rank among these school. Some of the same observations can be
applied to the <a
href="http://spotlight.encarta.msn.com/Features/encnet_Departments_College_defau
lt_article_TPRStudyLeast2010.html">list of schools where students study the
least</a>. To my mind, the real issue is not whether our students study
enough (many clearly study plenty) or whether they party enough, but how did it
happen that UND ranked in these categories? Princeton review bases their
rankings on a survey conducted through their website by students (as well as
information from the university administration). So, it's not just that
someone thinks UND is a party school, but someone cared enough to participate in
a survey that produced these rankings. The student willingness to
participate in a survey must account for something and it seems like this energy
could be parsed and analyzes in a positive way. After all, it's not every
day that UND ranks among the school on this list in anything.</li>
<li>My parents are in town and we visited <a
href="http://www.chuckkimmerle.com/">Chuck Kimmerle's</a> fantastic exhibit at
the <a href="http://www.ndmoa.com/exhibitions.html">North Dakota Museum of
Art</a> called "An Unapologetic Landscape." It was fantastic!
Kimmerle, who is also the University photographer, was able to capture both the
clear, sharp, and vivid qualities of North Dakota light as well as the subtle
and austere character of the North Dakota countryside. It's a must see for
anyone interested in landscapes.</li> <li><a
href="http://www.cricinfo.com/engvaus2009/engine/current/match/345973.html">The
fourth test in the Ashes</a> started this morning and before I got out of bed,
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England was 42/3. By the time I was done this post, England was 72/6 at
lunch. A good start for Australia.</li></ul>
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<div style="text-align: left;">On the doorjam of the North Dakota Museum of
Art.<a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a525dc36970
c-pi"><img alt="You are here." border="0" class="at-xid-
6a00d83451908369e20120a525dc36970c image-full "
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a525dc36970c
-800wi" title="You are here." /></a></div>
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IP: 99.155.204.96
URL:
DATE: 08/07/2009 07:40:41 AM
I love these geodetic pins. I photograph them wherever I find them -- typically
on geodetic columns in Greece. I have spent endless Zen hours holding polls on
these monuments for surveying. Geocaching has a whole "bench marks" gallery.
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594
IP: 99.155.204.96
URL:
DATE: 08/07/2009 08:10:59 AM
I did a quick search in Geocaching but didn't find it. Maybe you should upload
it. <a
href="http://www.geocaching.com/mark/">http://www.geocaching.com/mark/</a>
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DATE: 08/06/2009 07:09:31 AM

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I am well on my way of preparing my Western Civilization 101 class for online
delivery. As the semester looms, the calls from the bookstore become more
strident that I decide on a textbook for my class. I have dragged my feet
on picking a textbook for my online class largely because it seems funny to have
a paper textbook for a class delivered entirely over the interwebs.
Moreover, I spent a huge amount of time (think: <a
href="http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:kcftxzwkldje">Chinese
Democracy</a>) preparing 16 hour long podcasts that served as the basic
interpretive and "factual" framework for the class. This was, in effect,
an audio textbook. The only problem was that it did not have all the
features of a textbook. It didn't have an index, nice maps and timelines,
pictures, or a way for a student to navigate a topic (say Athenian democracy)
without listening to the podcast on Archaic and Classical Greece and mentally
noting the various points where the discussion touches on the particular
topic. There was, as far as I could figure out, no way to hypertext a
podcast. It remains linear and true to its textbook roots, but unlike a
textbook it didn't even have an index or comparable way to allow a student to
move through it in a non-linear way. On top of that, there was a
practical issue that the evaluation in my class is written. The class will
require a weekly-ish multiple guess quiz and discussion board, and at least
three short (3-5 page) papers. Moving from the oral environment of the
podcast to the written environment of quizes, discussion boards, and papers
poses a whole set of challenges -- not the least of which is spelling all the
funny names that students come across in my podcasts or the more vexing issue of
navigating the podcasts to get bits of information (what we historians quaintly
refer to as "facts"). And I did not want to assign a paper textbook.
 The solution is <a href="http://www.wikipedia.org/">Wikipedia</a>.
Over the last week, I've produced massive indexes to all my podcasts and have
hyperlinked the various terms in the index to corresponding Wikipedia
entries. I was tentative at first; after all, I have read the <a
aching-thursday-the-rise-of-a-new-luddism.html">neo-luddite</a> ranting
against the evils of Wikipedia, the unreliability of its wiki-based method of
gathering knowledge, and its corrupting influence on the research habits of
impressionable students. I have also troubled myself over the decline in
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scholarly and expert authority and the rise of a naive homogenized "group-think"
of the wiki writing masses. But then it dawned on me. History
textbooks -- particularly for entry level history courses -- are crap.
 Like Wikipedia, they are constantly being updated and modified.
Like Wikipedia, they are assembled by a mass of scholars who write and review
the text professionally, but bring to bear a wide ranging abilities,
intellectual perspectives, and degrees of commitment to the over all goal.
The result is a watery broth of interpretation, overcooked (and not infrequently
inaccurate facts), and intellectual bubblegum pop. (Even iconic textbooks
go through so many revisions and tweaks these days that their core message is
substantially diluted). In any event, the quality of the various textbooks
that I've used over the last few years is such that I tell my students to treat
them with a careful and critical eye. Don't trust the textbook any more
than you trust my lecture. Be critical. Question it. All this
and textbooks are incredibly expensive! Wikipedia is free. And in a
critical environment forms a neat, non-linear foil to the lecture of the
podcast. It also lays bare the editorial process in a way that textbooks
hide (in fact, the present discourse about Wikipedia explicitly problematizes
the means by which knowledge is produced). I put up my master index and
the links to the podcasts as soon as they are done. Stay tuned for
more.
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TITLE: Corinthian Infiltration: The Interior of Some Houses at Lakka Skoutara
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Of the dozen or so houses at Lakka Skoutara (for more on that see the index
at the end), there is only one that is clearly 19th/early 20th century, roofed,
and accessible. It afforded us a glimpse of the interior of these
houses. It was not really locked, the padlock merely served as a weight to
keep the wire chain pulled through the door handle. <a
width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px" height="272" alt="LSNotReallyLocked"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a51ff5a1970c
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> One of the interesting challenges
confronting archaeologists who study buildings is trying to work out the
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interior organization of domestic space. One the key problems is the use
of highly perishable materials to mark divisions in the interior of domestic
space or add decorative flourish. In our 19th and 20th century houses at
Lakka Skoutara, for example, interior walls were made of a very simple mud and
lime plaster which also served to shape the contours of the hearth and
mantle. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a51ff5a4970
width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px" height="272" alt="LSPlasterMantle"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a4c8b967970b
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a51ff5ac970
width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px" height="272" alt="LSPlasterWalls"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a4c8b97c970b
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> In houses that have stayed in use, the
plaster has sometimes been replaced by concrete. For example, the concrete
additions are visible in the mantle below: <a
width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px" height="272" alt="LSConcreteMantle"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a4c8b98d970b
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> While plaster floors are typically
easier to identify in excavation, wood members of flooring like the wood
threshold below are typically more ephemeral: <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a4c8b9ad970
width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px" height="272" alt="LSWoodThreshold"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a51ff5d7970c
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> There are, of course, more
common interior features that I should include here. For example, our old
friend <a
ovisional-discard.html">provisional discard</a>: <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a51ff5de970
width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px" height="272" alt="LSResinTiles"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20120a4c8b9b7970b
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> The concrete basin in the
above photo was for collecting resin. For more on Lakka
Skoutara: <a
nstruction-in-the-corinthia.html">Construction in the Corinthia</a> 

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AUTHOR: reinsen
EMAIL: info@bilderrahmeninfo.de
IP: 220.136.189.225
URL: http://www.bilderrahmen.net
DATE: 11/21/2009 10:55:22 PM
Hi, I recently heard that more and more archeologists work on modern or more
"present-time-related" heritages. But Iam not sure about the point....when
exploring antique stuff, it is not only intersting, it tells us something about
our own past, and might even tell us something about us today - ut whats your
interest in those more or less rotten houses?
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TITLE: Punk Archaeology: Trench Sounds
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DATE: 08/04/2009 09:01:24 AM

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The long awaited final <a href="http://www.pkap.org/">Pyla-Koutsopetria
Archaeological Project</a> podcast has arrived. Titled "Trench Sounds", it
is a 10 minute extract of over 3 hours of taping in <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/pylakoutsopetria_graduate/dallas_def
orest/">Dallas DeForest's</a> trench at Pyla-Koutsopetria. (For more
typical discussions of this trench you can down load these two podcasts: <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/PodCasts/Voices_of_Archaeology/
Koutsopetria_East_Week_1_2009.mp3">Koutsopetria East Week 1</a> and <a
Koutsopetria_East_Week_2_2009.mp3">Koutsopetria East Week 2</a>). The goal
was to capture the sounds of a trench in all of their mundane glory. The
inspiration was Punk Archaeology. <a
href="http://punkarchaeology.wordpress.com/2009/04/27/metal-machine-
music/">Kostis has posted on Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music</a> and its seminal
influence on the New York "No Wave" movement. This album, which is almost
impossible to listen to, is composed almost entirely of various ephemeral sounds
of the musical production process particularly looped tracks of guitar feedback
much of which was created intentionally by placing guitars facing their
amplifiers. This dissonant noise was then remixed and edited to produce
tracks including an unusual locked groove track at the end of side "D" (of a two
record set) which would play the final 1.8 seconds continuously (an <a
href="http://www.amazon.com/Metal-Machine-Music-Lou-
598
Reed/dp/B00004VXF2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1249394446&sr=8-1">effect lost
on 21st century listeners who are more likely to spend the 4$ to download the
album in MP3 than the $20+ to purchase the album on vinyl</a>!). Our
final "Voices of Archaeology" track is hardly as intentionally dissonant as
Metal Machine Music (nor will it likely be as iconic). It does,
however, capture and attempt to present some of the ephemeral sounds of
archaeology -- the gentle thumping of the pick, the scraping of the dust pan,
the cascades of dirt into buckets, the interrupted and fractured
conversations. It attempts to capture sonically, what we as archaeologist
are attempting to capture physically: the various bits of pieces of the
past. At one point on the track, Paul Ferderer asks whether a tiny
fragment of ceramic material is a piece of tile or a piece of pottery. The
tiny fragment was at once almost completely inconsequential (and the question of
whether the fragment was pottery or tile was even less consequential as all
ceramic material was analyzed by our ceramicist) and at the same time the bit of
ceramics is representative of the archaeological process. The artifact
must be contextualized in some way to generate meaning. It goes without
saying (almost) that fragments of the past have no inherent meaning. They
are displaced objects that the archaeologist envelop in contexts ranging from
the place of origin, the original "primary" use, and, of course, the chronology
of the other objects at the site. The tension between the decontextualized
object at the moment of discovery (the most tenuous and fleeting contextualizing
moment) and various "big picture" narrative and analyses that ultimately come to
make a specific site meaningful finds its place in the immediacy of punk rock as
experience. I recently listened again to the MC5's first album
Kick Out the Jams, a live album, and admired their effort to capture
the live sound and mark the band as a live phenomenon while evoking punk rock's
debts to the blues (a genre of music almost always recorded live) and the
ephemeral connections manifest in garage bands across the country. The
contextualizing narrative of modern American music has, of course, placed the
MC5 in a proper analytical and interpretive category (often placing them
alongside Iggy Pop's Stooges whose first album came out the same year and
captured a very different kind of sound through the exacting production of John
Cale) and striped the first album of much of its shock value (although it still
can capture some of the excitement typical of live performances). Our
short track of trench sounds hopes to capture the same thing -- at once it is
inconsequential (and frankly hard to listen to!) alone just like Paul's fragment
of pottery -- but at the same time, it captures a moment that begs a larger,
more dynamic context. The moment of discovery is the point of departure
for archaeological analysis. Trench Sounds pushes the incidental noise of
archaeological research into the center, like the feedback pushed to the
center of Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music. By recontextualizing
the sonic elements of archaeological fieldwork I hope to have shed light on the
analytical process itself which brings otherwise discarded and inconsequential
artifacts to the center while pushing the archaeological experience to the
edges... Enjoy: <a
Trench_Sounds.mp3">Trench Sounds</a> Update: For <a
href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/2009/08/its-only-matter-of-time.html">an
overly generous response click here</a>. Be sure to check out our other
podcasts: <a
PKAP2009_Intro.mp3">PKAP 20009 Introduction</a> <a
PKAP2009_Intro.mp3"><img height="16" alt="image"
599
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201156fc4fba0970c
-pi" width="61" border="0"></a> <a
Koutsopetria_East_Week_1_2009.mp3">Koutsopetria East Week 1</a> (Featuring P-
Ferd) <a
Kokkinokremos_East_Week_1_2009.mp3"><img height="16" alt="image"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201156fc4f8dc970c
Koutsopetria_West_Week_1_2009.mp3">Koutsopetria West Week 1</a> <a
Kokkinokremos_West_Week_1_2009.mp3"><img height="16" alt="image"
Vigla_East_Week_1_2009.mp3">Vigla East Week 1</a> <a
Vigla_West_Week_1_2009.mp3">Vigla West Week 1</a> <a
Kokkinokremos_East_Week_1_2009.mp3">Kokkinokremos East Week 1</a> <a
Kokkinokremos_West_Week_1_2009.mp3">Kokkinokremos West Week 1</a> <a
-pi" width="61" border="0"></a><a
Koutsopetria_East_Week_2_2009.mp3">Koutsopetria East Week 2</a> <a
600
Ground_Penetrating_Radar_Team_2009.mp3">Ground Penetrating Radar Team</a> <a
-pi" width="61" border="0"></a>
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IP: 99.155.204.96
URL:
DATE: 08/04/2009 09:03:50 PM
FANTASTIC EXPERIMENT. ABSOLUTELY SUBLIME. I had to respond with a blog entry: <a
href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/2009/08/its-only-matter-of-
time.html">http://kourelis.blogspot.com/2009/08/its-only-matter-of-time.html</a>
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TITLE: The Destructive Power of the Athenian Acropolis
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BASENAME: the-destructive-power-of-the-athenian-acropolis
CATEGORY: Byzantium
601

DATE: 08/03/2009 08:49:28 AM

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The Athenian Acropolis preserves an amazing collection monuments.
Perhaps because of the prominence of these monuments, it never fails to attract
attention and controversy. In fact, as much as the Acropolis and its crown
jewel the Parthenon has inspired, the idea of the Acropolis has also shown an
amazing power to disrupt, destroy, and disorient. The most recent example
of this (via <a href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/">Kostis Kourelis</a>) is the
short film directed by Constantin Costa-Gavras designed to be shown at the new
Acropolis museum. Apparently, the church became upset by a scene that
showed priests destroying part of the sculpture of the Parthenon frieze.
<a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jV-
NVZV8UFR6OU5x4iVmD9lNZVogD99LO4684">According to AP</a>: <blockquote> The
animated segment showed figures clad in black climbing up ladders and destroying
part of the Parthenon frieze; the scene referred to well-documented episodes of
destruction that took place in the early Byzantine period (5th-8th centuries
A.D.), when Christians often demolished monuments and temples belonging to the
old pagan era. Many parts from those temples were used to build churches. The
Parthenon itself suffered some damage but was spared a worse fate by being
converted into a church. "The priests used to destroy ancient temples.
Now they want to remove scenes from a film," Costa-Gavras told Greece's Mega TV
channel. "This is the kind (of censorship) that used to happen in the former
Soviet Union."</blockquote> This entire episode is fascinating and
another testimony to the power of the Acropolis and the Parthenon to
destroy. History first. The "well-documented episodes of the
destruction that took place in the early Byzantine period" is wrong. There
are almost no well-documented incidents of anything during the Early Byzantine
period. In fact, the closing of the Parthenon as a temple and its
consecration as a church remain a hotly debated issue with no particular chance
of any resolution any time soon. Alison Frantz in her still seminal and
elegant article from 1965 puts it best (<a
href="http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0070-
7546%281965%2919%3C185%3AFPTCIT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-V">A. Frantz, "From Paganism to
Christianity in the Temples of Athens," DOP 19 (1965), 185-205</a>): 
<blockquote> "The zeal with which the classically-oriented archaeologists of
the nineteenth century stripped away from Athenian temples all possible
reminders of their post-classical history has rendered unduly complicated the
task of dating their conversion. The nature of the required alterations made it
impossible to eradicate completely all traces and these, supplemented by
descriptions and drawings by the early travelers, have sometimes made it
possible to reconstruct the general appearance of both exterior and interior.
But the systematic removal, without recording, of wall masonry and, in many
cases, even of foundations, destroyed at the same time almost all chronological
evidence..." (p. 201)</blockquote> In fact, the lack of good chronology
for the conversion of the temples of Athens to church means that there is no way
of knowing who and when the Parthenon marbles were damaged. The issue
with the film and the marbles and the Parthenon and the Acropolis is not just
about some quibbling over the date of its conversion and the changes wrought by
its conversion to a Christian church. (There have been some good, recent
work on the <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/286433690">Parthenon during
the Byzantine Period</a>). The real issue that I want to focus some
602
attention on here is how amazingly destructive the idea of the

Parthenon has become. The prominent rock that is the Acropolis has long
stood as a place where the various rulers of Athens sought to project their
identity onto the city and, more recently, the modern nation. At the same
time that the rock with its temples has represented the commanding voice in
Athens, it has also worked to negate competing visions of the city and the
nation. The Conta-Gavras film is a typical example of this. His
work, like many intellectuals of modern Europe, has always contained an anti-
clerical strain, so it is unsurprising that he would project his left-leaning
ideals onto the Parthenon. At the same time, the Parthenon is a place
where identity is tightly controlled by the Greek state which, particularly when
governed by a center-right party, closely tied (if not properly inseparable)
from the Greek Church. From the 19th century on, efforts have been made
to purify the history of the Parthenon through the systematic destruction of its
post-Classical phases (see the work of <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/122424890">Y. Hamilakis</a>); more recently,
the construction of the new Acropolis museum in one of the most archaeological
sensitive areas of Athens has caused its own kind of destruction without
mentioning <a
href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/artblog/2008/jun/09/acropolisvartde
coathenssd">the high-profile controversy surrounding the need to destroy</a> a
nearby art-deco style building to ensure the museum's view of the "sacred
rock". It is a testimony to the power of the Acropolis that the recent
episodes have captured the modernist roots of archaeology and broadcast them so
globally. A the Parthenon, perhaps more than anywhere else, destroying the
past and collapsing it into an permanent present has become the key method for
transcending it. The most recent controversy over images of destruction in
the Costa-Gavras film and the subsequent destruction of his artistic vision
falls in line with the politics of nation building and identity formation that
have swirled around the monument for its entire history. It's also a nice
reminder of how an inspirational monument can empower destruction as well as
creation.
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COMMENT:
IP: 24.18.253.230
URL: http://nauplion.net
DATE: 08/03/2009 10:22:04 PM
A very useful summary of the issue, and a useful description of circumstances.
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COMMENT:
IP: 24.18.253.230
URL: http://www.angiolello.net
603
DATE: 08/03/2009 11:40:13 PM

The Costa-Gavras image of blackrobed priests hacking away at the Parthenon is
undoubtedly crude and inflammatory, but Alison Frantz (bless her) is no longer a
good reference to the fate of the building. For that you need to go to Manolis
Korres.
At some time, either just before or, more likely,just after the catastrophic
fire of the fourth or fifth century, most of the east end of the temple was
dismantled. The central figures of the east pediment were taken down to make
room for the apse, and almost all of the pronaos was dismantled. (The interior
of the cella, and the entire central area of the roof were totally destroyed by
the fire.)
It is time to admit that immense alterations had been made to the building by
the 6th century so that it would have been hardly recognizable to the ancient
world or, for that matter, even to us.
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COMMENT:
EMAIL:
IP: 208.107.184.168
DATE: 08/04/2009 06:24:55 AM
Pierre,
Thanks for the comments! Rest assured that I know that Korres is the better
reference, but I liked Frantz's prose (and, frankly, liked her article) more. I
think that 4th or 5th century changes to the building are really valuable for
this discussion. They suggest that there were very late repairs to the building
that were not necessarily associated with its Christianization. (I can't
imagine Christians converting the Parthenon in the 4th century and I'd be
skeptical of the 5th!) So the blackrobed priests hacking at the temple may not
have necessarily been Christian and may have, in fact, been pagans.
Bill
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DATE: 07/31/2009 08:04:20 AM

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Just a little gaggle of quick hits today: <ul> <li>What's the difference
between <a
aching-thursday-the-rise-of-a-new-luddism.html">a kind of 21st century academic
Luddism</a> and <a
href="http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/08/03/090803fa_fact_baker">just
being cranky</a>? The motivation for being a Luddite is economic and too a
less extent social. </li> <li><a
604
href="http://www.cricinfo.com/engvaus2009/content/story/416861.html">Twitter and
cricket</a>, but I've stopped watching this: <a
title="http://www.cricinfo.com/engvaus2009/engine/current/match/345972.html"
href="http://www.cricinfo.com/engvaus2009/engine/current/match/345972.html">http
://www.cricinfo.com/engvaus2009/engine/current/match/345972.html</a></li> <li><a
href="http://www.pennlive.com/news/patriotnews/west/index.ssf?/base/news/1248985
51637450.xml&coll=1">Some good press for the Pyla-Koutsopetria
Archaeological Project</a> from the Patriot News (Harrisburg, PA)
thanks to <a href="http://home.messiah.edu/~dpettegrew/">David Pettegrew</a> and
the good folks at <a href="http://www.messiah.edu/">Messiah College</a>.</li>
<li>So, I've been thinking of changing my blog. Two things have occurred
to me lately. First, <a href="http://twitter.com/BillCaraher">I like to
Twitter</a> and I do it a good bit (<a
href="http://twitter.com/BillCaraher">follow me here</a>), but I don't like that
Tweets are pretty ephemeral little things and there is no way (that I have
discovered) to link to them. So once you release a Tweet into the wilds,
it will really resist being captured or re-purposed. I am not going to
give up Tweeting, but was thinking about creating a new blog, perhaps an
anonymous new blog which intersperses slightly longer commentary with captured
(re-purposed) Tweets. It would be a sort of personal meta-twitter.
I'd then cut back <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/">this
blog</a> to, say, three days a week of longer posts. It's still just
a concept...</li> <li><a href="http://www.simplifymedia.com/">Simplify</a> works
well.</li> <li>I've been listening to: <a
href="http://www.sonicyouth.com/">Sonic Youth's</a> Evol (better than Daydream
Nation, I think), <a href="http://thegodetroit.com/">The Go</a>'s "Whatcha
Doin'?", and <a href="http://www.franzferdinand.co.uk/">Franz Ferdinand</a>'s
"Tonight", while "inking" artifact illustrations in Adobe Illustrator.</li></ul>
 <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20115724cf059970
bottom: 0px" height="249" alt="Print"
bottom: 0px" height="172" alt="Print"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20115724cf0a3970b
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TITLE: Teaching Thursday: The Rise of a New Luddism
STATUS: Publish
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605
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BASENAME: teaching-thursday-the-rise-of-a-new-luddism
CATEGORY: Teaching
CATEGORY: Web/Tech
DATE: 07/30/2009 08:07:33 AM

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I'll admit to being a bit slow on this, but a couple of weeks ago, the
Chronicle of Higher Education ran a short piece in their technology
session on taking computers out of the classroom. The provocative
title of <a href="http://chronicle.com/article/Teach-Naked-Effort-
Strips/47398/">the article is "When computers leave the classroom, so does
boredom,"</a> and it was centered around an interview with Jos√© A. Bowen the
Dean of the Meadows School of the Arts at SMU. In his argument, he weds
the age old argument against lecture-based classroom experience with an attack
on Powerpoint (or, as we call it here, The PowerPointer) and urges faculty to
use classroom time for discussion rather than Powerpoint based lectures.
 There is nothing revolutionary, of course, about asking faculty to
create a more dynamic environment in the classroom and abandoning the nap-
inducing nature of the PowerPointer seems hardly a suggestion worth covering in
the Chronicle of Higher Education. Moreover, PowerPointer (and other
similar ways to organize and project images from the computer onto the big
screen) has nearly revolutionized how we teach image based courses like art and
architectural history. In fact, projecting images from a wide range of
sources to a class is not at all incompatible with a discussion based classroom
experience. Slides, of course, work, but the simplicity of the
PowerPointer works better. So there must be something else to this.
It seems to me that this article represents a growing stream of Luddism in
faculty approaches to technology. While university faculty will always
have as many early adopters of technology as obdurate dissenters, I wonder if
there is an economic (sub?)text to some of the more adamant critiques of
technology in the classroom. This is not to suggest that Bowen's critique
is particularly adamant, nor that he recommends that we storm classrooms and
destroy computers and delete Powerpointer software. What I wonder is
whether the recent increase in critiques of technology in the classroom are less
critiques of the effectiveness of technology (as Bowen notes, Powerpointer is an
improvement (in some ways) to the old chalkboard or overhead projectors), and
more a critique of the way that technology in the classroom is changing the
economic and social structure of university life. Bowen notes, of course,
that many of the best research universities are already making lectures from
their top professors freely available online (and <a
href="http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Berkeley-Gets-Grants-to/7510/">Berkeley is
developing software</a> to make this even easier to do!). There are
established models for online course development that require faculty to abandon
control of their courses making it possible for non-faculty employees or
adjuncts to "teach" the course (at lower pay rates!). Of course, some of
this conversation has already been played out over "the Wikipedia". There
is a certain vested interest among both content creators (faculty, teachers, et
c.) and content providers (i.e. textbook and reference book companies) to
undermine the credibility of Wikipedia. And even if some of their
arguments are accurate and compelling, it does not remove the underlying
economic motivation. The emergence of an educational open market
where technology makes all aspects of faculty material more freely available
606
could well be terrifying to old guard university types whose place in the
academy depends on their local monopoly on expertise. Like the followers
of Ned Ludd some of them have come awake to the real and potential problems with
technology in the classroom and are using these problems to reinforce their own
positions. I don't mean necessarily to tar Bowen's with this brush
(although he admits some economic motivations for his arguments), but I do think
that his article acknowledges one aspect of a Luddite response. <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/isbn/0394703227">Just as Luddites were not opposed
to technology per se</a> but the changes to their society brought about by
changes in the modes and means of production, university faculty who oppose
technology often do so in ways that defends their own economic and social
positions. The scary thing is, of course, that the Luddites
failed.
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COMMENT:
IP: 99.155.204.96
URL:
DATE: 07/30/2009 09:58:06 AM
I think I'm a Luddite. I've been banning (as much as I can) computers in the
classroom because they are typically used for escaping the classroom (browsing
the internet, chatting on-line, updating Facebook). Not sure what to do about
it. The smarter our classrooms get, the less necessary is it for the student to
be there mentally.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Brice Pearce
EMAIL: tpearce@syr.edu
IP: 24.63.13.242
URL:
DATE: 07/30/2009 12:20:40 PM
Wow...so many statements that I heard all the time when supporting academics
using classroom-based technology: "I can't work the touch-panel", "PowerPoint
doesn't fit my style", "I have too many things to carry already", etc...
I think this is something that is slowly beginning to change as "traditional"

faculty members actually find the correct resource(s) to learn about classroom
presentation technology, as well as some who are more innovative pushing the
envelope. Ultimately, folks need to remember that the technology can't do
anything on its own; the instructor has to make the effort to see the benefit.
I will agree that students having computers in classrooms is annoying, but many
take their notes that way...what would be better is a way to lock-out non-
instructor laptops from the wireless...but then again, with smartphones, what's
the real difference?
607
As someone who hopes to have a job in the academy in the next 7-10 years, it is
disturbing watching the trend of corporatization of higher education, and the
unwitting support of many to do this with technology...I think this is gonna be
a big "self-police" issue, based on the critical thinking skills we learn...and
individual institutions ;)
Great stuff, Bill!

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COMMENT:
EMAIL:
IP: 208.107.184.168
DATE: 07/30/2009 12:27:29 PM
Brice,
Thanks for the comments and the perspective. I totally agree that it's how
technology is used not the technology per se, but then again, technology -- like
all tools -- is not value neutral. Technologies can and do condition behavior
and create economies. While a Luddite position seems extreme (Kostis excluded),
there does seem to be the matter of economic self-preservation here. Technology
can't actually teach, but it can make change significantly the role of the
teacher.
Bill
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: BrianB
IP: 134.129.193.249
URL:
DATE: 08/03/2009 10:20:09 AM
I studied with the option to become a secondary ed teacher. I've never been at
the classroom helm, but have had enough experience handling groups of young
people to recognize the skill necessary to grapple those short attention spans.
Sadly, I also recognize that young people can comprise a wide range of years, as
we live longer and redefine childhood. Is it just the condescendent snag of
being over thirty, or are new college students displaying an increasingly
disappointing lack of critical thinking?
There's the idea that a college applicant arrives with studious self-
determination, and a professor need merely be the source of knowledge and wisdom
as pertinent to his or her field. But if students are coming in less mature and
focused, how is the teacher and university at large to mold responsible adults
from each year's green learners? Do the faculty and institution hold a
reasonable responsibility to do so?
The technology factor only further complicates the issue. As Kostis states,
escaping the classroom is the biggest detriment to that window of countless
activities. Brice's idea to "lock-out non-instructor laptops from the wireless"
can be argued by students using the "the cloud" to create and save their
documents. Should the purposefully distracted be allowed to fail? What degree
of restriction of freedoms becomes denigrating imposition?
608
As I work in the university environment and aid patrons in their research, I

come across an inconsistent pattern of technological benefit. Some people are
delighted with what it can do for them, while others are strictly unwilling to
learn. Some come in with a broad grasp of the resources available, and others
make me mentally shudder at their inability to formulate even mildly intelligent
queries or use the most basic options. I am always glad to help open doors, but
it sometimes feels like I'm being asked to do all the thinking for someone.
So, I am concerned. I'm not in a position to affect policies, but I'm glad
there places like this blog to instigate and facilitate discussion outside the
formal realm. I sincerely wish you teachers the best of luck in the coming
school year.
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TITLE: More on Blogging
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: more-on-blogging
CATEGORY: Books
CATEGORY: Web/Tech
DATE: 07/29/2009 08:16:41 AM

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<a
border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="221" alt="image"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2011572455c10970b
-pi" width="144" align="right" border="0"></a> I try to read the odd book that
deals with Web 2.0 stuff or blogging with an eye toward including a couple in a
yet-to-be taught digital history class. I am particularly interested in
books that look at the history of some digital phenomena. The time span
for such a history is amazingly small; even the most optimistic readers of the
blogging phenomenon don't trace the development of the medium earlier than the
mid-1990s. While interviews, articles in the popular press, and simple
human memory go far to provide a foundation for writing "web history", other
kinds of primary sources can be amazingly ephemeral and controlled by the
vagaries of the roving-robots of the Internet Archive and cached browsers
pages. With this brief word of introduction, I'll offer a few modest
observations of <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/26404476">Scott
Rosenberg's Say Everything: how blogging began, what it's become, and why it
matters. (New York 2009)</a>. It was a quick read by an accomplished
journalist who provided a sound history of blogging from the first
autobiographical pages of Jonathan Hall to the recent explosion of political
bloggers. The book focuses almost explicitly on the bloggers themselves
with particular attention to folks who facilitated the development of the tools
that most bloggers depend upon to engage their craft (folks like David Winer (of
XML, RSS, et c. fame) and <a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evan_Williams_(blogger)">Evan Williams</a>
(of Blogger and now Twitter renown)). Rosenberg manages to capture the
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personalities of these individuals in rather vivid style, which is fun even if

some of the characters end up reading a bit like generic tech-hipsters and less
like read folks. What was really odd about the book (and what
perhaps separates it from <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/426258335">the
best kind of history</a> of blogging) is that it deals almost not at all with
the folks who actually read the blogs. These are the people who ultimately
made blogging a global phenomenon rather than a hobby for late 20th century ham-
radio types. Of course, blog readers, as a group, are somewhat less
interesting. They range from the bored housewife to the insomniac
historian to the unemployed denizen of the public library to the technology
consultant, and for whatever reason they found that a blogger out there had
similar (or diametrically opposed) interests. Moreover, these folk had
access to the technology to keep up with a blog and perhaps even comment on it
through the proliferation of personal computers in the public and private
zone. And these kinds of folks found in blogging a medium capable of
producing a compelling message. The slick <a
href="http://www.blogger.com/">Blogger</a>, <a
href="http://www.movabletype.com/">Moveable Type</a>, or <a
href="http://wordpress.org/">Wordpress</a>, driven presentation, the reliability
of the prose (both grammatically and in terms of its adherence to specific
language of expertise), the links to other trusted websites or blogs (i.e. a
relationship to a trusted community), or even the the relationship of the
blogger to certain known and trusted non-internet based entities whether these
be universities, corporations, print publications, or even the government.
The authority and influence accessible to bloggers was not simply a development
of their own idiosyncratic genius nor was it it simply their ability to tap into
or leverage a kind of "surplus authority" floating around the web. The
most interesting thing, to my mind, was that bloggers were able to establish a
position of authority in this new media and challenge the longstanding and time
tested authority of both general and specialized print publications. And
this wasn't accomplished simply because blogs were "better" or offered "better",
quicker, more up-to-date news, it was because the web provided a medium where
new relationships formed between authors and readers and from these new
relationships new sources and forms of authority developed. Thus, as
romantic an image as Evan Williams cut in Scott Rosenberg's prose, he was only
really one side of the equation. The other side of the equations is a
readership who were willing to embrace and trust blogging as a medium for
conveying information (in some of the same ways that we (or, ahem, our students)
are willing to trust Wikipedia as a medium) or engage in a public debate
with a certain faith their voices will not only be heard, but in an abstract,
intangible way matter. So as much as the authors of the blogs had to feel
that they were doing more than shouting into the wind, the readers had to feel
the same way. Unpacking the change in American culture that made this
possible requires more than just producing romantic character sketches of cyber
pioneers, but exploring <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/32892770">the
complex intersection of technology, social organization, authority,</a> and the
very acts of readership and authorship in the late 20th century. Blogging
didn't just come about because people were willing to "say everything" but
because people were willing to read everything.
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TITLE: Toward a Definition of Punk Archaeology
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DATE: 07/28/2009 08:02:54 AM

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Cross-posted to <a href="http://punkarchaeology.wordpress.com/">Punk
Archaeology</a>. I was asked recently what exactly <a
href="http://punkarchaeology.wordpress.com/">Punk Archaeology</a> is... and
aside from pointing to our blog of that name, I struggled to come up with a
clever answer or really any answer. The best that I could offer was that
Punk Archaeology was an empty vessel, a conceptual universe opening to being
filled by the careening intersection of punk rock music and archaeology (in
almost all of its forms and meanings). So far the vessel is filled with
bits of methodology, some history, some archaeology (in a Foucaldian sense) and
even some proper archaeological investigations. This description, however,
does not necessarily explain what Punk Archaeology is. So, here goes a
first effort toward a definition of Punk Archaeology: 1) Punk Archaeology
is a reflective mode of organizing archaeological experiences. Punk
Archaeology began as conversations between Kostis Kourelis and other
archaeologists who admitted to listening to punk rock music or appreciating the
punk aesthetic while studying archaeology. The result was a collaboration
between me and Kostis as we made an effort to probe the intersection between
these two choices. Why would we be drawn to punk rock -- or any particular
music -- and how does this musical choice explain or organize or condition our
approaches to archaeological research. Both of us came around to the
question of whether there is a totalizing discourse in our intellectual
lives. Is there some strand that makes sense of our varied interests?
2) Punk Archaeology follows certain elements of the punk aesthetic through
the discipline of archaeology. It celebrates, in particular, the things
that can be grouped under the blanket heading of <a
chaeology-technology-and-who-is-the-punk-archaeologist-now.html">DIY
practices</a>: various <a
la-koutsopetria-podcasts.html">low-fi podcasts</a>, <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/pylakoutsopetria_season_s/2009/05/mo
re-lowtech-sol.html">infield improvised devices</a>, and <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/pylakoutsopetria_season_s/2009/05/re
turn-of-the-sifters.html">serendipitous inventions</a> that allow archaeologists
to document space, place, and the past. 3) <a
href="http://punkarchaeology.wordpress.com/2009/02/10/punk-and-place/">Punk
Archaeology reveals a deep commitment to place</a>. Punk with its tied to
garage band sound has always manifest itself spatially. The tensions between
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urban and suburban (e.g. <a href="http://www.metrolyrics.com/london-boys-lyrics-

johnny-thunders.html">Little London Boys</a>), east and west coast, and the
persistent association of certain sounds and styles with cities or even places
(some of which are intended to disorient: <a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max%27s_Kansas_City">Max's Kansas
City</a>). As archaeology is, in so many ways, a "science" of place, its
affinity to a musical genre that self-consciously laced the experience of music
with the experience of place would seem appropriate. 4) <a
href="http://punkarchaeology.wordpress.com/2009/01/23/punk-nostalgia-and-the-
archaeology-of-musical-utopia/">Punk Archaeology embraces destruction as a
creative process</a>. Archaeologists destroy the very object that they
seek to study. Digging through strata removes artifacts from their
physical context and places them in the disciplinary context of the
archaeologist notebook, database, plan, map, article, or monographg.
Destruction as a creative process echoes in some ways the process of punk which
sought to deconstruct musically the foundation of Anglo-American pop music and
build in its place a subversive recontextualized narrative of safe and
comfortable bourgeois life. I am not sure that archaeology is always
subversive and I don't even know whether punk rock forms the best parallel for
the recontextualizing process of excavation, but there is a certain symmetry
between the two. 5) Punk Archaeology is spontaneous. The one thing
that the <a href="http://punkarchaeology.wordpress.com/">Punk Archaeology
blog</a> is seeking to capture is the spontaneity of the connection between punk
and archaeology. The performance of punk archaeology through the medium of
blogging allows for our definition to remain flexible and fluid. We can
reshape our argument and our juxtapositions and even challenge and contradict
ourselves. In short, we can create distortion, noise, and a kind off
creative chaos. That might, like Punk, have value. Or
not. We'll see.
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IP: 24.63.13.242
URL:
DATE: 07/30/2009 12:01:44 PM
This is pretty sweet stuff, man! I look forward to following the conversation
further!
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TITLE: Viewsheds in the Eastern Corinthia
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BASENAME: viewsheds-in-the-eastern-corinthia
DATE: 07/27/2009 10:07:51 AM

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David Pettegrew and I continue to make revisions to our article on <a
corinthia.html">the fortification around the sites of Vayia and Lychnari
bay</a>. One of the reviewers suggested that instead of simply describing
the views from the fortified heights of Ano Vayia and Lychnari, we could do a
viewshed analysis. Viewshed analysis describes any number of methods used
to determine the intervisibility of points on a map. Generally they are
performed using geographic information system software (GIS) and are based on
Digital Elevation Models (DEM or more properly a DTM, Digital Terrain Models).
My viewsheds are pretty basic. They derive from a DEM based on the 1:5000
maps of the Eastern Corinthia. I then use ESRI's spatial analyst to
produce very simple viewsheds based on the 6 known sites along the eastern
Corinthian coast from Mt. Oneion and Stanotopi to Ano Vayia. The
circles are the sites and the blue line represents the route south from the town
of Kenchreai, which is not labeled on this map but would have been immediately
north of Mt. Oneion and Stanotopi, which are the three sites lined up east to
west across the rocky spine that projects into the Mediterranean as a small
peninsula. The site from which the viewshed derives is labeled in each of
the illustration below. The dark black line is the Saronic coast line.
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20115723c08c2970
bottom: 0px" height="404" alt="WestOneion"
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20115723c08dc970
bottom: 0px" height="404" alt="EastOneion"
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20115723c08e6970
bottom: 0px" height="404" alt="Stanotopi"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20115723c08f8970b
bottom: 0px" height="404" alt="Vigla"
bottom: 0px" height="404" alt="Lychnari"
bottom: 0px" height="404" alt="Ano Vayia"
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src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2011571478ba9970c
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> I am not sure that these images tell me
anything more than what we already could say based on simple observations from
the various points in the countryside. Here is the argument that we offer
in our paper: "The towers and buildings at Vayia, however, do make sense
as military installations guarding key travel and transportation corridors
through the region. The Lychnari tower sits on the far western side of the
Lychnari hill and seems to be positioned to overlook the bay and the northern
coast of the Corinthia, while the Ano Vayia tower overlooked the pass from
Frangolimano as well as the Vayia River valley. Indeed, both towers were clearly
intervisible and well-placed to work together to monitor movement in the area of
Lychnari and Vayia. The tower at Ano Vayia overlooked movement through the pass
leading south to Frangolimano, but the height of the coastal ridge of Kaki Rachi
compromised its view of the northern coast of the Corinthia and the Saronic
islands. The tower on Lychnari, in contrast, could not see clearly into the pass
but had a good view of the northern coast of the Corinthia including most of the
Saronic Gulf and islands. Together these two fortifications could have worked to
guard against an invading force traveling either westward through the pass or by
sea along the coast. To the north Acrocorinth is visible in the distance as are
the occupied heights of Vigla,near the village of Almyri, and the fortifications
at Stanotopi, Oneion, and even Kenchreai. The sites at Acrocorinth, Oneion,
Vigla, and Stanotopi lacked a clear view of the bays located along the southern
coast of the Corinthia. In fact, without the towers situated near Lychnari bay,
it would have been possible for a substantial force to land at Frangolimano and
move east and north toward the Isthmus hidden by the coastal heights and
completely out of the view of Corinthian positions immediately south of Oneion
or on the Isthmus. Guards stationed at Lychnari or Ano Vayia ensured that this
inland route remained in communication with forces positioned closer to the
Isthmus and could provide an early warning for the heartland of the Corinthian
chora to any danger threatening these more peripheral communities. The
kind of network and communication proposed here is well-documented in other
regions of the Greek mainland. <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/12033923">J. Ober</a> and <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/43476884">M. Munn</a> have shown how rural
towers in Attica belonged to networks of routes, towers, and fortified sites
that functioned together for local defense in the Late Classical world.
Recently, <a
e-other-part-of-the-corinthia.html">J. Marchand</a> and <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/71285030">Y. Lolos</a> scholars have
demonstrated the close link between towers and roads and argued that states
situated towers so as to control traffic through the countryside. As we have
already noted, Lolos documented a tower at Tsakouthi in the Sikyonia with
similar size and construction technique to the round tower on the height of
Lychnari; he argued that it overlooked a significant roadway linking the
Sikyonian plain to the region around Stymphalos. <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/4824475">Wiseman</a>, <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2009/04/fo
rtifications-between-the-megarid-and-corinthia.html">Smith</a>, and others have
likewise associated a network of towers with the road network that passes from
the southern Megarid into the Corinthia via either the Kaki Skala or over
various passes through Mt. Geraneia.<a href="#_edn5"
name="_ednref5"> </a>In these contexts, rural towers functioned mainly as
signal stations across the countryside that connected military forces, rural
communities, and polis centers separated by long distances and rocky terrain.
614
The towers at Ano Vayia and Lynchnari would have functioned in a similar way,
although the rectangular building at Ano Vayia and the rubble fortification on
the Vayia peninsula also suggest brief or occasional occupations by small
garrisons perhaps positioned to protect the area against small-scale raiders.
The impressive views afforded the Lychnari and Ano Vayia tower must have
extended the influence of any force stationed in the rubble fortification on the
Vayia peninsula. In sum, the position of the Lychnari and Ano Vayia towers in
the landscape, along with the evidence of the artifact assemblage, encourages us
to understand the principal function of these structures as militaristic. The
ease with which a force could pass north from the Bay at Lychnari or even
Frangolimano into the rolling country south of Oneion made the fortification of
this stretch of coastline crucial to any Corinthian strategy designed to protect
territory peripheral to city‚Äôs central chora on the Isthmus. The fortification
of Vayia and Lychnari find parallels in Corinthian (and allies‚Äô) efforts to
guard or block vulnerable passes in the mountainous regions of Corinth. The
large and complex fortified site of Ayia Paraskevi near the modern village of
Sophiko, for example, overlooks a fertile plain and several major lines of
communication and travel through the southeastern Corinthia.While this site
could represent a fortified outpost for a village of the Corinthian interior,
its position also suggests a military function not dissimilar to the ‚Äúborder
forts‚Äù along the Attic-Boeotian frontier. Similarly, the impressive array of
rubble fortifications along the ridge of Oneion must represent efforts to
control passage across the eastern ridge of the mountain and indicate a clear
strategic initiative to control passage through the rugged interior of the
Corinthia‚Äîeven if those walls should represent a temporary occupation by a
foreign power." The total viewshed of these six sites, however, is
interesting: <a
bottom: 0px" height="404" alt="AllViews"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2011571478bbf970c
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> Basically, these six sites combine to
blanked the Eastern Corinthia with the exception of the small inlet at Katakali
and its beach (it's the largest bay that is not red near the center of this
map. I would be reasonable to look at the height to the west of this
inlet, perhaps, for a tower. A tower built on that hill would not only be
visible to other sites in the area, but also be poised to watch over this
embayment. Of course, this tower might not serve too obvious a strategic
function in that other towers would cover the most visible routes out of the
vicinity of the embayment. The lack over coverage over Lychnari bay is an
artifact of the DEM and my analysis. The bay is clearly visible from the
tower at Lychnari.
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CATEGORY: Web/Tech
DATE: 07/24/2009 07:41:17 AM

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Some fun little notes today: <ul> <li>First, I experienced the power of
social media applications and blogging first hand this week. On Wednesday,
I posted <a
easures-from-moving-merrifield.html">a photo of a curious Egyptian drawing found
on the back of a bookshelf in a colleagues office</a>. I posted a photo of
it on my blog and asked if anyone recognized it. At the same time, I
tweeted a link to the blog post. Within 20 minutes, I had a response, from
Chuck Jones, who not only identified the sketch but also confirmed my suspicion
that it was done by the late UND History Professor Charles Carter. By the
end of the day I had over 200 hits on the page (up from my summertime average of
70 or 80). How cool is that? <li>If you rock and iPhone or an iPod Touch
and have to deal with ancient Greek, you should get Lexiphanes which provides
access to the <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/13319175">Liddell and Scott
Greek Lexicon (1924)</a> and the G. <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/37786220">Autenrieth, Homeric Dictionary
of 1889</a>. Wow. (Thanks to David Meadows at <a
href="http://rogueclassicism.com/2009/07/23/classical-iphone-apps/">Rogue
Classicism</a>) <li>Breaking News: Paul Ferderer and I were interviewed by our
local ABC affiliate (<a href="http://www.wdaz.com/">WDAZ</a>) yesterday about
our work this past summer in Cyprus. The story is set to appear on the 10
pm broadcast tonight. <li>More Breaking News: If you're in Southwest
Florida, you owe it to yourself to go and check out the Surf and Song Festival,
produced by the famous Fritz Caraher. And it's for a good cause. So
check out Famous Fritz in the <a href="http://www.news-
press.com/article/20090724/ENT/907240334/1054/">Ft. Myers' News Press here</a>
or, if you're a more visual person, <a
href="http://www.fox4morningblend.com/tabid/3530/story/34557/Default.aspx">on
the Morning Blend on Fox 4</a>. <li>Even More Breaking News: I just heard that
my new <a
href="http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_mac/family/mac_mini?afid=p202|G
OUSE107380695&cid=OAS-US-KWG-CPUMini-US">Mac Mini</a> has shipped.</li></ul>
Have a good weekend everyone!
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TITLE: Teaching Thursday: Revising the Historians Craft
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BASENAME: teaching-thursday-revising-the-historians-craft
CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 07/23/2009 08:36:17 AM

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The summer is when I do most of the behind the scenes work on my courses for
both fall and spring semesters. I've never been able to juggle the
pressures of actually teaching a course with those of developing it, so I've
tended to develop my courses in the summer and put them into practice in the
fall. This summer I am redeveloping two courses that are the foundations
to my course rotation: History 240: The Historians Craft and History 101:
Western Civilization I. The former is our required
historiography/methodology class for all history majors and the latter is the
standard survey of Western history from the beginnings of time to the
Renaissance. For today, I am going to talk a bit about my History
240 course. I am working on transforming it from a small, seminar style
course focused on the very deliberate construction of a 10-15 pages term paper
to a larger, lecture style course focused on developing a broader understanding
of the history of the discipline of history and on specific research and writing
skills. The reasons for this change are complex, but have nothing to do
with enrollment pressures from the administration or new curriculum
requirements. The decision to transform was completely in-house and has
far more to do with how I understand the development of the history major on our
campus. Traditionally, I think, we have trained history majors to become
careful researchers. Reading and writing exercises across the entire
curriculum (with the possible exception of 100 level survey courses) have
focused on the production of either analytical essays (like on tests), critical
book reviews, and proper research papers -- and these three facets of the
history degree find clear analogies with the three responsibilities of the
practicing academic historian: teaching, writing book reviews, and writing
longer articles and books based on original "primary source" research.
Yet, while these specific reading, writing, and analysis skills are valuable
and transferable, here at the University of North Dakota most of our students
will not go onto graduate school in history and fewer still will become
practicing academic historians. In this way, the structure and
expectations of the major does not clearly align with our student's professional
goals. This is not to say that developing the skills of a professional
historian and using them in the field of law, politics, <a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Berman">sports broadcasting</a>, or
whatever will not be fulfilling or even rewarding in a practical sense.
 Instead, I am trying to re-imagine, through revising one course, how to
communicate the core values of a history degree without following long-standing
practices designed primarily to cultivate the skills required for professional
historians. I've decided, more less unilaterally, that our methods course
should emphasize three basic ideas: 1. Historical Awareness.
Students should be aware that history is only one of a whole range of equally
valid methods for understanding past events. They should be aware that
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history is a discipline with rules that developed through time in response to

social, economic, political, and intellectual stimuli. Thus, history has no
monopoly on "the truth" about the past, but offers a widely accepted model for
creating a useful past. At its best history is capable of producing a
sound foundation for diverse society and at its worse emerges a tool of a
tyrannical majority which seeks to suppress rival understandings of the
world. 2. Organized Research. Research, in any field, requires basic
organizational skills. Back in the day, this involved index cards, legal
pads, and binders; now, it involves specialized software, search engines, and
databases. The key, to my mind, is to show the students how to use modern
methods to organize and make more efficient their research. The discipline
of history grew up alongside the emergence of archives (both as physical
buildings and as a concept of grouped and organized information) and has always
been fundamentally a discipline that does research in the archive (rather than
in the laboratory or through contemplation or reflection). Thus, history
is well-positioned as a discipline to encourage a kind of information
literacy that is becoming more and more important as our access to
information grows at an almost unfathomable rate. 3. Critical
Reading. Historians read. I might even go so far to say that we read more
than we write (although it doesn't feel that way most of the time!). At the same
time, we are moving into a hyper-literate world (tied of course to the rapidly
expanding global archive). The foundation of history as a discipline is
the practice of peer review in which good, true, history emerges through a
complex node individual works validated through scholarly consensus. That
is to say, as professional historians, critical reading is the first step toward
making arguments and collating and organizing material from the archive.
Consequently, it is difficult to imagine a course on historical methodology that
doesn't involve the evaluation of historical work. Traditionally, scholars
associated the ability to read critically with the ability to produce historical
analysis. Thus reading is tied to writing. I am going to go out on a
limb here and suggest that we can separate the critical evaluation of texts from
the ability to produce those texts. So, what is the fundamental
motive for repositioning our historical methods course around these three
goals? What I have tried to do is begin the process of articulating the
historical method in a way that places at the center of a changing world and not
just at the center of a university and tradition-bound disciplinary rules.
In effect, I am trying to look outside the discipline in my effort to teach
historical methodology and articulate more clearly how understanding the
historians craft can make one a better member of contemporary society outside of
the expectation that one needs to acquire the full-blown skill set at the hands
of a practicing historian.
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TITLE: Treasures from Moving Merrifield
STATUS: Publish
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CATEGORY: Religion
DATE: 07/22/2009 11:09:33 AM

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A second post today, but be sure to read <a
e-merrifield-move.html">today's main post</a>. I was chatting with our
Department Chair, Kim Porter, in her former office and couldn't help but notice
this on the back of a bookshelf: <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20115712f3bcf970
width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px" height="537" alt=""
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201157223bb2d970b
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> She had asked Gordon Iseminger about it
and he suggested that it might have been done by <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2007/08/hi
ttites-in-nor.html">Charles Carter</a>. His speciality was Near Eastern
Languages, with a particular focus on the Hittites, but he worked to identify
and translate the fragmentary hieroglyphics inscription held by the University
Archives. It could have also been done by either of the subsequent ancient
historians at the University of North Dakota: Linda Ricketts who wrote her <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/20345920">dissertation on Ptolemaic Egypt</a>
or Walter Ellis, my immediate predecessor, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/27812424">who also worked on the same
period</a>. So what does it say? <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201157223bb33970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20115712f3bf1970c
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> Is it a curse on anyone
who dares to move the Department of History? UPDATE: Chuck Jones of the
Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, Near Easternist, and digital
librarian extraordinary, identified the drawing as "a sketch of one of the
reliefs at Yazilikayathis which depicted Tudhalyia IV in the embrace of his
god": <a
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20115712f92d8970c
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> And thought that it was
likely to be Charles Carter's work. 
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AUTHOR: Charles Jones
IP: 128.122.167.53
DATE: 07/22/2009 12:38:05 PM
I'll wager it is Charles Carter's. It is a sketch of one of the reliefs at
Yazilikaya (<a
href="http://z.about.com/d/archaeology/1/0/7/C/hat3.jpg)">http://z.about.com/d/a
rchaeology/1/0/7/C/hat3.jpg)</a> depicting Tudhaliya IV in the embrace of his
god.
I think there is a bibliography of Carter in
The Asia Minor Connexion

Studies on the Pre-Greek Languages in Memory of Charles Carter
Edited by Yoel L. Arbeitman
Leuven: Peeters, 2000
Orbis Supplementa, 13
90-429-0798-3
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Bishop Gregory Godsey
EMAIL: archbishopgodsey@taac.us
IP: 68.47.84.70
URL: http://www.taac.us
DATE: 07/22/2009 12:42:04 PM
I am no scholar, but I did find this very interesting. I did a search of the
Near East Languages and found this: <a
href="http://www.ancientscripts.com/luwian.html">http://www.ancientscripts.com/l
uwian.html</a>
It is a story about the god Sarruma who was the god of the mountains (the middle
lower symbol that looks like a spear passing through a circle). He was a great
king or a great king went to the mountain and was imparted some wisdom or died.
I know it is vague, but like I said, I am no scholar. This is my elementary take
on it.
BTW, if you look at images of Sarruma you will see the resemblance to the tall
man in the image.
Thanks for the puzzle, not sure if it is correct or not, but I enjoyed the
adventure!
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COMMENT:
EMAIL:
IP: 134.129.174.205
DATE: 07/22/2009 01:06:13 PM
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Chuck,
Thanks for the help! I reckoned if any of my blog readers could figure this
out, it would be you.
Hope you are enjoying your NYC Summer.
Bill
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COMMENT:
IP: 24.63.13.242
URL:
DATE: 07/22/2009 01:34:07 PM
Curses, beaten to the punch!
Was at Yazilkaya last summer during a visit to Hattusha, and what fantastic
carvings are left! More fun, however, were the reconstructions of the mud-brick
defensive walls done by the German project: <a
href="http://www.hattuscha.de/English/citywall.htm">http://www.hattuscha.de/Engl
ish/citywall.htm</a>
There's a cool Byzantine Chapel there as well, Bill.
Google Earth has awesome satellite imagery of both Hattusha and Yazƒ±lkƒ±aya.
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TITLE: The Merrifield Move
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BASENAME: the-merrifield-move
CATEGORY: Elwyn Robinson's Autobiography
DATE: 07/22/2009 08:13:00 AM

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It's finally happening. After all the bluster and delays, the
department is finally moving from its long-held place in Merrifield Hall to
O'Kelly Hall. As my colleagues are slowly being moved out of their
offices, I've been able to sneak in and get some final pictures of the offices
before they are lost to us forever (how's that for dramatic?). It will
also give me a chance to add some little odds and ends that I had meant to
include in other posts about Merrifield, but had not for various reasons.
First, this note greeted me on my return from Europe: <a
621
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> As the days past the

"faculty still in Merrifield" became less and less true as they moved, one by
one. One of the great offices on campus has been until
recently occupied by Han Broedel our Early Modernist. It has a bathroom,
for one thing: <a
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20115722324d7970b
-pi" width="304" border="0"></a><a
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20115712eae2c970c
-pi" width="173" border="0"></a> It is also, almost
certainly, Orin G. Libby's former office from the day that Merrifield opened in
1928 until his retirement in 1944. I am basing this idea, Pausanias like,
on a passage from Elwyn B. Robinson's autobiography: <blockquote> "Dr.
Libby had two rooms for his office, side by side at Merrifield #221 and #223,
with a door connecting them. The first was larger than the other with a toilet,
important to me [Elywn B. Robinson] because of the frequent, urgent bowel
movements [Robinson had serious problems with his digestive track nearly his
entire adult life. ed.]. It had Dr. Libby's desk, a worktable, and a lot of
bookcases. The other room, #223, had bookshelves to the ceiling and a worktable.
Its door to the hallway was not used. From the books on the shelves, I believed
it was a workroom connected with Dr. Libby's editorship of the North Dakota
Historical Quarterly. That publication of the State Historical Society was
suspended for lack of funds in the Thirties, so the room was not much used. A
folding army cot was set up there, and I would lie down and rest between
classes." </blockquote> The door linking the two offices was not used in
recent times, but was still there, to the left of the tall bookshelf: <a
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20115712eae3b970c
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20115712eae4e970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20115712eae54970c
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> Dr. Iseminger, <a
iday-quick--2.html">the most outspoken opponent of the move from Merrifield,</a>
has vacated his office. He had been in his office since the mid-
1960s. His office was famous for a number of reasons. First, he
still pounds out missives on an old manual typewriter, so the office had a
particular sound. He also had a massive philodendron plant that crept
around the top of the overflowing bookshelves. <a
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20115712eae63970c
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> Finally, the office
preserved some of the original flooring in Merrifield Hall. The local rumor is
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that this was the surplus battleship decking installed as cost cutting measure
(and perhaps salvaged from the 15 odd battleships scrapped at the end of World
War I in accordance with the Washington Treaty including, ironically, the USS
North Dakota (which wasn't officially scrapped until 1931)). Whether the
floors were actually old battleship decking or not is relatively
unimportant. They are funky: <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20115712eae6d970
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> The move from Merrifield
Hall is pretty sad. The building was tied to the Department of History
since its inception. Moreover, by moving our department we will be
separated from the departments most closely allied with the study of the past:
English, Philosophy and Religion, and Languages. But we've been promised a
better future in our new digs in O'Kelly Hall including upgraded office space,
better classrooms, and easier access to the Memorial Union food court.
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20115712eae8a970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2011572232531970b
width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px" height="304" alt="DSCN0559"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201157223253e970b
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> It's still hard not to
think that this isn't an end of an era. For more of my tribute to
Merrifield Hall see: Check out <a
rrifield-215.html">Room 215</a>, <a
der-libbys-gaze-merrifield-217.html">Room 217</a>, <a
der-libbys-gaze-images-of-the-department-of-history-from-merrifield-
hall.html">the hallways of Merrifield</a>, and even <a
rrifield-graffiti.html">Merrifield Graffiti</a>.
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TITLE: More Lakka Skoutara

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BASENAME: more-lakka-skoutara
DATE: 07/21/2009 07:55:42 AM

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 The site of Lakka Skoutara was initially documented in 2001 as part
of an extensive survey of the area between the harbor village of Korphos and the
village of Sophiko. The goal of this extensive survey was to discover the pre-
modern route between the two settlements and the work determined that it ran
through the site of Lakka Skoutara. In addition, the extensive survey identified
a significant scatter of ancient and modern ceramics as well as the presence of
several houses, agricultural installations, and a 20th century church building
associated with the modern route through the rugged interior of the Saronic
coastline. (For more on Lakka Skoutara, see the index below) The next
year, the <a
Korinthia Archaeological Survey</a> conducted a proper intensive survey in the
area as a follow up to the extensive survey in 2001. Since there were limited
resources and time available for the survey, the team decided to sample three
transects across the landscape. These transects would followed basic
geomorphological divisions in the basin by capturing some part of the slopes of
the Lakka, the alluvial fans that produced rocky soil throughout the northern
section of the basin, and the more-stable and less rocky red soils that marked
the basin floor. This method was loosely consistent with the geomorphological
division of units practiced throughout the EKAS survey area and allowed us to
control for the significance and in a coarse way, the chronology of various
erosional processes. The units were also positioned to capture areas immediately
surrounding six of the houses which represented various states of abandonment.
This sampling method produced 92 units in three groups with an average unit size
of 2335 sq meters and a total area of 2.1 ha. The EKAS team walked each unit
at a 10 meter spacing with each fieldwalker counting every artifact that
appeared 1 m to each side of their swath. This procedure sampled 20% of the area
of each unit for density. The variation of artifacts present in each unit was
sampled according to the chronotype system in which field walkers collected one
example of each unique type of artifact. The ceramics team analyzed these
artifacts in the field and the results were keyed into an Access database which
was linked to a GIS database. The units surveyed at Lakka Skoutara produced
an artifact density of around 2200 artifacts per ha (walked), which is
considerably higher than density of approximately 1500 sherds per ha produced by
the units in the main survey transect on the Isthmus, but still below the 3000
sherds per ha often considered to be the benchmark for site density in the
Eastern Mediterranean. There were, however, 25 units in Lakka Skoutara, with a
total area of approximately a hectare which exceeded the 3000 artifacts per
hectare standard for site density. During the course of the survey, the
field team designated one area of the site as a Localized Cultural Anomaly
(LOCA) owing to the high quantity of Final Neolithic material concentrated at
the conjunction of six moderate-density units with varying qualities of surface
visibility. In these areas, the team conducted a more intensive form of artifact
collection. The teams selected a 20m x 20 m square in each DU of the LOCA and
performed a total ChronoType collection in that square. One example of each type
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of artifact was collected from each of the four squares to produce a complete
sample of every type of ceramic present. The squares were located relatively
close to one another, since the FN-EH material was not randomly distributed
throughout each DU, but rather clustered together. Consequently, the LOCA
collection units were concentrated in an effort to capture the area with the
highest artifact concentration. GPS coordinates were taken at the SW corner of
each LOCA collection square providing a fixed point from which to map the units.
Artifact Distribution The standard (or Discovery Unit (DU)) and
local collection survey produced 926 artifacts in 625 batches. The periods
represented in this assemblage of artifacts produced in these survey units
represented over 6000 years of human occupation from the Final Neolithic period
to the modern day. Examining the assemblage produced by our standard (DU)
chronotype survey shows that 33 periods appear in the survey. Since the
chronotype system provides both broad and narrow periods, many of these 33
periods are overlapping. For example, a query for Medieval pottery brings up
pottery that is certainly Medieval as well as material that our ceramicists
could only date to a broad range of time which could include the Medieval
period. There are many ways to deal with this kind of data and to represent
it. <a
href="http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/tandf/tgis/2000/00000014/00000007/ar
t00004">Aoristic analysis</a> can take into account the different degrees of
precision in our dating of the artifacts and consequently provides one
representative way to show the chronological distribution of artifacts across
the basin. This kind of representative analysis assumes that an artifact has an
equal chance of appearing during any year across its entire span of possible
dates and weights the total assemblage of artifacts that might appear in a given
time span accordingly. So if an artifact is dated to the Late Roman period with
a date from between 400 and 700 A.D., the artifact has a 1/300 chance of appear
in each year. While it is important to emphasize that this is simply a model for
the chronological distribution of ceramics, it is a useful way to represent the
relative quantity of material datable to a particular period of time.
Since most artifacts (although certainly not all!) are most accurately datable
to the century, that is the scale that I have chosen for the two graphs included
here. As chart 1 shows, there is activity at the site for nearly the entire
historical period with a sharp increase in activity in the most recent century.
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20115721ec65d970
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> Chart 1 The
results of this kind of analysis, then can be compared to the spatial
distribution of material across the unit. For a survey of this <a
kka-skoutara-the-survey.html">read this post</a>. Lakka Skoutara
Index: <a
625
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TITLE: Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project 2009 Press Release
STATUS: Publish
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The equivalent of the archaeological victory cigar is the project press
release. It's penned only once the fieldwork is done (and usually before
the real celebration -- the publication of the results) begin. I send a
version of this off to my university's Office of University Relations and they
perform their tweaktastic magic on it. I'll post a link to their improved
(embettered?) version when it appears: 17 July 2009 Pyla-Koutsopetria
Archaeological Project Press Release For Immediate Release The Pyla-
Koutsopetria Archaeological Project has completed its 7th season of
archaeological fieldwork in the coastal zone of Pyla Village near Larnaka
Cyprus. Since 2003 the PKAP team has worked under the direction of William
Caraher (University of North Dakota), R. Scott Moore (Indiana University of
Pennsylvania) and David K. Pettegrew (Messiah College) and used intensive
survey, remote sensing, and excavation to document this rich archaeological
landscape. The 2009 field season was our second season of excavation and the
largest and most complex to date with over 30 students and colleagues from the
US, Canada, the UK, and Cyprus including 3 graduate students from University of
North Dakota. Over a 5 week season, the PKAP team opened 6 trenches at the sites
of Vigla, Koutsopetria, and Kokkinokremos. The trenches on the prominent coastal
height of Vigla produced significant evidence of a Hellenistic (4th-
3rd c. B.C.) settlement. An imposing fortification wall
surrounded domestic quarters whose collapsed mudbrick walls sealed valuable
ceramic material on the floors. These buildings may have been the houses for
mercenary forces positioned to protect a vulnerable stretch of coastline near
the cosmopolitan city of Kition, or perhaps the homes of local residents who had
settled in fortified villages during politically unstable times. The excavations
on the neighboring coastal ridge of Kokkinokremos revealed two sections of
complex perimeter wall dating to the Late Bronze Age. This wall suggests that
the site itself was not properly fortified but only ringed with a series of
interlocking structures. While these structures would have presented an imposing
vista to an attacking foe, the presence of doorways leading through the exterior
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wall indicates that residents of the Late Bronze Age settlement regarded
practical needs over the need for an impregnable defense. The final area of
excavation was the Early Christian basilica at Koutsopetria. Our work near this
long-known building sought to unravel the complex history of repair and
rebuilding that occurred during the 5th, 6th, and
7th centuries A.D. To gather information on the building‚Äôs
tumultuous life cycle, the excavations focused on an annex room that suffered
several incidents of significant damage before its roof and second storey
collapsed under seemingly dramatic circumstances. In conjunction with the
excavation work, the PKAP team conducted 10 days of geophysical survey with
ground penetrating radar in collaboration with Beverly Chiarulli of
Arcaheological Services Laboratory at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. This
work revealed several areas of significant subsurface features. Finally, the
PKAP team continued its commitment to a trans-media approach to archaeological
research. We were joined in the field by an experienced documentary filmmaker,
Ian Ragsdale of Big Ape Productions and Ryan Stander, a photographer in the
Masters of Fine Arts program at the University of North Dakota. Various members
of the PKAP team blogged regularly on PKAP sponsored blogs, tweeted from the
field on a PKAP Twitter feed, and produced a dozen podcasts. These projects
represent an important aspect of reflexive fieldwork, as well as a commitment to
public outreach through new media delivered over the web. The newly created
Working Group in Digital and New Media at the University of North Dakota will
contribute to the production of Ragsdale‚Äôs documentary and facilitate a
digital exhibit of Stander‚Äôs photographs. All field work was completed
with the permission and cooperation of Director of the Department of
Antiquities, Cyprus, Dr. Pavlos Flourentzos. We also enjoyed the generous
assistance of the Estate Manager of the British Sovereign Area ‚Äì Dhekelia
Garrison, the Larnaka District Archaeological Museum and the Cyprus American
Archaeological Research Institute. The 2009 seasonŒÑs fieldwork was funded by
grants from the University of North Dakota, Institute of Aegean Prehistory, and
generous private donors.
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TITLE: Check out "Literature in a Digital Age" if You Are in New
Rockford, North Dakota Today!
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BASENAME: check-out-literature-in-a-digital-age-if-you-are-in-new-rockford-
north-dakota-today
DATE: 07/18/2009 11:16:59 AM

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Here are the details: ‚ÄúLiterature in the Digital Age‚Äù with
guest Crystal Alberts Saturday, July 18, at 2:00 p.m. at the Opera
House in New Rockford, ND Is a book on the web still a book? Do
hyperlinks change the role of narrative? What is an author if anyone can publish
anything whenever they want? These questions frame WHY?‚Äôs first episode in
front of a live audience. Recorded at the newly renovated opera house in New
Rockford, North Dakota, guest Crystal Alberts will crack open ‚Äúphilosophy of
literature‚Äù to help us investigate our assumptions about literature, reading,
and art. An expert in ‚Äúnew media,‚Äù we will take the opportunity to ask her
the kinds of questions that come up all-too-often in today‚Äôs computerized
world. What does interactivity do to the experience of reading? How does the
urgency of ‚Äúhipness‚Äù compare with the time-tested lessons of the classics?
What does the world ‚Äúclassic‚Äù mean anyway? Is the feel of paper on your
fingers a necessary component of good reading? Dr. Crystal Alberts holds a
Ph.D. in English and American Literature from Washington University in St. Louis
and is a visiting professor of English at the University of North Dakota.
WHY?‚Äôs host Jack Weinstein says, ‚ÄúCrystal is representative of the energy
and learning that our newer scholars bring with them out of graduate school. She
is more aware of the cutting edge than most people I know, and talking with her
will be a challenge to my own assumptions, not just the listeners. This will be
a lively, exciting, and interactive episode.‚Äù Have a question you want to
ask Crystal during the show but can‚Äôt be in the audience? Ask it in advance by
sending it to: <a href="mailto:askwhy@und.edu">askwhy@und.edu</a> If you
can't make it, catch the radio broadcast on August 9th on Prairie Public.
<a href="http://www.whyradioshow.org/">For more on the Why? Radio Show click
here</a>.
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I've blogged a bunch this week, so I'll keep my Friday blog short
thoughts: <blockquote> On the Web:</blockquote> <ul> <li>I need to
update the look of <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/HomePage.html">my personal
webpage</a>. It's really bothering me.</li> <li>I contemplated moving my
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blog from <a href="http://www.typepad.com/">TypePad</a> to <a

href="WordPress">WordPress</a> and perhaps even hosting on some of my server
space. I got a little spooked about this this past week, as my wife's
self-hosted (and unpatched) WordPress blog was hacked and there are rumblings
about the <a href="http://www.und.edu/">University of North Dakota</a> (where my
server lives) articulating some better-defined internet policies with particular
emphasis on blogs and social media. </li> <li>That being said, I should at
least update the look of my blog. It's embarrassing.</li> <li>Remind me
again why I ditched my Blackberry for a Samsung Omnia? Each day something
new stops working. Wednesday was my Gmail, yesterday it lost its link to
the folder where my Media files are located, today it can't seem to find the
interwebs either through WiFi or through mobile broadband. I am not sure
whether it works as a phone any longer...</li></ul> <blockquote> At
home:</blockquote> <ul> <li>I'm thinking about building a digital media
center based on a <a href="http://www.apple.com/macmini/">Mac Mini</a> and a <a
href="http://www.cambridgeaudio.com/set_territory.php?TID=27&Redirect=/summa
ry.php?PID=320">Cambridge Audio DacMagic</a> D/A converter. It might be
time to leave my CD collection behind and embrace the future.</li> <li>I've
worked from home the last week. In the mornings, I've been rewriting my
History 240: The Historians Craft class. I've blogged on this challenging
class <a
e-challenge-of-midlevel-courses.html">here</a>, <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2009/02/ha
ppy-400th-post-from-history-240.html">here</a>, and <a
aching-thursday-revised-classes-for-spring.html">here</a>. And <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/Syllabi/Syllabus_240_SP2009.htm
">here was the most recent syllabus</a>.</li> <li>I am also working on our final
report for the <a href="http://www.pkap.org/">Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological
Project</a>, a "conditionally accepted article" (accepted on the condition that
we revise it and resubmit it, for what I gather) on <a
corinthia.html">some fortifications of the southeastern Corinthia</a>, and our
work this summer around the modern site of Lakka Skoutara, for which I need to
produce a nice blog index.</li></ul> <blockquote> At play:</blockquote>
<ul> <li>Make plans to go to the Surf and Song Festival next week if you live in
Southeastern Florida! (Even if you don't!). It'll be a great time
with great weather and great music... all for a great cause.</li></ul> <a
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20115711d422a970c
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Vincent
EMAIL: vincent@pyramidtextsonline.com
IP: 121.45.213.232
DATE: 07/18/2009 02:22:13 AM
My first Mac was a Mac Mini and since upgrading to an iMac recently I've been
using the Mini more as an entertainment unit.
Load up the mini with Boxee, Plex, or CentreStage, or even just use the built-in
FrontRow.
The fact the Mac's have a remote control makes this so much more viable than a
PC with a wireless mouse which I was using as an entertainment unit for the past
seven years.
Not only is there all the online content and what ever you have on the hard
drive but of course the Mini also has a DVD drive and so I have never needed to
buy a DVD player.
I say go for it! The MacMini rocks.

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BASENAME: teaching-thursday-cyprus-and-china
CATEGORY: Teaching
CATEGORY: Travel
DATE: 07/16/2009 07:45:13 AM

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<a href="http://teachingthursday.org/2009/07/16/making-the-most-of-a-month-
in-china-the-role-of-a-directed-journal/">Colleen Berry graciously agreed to
offer her thoughts on running a summer study tour to China</a> for our <a
href="http://teachingthursday.org/">Teaching Thursday</a> blog Colleen is
an experienced study tour leader and tour guide, and her trip to China in
collaboration with Victoria Beard is one of the best regarded summer programs on
campus. She recommends that directed journals as a key aspect of
keeping students engaged in the learning process throughout their time in
China. We experimented with less structured journaling exercises through
our <a
Student Perspectives</a> and <a
duate Perspectives</a> blog with the hope that making the students recount their
experiences in public (and with some direction, see: <a
w-to-write-for-the-pyla-kousopetria-archaeological-project-blog-a-primer-in-
archaeological-blogging.html">A Primer in Archaeological Blogging</a>) was
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likely to keep them honest. I particularly admire the probing questions

with which Colleen prompts the students. She is not timid in encouraging
the students to articulate their experiences in China on a personal level.
For example: "How has this trip changed your life? Give some specific ways that
your experiences on this trip will make your life and your actions different
when you return home." I also like the idea that the journal explicitly
served not simply as a means for the student to engage their experiences, but
also a method to evaluate the success of the class. In this way, Colleen
showed that her goals with the class were not just to familiarize students with
Chinese culture (broadly construed), but to convert this familiarity into
something that they can take home and make relevant in their everyday
lives. That is a potent goal and posses a real challenge to any assessment
regiment as it not only asks the student to reflect their own experiences in
China, but to anticipate how their time there will change their engagement with
American culture. In this regard, her assessment program asks students to
anticipate certain changes and this likely goes a long way to making changes in
student behavior real. It would be interesting to follow up with this
assessment technique in a years time to see whether the student expectations
prompted by Colleen's questions came to pass. Another thing that
struck me about Colleen's directed journal is that it did not emphasize the
development of any particular skills, expertise, or knowledge nor did it engage
a particular theoretic perspective (at least overtly) -- except perhaps the
question about feeling like a minority. In this way, her program (at least
as represented in the directed journal) represents a departure from the current
emphasis on teaching specific, well-defined skills (e.g. the ability to do "x")
and encouraging students to understand their experiences through a generalized
theoretical vocabulary often keyed to potent terms like literacy, diversity, et
c. On the one hand, clearly linking assessment goals to the assignments
themselves can make evaluation easier as the values that you assess are linked
the the student's ability to understand key terms and concepts. On the
other hand, these kind of limited outcome assessment practices (e.g. what did
you learn about diversity?) probably work poorly for the
immersive experiences associated with study tours in general. No matter
how similar the backgrounds and the preparation, students will engage a foreign
culture on their own, very specific terms. As a final note, I wonder why
Colleen presented almost nothing in her directed journaling that is specific to
China; that is to say the word China could be replaced with the word Cyprus and
the journal prompts would be equally valid. Is this good because she
approaches her study tour with the hope that students learn fundamental lessons
that would resonate with any transcultural experience? Or is this a
limitation because it homogenizes the world outside the U.S. as "other than
here" or "diversity"? It's great that Colleen agreed to engage
some of the issues (and in such a practical direct way!) that I tried to bring
up in my various posts on "Teaching in the Sun" (<a
href="http://teachingthursday.org/2009/05/30/teaching-in-the-sun-managing-
fatigue/">here</a>, <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/2009/05/24/teaching-in-
the-sun-a-scavenger-hunt-in-cyprus/">here</a>, <a
href="http://teachingthursday.org/2009/05/14/teaching-thursday-teaching-in-the-
sun/">here</a>) and I look forward to a continued dialogue.
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AUTHOR: Maria
EMAIL: Maria123@yahoo.com
IP: 58.27.153.8
URL: http://www.propertycyprussales.com
DATE: 07/27/2009 07:50:29 AM
This post is fantastic. Wow‚Ä¶thank¬¥s.
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TITLE: Lakka Skoutara: The Survey
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: lakka-skoutara-the-survey
DATE: 07/15/2009 07:32:53 AM

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I've already blogged a bit about my collaboration with <a
href="http://isthmia.osu.edu/teg/">Tim Gregory</a>, <a
href="http://home.messiah.edu/~dpettegrew/">David Pettegrew</a>, and Lita
Tzortzopoulou-Gregory in documenting the abandoned rural settlement of Lakka
Skoutara (<a
e-houses-of-lakka-skoutara.html">The Houses of Lakka Skoutara</a>, <a
llapse.html">Collapse</a>, <a
ovisional-discard.html">Provisional Discard</a>, <a
nstruction-in-the-corinthia.html">Construction in the Corinthia</a>). We
conducted an intensive survey in this upland basin in 2002 and I've just begun
to analyze the distribution pattern of material across the landscape
there. Since we only had about a week to do our survey at the site, we
decided to sample the various parts of the basin so that we would capture the
hillslopes, slope wash, the bottom of the basin and areas across the entire
basin for east to west including fields in the immediate vicinity of the
abandoned houses that David Pettegrew and I have so carefully documented.
In hindsight, I wish we had surveyed the entire area since the results of our
survey were so interesting. <a
href="http://myweb.fsu.edu/dpullen/">Daniel Pullen</a> and Timothy Gregory read
the ceramics from the site and the entire <a
Korinthia Archaeological Survey</a> helped out with the fieldwork. The
basin produced material from the Final Neolithic (ca. 3300-2500 B.C.) to the
632
modern period with noticeable concentrations of material in the Roman, Medieval,

and Early Modern periods. In the maps below each dot represents a single
artifact. The dates assigned to the various maps derive from the
Chronotype dates and reflect the specificity with which our ceramicists could
identify the individual artifacts. The modern houses are represented by
little dots and the larger black dots are threshing floors (alonia). The
coloring of the survey units represents the total density of material present in
each unit. <a
bottom: 0px" height="404" alt="LSFN"
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> Final Neolithic <a
bottom: 0px" height="404" alt="LSFNEHI"
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> Final Neolithic to Early Helladic
I <a
bottom: 0px" height="404" alt="LSEBA"
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> Early Bronze Age <a
bottom: 0px" height="404" alt="LSEHI"
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> Early Helladic I <a
bottom: 0px" height="404" alt="LSEHII"
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> Early Helladic II <a
bottom: 0px" height="404" alt="LSLBA"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201157208428b970b
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> Late Bronze Age <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20115711396bf970
bottom: 0px" height="404" alt="LSArchaic"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20115711396ca970c
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> Archaic Period <a
bottom: 0px" height="404" alt="LSArchaic_Classical"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20115711396dc970c
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> Archaic to Classical <a
bottom: 0px" height="404" alt="LSArchaicHellenistic"
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-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> Archaic to Hellenistic <a
bottom: 0px" height="404" alt="LSEarlyRoman"
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> Early Roman <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20115711396ff970
bottom: 0px" height="404" alt="LSRoman"
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> Roman <a
bottom: 0px" height="404" alt="LSRomanLate"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20115720842ff970b
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> Late Roman <a
bottom: 0px" height="404" alt="LSRomanMedieval"
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> Roman to Medieval <a
bottom: 0px" height="404" alt="LSMedieval"
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> Medieval <a
bottom: 0px" height="404" alt="LSMedievalLate"
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> Late Medieval <a
bottom: 0px" height="404" alt="LSModernEarly"
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> Early Modern <a
bottom: 0px" height="404" alt="LSModern"
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> Modern <a
bottom: 0px" height="404" alt="LSModernPresent"
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> Very Recent It's
clear, for example, that the prehistoric material clusters in a very different
place than the highest density of ancient material (particularly the Roman
material). In contrast, the "Greek" period material and Roman period
material cluster to the northeast of house 4. Later, the Roman and
Medieval material seems to concentrate in some of the same areas, particularly
the units to the east of house 9. These clusters of material suggesting
some local continuity in occupation or activity. For the material to
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cluster so relatively clearly in a small survey area was welcome and rather
unexpected. It will certainly make my job of writing up the distributional
data from the survey easier. Check back soon (maybe not
today, though!) for more on Lakka Skoutara over the coming weeks.
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TITLE: Pyla-Koustopetria Final Trench Plans
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For those of you who wonder how exactly I contribute to the
excavation component of Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project (yes, <a
href="http://home.messiah.edu/~dpettegrew/">David</a> and <a
href="http://www.chss.iup.edu/rsmoore/">Scott</a>), I present the fruits of my
recent labors. These are the final trench plans from 5 of the 6
trenches. One is still a work in progress, but with any luck, I'll put it
up when its done (today?). These plans were produced in ESRI ArcGIS from
illustrations produced in the field by the trench teams. We digitize each
plan that our trench supervisors produce and ideally this means that we have a
graphic representation of each stratigraphic unit that they excavate. It's
a time consuming process to digitize each plan, but we now have plans for each
trench embedded with dimensions and elevation data and properly placed in
relation to one another. So while these final plans
look simplified (and they are), they actually contain a substantial amount of
data in the background. <a
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201157202c69e970b
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> EU 8 <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201157202c6a7970
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201157202c6b7970
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src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201157202c6c2970b
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201157202c70f970
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> EU 13 Oh, and I
haven't forgotten about the final PKAP podcast. It's somethin' else.
I'll post it soon.
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TITLE: Reflecting on Academic Blogging at 500 Posts
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BASENAME: reflecting-on-academic-blogging-at-500-posts
DATE: 07/13/2009 08:32:23 AM

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I try to reflect on my own blogging every 100 posts or so. As I made my
500th post last, I decided to think a bit more about academic blogging.
This was prompted by two things. First, I missed a little flurry of
activity across the Ancient History blogosphere at the end of May (it has been
<a href="http://ancientworldbloggers.blogspot.com/2009/05/why-blog-does-
blogging-matter.html">usefully aggregated here</a>). While the issue was
framed quite broadly as "why blog?", most of the contributors to this
conversation really were asking how does blogging matter in an a tenure-track
academic career. And some even asked the more specific question: should
blogging count toward research, teaching, or service responsibilities that most
academic have. (The answer to that, seems a bit obvious -- it depends on
the institution -- but the spirit of the question was good). This
past weekend, I read the first couple of chapters of <a
636
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/264044762">Scott Rosenberg's Say

Everything: How Blogging Began and What It's Becoming and Why It Matters.
(New York 2009).</a> The key thing that these chapters reminded me was how
radical blogging was in the days of Justin Hall (ahhh, the mid 1990s!).
His proto-blog was intimate, compelling, and a real (or at least significantly
visible) departure from previous uses of the internet. Academic
blogs have tried to keep up a bit of a radical edge. Some bloggers write
anonymously. Others write on explicitly radical topics. But few
blogs these days embrace the radical potential of the medium. In fact, if
anything blogs have become increasingly mainstream. Scholars who write
popular books are encouraged to blog about them in order to increase their
visibility and promote sales. Academics talk seriously and consistently
about the role of blogs in hiring, tenure, and promotion decisions. There
have even been <a href="http://pdqweb.edublogs.org/">efforts (albeit abortive)
to archive and publish</a> noteworthy blog posts in paper form. Needless
to say, the present generation of digital publishing both in the commercial and
academic setting is built atop blogging software -- particularly
Wordpress. In fact, in a recent discussion with a colleague about starting
a new academic journal it seemed like commonsense to begin it online (as a kind
of peer-reviewed blog) before moving it to a print-on-demand format. Only
the most nostalgic of academics can imagine a future where printed, paper, bound
journals continue to play a central role in the academic discourse. As we
watch the newspaper industry disintegrate around us, it may well be that we are
watching the culmination of a process begun by Gutenberg. The era of mass
produced text is here. It seems clear to me that we have witnessed the
end of even academic blogging's most radical era and are now in midst of its
move into the mainstream of academic consciousness either through its lessons
being absorbed, its value specifically acknowledged, or the spark of creativity
dissipating as the weight of conformity draws even the most ambitious blogger
into line. This is not, of course, a particularly novel assertion.
 The interesting thing now, as I look ahead to my next 500 posts -- if
there will be another 500 posts -- where does academic blogging go from
here. Are we as academic bloggers to be satisfied that we've shepherded a
once marginal medium into (or at least onto the threshold of) the academic
mainstream or is there more work yet to do? This is what I value about
blogging and what I strive to do as I look ahead (and yes, this is almost a
fragmentary manifesto): 1) Blogging is Personal. I admire my fellow
bloggers who are able to find the intersection between their personal life and
professional identity and make it clear in the blog. I hope that my blog
can increasingly come to represent this complex intersection and bring more of
my personality (and channel more of my inner Justin Hall) to what I write about
(after all my blog can be found at: <a
title="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/"
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/">http://m
editerraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/</a>). I think <a href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/">my
collaborative</a> <a href="http://punkarchaeology.wordpress.com/">Punk
Archaeology</a> project reflects in an explicit way some of this direction in my
writing. Most importantly, the personal character of academic blogging is
a key aspect of how it is different from what we do in other venues.
Conference paper, seminar papers, academic articles and books rarely capture
explicitly the personality of the writer (except in the cases of senior scholars
who are invited to speak in particularly reflexive ways). As scholarship
is a reflection of one's own personality, blogging provides a venue to discuss
this important context for the more public and traditional manifestations of the
637
intellectual life. 2) Blogging is Immediate. As an archaeologist,

blogging provides an immediate venue for the results of research. This is
not to suggest that one's immediate impressions are the definitive
interpretation of a site, a dataset, or an archaeological discovery. My
blog is full of false-starts, problematic interpretations, and revisions, but
these reveal and preserve (to some extent) the archaeological process in a much
more transparent way than traditional print journals. 3) Blogging is
Free. Blogging provides free access to the academic debate. While
search engines are more and more likely to journals or even individual articles
even in relatively broad searches, much of the content in these volumes cost
some money to access. Blogs, for the most part, are free for the reader
and every bit as likely (if not more so) to appear early in a search.
(From my location, my blog appears on the top of the second page of search
results produced by a Google search for "Mediterranean Archaeology" and on the
front page for Google searches for "Survey Archaeology"). 4)
Blogging Provides Space for Experimentation. Peer-review is central to the
academic process of creating knowledge, but we'd be naive to think that all
valuable knowledge emerges as a result of peer-review. The experimental
space provided by blogs has allowed me to air ideas that have not yet (and may
never) endure the rigors of the peer-review process. As usual, "reader
beware", but on the other hand, these ideas, even a negative response to them,
could potentially contribute something to ongoing academic or intellectual
discussions. I've been pretty disappointed by my own unwillingness to
experiment as much as the medium would allow. I hope to do more in this
direction and feel stodgy when I read things like <a
href="http://snarkmarket.com/blog/">Snarkmarket's</a> recent volume on <a
href="http://snarkmarket.com/nla/">The New Liberal Arts</a>. 5) Blogging
is Interactive. Ideally. While my blog rarely receives more than a
few comments per post and has yet to generate any sustained intellectual debate,
blogs have this potential. It goes without saying that
blogging has competition for all these things. As journals take more
seriously the potential provided through blog-like interfaces (particularly the
opportunity for interactive discussions) and other media, like <a
href="http://twitter.com/BillCaraher">Twitter</a>, offer even more immediate and
potentially experimental environments in which to explore one's intellectual
life, I think that the arrival of academic blogging does provide a kind of
stable, middle ground between the open seminar (or the half-baked conference
paper) and the journal article. So, thanks to all my readers and keep
reading, please! And hold me to this manifesto and I try to think a bit
more explicitly and productively about how the wide range of tools in a digital
humanists toolbox can make a difference in the intellectual life of the
community.
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EMAIL:
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IP: 134.129.203.245
DATE: 07/13/2009 09:25:54 AM
congratulations on 500!
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: David Gill
EMAIL: d.w.j.gill@gmail.com
IP: 88.202.192.29
URL: http://bsahistory.blogspot.com/
DATE: 07/13/2009 11:50:45 AM
Bill, many congratulations on reaching 500 posts. A great achievement.
I too have reflected on the place of academic blogging:
<a href="http://lootingmatters.blogspot.com/2009/05/does-blogging-
matter.html">http://lootingmatters.blogspot.com/2009/05/does-blogging-
matter.html</a>
Best wishes
David
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: f_chan
EMAIL: Felicia.Chan@manchester.ac.uk
IP: 94.192.132.37
URL: http://cultureworlds.wordpress.com/
DATE: 08/04/2009 08:21:23 PM
This article actually helped me decide whether or not to blog. So, thanks!
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Ishmael
EMAIL: postmaster@thepequod.org.uk
IP: 79.64.218.70
URL: http://www.thepequod.org.uk
DATE: 08/10/2009 04:48:46 AM
Definitely agree that blogging appears to have become less radical. And it's a
shame that academia - which should be exploiting blogs to open up controversial
debate not accessible in more traditional media such as peer reviewed journals -
does seem a bit unwilling to make the leap into doing something different. Many
academics (like myself) are still afraid to put their name to a blog, because of
the fear that employers or other academics might not recognise that a blog post,
written quickly as a work in progress, does not necessarily signify a casual
approach to the demands of academic writing (incidentally, I wonder whether this
is more of a problem in the UK, where I am based, whereas in the US there are
fewer suspicions of the technology). As you say, even you have been surprised
"by my own unwillingness to experiment as much as the medium would allow." On
the other hand, it's easy to forget how new blogging technology is, such that
there is still scope for the academic landscape to change beyond recognition 50
years hence.
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TITLE: Grand Forks in July
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: grand-forks-in-july
DATE: 07/10/2009 01:08:51 PM

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A walk down an alley.<a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2011570fa4b8c970
c-pi"><img alt="Grand Forks in July" border="0" class="at-xid-
6a00d83451908369e2011570fa4b8c970c image-full "
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2011570fa4b8c970c
-800wi" title="Grand Forks in July" /></a>
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DATE: 07/10/2009 07:10:57 AM

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I've haven't gotten back into a standard routine for blog reading yet
(although some blogs I read religiously like <a
href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/">this</a> and <a
href="http://axisofaccess.blogspot.com/">this</a> and <a
href="http://www.ancienthistory.typepad.com/ancient_history_ramblings/">this</a>
). That being said, I've been looking at these from time to time:
<a href="http://www.fimoculous.com/">Rex Sorgatz's Fimoculous</a> and <a
href="http://mediaite.com/">Mediaite</a>. <a
href="http://theneedleandthegroove.com/">The Needle and the Groove</a> is mostly
about music that I don't know. <a
href="http://www.kottke.org/">kottke.org</a> always teaches me something
new. If you haven't listened to <a
href="http://beck.com/record_club/">Beck and friend's versions of some classic
Velvet Underground tracks</a>, you're missing something unusual. I've
also been enjoying <a
href="http://www.cricinfo.com/engvaus2009/engine/current/match/345970.html">the
first test of the Ashes</a>. And especially enjoying the <a
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href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/5livesportsextra">BBC 5 Radio</a>
commentary on it.
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TITLE: Teaching in the Sun: Revisiting the Study Tour
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BASENAME: teaching-in-the-sun-revisiting-the-study-tour
CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 07/09/2009 08:07:30 AM

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Thursday</a> Last month we were lucky enough to have the Indiana
University of Pennsylvania Honors College World Tour 2009 visit us for 10 days
in Cyprus. Contrasting the approach used by this group to the approach
used by the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project to a study tour/field
school was quite useful. In fact, it led to several productive
conversations with <a href="http://www.iup.edu/page.aspx?id=19017">IUP Economics
Professor Nick Karatjes</a> who asked whether there existed a body of
discipline-specific scholarship on study tours and field schools. I
confessed that I did not know whether any existed, and this got me to thinking
about what a scholarship of study tours or field schools would look like.
What would be the key issues to a discussion of study tours in the context of
Mediterranean archaeology or of humanities based study tours more generally?
Thinking on the fly, I propose 3 issues that would be good starting points to
a conversation about teaching in the sun: 1) Assessment.
As with all things in the academy today, any conversation on teaching in the sun
must begin and end with assessment. How do we assess student learning in
immersive environments? Unlike assessment in a classroom environment where many
rubrics focus on what goes on within the limited confines of the classroom
itself, assessing the success or failure of a field school or study tour must
take into account all of the components under the direct control of the project
supervisors. Thus, any mode of assessment must take into consideration
everything from the basic logistical details (food, accommodation, travel) to
the more typical pedagogical components of the education experience. The
pedagogical experience expands from the laboratory like environment of the
classroom to encompass the full range of student experiences. 2)
The Limits of Student Engagement. As so much of the value
of the study tour or field school is the potential for immersion in a unfamiliar
place or engaging in the regular practical application of skills acquired either
641
in the field or in the classroom. Both the need to survive in a foreign

country and the need to consistently perform tasks or demonstrate skills in a
"real world" environment requires a degree of student engagement in excess of
the typical course in the humanities. The stakes can be higher too.
The failure of a student to perform a task correctly over the course of a field
school could produce results that either undermine the goal of the team or
invalidate research results. The inability to deal with a foreign
environment can cause a degree of mental discomfort that may exceed the
discomfort produced in all but the most rigorous courses. The key in
aspect then in a scholarly engagement with study tours or field schools will be
how to successfully engage the students in their skill building exercises and
foreign environment both the maximize their experiences and to avoid difficult
results. At the same time, it is necessary to understand the background
and potential of a group of students to determine the degree to which they are
capable of engaging their surroundings. Pushing a group of students to go
beyond their comfort zone can be good, but going a step to far could have
unfortunate results. 3) Structure and Chaos. One
of the key components of any study tour or field school is balancing organized
or structured learning opportunities against unstructured opportunities for
students to explore their surrounding and engage the local culture on their own
terms. On the one hand, living and working in a foreign country is a great
opportunities for students to engage critically with everyday life in a way that
is difficult, if not impossible, to simulate within more familiar surroundings
(only abroad can going to the post office be an opportunity for cross-cultural
critique). Unstructured opportunities for engagement put greater pressure
on the individual student to create a meaningful space for themselves within a
foreign culture. On the other hand, unstructured time requires the faculty
to allow students to find their comfort zone even if that is not the exact type
of engagement that faculty might wish for the students. The more organized
and structured the engagement with the foreign culture is, however, the more
that the experience of living and working abroad is partitioned off into a
specific place and orchestrated set of experiences. Less structured time,
however, runs the risk of allowing students to chose not to engage with the host
community and, say, hide in their rooms or only engage aspects of the local
culture that seem familiar. I wrote the body of this blog post when in
Cyprus and reflecting on it now, I think that the three issues broached here
apply to some extent to teaching and assessing learning in a classroom
environment as well -- except that when running a study tour or field school,
these issues are pushed to the foreground as the instructor has far more control
over the day-to-day life of the students than an instructor in a more
traditional classroom setting.
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AUTHOR: Nick Karatjas
EMAIL:
IP: 71.60.62.11
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URL: http://profile.typepad.com/6p011571f50889970b
DATE: 07/11/2009 11:44:49 AM
Interesting--I have found a few articles which relate from 3 different outlets:
College Teaching, World Archaeology, and The Journal of Experiential Education.
Once I have read them I will let you if I find anything to add to the above
discussion.
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DATE: 07/08/2009 01:09:21 PM

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Just because it's a nice day out, it looked cool, and I am working on
revising an article: <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2011570e7497c970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2011571dc1f04970b
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> Swingline Stapler
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TITLE: The Body and the Liturgy
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DATE: 07/08/2009 08:30:43 AM

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The <a
href="http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_early_christian_studies/toc/earl.1
7.2.html">summer 2009 issue of the Journal of Early Christian Studies</a> is a
tribute to the work of Patricia Cox Miller. <a
643
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/29428668">Her book on dreams in Late

Antiquity</a> has been particularly useful to my work on dreams in an
archaeological context. The volume is dedicated to a series of articles
focusing on the body in Late Antiquity and represents the wide range of topics
that draw upon the study of the body as a key paradigm. The article in
the recent volume of the JECS that caught my attention is Derek
Krueger's "The Unbounded Body in the Age of Liturgical Reproduction". In
it, he explores the idea that in Late Antiquity there were very few checks on
the proliferation of the liturgy and its power to reproduce the body of
God. As evidence, he explores passages in John Moschos' Pratum
Spirituale. In particular, he examines the well-known story of the
children who play-act the liturgy and, when they utter the words of consecration
accidentally consecrate the host. Thus unordained and untrained children
were able conjure the body of God through the words of the liturgy alone.
Krueger then goes on to site some other passages that, in a general way,
reinforce his observations. Several years ago, in a thoroughly
unsuccessful and consequently unpublished article, I argued that the the same
proliferation of the liturgy explained the appearance of liturgical phrases in
inscriptions across the Eastern Mediterranean. These texts appeared not
just in the context of the church building, but also in domestic space and in
public space (particularly fortifications). While these texts rarely
contained the entire text of the anaphora (central to the act of consecration),
I argue that they frequently invoke the liturgy specifically and establish a
pars pro toto relationship. The implication here is that (1) literate
folks were familiar enough with the words of the liturgy to recognize a
liturgical phrase in an inscription. Krueger's work substantiates this
assumption. And (2) the liturgy itself was not the exclusive domain of the
clergy, but could be appropriated by ordinary folks for their homes (especially
in Syria) or by the elite in monumental fortifications. Thus, there exists
some tension between clergy's position as the "ritual experts" in relation to
the liturgy and the proliferation of the liturgy among members of the
laity. These arguments are persuasive and important, especially
for any scholar (like myself) who see the ritual formality of the liturgy as
crucial to its role in establishing a clearly defined relationship between the
laity, the clergy, and the divine. I can't get around the idea that
clergy's authority in Late Antique society was in some way linked to their role
in the liturgy. After all, the most visible mark of the liturgy and
clerical presence in a community was the monumentalized expression of liturgical
space -- the church building.
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TITLE: The Varieties of Archaeological Experience
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DATE: 07/07/2009 07:32:47 AM

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One of the recurring themes in this blog is an emphasis on the varieties of
archaeological experience in a Mediterranean context (<a
eam-archaeology-working-paper.html">e.g.</a>). Despite my insistence (primarily
to myself) that different approaches to archaeological knowledge can exist
concurrently and possess a kind of validity rooted in a particular cultural
discourse, it is nevertheless difficult to put this kind of approach to
archaeology into practice. It‚Äôs one thing to accept that different modern
archaeological methods ‚Äì say, intensive pedestrian survey, stratigraphic
excavation, and remote sensing ‚Äì can produce different results, but another
thing to try to understand (and risk validating!) the cultural context for, say,
metal detector looting. This being said, by the end of our field season on
Cyprus, we witnessed at least four different archaeological methods each with
its own goals and contexts‚Ä¶ 1) Stratigraphic Excavation. This method
of excavation has become the standard for academic excavations the world
over. Its basic premise lies in excavating according to depositional
contexts typically evident by changes in soil type. The goal is to
associate the depositional process with the cultural material preserved in each
stratigraphic layer. This process melds the processes that create the
archaeological environment with chronological and functional indicators of past
human activities. This method for archaeological investigation is widely
accepted that it can produce a kind arrogance in its practitioners that verges
on colonial conceit. 2) Non-Stratigraphic Excavation. The issue with
stratigraphic excavation is that it can be very slow ‚Äì especially with student
excavators in complex environments. The complexity and slow pace of our
excavation made it clear that we were not going to be able to answer some of our
research questions. In particular, we were not going to be able to excavate deep
enough to expose any of the Classical/Hellenistic phase to our settlement at
Koutsopetria. At one point our collaborator within the Department of Antiquities
suggested that we as ‚Äúacademic‚Äù archaeologist excavate too slowly and that
we should make a deep, non-stratigraphic sounding to answer a specific research
question. This evoked a rather strong negative reaction from many of the senior
project staff and conjured up images of Schliemann‚Äôs Great Trench at Troy. On
the other hand, the suggestion revealed an important distinction between the
goals and methods of the state archaeological apparatus and an academic research
project. The state, in its capacity as arbiter of official cultural values and
‚Äúowner‚Äù of all archaeological material and sites had a particular right to
approach excavation in a way that was inappropriate (at best) for a foreign
archaeological mission whose right to excavate depended in part on their
commitment to produce detailed documentation from the inherently destructive
practice of archaeology. 3) Looting with Metal Detectors. This year, more
than any other year in the past, the metal detector crowd was out in force
across our entire research area. While we did not actually catch them in action,
the divots left from their destructive shovel tests were evident across the
entire site. Local informants and the Sovereign Base Area police told us that
the metal detecting was organized and systematic at our site. The metal
detecting team had a powerful metal detector that could find metal objects well
below the plow zone. Apparently this more powerful type of metal detector is
645
illegal (and it was illegal in any event to use it so close to a registered

archaeological site), but the folks using it stationed look outs to keep them
from being caught. At one point, a man who claimed to be a good kind of metal
detector guy, talked with us about the bad kind of metal detector guys who were
giving his hobby a bad name. 4) The Mist of the Past. We were also visited by
a developer who grew up in the area. He was very keen to demonstrate a thorough
knowledge of the local archaeological landscape and talked in some detail about
the various local discoveries. He made a point of explaining how local people
could detect archaeological sites by observing the way that the morning fog
moved across the ground. The coastal position of our site ensures a consistent
morning fog making it well suited this kind of remote sensing technique.
Moreover, the expertise necessary to detect the slight changes in the way that
fog moved across the landscape required a training rooted in the social
organization of the local community. According our informant, this
archaeological method passed down through families and carried with it a kind of
distinct (and potentially secret) knowledge of the history of the area. The
four kinds of archaeological methods that we encountered this year on Cyprus
reveal different methods for appropriating and making meaningful the
archaeological landscape. The overlapping techniques present in the
reading of a single landscape (and revealed over the course of a single 4 week
field season) was a great antidote to the exclusive, modernist perspectives
offered by stratigraphic archaeology. This is not to say that we'll
unleash a cadre of metal detector wielding undergraduates across the site next
summer, but rather to remind ourselves that our methods and the meaning that
they project onto the research area represents only a small fraction of the
archaeological "carrying capacity" of a particular place.
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IP: 70.248.215.239
URL:
DATE: 07/07/2009 08:43:40 AM
It seems like your fourth category, "mists of the past," could have some
connection to the Dream Archaeology you have discussed in previous posts.
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COMMENT:
EMAIL:
IP: 134.129.174.205
DATE: 07/07/2009 08:49:20 AM
Rangar,
Absolutely... except the mists of the past is a conscious archaeological

technique which may have some contact with reality (who know?). In contrast,
646
dream archaeology is has feet both in the working of the unconscious mind
(dreaming) and the conscious interpretative facilities (interpreting the dream).
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COMMENT:
IP: 99.156.70.186
URL:
DATE: 07/07/2009 06:26:15 PM
This summer, I visited a cousin of mine, who lives in Lamia. He's a civil
engineer but very susceptible to populist theories. I haven't seen him in about
10 years, so I was telling him about my archaeological fieldwork. At some point,
he said, next time I am investigating a site, I should simply print out an
aerial photograph and give it to him because he has a friend who can detect
historical layers through ESP. So, he can do a "mental" excavation and tell me
whether I'll find anything below. Now, that is as "remote" as remote sensing
gets. During this visit, I was translating what my cousin was saying to my
brother-in-law, a very rational Swedish economist. I censored my own translation
during this passage. I was simply to embarrassed (for my cousin) to translate
this to my brother-in-law. There were many other things that I left
untranslated, mostly various conspiracy theories with the Economists as tools of
the Americans.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: CamArchGrad
EMAIL: cksulu@hotmail.com
IP: 96.48.68.141
URL:
DATE: 07/07/2009 08:07:18 PM
I think there always will be a tension between the need for detail and the need
to answer research questions. Moreover, I've noticed in the Mediterranean,
archaeologists from the region tend to be more cavalier about doing soundings.
When in Italy we cleaned out several structures with a backhoe and dumped the
medieval layers in a pile to get at the roman strata. Our English archaeologists
were horrified.
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COMMENT:
EMAIL:
IP: 134.129.174.205
DATE: 07/08/2009 08:35:40 AM
Kostis,
A very rational colleague of mine has a former student (and PKAP volunteer) who
claims to have color synesthesia (there is apparently no known cure or
treatment) which allows her to see space in colors. She looked at some of our
standard black and white air photos and made notes where things appeared in
different colors. My colleague investigated some of these places over the last
year or so and remains convinced of the potential of this very unorthodox form
of remote sensing.
The ESP story is brilliant. That's another great example of how people map the
landscape through their unconscious! Tanagras would be proud!
647
Bill
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DATE: 07/06/2009 08:01:42 AM

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As I settle back into my American routine, I'll try to bring my readers up to
date on my summer adventures. I just returned from 10 days (or so) of
fieldwork in the Corinthia at a site called Lakka Skoutara. As I've
reported here earlier, <a href="http://home.messiah.edu/~dpettegrew/">David
Pettegrew</a> and I spent much of that time recording a collection of rural
houses in various states of abandonment. To do this, we (mostly David)
described the condition of the house in minute detail, measured the houses,
photographed them, and this year we produced small sketch plans of a few typical
houses in the area. So, I've included here three sketch plans and
a photographs (with apologies to architects everywhere -- particularly <a
href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/">Kostis Kourelis</a>!). It will be
clear that these houses are rather typical Balkan type "long houses".
House 10 preserved the traditional divider that separated the area for
agricultural work or animals from the area reserved for domestic
activities. House 4 is said to be the oldest house in the area and our
sketch plan must represent multiple phases or significant repairs. House 10 was
by far the best preserved and it is clear that it is still maintained for
seasonal use, probably associated with the cultivation of olives. 
The large basin's for resin which were commonly associated with several of
these houses show that resin collection was an important activity for residents
of the Lakka. In addition to basins for resin collecting, most the houses
had a cistern or well near by, as well as an aloni (or threshing floor) and a
oven. Despite being identified as the oldest house, the aloni associated
with House 4 must be earlier than the house as at least part of the house sits
atop the aloni and it would have been impractical for the aloni to be that close
to a domestic area. Threshing grain is dusty work. Several of the
houses preserved a small area for a walled garden (see House 3 and probably
House 4). The wall probably served to keep animals out or chickens in.
House 3 <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2011570d329ae970
bottom: 0px" height="404" alt="LakkaSkoutara_House3"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2011571c803b0970b
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2011570d329b6970
bottom: 0px" height="272" alt="LakkaSkoutara_House4_Photo"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2011571c803b5970b
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> House
4 <a
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href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2011571c803be970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2011571c803c3970b
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2011570d329c1970
bottom: 0px" height="304" alt="OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA "
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2011570d329c5970c
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> House
10 <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2011571c803ce970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2011570d329ca970c
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2011571c803d1970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2011571c803dd970b
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COMMENT:
IP: 99.156.70.186
URL:
DATE: 07/06/2009 10:15:32 AM
Great to have your blog back as part of daily ritual. And the houses are great
stuff. I love the carbohydrate axis between aloni and bake oven with everything
else just a stage along the process. Interesting about the resin basin; I've
never seen this before.
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TITLE: Loutro Oraias Elenis in the Rain, a Church, and Thoughts of Going Home
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DATE: 06/29/2009 11:58:30 PM

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Yesterday afternoon, there was an American-style summer thunderstorm here in

Loutro Elenis. Complete with hail, lightening ground strikes, torrential
downpours, and thunder, the storm represents (to my mind) another example of
American cultural imperialism. The Corinthia, typically, gets very little
rain in the summer and thunder storms are relatively rare. <a
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20115718de651970b
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> The nice thing about this storm is that
it seemed to tell me that I should be going home. And I am.
Tonight. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201157098b29f970
bottom: 0px" height="272" alt="AyKatherineDome"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201157098b2ae970c
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> It also brought to mind a nice reminder
of summer field seasons in the past. In 2001, I was doing an extensive
survey with the <a
Korinthia Archaeological Survey</a>. This involved hiking by myself
through the mountains of the southeastern Corinthia and noting what I saw.
One late June afternoon, I came across the barely nucleated settlement that we
now call Lakka Skoutara. Just as I had finished doing a little walking
tour of a few of the abandoned houses -- the very abandoned houses that we
prepared for publication this summer -- a late June thunder storm rolled through
the mountains. I panicked and tried to find the biggest (but shortest)
olive tree for some shelter when I caught the slightest glimpse of a tiny,
whitewashed dome. My keen, Byzantinist-trained mind immediately realized
that there is only one kind of white-washed, domed building in the Greek
countryside. A church! <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201157098b2c2970
bottom: 0px" height="272" alt="AyKatherineChurch"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20115718de6a7970b
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> It turned out to be a small, rural
chapel dedicated to St. Katherine who is not particularly known for protecting
wanderers, extensive surveyers, or travelers, but she obliged my immediate needs
nonetheless and provided me shelter from the storm. As I look forward to
going home and returning to my more normal routine, I couldn't help but think
that the rain yesterday put a nice bookend on our work here in the
Corinthia. First, it evoked my first experience of the <a
llapse.html">Lakka</a> <a
ovisional-discard.html">Skoutara</a> <a
nstruction-in-the-corinthia.html">basin</a>, where <a
href="http://home.messiah.edu/~dpettegrew/">David Pettegrew</a> and I concluded
650
almost a decade of observation and documentation this year. It also

foreshadowed my return to the US with a quintessentially American weather.
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201157098b2dd970
bottom: 0px" height="272" alt="LoutroSunnyAM"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20115718de6ba970b
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> So, thank for the patience
with my somewhat erratic blogging schedule. Once I get back to the US and
settled in, I'll return to my normal blogging routine and post updates on my
summer fieldwork, plans for the fall, and various other topics. 
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Maddy Bray
IP: 76.170.0.106
URL: http://archaeobaking.blogspot.com/
DATE: 06/30/2009 11:05:50 PM
I miss the Corinthia. Happy travels!
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Missy
EMAIL: hought54@msu.edu
IP: 35.13.114.155
URL:
DATE: 10/22/2010 01:20:26 PM
I think you stayed in the exact hotel and the same room I stayed in when I was
in Loutro Elenis. I studied abroad this summer and just randomly did a search on
Loutro Elenis, and this site came up. Ha. I took almost the exact same photo
(the second and last photo)
Just sort of made me laugh

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TITLE: Collapse
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DATE: 06/26/2009 02:46:21 AM

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Over the past week, <a

href="http://home.messiah.edu/~dpettegrew/">David Pettegrew</a> and I have been
able to observe the various processes which caused a series of rural houses to
collapse. One key issue is with their tile roofs. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201157160dd87970
bottom: 0px" height="600" alt="Tiles"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201157160dda3970b
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> A number of houses seem to
have had their roofs systematically stripped of tile. <a
bottom: 0px" height="600" alt="TilelessRoof"
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> In some cases, the tiles
slide off the roof as parts of the roof gives way over time. As the tiles
slide off the roof, they frequently form halos around the house... <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20115706bb0a1970
bottom: 0px" height="272" alt="TileFall"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201157160de41970b
bottom: 0px" height="600" alt="TileFall2"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201157160deaf970b
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> In other instances, the
tile roof stays more or less in tact, but the walls of the house begin to
splay. <a
b-pi"><a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20115706bb1c4970
bottom: 0px" height="600" alt="WallProblems"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201157160df8b970b
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a></a> In some cases, the home
owner tried to buttress the wall with another wall, but this did not seem to
work entirely in this case. <a
bottom: 0px" height="600" alt="WallProblems2"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201157160e00d970b
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> When the walls collapsed,
the tile roof caved in on the interior of the house. <a
bottom: 0px" height="272" alt="RoofCollapse1"
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201157160e0fd970
bottom: 0px" height="272" alt="RoofCollapse2"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201157160e12e970b
652
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> If the interior of the

house doesn't get squashed by the collapsing roof, then the various interior
partition walls (which were often just plaster and mud) collapse as well. <a
bottom: 0px" height="272" alt="WallProblemsInt"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201157160e1b1970b
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> 
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COMMENT:
IP: 76.248.150.90
URL:
DATE: 06/26/2009 09:04:55 AM
There's some great comperanda from American vernacular architecture about the
communal cycle of roofs. Roofs are a part of the house that has to be repaired
at the end of every winter. The repair is done communally and doesn't require a
visiting specialist. Robert Blair St. George has argued that you can use roofs
to gauge the degree of communal cohesion, self-sufficiency, etc. Roof tiles are
inherently interesting because they are by design recycled every year. With
abandonment, of course, one sees a different stratification (roof tiles and wood
at the bottom of the trench, followed by stone and mortar with a distinctive
catenary curve forming around the walls.) GOOD STUFF. I can't wait to see your
documentation.
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DATE: 06/24/2009 07:21:43 AM

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<a href="http://home.messiah.edu/~dpettegrew/">David Pettegrew</a> and I have
been visiting a photographing a settlement in the Corinthian countryside.
Today we observed a few commonplace examples of what archaeologists call
provisional discard. That means discard that occurs in an orderly fashion
653
after an object is no longer needed for its primary use. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20115705adec9970
bottom: 0px" height="272" alt="ProvisionalDiscard1"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20115705adeda970c
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20115715015df970
bottom: 0px" height="600" alt="ProvisionalDiscard2"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20115705adf07970c
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> Provisional discard is
part of the numerous processes through which artifacts become part of the
archaeological record from their place in more everyday life.
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IP: 76.248.150.90
URL:
DATE: 06/24/2009 09:39:07 AM
Oh man. This is so interesting, and I imagine the method of documentation so
difficult. What kind of database criteria might one use? Walking through a bunch
of different environments this summer (elite Kephisia suburb, industrial
Boeotia, Athenian ghetto, Lamia, provincial beach near Stylida) I noticed a
consistent aesthetic of disjunction. Much of it was a material disregard for
juxtapositions, connections, joints. This ad hoc sensibility--not only in
spolia, but also in new constructions--completely disregards any rules of
appropriateness (middle class? protestant? western?) A yard accumulation in
Appalachian North Carolina, let's say, follows the same principles. So it can't
be strictly national or regional.
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TITLE: Construction in the Corinthia
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BASENAME: construction-in-the-corinthia
DATE: 06/23/2009 09:06:14 AM

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href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201157052aaff970
bottom: 0px" height="272" alt="ContingentConstruction"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201157052ab10970c
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> Four construction styles appear in one
building in the southeastern Corinthia. A Cinder block pediment rests atop
a fieldstone wall with tile chinking. Meanwhile a twisted piece of metal
holds the now collapsed roof beam in place.
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COMMENT:
IP: 67.66.94.180
URL:
DATE: 06/23/2009 09:14:14 AM
That's great. Is it near anything else of significance in the Corinthia?
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COMMENT:
EMAIL:
IP: 94.66.241.137
DATE: 06/23/2009 09:17:21 AM
Rangar,
Ummm... no. It's about 5 km east of Sophiko in a place called Lakka Skoutara.
Bill
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BASENAME: pyla-koutsopetria-blog-statistics
CATEGORY: Weblogs
DATE: 06/20/2009 10:27:04 PM

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As we get ready to leave the island and <a

href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/PKAPBlogAggregator.html">shut
down our empire of the new media</a> for the season (although some new v-logs
will appear on the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/PKAP2009">PKAP YouTube
channel</a>), we thought we might report on some of the statistics for the
blog. This is largely in response to the most asked question: "do people
actually read your postings?". The answer is emphatically yes. Here
are the page views for the past month: <a
ogy of the Mediterranean World</a>: 2061 <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/pylakoutsopetria_season_s/">Pyla-
Koutsopetria Season Staff Blog</a>: 1239 <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/pylakoutsopetria_graduate/">Pyla-
Koutsopetria Graduate Student Perspectives</a>: 1551 <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/pylakoutsopetria_undergra/">Pyla-
Koutsopetria Undergraduate Perspectives</a>: 1192 Total: 6043
page views Thanks for reading!
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TITLE: Narrating Pyla-Koutsopetria
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DATE: 06/20/2009 02:49:29 AM

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One of the simple pleasures of the end of fieldwork are the various papers
that we write and the opportunity to present in narrative form the history of
the site. There is nothing particularly binding about the following
narrative, nor is it even a working hypothesis, but a collection of potential
interpretations in narrative form. It sure beats the dry-as-bones
digitalizing and number crunching that will be at the core of our more formal
analysis! By the later stages of the Late Bronze Age the various settlements
in the area consolidated their population on the height of Pyla-
Kokkinokremos. Taking advantage of the imposing positions afforded by the
coastal height of Kokkinokremos and the now-infilled harbor, this settlement
must have controlled an impressive stretch of the coastline with views
incorporating around the curving aspect of Larnaka bay. This community
comes to an abrupt end sometime around the year 1200 after existing for less
than a century. There is no real evidence of continuity between this
community and later settlement in the area. So, during the Archaic-
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Classical period it was probably a new population who established the small,
fortified settlement on the height of Vigla surrounded by not insignificant
shrines both inland and on the coastal zone. By the Hellenistic period
(4th-2nd century BC), it is possible that the small settlement on Vigla received
a garrison perhaps of mercenaries funded by the Ptolemaic kings of Egypt who
sought to hold fast to Cyprus and awarded the governors of the province the
status of strategoi (or general) reflecting the military significance of their
post. The Roman conquest of the Eastern Mediterranean brought to an end
the almost constant wars between the various successors of Alexander the Great
and regional powers. This is likely revealed at our site by the gradual
occupation of the coastal plain of Koutsopetria. During Late Antiquity, or
the Late Roman period, the coastal site of Koutsopetria reached its heyday. The
substantial Early Christian basilica formed the western border of a prosperous
coastal town. To the east of the church there appears to have been domestic
space, but there are suggestions of another monumental building based on stray
architectural fragments found during the survey. There is also evidence for what
may have been modest harbor-side facilities. Only recently have we
discovered some faint traces of post-ancient occupation on the site. Our
excavation has revealed a substantial post-ancient fill that preserved some
pottery that we can tentatively date to the 10th-13th century. The fill was
associated with a wall that seems to be a substantial, late refurbishment of the
area near the basilica. Later still, In the post-Medieval period there are
only traces of activity across the site. There‚Äôs a rough wall that flanks the
modern coastal road and the faint remains of a possible 19th century road
running along a barely visible coastal ridge.
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IP: 76.248.150.90
URL:
DATE: 06/20/2009 05:53:42 AM
Very impressive. What a few sherds can tell.
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Here are some more <a href="http://www.pkap.org/">PKAP</a> Video
from our <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/PKAP2009">YouTube
channel</a>. Check out the interview with our filmmaker <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/pylakoutsopetria_season_s/2009/06/py
la-koutsopetria-filmmaker-ian-ragsdale.html">Ian Ragsdale here</a>. <div align="center"> <div class="wlWriterSmartContent"
id="scid:5737277B-5D6D-4f48-ABFC-DD9C333F4C5D:840a0567-7081-49d3-9c6d-
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8ade-6b4259efaba5" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; display: inline;"><div><a
href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zA0jqLV7sOs&hl=en&fs=1&"
target="_new"><img
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201157022d05e970c
document.getElementById('db737b1a-12f9-4abc-8ade-6b4259efaba5');
value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/zA0jqLV7sOs&hl=en&fs=1&\"
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<div class="wlWriterSmartContent" id="scid:5737277B-5D6D-4f48-ABFC-
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top: 0px"><div id="17fe4737-859a-4573-9501-ecbd0307890c" style="margin: 0px;
href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpqZkmbvVcE&hl=en&fs=1&"
target="_new"><img
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201157117ec6e970b
document.getElementById('17fe4737-859a-4573-9501-ecbd0307890c');
value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/YpqZkmbvVcE&hl=en&fs=1&\"
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TITLE: Pyla-Koutsopetria Filmmaker Ian Ragsdale
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BASENAME: pyla-koutsopetria-filmmaker-ian-ragsdale
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Things are getting hectic here as <a href="http://www.pkap.org/">PKAP</a>
heads into its final phases, so I'll let our resident documentary filmmaker
provide some content. Below is a short email interview with Ian
Ragsdale. I've asked him the same questions that I asked to Joe Patrow,
our last documentary filmmaker, two years ago. <a
erging-cyprio.html">For that interview click here</a>. What
were your goals in shooting a documentary with the Pyla-Koutsopetria
Archaeological Project? As an aspiring archaeologist as well as a
professional videographer, I arrived in Cyprus with a variety of goals. My
most basic goals are to provide PKAP with videos to increase the exposure of the
project, its mission, and its directors. It is my hope that these videos
will assist PKAP to educate students as well as retain and attract new sources
of funding. Before I arrived, I honestly did not have clear concepts about
what form such videos would take, but my goal now is to create short video posts
covering the personal and archaeological experiences of members of the field
team (already available online) and additionally make a 30 to 60 minute
documentary about the archaeology of the project. On a professional and
academic level, this video project is a great way for me to show a diversity of
filmmaking skills in a new environment and gain real archaeology field work
experience. This experience should also prove critical in my
applications to graduate school. On a personal level, the trip to Cyprus
has been a refreshing break from a strenuous and chaotic freelance videography
career. I haven't been to Europe to shoot movies since 2003 and 2004, and
it's been a wonderful and challenging opportunity. As expecting parents,
my wife, who is also here in Cyprus, and I are also happy that we've already
taken our child on an international trip. It sets a good precedent for the
future! How is your work different from PKAP‚Äôs earlier documentary
work, namely Joe Patrow‚Äôs award-winning <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/DocuScript/DSHomePage.html">Survey on Cyprus</a> and <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/Emerging_Cypriot.html">Emer
ging Cypriot</a>, his series of shorts? My work is different
from Joe's in a few ways. Most fundamentally, Joe worked with PKAP before
the project undertook any excavations, so the work going on at the PKAP site has
been incredibly different from what he captured on camera. While artifact
collection and processing has been similar, the simple fact that PKAP is now
digging into the ground has given me a whole new category of field methods to
cover. I've been able to build on Joe's work by covering a variety of field
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methods and other scenes non-existent at the PKAP site when Joe was last
here. As an aspiring archaeologist, I also have a different perspective on
the work that PKAP is doing. Although I am working on videos for the
general public, I'm also trying to specifically reach the aspiring-archaeologist
undergrad set with interviews and videos that address the questions and
interests of someone curious about archaeology as a profession. Since I am
in that same place in my life, it's a great perspective for me to try and give
others watching my videos. Can you describe your relationship to the
Project? Although I have been brought to PKAP as a professional
videographer, I feel like much more than a hired hand sent out to capture video
of Mediterranean archaeology. I'm living, eating, and riding bumper cars
with field team members and sweating in the trenches excavating whenever I get
the chance. I've unearthed artifacts, measured ancient walls, and earned
my blisters just like everyone else. About the only thing that is
different is every evening I go into my room and edit video, and occasionally I
appear randomly with a camera and demand an interview. Because I have four
weeks here - three weeks of excavations and one week for interviews - I have
been able to get all the footage I need while also getting some experience
digging. I must also say that the closeness that I feel to PKAP is not
only because of my interest in the work going on here, but truly because of the
warm reception I have received from the staff and the field team. I can
only hope that the PKAP directors don't mind me being chummy... Did
anything surprise you about working closely and being a member of the PKAP
team? It's a fairly stock response, but I didn't have too many
preconceptions. I've been on many group trips with close quarters, shared
meals, and long hours, so I experienced no hardship in that sense. One
thing that has been interesting is that, as a filmmaker, I have been afforded
the opportunity to constantly step back and "people-watch" at the PKAP
site. There are a great many wonderful individuals on the trip here, and
together they have formed many strange and unique alliances and small-group
cultures without developing cliques. Moving from trench to trench across
the site, I have been able to interact with all the workgroups and see their
quirks and listen to their conversations. I have been surprised and
pleased at how much fun folks can have in 105 degree heat, no wind, engulfed in
dust, and with no relief in site but a handful of pizza-flavored bagel chips at
5:00. Do you feel that your presence and work on the project
contributed to the project's overall goals? It's been great to see
the openness, on the part of the project's directors, to so-called "new media"
interacting with archaeology. Only since the invention of YouTube is free
bandwidth for video available to anyone to present their videos to the world,
and PKAP is all about taking advantage of such tools. I think that the
final word about my impact on the project's goals will come several years down
the road, as funding and other attention is directed towards the project via the
videos. What did you have to teach the archaeologists in order to
make your work there successful? I'm an extremely flexible filmmaker
and I like to shoot with minimal impact on my subjects, so I didn't really have
to fight anyone to conform to some Kubrick-esque demands in order to get a
critical interview about a trowel. I think the most important thing that a
filmmaker can do is to instill confidence in his or her subjects so that they
can feel comfortable letting the filmmaker, for instance, crawl over their
newly-discovered antiquities trying to pull off a neat shot. My work in
the trenches really showed that I was serious about archaeology and would
present both the work and the people faithfully.\
How much footage have you accumulated during your three weeks of
shooting? So far I've shot twelve hours, but I anticipate on
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shooting 18-20 hours total once I've completed the formal interviews next
week. How was the footage shot -- can you give us some technical
specifications without being too technical? I'm shooting with a
Panasonic DVX100 miniDV camera, editing with Final Cut Pro, producing special
effects using Motion, and creating original background music for the YouTube
clips using Garage Band. I always shoot with a polarizing filter on my
camera, which is a filter that reduces glare from the sky, sea and other
reflecting surfaces so that I can get nice shots of the blue sky over
Cyprus. This filter also protects my lens from dust and grit, which is a
reality on an archaeological dig. Whenever practical, I shoot with the
camera on a tripod. Shooting handheld makes it must faster to switch from
shot to shot, and it is sometimes easier to pull off pans with just the hands,
but having the camera on a tripod is extra insurance that my shot will be steady
enough to use in the final product. What will happen to the
footage? Does it have archival value? PKAP has already purchased an
external hard drive that will hold this year's footage in a totally digital,
versatile form, and which PKAP will keep for future use. I believe that
the interviews may hold some archival value, as they capture, in a nutshell, the
perspectives of PKAP staff in 2009. If the PKAP site ever undergoes full-
scale excavation or even conversion to a tourist attraction, then the interviews
could be an interesting feature of a visitor's center or excavation archives.
What are your future goals with the project? As I begin
graduate education in anthropology and archaeology, it would be wonderful to
continue my association with the project as both a member of the field team and
a filmmaker. Right now though I'm really living in the moment, still
trying to figure out what I'm going to shoot in the fifteen minutes following
completion of this questionnaire. What other projects are you
working on now and how can we follow them? In the past year I've
shot documentaries on slow food, family farms, and Olympic gymnasts and have
traveled to Tuscon, Philadelphia, and all over Texas for my work. I'm
based in Houston and my production company, Big Ape Productions has a website:
<a href="http://www.bigapefilms.com">www.bigapefilms.com</a>. The site is
new, but we are updating it with content as fast as we can.
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TITLE: More Pyla-Koutsopetria on YouTube
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DATE: 06/12/2009 10:59:16 PM
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<div align="left">Our resident filmmaker, Ian Ragsdale, has produced three more
video log (vlog) shorts on YouTube for your viewing pleasure. As the
students prepare to return to the US leaving the trench supervisors and senior
staff a hectic week of processing finds and rapping up final documentation, it
seems fitting to begin with a video dedicated to the hard work and fun that our
volunteers contributed to the project over the last month.</div> <div
align="left"> </div> <div align="center"> <div class="wlWriterSmartContent"
id="scid:5737277B-5D6D-4f48-ABFC-DD9C333F4C5D:a01c2c60-4c09-4da8-8de6-
8572a3c24958" style="padding-right: 0px; display: inline; padding-left: 0px;
padding-bottom: 0px; margin: 0px; padding-top: 0px"><div id="2eb6925a-7e17-4de5-
af16-d4158814d59b" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; display: inline;"><div><a
href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbIYd5bYKxk&hl=en&fs=1&"
target="_new"><img
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201157103b72e970b
document.getElementById('2eb6925a-7e17-4de5-af16-d4158814d59b');
value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/XbIYd5bYKxk&hl=en&fs=1&\"
src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/XbIYd5bYKxk&hl=en&fs=1&\"
width=\"425\"
alt=""></a></div></div></div></div> <div align="left">Dallas Deforest provides a
nice insight into the background of a trench supervisor... we'll head out this
morning to continue work on his trench which is now over 2 m below the
surface!</div> <div align="center"> <div
DD9C333F4C5D:14c6ca39-3912-4a47-9a03-53d7f4ba1e7e" style="padding-right: 0px;
top: 0px"><div id="88d329b5-d07e-4310-b39c-76e5e581dd4a" style="margin: 0px;
href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdS8J8IuVWs&hl=en&fs=1&"
target="_new"><img
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20115700e9c5f970c
document.getElementById('88d329b5-d07e-4310-b39c-76e5e581dd4a');
value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/xdS8J8IuVWs&hl=en&fs=1&\"
src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/xdS8J8IuVWs&hl=en&fs=1&\"
width=\"425\"
alt=""></a></div></div></div></div> Another perspective on life in a trench... 
<div align="center"> <div class="wlWriterSmartContent" id="scid:5737277B-5D6D-
4f48-ABFC-DD9C333F4C5D:e81fc802-3dde-4356-81aa-28ccf93ab09c" style="padding-
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0px; padding-top: 0px"><div id="7f4c4bb9-9d7a-4182-84fc-bd9e1c0c2da8"

style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; display: inline;"><div><a
href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnPpZKGyFi4&hl=en&fs=1&"
target="_new"><img
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201157103b73f970b
document.getElementById('7f4c4bb9-9d7a-4182-84fc-bd9e1c0c2da8');
value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/pnPpZKGyFi4&hl=en&fs=1&\"
src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/pnPpZKGyFi4&hl=en&fs=1&\"
width=\"425\"
alt=""></a></div></div></div></div> More to come
soon!
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TITLE: The Last Week of PKAP Fieldwork in 2009
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DATE: 06/10/2009 10:27:47 PM

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The entire Pyla Koutsopetria Archaeological Project is looking down the home
stretch of the 2009 field season. I find myself repeating in my head each
morning: "if I can only make it through Friday, we'll be fine...". Our
enthusiastic group of student volunteers begin to leave on Sunday morning and
the senior staff will shift their focus from the dirty work of excavation to the
tidier work of producing final reports. As part of the end-game process,
the senior staff has met regularly to parse out our top priorities for the next
10 days on the island. What absolutely has to get done before we
leave? We must process some of our finds -- especially those from secure
or sensitive contexts, we must draw and photographs trenches before they are
backfilled, and we must produce comprehensive reports on each area
excavated. A few of our trenches still need considerable work to
bring them to a successful conclusion. One of the cruel realities of
excavation is that the most sensitive contexts tend to appear at the end of the
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season. At least three of our trenches -- one on Vigla, one in

Koutsopetria, and one on Kokkinokremos -- are finishing up over the next few
days with the most delicate kind of excavation. Teams in each trench
scrape down floors, carefully remove floor packing, or excavate foundation
trenches related to significant walls in order to extract the chronologically
significant ceramics to ensure the we do not contaminate the material in these
contexts with material from other less secure layers. I've both spent
time in the trenches and digitizing trench plans to make sure that a digital
plan exists for each excavated stratigraphic unit. We've also begun to
enter the ceramic data produced by Scott Moore in the museum into our finds
database. Entering data while in the field ensures that we can analyze
results on the fly and produce a final report for the Department of Antiquities
quickly and efficiently at the end of season. So the blogging may slow
down as we are faced with the frantic dash to the finish of the PKAP season, but
fear not, we'll keep you in the loop.
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TITLE: Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project and the New Media
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DATE: 06/07/2009 10:28:41 PM

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The short weekend has given us a chance to upload some of the most recent new
media treatments of our work here in Cyprus. Our filmmaker, Ian
Ragsdale, has released two short pieces chronicling life on the <a
href="http://www.pkap.org/">Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project</a>.
The first two clips can be viewed on <a
href="http://www.youtube.com/user/PKAP2009">PKAP's new YouTube
channel</a>. Ian's work has focused on the students so far and gives a
great insight into how students and trench supervisors engage the work of
archaeology. <embed
src="http://www.youtube.com/v/kEVj8CBMPN8&hl=en&fs=1&" width="425"
height="344" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true"
allowscriptaccess="always"> <div align="center"> <div
DD9C333F4C5D:c3fd4816-f28e-4ccf-a485-a75f4ac7b6b5" style="padding-right: 0px;
top: 0px"><div id="e607d6a5-6e71-4de1-84ab-b3b5144d6c11" style="margin: 0px;
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href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rb0hvEb7IiU&hl=en&fs=1&"
target="_new"><img
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201156fdeb6e2970c
document.getElementById('e607d6a5-6e71-4de1-84ab-b3b5144d6c11');
value=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/Rb0hvEb7IiU&hl=en&fs=1&\"
src=\"http://www.youtube.com/v/Rb0hvEb7IiU&hl=en&fs=1&\"
width=\"425\"
alt=""></a></div></div></div></div></embed> We also have the second
installment of our popular PKAP podcast series: Week Two Podcasts:
<a
Koutsopetria_East_Week_2_2009.mp3">Koutsopetria East Week 2</a> <a
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Ground_Penetrating_Radar_Team_2009.mp3">Ground Penetrating Radar Team</a> <a

-pi" width="61" border="0"></a> Be sure to check out the Week 1
Series: <a
PKAP2009_Intro.mp3">PKAP 20009 Introduction</a> <a
PKAP2009_Intro.mp3"><img height="16" alt="image"
Ferd) <a
-pi" width="61" border="0"></a> If you haven't checked out our
photographer (and Artist-in-Residence) Ryan Stander's work, you are missing some
great photographs. Check them out both on his personal blog, <a
href="http://axisofaccess.blogspot.com/">Axis of Access</a>, and on the <a
Koutsopetria Graduate Student Perspectives</a> Blog. And we haven't
forgotten about the archaeology... This week will be our most hectic so
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far. Our goal is to bring at least 5 of our 6 trenches to completion

before our hard-working group of student volunteers leave the field on
Saturday. We also have planned a half-day trip to Nicosia, our Bronze Age
ceramicist, Mara Horowitz, will be arriving Wednesday, and we plan to push a
last few trays of pottery collected in 2008 through preliminary analysis over
the course of the next week. We're all tired, but excited to bring our
short and exceedingly intense field season to a close. Keep reading our
blog here and elsewhere. To read about the latest goings-on keep visiting
the <a
blog aggregator</a>. And just in case you are not convinced that PKAP is
awesome, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsIk15oT-ZI">check this
out</a>.
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DATE: 06/04/2009 11:03:32 PM

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Here is one more installment of PKAP Podcasts: <a
Ferd) <a
-pi" width="61" border="0"></a> A more substantial blog post will come
soon! We are in full on working mode. Do check out the work of our
photographer Ryan Stander. He's posting photographs on his excellent blog
<a href="http://axisofaccess.blogspot.com/">Axis of Access</a>.
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DATE: 06/03/2009 10:30:17 PM

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Here's the second installment of <a href="http://www.pkap.org/">PKAP</a>
podcasts from the 2009 Season. <a
Vigla_East_Week_1_2009.mp3">Vigla East Week 1</a> (Featuring P-Ferd) <a
-pi" width="61" border="0"></a> And here is a link to work by our
photographer Ryan Stander. He's posting photographs on his excellent blog
<a href="http://axisofaccess.blogspot.com/">Axis of Access</a>. Field
trips today to Pyla Village, Halla Sultan Tekke, and the chuch(es) of Ay.
Phaneromeni.
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TITLE: Pyla-Koutsopetria Podcasts
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DATE: 06/02/2009 11:14:05 PM

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Continuing our embrace of Punk Archaeology (in all forms), the team of the <a
href="http://www.pkap.org/">Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project</a> has
released our second EP of podcasts. Voices of Archaeology 2009 is now
ready for listening and to build suspense (and to take full advantage of our
limited bandwidth), we'll release the first batch of podcasts over the course of
the week. Like many of the most significant punk rock offerings, the sound
quality is mediocre, but the content is better. The wind up on the ridge
tops combined with a seriously cheap ($11) Radio Shack microphone to give the
entire operation a garage band like quality. Disclaimers aside, here are
the first three. The first track is a basic introduction to our site and
the goals of our fieldwork this summer. <a
PKAP2009_Intro.mp3" target="_blank">PKAP 20009 Introduction</a> <a
PKAP2009_Intro.mp3"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; border-left:
0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="16" alt="image"
-pi" width="61" border="0"></a> For the rest of the tracks, we stop by
the trenches and talk to the excavators. For these trench interviews, we
mainly focused on the student volunteers. The podcasts are all live and
without anything but the most cosmetic editing. This technique was part of
our strategy to get the students to think and interpret on their feet (and
discourage too much mindless digging). In some sense, the podcasts, while
artificial, nevertheless captured a moment in the archaeological process.
The first couple are from the trenches on Pyla-Kokkinokremos: <a
Kokkinokremos_East_Week_1_2009.mp3"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top:
0px; border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="16" alt="image"
Kokkinokremos_West_Week_1_2009.mp3"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top:
0px; border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="16" alt="image"
-pi" width="61" border="0"></a> Enjoy the podcasts and check back
tomorrow for the next installment. And remember for the full PKAP blog
experience check out the <a
Blog Aggregator</a>.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Aaron Barth
EMAIL: abarth@metcalfarchaeology.com
IP: 207.108.104.226
URL: http://www.metcalfarchaeology.com/
DATE: 06/04/2009 04:59:59 PM
This is good.
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TITLE: Field Trips
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DATE: 06/02/2009 12:07:09 AM

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As a director of the <a href="http://www.pkap.org/" target="_blank">Pyla-
Koutsopetria Archaeological Project</a>, I spend most of my time working on
issues central to our basic research goals whether this involves teams
logistics, issues of digital workflow, and questions of archaeological
methodology. Several times a year, however, I am called upon to contribute
to the various field trips that the team makes. Yesterday, for example, I
subbed in for my wife, who was feeling a bit under the weather and visited the
sites of Paphos, Paliokastro-Maa, Ay. Georgios-Peyias, and the monastery of Ay.
Neophytos. Today, I am traveling with a large study tour from Indiana
University of Pennsylvania (we affectionately call it the IUP World Tour 2009)
to the sites of Amathous, Kourion, and the Medieval manor house at
Kolossi. These trips are a nice distraction from the daily work of
archaeology and give me a chance to revisit important sites on the island.
They are also great testimonies to how effective and efficient our trench and
area supervisors are this year. After a week of excavation, there have
been no unexpected issues that have prevented the teams from functioning in a
regular way. This is a credit exclusively to our archaeological middle-
managers who monitor day-to-day activities in the trenches (literally!) and
continuously work with the students to refine their excavation and
interpretative techniques. Because the trench and area supervisors are
working so effectively, the project directors (David Pettegrew, Scott Moore, and
myself) have been able to take on an expanded number of daily tasks.
Recently, <a href="http://www.iuparchaeology.iup.edu/staff.html"
target="_blank">Beverly Chiarulli</a> has arrived from Indiana University of
Pennsylvania with a ground penetrating radar rig. We have been able to work with
her to initiate an ambitious program of GPR analysis across the site.
While the first day in the field produced some ambiguous results, we are
optimistic that today we'll be able to produce some good results from Vigla and
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begin to work down on Koutsopetria. Scott Moore and I have led trips to
area sites, we've hosted visiting scholars and showed them around our site, and
we've made plans to present some of our research to a group of interested
soldiers on the British base. 
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TITLE: If you can't get enough Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project...
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BASENAME: if-you-cant-get-enough-pyla-koutsopetria-archaeological-project
CATEGORY: Weblogs
DATE: 05/29/2009 11:02:34 PM

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If you just can't get enough information on PKAP, check out our family of
PKAP Blogs: <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/pylakoutsopetria_graduate/"
target="_blank">Pyla-Koutsopetria Graduate Student Perspectives</a> <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/pylakoutsopetria_season_s/"
target="_blank">Pyla-Koutsopetria Season Staff Blog</a> <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/pylakoutsopetria_undergra/"
target="_blank">Pyla-Koutsopetria Undergraduate Perspectives</a> Or
simply visit the <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/PKAPBlogAggregator.html"
target="_blank">PKAP Blog Aggregator</a> where all three blogs appear as well as
up to the hour updates from my Twitter feed.
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TITLE: Teaching in the Sun: Managing Fatigue
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: teaching-in-the-sun-managing-fatigue
DATE: 05/29/2009 10:12:17 PM

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(Crossposted to <a
Koutsopetria Staff Blog</a> and <a
href="http://www.teachingthursday.org/">Teaching Thursday</a>) One of
the key challenges that <a href="http://www.pkap.org/" target="_blank">we</a>
face on Cyprus is managing the fatigue of students and staff. <a
href="http://www.pkap.org/" target="_blank">Our archaeological project</a> often
spends over 8 hours a day in the sun working on our trenches, processing pottery
in the museum, or visiting other ancient sites. Most of students (and
staff) come from mild climates like central or western Pennsylvania or North
Dakota. By the end of the first week of work, the effect of the sun, work,
hours, combine with the lingering remains of jet lag to produce a very tired
cohort of students. Despite the fatigue, the students and staff have to
keep pushing in their rigorous schedule if we hope to accomplish our research
and pedagogical goals. In general, the students enjoy the rigor. Our
site is beautifully situated on the south coast of Cyprus, the trench
supervisors are an exceptional lot, and there comes a feeling of comradery from
working together long hours in the field. The downside of this, of
course, is that as the students become more tired, they become less susceptible
to learning. This goes for staff as well. There is just enough of
the macho ethic in archaeology that staff work beyond their maximum fatigue
levels and become less effective both as excavator and teachers. It would
be easy to simply suggest that we take more time off or ease back on our
schedule just a bit, but the students have traveled quite a ways and paid a good
bit of money to experience both the culture and history of Cyprus and gain
experience as excavators. So, every time that we consider cutting back on
the "contact hours", we worry that we are shortchanging the students. As
the students become more fatigued, of course, the quality of contact hours
decreases. There is some threshold beyond which it is not useful to keep
the students in the field working under the argument that we are doing it to
provide them with the fullest learning experience! This challenge
of balancing work load and actual learning has made me think of how we organize
our classes during the regular school year. For example, at my home
institution, <a href="http://www.und.edu/" target="_blank">University of North
Dakota</a>, it is fairly common for students to take many credits above the
typical 15 credit work load. This puts pressure on the students to
function at a relatively high level even under significant stress from their
increasing workload. While the visible evidence for the fatigue is more
striking when students are doing archaeological fieldwork, the fatigue and
stress experienced during the academic year is no less real. The
issue that arises, of course, is where is the threshold where students can
maximize their experiences on a project or in a class, while still functioning
at a high enough level to appreciate it. If you push too hard and the
students break down, tempers flair, and decision making (a key aspect of
archaeological fieldwork and learning) unravels. If you don't push hard
enough, you'll leave experiences and work on the table. To make matters
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more complex, some students and staff can go at maximum intensity for weeks on
end, while some break down after only a week of the stress of working and
managing a complex group of students and scholars. Today is the end of
our first week in the field and while we planned on going into the field all
afternoon, it is clear that the students (and staff!) need some time off to
recover from the first full week of excavating. We're going to work for a
half day today and then take most of Sunday morning off. Our GPR (Ground
Penetrating Radar) team arrives later today...
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TITLE: Digital Workflow in an Analog World
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BASENAME: digital-workflow-in-an-analog-world
CATEGORY: Web/Tech
DATE: 05/27/2009 12:22:04 AM

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One my responsibilities is managing the digital workflow on the
project. This includes migrating information collected in the field from
an analog format (mostly text written) to digital formats. With the
beginning of excavation, I digitized the first trench plan yesterday. Each
plan is digitized as it is prepared by the excavator so the following days
trench plans can include features excavated the previous day (if these features
remain in the trench -- like a wall or a particularly immobile stone). The
digitized plans provide the excavator with a tidy model of their previous days
sketch. The worry, however, (and there is always a catch) is that they will
freeze with the sketch the interpretative process. This is not a huge
worry for something like a single stone which is rather less susceptible to
changes in interpretation than, say, the top of a complex wall. Once the
wall appears on a trench plan as illustrated it can, of course, be changed by
the excavator (and we encourage them to change their illustrations as often as
needed!), but I wonder how the crossing of the digital/analog divide will
influence a trench supervisors understanding of the interpretative
processes. As another example, Scott Moore and I celebrated (with a bag
of chips and a fruit juice) the reading of the last unit of survey pottery from
the intensive survey the we conducted from 2004-2007. Scott dutifully
recorded pertinent data on over 8000 batches of artifacts (close to 20,000
artifacts total). He recorded all the information on a prepared form and
these were keyed into the project database. The process of digitization
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transforms the objects from physical, three dimensional artifacts to bits of

data organized into tables. These data can then be searched and organized
according to the analytical needs of the project. Like digitized trench
plans the transition from analog (or even "real") artifacts to digital artifacts
ossifies or freezes certain analytical functions. Like the authority
vested in the written word, digital data resists the kind of reinterpretation
that more traditional analog forms of data encourages in an archaeological
context. An object or a notebook entry seems inherently more susceptible
to recatagorization and change. The trick with digital data and central
to the documenting the digital workflow is to annotate somehow the changes to
digital datasets that occur as they move from an analog state to a digital state
(and any changes that almost inevitably occur within a digital state). In
a notebook or on a handwritten form it is easy to strike out an earlier
interpretation or statement and replace it with a newer one. The paper
copy, then, preserves a record of the changing interpretations, mistakes, and to
some extent the archaeological thought process. An important secondary
issue is how to preserve this process in digital form -- especially in a way
that embeds the process of change in the visible representation of the data (not
in hidden metadata, the name of which implies a secondary aspect to the data
itself). More scanning and digitization today... and I hope that an
answer reveals itself as I continue to modify and refine the workflow from the
analog to the digital. Crossposted to the <a
Koutsopetria Season Staff Blog</a>. If you haven't already, check out the
<a href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/PKAPBlogAggregator.html"
target="_blank">PKAP Blog Aggregator</a>.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: James Herbst
EMAIL: jherbst.corinth@ascsa.edu.gr
IP: 94.66.210.234
URL: http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/index.php/excavationcorinth/
DATE: 05/29/2009 08:37:04 AM
I would really like to see what you work out.
At present in Corinth, I'm less concerned about changes reinterpreting a single

context record for a stone or a wall or deposit, but how to track multiple
interpretations for sets or groups of contexts. Currently, we are synthesizing
this stuff randomly (every session or three week interval) in summaries but not
in more meaningful groupings.
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TITLE: Archaeology, Technology, and Who is the Punk Archaeologist Now?
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CATEGORY: Web/Tech
DATE: 05/24/2009 10:47:14 PM

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Every years, we encounter the same problem. Some vital piece of
equipment does not work the way that it should. This year (as it most
often is), it was our expensive and elaborate differential GPS unit. We
spent Sunday reinstalling the Trimble software on the survey controller.
Fortunately, this solved the problem, but it also highlighted the fact that as
archaeology develops into the 21st century, the technological demands on the
average excavator or survey archaeologist will continue to increase. The
knowledge necessary to fix whatever problem has infiltrated our GPS unit was
completely arcane. The various menus controlling the device's settings did
not cascade in a predictable way nor did they make their purpose know through
anything approach common or self-evident terms. The demand for technical
expertise continues through the various Geographic Information Systems software
as well. Trimble's Geomatics Office and ESRI's ArcGIS are quite
dissimilar, yet are both crucial to mapping our site accurately. While
many projects bring in a separate team to conduct mapping or survey activities,
PKAP has a more <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIY_ethic">DIY</a> or
hands-on approach. Aside from geophysical work -- resistivity and this
year ground penetrating radar, our project has found itself (primarily for
funding reasons) in a position to take on ever increasing responsibilities for
tasks that exist at the borders of specilization. What is interesting, of
course, is that some members of the project -- particularly those trained in
more tradition archaeology programs -- almost resist the use of
technology. Skeptical of its grandiose promises (sub-centimeter
accuracy!), elaborate language (EGG Geoid Models!), and temperamental
disposition ("Initialization has been lost"!), several members of the project
would gladly reject it and return to old style ways of mapping, organizing data,
and conducting fieldwork. In fact, we can often detect a bit of passive
resistance to the growing significance of technology among several old school
project members who subtly resist the various requirements imposed by technology
(particularly the inflexible demands of consistency imposed by our databases)
and seem to revel in declaring their particular fieldwork as having distinctive,
irresolvable autonomy from any larger, technological system. So
this brings me to the question in my subject line. While our project has
embraced a fairly wide ranging diy approach (note the various posts at <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/pylakoutsopetria_graduate/2009/05/da
ys-3-and-4.html">PKAP Graduate Student Perspective Blog</a> and this author has
insisted that we do not purchase the ready-made picks and shovels, but the kind
where the head is separate (or at least loosely attached) the shaft), there is a
lingering reluctance among some members of the project to include technology in
their performance of the diy aesthetic. This perhaps parallels one of the
grander splits in the punk rock movement: on the one hand, there were punks like
Brian Eno who showed an increasing willingness to embrace of technology and
electronic music and, on the other, those influences by the folk tradition who
recognized the simple implements of rock 'n' roll music (guitar, drums, base,
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keyboard) as sufficient to communicate their revolution. (It seems obvious

that <a href="http://punkarchaeology.wordpress.com/2009/04/27/metal-machine-
music/">Metal Machine Music</a> is ironic, but what exactly does it
critique?). So PKAP continues. Each day offers the potential
for another skirmish between the earnest and self-sufficient archaeologist with
the tape, compass, and notebook, and the technologically savvy director burdened
with his Mad Max like tangle of databases, GPS units, video cameras, data
collectors and "softwares". 
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Nathan
EMAIL: harpern2@unlv.nevada.edu
IP: 83.212.248.195
URL:
DATE: 05/25/2009 11:17:08 AM
Best of luck with the season! I arrive on-island Friday. Surely, a trip will be
made from Athienou.
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TITLE: Teaching in the Sun: A Scavenger Hunt in Cyprus
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BASENAME: teaching-in-the-sun-a-scavenger-hunt-in-cyprus
CATEGORY: Scott Moore
CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 05/24/2009 12:29:02 AM

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(Crossposted to <a
Koutsopetria Staff Blog</a> and <a
href="http://www.teachingthursday.org/">Teaching Thursday</a>) Classroom
teaching hardly prepares you for the adventures and eventualities of teaching
(in the broadest sense) while on site in a foreign country. My colleagues,
<a href="http://www.ancienthistory.typepad.com/ancient_history_ramblings/">R.
Scott Moore</a> (IUP) and <a href="http://home.messiah.edu/~dpettegrew/">David
K. Pettegrew</a> (Messiah College, Pa.), conduct <a
href="http://www.pkap.org/">archaeological research each summer in Cyprus</a>
and over the past few years have gradually increased the pedagogical and student
components to this work. This has forced us to balance our research goals
-- extracting good quality archaeological data from a site called Pyla-
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Koutsopetria -- with teaching goals -- giving the students not only an education
in the history and culture of Cyprus but also in archaeological method and
practice. At the same time, we have to deal with the very real challenges
of managing a group of students through the various stages of travel and culture
shock. Since many of our students come from <a
href="http://www.iup.edu/">Indiana University of Pennsylvania</a> and the <a
href="http://www.und.edu/">University of North Dakota</a>, schools that tend to
produce students who do not have extensive experience outside the country, this
can be as big a challenge as actually teaching historical, archaeological, or
cultural content. Many of our students have a tendency to be nervous
about venturing out into the city of Larnaka where we live. Some of this
comes from the somewhat disorienting local street "grid" where everything seems
slightly off parallel so streets are ever converging and diverging, and some
comes from the words in the Greek alphabet (even though most important signs are
translated into English). Scott Moore proposed that we encourage the
students to engage their surroundings through a scavenger hunt. The
students will take their digital cameras and crisscross the city taking photos
of both practical features (like banks, pharmacies, and mailboxes) and various
historical monuments and places across the city. The goal of the latter is
to form the foundation for discussion of religious and cultural pluralism on the
island as well as make the students familiar with significant the local
monuments and how history is inscribed in the local landscape. PKAP 2009
Scavenger Hunt Practical 1) ___ 1 point each, and worth
up to 5 points ‚Äì find a pharmacy 2) ___ 1 point each, and worth up to 5
points ‚Äì find a ATM machine 3) ___ 1 point each, and worth up to 5 points
‚Äì find a public mail box 4) ___ 1 point each, and worth up to 5 points ‚Äì
find a periptero or mini-market 5) ___ 1 point each, and worth up to 5 points
‚Äì find an American restaurant 6) ___ 1 point each, and worth up to 3 points
‚Äì find a bookstore 7) ___ 1 point each, and worth up to 3 points ‚Äì find a
Greek Orthodox church 8) ___ 1 point each up to 3 points ‚Äì find a
bakery 9) ___ 2 points ‚Äì find a Swiss restaurant 10) ___ 2 points ‚Äì
find an Irish restaurant 11) ___ 2 points ‚Äì find a Chinese
restaurant 12) ___ 2 points ‚Äì find a Cypriot restaurant 13) ___ 2 points
‚Äì find a Lebanese restaurant 14) ___ 3 points ‚Äì find the post
office 15) ___ 3 points ‚Äì find the police station Cultural
 16) ___ 2 points ‚Äì find Ayios Lazarus 17) ___ 2 points ‚Äì find a
mosque 18) ___ 2 points ‚Äì find the castle/fort 19) ___ 2 points ‚Äì find
the statue of Cimon/Kimon 20) ___ 2 points ‚Äì find the image of a
chalcolithic figurine 21) ___ 2 points ‚Äì find a coppersmith/metalworking
shop 22) ___ 2 points ‚Äì find the municipal market 23) ___ 1 point each
up to 3 points ‚Äì find a street without a Cypriot Greek name 24) ___ 1 point
each up to 3 points ‚Äì find a non Greek Orthodox church 25) ___ 1 point each
up to 2 points ‚Äì find a mudbrick building 26) ___ 2 points ‚Äì find a shark
fishing boat 27) ___ 2 points ‚Äì find a large airplane 28) ___ 1 point
each up to 2 points ‚Äì find a sign in Russian 29) ___ 2 points ‚Äì find a
store selling Lefkara lace 30) ___ 2 points ‚Äì find the Black Turtle
restaurant 31) ___ 2 points ‚Äì find a school 32) ___ 2 points ‚Äì find an
example of Gothic architecture 33) ___ 2 points ‚Äì find an example of
Ottoman architecture 34) ___ 2 points ‚Äì find an example of Byzantine
architecture 35) ___ 2 points ‚Äì find an example of British Colonial
architecture 36) ___ 2 points ‚Äì find an ancient ship-shed 37) ___ 2
points ‚Äì find a Greek flag 38) ___ 2 points ‚Äì find a Cypriot flag 39)
___ 2 points ‚Äì find an EU flag Bonuses 40) ___ 5 points ‚Äì
find a Cypriot wedding or procession 41) ___ 5 points ‚Äì find an American
car make and model
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COMMENT:
IP: 99.168.85.15
URL:
DATE: 05/24/2009 05:17:41 PM
Now that's a brilliant list!!!
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BASENAME: special-kind-of-chaos
DATE: 05/21/2009 10:31:48 AM

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The first week or so of the season always involves a very special kind of
chaos. First, we make the rounds talking with the various authorities on
the island who sanction or support our fieldwork. Over the last week we
met with folks at the Department of Antiquities, the Cyprus American Archaeology
Research Institute, the British Dhekelia Garrison (both the military and
civilian sides), and the Larnaka District Archaeological Museum. Each
party has a particular interest in meeting with us. From the Department of
Antiquities, who is responsible for all archaeological activity on the island,
to the British base at Dhekelia, who are primarily concerned with our safety on
their land. Each meeting, of course, brings with it the potential
for a new set of challenges. This week, we've moved from our traditional
digs at the Larnaka District Archaeological Museum to site of the museums
storerooms at a place called Terra Ombra. The special electrical system at
the storerooms seems to struggle to handle our rather modest array of computers
without blowing the main fuse which requires a walk around the block to
reset. At the same time, the folks at the base have expressed concern with
the potential for wildfires. The wet winter and the end of cultivation at
two of our main areas of fieldwork has let the vegetation to grow to dangerous
levels. To limit this very real risk (fires raging across archaeological
projects are not unknown on Cyprus), a few of us are going to receive some fire
training at the base fire station tomorrow and we have had to cut back swathes
of the vegetation to create a safe barrier for our work. Cutting back the
vegetation involves contacting and contracting with the local landscape
management company to bring their big field mowers out to clear the site (and
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avoid the archaeology). We'll also have the local grounds keepers for the
Department of Antiquities trim back the overgrowth from around more delicate
areas of the site. We've also brought our differential GPS online,
organized our new storerooms (and begun to process pottery from last year
including 12 prodigal units of survey pottery that managed to escape analysis
last season), and identified several places where new survey will clarify the
relationship between surface features and excavated features. Michael
Brown, our indefatigable colleague from the University of Edinburgh, Cypriot
prehistorian extraordinary, and representative of empires lost, constructed
several new sieves, while Scott Moore and myself scoured the city for various
archaeological tools including the elusive small hand picks. We found
three of the seven that we need and have promised of more to come next
week. While trying to manage this, we've also begun to gird
ourselves in preparation for ARRIVAL DAY. Over 48 hours the project will
go from a sleepy project of 8 made up of senior scholars and University of North
Dakota graduate students and alumni to a bustling hub of archaeological chaos
with over 25 scholars, graduate students, undergraduates, and support staff of
various kinds. Each team shows up at different times or (in some cases)
all at once meaning that after noon tomorrow we'll put even the thought of
fieldwork on hold for a bit as we marshal the team. Fieldwork is
slated to begin on Monday.... To get the rest of the story from different
perspectives, be sure to click on our <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/PKAPBlogAggregator.html">Pyla-
Koutsopetria Blog Aggregator here</a>. (Bev, that's a site where
you can read all about the project from the perspective of staff, graduate
students, and even undergraduate volunteers! Just click on the headlines
to go the various blog entries.).
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Maddy Bray
IP: 76.170.0.106
DATE: 05/22/2009 08:38:16 PM
It actually sounds pretty similar to doing archaeology in California- the
biggest hazards this time of the year (besides the sun) are snakes and fires!
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DATE: 05/19/2009 10:15:49 AM

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We spent an afternoon in the field today walking across the landscape and
deciding where our 2009 trenches might be and what needs to happen before we
begin to excavate in earnest. The area of Vigla has been removed from
cultivation now based in part on the results of our fieldwork. While I am
not entirely sure whether plowing was particularly destructive to the
architecture below the surface of the hill, the end to the plowing combined with
the particularly wet winter has let the local vegetation take over. The
entire ridge is completely overgrown with a dense tangle of prickly weeds.
(Compare it now to <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/pylakoutsopetria_season_s/2008/06/wh
ere-are-the-l.html">photos from last year</a>) <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201156fa074bf970
c-pi"><img title="Vigla1" style="border-top-width: 0px; display: inline; border-
left-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px" height="272"
alt="Vigla1"
-pi" width="404" border="0" /></a> Paul Ferderer, a UND
graduate student in history, got his first taste of the field. Brandon
Olson a UND M.A. in history alumnus, joined us in the field from Penn State,
just hours after having arrived in Cyprus. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201156fa074d8970
c-pi"><img title="Vigla2" style="border-top-width: 0px; display: inline; border-
alt="Vigla2"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201156fa074e9970c
-pi" width="404" border="0" /></a> <a
b-pi"><img title="Vigla3" style="border-top-width: 0px; display: inline; border-
alt="Vigla3"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2011570961bb6970b
-pi" width="404" border="0" /></a> We are going to have to
get these weeds taken back before we let our team of undergraduates loose on the
hill. The risk of both snakes and fires sweeping through the dried weeds
is too great right now. In the meantime, however, we‚Äôll
leave Vigla to under the watchful eye of its natural guardians: <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201156fa0753c970
c-pi"><img title="Stickbug2" style="border-top-width: 0px; display: inline;
border-left-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px"
height="272" alt="Stickbug2"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201156fa07551970c
-pi" width="404" border="0" /></a>
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TITLE: The 2009 Archaeological Preseason
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DATE: 05/17/2009 01:59:12 AM

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The PKAP season is slowly coming to life with the arrival of various team
members. Almost every day from now until the end of next week, we‚Äôll
head over to the Larnaka airport to collected travel-weary colleagues from
various universities across the U.S. and the world. The first few days of
the season are always more about logistics than archaeology per se.
There is always a bit of a shock arriving in the Mediterranean from North
Dakota. The heat, humidity, and noise are striking on first arrival
(especially when you arrive on Friday night when our seaside town comes to
life). Last night the constant buzz of motorcycle, car, and scooter
engines kept us awake (in combination with jet lag) well into the wee hours of
the morning. Arrival also brings with it the momentary traumas as
we face the various things that we forgot in the U.S. or have somehow become
inaccessible to us. It was relief to find that we had remembered all the
software and cables for our GPS units, for example. It was less of a
relief to discover, however, that this year the TSA kindly locked the case that
contains parts of our GPS unit, the tripod, and other odds and ends.
Unfortunately, we do not have the key to the case. So, for now, some vital
equipment is trapped inside a heavy duty plastic golf bag case. The solutions at
present range from trying to find a TSA key to sawing through the somewhat
flimsy plastic latch. I‚Äôll leave it for Scott to recount how we resolve
this issue‚Ä¶ Tomorrow morning we head up to Nicosia to meet with folks
at the department of antiquities and discuss our fieldwork plans. Once we
have that worked out (and various meetings with folks at the British base), we
should be able to get to mapping out our trenches for this season. 
Stay tuned!
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6a00d83451908369e201157088ee81970b "
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DATE: 05/14/2009 07:34:42 AM

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Cross-posted to <a href="http://www.teachingthursday.org/">Teaching
Thursday</a> and the <a
Koutsopetria Archaeological Project Staff Blog</a>. As the spring
semester gradually recedes into memory, the summer beckons. Many folks at
the <a href="http://www.und.edu/">University of North Dakota</a>, head off
campus or switch gears on campus as they begin to focus on new summer research
and teaching projects. These projects, even when it‚Äôs just teaching a
summer class, inevitably involve a change of pace. The pace of the summer
semester slows down for some; for others who look to the summer as a time of
more intensive research and teaching find that the summer brings a new bustle to
their routine. I will be heading to the Mediterranean this summer, as I
have for the last 6 years to conduct archaeological research on Greece and
Cyprus. This year, I‚Äôll be joined in Cyprus by about 15 undergraduate
and graduate students from across the US. These students arrive with
different expectations, different skills and experiences, and different ways of
learning, but all of them expect to leave Cyprus after 4 weeks with a better
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grasp of the methods, theory, and practice of archaeology. They‚Äôll

attempt to acquire these skills in the most distraction filled environment
possible. Not only will they be inserted into a fully-functioning
archaeological research project, but one that is located in a beach side town
(Larnaka, Cyprus) in a foreign country! While it is easy to see how an
travel outside the US provides additional opportunities to learn through
experience, these same experiences can also provide considerable ‚Äúbackground
noise‚Äù to the more routine and regimented learning processes that we are
accustomed to in the classroom. (As much as we might embrace <a
href="http://teachingthursday.org/category/edupunk/">the chaos of Edu-punk</a>,
few of us turn our classroom into a night at <a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CBGB">CBGBs</a>, but there are days in
Cyprus, when the height of our research season meets head on with the annual
summer festival in Larnaka (the <a
href="http://www.cyprusevents.net/events/kataklysmos-larnaca-
2008/">Kataclysmos</a>) that we‚Äôd embrace a daily routine that took on the
relatively predictable routine of, say, an Iggy Pop show.) Teaching in
the sun, in Cyprus or anyway away from the standard routines of the classroom
involves new strategies that not only allow students to absorb the chaotic
realities of experience, but nevertheless ensures that they acquire basic skills
essential to the courses (so to speak) that they are taking. For us,
it‚Äôs balancing between imparting the rigorous and structured requirements of
‚Äúscientific‚Äù archaeological research and allowing them enough unstructured
times to feel comfortable in a dynamic and complex foreign city. This is
particularly challenging for us because we also have research priorities each
season. On the one hand, this ensures that the students feel the genuine
(and authentic) experience of professional, archaeological research with all its
contingency and excitement. On the other hand, this creates a place where
some members of the project are constantly tempted to sacrifice the unstructured
time for the structured and rigorous experiences of primary data
gathering. One season, we famously broke our students. The senior
staff were disappointed that this dedicated cadre of students weren‚Äôt taking
in the local culture more consistency until we realized that after a grueling
day in the field the students were collapsing on their beds and sleeping until
dinnertime and then crashing out immediately after dinner clean up.
This was hardly an environment that cultivated students‚Äô access to
unstructured time! Over subsequent seasons we‚Äôve been better balancing
work and play, but the balance is always deliberate. Keep an eye on how
well we are maintaining it through our <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/PKAPBlogAggregator.html">Pyla-
Koutsopetria Project Blog</a> page. 
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As readers of this blog know, I am particularly interested in <a
corinthia.html">the topography and fortification</a> of the southeastern
Corinthia. My interest in this part of the Corinthia largely stems from my
experience with the <a
Korinthia Archaeological Survey</a>, but it also comes from an awareness that
scholars have already done much good topographic work for the southwestern and
western part part of the Corinthia (<a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/34369379">Bynum</a>, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/71285030">Lolos</a>, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/35921568">Pikoulas</a>, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/55115672">Marchand</a>, et al.). 
As I have already noted <a href="http://www.atypon-
link.com/ASCS/doi/pdf/10.2972/hesp.78.1.107">J. Marchand has just published a
lengthy and careful article in the most recent volume of Hesperia</a>
on the route between Corinth and Argos via the ancient city of Kleonai.
The articles is a lovely example of how extensive survey, intensive local
knowledge, and careful archival work can shed new and valuable light on one of
the most well-known stretches of the Corinthian countryside. Marchand
argues the the early modern routes through the region of Kleonai preserve the
traces of the Ancient road which linked the Corinthia to the Argolid via the
Longopotamos river. This is important because unlike some earlier
scholars, this route makes Kleonai a central player in the regional
geopolitics. The close ties between Kleonoai and Argos, for example, may
have led various enemies of Argos to prefer routes into the Peloponnesus that
bypasses the Longopotamos river and used, instead, routes through the Sikyonia
via Phlious. While this is helpful, indeed, the method that
Marchand employed is perhaps more interesting still. Marchand continued in
the tradition of topographic research fostered, in particular, at the University
of California at Berkeley under Prof. Ron Stroud and the late W. K.
Pritchett. These scholars, like many before them, encouraged students to
walk through the countryside to gain a first hand knowledge of the topography
that their research required. Indeed, Stroud's notes on his walks through
the western Corinthia remain a source of inspiration for many American School
students who work at the site of Ancient Corinth and have inspired numerous
weekend walks and led to the discovery of inscriptions and monuments.
Marchand supplements this emphasis on autopsy with a particularly thorough study
of early travelers who made their way from Argos to Corinth via Kleonai.
Through these texts, she has identified fountains, churches, khans, and bridges
by which she could reconstruct the routes taken through the countryside in the
18th and 19th centuries. Finally, she was able to check specific
information in the acquired through the early travelers against local
knowledge. Local informants were able to bridge the gap between the
monuments seen by early travelers and, in some cases, modern piles of ancient
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debris. They were also able to confirm the routes of the rapidly fading
network of walking paths (monopati) that linked together various places in the
countryside. These paths, according to Marchand's argument, preserve
traces of the ancient road networks that cast valuable light on how we
understand interstate relations and ancient texts. The only thing that
Marchand's article lacked to be a model approach to reconstructing the ancient
landscape is the results of intensive archaeological survey. This is not
meant as an indictment of Marchand's research; intensive survey is an expensive
undertaking, it is difficult to acquire the required permits, and increasingly
challenging to conduct intensive survey over large extents of territory.
That being said, intensive survey has consistently shed light on the kind of
local settlement structures that interstate relations and routes likely
influenced. The next generation of topographers and survey archaeologists
will seek a finer balance between the two traditions in reconstructing the
history of the Greek landscape.
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IP: 128.100.106.20
URL:
DATE: 05/13/2009 02:12:45 PM
And most recently, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/180938182&referer=brief_results">http://www.w
orldcat.org/oclc/180938182&referer=brief_results</a>
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TITLE: The Medieval and Post Medieval Mediterranean at the 2010 Archaeological
Institute of American Annual Meeting
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We got the good news last week that the panel put together by Kostis Kourelis
and Sharon Gerstel for the 2010 AIA Annual Meeting in Anaheim has been
accepted. The panel is titled First Out: Late Levels at Early Sites and
will feature papers by Jack Davis, Kathleen Quinn, Anne McCabe, Adam Rabinowitz,
Guy Sanders, and Tim Gregory and myself. <a
href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/2009/03/first-out-late-levels-at-early-
sites.html">Here's a link to the abstracts and overview statement</a>.
Tim Gregory and I plan to re-examine the data produced by the decades old <a
orion_archaeological_project/">Ohio Boeotia Project around the ancient city of
Thisvi</a>. This survey data was initially analyzed in a series of
publications in the 1980s. Since that time, digital analysis tools have
become considerably more powerful and there is a growing body of work in the
region, particularly associated with the Cambridge Boeotia Project and its
various spin-offs, that promises to add significance to any re-examination of
the OBE results. Returning to excavation and survey results -- so called
legacy data -- has taken on new importance in recent years as excavation permits
have become more difficult to acquire, a vigorous ethical discourse has put
pressure on project directors to make unpublished finds available, and the
digital archaeology "movement" has improved our ability to make published and
unpublished data alike visible and accessible to the professional public.
A recent issue of the leading electronic journal in archaeology, Internet
<a href="http://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue24/">Archaeology, has
dedicated an issue to the reanalysis of "legacy data"</a> taking advantage of
the intersection of digital distribution, new technologies, and the remarkable
potential of the existing pool of archaeological data to inform contemporary
research questions. We hope our paper frames not only some of the methods
and procedures at stake in the re-examination of survey data, but also makes the
argument that this kind of secondary analysis marks the coming of age of
intensive pedestrian survey. It marks the potential of survey data to go
beyond its applicability to narrowly defined research questions and to have the
kind of enduring value that excavations have nurtured by long standing methods
and carefully cultivated archival practices. Proving that survey
data is available for re-analysis is absolutely critical for its persistence as
an archaeological methodology in the Mediterranean. And the recent
transformation of post-Classical landscapes from spaces seen as stagnant and
unchanging to dynamic <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/42752729">"contingent" countrysides</a> makes
the study of the post-Classical world ideally suited as a test case.
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TITLE: Welcome to the Pyla-Koutsopetria Blogosphere
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DATE: 05/11/2009 07:44:13 AM

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As any regular reader of my blog knows, the <a
href="http://www.pkap.org">Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project</a> has
invested some time and energy into making the project more transparent through
encouraging staff and students to blog about their experiences. Most of
the project participants have embraced this initiative and contributed their
voice to one of the project's three weblogs. These blogs have brought
considerable positive attention to the project from both academic colleagues and
interested observers alike. We are particular proud of being in the
vanguard of the archaeological blogging movement. To make it easier to
follow PKAP on the Web, we have generated <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/PKAPBlogAggregator.html">a blog
aggregator</a> that captures the RSS feeds from the three PKAP blogs and puts
them together on a single page. All you need to do to follow the 2009 PKAP
season it to <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/PKAPBlogAggregator.html">visit
the blog aggregator</a> and click on the various links to get daily updates from
our Senior Staff, Graduate Students, and Undergraduate students. 
As with past seasons, the students and staff are encouraged to write about
whatever they want in the blog and in the past, we've captured everything from
<a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/pylakoutsopetria_season_s/2008/06/mi
ni-micro.html">the heroic silliness of the mini-micro</a> and the daring wager
of the sieve challenge (<a
e-first-two-d.html">here</a> and <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/pylakoutsopetria_season_s/2008/06/si
eves-follow-u.html">here</a>) to <a
e-first-of-my.html">the thoughtful reflections of our overqualified cook</a> and
<a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/pylakoutsopetria_graduate/">students
</a>. So, bookmark the <a
Blog Aggregator</a> and follow our adventures and discoveries this year!
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TITLE: Spring in Grand Forks
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DATE: 05/10/2009 06:25:09 PM

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<a
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Grand Forks" title="Spring in Grand Forks"
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CATEGORY: Byzantium
CATEGORY: Web/Tech
DATE: 05/08/2009 08:03:21 AM

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Some fun quick hits on a cloudy Friday. <ul>!
<li>Two interesting articles on <a
href="http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/index">First
Monday</a>. A nice article on the relationship <a
81">between using facebook and grades among college and graduate students</a>
and another <a
78">on a genre based typology of blogs</a>.</li>!
<li>An interesting <a href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/2009/04/jogging-
empowerment-kopanos.html">back</a> and <a
href="http://antiquatedvagaries.blogspot.com/2009/05/success.html">forth</a>
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(and <a href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/2009/05/kopanos-blog-challenge-

furfilled.html">back</a>) between two veteran bloggers. </li>!
<li>I can't remember whether I've linked to the <a
href="http://digitalscholarship.wordpress.com/">Digital Scholarship in the
Humanities blog</a>. This series on Digital Humanities in 2008 (<a
href="http://digitalscholarship.wordpress.com/2009/02/07/digital-humanities-in-
2008-part-i/">I</a>, <a
2008-ii-scholarly-communication-open-access/">II</a>, <a
2008-iii-research/">III</a>) is really good.</li>!
<li>Only <a href="http://www.hesperiaonline.org/">Hesperia</a> (with
their flashy new address on the web: <a
href="http://www.hesperia.org">www.hesperia.org</a>) can pull off <a
href="http://www.atypon-link.com/ASCS/doi/pdf/10.2972/hesp.78.1.107">a 58 page
article on the road linking Corinth and the Argolid</a>. That's well
over a page a kilometer. Amazing. But it's a good article with
lots of interesting topographic tidbits including another tower <a
mmer-research-on-the-fortification-of-the-southeastern-corinthia.html">that I
think is probably a farmstead</a>.</li>!
<li>Lots of exciting reports on the <a
href="http://www.doaks.org/research/byzantine/doaks_byz_2009_symposium.html">Dum
barton Oaks Spring Symposium: Morea: The Land and Its People in the Aftermath of
the Fourth Crusade</a>.</li>!
<li><a href="http://surprisedbytime.blogspot.com/2009/05/ag-thomas-at-
midea.html">This is a lovely little church and it's "restoration"
is sad and complicated</a>. I simply love the 13th-14th century undomed
(is that a word?) cross-in-square churches from the Argolid and Corinthia.</li>!
<li><a href="http://getweb.info/movies/?p=3120">Movies with Greek and Roman
themes this summer from the Languages Department</a>. </li>!
</ul>!
That's all for today and have a good weekend!
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TITLE: Teaching Thursday: Final Exams and Final Grades
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DATE: 05/07/2009 07:54:10 AM

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My only job today is preparing the final exam for my 100 level history class,
and I am dreading it. I have a robust bank of questions, various essays,
and clear ideas about how to evaluate the class's grasp of the the basic
principles that I have worked to instill over the course of the semester.
Moreover, I have some confidence about how my students will perform on the exam,
so I am not anxious for them (although, I already know that some students will
do as well as they like). What I dread is that with the final exam the
pedagogical aspects of testing give way to evaluation. That is to say, the
final doesn't serve the same kind of pedagogical purpose that the various other
exams and papers over the course of the semester do. Students rarely come
and pick up their exams, so writing extensive comments on them serves little
purpose. There isn't a chance to go over common problems in class
afterwards, since the class will no longer meet. I can't change the
emphasis of the class or go back through a particular section that caused
problems. Basically the final exam judges whether the students acquired
the skills and mastered the content that I consider to be central to the
course. The finality of final exams (and final grades) have always
bothered me. In large part because the disrupt whatever dynamic that I've
created with the students that encourages them to see the class as part of a
larger process of continuously refining their skills over not just the
trajectory of a single course, but over their entire career at the university or
even their entire life. The idealist in my considers learning to learn and
process information is a cumulative process. The final stage of the class,
with the exam and the final papers and the like, suddenly makes the steady
accumulation of skills into a goal oriented exercise. This, in and of
itself, is not bad. After all, most students have goals beyond simply
training their mind, but most of these goals exist external to the university
(material prosperity, a particular kind of job or career, et c.). In any
event, I've not discovered a way to create opportunities for the interactive
learning from the the final exams and final grades. I suppose they fit better
into the larger purpose of the university, where the entire range of courses and
experiences condition and encourage behavior in the students.
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TITLE: Under Libby's Gaze: Merrifield 300
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The big lecture hall in Merrifield Hall at the University of North Dakota is
Merrifield 300. It seat right around 150 students and is an almost a
living museum of different pedagogical insights and movements. <a
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> Theater style seating establishes an
immutable relationship between the student and the teacher. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201156f7bf944970
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201156f7bf94f970
-pi" width="304" border="0"></a> The front of the room is crowded with
the latest in visual teaching aids from the last 50 years: chalkboards,
televisions, maps (of course), overhead video projector screens, media center,
but oddly no podium. It's impossible, for example, to put your lecture
notes down on the media island and refer to them in a comfortable way.
It's also impossible to use both the chalkboards and the moveable screen.
I've never used the televisions, but their "olde skool", tube-tv, appearances do
not inspire confidence. The doors open directly into the orchestra so the
first part of class is always interrupted as late arrivals seek to slip
inconspicuously by the lecturer and situate themselves in the auditorium.
It's a wonder that more theaters aren't designed in this way. <a
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> These complaints aside the room has a
certain charm. I realized that last night will likely be my last night
teaching my Western Civilization I survey in this classroom. The
auditorium in our new building will have its own character, I am sure, but it
will almost certainly lack the bizarre, orange-patterned carpet on the walls.
Whether this was designed to calm the students, fill them with eagerness to
learn, or simply deter them from looking at anything other than the lecturer in
front of the room, is anybody's guess. The photo below preserves one of my
favorite features of Merrifield 300, the dark right corner. This corner of
the room is always packed with students, hoping, I suppose, that the lack of
light makes them less visible to their classmates and the instructor. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201156f7bf96e970
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> This is the final room of
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my Merrifield Hall farewell tour. (Check out <a

rrifield-215.html">Room 215</a>, <a
der-libbys-gaze-merrifield-209.html">Room 209</a>, and <a
hall.html">the hallways of Merrifield</a>) Friday afternoon, I begin to pack up
my office and hope to have it reasonably squared away before my impending
departure for Cyprus. Merrifield Hall has been the home of the Department of
History for over 80 years at the University of North Dakota, an admirable tenure
for any department in any building. Most of the Department's notable
graduates studied in its rooms, the most productive faculty in the Department's
history worked in its offices, and the rooms, hallways, and offices bear witness
to research practices, student habits, and teaching techniques of the building's
long history. Documenting some of the spaces and places in Merrifield hall
has revealed the accumulated traces of practice from its long history. By
midsummer, we will begin to process of inscribing the new building with the
evidence for our activities, habits, and routines.
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IP: 99.137.209.220
URL:
DATE: 05/09/2009 06:28:37 PM
I love the 1970s pattern. This is important documentation work. The politics of
the room (I want to crawl in the dark corner to do my grading) are priceless
(and pleasantly familiar). Kostis
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TITLE: Summer Research on the Fortification of the Southeastern Corinthia
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Those of you who follow my <a href="http://twitter.com/BillCaraher">Twitter

feed</a> know that <a
corinthia.html">our article on the fortifications around Lychnari harbor in the
Southeastern Corinthia</a> was given "conditional acceptance" by Hesperia this
past week. The descriptive elements -- that is the publication of the
archaeology -- was fine, but our interpretation appears to have been somewhat
lacking. The main objections from the substantial peer reviews focused on
our identification of these rural structures as fortifications constructed
either by the "central government" at Corinth (such as this existed in the Late
Classical and Hellenistic period) or, at very least, by the local residents of
the coastal valley to the south of the main Isthmian plain. One reviewer
thought that our site was more likely to be a farmstead or even rural
storage. The other thought that we needed to make our argument more
convincingly irrespective of our interpretation of these sites. 
From the start our goal in publishing the results of our work around Lychnari
bay was to make the material public and make it available for future scholars to
draw upon in their analyses. We argue that this alone makes these sites
worthy of publication because so few examples of rural fortifications, or
installations of any kind, have been published from the Corinthia. So,
with that being our goal, how do we approach a problem with the interpretation
of our site (and recognizing that we could never separate interpretation fully
from description)? We bandied about three potential solutions:
First, we could simply observe that the debate around the function of rural
installations is long-standing and probably intractable and allow for our sites
to be read either as fortifications or as sites of rural habitation or both
(imagining that a "fortification" in the countryside would be able to sustain at
least a small detachment of guards for seasonal guard duty). Opening the
door to both interpretations would shed light back on the material evidence
itself and (perhaps ironically) the difficulty of interpreting rural sites
without continued efforts to document and publish existing, known, rural
installation in a systematic and thorough way. Second, we could fortify
our analysis (get it, fortify) our current analysis with an expanded treatment
of our discussion of topography, history, and architecture present at our trio
of sites. Bringing more comparanda to bear is always difficult in
instances when the basic function for almost all rural sites is in
dispute. That is to say, for every example of a rural site that fits our
argument for fortification, it is possible to suggest that these comparanda are
not necessarily fortifications, but other kids of rural installations. On
the other hand, we have some additional evidence and arguments that can expand
our arguments for the topography of the region. In particular, we can show
that there is evidence for the fortification of the route from Franglimano to
the far southern Corinthia during antiquity and the post-antique period.
This suggests that access to the Saronic ports of the eastern Corinthia was
regarded as significant route to more settled areas. While it will not be
possible to argue for the amount of traffic through the network of valleys in
the Eastern Corinthia, we can at least propose that some of these routes
warranted an investment in fortification historically to support our
interpretation of the potential state sponsored fortifications around Lychnari
bay more successfully. This would include more careful discussions of the
several episodes of military activity in the area: the Athenian raid of Solygeia
during the Peloponnesian War(4.42-44) and the Athenian landing at Spireion
(Korphos?) at 8.11-12. We can also make more of the description in
Xenophon, Hell. 7.4.4 of Athenians being stationed at "guard stations"
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throughout the Corinthia in the 360s. Finally, we could back off
our interpretation in general. The problems associated with interpreting
rural installations are well-known. The issues surrounding these types of
sites are unlikely to be resolved successfully without systematic excavation of
a considerable percentage rural sites (and perhaps not even then). The
link between difficult interpretation and archaeological publication is one that
I had not considered in the past. If the problem with an article rests in
its interpretation, rather than with the documentation of the site, and the
problem is significant enough to prevent the description of the site from
publication, then what are the implications for other kinds of problematic
evidence seeing the light day in print. It would seem that this kind of
problem would increase the potential for stable, digital publication of
archaeological data to make an important contribution to the dissemination of
archaeological knowledge that resists easy interpretation. Hopefully
we'll get a chance to return to work on our Corinthia article after our field
season with the <a href="http://www.pkap.org">Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological
Project</a>. I have about 10 days in Greece in late June and hope to be
able to tie up some interpretive loose ends now. And, special thanks to
the anonymous reviewers for Hesperia who have helped us focus very clearly on
the shortcomings of our work and challenged us both in the specific context of
our research and the more general context of Greek archaeology!
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TITLE: Revisioning Relics: Lost, Found, and Lost Again
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BASENAME: double-dreams
CATEGORY: Byzantium
DATE: 05/04/2009 08:15:24 AM

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One of the most amazing inventio narratives, complete with multiple dreams
and visions, and multiple excavations, appears in the 6th century Chronicle of
the Marcellinus and involves one of the most well traveled relics, the Head of
John the Baptist. (In fact, the Head was sufficiently well-traveled to
deserve a monograph as early as the 17th century: <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/83537177">C. Du Frense Du Cange, Trait√©
historique du chef de S. Jean Baptiste...</a> (Paris 1665); for a
brief modern treatment see: J. Wortley, "The Relics of 'the Friends of
Jesus' at Constantinople," in J. Durand and B. Flusin eds, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/57165084">Byzance et les Reliques du
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Christ</a>. Centre de Recherche d'Histoire et Civilisation de

Byzance 17. (Paris 2004), 143-157). Ultimately, one part of the
complex history of the rediscovery of John the Baptist's head is commemorated in
<a href="http://www.rongolini.com/synmay.htm#May%2025">the Synaxarion of
Constantinople of May 25th</a>. <blockquote> "John, the herald of
the Lord and his baptizer, revealed his head which , at an unspeakable horrible
demand, Herodias had once accepted after it had been cut from his shoulders and
placed on a dish, and buried far from his headless bod; he revealed his head to
two eastern monks entering Jerusalem to celebrate the resurrection of the Christ
the Lord, so that when they reached the place where the former king Herod lived
they were advised to search around and dig the ground up faithfully. So
while they were journeying back to their own places, carrying in their rough
saddle-bag the head they had discovered by faith, a certain potter from the city
of Emesa fleeing from the poverty which threatened him daily, showed himself to
them as a companion. While, in ignorance, he was carrying the sack
entrusted to him with the sacred head, he was admonished in the night by him
whose head he was carrying, and fleeing both his companions he made off.
He entered the city of Emesa immediately with his holy and light burden, and as
long as he lived there he venerated the head of Christ's herald. At his
death, he handed it over in a jar to his sister, who was ignorant of the
matter. Next a certain Eustochius, who was secretly a priest of the Arian
faith, unworthily obtained this great treasure and dispensed to the rabble, as
if it were purely his own, the grace which Christ the Lord bestows on his
inconstant people through John the Baptist. When his wickedness was detected he
was driven out the city of Emesa. Afterwards this cave, in which the head
of the most blessed John was set in an urn and reburied underground, became the
abode of certain monks. Finally, while the priest and head of the
monastery, Marcellus, was living a faultless life in that cave, the blessed
John, herald of Christ, revealed himself and his head to Marcellus and showed
that it was buried here, conspicuous by its many miracles. It is agreed
therefore that this venerable head was found by the foresaid priest Marcellus
whil Uranius was bishop of the city mentioned. This was on the twenty-
fourth day of February in the consulship of Vincomalus and Opilio, in the middle
week of Lent, and the ruling emperors were in fact Valentinian and Marcian."
<a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/32803276">Chronicle of Marcellinus.
trans. B. Croke. (Sydney 1995)</a>, pp. 19-22</blockquote> This is an
extraordinarily complex and dense story capturing almost the entire realm of
Late Antique experiences from heretical priests to traveling monks to visions,
relics, and the realia every day life (potters, rough saddle-bags,
jars, et c.). The story is one of a significant number of episodes when a
holy relic is lost multiple times. For example, the the bodies of the 40
Martyrs of Sebaste reappear once in the time of the Empress Pulcharia in the
early 5th century (Sozomen HE 9.2) and then later in Justinian's reign
(Procop. Aed. 1.7.2-10). Numerous icons appear and vanish from
the tumultuous history of far flung monasteries representing the irrepressible
sanctity of religious objects. From a historical perspective, I have
always thought that there is something incongruous about sacred objects being
misplaced or lost, but then again, we hear of important documents and artifacts
sometimes going missing in museums even today, especially during chaotic and
unstable times. From the perspective of narratives on dream
archaeology, these stories show how densely packed stories associated with
relics could be and how multiple individuals, places, and events could partake
of the sacred penumbra of a single relic. Once the head of John the
Baptist appeared in Constantinople (at the church of St. John Studios or the
Pharos ("Lighthouse") Church), it not only validated its power as a sacred
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object through the various places and people involved in its inventio, but also
imparted those people, places, and invents with a share of its sanctity.
The re-inventio of a relic not only reinforced it sacred status, but also
produced an expanded network that mapped together people and places from across
a sacred history and landscape. So multiple dreams, multiple
excavations, and various translations (travels) held out an extraordinary
potential for creating a sacred topography (often extending far beyond the final
resting place of the relic), a sacred history typically revealing the
irrepressible persistence of the sacred object, and, in some cases, multiple
individuals credited and blessed with the discovery of the object. When
the story is set in such mundane and ordinary surroundings as the one recounted
above, the sacred object imbues even the mundane realia of everyday
life like pots and saddlebags with a sacred glow.
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TITLE: Old and New in Grand Forks
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DATE: 05/02/2009 03:47:49 PM

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<a
c-pi"><img class="at-xid-6a00d83451908369e201156f71635c970c image-full" alt="Old
and New in Grand Forks" title="Old and New in Grand Forks"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201156f71635c970c
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TITLE: To Fargo 2
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<a
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Fargo 2" title="To Fargo 2"
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TITLE: To Fargo
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<a
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c-pi"><img class="at-xid-6a00d83451908369e201156f715e84970c image-full" alt="To
Fargo" title="To Fargo"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201156f715e84970c
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Here are some quick thoughts on a cool NoDak Friday: <ul> <li><a
href="http://phdiva.blogspot.com/2009/04/friends-romans-why-i-closed-
blog.html">Some folks live more interesting lives than others</a>.</li> <li><a
href="http://henryjenkins.org/2009/04/how_sarah_spread_and_what_it_m.html">I
really H. Jenkins' idea of "spreadable" media</a>. I need to pencil in
time to read <a
href="http://www.henryjenkins.org/2009/02/if_it_doesnt_spread_its_dead_p.html">t
he entire 8 part (!) discussion of it on his blog</a>.</li> <li>It will be cool
to follow the work at the <a
href="http://lateantiqueostia.wordpress.com/">Berlin-Kent Ostia Excavations</a>
again this summer.</li> <li><a href="http://pretexts.blogspot.com/2009/04/whose-
culture-indeed.html">This is a pretty scathing review</a>.</li> <li><a
href="http://www.jhfc.duke.edu/olson/courses/wired/projects/hadrianicbaths/">Thi
s is pretty cool</a> and <a
href="http://undergraduatedean.duke.edu/2009/04/duke-students-digitally-model-
roman-baths/">this blog</a> is a nice way to highlight the accomplishments of
your students.</li> <li>The <a href="http://digitalgateway.und.edu/">Working
Group in Digital and New Media</a> got some good press from the President
yesterday in the University Council Meeting. As the press release says:
"Two new initiatives may be built into sustainable centers, Kelley said, citing
one project that focuses on digital and new media (involving the department of
computer science, art, English, history, music and the Chester Fritz
Library)..." </li> <li>Chuck Jones continues to produce useful online
content. Check out his <a
href="http://ancientworldonline.blogspot.com/">Ancient World Online</a> for the
latest on open access material for scholars of antiquity.</li></ul> That's
all for today... have a good weekend.
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TITLE: Teaching Thursday: Capstone Classes
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History at the University of North Dakota has a capstone class. Called
History 440, it requires the students to produce a substantial term paper on a
particular topic in history. The students meet together perhaps a dozen
times over the course of the semester as a group, but generally work one-on-one
with a faculty adviser who shepherds them through the processes of research,
writing, and revision. The students are responsible for meeting with their
chosen faculty advisers and the level of "student engagement" with this process
varies. There is a general hope that the students are familiar with the
processes involved in writing a substantial term paper. Befitting a
capstone class, many of the basic skills necessary -- from note taking to
footnoting -- are developed over the course of the curriculum in the department
and in History 240, the preparatory methods class. Ideally, the students
have a complete tool kit for writing a substantial and exciting paper.
Having listened to a half-dozen of the papers presented by students this year,
the results of this process are varied. It's not entirely clear whether
we've successfully communicated the basic research principles to our
majors. They can, at their best, play the part and present professional
sounding papers, but it is a different matter to consider whether they truly
understand how to write, think, and do research (and walk) like a
historian. I am optimistic and apparently so are some of my colleagues
around the US. In the most recent issues of Perspectives there was a
series of papers on capstone courses and some discussion in the blogosphere
(including <a href="http://edwired.org/?p=489">this nice contribution from
edwired</a>) Since I've been teaching History 240, which is the
preparatory methods class for 440, I have a front row seat for many of the
issues surrounding the capstone course in our department (and I suspect, in
departments around the US). Increasingly I've come to the conclusion that
a capstone class is not particularly suitable for history majors. Some of
this has to do with the idiosyncratic nature of most history departments, some
of this has to do with the kinds of students that we attract to the major, and
some of this has to do with the nature of the discipline itself. Here are
some of my preliminary thoughts: 1. Students are drawn to history not
because they love to write and do research because the love the stories.
Historical fiction, the History Channel, historical fantasies (like the Da Vinci
Code or Larry Potter), and even video games are the primary route through which
our students are lured to the discipline. The major itself, however, is a
very different thing from the narrative driven experience that have attracted
students to the field. The shift from narrative to analysis,
interpretation, and argument driven writing turns off a significant portion of
our majors. Writing a major analytical and argumentative paper is even
more difficult in that they are being asked to make the transition from "content
consumers" to "content producers". This is difficult and a percentage of
our students just check out on the content production part of their education.
It's not why they signed up to be history majors. 2. The skills
communicated in our capstone course do not appear to the student to fit clearly
within their post-university goals. Few of our students go on to graduate
school in history. Many go on to teach, go to law school, or go into the
699
business world. While it is easy enough to convince students that a long

term paper will help them develop a particular set of skills that will be useful
in their post-university life (e.g. the elusive critical thinking, writing
skills, research discipline, et c.), it is another thing to convince them that
this is the best way to develop those skills and it is certainly not a method
that most of them particularly enjoy (see point 1). 3. History is not a
cumulative discipline. Capstone courses are best suited to field where faculty
disseminate bits of methods, practices, and procedures over the course of a
series of classes. History doesn't really work that way. And our
department, which is fortunate to have a wide range of methods and theoretical
perspectives represented, does not work this way in particular. While I
can imagine how skills learned in a course taught in Oral History, Quantitative
Methods, Mediterranean Archaeology, Marxist approaches, Gender History, and
Early Modern and Medieval History could introduce a diverse and robust
historical tool kit for an aspiring student, I can also understand why these
diverse approaches do not present an easily integrated group of methods for a
single project. The fact that we distribute our students among the various
faculty in the department to work on their papers one-on-one reveals that we
don't even expect our students to bring together methods developed across their
full range of classes. So the idea that the capstone paper is some kind of
integrative or cumulative experience is likely false. In reality, our
capstone paper follows models of specialization common to graduate
programs. In these models students become increasingly focused on a
particular and limited skill set (not necessary to the complete exclusion of
other skills, but certainly with the goal of becoming a specialist rather than
an individual with a diverse set of transferable skills). So, to sum up,
students aren't attracted to history by the writing and research, the capstone
course does not feed clearly into the post-graduate goals of most students, and
at least as our department has established our capstone, the approach runs
counter to the most commonly accepted idea of the capstone course as a
cumulative experience. For more thoughts on teaching, be sure to check
out our <a href="http://www.teachingthursday.org/">Teaching Thursday</a>
blog! <a href="http://edwired.org/?p=489">Edwired offered some
interesting, alternative</a>s, but these could simply exchange one set of
professional expectations (i.e. professional academic history) for another
(public history, community activism, et c.) and the division of history majors
into various tracks with different cumulative projects (public, professional,
teaching, community work) would eventually undermine not only the integrity of
the discipline as having certain common outcomes ideally assessed and evaluated
for all majors, but also would continue to focus the students on certain skills
held by particular faculty members in the department. So in some ways,
changing or even diversifying the focus of the capstone experience simply
compounds methodological diversity, theoretical differences, and chronological
specialization already present in a department with an additional layer of
fragmentation based on faculty ability to advise a student on various kinds of
projects. Again, the capstone experience that draws students to understand
how the discipline of history functions as a discipline dissolves into the
ghettoized compartments of professional specialization. 
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TITLE: Another Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project Updates
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The season is begins in a little less than two weeks and the <a
href="http://www.pkap.org">PKAP</a> team is preparing for the most complex and
exciting field season to date. So a quick blog today to keep our various
stakeholders and interested onlookers appraised of what we are up to. 1.
Despite the difficult economic times, we are fully funded this year thanks to
the generosity of the <a href="Institute for Aegean Prehistory">Institute for
Aegean Prehistory</a>, the <a href="http://www.und.edu">University of North
Dakota</a>, various grants from the <a href="http://www.asor.org/">American
Schools of Oriental Research</a>, <a
>private donors</a>, and a group of enthusiastic field school students from <a
href="http://www.messiah.edu/">Messiah College</a>, the University of North
Dakota, University of Pittsburgh, and <a href="http://www.iup.edu/">Indiana
University of Pennsylvania</a>. It's great to realize the confidence that
various groups have in our project, our PKAP team, and its goals. 2. Pre-
season Inventories. Over the past few days, the PKAP triumvirate has been
conducting a comprehensive inventory of PKAP Digital Resources. This
includes digital research materials that we use in the field (scanned books and
articles, for example), scanned documentation from past season (forms,
notebooks), digital photographs of objects, survey units, excavation units, and
various photos of field and museum work and daily life. Finally, I am
preparing an inventory of all our "born digital data" from GPS points to GIS
maps, resistivity data and survey, finds, and excavation databases. The
hope is that this inventory will provide a common set of digital tools for all
the PKAP team members and provide a solid, common foundation for both in-field
analysis and the final analysis for publication. 3. New and Multimedia.
This year we'll have four new/multimedia projects underway. We'll run our
typical complement of blogs (which I hope to get running by early next
week). At the same time, we plan to host both <a
ndscape-archaeology-and-photography-at-the-pyla-koustopetria-archaeological-
project.html">a still photographer</a> (who will be our official artist-in-
residence) and a documentary filmmaker. The hope is that some of this
content will be made available as the season progresses. I will also
(hopefully) conduct some in field interviews and post the podcasts online <a
e-final-pkap.html">like last year</a>. Hopefully this work will not only
highlight the performative aspects of fieldwork, but also make our research more
701
accessible and transparent. As part of our multi and new media program for
this year, we are going to arm some of our field school students with
inexpensive digital video cameras and invite them to capture their own
experiences on the project. This content will be available for our
documentary filmmaker to incorporate into this work and for the project's larger
archival purposes. 4. In season work. We plan to have as many as
six trenches in three different areas open at once this year. We'll
excavate on the top of Vigla in an effort to come to terms with the
architecture, function, and, most importantly, chronology of this fortified
site. Michael Brown will continue his work at the Late Bronze Age site of
Pyla-Kokkinokremos in an effort to come to terms with the extent of settlement
on the site and the function of the fortification walls. The Late Antique
contingent on PKAP also hopes that Brown's trenches will reveal something of the
later history of this site, perhaps even some of its function in Late
Antiquity. The final area under excavation will be Pyla-
Koutsopetria. This area was originally excavated by Maria Hadjicosti and
the Department of Antiquities (see preliminary reports <a
href="http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/bch_0007-
4217_1994_num_118_2_6980?_Prescripts_Search_isPortletOuvrage=false">here</a> and
<a href="http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/bch_0007-
4217_2000_num_124_2_1621?_Prescripts_Search_isPortletOuvrage=false">here</a>).&n
bsp; We hope to get the complex stratigraphy of this area sorted out a bit more
clearly and to determine whether the remains of an earlier phase are present at
the coastal site. To facilitate this we have increased the number of
trench supervisors and created the position of area supervisors who will
supervise the work across the various trenches in an area. We will also
collaborate with a group from Indiana University of Pennsylvania who will
conduct a survey of various areas using ground penetrating radar (GPR). We
hope that this technique, which is somewhat faster than resistivity, will
produce a more comprehensive picture of the subsurface remains on both Vigla and
the Koutsopetria plain. 4. Publication and Presentation. Over the
last few years we have worked continuously to present our research at
conferences, workshops, and in a wide-range of publications. In 2009 we'll
begin to look toward the final publication of the survey, remote sensing, and
excavation. We have an advanced draft of an article for the Journal of
Roman Archaeology almost complete, and there is probably some wisdom to
preparing a final "preliminary" report for the Report of the Department of
Antiquities of Cyprus (RDAC), but beyond these projects our efforts will shift
to preparing the final publication for submission in 2011.
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TITLE: More on Teaching Graduate Students
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DATE: 04/28/2009 08:37:13 AM

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Cross posted on <a href="http://www.teachingthursday.org/">Teaching
Thursday</a>. <a href="http://www.teachingthursday.org/">Teaching
Thursday</a> is on the cutting edge with our recent focus on <a
href="http://teachingthursday.org/2009/04/23/mentoring-graduate-
students/">teaching graduate students</a>! There was a thought provoking
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/opinion/27taylor.html">Op-Ed piece in
the New York Times Sunday on graduate education</a>. It began with the
provocative paragraph: <blockquote> "Graduate education is the Detroit
of higher learning. Most graduate programs in American universities
produce a product for which there is no market (candidates for teaching
positions that do not exist) and develop skills for which there is diminishing
demand (research in subfields within subfields and publication in journals read
by no oe other than a few like-minded colleagues), all at a rapidly rising cost
(sometimes well over $100,000 in student loans).</blockquote>
Taylor goes on to propose 6 solutions: 1. Restructure the curriculum
along cross-disciplinary lines. 2. Abolish permanent departments and replace
them with constantly evolving, problem-focused programs. 3. Increase
collaboration among institutions. 4. Transform the traditional dissertation
particularly in the humanities by encouraging students to experiment with
alternative formats. 5. Prepare students to work in a wider range of jobs by
considering real life applications of their graduate training. 6. Impose
mandatory retirement and abolish tenure. He concludes with a personal
maxim: "Do not do what I do; rather, take whatever I have to offer and do with
it what I could never imagine doing and then come back and tell me about
it." While it is easy to imagine the reasons why these reforms do not
take place within the modern university (funding concerns, competition among
departments, genuine intellectual and philosophical differences between
disciplines, institutional and bureaucratic impediments, et c.), this core
sentiments in this short op-ed piece are shared by many in academia. But,
as with many professions, students and faculty tend to be risk adverse.
Graduate students often see their accomplishments over their graduate school
careers as the basis for their professional careers, and graduate faculty
(despite their sometimes well-meaning encouragement to students to take risks)
often reinforce this idea as a way to push graduate students through the
program, encourage them to complete work on time, and perform up to their
potential in the classroom. Moreover, encouraging a student to engage in
cross-disciplinary research or a particularly innovative (or even revolutionary)
research plan is a challenge for any graduate faculty member. After all,
cross-disciplinary or non-traditional research most often puts graduate faculty
in a weak position to advise because it frequently falls toward the fringes of
our academic expertise, our professional training, and our disciplinary
loyalties. It also requires that graduate faculty find ways to work around
institutional divisions and, in many cases, find collaborators within a number
of administrative silos. Finally, and this is something that I
have been thinking about a good bit lately, introducing theses and dissertations
in "alternative forms" ranging from new media projects to more practical applied
research in the humanities or even just slightly less tradition-bound variations
on thesis/dissertation format requires that we change certain fundamental
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aspects of our curricula (particular in the humanities). In history, for

example, the entire undergraduate curriculum is geared toward preparing students
to write a major research paper in formal academic prose and with the complete
scholarly apparatus (footnotes, bibliography, et c.). This capstone
exercise represents the supposed culmination of these students' work in the
field of history. It forms a solid foundation (in its ideal form) for
continued work in the field including the M.A. and even the Ph.D. In
effect, the capstone paper is a miniature version of M.A. thesis or
dissertation. Ancillary to the place of the thesis in the historical
profession, it is said to develop research skills, critical thinking (although
this is a vague catch-all), and writing abilities. While there is no doubt
that research skills, writing ability, and the ambiguous, if crucial, "critical
thinking" are crucial to success in many fields, these skills can also be
successfully imparted through any number of projects, media, and programs.
 The point here is, as we move toward more innovative projects, cross-
disciplinary programs, and non-traditional career paths, graduate education is
only the very tip of the iceberg. In fact, the real fundamental change
within academia might have to occur at undergraduate level. Graduate
education, with whatever vocational and professional training that it seeks to
impart, builds upon a foundation established in undergraduate programs, if not
even earlier. Without changing the foundation of graduate education, it's
hard to imagine a new beginning for the Detroit of higher learning.
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DATE: 04/27/2009 08:22:45 AM

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For the past few years, my wife and I have taken to listening to Philadelphia
Phillies' baseball games on the radio. First we did this over XM radio and
now we do it over internet(s). The <a
href="http://mlb.mlb.com/index.jsp">mlb.com</a> service allows us to almost
always listen to the Phillies broadcast team where as XM always carried the home
team broadcasts. This year more than ever, I've felt a tremendous
nostalgia for the various institutions and businesses advertised during the
game. <a href="http://www.wawa.com/WawaWeb/">Wawa dairies</a> (a local
convenience store chain), <a href="http://amorosobaking.com/">Amoroso rolls</a>
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(a must for a Philly Cheesesteak), <a href="http://turkeyhill.com/">Turkey

Hill</a> ice cream and even local car dealers that, in truth, I've never visited
but were a ubiquitous presence on the airwaves in the Philadelphia area.
This disjunction between the businesses being advertised on the radio and my
current locale (Grand Forks, North Dakota) is jarring. It is also an
interesting reminder of how easy it is to invoke the local in an era where the
internet allows us to access various local institutions from anywhere in the
world. At the same time that I was reveling in advertisements for Amoroso
bread and Wawa sandwiches, I took a group of students for a somewhat impromptu
"tour" of campus. We talked about the frequent disconnect between
institutional places of memory and the networks of meaning that students
construct on a university campus. They shared some of the silly nicknames
that students assigned to campus monuments and some of the ways in which they
map and associate experiences with places. I made the observation that the
current practice of listening to your iPod while walking across campus likely
has changed the way in which this generation of students has shaped and mapped
their campus experiences. Last year, while I was living in Athens, I used
to go out to eat on Saturday night with the same little group. On the walk
to a local taverna, I'd listen to my iPod. Today when I hear some of the
songs that I used to listen to on these Saturday evening walks, I immediately
recall the experience of Athens in the winter. These experiences and
memories, however, are almost completely personal. Since my playlists were
idiosyncratic (to say the least) and piped directly to <a
href="http://www.lyricsfreak.com/p/parliament/p+funk_20290643.html">my
earhole</a>, the experience was perhaps more intensely personal than one
conveyed through more public media (say, the noise of the streets). The
students talked around about this for a while and added that they often
associated different places on campus with different scents. I've never
seen any effort to map smells, although there has certainly been some
scholarship on the role of scents in religious experience for example. In
fact, it is difficult for me to separate Byzantine architecture from the smell
of incense. A final observation that contributed to my recent
experiences of the local: all weekend we noticed a low flying helicopter
twacking its way back and forth across town. My wife and I puzzled about
this until Sunday morning when we noticed that a local business was offering
helicopter rides. Judging by how often we saw the helicopter in the air, I
suspect that these rides were quite popular. Helicopter tours of big
cities like New York are not unusual, but a helicopter ride over the small town
of Grand Forks, North Dakota? While a helicopter ride in New York are
probably designed for tourists who struggle to grasp the enormity of the city,
Grand Forks, aside from the constant flow of bargain-conscious Manitobans, is
not a tourist destination. So these helicopter rides are meant for local
residents who are seeking a new perspective on their own community. 
Just as our listening to a Phillies broadcast allowed me a nostalgic escape
from Grand Forks, ND, so a helicopter ride could introduce a similar feeling of
displacement (an uncanny feeling) by presenting the familiar in a novel,
exciting, and unfamiliar way. The idea of localness and of place develops
through the tension between physical space and surroundings, experiences,
sensations, and memory. 
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COMMENT:
IP: 129.15.101.225
URL:
DATE: 04/27/2009 10:17:20 AM
On mapping and scent -- I always think of Athens when I smell diesel fumes.
This may sound like a slight against Athens. It is not. Rather, the smell of
something that some regard as unpleasant (diesel fumes), I find oddly enjoyable
because it reminds me a city that I really like.
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COMMENT:
IP: 134.129.168.162
DATE: 04/27/2009 11:09:11 AM
bill...love this post. the scent memory mapping is def. interesting. i can
easily remember the scent of my best friends home while i was growing, my musty
flat in Brasil, the exhaust and cigarette smoke in NYC, the scent of the local
wood grill restaurant that choked out my runs in sioux falls.
what struck me as i was reading this is how place memory forms through both
extraordinary events but also over time in an accumulation of experience (active
and passive) that allows place to emerge out of space.
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COMMENT:
EMAIL:
IP: 134.129.133.190
DATE: 04/27/2009 11:32:27 AM
Rangar,
My wife has a similar memory of Athens:
<a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/susan_cara
hers_view_of_pkap/">http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the
_me/susan_carahers_view_of_pkap/</a>
Bill
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Brian
IP: 134.129.193.248
URL: http://mazeoffeathers.blogspot.com/
DATE: 04/28/2009 10:15:03 AM
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Great post. Those moments that really stick with us throughout the years,
comprising unique collections of sensory data, aren't usually recognized for
their significance until after the fact. Could we have seen it for it's value
at the time, might we have basked in the moment a little longer, given a little
more effort to appreciate the experience? This line of thinking has challenged
me in my photography to think forward to what my future self or others would
find truly interesting of a particular place and time, much of which might be
taken for granted in the present.
Thank you for yet another reminder to be aware of my place in history.

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BASENAME: snow
DATE: 04/26/2009 09:34:15 PM

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A spring snow!<a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2011570550ae1970
b-pi"><img alt="Snow!!" border="0" class="at-xid-
6a00d83451908369e2011570550ae1970b image-full "
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2011570550ae1970b
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CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 04/24/2009 09:52:30 AM
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Some assorted stuff: <ul>!
<li>If you don't know about <a
href="http://researchnewsinla.blogspot.com/">this</a>, then you might have
missed <a href="http://saintsandblesseds.wordpress.com/">this</a> and <a
href="http://www.proc.britac.ac.uk/cgi-
bin/somsid.cgi?page=volumes/pba141">this</a>. <a
href="http://www.proc.britac.ac.uk/cgi-
bin/somsid.cgi?page=141p649&session=581648A&type=header">This
article</a> is particularly interesting. </li>!
<li><a href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/2009/04/stand-by-me.html">Kostis
Kourelis as new media prophet</a>. Read his post alongside <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/22/opinion/22dowd.html">this</a>, and then
read the commentary <a href="http://www.theawl.com/2009/04/person-with-twice-
weekly-column-feels-no-need-to-provide-instant-updates">here</a> and <a
href="http://www.kottke.org/09/04/in-defense-of-twitter">here</a>. You
can follow <a href="http://twitter.com/BillCaraher">me here</a>. And we
probably need to think about <a
href="http://henryjenkins.org/2009/04/how_sarah_spread_and_what_it_m.html">this<
/a> now as well.</li>!
<li><a href="http://classics.uc.edu/troy/coins/">Sebastian Heath leading the way
again</a>. </li>!
<li><a href="http://teachingthursday.org/">In case you missed it</a>. </li>!
<li><a
>We're trying to raise money to do great things</a>. </li>!
<li>Keep <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2009/03/ta
lk-on-thursday-socialism-serbofilia-sex-and-suicide.html">4:00 pm next Thursday
free for this</a>. </li>!
<li><a href="http://digitalgateway.und.edu/">This is cool</a> and now has a link
from the <a href="http://www.und.edu/">UND homepage</a>. </li>!
<li><a
href="http://www.historians.org/perspectives/issues/2009/0904/0904tea1.cfm">This
</a>, <a
href="http://www.historians.org/perspectives/issues/2009/0904/0904tea2.cfm">this
</a>, and <a
href="http://www.historians.org/perspectives/issues/2009/0904/0904tea3.cfm">this
</a> are food for thought.</li>!
</ul>!
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TITLE: Construction Season
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DATE: 04/23/2009 07:44:48 AM

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Despite the flood and the crazy spring weather, it's
construction season again. They are building in a few more of the lots
left vacant after the 1997 flood. I really like my new phone's
camera. It makes it relatively easy to capture photos like this. The
brick is the only remnant of the previous house on this lot sitting amidst the
markings for the new foundation. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201156f4f24aa970
bottom: 0px" height="304" alt="LonelyBrick"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201156f4f24ac970c
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TITLE: Teaching Graduate Students
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CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 04/23/2009 07:35:55 AM

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Today's blog is just a <a href="http://www.teachingthursday.org/">link</a>
over to the thoughtful comments offered by my colleague Cynthia Prescott on <a
href="http://teachingthursday.org/2009/04/23/mentoring-graduate-
students/">Mentoring Graduate Students</a>. As I spend more and more of my
time this semester reading M.A. Theses, I realize more and more how challenging
advising graduate students can be. She has worked hard this year to engage
the graduate students in critical activities outside the seminar and
classroom. These "value added" activities, namely our monthly history
workshops, have not only allowed us to model constructive, professional
criticism to our students, but also build a sense of community that encourages
709
collective learning. Prescott's post also explores the fine line between
frank professional advice and nurturing the dreams and aspirations of our
sometimes naive graduate students. The job market for historians is not
good these days and our students need to understand that reality. On the
other hand, we have positions so it is possible to move from graduate school to
the professional world. Ok, enough of my summary, <a
href="http://teachingthursday.org/2009/04/23/mentoring-graduate-students/">go
and read it yourself</a>. (And check back, because there is another post
on the way!)
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TITLE: Two Years of Blogging and 50,000 Page Views
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DATE: 04/22/2009 08:28:45 AM

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I am not obsessed with blogging, but it gives me something to do while I
drink my morning coffee, and now I have done it for two years. I think
that <a
restrospectiv.html">the observations that I offered one year ago still
stand</a>. I can briefly add five more: 1. Audience. A year
ago, I still thought a good bit about a blogging voice and an intended
audience. Since then, I've just decided to blog on what I want to
blog. I will admit that at times, it suddenly occurs to me that I am an
archaeologist and an ancient historian - rather than an American historian, an
academic technologist, or whatever - but I am less concerned with
inconsistencies in my intellectual and academic life. After all, if a
reader isn't interested in a particular topic that I am exploring, they do not
have to read that post! 2. Blogging as Professional and Social
Networking. Over the last 15 months, I have begun to realize how useful
blogging is in finding like-minded colleagues from around the world. While
my blog has never attracted a huge number of comments (less than 200 as of this
morning), I frequently receive emails from fellow scholars commenting on various
posts or addressing particular issues that I raise in my posts. Moreover,
I now am regularly identified as a blogger by people whom I would have never met
otherwise. And, it appears to be regarded as a good thing. 3.
People read blogs. This has led me to the startling conclusion that people
really do read blogs. Whether they are taken seriously as academic
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production or seen a merely a pleasant diversion is another matter, but people

do visit my blog regularly. Over the last four months, I've averaged close
to 100 visitors per day and over the lifetime of the blog almost 70 visitors per
day. 4. Content and Form. My blog is ugly. I keep thinking
that I should change the template and give it a more open, up to date
look. <a href="http://www.typepad.com">Typepad</a> and <a
href="http://wordpress.org/">Wordpress</a> release new blog templates seemingly
daily. They offer new features (like threaded comments), new widgets for
gathering and displaying information, and new formats for text to make your
content appear in contemporary formats. My blog does not take advantage of
any of these new bells and whistles, but still draws a steadily increasing flow
of traffic. I suppose I will eventually move the blog to a more flashy
Wordpress template. When I have time. 5. Always be Composing.
When Michael B√©rub√© <a
href="http://www.michaelberube.com/index.php/weblog/til_we_meet_again/">took a
break from his well-known blogging routine</a>, he complained that that the ABC
-- Always be composing -- had taken its toll on him after three years of
blogging almost daily. This is certainly the case. I spend at least
an hour a day planning my weekly posts, thinking of topics, and, of course,
writing. My black notebook is a constant companion as I jot notes down and
even write out posts longhand. I can imagine a time when I will have to
stop whether the press of other responsibilities becomes too great or out of
boredom or a kind of exhaustion, but right now, I continue to feel
motivated. The motivations comes from two sources. One, I am
energized by the idea of producing text that people want to read, and, two, the
discipline of blogging has made me a more efficient scholar. <a
bottom: 0px" height="272" alt="PageViews"
-pi" width="400" border="0"></a> So, thanks for reading my
blog regularly and contributing to my scholarly discipline. Read blogs.
 Here is my weekly reading list: <a
href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/">Objects, Buildings, Situations</a> <a
href="http://www.janchipchase.com/">Future Perfect</a> <a
href="http://www.ancienthistory.typepad.com/ancient_history_ramblings/">Ancient
History Ramblings</a> <a href="http://tenured-radical.blogspot.com/">Tenured
Radical</a> <a href="http://electricarchaeologist.wordpress.com/">Electric
Archaeologist</a> <a href="http://ancientworldbloggers.blogspot.com/">Ancient
World Bloggers Group</a> <a
href="http://traumwerk.stanford.edu/archaeolog/">Archaeolog</a> <a
href="http://pretexts.blogspot.com/">(pre)texts</a> <a
href="http://www.antiquatedvagaries.blogspot.com/">Antiquate Vagaries</a> <a
href="http://surprisedbytime.blogspot.com/">Surprised by Time</a> <a
href="http://axisofaccess.blogspot.com/">Axis of Access</a> <a
href="http://www.henryjenkins.org/">Confessions of an Aca/Fan</a> <a
href="http://lootingmatters.blogspot.com/">Looting Matters</a> <a
href="http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/">apophenia</a> <a
href="http://www.atrium-media.com/rogueclassicism/">rogueclassicism</a> 
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Jonathan Laden
EMAIL: jladen@bib-arch.org
IP: 216.156.120.90
URL: http://www.bib-arch.org
DATE: 04/23/2009 08:42:54 AM
Congratulations on hitting both impressive milestones.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Dallas
IP: 140.254.69.123
URL:
DATE: 04/23/2009 12:29:42 PM
Any idea why your data is skewed at 2 points? Seems odd.
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COMMENT:
EMAIL:
IP: 134.129.133.190
DATE: 04/23/2009 12:55:47 PM
Sometimes a particular post will be linked to from a high-traffic site. The
first spike is after I posted some pictures of Athens in the snow. The second
spike might be from students in Tim Gregory's Byzantine class.
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BASENAME: fortifications-between-the-megarid-and-corinthia
CATEGORY: Books
DATE: 04/21/2009 07:57:07 AM

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Having worked in and thought about Corinth and the Corinthia for the past
decade, it amazes me how little I've thought about its northern neighbor Megara
-- despite the fact that we drive through the Megarid on the way from Athens to
Corinth. <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/226389459">Philip J.
Smith's book, The Archaeology and Epigraphy of Hellenistic and Roman
Megaris, Greece. BAR 1762. (Oxford 2008),</a>
should make the archaeology of this region more accessible. Of particular
interest to me are the fortification across the northern border of Mergara
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presumably situated to impede progress through the Isthmus. Since scholars

have generally regarded the Megarid as "neutral" through most of its history or
at least militarily and politically subordinate to her southern neighbor, the
fortifications along the border between the Corinthia and Megarid would seem to
fit into a more ambiguous category of internal or regional fortifications
designed to accomplish interregional goals or highly local ones rather then
simply to protect the boundaries of an established state. <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/4824475">Wiseman</a> documented the rubble
fortifications at Lysi on Geraneia (20-22) which is the best local comparandum
to the rubble fortifications across Mt. Oneion on the southern boundary of the
Isthmian plain (see <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/103965127">Caraher and
Gregory 2006</a>). This rubble fort would seem to have less to do with
fortifying the territory of Megara (or the Corinthia) than with blocking traffic
across the Isthmus. Smith follows Wiseman in suggesting that Cassander
built this fortification in 316 BC when he was most active in the Peloponnesus
(Smith, 31). We've argued that our walls on Oneion further south are, in
fact, somewhat earlier. Northeast of the site of Lysi, near the site of
Paliopyrgos stands the remains of a circular tower which is probably post-
antique on account of its mortar and rubble construction. It may sit on an
older foundation (or not) which blocked the northern approach to the rubble fort
and the passage through Geraneia. Some 10 km east of the site of Lysi
stands another useful comparandum for <a
corinthia.html">our recent work on Corinthian fortifications</a>. At the
Kaki Skala there is the remains of a round tower and a rectangular fortification
at the northern end of the eastern pass from the Megarid into the Corinthia
(Smith, 24-25). Measuring about 10 m in diameter, this is roughly the same
size as our <a
e-corinthia-1.html">tower at Lychnari</a> and the combination of a round tower
and fortified enclosure parallels nicely <a
e-corinthian.html">the fortifications at Ano Vayia</a>. Smith and Wiseman
regard the site as a fortification designed the block the pass south and part of
a regional signaling system which could have alerted the polis center of an
enemy moving north through the Kaki Skala pass (Smith, 89-92). 
Towers or fortifications at the site of Mavrolimini in the northwestern
Corinthia complete the fortifications across the southern Megarid and presumably
blocked passage through the western side of the the Geraneia ridge.
Unfortunately the remains at the site are mostly lost. There is a nice <a
href="http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2009/2009-04-10.html">review of Smith's book
here</a>. The only thing that I could add to this is that it is
regrettable that the author did not extend his analysis to at least Late
Antiquity. The Late Antique Medgarid is poorly documented consisting of a
handful of stray finds, graves, and several early Christian basilicas. It
seems increasingly common practice to include the 4th-7th century in such
sweeping regional studies.
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TITLE: How to write for the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project Blog: A
Primer in Archaeological Blogging
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DATE: 04/20/2009 07:36:28 AM

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As the <a href="http://www.pkap.org">PKAP</a> season looms, we are beginning
to think of all the little details that go into making our time in Cyprus as
stress free and productive as possible. Over the past two seasons we have
run a very successful series of weblogs. The various participants submit
their blog posts from the field and have captured a whole range of
archaeological experiences (see our <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/pylakoutsopetria_season_s/">Senior
Staff Blog</a> and our <a
Student Perspectives Blog</a>). This year we plan to encourage our large
group of undergraduate volunteers to contribute to a "PKAP Undergraduate
Perspectives Blog". While I haven't set up the space for it yet
(but we'll announce it with great fanfare here when I do!), we thought it a
good idea to make clear what archaeological blogging entails before we set loose
a gaggle of eager undergraduates into the blogosphere. From our
perspective (and like any genre) archaeological blogging has certain rules and
conventions about it. There are topics that are appropriate for a blog
and ones that should be regarded as off-limits. On the one hand, this
seems to hint at a kind of top-down censorship, and there is definitely some
truth to that. But, on the other hand, part of the goal of the
"field school" aspect of the project is to introduce students to the
various expectations that condition behavior on archaeological project.
This includes how to behave in the field (field procedures, methods, and
processes) as well as how to talk about the archaeological experience in various
venues. As an added layer of complexity some of our students this year
will hail from a <a href="http://www.messiah.edu/">small, Christian college</a>
that has a rather strict <a
href="http://www.messiah.edu/about/community_covenant.html">code of
conduct</a>. I am vaguely worried that an innocent posting on some aspect
of archaeological culture will get our students into real trouble when they
return home! So, below is my first effort at creating a guide to
archaeological blogging for PKAP. Since more and more projects are
blogging (I am excited to see that the blog for the <a
has come back to life lately!), I thought that some of the guidelines would be
helpful in creating a comfortable and useful space for students to document
714
their experiences working and living together in our archaeological

community. I am sure these guidelines will get tweaked once my co-
directors read them and we try to implement them in the field, but they are a
start: How to write for the PKAP Blog: The various PKAP blogs are
among the most unique aspects of our project. Our blogs inform our friends and
families, bring the experiences of archaeology back to our colleges and
universities, and become the face of our project on the internet. Our
blogs also encourage us to think carefully about the processes and experiences
of archaeological fieldwork as it takes place. At the end of each season the
directors the project archive all the blog posts, and they become part of the
permanent record of the project. Over the past few years, individual posts have
become popular destinations on the web and continue to attract traffic even
now. In fact, people remember well-written, exciting, and clever posts
and bring them up to project members at social and professional events!
Like last year, there will be three individual blogs that capture various
aspects of the project. A Season Staff Blog is reserved for the senior
staff of the project. PKAP Graduate Student Perspectives captures the
experiences of graduate students on the project. And our Undergraduate
Perspectives Blog provides a venue for our undergraduate volunteers. On
each blog, we group the posts under the individual bloggers name allowing
visitors to explore the perspective of particular participants. It's
important to remember before you begin to blog that not only will a wide range
of people read your posts, but they will become part of the permanent record of
the project. Archaeological blogging requires a kind of honesty to confront the
wide range of experiences that you will have in Cyprus and working
together. It will also require a kind of discretion in that not all of
your experiences doing field work and living and working together are
appropriate for public consumption. If you have any question whether a topic,
picture, or experience is appropriate for the blog, talk to a senior staff
member before you make your post! Here are some basic guidelines for
blogging the PKAP experience: 1. Blog about
fieldwork. Archaeological fieldwork requires constant analysis and is
exciting. Attempt to capture that in your blog posts. But also be
discrete. It is considered bad form to publish photos of finds or
detailed photographs of your trenches. Keep photographs and descriptions
of objects and features general. The proper place for detailed
description of artifacts and features is in our formal publication. 2. Blog about Cypriot culture. PKAP hopes that you will
think carefully about your experience of living in Cyprus, seeing the various
archaeological and historical sites, and learning about the diverse culture and
politics of the island. These things will be particularly interesting to your
audience back home! But also be aware that Cypriots can read your blog as
well. Most Cypriots can read English well and will find your writing
through search engines and links. So, be respectful to the host country
in your post and approach your efforts to describe your experiences on Cyprus
with an open mind and a generous attitude. 3. Blog
about living and working together. One of the most exciting aspects of
archaeological fieldwork is living, talking, and working together. In
past years, our blogs have captured some of the conversations, arguments, and
discoveries that come from the intense experiences of living and working as a
community of scholars. Before you blog on a funny story that your roommate told
you or a heated argument with your trench supervisor, it's always polite to
ask these other folks whether you can blog about what you have discussed.
In general, people don't mind being blogged about, but sometimes people
might want things to remain private. Be a courteous blogger. 4. Blog with pictures. Our blogging service allows

us to upload photographs. Pictures make your blog more interesting and
vivid! Be sure to ask people, though, if you can post that silly
photograph of them after a hard day at work and refrain from posting photos of
finds or features in trenches (photographs of people working in a trench are
fine as are general work pictures). As a note, large, high resolution
photographs will take a long time to upload on our slow internet connection.
Some more basic blogging tips: 1. Remember your
audience! Try to write clearly and avoid emoticons and other internet
slang. Some of our audience won't be familiar with these things and
it will make the blog less accessible to our diverse audience. 2. Remember that people will read your posts! While it
might be funny to recount a particularly raucous night on the town, you might
not want your dear old aunt or zealous university administrator to read about
these things. People will read your blog and if you say things that are
inappropriate, it will come back to us and you. 3.
Don't be intimidated by length. The great thing about blogs is that
they can be as long or as short as you want them to be. A 50 word blog can be
better, more vivid, or more revealing than a rambling 1000 word post. At
the same time, you can write mini-essays, multi-part stories, or even poetry in
a blog post without any problems. In fact, the more diverse, reflective,
and earnest our blogs are the more people remember and appreciate them. 4. Lots of links. The very best blog posts have
lots of links to other posts or even other blogs! Blogging is like social
networking the more you reach out to others, the more they want to know what you
are doing. 5. Tell your story. The most common
comments that I get about our blogs are about the very earnest and the funny
posts! So, develop a voice and be earnest. People like it.
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CATEGORY: Byzantium
CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 04/17/2009 11:24:59 AM

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A busy Friday, but some fun and serious links: <ul> <li><a
href="http://www.fimoculous.com/">Another North Dakotan who's made it big</a>.
<li><a href="http://www.hulu.com/watch/62827/late-night-with-jimmy-fallon-
public-enemy-with-the-roots">Flavor Flav in a NASCAR jacket</a> with Public
Enemy and the Roots. Note also the updated fatigues. <li><a
href="http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/04/16/mexico.death/index.html?iref=
newssearch#cnnSTCVideo">Local saints</a>. <li><a
href="http://ux.opencontext.org/blog/">Heritage Bytes</a>. <li><a
href="http://www.teachingthursday.org/">Keep checking back</a>. <li><a
href="http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i32/32b01501.htm?utm_source=pm&utm_mediu
m=en">Stupid Grammar</a>.</li></ul>
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AUTHOR: Maddy Bray
IP: 76.170.0.106
DATE: 05/03/2009 12:14:16 PM
That's a hilariously crotchety rant on Strunk and White.
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TITLE: Digital Archaeology at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World:
What I Learned
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BASENAME: digital-archaeology-at-the-institute-for-the-study-of-the-ancient-
world-what-i-learned
CATEGORY: Web/Tech
DATE: 04/16/2009 08:38:48 AM

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Tuesdays Digital Archaeology meeting at <a
href="http://www.nyu.edu/isaw/">ISAW</a> was fantastic and <a
href="http://homepages.nyu.edu/~te20/">Tom Elliott</a> and Roger Bagnall should
be commended for their commitment to creating room for open discussion about
crucial matters of digital publication in archaeology. One of the key
metaphors of the day was "the carrot and stick". This phrase referred to
the need to encourage and require projects to release their digital data.
And much of discussion consider the various carrot aspects and stick
consequences as related to digital publication of archaeological data. To
my great relief, the carrots of opportunity far outweighed, the stick of
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necessity! I learned a good bit listening to colleagues who have

struggled over crucial issues in digital archaeology for the past decade.
Below I offer a some of the key points that made an impact on how I think about
digital archaeology (and these points do not reflect necessarily the scope or
priorities of the meeting): 1. The Digital Future is Now. The
number of people deeply committed to digitizing legacy data from across the
archaeological world was truly remarkable. More importantly, it is clear
that major digitization projects currently underway will have a significant
impact on the availability of archaeological data in a digital format in the
very near future. Moreover, the group assembled at ISAW this past week
seemed to agree in large part concerning the most pressing and significant
issues surrounding archaeological data management. The solutions that each
project or team provided varied, but the overarching priorities seemed securely
established. In short, many of the old objections to the digital
distribution of archaeological data are now entirely resolved. Variable
security levels can limit access to material under investigation and analysis,
customized systems preserve idiosyncratic data integrity and secure backups
protect data from loss. 2. The Gap between the Coding and Non-
Coding Archaeologist. The day has arrived when any serious, large-scale
archaeological project needs a data plan. This data plan will almost
always require a deliberate and sophisticated approach to processing data from
its collection in the field to its dissemination among team members to its final
(ideally digital) publication. In many cases, the entire process will
depend upon a custom build application or interface. The funding levels
necessary to make it possible to have the services of coding archaeologist to
produce customized interfaces are likely limited to larger projects with
substantial institutional support. The number of archaeologists
working on serious, custom applications and interfaces to maximize specialized
access to their data was remarkable. This leaves smaller projects, which
have the same responsibilities to to work toward converting legacy data and to
preserve and publish born-digital data, in a potentially exposed position.
What makes this all the more pressing is that so much archaeological data of all
kinds, is produced or bound up in smaller projects. The days of the "big
dig" are nearly over. Small, focused, and relatively efficient field
projects have emerged in its place and, importantly, produce data that can
benefit significantly from comparison with other small scale projects. The
key now will be to encourage small projects to share data in such a way as to
multiply the significance of their conclusions. 3. Aggregated Data.
The potential for comparisons across large-scale aggregated data sets were
hardly a priority at this meeting and the reasons seem to be (1) that most data
sets are simply too idiosyncratic to compare in a simple or automated way and
(2) the drive to aggregate various data sets has to come from specific research
questions: for example, kinds of aggregated data can shed light on problems
imagined at the regional level or emphasize some aspect of Mediterranean
trade. That being said, there seemed to be a broad consensus that that the
current wave of digital publications have emphasized the production of data
structures that allows the end users a tremendous amount of flexibility in
arranging data. So the creation of data to be compared across projects,
sites, or even regions, needs not be an exclusive concern for the data producer,
but, in fact, depend more heavily on the savvy and tools available to the end
user. The data producer merely has to present the data in a way that is
accessible to various third party applications (like Google Earth) through which
the data can be mined and queried by the end user. 4. Institutional
Thinking. It's interesting to see how many institutions participate in the
impetus behind the creating of digital data. The <a
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href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/index.php/digital-library/">American School of
Classical Studies at Athens</a>, The <a
href="http://www.archaeological.org/">Archaeological Institute of America</a>,
<a href="http://classics.uc.edu/">the University of Cincinnati</a>, the <a
href="http://www.museum.upenn.edu/index.php">University Museum at the University
of Pennsylvania</a>, are all major players in the universe of Mediterranean
Archaeology and all were represented at the meeting. It is clear that
issues of digital data in archaeology are being conceived on the trans-
institutional level. This not only reflects the serious commitment of
resources (especially during difficult economic times), but the development of
the kind of decentralized infrastructure for digital archaeology that could spur
innovation as different groups work toward common goals from different
perspectives. There were only a few things at the meeting that I'd
have liked to have heard more about. First, is digital workflow in the
field. I have this dream where our data can be produced in the field with
solid validations rules and disseminated in almost real time to collaborators
around the world. This instant digital publication would streamline the
final publication of data and save time on the tedious "post-production" work of
data managing in the off season. It's clear that some projects are better
at this than others, and I just wanted to understand how and why. The
other thing that I would have liked to learn more about is how projects are
dealing with the potential of the new media. Most of the discussion
centered on "old media" -- drawings, plans, photographs, notebooks, and the like
-- and tended to deal with new media the same way (i.e. our systems can
accommodate video, audio, or whatever). This is a particular concern for
our work which brings in more video and audio than many projects, but it would
presumably have applicability for <a href="http://www.millsaps.edu/svp/">any
project with an ethnographic or reflexive component to their research</a>.
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TITLE: Digital Archaeology Meeting in New York
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CATEGORY: Web/Tech
DATE: 04/13/2009 08:30:34 AM

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 I'm off to New York for a meeting focused on digital archaeology
hosted by the <a href="http://www.nyu.edu/isaw/">Institute for the Study of the
Ancient World</a>. We've been asked to put together a brief presentation
on how we use digital technology in our archaeological research and areas where
more sophisticated use of the technology available would improve our ability to
collect, analyze, and archive archaeological data. Here's a brief precis
of what I plan to present: 1. On of my main goals for the next few years
is to continue to work to streamlining the digital workflow for the <a
href="http://www.nyu.edu/isaw/">Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological
Project</a>. Right now, we collect numerous different kinds of born data
regularly (e.g. excavation data, survey data, photographs, finds records,
scanned field notebooks, et c.) but it's not done in an integrated way.
The end result is a whole series of data sets that could be integrated, but are
not. 2. The lack of integrated workflow in the field has impaired our
ability to bring our digital data to quick publication. We feel that
improving the level of integration will help us produce data efficiently that
can sustain rigorous analysis and enables an end user to drill down (and across)
from published reports to digital data of various kinds. 3. I have
also been working to create stable, public, digital data sets from legacy and
analogue data. For my work in the area of <a
orion_archaeological_project/">Thisvi</a> (with data from a survey conducted in
the early 1980s called the Ohio Boeotia Expedition), I have worked to migrate
analog data to digital formats. This data preserves archaeological information
from a landscape currently under threat and susceptible to making it accessible
for new analysis in GIS. Moreover, this work forms a model for migrating
legacy data to digital formats for other small scale surveys in the Corinthia
that record information about endangered or destroyed landscapes. 4.
I've begun to also think about work at the <a
href="http://isthmia.osu.edu/">Ohio State Excavations at Isthmia</a>. Over
the last few years, <a href="http://isthmia.osu.edu/teg/">Timothy Gregory</a>
and I have created concordances that have allowed us to integrate the context
pottery from the OSU-Isthmia Excavations with the survey data from the <a
Korinthia Archaeological Survey</a>. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2009/04/de
-centering-data.html">In a post last week</a>, I've begun to think about how our
work at integrating EKAS and OSU-Isthmia data could extend to the various other
teams working at Isthmia to ensure that the data that they produced in various
formats is archived and fundamentally compatible. This work would, of course,
grow to include collaborating with the efforts of the American School at Corinth
and in Athens to make our data available for eventual migration to a stable,
long-term, integrated environment encompassing many of the American School
projects in Greece. 5. The final issue is the most complex. For
PKAP, in particular, we have gathered a considerable quantity of digital video
and audio and we want to begin to make this available alongside our more
traditional archaeological data in immersive, multimedia environments.
This ties into the issues under point 2 above, but with the additional layer of
multi and new media complexity. 
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DATE: 04/10/2009 08:50:08 AM

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Just a few assorted varia and quick hits: <ul> <li>I just discovered <a
href="http://www.historians.org/perspectives/issues/2009/0903/0903mem2.cfm">this
lovely obituary for Joseph Lynch</a>. He was the Medievalist at Ohio State
and served on the comprehensive exam committee. I was Professor Lynch's
T.A. for his Early Christianity course, took a reading class with him, and
regularly attended his Latin reading group -- which I have tried to reproduce
here at the University of North Dakota. </li> <li><a
href="http://edwired.org/?p=489">This is an interesting post</a> on the need for
a new capstone course. It ties in with some thoughts I had a few weeks ago
on the challenge of midlevel courses and <a
href="http://teachingthursday.org/2009/03/05/the-challenge-of-midlevel-
courses/">posted here</a>. I've been talking with my History 240 students
about role of the historical method in teaching history majors. On the one
hand, an emphasis on historical thinking (through various methods) builds
writing, critical thinking and other transferable skills. On the other
hand, many students become history majors not because they like the historical
method, but because they are drawn toward the narratives or personalities
central to the study of history. Students who are drawn to history for
"the sake of the past" often find an emphasis on method, historiography, and
writing to be distasteful and incompatible with their expectations. So,
the question becomes, how do we accommodate the range of expectations of history
majors?</li> <li> I am Twittering again: <a
title="http://twitter.com/BillCaraher"
href="http://twitter.com/BillCaraher">http://twitter.com/BillCaraher</a> .
<a href="http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i31/31a01001.htm">Inspired by
this</a>.</li></ul> Have a good holiday weekend!
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TITLE: Some Alternative Scenarios to Charles Watkinson's "Baby,

Bathwater..." blog
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<a href="http://www.charleswatkinson.com/">Charles Watkinson</a> always makes
a splash with his occasional foray into the blogosphere. <a
href="http://www.charleswatkinson.com/2009/04/baby-bathwater-what.html">On
Saturday he made a good post</a> on the recent report from the Association of
Research Libraries. The report, entitled <a
href="http://www.blogger.com/www.arl.org/bm%7Edoc/transformational-
times.pdf">Transformational Times</a>, again tolls the death knell for the long-
held gold standard of academic published: the printed monograph.
Watkinson offered three scenarios where the monograph still has some
value. It just so happens that I have counter examples for two of his
scenarios. This is not meant to be a challenge to Watkinson -- a shrewd
observer of archaeological publishing and an insider -- but just another
anecdotal perspective that perhaps suggests that, indeed, times are
achangin'... Watkinson observed that print monographs remain valuable for
the archaeologist in the field and evokes "well-thumbed copies of Rotroff, Hayes
or other reference bibles." Ironically, our ceramicist uses digital copies
of Hayes and various other reference bibles in part because the print monograph
is so incredibly expensive (if you can find it at all). In fact, a nicely
digitized pdf, complete with bookmarks for commonly referenced forms, on a $300
netbook may cost less than the print version. And that same netbook (as
close as we have to a disposable computer) could easily handle dozens, if not
hundreds of scanned books, keeping the out of print and nearly priceless print
copies safely at one's home institution. His post also talks about
the value of books as a kind of academic wampum. This is certainly
true. I admit to enjoying the offprint, book, or chapter sent by an
academic colleague as a sign of respect or appreciation. This past summer,
however, when I received a copy of a volume of the Report of the Department of
Antiquities of Cyprus while in Cyprus, I appreciated the limitations of the book
wampum system. Was I really expected to bring this book back to the US
with me? The complementary volume was appreciated, but my willingness to
deal with the difficulties of print while traveling changed my
perspective. The common experience of my predicament was confirmed when I
met with a German scholar this past year at a colloquium in Montreal.
Instead of exchanging piles of offprints (that neither of us carried
internationally), we exchanged emails and dutifully sent along wonderful pdf
files of various recent articles. I was no less appreciative of the
gesture and, thus, electronic publications represented the same kind of wampum
as a print publication. Now, I do appreciate the fact that some of the
places where archaeologists work lack the infrastructure to take full advantage
of the various digital media that many archaeologists have come to rely upon to
conduct research on a daily basis. Actually, being at a University that
neither subscribes to the entire suite of JStor journals nor to all the various
other services, I often find myself relying on paper copies of offprints via
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ILL. That being said, one of the best gifts that I have received from a
senior scholar was access to a secure collection of digital offprints and
monographs -- that scholar's private hoard, a kind of digital wampum.
Finally, Watkinson's print monographs for tenure is a good observation.
It's clear that we are simply not there yet as far as the perceived quality of
digital monographs. I like the idea of print-on-demand though and have
noticed an ever increasing number of books in my collection are the print on
demand kind. Perhaps this is the hybrid stage between fully digital
monographs and the end of print publishing as we know it. 
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TITLE: Check out Teaching Thursday
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CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 04/09/2009 07:27:38 AM

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Over the last couple of months there have been some really interesting
contributions to our <a href="http://www.teachingthursday.org/">Teaching
Thursday blog</a>. This blog is an extension of <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/teaching/"
>my old Teaching Thursday</a> feature here (and over at <a
href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/">Buildings, Objects, Situations</a>).
Each Thursday (and sometimes more often) we offer a short teaching related post
from across the University of North Dakota's campus. We've explored the <a
href="http://teachingthursday.org/2009/03/12/call-me-edupunk/">idea of
EduPunk</a>, thought about <a
href="http://teachingthursday.org/2009/03/19/timely-reflections-on-asynchronous-
teaching/">asynchronous teaching</a> and <a
href="http://teachingthursday.org/2009/04/09/using-models-to-teach/">teaching
with models</a>, <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/2009/04/02/technology-and-
pedagogy/">grappled with technology and pedagogy</a>, and <a
href="http://teachingthursday.org/2009/03/26/teaching-business-during-an-
economic-crisis/">reflected on teaching during times of economic
crisis.</a> So go and check out <a
href="http://www.teachingthursday.org/">Teaching Thursday</a>, leave comments,
and spread the word!
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TITLE: De-Centering Data
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DATE: 04/08/2009 08:43:28 AM

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Next week, I've been lucky enough to be invited to a workshop hosted by the
<a href="http://www.nyu.edu/isaw/">Institute for the Study of the Ancient World
at NYU</a>. The workshop will focus on the challenges and opportunities of
using digital data in archaeological research and bring together a wide range of
scholars who are using digital data in various ways. To get folks onto the
same page, we've been asked to complete a fairly simple homework
assignment. One of the questions is whether anyone (or a group) owns or
manages our data and whether there are any ways that we would like to centralize
or better coordinate our digital workflow. This afternoon, we have a
meeting with various University of North Dakota folks to discuss our "emerging"
Working Group for Digital and New Media. The working group is largely an
artificial creation that was brought together in order to apply for money that
the University President was offering for innovative, inter and trans
disciplinary groups on campus. The Working Group includes faculty from
English, History, Music, Scientific Computing, and the head librarian
here. It appears that we will receive a substantial infusion of funding to
stimulate (in the language of the day) collaboration and innovation. While
the details are still being worked out, I think it is likely that some of funds
will go toward creating a centralized Digital and New Media Lab. 
In the lead up to my meeting today and my meeting in New York next week, I've
been thinking about how often I still regard data and the digital realm as
something that needs to be managed, centralized, and structured. We have
been talking about archaeological data management and the creation of a "center"
for digital and new media on campus. At the same time it is becoming more
and more obvious that our ability to produce and manipulate digital data is
becoming increasing de-centered and de-centralized. As our digital data
gathering devices (cameras, GPS units, phones, laptops, video, et c.)
proliferate and expertise proliferates -- we have multiple people who can
manipulate and create databases, spreadsheets, and GIS. Even in these
conditions, we can certainly imagine the utility of a single data manager or a
system that can integrate digital media from a variety of devices and organize
them systematically (after all, analogue data has a tendency to proliferate on
archaeological projects as well and it projects have always prioritized the need
to archive, organize, and record systematically). The future of data
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management, however, may not be in such centralized and managed

collections. These collections may be built around commonly agreed upon
standards or best-practices, but even these centrally administered structures
might not suit all the potential types of data, organizing questions, or
analytical units that creative archaeologists can imagine. We may look to
a future where researchers emphasize the production of concordances that relate
different kinds of data to one another as the methods, data types, and
applications expand. The issue remains, of course, that data to be useful
nevertheless needs to be organized and preserved in some way, but it's hard to
imagine such a radically decentered kind of data management method. 
As an example, I've been talking with Timothy Gregory about how to manage
digital data produced by the Isthmia Excavations. Like many large scale
projects several different groups of people are producing and using data from
Isthmia. Each group has its own research questions, data collection tools
(ranging from experiment RDF tags to GPS), data management systems (ranging from
Autocad to ArcGIS to Microsoft Access and legacy formats), and time
frames. There is simply no way to produce a system that integrates this
data as it is being produced and some of the data might be inherently resistant
to combination. Nevertheless all of this information deserves to be
archived and perhaps even maintained. A similar, decentralized
future might await the Working Group in the Digital and New Media. While
it is easy enough to imagine how various groups on campus might benefit from
pooling resources to satisfy specific hardware and software needs (high-end
computers, large-scale storage, server space, access to applications and
devices), it seems strangely outmoded to talk about a center for something like
digital and new media since these technologies have done some much to de-center
the production of texts, media objects, and even certain key elements in the
public discourse. It seems more forward looking to imagine the creation of
various nodes where individuals, groups, hardware and software could combine to
solve specific problems and then disperse to ensure that the community as a
whole can maximize the investments in capital (i.e. software, hardware,
space). I like the model of an art gallery that can be re-arranged for
various installations and exhibits quickly and efficiently. While an
artist would have to accommodate some basic structures, like the architectural
structure of the space, there would exist a fair degree of flexibility with the
best galleries being open to a range of different kinds of exhibits. Of
course, these ideas are naive. After all, the existence of a center is as
vital to archaeological research as campus politics. Resources are tied to
professional credit and control backed by notions of intellectual and physical
property. Restricted access to archaeological data has long formed a basic
structure for academic research. The freedom provided by unfettered
control over technological resources allows for the kind of personally,
unstructured environment where a scholar is free to experiment, explore, and
fail without impacting other members of the community. Finally, the center
structures responsibility and accountability -- watchwords in the current
economic and political climate. Someone being in charge of the data and in
charge of resources ensure that someone can be held accountable for failure as
well as successes. The urge to centralize is pragmatic reflection of the
will to power.
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AUTHOR: Chuck Jones
IP: 24.199.91.113
DATE: 04/08/2009 05:25:59 PM
Interesting to read this along with Jo Guldi's piece (<a
href="http://landscape.blogspot.com/2009/04/age-of-digital-
citation.html)">http://landscape.blogspot.com/2009/04/age-of-digital-
citation.html)</a> today.
Looking forward to seeing you next week!

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One reason that I abandoned my beloved Blackberry for a less-loved Samsung
Omnia is that it has a 5 megapixel camera which has encouraged me to document
more regularly "archaeological" aspects of my everyday life. Every day I
walk leave Merrifield Hall on the University of North Dakota's campus past one
of the oddest and yet most traditional pieces of campus graffiti. Unlike
more urban campuses, UND's campus is remarkably graffiti free. Even
restroom poets, so common to the semipublic space of university campuses, seems
to be scarce. So this one example of campus graffiti really stood
out. Someone had scratched a Chi-Rho on the inside doorframe at the
southeast corner of Merrifield Hall. The Chi-Rho is an important
symbol to Christians, representing the first two letters of Christ's name in
Greek. According to most of the major sources for Constantine's reign, the
Chi-Rho appeared associated with the battle of Milvian bridge after which
Constantine showed a particular dedication to the Christian cause. It was
famously incorporated into Constantine's military standard (called the labarum).
By the later 4th and 5th centuries, the Chi-Rho became a symbol of the Christian
cause appearing in both formal inscriptions, mosaic decoration, and
graffiti. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201156f04e54a970
bottom: 0px" height="389" alt="MerrifieldChiRho"
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src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201156ffbd8a8970b
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201156f04e57c970
bottom: 0px" height="537" alt="MerrifieldDoors"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201156f04e59b970c
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> This immediately reminded
me of ancient examples of graffiti -- especially the Christian graffiti found at
various points along the Hexamilion wall in Greece. While none of those
graffiti were Chi-Rhos (that I can recall), several cross graffiti were located
at doors entering towers or at gates into the fortress. (See: <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/26158265">T. Gregory, The Hexamilion and the
Fortress. Isthmia 5 (Princeton 1993)</a>, p. 126, ill. 23.).
Scholars have often interpreted such graffiti as being apotropaic; that is
designed to ward off evil of both the human and spiritual kind. Thresholds
such as the door of a building or a city gate are liminal spaces (quite
literally) and are unstable places being neither within the protected area of
the building nor safely outside and away from protected space. The
vulnerability of such places often prompted appeals to divine powers to protect
the space. Of course, <a
href="http://media.www.dakotastudent.com/media/storage/paper970/news/2009/04/03/
Opinion/The-Importance.Of.Unds.Ghost.Story-3694722.shtml">in some instances</a>,
the evil or <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/237345178">restless</a> powers
have already infiltrated the interior space and the apotropaic marker -- like
the graffiti on the Hexamilion -- are reminders that the bad things of the world
can't always be kept at bay.
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IP: 99.12.240.32
URL:
DATE: 04/07/2009 09:54:26 PM
Very very interesting. One might wonder on the author's intention. Does he/she
feel oppressed by a secular university? Is it a sign of rebellion? May a student
had a Constantinian dream. While at Lancaster, I saw this fabulous presentation
by Claire Potter (aka Tenured Radical blogger) on chalking at Wesleyan
University. Will send or blog further details.
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EMAIL:
IP: 134.129.133.190
DATE: 04/08/2009 07:20:09 AM
Kostis,
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Great questions! I have thought about the authors intent and the intended
audience. And context! The door is directly below the Department of Religion
and Philosophy and the classroom where I taught Byzantine History some two years
earlier.
The Chi-Rho as a sign of resistance! I love it.
Bill
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CATEGORY: Web/Tech
DATE: 04/06/2009 07:42:21 AM

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This must be the intellectual springtime that comes at the end of a long,
cold, snowy winter. First next Tuesday, I'll be at the Institute for the
Study of the Ancient World in New York to hear <a
href="http://sebastianheath.com/">Sebastian Heath</a> and Eric Kansa deliver
talks. Heath will speak on "Digital Publication and Linked Data at Troy"
and Kansa (the guru behind <a href="http://www.opencontext.org/">Open
Context</a>) will speak on "Open Context: Digital Dissemination of Field
Research and Museum Collections." For abstracts and more details about
these open to the public lectures check out <a
href="http://horothesia.blogspot.com/2009/04/publishing-archaeological-data-on-
web.html">this post on Tom Elliott's blog, Horothesia</a>. Not to be
outdone, Phi Alpha Theta (the History Honor Society) at the University of North
Dakota will host <a href="http://www.cord.edu/dept/art/facprfps.html">Peter
Schultz</a> of Concordia College. Peter is a rock star archaeologist/ art
historian and he will speak on "History, Image, and Anti-Image on the Periklean
Acropolis". The talk will be on Thursday, April 16th at 5 pm in the East
Asian Room of the Chester Fritz Library. There will be a reception at 4 pm
with pastries and coffee and a chance to chat with Peter. One more, we
have successfully rescheduled <a
href="http://www.ndsu.nodak.edu/history/JohnKCox.htm">John Cox's</a> talk.
If you recall, it was scheduled during the Fargo flood crisis and we allowed him
to prioritize his efforts to save his community! In any event, the talk is
entitled "<a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2009/03/ta
lk-on-thursday-socialism-serbofilia-sex-and-suicide.html">Socialism, Serbofilia,
Sex, and Suicide: The Mad World of Slovene Literature and Politics around
1900</a>" and will be on Friday, April 30th. The talk will start at 4:00
pm, reception afterwards! What better way to spend a Spring Friday!
And, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention our ongoing and successful History
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Workshop will meet once again on April 8th to discuss Daniel Sauerwein's
biography of Nonpartisan League president A.C. Townley. If you are
interested in participating, contact Cynthia Prescott for a copy of the paper
and location details.
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Some fun hits to enliven your weekend browsing: <ul> <li>Congratulations
to our College of Arts and Sciences at the University of North Dakota for <a
href="http://www.und.edu/dept/artsci/">their flashy new webpage</a>. <li>It's
fun to see that the long-standing <a
href="http://web.archive.org/web/20050203040143/http://campusmawrtius.blogspot.c
om/">Campvs Martivs</a> site is back as <a href="http://thecampvs.com/">The
Campvs</a>. Check it out for witty, classics banter. <li>It has been rewarding
to see some nice traffic stats over at our Teaching Thursday site, but not as
much discussion as we had hoped. Wordpress supports threaded discussion as
well so that discussions can be quite dynamic. <li>This is an <a
href="http://antiquatedvagaries.blogspot.com/2009/03/sand.html">amazing
satellite image of the Sahara Sands</a> crossing the Mediterranean and coating
Athens with a fine mist of sand. <li>The water should be receding by now
in Grand Forks, having crested at just a touch under 50 ft. if you haven't
checked out the <a href="http://www.justin.tv/gfherald">Grand Forks Herald's
flood cam</a>, do it now before the water is gone. <li>How about
Afghanistan??? <a
href="http://content.cricinfo.com/iccwcq2009/engine/current/match/390207.html">T
his</a> and <a
href="http://content.cricinfo.com/iccwcq2009/engine/match/390201.html">this</a>
are both pretty cool. And check out <a
href="http://blogs.cricinfo.com/btw/">Hameed Hasan's posts here</a>.</li></ul>
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TITLE: The Pyla-Koustopetria Archaeological Project Season Countdown begins...
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<a
Moore</a> usually posts a pre-season countdown for various <a
href="http://www.pkap.org">PKAP</a> preparations (and has a handy countdown
timer on his blog). As this year's season is shaping up to be more hectic
than usual, there is a strange calm-before-the-storm feeling right now.
Despite the lull, there are some interesting and exciting PKAP wrinkles this
year: 1. A big group. This will be our biggest PKAP team
ever. By all counts, it will number over 30 for most of the four week
season. We'll not only have a while gaggle of undergraduate and graduate
student volunteers from Messiah College, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and
the University of North Dakota, but also a whole group mid-level staff from Ohio
State, Penn State, and various other places. We'll also have a cook, a
great group of area supervisors who will keep an eye on the trench supervisors,
and several experts in ceramics, wall-painting, et c. 2. We will be
joined this summer by a team from IUP who will conduct some subsurface
prospecting using Ground Penetrating Radar. They'll arrive for about a
week worth of work and will likely concentrate their efforts on the Koutsopetria
plain. Over the past three years we've used electrical resistivity to map
subsurface features. And we based our excavation strategy on the results
of this technique. The advantage of resistivity is that it was relatively
inexpensive and required relatively little post-processing work to produce
results. GPR is a more expensive technique as the gear is more complex and
larger and has to be brought onto the island from the US, but GPR will allow us
to cover more area more quickly than resistivity. We still hope that a
larger sample of the subsurface features from Pyla-Koutsopetria will help us
understand the organization of space in the Late Roman settlement. If
there was some formal organization -- say a grid pattern -- this would suggest
that the coastal community had some form of urban planning and central
organization. If it was less formally organized, it would suggest that we
have basically a large, well-developed village. 3. Three excavation
areas. One of the challenges that PKAP faces is that our excavations are
designed primarily to ground truth our intensive pedestrian survey.
Consequently, this season, we will have three distinct excavation areas.
These areas are spread out over close to 2 sq kms. The topography of the
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site compounds the distance and makes it even more difficult to communicate
between the areas being excavated. Fortunately each area will have an
experienced area supervisor to coordinate the efforts of the trench supervisors
and ensure that the data collected is consistent, robust, and high quality.
4. With more areas under excavation, more pottery being analyzed, and
additional spatial data -- like our GPR results -- coming in from the field, we
are going to have to streamline our data collection, storage, and verification
methods. For one more year, I will likely be the only coordinator of
digital data collection, and I think that this will be manageable. But the
next step with the project is a more decentralized digital data collection
process. The challenge with this, of course, it bringing all the data
together, having multiple copies of (or server based) software applications, and
making sure that teams have the training and understanding to enter data
consistently and well. 5. An improved field school. We've always
claimed to be a hybrid project -- part research excavation/survey and part field
school. This year this will even be more true. We'll have our
biggest group of students yet, but also our most well defined research
goals. So we've put considerable effort into creating a cohesive student
experience for our volunteers so that they'll learn both in the field, but also
at the museum and at various sites across the island. So, stay tuned for
more PKAP news and notes here. We'll get the various PKAP blogs up and running
in the next few weeks and try to capture some of the growing excitement around
the 2009 PKAP season!
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TITLE: Check out the University of North Dakota's Writers Conference
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 If you haven't look at the <a href="http://www.und.edu/org/writers/wc-
schedule.htm">schedule</a> or <a href="http://www.und.edu/org/writers/wc-
authors.html">the participants</a> or <a
href="http://www.und.edu/org/writers/wc-history.html">the history</a>, here are
the links. This year the theme is Wit and the featured authors include <a
href="http://www.und.edu">University of North Dakota</a> alumnus Chuck
Klosterman. So if you are trapped in the Grand Forks area by weather or
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just happen to live here, go and check out a panel. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201156fb06bc2970
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CATEGORY: Teaching
CATEGORY: Web/Tech
DATE: 03/31/2009 09:14:49 AM

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Last week Anne Kelsch, the director of our <a
href="http://www.und.edu/dept/oid/">Office of Instructional Development</a> at
the <a href="http://www.und.edu">University of North Dakota</a>, suggested that
we might have a conversation about the relationship between pedagogy and
teaching. In her email she reckoned that "people think in terms of
technology inherently either enhancing or detracting from student learning and
teaching". And she should know, as she regularly deals with the whole
range of issue from the simple implementation of technology to the pedagogical
and philosophical underpinnings of various innovations. I have tried on
various ways of understanding how to use technology in the classroom from
various perspectives.the biggest issue at stake with technology and pedagogy is
that to use technology successfully in the classroom, you have to understand the
recent increase in "technology" as a change in the way in which people think
about that you seek to use and how the application, device, or i
From my conversations on campus, people tend to see "technology" (broadly
construed) in one of three ways: 1. A Tool. My initial effort to
engage and use technology was as a tool that could optimize some long standing
pedagogical practice. For example, I could use a threaded discussion to
take a classroom discussion from the confines of the classroom and expand it
throughout the week. Thus, technology could help us do what we have always
done -- but do it in a more efficient way and extend what we do in the classroom
beyond its traditional boundaries. 2. A Medium. After a while of thinking
about technology in this way, I gradually came to see it as less a tool and more
a medium of communication. Unlike a tool, which (in my simple assessment)
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allowed me to perform some established task (typically established within the

traditional pedagogical discourse) better, a medium functioned according to its
unique set of rules, standards, and processes. Over time, the medium
effects the message (or as well all know, becomes the message). Thus, it's
even possible to manipulate the medium as an end to itself -- the processes
becomes the product. An emphasis on technology as a medium for
disseminating information and shaping information encouraged me to experiment
more with wikis, podcasts, blogs and the like. Each new medium provided
new challenges -- how do I make a podcast that they will listen to? how do I
encourage them to use wikis? how do I write for a blog and how does that
effect my writing? 3. A Network. Most recently, however, influenced
by the works of B. Latour, I've begun to think about technology and pedagogy in
terms of networks. Unlike tools which, in my initial assessment had
distinct boundaries and functions, or media, which remain in some way
subordinate to the messages that they carry, networks link together media,
tools, users, producers, expectations and assumptions. In a pedagogical
context, the complexity of the networks which impart technology with both
meaning and function as a teaching tool, make it important to attempt to
consider the implementation, student perceptions, extent of use in the
institution, legacy (or history) of the various technological components, and
our need and ability to assess the success or failure of the overall pedagogical
goals. By attempting to understand technology in the classroom (variously
defined) from a network perspective, we approach teaching technologies as social
and political phenomena that have social and political goals. Thus,
technology becomes something as deeply embedded in all aspects of the
educational process including content, teaching methods, pedagogy, and, of
course, the politics of curriculum development (and it's articulation).
For example, in this method of reading technology and pedagogy, using a wiki in
the webbased component of a classroom-taught class requires us to understand how
students view wikis. In my History 101 class (Western Civilization I), it
is clear that students see wikis as a source of authority and are therefore very
reluctant to contribute to it -- even though it is behind a password protected
interface. Students likely associate my classroom wiki with <a
href="http://www.wikipedia.org/">Wikipedia</a> which they receive passively as a
source of "valid" knowledge. Moreover, the idea of collective intelligence
and collaborative learning upon which a wiki depends, runs counter to the
individualized grading and evaluation that characterizes most higher
education. In the discipline of history, there tends to be an assumption
that certain valid facts exist within a fairly rigid narrative. While
scholars obviously do not believe this, students tend to see history this way at
the introductory level. So a wiki which encourages them to view knowledge
in a more fluid way challenges basic assumptions that students tend to
hold regarding the discipline. This could be good, but also could
challenge their ability to engage the material and technology
thoughtfully. There is also the learning curve, even the most basic
wysiwyg interface will intimidate an inexperienced user and limit their ability
to take full advantage of the medium. At the end, even the most simple
technology -- a wiki -- is not merely a tool that allows students to work
together toward a pedagogical goal, but a node in a series of networks that
undergird student assumptions regarding the university experience, the
discipline, and the function of technology in a wider context. (And, this
does not even delve into the assumptions that faculty have about technology and
how they attempt to use them in the classroom -- whether they are simply
replacing an earlier "analog" technology or introducing a "new" learning
environment with new goals.). We hope to offer some posts on teaching
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with technology over at <a href="http://www.teachingthursday.org/">Teaching

Thursday</a> this week, so check us out!
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TITLE: A Few Thoughts on Formation Processes and Sacred Space
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CATEGORY: Books
CATEGORY: Byzantium
DATE: 03/30/2009 09:23:36 AM

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<a
border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="191" alt="LavanBook"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201156f93b38d970b
-pi" width="129" align="left" border="0"></a> I spent little bits of time this
weekend meandering through the most recent volume in the Late Antique
Archaeology series from Brill: <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/254928623">L. Lavan, E. Swift, and T. Putzey
eds., Objects in Context, Objects in Use Material Spatiality in Late
Antiquity. Leiden 2007</a>. Aside from the sort of silly notion
of material spatiality, which seems to imply that there could be spatial
relationships that are somehow not material, this imposing tome has a bunch of
interesting "stuff" in it. <a href="http://www.bmcreview.org/">Byrn Mawr
Classical Review</a> has offered a complete early review <a
href="http://www.bmcreview.org/2009/03/20090305.html">here</a>. The
volume contained, among other things, a series of articles on object in Early
Christian space. The articles by B. Caseau, V. Michel, and Z. Fiema,
employed various textual and archaeological methods to survey the range of
objects associated with religious space in an Early Christian context. Of
particular note was Z. Fiema's discussion of documents in the storeroom of the
Petra Church. The careful excavation revealed a fairly substantial archive
originally arranged on shelves and in cabinets. The two articles by B. Caseau
examined textual sources for the various objects that they associate with Late
Antique churches. Her work reminds us how few of the objects recorded in
Late Antique church inventories or in more literary sources are regularly found
in excavated churches. Her discussion of the objects associated in texts
with healing shrines reminds us how how most of things present in the everyday
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life of even the most imposing churches were perishable. Brooms, wooden
buckets, leather, metal and papyrus only survive in very particular
archaeological and cultural environments and consequently remain invisible to
excavators. These articles reminded me of a short paper that I wrote,
probably 8 years ago, with Tim Gregory and David Pettegrew, ("Archaeological
'Signatures' of Byzantine Churches: Survey Archaeology and the Creation of a
Byzantine Landscape," Byzantine Studies Conference Abstracts of Papers
27 (2001), p. 38.). We did very intensive archaeological survey in
the immediate vicinity of Byzantine Churches on the island of Kythera hoping to
discover some kind of material signature for Byzantine churches. We were
not particularly successful. The tendency to keep church yards clean, the
position of churches on the tops of hills or ridges, and the generally overgrown
condition of the island made it difficult for us to find much material that was
distinct to the religious function or chronological range of these
buildings. This all led me to think a bit about the distinct set of
formation processes that create the archaeological evidence for religious
space. The tendency for the community to regard some religious spaces as
sacred and consequently to continue to function on some level after catastrophic
events like earthquakes and fires. Later burials in the remains of Early
Christian basilicas is one example of post-destruction re-use. The
functioning of informal and sometimes open air shrines at collapsed churches is
another. The religious significance of various objects associated with
churches might prompt more significant kinds of intervention in prior to total
abandonment. Easily recognizable architectural forms (particularly the
apse) made churches particularly visible even centuries after their initial
abandonment and led to patterns of episodic reuse separated by centuries.
The studies pertaining to religious space presented in Objects in
Context, Objects in Use, focused almost exclusively on the link between the
location of objects in an archaeological context and their primary use within
space. In general, the archaeological studies avoided over reliance on the
so-called Pompeii Premise, which assumed that objects found in an archaeological
context revealed the function of those spaces in antiquity. While
carefully wrought observations regarding the location of objects and the
function of space remain significant for unpacking the difficult matters
surrounding the function of space in an Early Christian context, it provides
less help understanding the dynamic processes that form the archaeological
record and reveal persistent attitudes toward space in antiquity and in
subsequent centuries.
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I've been thinking a good bit about the web site for our proposed Working
Group in Digital and New Media. I can remember when it was pretty easy to
set up a website -- throw up some links, perhaps frames or a nice stable menu
bar, add a photo or a bit of music (if you were flash-y). Now
things are different. First, the number of applications, add-on,
languages, style sheets, and the like have proliferated. It's hard to
figure out exactly how to combine various forms of java, flash, shockwave, php,
CSS, et c. to make an appealing and manageable interface. And we have to
contend with multiple browsers. It's also hard to figure out what
kind of devices the page will appear on. A page will look great on my 17
inch Macbook Pro, but not so good on my 9 inch Dell Mini and damn near illegible
on my iPod touch or Samsung Omnia (running Opera Mobile). So, do we create
multiple pages for multiple devices? How often do we change our
looks? Do we run the page as a blog with that allows up to update easily
into a new theme to keep the page fresh. Do we strip the page down and run
it as a wiki which could be changed collaboratively, impulsively, and tracked
historically? Or do we combine multiple options to capture the dynamism of
the web in it's various facets? Some other little hits: <ul> <li>I
like <a href="http://creynolds.tumblr.com/">this</a> and impressed with the
interface that <a href="http://www.tumblr.com/">Tumblr</a> provides. I am
going on a little road trip and want to create a small blog to document my
travels. Perhaps Tumblr is the solution?</li> <li>Here's another in the
growing list of <a
href="http://www.digitalhumanities.ucla.edu/images/stories/papers/promise%20of%2
0digital%20humanities.pdf">Digital Humanities White Papers</a>. It would
be cool to produce an index of these.</li> <li>Keep an eye on the <a
href="http://www.grandforksherald.com/event/tag/group/Local%20News/tag/2009%20fl
oods/">Grand Forks Herald's flood headlines</a> and keep the folks in Fargo-
Moorhead in your thought and prayers.</li> <li>It sure would be fun to hear
about the Corinthia Archaeology conference in Loutraki! Can anyone send
along a copy of the program?</li></ul> Have a good weekend and stay dry.
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AUTHOR: Dallas
IP: 65.60.192.124
URL:
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DATE: 03/27/2009 11:06:55 AM

Info (program, abstracts) here:
<a
href="http://www.corintharchconf.gr/indexen.html">http://www.corintharchconf.gr/
indexen.html</a>
Quite the gathering...
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Chuck
EMAIL: cyreynolds@gmail.com
IP: 167.219.88.140
URL: http://creynolds.tumblr.com
DATE: 03/30/2009 12:49:07 PM
A thought on using Tumblr, it really is a mid-way point between Twitter and a
blog. They infact encourage you to make multiple "tumblogs." The ease of
updating sounds, pictures, quotes, links, etc. really is nice and allows you to
quickly do it. With a blog you don't want to post just a quote or photo - with
tumblr they want you to. Perfect for trips or just a gathering of thoughts not
worthy a blog.
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TITLE: Teaching Thursday: Teaching Uncertainty
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: teaching-thursday-teaching-uncertainty
CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 03/26/2009 09:34:25 AM

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This has been a wild week in the Red River Valley with blizzards and
floods. <a
aching-thursday-teaching-and-the-worldwide-financial-crisis.html">Last Thursday,
I asked people to share how they were teaching the "worldwide financial
crisis"</a> and <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/2009/03/26/teaching-
business-during-an-economic-crisis/">we'll post a response</a> by <a
href="http://www.business.und.edu/homepages/dflynn/">David Flynn</a>, a
professor of economics here at the University of North Dakota over on our <a
href="http://www.teachingthursday.org/">Teaching Thursday</a> blog. One
thing his post brings out -- and it is certainly relevant to this particular
moment in the region -- is the need to be able to teach uncertainty.
Teaching uncertainty is surely among the most difficult things for me to
do. Historians, particularly in the classroom, find themselves in a
position where they transform complex and confusing networks of events into more
easily understood causal relationships. In fact, history is particular
adept at demonstrating how individuals in the past did not grasp the complexity
or consequences of their own situations. Surely Caesar could not have
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realized how crossing the Rubicon or engaging in a Civil War would have impacted
the long term stability of the Roman Republic (although it is hard to imagine
that he thought it would help the Republic). Likewise Constantine could
not have fully understood the consequences of his decision to support the
fledgling Christian church in the 4th century. Unpacking the consequences
of these individuals' actions with the benefit of hindsight is certainly one of
the key responsibilities of the historian and playing with such omniscience
gives us a kind of authority in relation to historical actors. While most
historians would readily admit that their command over the past offers very
little in the way of command over the present, the public and our students
sometimes see it that way. After all, there are still many who look to
history for cautionary tales and take quite literally the old proverb about
repeating the past if you can't learn from it. During uncertain
economic (or environmental!) times, historians (not exclusively, of course) tend
to become more visible. The Obama election and economic turmoil of the
last six months has led to more historians appearing in the media and speaking
with confidence about the present. While this is certainly appealing and
empowering to those of us who keep a comparatively lower profile, it certainly
exposes us to a different set of expectation than we are likely to experience in
more certain times. At the same time, budget crunches at universities and
colleges have forced the humanities to defend themselves more vigorously and to
demonstrate in ways that the general public can understand the relevance of
their academic pursuits. The pressure is on to demonstrate our worth to a
society that is undergoing challenges. Uncertainty is a difficult sell in
uncertain times. Of course, we all would readily accept that history is
full of uncertainty and even the rhetorically omniscient perspective of the
professional historian can only present a plausible interpretation of past
events on the basis of a small fraction of the real variables present. The
study of the past, just like our understanding of the present, is, in fact,
plagued by uncertainty. Scholars, paradoxically, have found a certain
amount of confidence by accepting the variability of the events that they study
and the inability of their own methods, approaches, and tools to produce
definitive and unchallengeable explanations of past events. In effect, we
frame our entire discipline within the expectation that things will change with
how we view the past; this is to say that we brace our own interpretations
against an inevitable feeling of uncertainty. So perhaps the current
economic and environmental crisis is a good opportunity to present a
counterpoint to the confidence projected in the classroom and formed around the
internal cohesion of historical narratives. The past like the present is
contingent, uncertain, and subject to change.
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TITLE: Weather
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DATE: 03/25/2009 07:55:10 AM

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With the weather we're having it's hard to think of much beyond our
front door right now. The best I can do is to point out, in a rather
mundane way, how new media applications have helped our community communicate
during a difficult time. For example, the <a
href="http://www.und.edu">University of North Dakota</a> community is kept up to
date via a <a href="http://www.conted.und.edu/flood/">Flood blog</a>. Our
automated emergency notification system simultaneously sent our emails and
contacted us via our mobile phones to tell us that the university was closed
(while I was shoveling our car out!). The <a
href="http://www.grandforksherald.com/event/tag/group/Local%20News/tag/2009%20fl
oods/">Grand Forks Herald's flood web page</a> is updated regularly allows
folks to monitor the rising waters in the local communities. And there at least two video feeds which show important
communication routes across the Red River. The top feed is Grand Forks
and the lower one is Fargo. The <a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorlie_Memorial_Bridge">Sorlie Memorial
Bridge</a> in the top video should close by 10 am today.<object bgcolor="#000000"
data="http://www.justin.tv/widgets/jtv_player.swf?channel=gfherald" height="320"
id="jtv_player_flash" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="400"><param
name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="movie"
value="http://www.justin.tv/widgets/jtv_player.swf" /><param name="flashvars"
value="channel=gfherald&auto_play=false&start_volume=25" /></object><a
href="http://www.justin.tv/gfherald" style="padding: 2px 0px 4px; display:
block; width: 345px; font-weight: normal; font-size: 10px; text-decoration:
underline; text-align: center;">Watch live video from Grand Forks Herald on
Justin.tv</a> <object
classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" height="320" id="utv352952"
width="400"><param name="_cx" value="10583" /><param name="_cy" value="8467"
/><param name="FlashVars" value="" /><param name="Movie"
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name="ProfilePort" value="0" /><param name="AllowNetworking" value="all"
/><param name="AllowFullScreen" value="true" /> <embed allowfullscreen="true"
allowscriptaccess="always"
flashvars="viewcount=true&autoplay=false&brand=embed" height="320"
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id="utv352952" name="utv_n_460080"
src="http://www.ustream.tv/flash/live/1/589995" type="application/x-shockwave-
flash" width="400" /></object><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><a href="http://www.ustream.tv/" style="padding: 2px
0px 4px; background: #ffffff none repeat scroll 0% 0%; display: block; font-
weight: normal; font-size: 10px; width: 400px; color: #000000; text-align:
center; text-decoration: underline; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-
background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;"
target="_blank">Online TV Shows by Ustream</a>
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Tom Elliott
EMAIL: tom.elliott@nyu.edu
IP: 75.254.89.165
URL: http://homepages.nyu.edu/~te20/
DATE: 03/25/2009 08:21:23 AM
Bill, thinking about you and hoping for the best!
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TITLE: Modern Greek Studies Association Symposium 2009
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BASENAME: modern-greek-studies-association-symposium-2009
DATE: 03/24/2009 07:49:29 AM

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We heard this past week that the <a href="http://mgsa.org/">Modern Greek
Studies Association</a> accepted a panel coordinated by <a
href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/">Kostis Kourelis</a> and <a
href="http://www.unl.edu/anthro/afaculty/athanassopoulos.shtml">Effie
Athanassopoulos</a> under the auspices of the <a
href="http://www.squinch.und.edu/">Medieval and Post-Medieval Archaeology in the
Mediterranean Interest Group</a> of the <a
href="http://www.archaeological.org/">Archaeological Institute of
America</a>. The panel is entitled "From Town to Country: The
Archaeology of Modern Greek Landscapes" and here's the description:
<blockquote> Since the birth of the nation-state, the identity of Modern
Greece has been defined by its relationship to antiquity. The discipline of
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archaeology has, thus, played a central role in the construction of Greece, but
only in so far as it concerns ancient periods (archaia). For Greece, the
archaeology of the recent past is an etymological contradiction. Material
culture dating to after 1850 is considered non-archaeological; it can be
exported and traded freely. Archaeological studies on 19th- and 20th-century
Greece are greatly lacking, leaving a huge disciplinary gap with Historical
Archaeology, a discipline that flourishes in the United States. This panel
brings together recent work applying archaeological perspectives to the material
culture of Modern Greece spanning a spectrum of ecological milieus from the
metropolis, to the small town, the village, the monastery and the rural
landscape. The theme that connects the individual papers is that of
‚Äúlandscape‚Äù approached through the lens of archaeology. Landscape as a
concept refers to the external world mediated through subjective human
experience. In archaeology, approaches to landscape have changed drastically
over time, from economic and ecological perspectives of the 1960s to more recent
post-modern views that focus on the social and symbolic construction of
landscapes. In Greece, the field of landscape archaeology has grown out of the
tradition of archaeological regional surveys, introduced by American scholars
during the 1950s. The individual papers offer diverse perspectives and
examine a wide variety of landscapes in the 19th and 20th century. The settings
range from the urban space of 19th century Athens to the town of Corinth, to
rural space in the upland basins of Corinthia, to monastic space in Mount
Menoikeion in northern Greece, and to landscape features such as Mt.
Pentadaktylos in Cyprus. Each paper applies a different methodological tactic.
Some revisit older historical records, others collect new data or re-
conceptualize physical relationships. Collectively, they represent the richness
of a growing field. Susan Buck Sutton, who pioneered the study of the Modern
Greek countryside and single-handedly developed the discipline of ethno-
archaeology, has agreed to serve as the panel‚Äôs respondent. The panel is
sponsored by the Medieval and Post-Medieval Archaeology in Greece Interest Group
of the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA). The Group consists of AIA
members with an interest in the archaeology of post-classical Greece, and in
promoting its understanding through various programs and
publications.</blockquote> Here are the papers (<a
href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/2009/03/from-town-to-country-archaeology-
of.html">for full abstracts</a>): <blockquote> "Athens in the 19th
Century: Archaeological Landscapes and Competing Pasts" Effie Athanassopoulos
(University of Nebraska-Lincoln) "Ancient Corinth from the Ottoman Empire to
the Archaeologists" Amelia R. Brown (American School of Classical Studies at
Athens) "<a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2009/01/ab
stract-for-the-modern-greek-studies-association-annual-meeting.html">Between Sea
and Mountain: The Archaeology of a 20th-Century ‚ÄúSmall World‚Äù in he Upland
Basins of the Southeastern Korinthia</a>" William R. Caraher (University of
North Dakota) David K. Pettegrew (Messiah College) Timothy E. Gregory
(Ohio State University Excavations at Isthmia) Lita Tzortzopoulou-Gregory
(Ohio State University Excavations at Isthmia) "The Sacred Grip:
Landscape, Art and Architecture in Mount Menoikeion (19th-20th
Centuries)" Nikolas Bakirtzis (The Cyprus Institute) Kostis Kourelis
(Connecticut College) Matthew Milliner (Princeton University)
</blockquote>
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TITLE: Red River Flood 2
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BASENAME: red-river-flood-2
DATE: 03/23/2009 08:22:32 PM

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<a
b-pi"><img class="at-xid-6a00d83451908369e201156f41693e970b image-full" alt="Red
River Flood 2" title="Red River Flood 2"
-800wi" border="0" /></a> 

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TITLE: Red River Flood
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BASENAME: red-river-flood
DATE: 03/23/2009 08:20:01 PM

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<a
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b-pi"><img class="at-xid-6a00d83451908369e201156f41653a970b image-full" alt="Red
River Flood" title="Red River Flood"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201156f41653a970b
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TITLE: Talk on Thursday: Socialism, Serbofilia, Sex, and Suicide
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BASENAME: talk-on-thursday-socialism-serbofilia-sex-and-suicide
DATE: 03/23/2009 07:14:03 AM

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<a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201156f3c55d8970
width: 0px; margin: 0px 15px 0px 0px; border-right-width: 0px" height="240"
alt="Ivan_Cankar"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201156e42b55a970c
-pi" width="167" align="left" border="0"></a>If you are in the Grand Forks area,
I encourage you come to hear <a
href="http://www.ndsu.nodak.edu/history/JohnKCox.htm">Prof. John Cox, the chair
of the Department of History at North Dakota State</a> speak on Socialism,
Serbofilia, Sex, and Suicide: The Mad World of Slovene Literature and Politics
around 1900. The talk will be in Gamble Hall 280, March 26, 2009, at 4:00
pm. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201156f3c55d8970
b-pi"> </a>His talk will explore the changing landscape of Slovene politics
and culture in the twilight years of the Habsburg Empire. In particular, he will
focus on the ideas of Ivan Cankar (1876-1918). Cankar was a highly regarded and
prolific prose writer whose quests for esthetic authenticity and for Slovene
political rights led him to embrace socialist, pro-Balkan political views that
complicate today's dominant narrative of the Slovene "national awakening." Cox
will also read selected (potentially amusing!) passages from his newly released
translation of Cankar's novel <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Martin-
Kacur-Biography-Ivan-
Cankar/dp/9639776416/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1237809939&sr=8-
1">Martin Kacur: Biography of an Idealist (Central European University Press,
2009)</a>, which treats the moral decline and catastrophic fall of a progressive
schoolteacher in the Slovene countryside about 1900. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201156f3c55e3970
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width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px" height="240" alt="Cox_Cover"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201156f3c55e8970b
-pi" width="240" border="0"></a> Gamble Hall 280 ¬∑ March
26, 2009 ¬∑ 4:00 pm
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AUTHOR: Khristophoros
EMAIL: abdiel_standing@yahoo.com
IP: 208.107.164.89
URL:
DATE: 04/29/2009 09:51:50 PM
I'm sorry that I missed it!
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TITLE: Thaw
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BASENAME: thaw
DATE: 03/22/2009 08:08:57 AM

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Things are thawing here in Grand Forks and people are
nervous. <a
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201156f3432be970b
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201156e3a5f13970c
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href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201156e3a5f34970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201156e3a5f37970c
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DATE: 03/20/2009 07:48:06 AM

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There is so much going on in the next few weeks, that I can only offer you
some quick hits now: <ul> <li>Two military historians blogging: <a
href="http://www.adriangoldsworthy.com/blog.php">Adrian Goldsworthy</a> and <a
href="http://www.barrystrauss.com/blog/">Barry Strauss</a>.</li> <li><a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/NewHomePage.html">Too punk
rock</a>?</li> <li>The Medieval and Post Medieval Interest Group of the
Archaeological Institute of America has submitted a panel for the 2010 Annual
Meeting. The panel, put together by the tireless Kostis Kourelis and
Sharon Gerstel, is called <a href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/2009/03/first-
out-late-levels-at-early-sites.html">First Out: Late Levels at Early
Sites</a>. They were kind enough to invite me and Tim Gregory to
contribute a paper that goes beyond excavation and the first out metaphor (and
reality) to look at survey data.</li></ul> Good luck to our neighbors down
south at the <a href="http://www.ndsu.edu/">Agricultural College</a> as they
take on Kansas in the NCAA Basketballing Tournament!!
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TITLE: Teaching Thursday: Teaching and the Worldwide Financial Crisis
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BASENAME: teaching-thursday-teaching-and-the-worldwide-financial-crisis
CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 03/19/2009 08:08:48 AM

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There was <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/15/business/15school.html">an article in
the New York Times</a> this weekend about how the Worldwide Financial Crisis has
influenced the material and ideas taught in business schools. The
Chronicle of Higher Education regularly focuses on some innovation or
transformation spurred by more difficult economic times. (Today it was <a
href="http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/3669/dartmouth-professor-creates-
recession-inspired-video-game?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en">recession-themed
video games</a>!) So, I've been thinking about how the worldwide
financial crisis will effect my teaching -- not only in terms of content, but
also in terms of how I approach the content. In terms of content, it
seems clear that folks are looking at the way in which house foreclosures, "the
culture of greed", and governmental policies (or lack there of) have begun to
challenge or change our impressions of American values. For my 101 class
(Western Civilization I), I've shifted a bit more emphasis onto topics like the
decline of empires (Athens, Rome, Charlemagne). I am also thinking about
changing the way I teach the rise of towns and the development of a kind of
proto-capitalism in Medieval Europe. In general, I've tended to focus on
the relationship between the values of urban dwellers and the church as both
groups sought to adjust their skills, expectations, and moral outlook to a new
set of social expectations. The conversations about values and morality
carried out in the "urbanized" world of Late Middle Ages played out over
centuries (and may still be playing out in some ways) and the current shock to
the American system is not yet a year old. One of the perennial struggles
in teaching Western Civilization is translating the matter of scale: do event
occur more quickly in our hyper-connected, modern, (post)industrial world or
does it just seem that way? Content, of course, is just one part of
teaching the financial crisis. The demographics of our student body will
almost certainly change -- and perhaps quite quickly as unemployment among 20-
somethings outpaces other demographic groups. Students might start
returning to school from this group to pick up second degrees or retrain.
At the same time, the manufacturing slow down could entice folks who skipped
college to go directly into the workforce, back into the classroom. It's
too early, necessarily, to tell how students with particular, and perhaps
unfortunate, experiences with the American economy will influence classroom
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atmosphere and whether they will offer a critique of some of the typical master
narratives promoted throughout higher education. As a parallel on a small
scale (it's all about scale, isn't it?), I've found that having Gulf War
veterans in my classes has often transformed not only discussions of the Middle
East but also how students approach topics like cultural exchange, tactics, and
war and its social impact. In fact, one or two Gulf War vets can electrify
a classroom discussion by speaking with an authority rooted in experience.
It will be interesting to see if "victims" of the economic crisis will bring a
similar perspective born of experience to the classroom. Finally, I had a
few short, but interesting discussions with our <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/dept/grad/html/welcome2.html">Graduate Dean</a>,
and he pointed out that the stimulus package could provide funding for
undergraduate and graduate research opportunities and certain programs.
Just like the Cold War stimulated research in Slavic Studies, Eastern European
history, and certain kinds of defense and aerospace initiatives, it will be
interesting to see if the current economic crisis will shift teaching priorities
at the university. I keep thinking that next week's <a
href="http://www.teachingthursday.org/">Teaching Thursday</a> blog post over at
our newly created <a href="http://www.teachingthursday.org/">Teaching
Thursday</a> blog should focus on Teaching the Worldwide Financial Crisis.
Any thoughts on this?
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BASENAME: merrifield-215
DATE: 03/18/2009 08:02:11 AM

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Merrifield 215 has a kind of old school charm that will be lost when the
department migrates to O'Kelly Hall next fall. The traditional arrangement
of desks facing the lectern, chalkboard, maps, and (yes) an outmoded TV which
apparently produces its moving picture using some kind of tube. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2011279747ae628a
4-pi"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-bottom-
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src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2011279747af128a4
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> The maps are torn and tattered. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20111690049fc970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2011279747afb28a4
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> And the days of the chalkboard are
numbered as chalk dust is incompatible with the technology in today's "smart
classrooms". <a
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2011279747b0428a4
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> I've never used a white-
board regularly, but I will miss the chalkboard. I haven't joined in with
the power-point revolution and still prefer to write my notes on the board the
old fashioned way. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2011279747b0928a
4-pi"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-bottom-
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2011169004a0d970c
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> The best part of 215 is
its view toward the library and the quad. For more
Under Libby's Gaze see: <a
der-libbys-gaze-merrifield-217.html">Merrifield 217</a>, <a
der-libbys-gaze-merrifield-209.html">Merrifield 209</a> and <a
hall.html">Merrifield Hall</a> in general.
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TITLE: Revising Dream Archaeology
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BASENAME: revising-dream-archaeology
CATEGORY: Byzantium
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DATE: 03/17/2009 07:28:52 AM

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I've set as a goal to send out my now over-hyped <a
eam-archaeology-working-paper.html">Dream Archaeology</a> paper by the beginning
of May -- that is before the start of my field season with the <a
href="http://www.pkap.org">Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project</a>. I
presented the paper in the early winter at North Dakota State University and got
a good bit of helpful feedback. I've also had some useful conversations
with <a href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/">Kostis Kourelis</a> (see <a
href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/search/label/Modern%20Greece">his discussion
of Tanagras</a>) and read a good bit more, particularly on modernism and
nationalism in a Greek context. G. Jusdanis <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/232497163">Belated Modernity</a> and
J. Fabion's <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/27938075">Modern Greek
Lessons</a> proved particularly helpful as did a relatively recent
volume of <a
href="http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/mod/">MODERNISM/modernity</a> (11
(2004)) which featured a relatively extensive discussion of the relationship
between archaeology and modernity. While I felt fairly confident about my
ability to analyze ancient and even Byzantine (particularly hagiographic)
sources, my grasp of the modern As is so often the case, the final
substantial revisions has far more to do with repositioning the paper that I
already have than some massive re-write. In fact, I began the process of
repositioning by adding one paragraph: <blockquote> The wide range of
material available from Late Antiquity, the Byzantine period, and contemporary
Greek history has emphasized the importance of dreams and visions in creating an
understandable historical and archaeological landscape. These stories
suggest that Dream Archaeology stands at the intersection of a number of crucial
strands in the development of the Greek landscape. The following
discussion will seek to explore four distinct connections between the world of
dreams and archaeological practice. First, this paper will expand <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/122424890">Y. Hamilakis</a> recent discussion
of the role of dreams in creating a sacred context for archaeological practice
by placing it in a more developed historical context. To do this, I will
focus on both the historical and the performative elements of dream archaeology
especially as they provide a link between the role of archaeology as a sacred
commission and its production or discovery of sacred objects. The
liturgical roots of the hagiographic tradition in which Dream Archaeology and
inventio play such an important role, connects the obligation of the
archaeologist to excavate to religious rites that mediate between the secular
present and a divine. In the modern era, the role of Dream Archaeology in
bridging the gap between the eternal sacred and the present and local parallels
the role of modern inventio stories that tied local experiences to key
events in the emergence of a nationalist narrative. Nationalism in Greece,
as elsewhere, sought to capture and propagate common experiences across
geographical extent of the modern nation state and use these narratives as a
foundation for a distinct Greek identity. The power of Dream Archaeology,
and the final focus of this discussion, is that it not only promoted the
autochthonous character of the Greek identity and experience, but it recognized
it within dreams which rank among the most personal experiences of an
individual. Thus, Dream Archaeology creates a set of conditions in which
749
the nation can transcend the chronological experiences and spatial limits of a
local communities and pervades the unconscious world of the individuals.
</blockquote> Stay tuned for another "working" draft in the next couple
of weeks.
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AUTHOR: Ryan
EMAIL: dunganhurd@gmail.com
IP: 99.22.95.136
URL: http://dreamstudies.org
DATE: 06/13/2009 02:04:28 AM
I'm very interested in your line of thought here, connecting dreams and
archaeology in antiquity. this is part of cognitive archaeology that has been
overlooked for far too long. have you published it yet?
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It's springtime in Grand Forks, at least for the moment. With spring
new threats come to our fair community. The piles of snow that dot the
landscape slowly become less controlled and begin to transform into different
forms. While it's nice to see little patches of brown earth and pavement,
the bigger worry is where all this snow will go. To defend us from the
nefarious snow, the trucks have begun to roll through Grand Forks with their
cargos of clay. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20112796de85c28a
4-pi"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; border-left: 0px; border-
bottom: 0px" height="304" alt="Truck1"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2011168fa06dd970c
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2011168fa06e5970
bottom: 0px" height="304" alt="Truck2"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20112796de86528a4
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> They gather at our
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fortification walls: not far from <a

all-town-arch.html">some recent construction</a> which preserved <a
re-small-town.html">some clear evidence</a> for what could happen if our
fortifications do not hold. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2011168fa06eb970
bottom: 0px" height="304" alt="Survey"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2011168fa06ec970c
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2011168fa06ef970
bottom: 0px" height="186" alt="Wall2"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20112796de86e28a4
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20112796de87628a
bottom: 0px" height="304" alt="Dozer"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20112796de87928a4
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> Fortunately, the folks
here in North Dakota have some experience with using the earth to protect
habitation centers. Our predecessors to the west, <a
href="http://www.nps.gov/archive/jeff/LewisClark2/TheBicentennial/Symposium2001/
Papers/Wood_Raymond.htm">the Mandan</a>, tended to build their villages on high
ground and protect <a
href="https://www.state.nd.us/hist/doubleditch/doubleditch.htm">them with
ditches</a>. <a
href="http://www.grandforksherald.com/event/article/id/110688">The Grand Forks
Herald scooped me on this</a>. I opened my favorite local paper's web page
this morning, and there was not only a better discussion of this, but also
better photos.
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CATEGORY: Television
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DATE: 03/13/2009 07:04:25 AM

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A few quick and fun things: <ul> <li>Our EduPunk show has officially
blown up. Watch the Educause sponsored debate <a
href="http://teachingthursday.org/2009/03/10/edupunk/">here</a>, and see our
responses <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/2009/03/12/call-me-
edupunk/">here</a> and <a
aching-thursday-considering-the-punk-in-edupunk.html">here</a>.</li> <li><a
href="http://electricarchaeologist.wordpress.com/">Electric Archaeologist</a> at
50,000 page views. Congratulations, Shawn!</li> <li><a
href="http://www.gradspace.und.edu/blog/2009/03/09/2009-scholarly-forum-
highlights-excellence-with-distinguished-dissertation-thesis-awards/">Our very
own Liz Saunders won the 2009 Distinguished Thesis Award</a> from The <a
href="http://www.graduateschool.und.edu/">Graduate School</a> for her thesis:
"Pine Ridge Reservation's Early Economic Initiatives and Intercultural
Reactions" under Jim Mochoruk.</li> <li>Word on the street is that a version of
our <a
gital-humanities-white-paper-at-the-university-of-north-dakota.html">White
Paper</a> which combined a New Media center with a healthy does of Digital
History and Digital Humanities received some 6 digit funding.</li></ul>
Thanks to everyone who braved the elements to show up <a
-advertisement-for-myself.html">at my talk on Wednesday</a>! I appreciated the
support and interest that our diverse campus brought to my presentation.
I've been dragging a bit this semester and it was just what I needed to carry me
through the late winter. Have a good weekend and enjoy the hoops.
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TITLE: Teaching Thursday: Considering the Punk in EduPunk
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BASENAME: teaching-thursday-considering-the-punk-in-edupunk
CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 03/12/2009 10:16:57 AM

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Have you watched the series of video debates centering on <a

href="http://jimgroom.net/">Jim Groom's</a> term EduPunk? We've (that the
royal we) posted them over on our Teaching Thursday blog. The critique of
the term and its usefulness and applicability is well underway (and <a
href="http://mikecaulfield.com/2008/05/26/edupunk/">was nearly
instantaneous</a>); nevertheless it seems to have hung around for more than 15
minutes -- almost a year. While it originated in the context of
instructional technology and a rage against the Blackboard machine, it surely
has implications that go beyond the world of the web to capture a growing spirit
or willingness to bring . So perhaps it might be useful to tug at the term
and its implications some more and to see how it might fit into a broader
cultural context. I have a <a
href="http://punkarchaeology.wordpress.com/">passing interest</a> in the place
of punk in a broader cultural and academic discourse. A colleague and I
have explored the place of a punk "mentality" or even "methodology" in
archaeology. In the context of EduPunk, the conversation centered on the
DIY movement as a form of resistance to the increasing commodification of
educational technology (read: Blackboard). In my little writings, I've
emphasized punk as a contextual movement with deep (and ironic) nostalgic
strains. <a href="http://punkarchaeology.wordpress.com/2009/02/10/punk-
and-place/">Through an explicit sense of place</a>, punk sought to bridge the
growing gap between suburban culture (the garage of the garage band) and the
spirit of alienation eating away at the urban center. The reverse
migration of punk rockers from the suburbs or at least the periphery of the city
inward toward the urban core (and its values good and bad) sought to reverse the
flow of the middle class from the city. At the same time, punk played with
place on the small scale -- the Velvet Underground's famed early show at the New
York State Psychiatry convention or the Cramps show at the California State
Mental Hospital or the ironic name of CBGBs. The idea of EduPunk
immediately brought to mind the classroom as the place for education and the
idea of bringing a punk attitude toward the classroom environment: pushing
students to confront the arbitrary nature of so many classroom practices, their
power relationships, and the tradition bound conventions (little desks all in a
row). Of course, the students would replace them with their own (equally
if not more arbitrary) relationships, but by doing so they'd get it.
They'd understand that these rules are (in many if not all cases)
meaningless. <a
href="http://punkarchaeology.wordpress.com/2009/01/23/punk-nostalgia-and-the-
archaeology-of-musical-utopia/">Punk is also nostalgic</a>. Punk music
conspicuously included fragments of the past. While they would distort
these fragments and maybe even ridicule the sensibilities that produced them,
but they would preserve and transmit these fragments of the past to ensure
(almost dialectically) that their music is in a conspicuous dialogue with
popular sensibilities. The challenge of punk rock is explicit and
direct. So how do these ideas fit into an approach to education that goes
beyond being frustrated by the hype-capitalism (and intellectual imperialism) of
Blackboard or other for-profit learning management systems? The grounds
for the challenge shifts from a system like Blackboard which can clearly be
identified as the enemy to the much more ambiguous, widely respected, and
(frankly) powerful, institutions of (higher) learning. Punk never
succeeded in tearing down society or any particular institution or even
shattering the assumptions of rock music (although Mike Caufield's claim that
punk had "surprising little social impact" is perhaps overstated or at very
least requires some qualification; after all, punk has been commodified (an
unlikely scenario if it had no value within the capitalist system) and made into
753
a pseudo-ideology that works as a tonic to the predictable angst of adolescence

(or or the chronically alienated).). Punk represented a persistent
challenge that consistently attacked the received wisdom through performative,
theatrical gesture as it ignored best practice and defying aesthetic logic.
EduPunk could also mean: leading a seminar in an auditorium room of 150,
lecturing to a class of 4, grading the class as a group and ignoring the
individual, beginning in the middle, changing expectations mid course, and in
the words of Andy Warhol (one of the great promoters of punk) "Always leave them
wanting less". For another view on Edupunk see <a
href="http://teachingthursday.org/2009/03/12/call-me-edupunk/">Crystal Alberts
post over at Teaching Thursday!</a>
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TITLE: An Early Draft of an AIA Abstract
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DATE: 03/11/2009 08:29:54 AM

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Lots going on this week! If you're in Grand Forks -- and <a
href="http://www.grandforksherald.com/">have dug yourself out of the snow</a> --
come and check out <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/dept/grad/docs/2009ScholaryForum/CaraherPoster.pd
f">my research talk</a> at the Lecture Bowl at the Memorial Union at the
University of North Dakota today at 12 pm. If not, here's part of
my chaotic life: an abstract for next January's <a
href="http://www.archaeological.org/webinfo.php?page=10096">Archaeological
Institute of America</a>'s meeting. The plan is for a panel that looks at
post-Classical levels at well-know ancient sites sponsored by our <a
href="http://www.squinch.und.edu/">Medieval and Post-Medieval Interest Group of
the AIA</a>. My paper will tweak that a bit by looking at data collected
from a handful of small intensive survey projects and re-analyzing them in light
of recent work on the post-Classical world and changes in the basic questions
survey archaeology has proven adept at addressing. <blockquote> New Views on Old Data Reinterpreting Intensive Survey Results
After 30 Years Intensive pedestrian surveys across Greece have vastly
754
expanded our understanding of the Greek countryside, particularly for the post-
Classical period. Over the past 25 years, the publications of the
so-called second-phase intensive survey projects have contributed to our
understanding of a more prosperous Late Roman east and refined our view of the
post-Classical settlement structures. With these successes in mind, this
paper will reexamine the results from several small-scale survey projects
conducted in the late 1970s and early 1980s in Boeotia and the Corinthia.
Using a series of case studies, this paper argues that there is much to be
gained by returning to old survey data with an eye toward addressing recent
questions regarding the post-Classical landscape. The survey projects
examined in this paper coincided with many of the early second-phase survey
projects, like the Cambridge Boeotia Project and the Argolid Exploration
Project, but were published earlier and in a less comprehensive way.
Returning to the material from these projects, in much the same way that
archaeologists return to excavation material many years after its recovery and
publication, both represents the coming of age of intensive survey and continues
the reflexive trends in the study of survey material and data. Re-
examining the data and these projects‚Äô underlying assumptions increases the
transparency of these older efforts, enriches the pool of material available for
the comparative study of the Greek countryside, and contributes to the way in
which current survey projects collect and organize their data.</blockquote>
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DATE: 03/10/2009 08:50:29 AM

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I'm in my office today despite the reports that we going to get pounded by a
blizzard. Apparently, blizzard has a name: <a
href="http://www.grandforksherald.com/event/article/id/109942">Coyote</a>.
It was named after a dog on the team of a local "musher" racing in the Iditarod
in Alaska. Wow. Everything is closed except the <a
href="http://www.und.edu">University of North Dakota</a>. North Dakota
State, Valley City State, Mayville State, Minnesota State-Moorhead, University
of Minnesota-Crookston. The word here in UND is that these schools closed
because they are WEAK. Plus, there is a 30% chance that nothing at
all will happen. I like those odds. You can follow along here: <a
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title="http://www.rwic.und.edu/webcam/"
href="http://www.rwic.und.edu/webcam/">http://www.rwic.und.edu/webcam/</a>
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DATE: 03/10/2009 08:18:48 AM

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Edupunk, a term coined by Jim Groom of Mary Washington University, in <a
href="http://bavatuesdays.com/the-glass-bees/">an important blog post last
May</a> has once again hit the internets. A recent debate sponsored by
Gerry Bayne, one of the big wigs at <a
href="http://www.educause.edu/">Educause</a>, has centered on the merits of this
term for how we think about the changing landscape of university
education. Since its introduction last spring, the notion of Edupunk has
swept through the blogosphere and print media while cleverly avoiding
definition, complete disclosure, or sustained interrogation. Of course,
when EduPunk hit the scene, some of us had already been tempted into the punk
metaphor. <a href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/">Kostis Kourelis</a>
posted his now famous <a href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/2008/02/punk-
archaeology.html">Punk Archaeology</a> blog post in mid-February of last year
and <a href="http://punkarchaeology.wordpress.com/">our ongoing efforts</a> have
touched upon some of the intersections -- both intellectual and spontaneous --
between punk rock and archaeology. I am still mulling over
Edupunk, but I've <a
href="http://teachingthursday.org/2009/03/10/edupunk/">posted the five part
YouTube video debate over at our Teaching Thursday blog</a>. Check back
there on Thursday to see the musings of <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/calberts/">Crystal Alberts</a> on the
video debate and EduPunk as a "movement" (or "project") more broadly. 
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DATE: 03/09/2009 03:33:18 PM

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<div style="text-align: center;"><a
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c-pi" style="display: inline;"><img alt="SNC00006" border="0" class="at-xid-
6a00d83451908369e2011168cebfac970c image-full "
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2011168cebfac970c
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Blizzard.
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This fall we worked to establish a Center/Centre/Working Group (my favorite)
for the Digital Humanities here at the <a href="http://www.und.edu">University
of North Dakota</a>. A funding opportunity presented itself in the form of
submitting a <a
gital-humanities-white-paper-at-the-university-of-north-dakota.html">White
Paper</a> (it's like the White Album but less influential) to the <a
href="http://www.und.edu/president/">President of the University</a>.
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Through this process, the powers-that-be suggested that we merge our proposal
with two others which predominantly focused on New Media applications in the
arts. The result of this process was an almost established Working Group
in the Digital and New Media. The practical demands of the application
process required this merger -- as opposed to any real, or at least
acknowledged, intellectual common ground. This process of creating
a "Centre" here on campus, or securing some funding from the administration, was
largely a bureaucratic one, but it does point to the ambiguity surrounding
definitions of such emerging disciplines as "digital humanities", "digital
history" or even "new media studies" at the level of the university
administration and almost certainly among the general public. This is not
to suggest that there isn't considerable overlap in this developing specialties
or even that we should maintain rigid divisions between them. On the
other hand, the more inclined we are to forge definitions, the more fragmented
the various "digital" fields could become. After all, <a
href="http://dev.cdh.ucla.edu/digitalhumanities/2008/12/15/digital-humanities-
manifesto/#27">orthodoxy creates heretics</a>. <a
href="http://www.robmacdougall.org/index.php/2009/02/digital-history-hacks/">A
recent post-mortem</a> on the important digital history blog -- <a
href="http://digitalhistoryhacks.blogspot.com/">Digital History Hacks</a> --
points out one key fissure that could eventually develop into a meaningful
schism in the field: how much technical, nuts and bolts, knowledge does one need
to be a member of the digital history/digital humanities community. I'll
admit that my ability to code is almost zero. I struggle with HTML and my
well-meaning efforts for learn some basic XML collapsed amidst a chaotic
workload. Programmers intimidate me (as did much of Turkel's blog),
although I certainly appreciate what they bring to the table. On
the other hand, my background -- and any claim to be a digital historian --
comes not from any sort of philosophical commitment to digital history as the
way of the future or the foundation for some kind of radical democracy, but from
the practical applications of pre-existing software to archaeology and
history. Most of my experimentation over the past few years (most of which
I have documented here) comes through the mixing and matching of simple
applications available to anyone on the web or at the local big box store --
wikis, blogs, Google applications, podcasts, and low-cost digital
recorders. In fact, much of what I preach (on those odd occasions when I
have the pulpit) is how easy and accessible the tools for making history a
digital activity. This is a far cry of Turkel's supercool, very technical,
and cutting edge <a
href="http://digitalhistory.wikispot.org/Fabrication_Wiki">Lab for Humanistic
Fabrication</a>. Maybe there will be a massive divide sometime between
those of us who rely on the pre-packaged applications and those who are creators
and innovators in the digital realm. Those of us who rely on pre-packaged
applications would slowly return to the core of our disciplines as society (and
academia) come to expect ever increasing amounts of competence and engagement
with digital technologies of all kinds become expected. Those who code,
fabricate, develop, and pioneer, will remain the digital vanguard and
appropriate the term "digital humanist" or "digital historian". 
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AUTHOR: Aaron
EMAIL: abarth_2000@yahoo.com
IP: 96.3.118.225
URL:
DATE: 03/09/2009 01:27:26 PM
A friend familiar with UC-Berkeley's interdisciplinary doctoral studies program
recently asked me how historians, in 50+ years, are going to write histories
from electronic archives. It's a question worth considering. This particular
blog post somewhat smacks of an article published some years ago concerning a
piece of Hubble Telescope technology being used to decipher what was otherwise
ancient and burnt up papyrus. With the telescope technology (something to do
with infrared stuff that I don't even have the time to understand), scientists
were able to read what was before unreadable, and found quite a bit of info to
fill in certain gaps of, I believe, Archimedes (or one of those Ancient brains).
In this case, new technology allowed humanity to see what otherwise couldn't be
seen, and the humanist scholars of the Ancient texts could synthesize the new
information with what was already known: the sciences and the arts working
together (absolutely outstanding when it works this way within university ‚Äî¬†I
recall that, in Caraher's words, it was another "seamless" process).
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AUTHOR: Sterling Fluharty
EMAIL: phdinhistory@gmail.com
IP: 68.35.74.82
URL: http://cliomachine.org
DATE: 03/09/2009 10:59:08 PM
I am becoming one of the programmers. Right now I feel like more of an outcast
from traditional history, but maybe that will change. I am not sure if
programmers will remain in the vanguard. They may be the ones who largely set
the research agenda in digital history, but their specialization may end up
being just another form of historiography/historical methods. The historians
who produce earth-shattering scholarship through use of new digital tools,
especially in cases where the scholarship would not be otherwise possible, are
probably the ones whose work will be seen as most significant.
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Just a quick post advertising my talk next week. I'll be giving a <a
href="http://www.gradspace.und.edu/blog/2009/03/03/first-of-the-deans-lecture-
series-announced/">Graduate School Dean's Lecture</a> on Wednesday, March 11th
at 12 pm at the Lecture Bowl of the Memorial Union. The talk is scheduled
to coincide with the Graduate School Scholarly Forum. <a
href="http://graduateschool.und.edu/docs/2009ScholaryForum/SFSchedule-
Web.pdf">Here's the schedule of events for that</a>. The talk is titled:
‚ÄúFive Years at an Ancient Harbor in Cyprus‚Äù. <blockquote> The Pyla-
Koutsopetria Archaeological Project (PKAP) began work in the coastal
zone of Pyla in Cyprus in 2003. Our initial exploration of the area revealed a
massive coastal site extending for over 1 km along the coastal plain. We quickly
recognized that this site was remarkable both on account of its coastal position
and its size and complexity. Moreover, we became aware that the previous
archaeological work in the area had only reveal small and isolated sections of
the diverse array of archaeological remains present. Consequently, beginning in
2004, the PKAP initiated a systematic, multi-tiered investigation of the
microregion designed to understand the historical development of the in its
political, economic, and cultural context. Using the tools of intensive
pedestrian survey, remote sensing of various kinds, and targeted excavation, we
produced a robust assemblage of material capable of answering numerous questions
about the history, function, and chronology of the site. This fieldwork
confirmed that people occupied our corner of Cyprus from at least as early as
the Late Bronze Age (ca. 1200 BC) and fortified parts of the site during the
Archaic to Hellenistic period (700 BC-BC 300). The site, however, flourished
during Late Antiquity (AD400-600) when it reached its greatest extent and
included monumental religious architecture, fine imported ceramics, and a
significant functional diversity across. At this time, sprawled for over a
kilometer along the Cypriot coast producing a scatter of material considerably
larger than a villa, hamlet or rural village yet smaller than a urbanized polis
or city center. Scholars have generally overlooked such ‚Äúmid-sized‚Äù sites in
the Eastern Mediterranean and, consequently, must of our research has focused on
the key role that such sites played in both the regional and local economy and
within the local settlement structure. Alongside these traditional
components of archaeological research, PKAP has sought to document the
performative, narrative, and reflexive components of the archaeological
experience. By drawing extensively on new media technologies and applications we
have worked to record the experience of archaeology and project it beyond the
limits of the field. Such programs are more than simply ancillary components to
the overall aims of the project, but complement the main lines of research by
emphasizing the multiple narratives present within the same body of research.
This practice not only remind project members of the dense web of assumptions,
methods, and procedures required to produce archaeological knowledge, but also
reinforces the ambivalence and ambiguity central to all humanistic
inquiry.</blockquote> I know, we've been working at Pyla-Koustopetria for
six years, but five years had a better ring to it. Have a good weekend.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Kreta
EMAIL: b747@email.cz
IP: 83.29.227.90
URL: http://www.odlotowewakacje.com
DATE: 03/07/2009 09:04:18 AM
I know Pyla. Charming small town. I was there last year. The village is located
in the eastern part of the island, in the United Nations Buffer Zone in Cyprus.
Very interesting article. I must to show my wife. Good weekend for you, too.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Tanie bilety lotnicze
EMAIL: dandaman@onet.pl
IP: 62.121.65.240
URL: http://www.ewings.pl
DATE: 06/09/2009 04:07:09 AM
Ive been to that area but cant see to recall any archsites...
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Wycieczki
EMAIL: ramzi@interia.pl
IP: 89.76.78.150
URL: http://www.fostertravel.pl
DATE: 07/07/2009 06:13:33 PM
I have been in Nicosia in Cyprus, also Cyprus North (turkish) but didnt see
arceological sites besides Paphos
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TITLE: Teaching Thursday: The Challenge of Midlevel Courses
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: the-challenge-of-midlevel-courses
CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 03/05/2009 08:11:03 AM

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There are few places where the transitional or transformative aspect of
university life is more visible than in the midlevel courses. At the <a
href="http://www.und.edu">University of North Dakota</a>, these courses often
receive the 200 or 300 level designation and represent the lowest level course
required for the degree. Mediating between introductory classes that are
often pitched to a general undergraduate audience and upper level classes
where we work to develop discipline (or major) specific skills, these courses
lay the foundation for later coursework while shepherding students into the
major and, ideally, the culture of a particular discipline. In the
Department of History, I teach the midlevel course which is one of only two
specific classes required for all majors. We call it History 240: The
Historians' Craft. The course introduces historical methodology and
research techniques, the history of the discipline, and the style of historical
writing and argument. In the best of all worlds, the class prepares
students for the experience of upper level courses which, in turn, reinforce and
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expand the skills developed in History 240. By History 440, the capstone
course in our major, the students should be prepared to write a major term paper
with sustained faculty guidance. This doesn't work quite as well as
we'd like as a department, and as a consequence our History 240 class is <a
aching-thursday-revised-classes-for-spring.html">under constant
revision</a>. In the process of the several revisions that this class has
undergone, I've tried to think generally about what the class is supposed to
do in our department's curriculum and what these midlevel courses are
supposed to in the more general scheme at the university. The main
challenge of such a course, particularly in a discipline like history, is to
position the class in such a way to allow the student to be successful in a wide
range of upper level courses which embrace a wide range of general approaches to
the field of history. Our upper level courses in history represent a
diverse assortment of methods and methodologies from fairly traditional
narrative based approaches to the past, to those rooted in archaeology, oral
history, quantitative analysis, and various theoretical approaches. In
fact, from my perspective one of the strengths of our department is the
diversity of approaches both in terms of scholarship and pedagogy.
So, the midlevel course is designed to prepare students for a very
diverse experience in upper level courses and to an environment where
disagreements of basic aspects of theory, epistemology, and pedagogy make it
hard to imagine any single set of skills being reinforced
consistently. In a world where "one-size-fits-all"
solutions in any field (much less academia) have become unfashionable, the
midlevel course is asked to provide just that: a foundation upon which any
number of discipline based assumptions and expectations can rest. On the
other hand, if the course become too generic and focus on such neutral (if
important) skills as "critical thinking" or "writing" or
"reasoning", we run the risk of eroding the key features of the
discipline. In a discipline like history which adopts methods from
outside the field with consistency, it is dangerous to push too far (explicitly)
into the realm of the generic foundations of "humanistic
inquiry". It is easy to agree that critical thinking is important
for our majors, but if that is all we offer in the discipline of history, then
there is little that justifies its existence as an independent discipline -- and
this is certainly not the road any self respecting department wishes to
pursue. Moreover, To return to the problem of the midlevel course
and add a small twist, we have traditionally taught the midlevel course almost
exclusively to majors in a small seminar style environment. The class has
capped at 15 and is offered in at least three sections of the year. This not
only limits our enrolment figures per semester or per year, but also may limit
our number of majors as well. As we look ahead to declining enrolments in
the humanities (a seemingly inevitable consequence of economic instability) and
at our university specifically, there must be good reason to create a mid level
class limited to so few students over the course of a year. While most of
us can agree that smaller classes have definite advantages over larger courses,
in times of stagnating enrolments these advantages must be clearly
articulated. As we revisit our midlevel courses this year, we have also
revisited the size of these classes and consider whether it is possible to teach
the foundations of the discipline to a larger group of students without
significantly eroding the quality of the experience or learning.
With this in mind, we can return to the difficult task of structuring a
course to feed into a diverse array of expectations, outcomes, and pedagogies at
the upper level. As our department considers expanding the number seats
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available in midlevel courses and radically revising the assignments, content,

and goals, I've become interested in hearing how other people bridge the gap
between the expectations and goals of the lowest level courses and the demands
and methods of upper level courses. If you have any ideas to share either
specifically or generally, check out the blog at <a
href="http://www.teachingthursday.org">www.teachingthursday.org</a> where
I've cross-posted this post and hope to get some though-provoking
responses. It's <a
href="http://teachingthursday.wordpress.com/about/">a joint venture</a> between
Anne Kelsch of the <a href="http://www.und.edu/dept/oid/">Office of
Instructional Development</a> and <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/ContactInfo.html">me</a>.
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IP: 129.24.94.163
URL: http://phdinhistory.org
DATE: 03/05/2009 12:26:39 PM
I checked IPEDS and saw that UND granted 26 history BAs in 2006 and 22 in 2007.
These are small numbers and the trend is downward, as you noted. Maybe one way
to continue justifying the course to your dean is to run it as a combination of
lecture and discussion sections. The lecture could happen once or twice per
week and the discussion sections would meet once or twice per week as well.
This would have the advantage of aggregating sections so that the total
enrollment of the course stayed at higher levels, which would likely satisfy
your administrators. Lastly, I would point out that the national average is
that about 2.2 percent of all bachelors degrees awarded are in history. At your
institution, only 1.4 percent are in history. So I would say that your
undergraduate program probably has some unrealized growth potential,
notwithstanding the recession.
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TITLE: Charles Morley, Ohio State, and the University of North Dakota
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: charles-morley-ohio-state-and-the-university-of-north-dakota
DATE: 03/04/2009 06:46:17 AM

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When <a
href="http://www.historians.org/Perspectives/issues/2005/0511/0511mem2.cfm">Char
les Morley died in 2005,</a> his status was secure as one of the leading figures
in the study of Eastern Europe and Poland. The most recent issue of Making
History at the Ohio State University, the newsletter of the <a
href="http://history.osu.edu/">Department of History at Ohio State</a>, reported
that his widow has donated Prof. Morley's significant collection of books on
Eastern Europe to Ohio State. Morley did his undergraduate work at Ohio
State before going on to receive his Ph.D. from Wisconsin. Morley is
interesting to me on this blog because he taught at the <a
href="http://history.osu.edu/">University of North Dakota</a> from around 1939
to, perhaps, 1942. From 1943-1944 he served alongside many well-known
scholars in the Office of Strategic Services. At UND, he was part of a
group of scholars who taught for a year or so in the department of history in
the 1930s including Reginald Lovell, Clarence Matterson, John Pritchett Charles
Centner. Matterson would serve as Department Head at Iowa State
University, Centner would publish numerous works on <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/8992697">European/South American
relations</a>, Lovell published an important work <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/599326">on economic imperialism in South
Africa</a>. Elwyn B. Robinson provides, in his customary way, a brief
description of Morley during his time at UND: <blockquote> "An unmarried
young man of Polish origins from Cleveland, Morley was teaching in the European
History Department. I do not remember how long he was at the university,
but I know he was later on the history faculty of Ohio State University.
That was a typical experience. Generally faculty members who stayed only a
few years at the University of North Dakota moved on to an institution of
greater prestige. North Dakota was a place where young men of good quality
gained valuable experience or seasoning. That in a sense was a
recommendation for the quality of the faculty of the university. In our
early years at the university I was struck by the rapid turnover among the
younger members of the faculty and their expectation of not staying long.
I used to say to Eva that so-and-so was "only camping," meaning they would soon
move on." </blockquote>
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TITLE: Western Civilization Podcasts
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: western-civilization-podcasts
CATEGORY: Teaching
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DATE: 03/03/2009 07:31:43 AM

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A few people have asked me to make my podcasts for my Western Civilization
class more widely available. So here they are. They are works in
progress! The first few podcasts used a really poor microphone, so the
sound quality is pretty low. All the later ones were produced with a <a
href="http://www.bluemic.com/products/snowball">Blue Snowball Microphone</a> and
Garage Band on a MacBook Pro. I convert them all to MP3 format. I am sure
that there are little factual errors and some interpretative inconsistencies
here and there throughout the podcasts. My goal from the start was to
create podcasts that <a
aching-thursday-the-instability-of-hybrid-learning.html">supplemented the
classroom experience</a> rather than replaced it. Here are the first 9
podcasts: <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/WestCivPodCasts/1_Western_Civ_I
ntro.mp3">1. Introduction to Western Civilization</a> <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/WestCivPodCasts/2_Early_Civiliz
ation.mp3">2. Early Civilization</a> <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/WestCivPodCasts/3_Classical%20G
reece.mp3">3. Classical Greece</a> <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/WestCivPodCasts/4_The_Hellenist
ic_World.mp3">4. The Hellenistic World</a> <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/WestCivPodCasts/5_The_Roman_Rep
ublic.mp3">5. The Roman Republic</a> <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/WestCivPodCasts/6_The_Roman_Emp
ire.mp3">6. The Roman Empire</a> <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/WestCivPodCasts/7a_Christianity
_and_the_Later_Roman_Empire.mp3">7a. Christianity and the Late Roman
Empire</a> <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/WestCivPodCasts/7b_Christianity
_and_the_Later_Roman_Empire.mp3">7b. Christianity and the Later Roman
Empire</a> <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/WestCivPodCasts/8a_Late_Antiqui
ty_Byzantium_and_the_Early_Medieval_World.mp3">8. Late Antiquity, Byzantium, and
the Early Middle Ages</a> I'll post the second half of the class
toward the end of the semester (I am still working on post-production special
effects). If you want to follow the class, so to speak, online here's
a <a
">link to the syllabus</a>. I'm making these podcasts
available, in part because I said that I would. I also have this vague
idea that the <a href="http://www.und.edu/">University of North Dakota</a>
should do more to make (or promote) the content of their classes available to
folks in the community (they've started to do this with their <a
href="http://www2.und.edu/our/itunes/index.php">iTunes U</a> or as they call it
on their homepage Itunes U.) I've been trying to talk to people here
into a campaign that promotes our community content. We could call it
"UND for Free". Enjoy the podcasts. 
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TITLE: James Brewer Stewart and Abolitionism at the University of North Dakota
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: james-brewer-stewart-and-abolitionism-at-the-university-of-north-
dakota
DATE: 03/02/2009 09:10:36 AM

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On Friday, we have the distinct pleasure of hearing <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/org/rrvhc/keynote_speaker.html">James Brewer
Stewart give a talk entitled, "The Old Slavery and the New: History,
Memory, and the Challenges of Human Trafficking".</a> His talk was
one of those all too rare occasions when a historian can bridge the gap between
past practices and present policies and offer a compelling case for present
action. He argued that the abolitionist movement of the first half of the
19th century could provide a model for the creation of a movement to abolish
slavery in the world today which Stewart regards as a more pressing problem
today than ever before. In particular, he asserted that the moment is
right for a movement that would demand the immediate emancipation of all slaves
in the world. His talk was particularly successful in tying events in the
19th century to the current upswing in youth activism, the spread of technology,
the vitality of the evangelical movement both at specifically evangelical
colleges and in American life in general, and the dire need to eliminate the
immoral practice of slavery from the earth. The talk was one of those
great opportunities to discuss and grapple with a wide range of issues from the
uses of the past, to the nature of slavery (in the past and today), and the
potential and structure of any movement with global goals and ambitions.
The discussions poured over in a local watering hole and Steward graciously hung
around talking to faculty and graduate students. My students, who
generally study pre-modern Eastern Mediterranean, we particularly excited about
Stewart's talk. Not only have there been some interesting recent
works that look at various aspects of slavery in the Ancient and Medieval East
(e.g. <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/67239425">Jennifer Glancy's
recent survey</a> or <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/46694625">M.
McCormick's Origins of the European Economy</a>), but our work in
Cyprus and in the Muslim east brought to the fore important transnational issues
(e.g. what is the impact of evangelical involvement in various social justice
issues in countries where Western Christianity is looked upon with concern or
even hostility). The point of this post today is purely
advertisement. Between Friday's <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/org/rrvhc/conference_schedule.html">Red River
Valley History Conference</a> and Stewart's talk, I was impressed and
invigorated by the vitality present in our small history department and small
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graduate program. Check out <a

href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/org/rrvhc/2009_conference_photographs.html">the
photos on the web page</a>! And our graduate student members of the
history honor society, Phi Alpha Theta, should be commended for their hard work
and successful conference.
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IP: 99.184.129.166
URL:
DATE: 03/06/2009 09:44:39 AM
There has been very little work on Protestant missionary in Greece. There is a
history of the American Farm School, Brenda Marder, Stewards of the Land: The
American Farm School and Modern Greece (1979) and there is some work on Robert
College in Istanbul. Both elite Greek high schools, Athens College and Anatolia
(in Thessaloniki) were the descendants of Robert College. I know of one
dissertation that looks at the archives of a Mennonite community in Crete. Good
stuff.
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TITLE: Phi Alpha Theta Conference and Other Fun Stuff
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: phi-alpha-theta-conference-and-other-fun-stuff
CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 02/27/2009 08:38:39 AM

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If you are in the Grand Forks area, stop by the Red River Valley History
Conference today at the Memorial Union at the University of North Dakota.
In particular, stop by my panel at 9:30 am in Medora Room 209. Historical
Idealism & Religion Dr. W. Caraher, Commentator, Memorial Union
Medora Room 209 "Croce and Collingwood:
Continuities in Idealism" Dalton Little,University of North Dakota "A
Late Antique Saint" Kathryn A. Hughes Nedegaard University of North
Dakota ‚ÄúStandard of Salvation: The
Christian‚Äôs Use of Greco-Roman Literary Genre‚Äù Paul Ferderer, University
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of North Dakota ______________________ And stick around for the

other panels and <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/org/rrvhc/keynote_speaker.html">our keynote
speaker</a>: Dr. James Stewart: "The Old Slavery and the New: History,
Memory and the Challenges of Human Trafficking" A few other fun quick
hits: <ul> <li>Some interesting discussion over that <a
href="http://www.teachingthursday.org/">Teaching Thursday</a>. Check it
out and leave a comment! <li>This is <a
href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/2009/02/cistercian-abbey-of-zaraka-in-
ancient.html">interesting</a> and <a
href="http://www.thomasav.com/Media/zaraka.html">cool</a>. <li><a
href="http://classics.uc.edu/users/lima/">This will be fun to
follow</a>.</li></ul>
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TITLE: Student Expectations in an Age of Anxiety
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BASENAME: student-expectations-in-an-age-of-anxiety
CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 02/26/2009 08:22:05 AM

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I've had some time to mull over the recent <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/18/education/18college.html?_r=2&scp=1&
amp;sq=grade%20entitlement&st=cse">NY Times' article</a> on the growing
sense of student entitlement at American universities. It has caused
some buzz in the blogosphere <a
href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/2009/02/student-entitlement.html">where a
colleague captured some of my immediate reactions</a>. My gut response is
always to side with the students, and it is virtually impossible to shake that
perception in this case. After all the article does not articulate a sense
of entitlement without foundation. The students assume that if they do the
work, they will get an above average (i.e. B or better) result. While many
teachers (myself included) think that we can counter this kind of attitude
through the careful manipulation in the utopian space of classroom, the
historian in me sees many of these notions to be deeply rooted in American
culture. The idea that hard work will produce above average results must derive
at least in part from long held ideas of American exceptionalism. The
spirit of American exceptionalism translated to a suburban environment where two
generations of Americans witnessed how a work-a-day life could produce a
steadily rising standard of living and slowly built up the comforting arrogance
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that the grinding routine of a 40+ hour work week could grant one access to a
wonderful world of consumables and luxuries. This might all change as the
worsening "global economic crisis" threatens not only the economic basis for
American optimism, but also calls into question the authenticity of the values
on which this optimism rested. Despite these threats, the common paean in
the news today is that hard work will bring America back from the brink.
When we walk into the classroom and confront a group of students who will
likely work hard -- if not in our class specifically, then in their classes in
general (and if not "hard" by our standards, "hard" by their standards) -- we
aren't confronting simply another example of botched communication between
student and teacher, but the realities of over 100 years of American
culture. If a sense of student entitlement is rooted in part in
American culture, it is compounded by a university system that can be quite
confusing on a number of levels. Despite efforts to standardize classes
across the curriculum, they still represent a bewildering diversity of demands,
requirements, expectations, and work loads. For example, most departments
offer courses at different levels (100, 200, 300, 400). The lower numbers
represent "lower level courses", but what exactly does this mean? Is it
that the higher level requires more background and expertise? Or is the
workload in these classes higher? Are they simply "harder" as many
students assume? Students often seem to think that lower level courses
should require less work and upper level course require more work. But, if
upper level course do require different things or are harder or have a greater
workload, it's strange that they all count for the same number of credits
(generally). And credits are what the student needs to graduate. And to
make matters more complex, credits do not correlate precisely to grades. I
student can get a C in virtually all of their undergraduate classes and still
graduate. And as the NY Times article reports, most faculty assume that a
C is the minimum amount of knowledge sufficient to receive credit for the
course. On the other hand, the maximum knowledge gleaned from a course
does not, at the end of the semester or academic career, equate to more credits
-- the basic standard required for graduation. (It's interesting to note
that the <a href="http://www.und.edu/">University of North Dakota</a>, like many
universities, did experiment with tying grades to credits awarded during the
1920s (I think)). Another key aspect of the current system is that the
expense of college education grows yearly. Now more students invest more
money in their college education than ever before. The effect is
predictable. As the stakes get higher with the spiraling cost of tuition
the tactics students use to get the most obvious public results for their money
become more creative and strident. In part, this is because students feel
that they should expect more and more of the university experience, in general,
including the faculty. This puts faculty on the spot as the rapid increase
in tuition has not, from what I can tell, corresponded to an similar shift in
campus culture. In particular, we probably need to develop strategies to
confront the reality that all students are not all going to learn successfully
the material presented in a class, despite the fact that they will pay --
sometimes huge sums of money to learn the material. While its distasteful
to consider on the level of an individual class, could it be that we need to put
into place some kind of guarantee that student hard work will allow them acquire
or achieve something within a system created by the university itself?
Of course, much of this debate also reveals the no incredibly contingent
nature of so much education in any event. I see this particularly with
graduate education in the humanities where the pressure to come up with a thesis
topic, do research, write well and creatively, and complete the degree in a
reasonable amount of time can be enormous (Go! Be creative! Quickly!). The
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difficult thing, of course, is that it might not be possible to come up with a

"good", much less exceptional, thesis topic in set amount of time, and so much
good research is at least partially tied to luck. Of course it's hard to
sell luck in an environment where costs continue to spiral upward and hard work
is touted as the solution. A student can work hard, in some cases, and
still not succeed. These observations should not, of course, serve as
an excuse not to communicate our expectations to students clearly. Nor
should it give us reason to grade capriciously and without any attention to the
learning processes that take place when a student works hard and comes up
short. What we can learn is that some expectations are not simply the
break down in classroom communications or another indication of the decadent or
irresponsible student behavior. The issues that are manifesting themselves
in changing attitudes toward classroom grades, the purpose of higher education,
and the role of faculty in this process are complex and largely rooted outside
what we can immediately control in the classroom. What we can do is to
engage openly and transparently both the root causes of changing student
attitudes and adapt our methods to accommodate and whenever coopt these
attitudes more effectively into the structure of the university and our
classroom. Cross-posted at the <a
href="http://www.teachingthursday.org/">Teaching Thursday blog</a>!
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TITLE: History at the University of North Dakota
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BASENAME: history-at-the-university-of-north-dakota
DATE: 02/25/2009 07:47:00 AM

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I have finally produced a "final" copy of my pamphlet <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/WorkingPapers/Departmental_Hist
ory_Complete_Caraher.pdf">History at the University of North Dakota 1885-
1970</a>. Those of you who read this blog regularly have read bits
and pieces of this history over the past few year and know that my interest in
the history of our department and the university more generally will
persist. Various observations on the history of history at the University
of North Dakota appear <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/department
al_history_at_und/">here</a> and <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/elwyn_robi
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nsons_autobiography/">here</a>. I include here part of the

introduction: <blockquote> 
The plan for each department to write a departmental history first emerged in
conjunction with the Centennial Celebration at the University of North
Dakota. The result was a series of departmental histories which ranged
widely in quality and length. The Department of History, however, did not
produce a formal history at that time. It may have been that the
production of a volume celebrating the 100th Anniversary of the University
occupied their collective efforts. While work began on such a
publication, it never advanced beyond a rather ramshackle document without any
author listed and entitled: "A Centennial Newsletter." When
President Charles Kupchella requested that departments and divisions bring their
histories up to date in the run-up to the 125th Anniversary of the founding of
the University, I undertook to write a basic history of the department from the
first historian on campus until today. I quickly decided, however, that
the task of writing the entire history of the department in a way that would do
justice to the methods of our discipline was simply not possible in the time
allowed. Moreover, the material for the most recent history continues in
regular use by the department‚Äôs officers and, consequently, has not been
committed to the University Archives. In other cases, the faculty did not
preserve documents, which at the time appeared to be inconsequently.
Finally, delving into the recent past always runs to risk of re-awakening
tensions between members of the department, and it seemed an unwise course for a
junior, untenured faculty member. Consequently, I chose to end my history
around 1970. The significant changes that took place in the department
during the 1960s carried the department through the following decade. 
 This document follows in the tradition of
institutional history. This largely derives from the reality that I am not
an expert on history of the University, the state, or the developments within
academia or the discipline over the course of the 20th century. Numerous
names, events, and historical developments sent me scrambling for my copy of
Robinson‚Äôs, History of North Dakota, L. Veysey‚Äôs, The
Emergence of the American University, P. Novick‚Äôs, That
Noble Dream: The "Objectivity Question" and the American Historical
Profession, and above all, L. Geiger‚Äôs History of the
University of the Northern Plains. The shadow of this last
work, a fine example of institutional history, looms large behind these three
chapters. All things being equal, I would
have liked to capture more of the experience of studying at the University
during the first half of the 20th century. At the same time, I have also
neglected to follow the example of the best kind of modern history which
captures the personalities of the main characters in the narrative; for long
stretches this history reads like the worst kind of prosopography, where
individuals fade away behind an endless litany of credentials, accomplishments,
and dissertation advisors. </blockquote> The <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/WorkingPapers/Departmental_Hist
ory_Complete_Caraher.pdf">complete text can be downloaded here</a>. It
text ends around 1970 without a conclusion. I hope that I can pick it up
again in a few years and bring it closer to today. My ongoing work on <a
href="http://library.und.edu/Collections/Robinson/home.html">Elwyn B.
Robinson</a>'s Memoirs (or Autobiography) will undoubtedly add to this work as
well.
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TITLE: Happy 400th Post from History 240
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CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 02/24/2009 02:50:41 PM

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My history 240 students surprised me with cake (after an <a
iday-varia-and-quick-hits-1.html">innocuous comment on my Friday
blog</a>). Before we cut it, the cake said 401! It's gratifying to
know that some of my students read my blog. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20112790a997a28a
bottom: 0px" height="304" alt="400Cake"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20112790a997e28a4
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> And the cake was delicious. 
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TITLE: Archaeology of the Mediterranean World at 400
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CATEGORY: Emerging Cypriot
772
DATE: 02/24/2009 08:55:55 AM

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Yesterday I posted my 400th post. Now, some of those posts were not the
most substantial things, but I pride myself on some degree of regularity
(bordering on obsessive consistency), so maintaining this blog for now over 400
posts does give me a degree of satisfaction. I began just this morning to
reflect a bit on what I am doing with this blog. In particular, I was
thinking about its origins. It began as an effort to document the goings
on the <a href="http://www.pkap.org">Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological
Project</a>. The goal was primarily to extend what I do to a broader
audience and maybe even to impart a modest sense of community among those
individuals who shared a common interested in our project on Cyprus,
Mediterranean archaeology, and North Dakotiana. It's hard to evaluate how
successful I have been at achieving those goals, but I have met many interesting
colleagues through my blog and am occasionally (and pleasantly) surprised when I
meet a well-respected colleague in my field who knows a something about my work
and my interests through my writing here. (I am also pleased that, with
one or two rather minor exceptions, I have stayed out of trouble!). As
the blog has developed, however, my interests and goals have changed.
Beginning with a well-received article on <a
Archaeology</a>, I began to think more explicitly about the intersection of
archaeology and the "new media". Over the the life of this blog, I have
continued my tinkering with <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/emerging_c
ypriot/">digital video</a> (in collaboration with Joe Patrow), <a
href="http://www.pkap.org/podcasts.html">digital audio</a> (via podcasts), and
<a href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/pylakoutsopetria_graduate/">group
authored</a> <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/pylakoutsopetria_season_s/">explorat
ions of the archaeological experience</a> (though our "sister" blogs).
This work has made me more aware of the way in which the accessibility of the
new media has started to open the doors to new ways of thinking about not only
the past but also those processes that allow us to document and explore the
past. Next month I am going to give a talk on the first 6 years of
fieldwork at Pyla-Koutsopetria. I've divided the talk into three
sections. The first one sets out the the basic historical questions that
our work has sought to answer with a particular emphasis on those relating to
Late Antiquity. It's a public talk so some of this will need to be
simplified, but I start with a critique of the idea that Late Antiquity was a
time of decline and settlement contraction, and then go on to place Cyprus in
the context of a prosperous Late Roman world. The second part of the talk
discusses archaeological method and methodology. I set out our tiered
approach to the sit and explain how we used intensive survey, geophysical
prospecting, and targeted excavation to address specific research questions.
The final section will draw at least part of its inspiration from this blog.
I will bring in our efforts to encourage reflexive thought about the
archaeological process and to document this reflexive critique in real
time. Our earliest efforts at documenting the reflexive habits have been
top down in the spirit of traditional media. Project directors, team
leaders, senior staff wrote blogs, a video documentary organized and funded by
the project directors documented many of the day to day activities of the
project, and I orchestrated a series of podcast interviews. These top down
approaches presented only a fairly rarified perspective on archaeological
773
decision making and hardly captured the spirit of the new media which has
emphasized the democratic nature of the discourse (think: wikis, youtube, et
c.), the ability to produce mash-ups that juxtapose different perspectives and
visions, and the ultimately the instability of any authoritative
discourse. So, the paper will conclude with a look toward the future where
it will be easier to produce kaleidoscopic and multipolar views of the
archaeological experience. Low cost digital video cameras can
produce better images than expensive "pro-sumer" models available just 5 years
ago. Server space for blogs, photographs, and video and audio is now
inexpensive and widely available for the storage and distribution of new media
content. The 1+ years and 400 posts on the blog have begun to outline my
interest in the opportunities and challenges provided by new media approaches to
archaeology. Hopefully the next 400 posts will begin to embrace more fully
the potential of new approaches to old stuff.
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COMMENT:
IP: 99.155.205.199
URL:
DATE: 02/24/2009 11:24:35 AM
Happy 400! Bravo.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Geoff Csrter
EMAIL: carter.geoff'@btinternet.com
IP: 86.172.108.11
URL: http://structuralarchaeology.blogspot.com/
DATE: 02/24/2009 12:50:34 PM
Amazing, that is some going, - there is hope for us all, I have done 24 in six
months, so it will be September 2016 before I catch up with you!
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Miriam
EMAIL: dzone_db@yahoo.com
IP: 64.56.71.48
URL: http://www.craigslistguide.info
DATE: 03/06/2009 05:15:24 AM
I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would
leave my first comment. I don't know what to say except that I have enjoyed
reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.
Miriam
<a href="http://www.craigslistguide.info">http://www.craigslistguide.info</a>
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I continue to work with <a
href="http://www.vanderbilt.edu/divinity/facultypages/jensen.php">Robin
Jensen</a> and <a
href="http://college.up.edu/theology/default.aspx?cid=1089&pid=196">Richard
Rutherford</a> in an effort to prepare a catalogue of Early Christian
baptisteries. The goal of the catalogue is to present this material in a
way that makes it more accessible to a broader audience (than Ristow's otherwise
satisfactory work) and with a greater emphasis on regional characteristics,
indicators of ritual activities, and their place within their immediate spatial
context and built environment. I've taken a stab at one of the longer
entries in this catalog, but may not have struck the balance between scholarly
precision and accessibility. Lechaion The Lechaion Baptistery ranks among
the most architecturally elaborate and lavishly decorated baptisteries in the
Eastern Mediterranean and yet remains relatively unknown. The baptistery
sits less than 200 meters from the Gulf of Corinth at the ancient harbor of
Lechaion, the Western harbor of Corinth. The baptistery is situated at the
southwestern corner of the Lechaion basilica. This massive three-aisled
basilica with a large atrium and double narthex is the largest and most ornate
church in Greece and seems almost certainly to be associated with a prominent
local saint. Today, nothing of the church exists about the lowest reaches
of the walls, but these are sufficiently well-preserved to provide a complete
floor plan of this impressive building. The baptistery itself consists
of three architecturally distinct compartments. The largest is a 16.20 m x
7.60 hall with apses on its north and south end. This main hall was
entered from the south end, presumably from the basilica , through the
apse. To the east of this apsidal hall were two additional chambers.
The northern chamber has a central core measuring 5.05 m square with apsidal
exedra at the cardinal directions. Entered from the west through the
western apse, this room was identified by the excavator as the
apodyterion. This chamber lacks a font and seemed well positioned for this
purpose. Immediately to the south of this chamber was the octagonal
photisterion or baptistery proper which measures 3.15 m across. It appears
to have communicated with the apodyerion to its north through the triangular
space formed by the east wall of the long hall and the west walls of the north
and south chambers. The octagonal room featured apses at the corners and
square exedra at the cardinal directions. To the west, the photisterion
communicated with the long hall. To the east projects an usually shaped
apse. Marble revetment decorated the walls of the elaborate buildings and
the interior of the font. The photisterion preserved two
fonts. The center of the octagonal interior space featured cruciform
775
octagonal font set in the floor with stairs on the northern and southern cross-
arms. It is just under .50 m in depth. Such cruciform fonts are
common in the Corinthia and in Late Roman Achaea more broadly. A smaller
font sits in the southeast apse. The chronology of the baptistery complex
is difficult to ascertain with any certainty. The basilica has a terminus
post quem of 425 leading the excavator to argue that the basilica was largely
5th century in date and destroyed during the 6th century earthquakes.
Recently, however, scholars have been inclined to date the basilica to the 6th
century, perhaps during the reign of Justinian or Anastasius, on the basis of
ceramics found in nearby graves and architectural cues. While an
archaeological date for the construction of the basilica is unlikely to emerge,
it seems probable that the building continued to stand into the second half of
the 6th century. Any clarity regarding the dating of the church sheds
little light on the date of the baptistery. It is on a slightly different
orientation to the main church, however, suggesting an earlier date. The
baptistery may have also remained in use later than the main church. One
argument for the second font suggests that it came into use to allow the
photisterion to serve as the church after the main basilica became damaged or
fell out of use. This practice appears to have occurred elsewhere in the
Corinthia. The baptistery is striking in that it is close to the main
basilica, but they hardly represent an architectural unit. The entrance on
the south side of the baptistery allowed for easy access from the narthex of the
main church through a door in its north wall. Seemingly later and
relatively insubstantial walls created a courtyard between the north wall of the
basilica and the baptistery. Ancillary room attached to the northern wall
of the basilica may have also functioned in conjunction with the baptistery and
provided access to the church‚Äôs northern aisle or galleries which are no long
preserved. This may have provided an easy way for catechumens to enter and
leave the basilica for the baptistery complex. Bolonaki, I. (1976). <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/4737938">Ta Palaiochristianika Baptisteria
tes Ellados</a>. Athens Archaeological Society, Athens, 65-66. Ristow,S.
(1998). <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/39499611">Fr√ºchristliche
Baptisterien</a>, Aschendorffesche Verlagsbuchhandlung. Munich, pp. 155-
156, no. 249 Sanders, G. D. R. (1999). A Late Roman Bath at Corinth:
Excavations in the Panayia Field, 1995‚Äì1996. Hesperia 68:
441‚Äì480. Sanders, G. D. R. (2005). "Archaeological Evidence for Early
Christianity and the End of Hellenic Religion in Corinth," in D. N. Schowalter
and S. J. Friesen, Urban <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/56874310">Religion in Roman Corinth.</a>
Harvard Theology Studies, Cambridge, MA., pp.. 419-442. Varales, I. (2001). E
epidrase tes theias leitourgias kai ton ieron akolouthion sten ekklesiastike
architectonike tou anatolikou Illyrikou (395-573). Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis,
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. Thessaloniki.
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DATE: 02/20/2009 09:26:55 AM

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Some fun or at least interesting readings this Friday: <ul> <li><a
amp;sq=grades&st=cse">An article</a> on grades and student expectations in
the <a
amp;sq=grades&st=cse">New York Times</a>. I'll be very interested to
see my colleagues have to say about this article. It' just the kind of
thing that gets folks excited and can generate some valuable conversation.</li>
<li>And, our newest venture in the blogosphere: <a
href="http://www.teachingthursday.org/">Teaching Thursday</a> would be a great
place for the <a href="http://www.und.edu">University of North Dakota</a>
community to engage this topic.</li> <li>And keep an eye out <a
href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/">here</a> as well.</li> <li><a
aching-thursday-teaching-in-the-field.html#comments">Rangar Cline posted a
thoughtful comment</a> on <a
aching-thursday-teaching-in-the-field.html">my Teaching Thursday post</a> from
yesterday. Rangar should blog.</li></ul> Other stuff: <ul> <li>A
cool piece on <a href="http://chronicle.com/review/brainstorm/fendrich/modern-
middens">modern middens</a> which links the recent collision between two
satellites and the rise of deadly trash with B. Ward-Perkins, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/253896539">The Fall of Rome and the End
of Civilization</a>. It feels like people are using archaeology more
recently to explore our world. The idea of space middens resonates a bit
with <a
href="http://traumwerk.stanford.edu/archaeolog/2008/11/trashed_out_an_archaeolog
ical.html">a recent archaeological reading of foreclosures over at
Archaeolog</a>.</li> <li>I've received several hits from <a
href="http://mashuparchaeology.humanities.manchester.ac.uk/">this site
lately</a>. It seems like a useful destination for interested
archaeologists and museum types and I like the idea of Mash-ups in all
forms.</li> <li>I can't say enough about the content and links that Shawn Graham
posts over at <a href="http://electricarchaeologist.wordpress.com/">Electric
Archaeologist</a>.</li> <li>For those keeping track at home... Monday will be my
400th blog post. Bake a cake!</li></ul> Have a good weekend! 
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AUTHOR: Shawn
IP: 69.168.144.134
DATE: 02/21/2009 09:56:47 AM
Hi Bill,
Thanks for the great reviews! I have to say, I find your Teaching Thursdays
series to be incredibly valuable, and as a former resident of Manitoba, I like
to hear what's happening further up the Red River Valley!
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DATE: 02/19/2009 08:34:43 AM

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Some of the most valuable experiences that I have had as an archaeologist
have come when my advisor, <a
href="http://history.osu.edu/people/person.cfm?ID=689">Tim Gregory</a>, or
another senior or more experienced colleague (here I am thinking of <a
href="http://www.arthistory.upenn.edu/aamw/faculty.html#tartaron">Tom
Tartaron</a>, <a href="http://trefoilcultural.com/">Richard Rothaus</a>, Sarah
Lepinski, and others) took the time to show me how to do something or study an
object in the field. This taught me more about the archaeological process
and the techniques and methods of archaeological research than any seminar or
book. Over the past year or so, I've been thinking about how to replicate
this process in the field of history. While mindful of Mommsen's famous
observation: <blockquote> "It is moreover a dangerous and harmful
illusion for the professor of history to believe that historians can be trained
at the University in the same way as philologists or mathematicians most
assuredly can be. One can say with more justification of the historian than of
the mathematician or the philologist that he is not trained but born, not
educated but self-educated." (From his Rectorial Address at the University
of Berlin in 1874). </blockquote> I couldn't help but think that my <a
aching-thursday-revised-classes-for-spring.html">Historian's Craft</a> class
relied fairly heavily on teaching the students techniques in the abstract and
doing very little to help them implement these techniques is a practice, real-
world way. Telling them how to perform a Google search or look up a book
review in J-stor is different from actually walking them through the
process. The same goes for archival work. Telling them how to get
778
boxes and files from the archives is different from being on hand to help them
understand how particular sources could work to advance particular
arguments. So, I have tried something new this semester: supervised
archival work. Instead of just sending the students over the archives to
rely on their own devices, I am running four classes this semester in the
archives themselves. I leave over an hour for the students to get down to
work with their materials and then circulate to trouble shoot specific issues,
talk to the students about their successes and struggles in the research
process, and make myself available for more broad reaching and spontaneous
issues related to working in actual archives. I've been lucky to have to
complete support of the university archivist and his staff. They've made
our small (<15) class feel at home in the archives and gives them ample space
to pull their materials. Talking with the students while they are
conducting their research has exposed me to the various frustrations of the
students in ways that talking with them in office hours does not make as
visible. It also makes visible their successes at the moment of discovery
and allows students to share the enthusiasm and energy that more solitary
research environments keeps hidden away. And this seems to be particularly
an issue here at the <a href="http://www.und.edu">University of North Dakota</a>
where, at least according to what my students tell me, they don't tend to study
together or even necessarily see any value in it. (This may be tied to the
myth of the solitary, self-sufficient farmer making their own way on the
Northern Plains which in some ways has superceded the myth of the progressive,
community oriented farmers who band together to succeed in an inhospitable
environment.) For a full list of Teaching Thursday post <a
>click here</a>. And stay tuned to our newest project: <a
href="http://www.teachingthursday.org">www.teachingthursday.org</a>. 
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IP: 68.89.251.140
URL:
DATE: 02/19/2009 09:29:33 AM
As someone who has benefited (I hope) from the Gregory and Rothaus (as well as
Sanders and Camp) methods of on-site instruction, I've also wondered if
historians can be trained through a similar methodology. For undergraduates in
Roman history courses, I've tried using documents or inscriptions like
Diocletian's Price Edict, or the parts of the Theodosian Code, or photographs of
archeological sites and material. Then I ask some version of the question,
"what does this tell the historian?" Although students might be acquainted with
these sources, often they have not had to examine them very carefully. To ask
questions about the sources of our knowledge seems to me to be in the spirit of
on-site archaeological instruction as exhibited by the best teachers.
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Also, I'm sure Mommsen would be dismayed, but in class I usually do compare such
document and primary source analysis, and student research papers, to the
lab/practicum that accompanies many science classes.
I hope your students thank you for showing them to the archives!
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From the first season of the <a href="http://www.pkap.org">Pyla-Koutsopetria
Archaeological Project</a>, the directors, <a
Moore</a>, <a href="http://home.messiah.edu/~dpettegrew/">David Pettegrew</a>,
and myself, committed ourselves to archaeological outreach. Over the
years, this has taken various forms ranging from public lectures, to blogs,
podcasts, and documentaries. One aspect of outreach that PKAP has produced
each year is the PKAP Newsletter. Each year in the late winter, we produce
a two page newsletter that communicates what the project accomplished in the
previous season and what we plan to do in the coming summer. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/PKAPNewsletter2007.pdf">Here is last
years letter</a>. So, introducing the (first draft) of the <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/PRLetter2009/PKAPNewsletter2009
.pdf">2009 PKAP Newsletter</a>. Click on the image below to download
it. Or look for it in the mail soon! <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/PRLetter2009/PKAPNewsletter2009
.pdf"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-bottom-
width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px" height="536" alt="PKLetter"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2011278f966f528a4
-pi" width="420" border="0"></a> And be sure to check out
<a href="http://www.pkap.org/">our website</a> which Scott has spent some time
<a
href="http://ancienthistory.typepad.com/ancient_history_ramblings/2009/02/pkap-
webpages-updated.html">updating </a>recently to include the usual array of
reports, photographs, and links. We'll hopefully have links to past PKAP
Newsletters up soon.
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I usually wake up, become oriented, and think about what I will do and blog
about for the day. This morning, I slipped into some kind of
overload. I could not put together a coherent blog post, plan for the day,
or strategy for the week. This semester has presented me with a whole
series of mini-tasks. None takes more than a day or two and none provides
any sense of accomplishment. So, in the spirit of the mini-task, I
offer four mini-posts: 1. Video and the <a
href="http://www.pkap.org">Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological
Project</a>. So what would happen if we distributed 5 simple HD cameras to
folks on PKAP this summer. They were told to video anything of interest to
them and at the end of each day, we downloaded the video onto a hard drive and
marked with the individual's name. On the return to the US we turned it
all over to another group of students, faculty, folks, people, scholars,
whoever, and asked them to produce a mash-up, narrative, montage, or
whatever. What would we learn? What would we see? Who would be
the author? Most importantly, what would this exercise or experiment tell us
about the experience of archaeology on Cyprus with the Pyla-Koutsopetria
Archaeological Project? 2. Military History in Murfreesboro.
In April, I am going to the <a
href="http://www.smhconference.org/index.php">Society for Military History's
Annual Meeting in Murfreesboro, Tennessee</a>. I was invited to comment on
papers offered by a group of graduate students from Penn State on topics related
to archaeology and the Battle of Issus where Alexander first defeated the
Persian King Darius III. This is pretty far from my comfort zone, although
I did write my <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/35251389">M.A. Thesis on
Alexander the Great</a> and I have worked on Hellenistic fortifications. I
have to be honest when I say that I am a bit nervous about this, but the idea of
the archaeology of ancient battlefields, has begun to intrigue me. The
most recent wave of intensive pedestrian survey archaeology has done little to
clarify the topography of battle in the ancient world, and, in this regard,
stands in contrast to its predecessor -- extensive survey, which often sought to
localize ancient battles within the modern topography. So, I think that I
will be able to say something... 3. Cyberpunk Space and
Archaeology. This is a tiny post for our Punk Archaeology project. I
had a habit of reading <a
href="http://www.williamgibsonbooks.com/blog/blog.asp">William Gibson</a> on
flights to conduct archaeological work in Greece and Cyprus. Gibson was
among the founders of the Cyberpunk movement and many of his books are
781
characterized by vivid "post-urban" landscapes. While all his books work

at the intersection of material culture, punk, and identity, his Bridge Trilogy
(<a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/27727228">Virtual Light</a>,
<a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/34576883">Idoru</a>, and <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/41320160">All Tomorrow's Parties</a>)
was the first to draw me in -- if for no other reason than one of the books was
titled <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/41320160">All Tomorrow's
Parties</a> and any book with a title from a Velvet Underground song
deserves to be read. One of the key settings in these works (which I have
not read for at least 5 years) is Bay Bridge in San Francisco which after being
damaged in an earthquake became an interstitial settlement. Spolia, the
re-use of urban space, cultural and political dystopia, and the shadow of
natural disasters evoke themes common to literature on Late Antique
archaeology. 4. An Encyclopedia of Baptisteries. I've
recently returned to thinking about <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/early_chri
stian_baptisteries/">Early Christian baptisteries</a>. Hopefully I will have a
few early drafts of encyclopedia type entries done in the next week or so. As I
write these relatively short entries, I've had to think about what to include
and exclude in each and who my audience will be. It reminded me of site
reports from my time at the American School of Classical Studies at
Athens. Do I include dimensions? Do I include scholarly
debates? How much bibliography should I include? Should I interpret
as much as I describe? More? So, four mini posts for the day.
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Next Friday (February 27th), Phi Alpha Theta, the history honor society here
at the University of North Dakota, will host their annual spring conference
called the <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/org/rrvhc/conference_schedule.html">Red River
Valley History Conference</a>. I am chairing a panel on "Historical
Idealism & Religion" at 9:30 AM in the Memorial Union Room 209.
My panel will feature papers from three UND M.A. students Dalton Little, Paul
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Ferderer, and Kathy Nedegaard. The highlight of the conference this year
will be the department's regular Wilkins Lecture offered by <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/org/rrvhc/keynote_speaker.html">Emeritus Prof.
James Steward of Macalester College in St. Paul</a>. The conference has
largely been organized by our graduate students here and will feature papers
from many of the regional universities, including the University of Minnesota,
Minot State, and North Dakota State. There is no registration fee, so if
you are in the area, stop by and catch a panel. The papers give a great
overview of the work being done by M.A. level students at both UND and the other
universities in the region. And, it's a regional conference!
Reflecting back on my travel this winter to the Annual Meeting of the
Archaeological Institute of America, I realized that my trip to Philadelphia
cost, all told, over $1500. While the meetings, paper, and fellowship
were priceless (as they say), it did drive home how expensive conference travel
can be -- as if the myriad articles in the Chronicle of Higher Education
haven't made this argument abundantly clear. Despite the high cost
and world wide budget tightening, national and international conferences seemly
continue to proliferate. In fact, this year alone, I avoided attending
conferences in Rome, Berlin, and Loutraki, Greece. (Of course, some of
these conferences are, in fact, local or regional for their
participants!). In any event, regional conferences have often
(but not always!) been regarded as decidedly second tier affairs, suitable for
graduate students, regional scholars, and local hobbyists. But what would happen
if we began to think of regional conferences as a way of fostering a deeper
engagement with the local intellectual community? How would the
profession of history (or any field) change if the economy compelled us to rely
on local intellectual resources to get our annual conference fix?
Assuming that the conference still functions as an important opportunity for
genuine academic and intellectual discourse, I suspect that regional conferences
would promote a deeper engagement with the local community, closer ties between
faculty in different areas of the discipline, and perhaps even promote a more
robust local intellectual life. I typically tell our potential
job candidates that my closest colleagues are spread around the US, if not
around the world, as a way of assuring them that the relative isolation of our
campus has not been a major obstacles to my professional goals. I stay in touch
with my various collaborators via phone, email, wikis, and even blogs.
But this low level and regular contact is not the same as an academic
conference. The technologies and techniques that we use, however, could
replicate, if not improve upon, some of the basic goals of a conference.
Podcasts linked to threaded discussions, for example, would facilitate question
and answer sections removed from the constraints of "real time"
(I'm sorry, our time is upon now, but I am sure the participants would be
happy to continue to discuss their paper's at this evening's
social...). Participants could be encouraged -- or required -- to engage
their colleagues' papers and respond to posts from registered users in order
to foster the kind of dialogue that makes a conference valuable as an
intellectual and academic enterprise (and not just an opportunity for
socialization). Of course, such an approach may not reproduce entirely
the opportunities for informal conversation and social networking that makes
national conferences so valuable, but in some ways, the online social networking
tools have already begun to fill even that niche. I know more about many
of my distant colleagues now than I did five years ago because they update their
facebook status, blog regularly, or maintain twitter feeds. Integrating
this kind of social space into an online conference is more a matter of
balancing the spontaneous opportunities provided by simultaneity (papers read in
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real time, for example) against the convenience of non-real time

delivery. Such issues though could surely be resolved and would shed
interesting (if not valuable) light on the different modes of academic
engagement. Speculation on the future of academic conversation aside, if
you have a chance, do stop by the Red River Valley History Conference next
Thursday. 
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TITLE: Friday Quick hits and Varia
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Some interesting little hits on a Friday morning: <ul> <li>I am not sure
what is more amazing, <a href="http://content-
usa.cricinfo.com/wiveng2009/engine/match/352661.html">this</a> or <a
href="http://content-
usa.cricinfo.com/wiveng2009/content/current/story/390647.html">this</a>.
<a href="http://content-
usa.cricinfo.com/ausvnz2008/engine/current/match/351693.html">This</a> is a
relief.</li> <li><a
href="http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/view.php?id=37017">These
images</a> never cease to amaze me. And <a
href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=do9AoKyjjQg">this is really
touching</a>.</li> <li>These <a
href="http://electricarchaeologist.wordpress.com/2009/02/11/tweeting-
archaeology/">two</a> <a
63">things</a> are worth considering.</li></ul> Have a good weekend and enjoy
<a href="http://www.daytona500.com/">THE RACE</a>.
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EMAIL:
IP: 208.107.218.18
DATE: 02/13/2009 10:54:49 AM
Nice one. I posted the video, too. I have watched it several times now and still
can't believe it. Poor thing must have been in such shock. The nice part is that
the media updates on her condition say that she is healing and even has a
boyfriend!
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DATE: 02/12/2009 08:35:57 AM

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This is a sneak preview or some kind of beta release of
<a href="http://teachingthursday.wordpress.com/">a new
project</a>. A couple of weeks ago, I began talking with
Anne Kelsch, a historian who also runs our <a
href="http://www.und.edu/dept/oid/">Office of Instructional Development</a> here
at the <a href="http://www.und.edu">University of North Dakota</a>, about taking
my <a
>Teaching Thursday concept</a> and opening it up to a wider audience. Of
course, <a
href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/search/label/Teaching%20Thursday">I already
have colleagues who have found that writing one day a week or so on teaching</a>
gives them a change to verbalize ideas, formulate more formal arguments, and
share teaching tips with readers from around the interweb. So I pitched to
Anne Kelsch the idea of creating a blog dedicated to "Teaching Thursday" and
running it as an official project of the Office of Instructional
Development. And we're almost there... The issue now is how do we
describe Teaching Thursday to potential readers and, more important still,
potential contributors. Of course, Teaching Thursday is built as a blog on
the popular Wordpress blogging application. But, as this blog as discussed
since its inception, blogs are different things in different contexts. A
blog could be a personal journal left open for the public to read, or it could
be a minute to minute political commentary. I can also be everything in
between. Blogs can accommodate pictures, podcasts, video, as well as the
typical maze of hypertext leading off in all directions. So, what,
exactly, will or can the Teaching Thursday blog look like? It is appealing
to imagine it open to almost any kind of expression that lends insight to
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teaching, but on the other hand some kind of guidelines often work to frame a
project in a way that we can easily communicate to contributors and readers.
I think that we'll begin our project as part of the long-standing, campus-
wide effort to get people to talk more about teaching. I like the idea of
Teaching Thursday being a collection of essays on teaching. Essays capture
a whole range of careful writing ranging from the dreaded essay test to
thoughtful reflections focused on particular topics. It also doesn't
exclude the possibility of video and audio essays or even other creative efforts
to designed to expand the discussion about teaching on campus. We
also want to use the tradition of interactivity to blogs to position Teaching
Thursday posts as points of departure for interactive discussions. While
the Office of Instructional Development has regular talks, roundtables, and
symposia on campus, they often conflict with our increasingly chaotic
lives. Consequently the audience at these gatherings keeps changing and it
is sometimes hard to create a sustained dialogue. Since a blog, like
Teaching Thursday, can be read at one's leisure, we hope that it will encourage
a more sustained dialogue between folks interested in innovative and effective
teaching on campus. I could even imagine conversations playing out in the
comments and responses by the authors of provocative or controversial
posts. Who knows, maybe we'll expand to a Teaching Tuesday as well.
Since blogging is relatively free, the sky's the limit. A blog like
Teaching Thursday will also work to forge community on campus -- and perhaps
eventually beyond. As regular readers become contributors and offer
regular comments. I also think that we'll maintain a blog roll for
contributors who maintain blogs with overlapping interests. The blogging
began as a venue for social networking as bloggers linked to friendly blogs and
relied on networks of associates from across the web to keep one another
informed on topics of common interest. Proper social networking sites have
refined this model considerably over the last decade, but blogrolls remain
(often in conjunction with the clever use of social networking sites) a key way
to communicate shared interests in the chaotic and unstructured space of the
internet. So, I hope that Teaching Thursday becomes more than just
required reading for folks interested in teaching here at UND (and elsewhere!),
but a jumping off point for access to like-minded individuals and resources
across the web. We'll see. Right now, we're still "<a
href="http://teachingthursday.wordpress.com/2009/02/12/coming-soon/">coming
soon...</a>". But make a note.
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IP: 99.170.154.217
URL:
DATE: 02/12/2009 05:34:36 PM
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The Chronicle of Higher Education has a lot of amusing first-person teaching-

experience reports. This might provide some model for some submission
guidelines.
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DATE: 02/11/2009 08:15:48 AM

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<a
alt=""
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20105371ff7c8970b
-pi" width="68" align="left" border="0"></a> History at the University of North
Dakota came to age with the arrival of the seminar. The seminar in history
originated in Germany and arrived in the US first at Harvard and then at Johns
Hopkins under the direction of Henry Baxter Adams. At UND it arrived via
the University of Wisconsin Madison with its collection of Hopkins graduates --
namely Frederick Jackson Turner and Charles H. Haskins. Orin G. Libby
learned under the seminar at Wisconsin and transplanted it to UND at the turn of
the century. He held the first seminars on U.S. History during the 1903-
1904 academic year and two years later he offered his famous seminars on the
history of the Northwest focusing on the history of North Dakota and
Canada. By 1907-08, he had arranged to get the papers from this seminar
published by the State Historical Society in their Collections.
The work by this seminar formed the foundation for the history of the state.
Along with the seminar came the seminar room. Large tables, maps,
reference books, dark wood panels, form the basic components of seminar
ambience. The Department of History's seminar room is 217 Merrifield. 
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20105371ff7cc970
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20105371ff7d7970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20111685ab13d970c
-pi" width="304" border="0"></a> Wood panels and the watchful eyes of
historians past create the setting for serious, seminar research. It's
disappointing that there are no women on the wall yet, but the collection of
photos is hardly systematic or representative of the department as a
whole. It features Clarence Perkins, Felix Vondracek, Philip Green, Louis
Geiger, John Harnsberger, and Robert Wilkins. Vondracek and Perkins were
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department heads in their day. Geiger and Wilkins were leaders in the
department and significant scholars. Green and Harnsberger, while
accomplished, left little impact on the department: Harnsberger eventually left
UND for Witchita State where he became department head. Green left UND for
Queen's College in Charlotte, NC. Elwyn Robinson looks on as well.
 <a
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20105371ff7e8970b
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> Like any good seminar rooms, it has
maps for reference. Many of these are the same aging Denoyer-Geppert
standing maps that appear <a
der-libbys-gaze-merrifield-209.html">in room 209</a>. The exception in the
large, detailed map of Great Britain on the wall. The central
walls of Merrifield hall are immense and conspicuously weight bearing. In
an effort to keep the classrooms from feeling like bank vaults they have windows
not only to the outside, but into the central hallway as well. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20105371ff7ec970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20105371ff7ee970b
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20105371ff7f2970b
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DATE: 02/10/2009 08:26:41 AM

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Cross-posted with <a
href="http://punkarchaeology.wordpress.com/">Punk
Archaeology</a>. With Lux Interior's death last week, I
offered <a href="http://punkarchaeology.wordpress.com/2009/02/06/50/">a short
post</a> on The Cramps' concert at the California State Mental Hospital on our
Punk Archaeology blog. It got me thinking about the close relationship
between punk music and place. I haven't thought systematically about it,
but in fragments, as I tried to link it to the importance of place within
archaeology. Punk as much as any other music played with place. In
their efforts to defy social conventions and question the accepted practices of
the music industry and bourgeois society, punk rockers challenged expectations
with their concerts. The engaged in theatrical, chaotic performances
openly rejecting the polished and choreographed sets associated with pop
music. By rejecting the systematic in their performances, they embraced
the spontaneous and contingent. This is not to say, however, that their
shows were accidental or random. There was an aura of
intentionality. The Cramps' show at a mental hospital was full of
meaningful references ranging from the tradition of performing to shut in of
various kinds to (as <a
href="http://punkarchaeology.wordpress.com/2009/02/06/50/#comments">Kostis noted
in his comment</a>) Antonin Artaud's Theater of the Absurd and Marquis de Sade's
famous efforts to direct plays while imprisoned at the hospital at Charenton
(one could also note M. Foucault's <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/676127">Madness and
Civilization</a>). The former evoked B.B. King's great live album at the
Cook Country Jail and Johnny Cash's concerts at Folsom Prison and San Quentin
(as well as a series of other well-known performances to inmates). While
these performances have been seen as acts of compassion by Cash and King, they
also make explicit the link between the dire nature of their music and the dire
state of the inmates. In fact, the power of these shows derives, in part,
from the authenticity of the performances. The inmates as audience have
actually shared the tortured stories of the performers. It speaks of an
intimacy that is absent from shows where the audience, the musician, and the
music dwell separately from one another. A concert at a mental
hospital depends upon the understood link between the audience and the music
established by folks like King and Cash, but turns it on its head. The
Cramps, with their theatrical stage shows, absurdist lyrics, and chaotic,
raucous sound, depend upon the place to define their music. They play the
music of the insane. "And we drove 3,000 miles to play for you people...
And somebody told me that you people are crazy, but I'm not so sure about that.
You seem to be alright to me." The playfulness with place has deep roots
in the punk movement. The moniker "garage rock" locates the entire genre
of music in the informal and marginal space of the garage. The garage is also a
symbol of suburbia and the dislocation of domestic space from the place of work
and the urban center . When punk bands played CBGB's or Max's Kansas City
(the name itself is another play on place) in New York, the garage band sound
made explicit their critique of bourgeois values; when the suburbia came to the
city, they presented not the well-ordered, picket-fence houses, but a sonic
dystopia. <a href="http://punkarchaeology.wordpress.com/2009/01/23/punk-
nostalgia-and-the-archaeology-of-musical-utopia/">As I posted earlier</a>, punk
rock played with time by evoking, manipulating, and mocking nostalgic themes in
American music. The Cramps dedicated their album A Date with Elvis
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to the late 50s/early 60s rocker Ricky Nelson. They also drew heavily
from the informal "low-fi" sound ironically insisting on a kind of musical
authenticity to underpin their blatantly silly lyrics and ridiculous stage
shows. Their songs show strong influences of both rockabilly and surf
rock. The Cramps' sound formed the foundation for later bands like The
White Stripes or The Black Keys or Jon Spencer's Blues Explosion who ironically
and playfully employed the authenticity of low-fi sound to highly textured,
remixed, and produced albums. Time and space remain central
archaeological concerns. Punk rock willingness to play with nostalgia and
authenticity and use place as a form of social and musical critique provides
foundations for a far more radical appreciation of archaeological contexts than
traditional chronological or functional analyses allow.
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TITLE: Another Abstract for a Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project Talk
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I've been invited to give a talk in the Dean of the Graduate School's Lecture
Series. The talk is on March 11th during the The Graduate School Scholarly
Forum (an annual conference highlighting the research of UND faculty and
students). It's always fun to give a talk to my peers here at the
University and a broader non-scholarly audience. I've given quite a few
PKAP talks over the last few years, and each time I present, I try to develop my
ideas a bit more and show another aspect of our research. For the talk
this spring, I am going to juxtapose our efforts to answer particular questions
regarding the site's place within the Mediterranean economy and local settlement
structure with our efforts to capture the performative aspects of archaeological
fieldwork and to produce a reflexive atmosphere of archaeological decision
making. The goal is to show not only how these aspects of the project
"work together" to produce unified and empirically significant conclusions, but
also to show how they challenge one another by providing space for the kind of
intellectual dissonance and counter-narratives that makes our work (that is the
process of archaeology) vital and self-aware. Five
Years at an Ancient Harbor in Cyprus New Perspectives on an Ancient Landscape
 The Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project (PKAP) began work
in the coastal zone of Pyla in Cyprus in 2003. Our initial exploration of
the area revealed a massive coastal site extending for over 1 km along the
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coastal plain. We quickly recognized that this site was remarkable both on
account of its coastal position and its size and complexity. Moreover, we
became aware that the previous archaeological work in the area had only reveal
small and isolated sections of the diverse array of archaeological remains
present. Consequently, beginning in 2004, the PKAP initiated a systematic,
multi-tiered investigation of the microregion designed to understand the
historical development of the in its political, economic, and cultural
context. Using the tools of intensive pedestrian survey, remote sensing of
various kinds, and targeted excavation, we produced a robust assemblage of
material capable of answering numerous questions about the history, function,
and chronology of the site. This fieldwork confirmed that people occupied
our corner of Cyprus from at least as early as the Late Bronze Age (ca. 1200 BC)
and fortified parts of the site during the Archaic to Hellenistic period (700
BC-BC 300). The site, however, flourished during Late Antiquity (AD400-
600) when it reached its greatest extent and included monumental religious
architecture, fine imported ceramics, and a significant functional diversity
across. At this time, sprawled for over a kilometer along the Cypriot
coast producing a scatter of material considerably larger than a villa, hamlet
or rural village yet smaller than a urbanized polis or city center.
Scholars have generally overlooked such ‚Äúmid-sized‚Äù sites in the Eastern
Mediterranean and, consequently, must of our research has focused on the key
role that such sites played in both the regional and local economy and within
the local settlement structure. Alongside these traditional components of
archaeological research, PKAP has sought to document the performative,
narrative, and reflexive components of the archaeological experience. By
drawing extensively on new media technologies and applications we have worked to
record the experience of archaeology and project it beyond the limits of the
field. Such programs are more than simply ancillary components to the
overall aims of the project, but complement the main lines of research by
emphasizing the multiple narratives present within the same body of
research. This practice not only remind project members of the dense web
of assumptions, methods, and procedures required to produce archaeological
knowledge, but also reinforces the ambivalence and ambiguity central to all
humanistic inquiry. 
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TITLE: A Rare Saturday Post for a Good Cause
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DATE: 02/07/2009 09:01:11 AM

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 I forgot remind my reading public of the inaugural <a
href="http://www.whyradioshow.org/">Why? radio show</a>. It is produced by
the <a href="http://www.philosophyinpubliclife.org/">University of North
Dakota's Institute of Philosophy and the Public Life (IPPL)</a>. <a
href="http://www.whyradioshow.org/aboutwhy.html">The host of the show is Jack
Russell Weinstein</a>, a fellow denizen of Merrifield Hall and professor in the
Department of Philosophy and Religion. His first guest will be Clay
Jenkins from <a href="http://www.jeffersonhour.org/">The Thomas Jefferson
Hour</a> (not Clay Aiken, as many had hoped). The show is a call-in style
radio show that seeks to "create a large-scale conversation between
philosophical professionals and the general public". I love the idea of
philosophical professionals (as opposed to professionals who do not lived
reflective lives). The show will be blogged live at <a
href="http://nancydevine.blogspot.com/">Nancy Devine</a> and even has <a
href="http://www.widgetbox.com/widget/my-widget-
ippl?wbx.refer=1&wbx.location=http://www.whyradioshow.org/community.html">it
s own widget</a>. In any event, the show will be at 5 pm CST on
Sunday. Tune in (via any number of old tech and <a
href="http://www.whyradioshow.org/community.html">new tech media</a>!) and if
you want to send in a question, here's the email: askwhy?[at]und[dot]edu.
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AUTHOR: Nancy Devine
EMAIL: ndev1@yahoo.com
IP: 24.111.46.75
URL: http://nancydevine.blogspot.com
DATE: 02/08/2009 11:59:14 AM
Thanks for mentioning the live blogging today. I hope it goes well.
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DATE: 02/06/2009 10:22:36 AM

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Lots of interesting and news worthy things this week: <ul>!
<li>Sad news about Tom Clifford's passing. He was President of the
University of North Dakota from 1971 to 1992. <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/25585876">Dan Rice's book</a> is the best
treatment of his term as President. The Alumni association has put up a
<a href="http://www.und.edu/clifford/html/biography.html">nice biography</a> and
<a href="http://www.undalumni.org/NetCommunity/Page.aspx?pid=982">interactive
space</a>.</li>!
<li>Congratulations to <a href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/2009/02/new-
griffon-10-archaeology-of-xenitia.html">Kostis Kourelis and all the
contributors</a> for the publication of <a
href="http://www.oxbowbooks.com/bookinfo.cfm/ID/67581//Location/DBBC">Archae
ology of Xenitia: Greek Immigration and Material Culture</a> in the
New Griffon publication series of the <a
href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/index.php/gennadius/">Gennadius Library</a> at the
American School of Classical Studies at Athens. This books came out of a panel
held at the 2007 Archaeological Institute of America meetings under the banner
of the Archaeology of the Medieval and Post Medieval Mediterranean Interest
Group.</li>!
<li><a
href="http://traumwerk.stanford.edu/archaeolog/2009/02/a_response_to_the_nation_
and_i.html#more">An interesting review and response</a> to Y. Hamilakis'
book, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/122424890">The Nation and Its
Ruins</a> at <a
href="http://traumwerk.stanford.edu/archaeolog/">Archaeolog</a>. </li>!
<li>Lux Interior of The Cramps died this past week. <a
href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5OMuj4FpII">The Cramps concert at the
California State Mental Hospital</a> remains one of the landmarks in <a
href="http://punkarchaeology.wordpress.com/">Punk Archaeology</a>.</li>!
<li><a href="http://axisofaccess.blogspot.com/2009/02/historical-
jesuses_05.html">Some good comments from Ryan Stander</a> over at <a
href="http://axisofaccess.blogspot.com/">Axis of Access </a>on my Historical
Jesus talk.</li>!
</ul>!
I have the feeling that I had more varia and quick hits, but I can't
remember them. So, the list will likely be updated. Have a good
weekend.
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TITLE: Teaching Thursday: The Instability of Hybrid Learning
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: teaching-thursday-the-instability-of-hybrid-learning
CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 02/05/2009 09:09:41 AM

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If we can summarize the first decade of the 21st century with a single term
it would be: hybridity. It is impossible to go even a day without hearing
about some kind of hybrid invention: hybrid cars, hybrid identities, hybrid
foods, hybrid research projects, and hybrid courses. In almost every case
the notion of hybridity evokes a positive response. The 21st century
hybrid brings together two objects, ideas, or concepts that are merely
satisfactory and creates a superior synthesis that preserves the character of
the original components (in some way) but eliminates some of the negative
attributes. We can all think: less pollution, less fat, less disciplinary
isolation. And most positively: better efficiency, better nutrition,
better collaboration. The positive character of the hybrid has even
appeared in scholarship in which scholars tout the hybrid identities of groups
in the past as presaging the dynamic identities of the modern age and superior
to groups that have remained isolated, pure, or simply defined. !
While there is indeed much to celebrate in terms of the hybrid in today's
culture, it is worth remembering, however, that hybrid identities are also
threatening, unstable, and, frankly, confusing. In a post-colonial
context, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/56319821">Homi Bhabha is
clear</a>: hybrid individuals threaten and destablized the clearly defined world
with its boundaries between the authority of the colonizer and the identity of
the colonized. We should not be overly romanced by the power of the
hybrid to bring out only the positive aspects of the combination and realize
that hybrids are, in many cases, inherently unsettling. They are
ambivalent, shape shifters that defy easy categorization and disrupt established
interpretative regimes and assumptions.!
This semester I introduced an overtly hybrid element in my Western
Civilization I class. I divided the course material into 4 parts some of
which happen in class and some of which happen online. Lectures are
podcasts, primary source readings are online, there is a basic book (<a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/62263657">P. Crone's Pre-Industrial
Societies</a>), and discussions rooted in the podcasts, primary source
readings, and the Crone book occur both online and in class. By moving lectures
from their tradition space during class to the internet and by spreading
discussion between the classroom and online, I intended to create a much more
flexible classroom environment where the class could review online lecture
material, discuss the basic primary and secondary sources, and spend time
explicitly developing certain skills (historical argumentation, academic
writing, study management) that are often squeezed or marginalized during a
crowded survey class. !
As the instructor, I have thoroughly enjoyed the flexibility that this
approach has given to the classroom. I can target specific problems of
understanding, allow discussions to meander through the student's interests,
and, at the same time, be less anxious about "getting through the
material" since some of the basic structure of information dissemination is
now presented online. !
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On the other hand, the students are struggling. I have received
multiple emails from students who simply "don't get the
class". This is after I stopped and talked with them at least twice
about how each component of the class (podcasts, discussion, Crone, primary
source reading) fits together. I've worked to explain how the
environment in which content is disseminated is as crucial to learning as the
material itself. To do this, I have tried to use a series of overlapping
metaphors for the relationship between the classroom and online
environments. The online environment with its wiki and threaded
discussion is "student led", voluntary (in a sense), and not bounded
by strict time limits; the classroom environment, that is in the lecture bowl
where the class meets once a week, is "instructor led" (no matter how
far they stray on a particular discussion or point, I can ultimately gather them
up and refocus them), required (inasmuch as they know that I can tell if they
don't come to class), and bounded by the limitations of the space and
time. Or more playfully: the online podcasts are "recorded in the
studio" where as my lectures in the classroom are a "live show",
and just because you have a CD of your favorite band, doesn't mean that you
don't want to go and hear them live. In fact, you'd expect the
live experience to be different; you can feed upon the energy from the audience,
have a more intimate relationship with the musicians, and . While this
isn't a perfect metaphor, it does challenge them to consider the environment
where learning takes place and how the same material in different contexts
(online or inclass, collaborative (on a wiki) or solitary (on a test)) makes a
difference. !
Despite these efforts to explain the benefits of a hybrid environment, the
class remains ill at ease. At first, I criticized my own ability to make
my pedagogy clear. But now, I have begun to realize that the hybridity of
the form is partially to blame. The course defies student expectations in
that the dissemination of material is not predicated on efficiency, specifically
tailored to a single tool or environment, and compartmentalized neatly for easy
digestion. The hybrid nature of the course is clearly part of the
issue. The expectations that students have for online course (relative
anonymity, ability to move at one's own pace, complete access to material in
an online venue) are defied since they know that they need to attend
class. On the other hand, their expectations of a classroom environment,
particularly for a lecture bowl type class that meets once a week, are not being
met either: they can't be passive and are expected to contribute to the
direction of the class time and engage the material in a public way.
Moreover, dissemination of information is not limited by the classroom time or
environment. There is material that I expect them to know and at least
try to use that will not be "covered" in class but emerge exclusively
through their engagement with the online environment.!
As the Hybrid Decade of the 21st century continues on, I suspect that the
unease experienced by my students will manifest itself as we are confronted by
increasing numbers of hybrid experiences. With the promise of progress
through hybrid approaches to pressing problems comes the instability and
ambivalence of hybrid experiences. !
For more Teaching Thursdays see:!
<a href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/2009/01/teaching-thursday-history-of-
domestic.html">Teaching Thursday: History of Domestic Architecture</a> <a
aching-thursday-teaching-demonstrations.html">Teaching Thursday: Teaching
Demonstrations</a> (K. Kourelis) <a
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aching-thursday-revised-classes-for-spring.html">Teaching Thursday: Revised

Classes for Spring</a> <a
href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/2009/01/teaching-thursday-architecture-
1400.html">Teaching Thursday: Architecture 1400-Present</a> (K. Kourelis) <a
aching-tuesday-trends-in-grades-in-a-western-civilization-course.html">Teaching
Tuesday: Trends in Grades in a Western Civilization Course</a> <a
href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/2008/12/teaching-thursday-
interviews.html">Teaching Thursday: Interviews</a> (K. Kourelis) <a
aching-thursday-rethinking-lectures-content-and-the-classroom-
vibe.html">Teaching Thursday: Rethinking Lectures, Content, and the Classroom
Vibe</a> <a
aching-thursday-teaching-by-templates.html">Teaching Thursday: Teaching by
Templates</a> <a
aching-thursday-a-historical-perspective-on-teaching-research-methods-with-kate-
turabian.html">Teaching Thursday: A Historical Perspective on Teaching Research
Methods with Kate Turabian</a> <a
aching-thursday-teaching-time.html">Teaching Thursday: Teaching Time</a> <a
href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/2008/11/teaching-thursday-classroom-
modernism.html">Teaching Thursday: Classroom Modernism (K. Kourelis)</a> <a
aching-thursday-a-day-early-teaching-the-election.html">Teaching Thursday:
Teaching the Election</a> <a
aching-thursday-making-room-for-experiments.html">Teaching Thursday: Making Room
for Experiments</a> <a
aching-thur-5.html">Teaching Thursday: More on Writing</a> <a
aching-thur-2.html">Teaching Thursday: Making the Test</a> <a
aching-thur-1.html">Teaching Thursday: Red pens, Reading, and Assessment</a> <a
aching-thursd.html">Teaching Thursday: The Structure of Seminar</a> <a
href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/2008/09/teaching-thursday-jennifer-
balls.html">Teaching Thursday: Jennifer Ball's Teaching Thursday</a> (K.
Kourelis and J. Ball) <a
aching-thur-3.html">Teaching Thursday: The Changing Meaning of the Large
Lecture</a> <a
aching-thur-2.html">Teaching Thursday: The Modern Graduate Student</a> <a
aching-thur-1.html">Teaching Thursday: Reading the Digital Palimpsest for Traces
of an Analog World</a> <a
href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/2008/09/teaching-thursday-who-are-my-
students.html">Teaching Thursday: Who Are My Students?</a> (K. Kourelis) <a
aching-thursd.html">Teaching Thursday: Another View on High Tech Teaching</a> <a
aching-thur-1.html">Teaching Thursday: Transmedia Teaching</a> <a
href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/2008/08/teaching-thursday.html">Teaching
Thursday</a> (K. Kourelis) <a
aching-thursd.html">Teaching Thursday</a> 
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TITLE: The Historical Jesus
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BASENAME: the-historical-jesus
CATEGORY: Religion
DATE: 02/04/2009 08:24:40 AM

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Every couple of years, I get asked to talk about the historical Jesus.
While this falls toward the ragged fringes of my expertise, in most communities
where I have lived, there simply aren't very many historians who think about the
pre-modern Mediterranean. Consequently, for some folks, the 5th century AD
(or so) looks about a good as 1st century BC/AD. Today, I am talking in
the <a
href="http://www2.und.nodak.edu/our/calendar_new/index.php?eventid=17809&dat
e=">Joint Campus Ministry Association's Theology for Lunch series</a>.
Apparently, there will a free lunch (soup!!) on offer. I'll have 20
minutes to present something, and after that there will be about 20 minutes for
conversation. Since I don't know the group, I am going to try to present a
fairly broad perspective on the topic hoping that the discussion will lead to
specific areas of interest to the group. The basic argument that I'll make
is that the "historical" Jesus has meant different things to different people
through time. In fact, the historical Jesus could as easily mean
the view of Jesus using any number of historical methods and
epistemological perspectives as the view of Jesus as a unified "historical"
artifact with well-defined features derived from some kind of "scientific"
study. This will lead me to focus, then, on the key role of context --
both ancient and modern -- in understanding how various historical (and other
interpretive) regimes generated a Jesus who was meaningful to specific groups,
situations, and individuals, but nevertheless sufficiently coherent to be
enduring and recognizable. To reinforce this somewhat, I'll spend
the second 10 minutes of the talk preparing a (very) basic sketch of the
cultural, political, and religious life Roman Mediterranean in order to provide
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at least one perspective on the context for the New Testament texts. But I
will emphasize that simply placing Jesus in his ancient context does not
necessarily produce a more "historically accurate" depiction of Jesus "the
man". In fact, placing Jesus in an ancient context runs the risk of
impoverishing the great diversity and brilliance of the Christian traditions
which created meaningful images of Jesus throughout the ages. Just as the
ancient writers created a Jesus that was meaningful in their context, subsequent
generations have contributed their own perspectives on the founder of
Christianity. If post-modern approaches to the past have taught us
anything, it is to celebrate the plurality of meaning in the historical
record. In the context of the historical Jesus, this opens the door to
finding significance in a aspects of the historical figure of Jesus that might
have been obscured by accretions of time, scholarly or popular neglect, or the
overwhelming pressure of contemporary approaches and concerns. In fact,
Christians often observe that Jesus is a figure who transcends time and
context. By looking at Jesus historically -- that is through the eyes of
history as a dynamic discipline as well as through time -- we have the chance to
recognize Jesus in ways that destabilize our expectations, challenge our
assumptions, and renews faith. But I am an amateur. For a
professional, check out Phil Harland's awesome blog: <a
href="http://www.philipharland.com/Blog/">Religions of the Ancient
Mediterranean</a>. It's the Bentley of Ancient Christianity Blogs with a
spec-ta-cu-lar series of podcasts on <a
href="http://www.philipharland.com/Blog/2009/01/28/historical-jesus-in-context-
podcast-episodes-and-the-strike/">The Historical Jesus in Context</a>. 
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IP: 136.244.13.82
URL:
DATE: 02/04/2009 08:37:51 AM
My favorite way to start the Art History survey is to explain BC and AD, versus
BCE and CE. One argument I use that keeps me out of deep waters is the
scientific realization that the real Jesus was born after the year 0, making the
whole numbering system messed up. Under this light, the Jewish, Arabic (even
Byzantine) dating system doesn't seem as bad. Another favorite strategy to avoid
the discussion of the real Jesus but keeping it historical is to talk about
Saint John Prodromos, who was essentially a freedom fighter, which is why he
hang out in caves (not unlike some well-known Islamic contemporaries of ours).
Historical Jesus had to befriend the militant Jewish faction, causing all kinds
of theological problems: how/why does some one NOT divine baptize someone
divine? Lots of fun with the Early Christians and the wonderful tensions of
religion.
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COMMENT:
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AUTHOR: Paqid Yirmeyahu

EMAIL: subscriptions@netzarim.co.il
IP: 84.109.122.129
URL: http://www.netzarim.co.il
DATE: 02/04/2009 12:30:01 PM
You'll find significant documented historical information not published in the
Christian world at:
www.netzarim.co.il
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TITLE: Two More Springtime Conferences
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BASENAME: two-more-springtime-conferences
DATE: 02/03/2009 08:16:12 AM

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The Spring conference schedule is jam-packed this year! Two more
interesting events: <a href="http://www.indiana.edu/~sf8/">Shifting
Frontiers VIII</a> is being hosted by Indiana University, April 2-5, 2009.
The focus this year will be on "Shifting Cultural Frontiers in Late
Antiquity". It looks good albeit <a
href="http://www.indiana.edu/~sf8/Program.php">with predictable panels</a> on
the typical Late Antique topics: Letters (II), the body (III), cultural
negotiation between religious groups (IV), identity (V), ritual (VI), memory
(VII), "material culture" (IX), historiography and cultural representation (X),
imperial power (Xb), and the frontier (XI). All and all, the panels
provide a nice survey of the pressing issues in scholarship on Late
Antiquity. At the same exact time, the <a
href="http://sitemaker.umich.edu/rac2009/session_topics__speakers__and_abstracts
">Roman Archaeology Conference</a> (RAC) will occur at the University of
Michigan including an interesting panel on the "<a
#troubled">Troubled Adolescence of Late Antique Studies...</a>", Cam Grey's
paper in this panel has particular relevance to our work on Cyprus (<a
#Grey%20-%20Abstract">Stuck in the Middle: Between Grand Theory and the Case
Study in the Countrysides of Late Antiquity</a>). <a
#comparativeissues">Another interesting panel</a> will focus on comparative
approaches to the archaeology of the Roman rural landscape. It's
perhaps instructive to note where the two conferences overlap even though it is
always difficult and dangerous to judge a book by the cover or a panel by the
titles and abstracts of the papers. They both show marked interest in
issues of identity, particularly of groups on the periphery, and various forms
of representation and reception - particularly as related to urban culture or
elite power. Both conferences also consider the relationship between religion
and ritual in a Roman context. Other than that there was not as much
overlap as one might hope. The RAC had relatively little interest in the
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archaeology of the body or, at least explicitly, in the issue of authority,

which has become an important topic of discussion for scholars of the Late
Antique world. Shifting Frontiers, for their part, showed little sustained
or systematic interest in the Late Roman economy in the countryside or the city
(outside of the panel on "material culture"). Curiously, Shifting
Frontiers has almost nothing, explicitly on epigraphy even though inscriptions
marked one of the key ways that scholars have observed the conflicting,
overlapping, and complementary spheres of influence produced through
languages. Both conferences look interesting and it is always
valuable to see how the lines are drawn in the discipline between archaeologists
and historians, Romanists and Late Romanists, scholars of culture and scholars
of material culture, et c. 
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TITLE: Working Paper: Towers and Fortifications at Vayia in the Southeast
Corinthia
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BASENAME: working-paper-towers-and-fortifications-at-vayia-in-the-southeast-
corinthia
DATE: 02/02/2009 07:42:28 AM

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Lest you think that I am all blog and no... publish. David Pettegrew
and I have submitted an article to Hesperia focusing on our work in the Vayia
Microregion. Faithful readers of this blog have seen this article emerge
from roughish field notes (see below), <a
ree-new-sites-in-the-eastern-corinthia.html">to conference paper</a>, to working
article suitable for submission. The goal of the article was to present
three new sites in the Corinthia with enough analysis to make them
understandable. We intentionally shied away from too many grandiose
conclusions or any broad reaching synthesis in large part because there has been
so much synthetic and interpretive work done, recently, on fortified rural
sites. Our effort here was to produce another set of examples of such
sites from a region that was typically overlooked in discussions of
fortifications in the countryside. Here's the abstract: <blockquote>
Although rural towers have long been central to the discussion of the
fortified landscapes of Classical and Hellenistic Greece, the Corinthia has
rarely played into the conversation, despite the historical significance of ex-
urban fortifications for the territory. In this paper, we report on the
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recent investigation by the Eastern Korinthia Archaeological Survey of two

towers and associated fortifications in the immediate vicinity of Lychnari Bay
in the southeast Corinthia. By integrating topographic study, intensive
survey, and architectural analysis, we argue that these three sites served to
protect and guard both an economically productive stretch of the Corinthian
countryside and important passes northward to Corinth. </blockquote>
<a
_Towers_Fortifications_Working.pdf">Here's a link to a working version of the
article</a>. It was a pleasure working with David Pettegrew on this
project. He is one of the most careful thinkers about the Corinthian
countryside (or the ancient countryside more broadly). I hope that he
benefited from my interest in ancient fortifications. One of my many,
ongoing projects is a synthetic article that brings together the recent work on
fortifications in the Korinthian countryside and examines the various
interlocking and overlapping strategies at play in the highly visible
fortifications present in this area. Finally, it was exciting to write on
the results of extensive (rather than intensive survey) and evoke the voice of
so many peripatetic scholars whose walks produced informal plans, photographs,
and field notes and provided the first links between the ancient and modern
Greek landscape. For more on our fieldwork in the Vayia
Microregion: <a
Microregion</a> <a
e-corinthian.html">The Corinthian Countryside: The Site of Ano Vayia</a> <a
of Ano Vayia</a> <a
e-corinthia-1.html">The Corinthian Countryside: The Lychnari Tower</a> <a
Corinthia</a> <a
e-corinthia-3.html">The Corinthian Countryside: Classical Vayia</a> <a
e-corinthian.html">The Corinthian Countryside: History and Archaeology</a> <a
Thoughts</a> <a
Corinthia</a> (W. Caraher and D. Pettegrew)
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TITLE: A Conference on Kourion at the University of Pennsylvania Museum
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BASENAME: a-conference-on-kourion-at-the-university-of-pennsylvania-museum
DATE: 01/30/2009 09:02:45 AM

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Rather than a typical Friday quick hit and varia post, here's a conference
dedicated to The University of Pennsylvania's work at the site of Kourion:<a
href="http://www.museum.upenn.edu/cyprus">The Ancient Kourion Area: Penn
Museum's Legacy and Recent Research in Cyprus: A Conference Commemorating the
Seventy-Fifth Anniversary of the Museum's Expedition</a> March 27-29, 2009
 Program FRIDAY, MARCH 27 7:00
p.m. Welcome and opening
remarks: C. Brian Rose, UPMAA Deputy Director and Curator-in-Charge,
Mediterranean Section Ambassador Andreas Kakouris, Republic of
Cyprus 7:15 Keynote: Stuart Swiny, Director, Institute of
Cypriot Studies, University at Albany , ‚ÄúThe Land of Kuri: How American and
Cypriot Archaeologists Revealed the Past of the Island‚Äôs Southern Shore‚Äù
8:15 ‚Äì 9:00 Reception 
SATURDAY, MARCH 28 9:00
Welcome C.Brian Rose
Session I: Hippos and Humans Settle Prehistoric Kourion
9:10 Alan Simmons, University of Nevada Las Vegas ‚Äì
‚ÄúSo, Who Were the First Cypriots?‚ÄîPerspectives on When and Why People
Initially Came to Cyprus‚Äù 9:40 Ellen Herscher,
Univ. of Pennsylvania Museum ‚Äì ‚ÄúBetween Two Worlds: Phaneromeni and the
Transition to the Late Bronze Age‚Äù 10:10 Gisela Walberg,
University of Cincinnati ‚Äì "Excavating a Late Bronze Age Major Coastal Urban
Center - UPenn and UC at Episkopi Bamboula" 10:40 coffee break
 Session II: Late Bronze Age Roots of the Kingdom of Kourion
11:10 Pavlos Flourentzos, Director, Department of Antiquities,
Cyprus ‚Äì ‚ÄúA Contribution to the Topography of Bronze Age Kourion, A New
Suggestion‚Äù 11:40 Maria Iacovou, University of Cyprus ‚Äì
‚ÄúSite Location and Status Identification: The Kouris River Valley Regional
Authorities in the Late Second and First Millennia B.C.‚Äù 12:10
discussion 12:30 ‚Äì 2:00 lunch break 
Session III: Research at Kourion, Past and Present
2:00 Thomas Kiely, British Museum ‚Äì ‚ÄúAncient
Kourion On-line. The British Museum Excavations of 1895 in Cyberspace‚Äù
2:30 Tom Davis, Cyprus American Archaeological
Research Institute ‚Äì ‚ÄúAn Amateur‚Äôs Dream: McFadden at Kourion‚Äù
3:00 Nathan Harper, University of Nevada Las Vegas
‚Äì ‚ÄúAncient Cypriots in the Kouris River Valley: The University Museum‚Äôs
Contribution to Physical Anthropology‚Äù 3:30 coffee
break Session IV: From City Kingdom to Roman City
3:50 Sabine Fourrier, CNRS Lyon, France ‚Äì "The
Topography of Cult in the Iron Age Kingdom of Kourion"
802
4:20 Demos Christou, former director, Department of

Antiquities, Cyprus ‚Äì ‚ÄúExcavations of the Cyprus Department of Antiquities
at Kourion, 1975-1998‚Äù 4:50 Michael Given,
University of Glasgow ‚Äì ‚ÄúFunerary Landscapes at Kourion's Amathus Gate
Cemetery‚Äù 5:15 ‚Äì 5:30 discussion
 SUNDAY, MARCH 29 Session V: The Christian Era
9:00 Benjamin Costello IV, SUNY Buffalo ‚Äì ‚ÄúThe
Earthquake House at Kourion: An Analysis of the Material Culture‚Äù
9:30 David Rupp, Canadian Institute in Greece ‚Äì
‚ÄúTo Be, or Not To Be. The Limits of Antiochene and Christian Influence on the
Floor Mosaics of the Early Fifth Century AD Eustolios Complex at Kourion,
Cyprus‚Äù 10:00 John Rosser, Boston College ‚Äì ‚ÄúThe Episcopal
Basilica at Kourion‚Äù 10:30 coffee break 10:50
Marina Solomidou-Ieronymidou, Curator of Antiquities, Department of Antiquities,
Cyprus ‚Äì ‚ÄúThe Medieval Sugar-Mills of Episkopi Serayia and Kolossi, and
Sugar Production in Medieval Cyprus‚Äù 11:20 William Woys
Weaver, Drexel University ‚Äì ‚ÄúThe Foods of Kourion through a Medieval Lens:
An Ethnographic Analysis‚Äù 11:50 ‚Äì 12:15 discussion and
closing remarks
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TITLE: Teaching Thursday: Teaching Demonstrations
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: teaching-thursday-teaching-demonstrations
CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 01/29/2009 08:09:04 AM

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One of the most bizarre rituals in the interview process is the teaching
demonstration. I suppose not every university asks their candidates to do
such a thing, but from my experiences as both an interviewer and interviewee,
most schools that prioritize teaching do. The Department of History at the
University of North Dakota is no different and having seen three groups of
candidates over the last four years, I feel like some critique of the process
(not the candidates!) is in order. First, anyone who has done a teaching
demonstration during an interview knows how bizarre the experience can be.
Typically, you are "invited" to give a lecture in a section of a survey
class. I've taught the French Revolution, Roman Greece, the Augustan Age,
and 19th century Marxism over the course of my relatively modest career as an
interviewee. While I consider myself fairly comfortable in a lecture or
teaching environment, these guest lectures were almost always awkward. In
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one memorable case, I had to give a mock teaching lecture in an empty lecture
bowl as the students were all on summer leave! I still remember the strange
acoustics when I spoke and the dead silence whenever I stopped speaking in this
cavernous, empty, classroom. Even more realistic venues -- say, with
actual students in the seats -- are still hardly ideal environments to showcase
one's teaching. Trying to get students to interact with a lecture, quickly
develop some kind of rapport, and cover material in a way that is both
representative of one's teaching style, but generic enough not to offend folks
who might have significantly different ideas of how to teach a class or a
topic. I always tried to do something for everyone in my teaching
demonstration. I'd lecture for a bit, then show that I could interact with
the students in a Socratic style, question and answer, and then show that I
could amuse the class and keep their attention with a witty anecdote, and then
use a primary source. To this day my colleagues tease me for one
desperate effort to engage the students in class. When discussing
Augustus' use of visual propaganda (following <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/18069543">Zanker</a>, for example), I noted
the significance of gestures in making an imperial figure immediately
comprehensible to a broad audience. I could tell that the students did not
really understand what a gesture was and how it could communicate identity or
even ideology. So, in an act of desperation, I sought a modern parallel and came
upon the <a href="http://www.heisman.com/">Heisman Trophy</a> pose (stupid
Desmond Howard). The students laughed and maybe got the point. I got
the job, so some silliness didn't disqualify myself from employment. 
Our positions at UND almost always require a substantial commitment to
teaching both graduate and undergraduate students, and we expect our candidates
to be comfortable in the classroom. There is almost no good way of
determining that. One is always uncomfortable in someone else's classroom,
particularly if one is discussing a topic that is at the far fringes of one's
expertise. Moreover, the teaching demonstration rarely demonstrates
whether a candidate can achieve rapport with a students (what works for a fun,
guest lecture can confuse students over the course of an entire semester).
 This isn't one of those posts that gives a candidate advice on how to
give a good teaching demonstration nor do I have any alternative except maybe to
drop the teaching demonstration entirely. I am not sure that it works
except in extreme cases where a candidate is paralyzed in front of a group of
students or cannot command their attention or is so instantly connected with the
demographic in the room that they create a new standard for rapport and student
engagement. In most cases, however, these aspects of a candidates
personality will come out in other parts of the interview. The ability to
command a room, advance an organized argument, and think on their feet, should
come through in a job talk, for example. Ability to engage students would
be just as apparent in less formal meetings. For more Teaching
Thursdays see: <a
aching-thursday-revised-classes-for-spring.html">Teaching Thursday: Revised
Classes for Spring</a> <a
href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/2009/01/teaching-thursday-architecture-
1400.html">Teaching Thursday: Architecture 1400-Present</a> (K. Kourelis) <a
Tuesday: Trends in Grades in a Western Civilization Course</a> <a
interviews.html">Teaching Thursday: Interviews</a> (K. Kourelis) <a
804
Vibe</a> <a
Templates</a> <a
Methods with Kate Turabian</a> <a
aching-thursday-teaching-time.html">Teaching Thursday: Teaching Time</a> <a
modernism.html">Teaching Thursday: Classroom Modernism (K. Kourelis)</a> <a
Teaching the Election</a> <a
for Experiments</a> <a
aching-thur-5.html">Teaching Thursday: More on Writing</a> <a
aching-thur-2.html">Teaching Thursday: Making the Test</a> <a
aching-thur-1.html">Teaching Thursday: Red pens, Reading, and
Assessment</a> <a
aching-thursd.html">Teaching Thursday: The Structure of Seminar</a> <a
Kourelis and J. Ball) <a
Lecture</a> <a
aching-thur-2.html">Teaching Thursday: The Modern Graduate Student</a> <a
of an Analog World</a> <a
students.html">Teaching Thursday: Who Are My Students?</a> (K. Kourelis) <a
aching-thursd.html">Teaching Thursday: Another View on High Tech
Teaching</a> <a
aching-thur-1.html">Teaching Thursday: Transmedia Teaching</a> <a
Thursday</a> (K. Kourelis) <a
aching-thursd.html">Teaching Thursday</a>
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DATE: 01/28/2009 08:15:00 AM

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<a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2010536fda768970
alt=""
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2010536fda76e970c
-pi" width="64" align="left" border="0"></a> As part of my project to document
the space of the second floor of Merrifield Hall, with a particular emphasis on
the space used by the department of history, I have started with Room 209.
(For my first effort <a
hall.html">see here</a>). Structurally, the room is interesting in that a
partition wall separates it from my office (209B). The wall is made of
sheet rock and thin as a result I hear almost everything that goes on in the
adjoining classroom. (And sometimes I do feel like <a
href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8A0rhVG91U">Aerosmith in their famous
video with Run DMC</a>.) The room seats 55 or so easily and is one of the
more spacious classrooms in Merrifield. It has three features that most
historians today can not live without: maps, a digital projector, and a closet
filled with... stuff. The maps are the Denoyer-Geppert floor standing
models -- one set dates to perhaps 1943 (no map is later than 1942) and the
other to 1960. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2010536fda7bd970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2010536f48bc2970b
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> The big windows provide
great views of the sunrise in the winter. Many mornings it is possible to
find Gordon Iseminger diligently inscribing the key terms for his class on the
chalkboards. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2010536fda7c6970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2010536f48bc8970b
806

href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2010536fda7d3970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2010536fda7d7970c
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> The most striking features of the room,
however, are two prints produced by the <a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine_Art_Society">Fine Art Society</a>.
The prints show battle scenes -- suitable for a history classroom, it would
seem. The more interesting thing is that both prints have a plaque
attached to their frames that states: "Presented to the Pioneer Club by E.H.
Thursby 1892. E.H. Thursby was among the "founding fathers" of the
University. He appears to have been a wealth land owner from <a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Towner,_North_Dakota">Towner, North
Dakota</a>. While he was not a member of the original board of regents, he
did offer the first full scholarship to the school in 1890 and made it available
for any resident of McHenry Country (see the <a
href="http://www.library.und.edu/Collections/BoardofRegents/BORv3p76_100.htm">Bo
ard of Regent's Minutes June 12, 1890</a>). <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2010536f48bd1970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2010536f48bda970b
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2010536f48be7970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2010536fda7e4970c
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> The Pioneer Club is almost certainly
the Pioneer Reading Club. This organization was <a
href="javascript:pop2('citation.php?CISOROOT=/davies&CISOPTR='+citationUrl()
,'400',%20'150')">a women's reading club organized in 1885</a>. <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/dept/library/Collections/og113.html">The minute
book from 1899-1901</a> shows the names of many of the most prominent women in
Grand Forks -- including the wives of faculty members (Josephine Connell Wheeler
(presumably the wife of Henry Wheeler, a prominent local doctor) , Lillian Cool
Babcock (wife of Earl Babcock, who would server the university in almost every
capacity over a long career), Belle G. Estes (wife of Ludovic Estes, the first
Ph.D. hired by the university and a physicist), a Mrs. Woodworth (either the
wife or daughter of Horace B. Woodworth), Mrs. Kennedy (presumably the wife of
Joseph Kennedy, longtime professor of education), Mrs. Brannon(presumably wife
of Melvin Brannon, professor of biology). These women met frequently to
read and discuss books and issues of current affairs. They also worked to
raise money. Perhaps their most significant achievement was working to
secure funding for the Grand Forks Public Library. Apparently the group
enlisted William "Billy" Budge (whose wife appear to have been active in the
reading club) to solicit funds from Andrew Carnegie. In any event, one of
this groups interests was art, and at various times they sought to acquire
etchings and prints for the library, for the University, and for a private
collection that they displayed and discussed in the community and in small towns
throughout North Dakota. It's not entirely clear to me how the two prints
in Merrifield 209 came into the possession of the University, but the close ties
between the Pioneer Reading Club and the University make it not
surprising. Not only did the club include many faculty wives, but
President Merrifield was known to give the occasional talk to the group and the
807
group had given several gifts to the University over its existence. It may
even be possible that these prints came from the Lander family who were
prominent local real estate developers and Mrs. Lander was active in the Pioneer
Reading Club. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2010536fda7ea970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2010536fda7f1970c
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TITLE: More on Dreams...
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BASENAME: more-on-dreams
CATEGORY: Books
CATEGORY: Byzantium
CATEGORY: Religion
CATEGORY: Science
DATE: 01/27/2009 08:13:12 AM

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The regular readers of this blog know that I have <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/42366325">an emerging interest in dreams with
a focus on the relationship between religion (particularly the phenomenon of
inventio) and archaeology</a> in Greece. Even more specifically, I've
thought a bit about the different (but related) roles that predictive dreams
played in disciplines influenced by the early 20th century modernist
discourse. For example, religiously inspired dreams appear
occasionally in otherwise highly "scientific" archaeological reports and seem to
have led the discovery of specific artifacts (relics!), buildings, or
features. This intersection of religious dream and scientific archaeology
allowed the scientific discourse of archaeology to bridge the gap, if just
momentarily, and create a space where it was possible to reconcile long standing
religious phenomenon and "empirical" arguments. This space, in turn,
played a part in the creation of nationalist discourses which typically
accommodated by mystical and scientific bases for national identities.
I've also suggested that the role of predictive dreams in anthropological
discourse (as well as the scientific discipline of laography (or folklore
studies)) was similar, although these dreams tended to be stripped of religious
power and transformed into artifacts of continuity between Greek folk and their
ancient and Byzantine predecessors. Finally, I have noted that dreams
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have a significant place in the field of psychoanalysis and in Freud's works,

most notably his <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/42366325">Interpretation of
Dreams</a>. Freudian thought was, of course, characteristic of
modernism and sought to place the unconscious mind of firmer "scientific"
footing. It appears that Freudian ideas first circulated in Greece during
the third decade of the 20th century and among the first generation of Greeks to
explore Freud's ideas was Angelos Tanagras (P. Hartocolis, "A Letter from
Greece," Journal of American Pschoanalytic Association 48 (2000),
675). I spent yesterday afternoon reading through A. Tanagras,
<a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1991839">Psychophysical Elements
in Parapsychological Traditions (New York 1967)</a> on the recommendation
<a href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/">of a colleague</a>. Originally
published as La Destin et la Change in 1930, this book sought to
integrate Freudian psychological analysis and research into the
parapsychological phenomenon ranging from telekinetics to telepathy and
clairvoyance. Dreams feature prominently in his book -- including dreams
that lead to the discovery of lost objects. Tanagras, following much early
20th century parapsychological research, attempts to argue that the mind can
control the material world through not only the power of suggestion but also the
manipulation of subatomic particles. His arguments are based upon numerous
interviews and sworn testimony of members of the Greek bourgeoisie (doctors,
lawyers, newspaper editors, bankers and the like) and interlaced with a strongly
Freudian understanding of mind. In fact, it appears that the unconscious
was every bit as powerful -- if not more so -- as the conscious mind in its
ability to manipulate and influence the material world. It is worth noting
that Tanagras makes an effort to apply the principles of parapsychology to "evil
eye" -- the practice of cursing an individual through a jealous gaze and a
common phenomenon in Greek and Eastern Mediterranean folk traditions. 
While Tanagras does not deal with archaeological dreams specifically, his
research follows a now well-trod path of attempting to explain and accommodate
"supernatural" or even religious phenomena within the emerging (and expanding)
scientific discourse. Efforts to validate scientifically the "folk"
traditions in a Greek context -- whether by categorizing them as persistent
remnants of ancient practices or through juxtaposing religiously inspired dreams
and empirical discoveries or establishing a scientific basis for supernatural
phenomenon -- worked to create the foundation for a modern society which stood
close to the center of the emerging discourse of nationalism in a Greek context
(for a more subtle reading of this complex process see : <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/27938075">J. Faubion, Modern Greek
Lessons: A Primer in Historical Constructivism. (Princeton
1993)</a>.) Update: For more on Tanagras, <a
href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/2009/01/angelos-tanagras.html">check out
Kostis Kourelis excellent post</a>! Update 2: <a
href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/2009/01/tanagras-and-archaeology.html">Kostis
has contributed more to the link between Tanagras and archaeology</a> including
the relationship between the renowned archaeologist A. Philadelpheus and
Tanagras. Philadelpheus apparently dedicated his <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1742372">Monuments of Athens</a> to
Tanagras. Even more interesting is that Tanagras has an autobiography with
a copy at the Elliot Garrett Parapsychology Foundation Library.
Update 3: More brilliant blogging by <a
href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/2009/01/tanagras-and-
kourouniotes.html">Kostis Kourelis on Tanagras, parapsychology, and
archaeology</a>. 
809
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TITLE: Metadata Monday
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BASENAME: metadata-monday
DATE: 01/26/2009 08:16:11 AM

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I haven't done a Metadata Monday for a while, so perhaps it is time for a
quick metadata update for this blog. As I have argued before,
metadata is less interesting for the volume of visitors than for the type of
visitors. If we accept the idea that web-reading habits play a role in
forming virtual communities on the web, then it worth making the structure of
these communities a bit more obvious. The most common referring blogs to
my site are: 1) <a href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/">Buildings,
Objects, Situations</a> (Kostis Kourelis) 2) <a
href="http://rogueclassicism.com/">Rogue Classicism</a> 3) <a
href="http://grandforkslife.blogspot.com/">Grand Forks Life</a> (I had to beg
him to keep a link to my blog on his blog roll! So click through for me to give
him some traffic!) 4) <a
href="http://archaeoastronomy.wordpress.com/">Archaeoastronomy</a> (Alun
Salt) 5) <a href="http://westmelrose.blogspot.com/">Thoughts from West
Melrose</a> 6) <a href="http://electricarchaeologist.wordpress.com/">Electric
Archaeologist</a> (Shawn Graham) 7) <a
href="http://historicalarchaeologyintheancientmediterranean.typepad.com/">Histor
ical Archaeology in the Ancient Mediterranean</a> (Brandon Olson) 8) <a
Group</a> 9) <a href="http://antiquatedvagaries.blogspot.com/">Antiquated
Vagaries</a> 10) <a href="http://bsahistory.blogspot.com/">History of the
British School at Athens</a> (David Gill) Since the inception of this
blog about a year and a half ago, I've had just over 40,000 page views. In
the last year, I've had just under 20,000 visits (almost 30,000 page
views). The average time on the site over the last year has been
1:13. The top 10 countries with readers of my blog: 1)
US 2) Greece 3) UK 4) Canada 5) Italy 6) Australia 7)
Germany 8) Cyprus 9) France 10) Turkey The top 10 states:
1) California 2) Pennsylvania 3) Minnesota 4) New York 5) North
Dakota 6) Ohio 7) Illinois 8) Florida 9) Texas 10) New Jersey
And for Sam Fee and my wife , the top browser by just over 1% is Firefox:
1) Firefox (43.67%) 2) Explorer (42.66%) 3) Safari (8.10%) 4) Opera
(2.93%) 5) Chrome (1.38%) The top OS: 1) Windows (80.60%) 2)
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Mac (18.08%) 3) Linux (0.98%) 4) iPhone (0.08%) 5) iPod (0.05%) 

I have no idea what this means in a cosmic sense, except that it provides an
interesting overview of my readers. Thanks for reading! 
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TITLE: Happy Australia Day!
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DATE: 01/26/2009 07:44:36 AM

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My wife (who is Australian) and I (who am not) celebrated Australia Day last
night with a meal of lamb and prawns. It was delicious and fun even though
it was -10 and dark at the time rather than a more holiday appropriate 85 and
sunny. It's the 60th anniversary of Australian citizenship this
year. Prior to 1949, Australians were simply British Subjects. 
We both wish that we could have spent the holiday -- which commemorates the
arrival of the "First Fleet" in 1788 (11 ships sent out from England to found a
prison colony in Australia)-- with friends and family (and warmth) in
Australia. Australia Day is critiqued in Australia in a similar
spirit to Columbus Day in the U.S. Perhaps it is fitting that <a
href="http://www.australianoftheyear.org.au/pages/index.asp">Australian of the
Year</a> this year <a
href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/01/25/2473920.htm">was Mick
Dodson, a noted Indigenous Australian leader</a> and a University administrator
and Professor at Australian National University. It would have been nice
if the <a href="http://content-
usa.cricinfo.com/ausvrsa2008_09/engine/current/match/351687.html">Australian
Cricket team would have obliged and won.</a> <a
bottom: 0px" height="74" alt="Flag_of_Australia.svg"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2010536edf52a970b
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2010536edf530970
bottom: 0px" height="74" alt="Coat_of_arms_of_Australia.svg"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2010536f7699b970c
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TITLE: Abstract for the Modern Greek Studies Association Annual Meeting
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BASENAME: abstract-for-the-modern-greek-studies-association-annual-meeting
DATE: 01/23/2009 02:26:40 PM

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Over the last week, I've been working with Lita Tzortzopoulou-Gregory, <a
href="http://isthmia.osu.edu/teg/">Timothy Gregory</a>, <a
href="http://home.messiah.edu/~dpettegrew/">David Pettegrew</a> to prepare an
abstract for the Modern Greek Studies Association Annual Meeting next year in
Vancouver on a panel coordinated by the <a
href="http://www.und.edu/dept/squinch/">Medieval and Post-Medieval Archaeology
of the Mediterranean Interest Group of the Archaeological Institute of
America</a>. The paper will focus on our work at the site of Lakka
Skoutara and its environs in the southeastern Corinthia. This is an area
originally documented by the <a
Korinthia Archaeological Survey</a> (2000-2008) and then by the <a
href="http://mailer.fsu.edu/~dpullen/SHARP/">Saronic Harbors Archaeological
Research Project</a>. It's always challenging to work on a research paper as
a group, but in this case, the potential is remarkable. David, Tim, Lita,
and I all conceive of our research at this site in significantly different
ways. Lita is interested in the larger systems in which the site and the
regions functions, Tim is an expert on ceramic evidence and the perspectives it
can offer, David's interest focus on archaeological methods and formation
processes, and I am interested in embedding the site at the intersection of the
archaeological and historical discourse. Such productive tensions will
undoubtedly enrich the work and our own understanding of the sites, the region,
and the process of archaeology in Greece. Here's the abstract: "Between
sea and mountain: the archaeology of a 20th century ‚Äúsmall world‚Äù in the
upland basins of the southeastern Korinthia" Between the villages
of Sophiko and Korphos in the southeastern Korinthia are a number of
geographically well-defined and fertile upland basins or poljes, each one
accompanied into modern times by a cluster of farmsteads and used for
812
agriculture and pastoral activities. The heavily forested slopes adjacent to

these basins were systematically exploited for resin production, a flourishing
industry in the wider region especially after WWII, which is now in serious
decline. Although physically isolated from major urban centers, these
microecologies played a vital role in the 20th century in the subsistence of its
local population, which originated primarily in the nearby mountainous village
of Sophiko. Placing these isolated, yet deeply interconnected places into
their regional context provides another key case-study for the contingent
character of the Greek countryside in the 19th and 20th century. Between
2001 and 2009, the authors investigated these basins, with a primary focus on
the largest, known locally as Lakka Skoutara, through two archaeological
projects: the Eastern Korinthia Archaeological Survey (2001-03) and the Saronic
Harbors Archaeological Research Project (2008-09). The former studied
Lakka Skoutara as part of its emphasis on the archaeology of the modern period
(19th-20th centuries), while the latter conducted archaeological investigations
in several of these basins as part of a larger regional survey of the Saronic
coastline. Typical of the other basins, Lakka Skoutara presents a remarkably
robust assemblage of material, including domestic and religious architecture,
agricultural installations, and ceramics scatters. This material reflects
the dynamism of changing land use patterns in the Greek rural landscape as well
as the formation processes and life cycles of use, reuse, and abandonment
connected to domestic residence. By combining archaeological survey with
oral information obtained from local residents, we were able to reconstruct part
of the landscape history of this small, low-density rural settlement and its
relationship to the wider world. This micro-level analysis of the site
complements the broader perspectives offered by regional level data collection,
oral history, and comparative studies from elsewhere in Greece. Lakka
Skoutara and its neighboring poljes offer both snap shots of historical
processes affecting the countryside over the last two centuries as well as the
dynamic archaeological environments of semi-abandoned settlements recorded over
the much narrower horizon of a decade of field work. 
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TITLE: Under Libby's Gaze: Images of the Department of History from Merrifield
Hall
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DATE: 01/22/2009 08:11:11 AM
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<a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2010536e42ac7970
alt=""
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2010536ed8ddd970c
-pi" width="80" align="left" border="0"></a> While there is no physical
evidence for it yet, the Department of History's days in Merrifield Hall are
numbered (for more see: <a
ving-from-mer.html">Moving from Merrifield Hall</a>, <a
re-merrifield.html">More Merrifield Memories</a> It occurred to me,
however, that aside from our vocal protests, we haven't done much to commemorate
and preserve the record of the Department's time in Merrifield. Recording
how the Department inhabited space is not the most straightforward
undertaking. It involves documenting all those small performances that
make up the elusive "everyday life" Moreover, it has to include the wide
array of spaces that we inhabit (where we dwell): offices, classrooms, hallways,
thresholds, et c. Not to be intimidated by such a complex project, I
brought my wife's little Nikon point-and-shoot camera to school this very
morning (unfortunately I did not bring her high-quality photographic eye) and
began to take photos of my morning routine and the views that gave me a sense of
place within Merrifield Hall. Imagine if we could encourage our students,
faculty, and others to make an effort to produce an archive of history within
Merrifield and to capture the experience of place there. Not only would
this represent the archival and archaeological instinct present in most
historians, but also serve as a silent, but potent protest to the rather
cavalier way in which the University administration uprooted our department from
its traditional spaces on campus. Here are my tentative,
preliminary offerings: <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2010536ed8de2970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2010536e42ad3970b
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> The History Hall. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2010536ed8de9970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2010536e42ad8970b
-pi" width="304" border="0"></a> My office door toward the hall.
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2010536ed8dee970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2010536ed8df0970c
-pi" width="304" border="0"></a> Hooks for winter coats. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2010536ed8df3970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2010536e42ae1970b
814
-pi" width="304" border="0"></a> My Office. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2010536ed8df9970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2010536e42ae7970b
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2010536ed8dfe970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2010536e42af3970b
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> Gordon Iseminger at the
Photocopier. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2010536ed8e0a970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2010536e42b11970b
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> The Stairs.
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TITLE: Punk Rock, Nostalgia, and the Archaeology of Musical Utopia
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DATE: 01/21/2009 07:38:13 AM

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Last week, <a href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/">Kostis Kourelis</a>
initiated <a href="http://punkarchaeology.wordpress.com/">a collaborative
project</a> designed to explore the concept, experience, and potential of punk
archaeology. As we <a
nk-archaeolog.html">had bantered</a> about <a
href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/2008/02/punk-archaeology.html">this very
topic over the space of our two blogs</a>, he invited me to contribute.
The format is completely experimental and part of a greater goal to find those
points of contact between intellectual life and scholarly life. My first
contribution to this project is completely in the spirit of punk rock.
It's raw, garage-band quality thought and seeks to question the relationship
between nostalgia, archaeology, and the punk aesthetic: 
 One thing the Kostis' post on <a
815
href="http://punkarchaeology.wordpress.com/2009/01/01/house-of-the-rising-
sun/">the Animals' "House of the Rising Sun"</a> reminded me of was the
nostalgic tone to so much popular music. This is not exclusive to the
1960s British invasion bands, nor to punk rockers, of course, but it does
intersect with a key characteristic of an archaeological preoccupation with the
past. Archaeologists are in some ways nostalgic (in the same way that they
are often secretly utopian in aspiration). We hope that excavating the
past we can reveal the deeper significance or truth in some fragment of the
contemporary world. The fragments of the past become recontextualized in
within our contemporary sensibilities -- reassembled and redeployed to capture a
kind seemingly authentic past full of utopian innocence and beauty. 
 The rediscovery of the American blues, whether by the
1960s British pop music scene or the later 1960s American folk rock scene seems
to capture a similar craving for authenticity, a desire both to appropriate a
past reality and recreate it in the present as a utopian critique of the
plastic, mass-produced, insincere present. The mid-1960s blues revival
craved this authenticity, and in this was both genuine and, to a certain extent,
naive. (And in some way, this is what made the intersection between these
two groups so potent. Here I'd refer a reader to Sonny Boy Williamson's
date with the Animals or, more haunting still, Alan Wilson's (of Canned Heat)
work with Son House in the mid 1960s). It's possible at times to detect
(over the ironic, post-everything din) the quest for a kind of primordial
authenticity still echoes in the blues inspire guitar rock of the White Stripes
(see their version of "Death Letter "from De Stijl) or the Black
Keys. Punk rock's engagement with the archaeological
stratigraphy of music reveals a more post-modern disposition. While on the
one hand, the punk movement continued to champion a kind of a kind of musical
authenticity. The low-fi, garage band postures and sound spoke to a more
basic and visceral kind of musical experience. "Always leave them wanting
less." On the other hand, when punk musicians dug through the stratigraphy
of past music and excavated classic pop songs from just a generation earlier,
they regarded them with a new spirit of ironic detachment. These songs no
longer deserved the kind of authentic (re)productions embraced by the blues
revival but a new reading that revealed by the potent gaze of the punk
rocker. The very name of the iconic early punk band, The Velvet
Underground, invokes the seedy underbelly of the domesticated suburban life in
the same spirit that the Germs raucous versions of Chuck Berry's "Round and
Round" or Johnny Thunders version of The Commodores (and perhaps as
significantly the Dave Clark Five) "Do you love me?" I
am not positive how this relates to archaeology, but in the spirit of garage
band ramblings, I offer this: The most recent trends in archaeology have
pulled back from romantic dalliances with the idealized symbols of pure
"Classical" past (think: alabaster temples and philosopher-filled stoas) and
dedicated themselves to uncovering and subverting such idealized symbols through
the study of the more mundane objects and spaces. Over the last several
decades serious research has recovered the significance of domestic structures,
rural installations, and coarse and utilitarian pottery. By appropriating
the mantle and methods of Classical archaeology and its associations with
utopian visions of the past, a new Mediterranean archaeology recontextualizes
the research of a generations of scholars romanced by the illusory notions of
authenticity offered by monumental, urban, elite architecture, sculpture, and
ceramics. The Punk Archaeologist shifts the attention from such elaborate
acts of nostalgic commemoration toward a sustained and subversive effort to
appropriate the notion of the Classical in the spirit of social and political
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critique. The goal is less to preserve the Classical world, than to use it
as weapon against itself. 
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DATE: 01/20/2009 07:26:34 AM

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It's difficult to think about blogging when the world is watching much more
significant events unfold in Washington, D.C. So, instead of reading (and
writing) this blog, we should all watch the Obama Inauguration (my mother-in-law
is getting up at 3 am to watch it on the Sunshine Coast, Australia).
Whatever one's political views, this will undoubtedly be a "historical"
event. And if Obama's previous speeches are any indications, his address
should be one for the ages. Good luck, Barack Obama. (Oh, because I
couldn't resist, the CNN.com page that teams up with Facebook, is pretty
interesting.) 
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TITLE: A Quick Course on Art, Ritual, and Text in Early Christianity
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CATEGORY: Byzantium
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DATE: 01/19/2009 07:45:51 AM

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For the last few years, I've offered an informal readings for graduate and
advanced level undergraduates in the Spring semester. In the past, I've
offered readings on the Age of Augustus, The Archaeology of Late Antiquity, and
Authority in the Early Christian World. Generally these quick courses are
designed to sample (in an almost random way) some recent and classic books
offered on a particular area. This semester's will be Experience, Ritual,
and Text is Early Christianity. After a quick primer with some Peter Brown
and Robert Taft, we'll proceed through some recent(ish) and important works that
emphasize on some ways the experience of religion, religious art, and ritual in
Late Antiquity. The most glaring omission (of several) is the lack of
any work on ekphrasis -- that is the poetics of description -- which became such
an important component of Late Antique literature. I might yet add a 7th
week and draw in a work like the recent edited volume by Liz James, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/69331584">Art and Text in Byzantine
Culture.</a> (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). It's
also disappointing to have to leave out such classics as Thomas Mathew's <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/230989180">The early churches of
Constantinople : architecture and liturgy</a>. (University Park, 1971) or
<a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/27936933">The Clash of Gods</a>
(Princeton 1993). But for a 6 week, non-credit, informal style readings,
I think this is a nice core of material for discussion: Experience, Ritual, Text in Early Christianity An Informal
Reading Syllabus Course Goals: This is just an informal reading,
but the goals are to explore some classic and recent literature on the
intersection of Art, Ritual, and Text in Early Christian (and Byzantium).
The readings will have a slight archaeological bent to them, but nevertheless
attempts to touch on art historical and liturgiological approaches as
well. The books included below are not meant to be a representative sample
of recent approach nor even a good sample of Classic texts, but a gaggle of
works that intersect the tangled matrix of space, ritual, art, and power in the
Early Christian world. Basic Texts: Reading 1 P. Brown, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/138222">The World of Late Antiquity</a>.
New York 1971. K. Bowes, ‚ÄúEarly Christian Archaeology: A State of the
Field‚Äù (<a
href="http://www.arts.cornell.edu/Classics/faculty/KBowes_files/early%20christia
n%20archaeology%20religion%20compass.pdf)">http://www.arts.cornell.edu/Classics/
faculty/KBowes_files/early%20christian%20archaeology%20religion%20compass.pdf)</
a> Reading 2 R. Taft, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/61687634">Through their own eyes: liturgy as
the Byzantine‚Äôs saw it</a>. Berkeley 2006. R. Taft, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/26547561">The Byzantine Rite: A Short
History</a>. Minneapolis 1992. Reading 3 J. Elsner, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/29910320">Art and the Roman Viewer: The
Transformation of Art from the Pagan World to Christianity</a>.
Cambridge 1995. Reading 4 A. Wharton, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/31753671">Refiguring the Post-Classical City:
Dura Europas, Jerash, Jerusalem, and Ravenna</a>. Cambridge 1995.
Reading 5 S. A. Harvey, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/60454912">Scenting Salvation: Ancient
Christianity and the Olfactory Imagination</a>. Berkeley 2006.
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Reading 6 K. Bowes, <a

href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/183179509">Private Worship, Public Values,
and Religious Change in Late Antiquity</a>. Cambridge 2008. 
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DATE: 01/16/2009 09:02:23 AM

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A quartet of quick hits today, all of which deserve more lengthy
explorations, but for now, just some links in old-school blog style: <ul>
<li>The big talk at last week's AIA Annual meeting was the University of
Pennsylvania's Museum's decision to lay-off a large part of their research
staff. While this has been news for sometime now, activities geared toward
reversing this decision seems to be reaching a crescendo. <a
href="http://pennmuseumpetition.wordpress.com/">Read about it here and sign the
petition</a>. <li><a
href="http://dev.cdh.ucla.edu/digitalhumanities/2008/12/15/digital-humanities-
manifesto/">A Digital Humanities Manifesto</a> (thanks to Chuck Jones at the <a
Group</a>) provides an interesting point of departure and comparison with <a
gital-humanities-history-and-archaeology-at-the-university-of-north-dakota-
first-steps.html">our own, much more modest, efforts</a>. <li>Over at <a
href="http://ancienthistory.typepad.com/ancient_history_ramblings/2009/01/cyprus
-rain-and-waterpark.html">Ancient History Ramblings</a>, an interesting story
which could impact our work at the <a href="http://www.pkap.org">Pyla-
Koutsopetria Archaeological Project</a>. <a href="http://www.cyprus-
mail.com/news/main.php?id=43520&cat_id=1">It sounds bombastic</a>. <li><a
href="http://www.stanford.edu/dept/archaeology/journal/08Papalexandrou.pdf">Anot
her valuable contribution</a> by Nassos Papalexandrou to how we read the modern
Cypriot landscape.</li></ul> Lots of things to think about over the long
weekend... including the Mighty Eagles game on Sunday. Go Eagles.
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TITLE: Teaching Thursday: Revised Classes for Spring
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DATE: 01/15/2009 08:20:45 AM

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I apologize for missing a post yesterday. I seem to have acquired a
catastrophic stomach bug. But I am back in the office today equipped with
saltines and weak tea. I have (perhaps foolishly) revised both of my
classes for this spring. For Western Civilization, this has involved
moving some of my weekly lecture material to podcasts. Each podcast is
around an hour and presents the basic historical narrative for the class.
Since my class emphasizes the nature of pre-industrial states and societies,
most of these lectures focus on the basic political history for each
period. It's been a challenge to compress, say, all of Archaic and
Classical Greece down to an hour, but has encouraged my to prioritize the
structured, narrative information that I provide each week. The goal
behind these podcasts is to allow allow me to spend more time in class dealing
with primary source texts and writing skills. Last semester I experimented
with a more lecture based format (entirely appropriate, I think, for a class of
100+ students). I was unsatisfied with the results overall but
nevertheless regarded the format as well-suited for the dissemination of basic
historical information. <a
">Here's the syllabus</a>, and I will post some of the podcasts soon! As
for my History 240: The Historians Craft... Traditionally I have run this class
as an open seminar allowing students to conduct research on any historical topic
while providing basic structure to guide them through the writing and research
on their chosen subject matter. This worked relatively well, judging from
my basically solid reviews and the fairly decent final products. The only
down side was that the class was hardly a seminar. There was little in the
way of conversation among the students as their topics were often as divergent
as "Ninjas" and "Women in the Revolutionary War". To remedy this, I have
created a more focused seminar on the history of the University of North
Dakota. This is meant to key on both the recent <a
href="http://125.und.edu/">125th-i-versary celebrations</a> here at UND as well
as get the students into the <a
href="http://www.library.und.edu/Collections/UA/home.html">University
Archives</a>. There is no substitute for exposing the students to real
archival material (raw and unedited!). The biggest challenge will likely
be encouraging the students to think beyond the boundaries of UND and engage the
broader historiographic context for their research. If I can do this,
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however, there will be a significant upside: the students will be forced to

consider how their own experiences here on UND's campus fit into broader
trends. <a
">Here's the syllabus</a>, and I will report back on our progress soon!
For more Teaching Thursday: <a
Tuesday: Trends in Grades in a Western Civilization Course</a> <a
interviews.html">Teaching Thursday: Interviews</a> (K. Kourelis) <a
Vibe</a> <a
Templates</a> <a
Lecture</a> <a
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Teaching</a> <a
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CATEGORY: Web/Tech
CATEGORY: Weblogs
DATE: 01/13/2009 08:29:09 AM

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The <a href="http://www.archaeological.org/webinfo.php?page=10096">AIA Annual
meeting</a> was as exciting and interesting as usual (I'll leave it to my more
regular readers to determine whether there is sarcasm intended). It was
good to see old friends and hear about new ideas, projects, and, well,
news. Four conversations stuck out in my head as I traveled back to Grand
Forks, and here they are: 1. Jobs. While most of
my <a href="http://home.messiah.edu/~dpettegrew/">graduate</a> <a
href="http://www.ancienthistory.typepad.com/ancient_history_ramblings/">school</
a> <a href="http://www.mcgill.ca/history/faculty/faculty/fronda/">buddies</a>
landed tenure-track positions over the last 5 years, I still know enough folks
on the job market to hear about the good (2-2 teaching loads, good support for
research), bad (4-4 teaching loads, budget cuts), and ugly (fractured
departments, battles in interviews, little chance for tenure) jobs
available. The reports from the AHA and the MLA appear to resonate with
things at the AIA/ APA (American Philological Association) Joint Meeting.
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Almost everyone with whom I talked had some story about a job search being
canceled or words of warning about "upcoming cuts" during the interview.
One interesting phenomenon is that several folks told stories about job searches
being accelerated to get the hiring done before the position was
suspended. A few people told stories the entire job search -- phone
interview, on-campus interview, and job offer -- taking place over a mere two
weeks. Our department is searching right now and we were surprised when
one candidate accepted a position before Christmas. Traditionally job
offers are made in the late winter or spring. It may be that our lost
opportunity was the product of an accelerated search. 2. Digital
Archaeology. I talked with several people about archaeological field
work this summer (see below), and one thing that came up in conversations was
the need for IT support. On the one hand, this is not terribly surprising
as most projects have (mostly de facto) an "IT Guy" (or person). On the
other hand, it was interesting to hear projects talk seriously a dedicated IT
expert perhaps even with long term responsibilities to the project. The
coming of age of digital archaeology is when archaeologists understand that
born-digital data requires the same level of curation as traditional techniques
for archaeological recording (inventory cards, artifacts, notebooks, drawings,
et c.). In some ways born-digital artifacts are susceptible to the same
risks as an artifact of archaeological fieldwork. In particular, digital
data requires carefully documented context to be meaningful. Unlike
"analog" artifacts -- especially notebooks -- the techniques for preserving and
maintaining digital records are not nearly as refined (yet), so archaeological
IT experts must remain committed to project data at least until it reaches a
stable state. Even then, projects appear to be aware that a basic level of
maintenance is required for "legacy data"; after all, no one produces data with
the expectation that it will become unusable or worthless. Data becomes
unusable only through neglect. In any event, it was heartening to hear so
many projects (even small ones) talking about either bringing in a dedicated IT
person from the earliest planning stages and hearing more established projects
designated IT "coordinator" to curate legacy data and enforce good practices in
data creation. Some projects even talked about data integration beyond the
site on a regional level. The era of the digital archaeologist has
arrived. 3. A Fractured Field. I think that I
heard the phrase, "that doesn't really interest me" more times at this meeting
than ever before. I'll admit that I was guilty of this on several
occasions (one might have even been documented on a digital recorder!) as I
begrudged my prehistorian colleagues the abundance of panels on Aegean
prehistory at the AIA! Some of my begrudging was for show, I have to
admit. After all, we have worked for the last few years on the Late Bronze Age
site of Kokkinokremos on Cyprus and enjoyed the support of colleagues and
funding organization in our efforts to contribute to a better understanding of
the Bronze Age Eastern Mediterranean. What was vaguely more disturbing was
the willingness of senior (and contemporary) colleagues to express a genuine
lack of interest of work even within the more narrow disciplinary
confines. My feigned lack of interest in the Bronze Age could be seen as
reasonable since my area of specialty is some 2000 years later in time! A
lack of interest in material produced 400 or 500 years earlier or later than
one's specialization (or in a different sub-region of the Mediterranean)
reflects the ever narrowing focus of our field and perhaps predicts the eventual
demise of such august and long-lived organizations at the AIA. Already,
conferences like the Byzantine Studies Conference, Dumbarton Oaks Symposia,
annual meeting of the American Schools of Oriental Research Annual Meeting, the
Society of American Archaeologists, and regional groups like the Classical
823
Association of the Midwest and South offer smaller and potentially more focused
environments for scholarly exchange. As money for travel to conferences
becomes more scarce (not to mention the money to put on such major events),
perhaps the lack of interest among scholars who are more devoted to their narrow
research fields (rather than larger disciplines) simply marks out a practical,
intellectual reality of our changing times. <a
href="http://chronicle.com/review/brainstorm/article/?id=1084&utm_source=at&
amp;utm_medium=en">Stan Katz offered a similar (if more articulate) critique of
the American Historical Association Annual Meeting at the Chronicle Review
Blog</a>. Despite my posturing, I'd be sad to see the AIA go. I think that
we have far more to learn from our colleagues than we sometimes realize.
4. <a href="http://www.pkap.org">Pyla-Koutsopetria
Archaeological Project</a> Logistics. I spent a good
bit of time on Thursday and throughout the meeting talking logistics with my
fellow directors of the Pyla-Kousopetria Archaeological Project. It looks
like we will have over 30 people this year on the project ranging from almost
completely inexperienced undergraduates to specialists in Bronze Age pottery,
Roman wall-painting, and the history of the Medieval Cyprus. We had
designed our project from the start to be "scalable". We began with 6, 3
students and 3 faculty, and each year expanded our operation. With over 30
slated to come for at least part of the time, we'll certainly push the limits of
scalability. This blog began as a means to make our planning and field
work on Cyprus more transparent. While it has expanded and wandered over
the almost 15 months of its life, it will continue to keep our stakeholders
informed of our planning and our day-to-day activities in the field.
Finally, I was approached a number of times this weekend by folks with kind
words for this blog. Apparently it was mentioned in several contexts at
the Meetings, and this corresponds with a spike in hits over the weekend.
I do not do much to promote this blog (although it is listed in the various
indexed blog-searches and has even appears occasionally in Google Scholar), so
it was really encouraging to hear that people appreciate my musings.
Thanks! And if you are a visitor or a new reader, I hope you find my blog
entertaining (at least) or informative or just pathetic in an endearing
way. After all, <a
ld.html">it's cold out here</a>, and blogging helps keep me warm. Keep
coming back and I'll keep posting.
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DATE: 01/13/2009 07:23:01 AM

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This is the vision that greeted me this morning. The time, the inside
temperature, and two little dashes telling me that it was too cold to register
any temperature outside. That's -35 F (although the F doesn't really
matter). <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2010536c2abc3970
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src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2010536c2abc8970b
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Sorry about the brief intermission in blogging. I was attending the
110th Annual Meeting of the <a
href="http://www.archaeological.org/">Archaeological Institute of
America.</a> I'll blog some tomorrow on my discussions there. (And
I'll get back to my regular blogging routine as the semester starts today!).
For now, here is our paper delivered on Friday (with the SLIDE notes and
all). Thanks to all the folks who offered comments, comparanda, and
encouragement. It was really heartening to see the room filled for the
paper. For more on our research in the Eastern Corinthia see the links <a
chaeological-institute-of-america-annual-meeting-the-corinthian-countryside-at-
the-aia.html">at the bottom of this post</a>. "Three New
Sites in the Eastern Corinthia‚Äù William R. Caraher, University of North
Dakota David K. Pettegrew, Messiah College Delivered
at the 110th Annual Meeting of the Archaeological Institute of
America Philadelphia, PA January 9, 2009 
Introduction Over the last
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several decades, regional programs of archaeological research have populated the

Greek countryside with Classical and Hellenistic farmsteads, buildings,
monuments, and places associated with the ephemeral activities of rural life
[SLIDE]. Among the most debated type of site are rural towers which have
been variously interpreted as storage facilities for farmsteads, communication
beacons, local strongholds, and even slave quarters. If little consensus
has emerged regarding their function in the Greek countryside, it is because
even modest variation in form and context can indicate major differences in the
function of these installations. The best way forward in interpreting the
function of these buildings [SLIDE] is to make arguments based on a
refined understanding of their local historical, archaeological, and
topographical contexts. Our paper today seeks to
place a series of three newly discovered rural installations in the Eastern
Korinthia into their local context [SLIDE]. The sites are Ano Vayia,
Lychnari, and Kato Vayia and were first discovered in 2003 during the course of
the Eastern Korinthia Archaeological Survey. With the continued support of
the project's directors and with a study permit provided by the Ephoria of
Classical Antiquities, we returned to the sites in 2008 to document the visible
architecture and to study the ceramic artifacts collected in previous
seasons. While our analysis of these towers should
contribute to the broader discussion of the significance and function of the
rural installations, our principal aim of this paper is to provide specific
information on the Late Classical and Hellenistic landscape of the Eastern
Corinthia. [SLIDE] Despite two decades of intensive regional survey
throughout the Corinthia, the coastal zone of the Eastern Corinthia south of the
modern town of Loutro Elenis and north of the harbor of Korphos has been largely
overlooked. Recent work in this microregion has produced a dynamic
landscape of agriculturally productive land, mountain passes, and small harbors
occupied at least as early as the Bronze Age. The presence of Classical-
Hellenistic rural buildings in this area suggests that it was a significant
component of the Corinthian chora. Topography of the
Vayia/Lychnari Area The
importance of this area for the city of Corinth lies in its place within
communication and travel networks between the Isthmus and the Epidauria.
The rocky spine of Mt. Oneion forms the dramatic southern boundary to the flat
plain of the Corinthian Isthmus [SLIDE], stretching from the imposing rock of
Acrokorinth to the harbor town of Kenchreai in the east. To move south
along the eastern coast of the Korinthia, avoiding both Corinth and the
fortifications near Kenchreai, required crossing Mt. Oneion through several
passes fortified during the Late Classical period. Once south of the
mountain there were several routes through the mountainous country of the
southeastern Korinthia. [SLIDE] These routes provided access to
cultivatable valleys and unfortified settlements, roads west into the Argolid
and south into the Epidauria, and several ancient
embayments. The bay of Lychnari is one of the best natural
inlets on the rugged coast of the Eastern Corinthia [SLIDE]. While no
evidence for ancient harbor works has been found there, its sheltered aspect and
relatively flat beach would have been well-suited for ancient ships.
The peninsula known as Vayia shields the small bay from the east and the rocky
hilltop of Lychnari protects the bay below from the western wind. Lychnari
Bay opens inland onto a relatively broad valley bounded to the north by the
coastal ridge and to the south by the abrupt mountains of the Corinthian
interior. [SLIDE] The valley bottom provides relatively easy passage from the
vicinity of Lychnari bay and the nearby village of Katakali northwestward to the
low hills south of Oneion, where are today the modern villages of Almyri, Loutro
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Elenis, and Galataki, and in antiquity, the settlement of Solygeia.

Further north, passing over the low hill of Stanotopi, is the Isthmus of Corinth
and the harbor town of Kenchreai. Immediately to the east
of Lychnari, a small, pebbly beach sits at the mouth of the seasonal Vayia
river. [SLIDE]. Walking inland from this beach, it is easy to turn west
toward Lychnari bay over the low northern end of the Vayia
peninsula. An ascent up the steep, but not unmanageable southern
bank of the Vayia River affords access to a high pass that runs southward below
the coastal height of Kakia Rachi. [SLIDE] This pass leads to the bay of
Frangolimano whence a traveler can proceed inland, past the fortified Classical
site of Ay. Paraskevi and onward toward the valley of Sophiko and the Epidauria
beyond. Remains in the Vayia Area
 Architectural Remains 
The most extensive remains in the region of Lychnari and Vayia stand atop the
hill that we have called Ano Vayia to distinguish it from the site of Kato Vayia
below [SLIDE]. The remains consist of a long, north-south oriented complex
constructed of rough polygonal masonry. Its most imposing feature is its
western wall which is preserved to a height of over 1 m [SLIDE]. In
several places along the course of the wall, it is clear that the builders cut
back bedrock to form a solid base for the building [SLIDE]. At its midway point,
there is a gap in the wall of slightly over 2 m where the bedrock was trimmed
back [SLIDE]. This gap, which divides our complex into northern and
southern structures, presumably represents an entrance to an east-west corridor
between the different parts of the building. The corridor runs eastward to
the foundation of a round tower [SLIDE]. The lowest course of the tower
remains in situ and suggests a structure with a diameter of 6.2 m. The
carefully-coursed stones preserved roughly-cut, curved profiles on their outer
faces. A considerable quantity of similarly curved stones are scattered
down the eastern side of the hill. The round tower is clearly a component
of the rest of the compound but the exact architectural relationship is unclear.
Distributional Data In conjunction with the
initial planning of the site, members of the Eastern Korinthia Archaeological
Survey conducted a small-scale, highly localized, intensive pedestrian survey of
the Ano Vayia hill [SLIDE]. Unsurprisingly, this survey established that
the densest concentration of material occurred around the architecture present
on the top of the hill with dramatically declining densities further down the
slope. The units immediately adjacent to the collapsed buildings showed
artifact densities of nearly 2,000 artifacts per hectare which were comparable
to the generally high artifact density that EKAS documented across the busy
Corinthian Isthmus. It seems probable that the material in the immediate
vicinity of the collapsed buildings represents a distinct and localized
phenomenon in the landscape. Ceramic Finds Aside
from a small number of Late Medieval and Early Modern sherds, the ceramic
assemblage at Ano Vayia dates to the Late Classical-Early Hellenistic
period. The most common class of artifacts present are slipped Laconian
and Corinthian roof tiles [SLIDE]. These tiles were present not only on the
surface of the ground around the buildings, but amidst the tumble on the
interior of the structures, and indicate that at least part of the structure was
roofed. The different kinds of roof tiles, as well as visible repairs to
the north wall of the south structure, suggest distinct episodes of construction
at the complex. In addition to the tiles, there are
numerous pithos sherds [SLIDE] and, less commonly, Corinthian B and A amphora
sherds and Classical-Hellenistic cooking wares. The scatter is almost completely
utilitarian nature. The pithos and amphora sherds, in particular, suggest
that storage was a priority at the site. The paucity of kitchen ware and
827
the absence of fine wares suggest that the occupation of the building atop Ano
Vayia was relatively short term or at least not very intensive. Fine wares
and kitchen wares are far less common in use assemblages than amphoras and
storage wares, and typically appear only after occupations of considerable
length or intensity. Lychnari Tower 
The second major site documented by the Eastern Korinthia Archaeological Survey
lies on the hill of Lychnari immediately to the north of the bay with the same
name [SLIDE]. On its eastern side some 20 m to the southeast of the
geodetic marker are the remains of another round tower. Like the
fortifications at Ano Vayia, the tower is coursed, rough polygonal in
construction and includes stones of massive size. The walls are relatively
very well-preserved [SLIDE]. The outer face is traceable for two-thirds of its
circuit producing a tower of over 8 meters in diameter with walls over 1 m in
width. [SLIDE] While today the remains stand only 1.5 m in height,
Young‚Äôs informal estimate of heights for these towers suggest that their
height could be 2 ‚Äì 2.5 times their diameter. If this is even a
rough indicator, the tower may have stood to over 15 meters in height. The
tower at Lychnari can be dated to the Classical to Hellenistic period on the
basis of pottery imbedded in the tumble of the building and scattered around the
general area. The assemblage, which was not documented intensively,
included pithoi, amphoras, and painted Corinthian tile fragments. This material
is consistent with the rough-polygonal masonry and date the structure within a
significant margin of reliability. We observed only one later ceramic
fragment, an early Roman lamp fragment dating to the 1st-2nd century AD, found
in the vicinity of the tower.
The Remains Near Vayia
 The final group of remains likely datable to the Late
Classical ‚Äì Hellenistic period stand on the peninsula of Vayia proper which
projects northwestward into the Saronic Gulf and shelters the eastern side of
the harbor of Lychnari [SLIDE]. The remains on the peninsula are poorly
preserved so it is not possible to determine its complete plan. They exist
amidst a scatter of ceramic material that is very similar to the utilitarian and
coarse material found around Ano Vayia and the tower at Lychnari.
Moreover, the rubble construction style is similar to the fortifications
documented at both Stanotopi and by this author on the heights of Mt.
Oneion. The most clearly defined features at Vayia
are a series of long rubble walls and extensive piles of tumble [SLIDE].
The best preserved wall runs for close to 40 m from southeast to northwest,
curving slightly to follow the natural contours of the peninsula and bounding
the western side of the level area along the top of the Vayia ridge. This
wall is constructed of unworked, local grey limestone stacked in irregular
courses to form two faces approximately 1 m apart, with cobble fill between the
faces. [SLIDE] There are several square rooms that project into the interior of
this rubble enceinte. While it is nearly impossible to offer a
definitive interpretation of this complex of walls on the Vayia peninsula, the
uniformity of the ceramics associated with the structures and the extensive
system of rubble walls recommends a fortification of the Classical ‚Äì
Hellenistic period. The closest analogy in the Corinthia for this kind of
informal construction are the walls on Stantopi and Oneion which are similarly
constructed of rubble masonry and situated atop strategically significant
heights. Discussion: Function, Topography, and
History Recent
scholarship has associated isolated rural towers in the countryside with
economic purposes such as agricultural storage, fortified farmsteads, and
quarters for slaves involved in mining endeavors.
828
 At present, we see several reasons for concluding that

the sites in the vicinity of Lychnari bay functioned chiefly to protect this
agriculturally rich and strategically significant stretch of the Corinthian
countryside [SLIDE]. First, the position of the Lychnari and Ano Vayia
towers at the highest points in their landscape encourage us to understand these
structures as military installations guarding the travel and transportation
corridors through the region. The Lychnari tower sits on the far western side of
the Lychnari hill and was positioned to overlook Lychnari Bay and the north
coast of the Corinthia rather than the agricultural lands extending to the east
below. The Ano Vayia tower overlooked the pass from Frangolimano as well
as the Vayia River valley rather than the agricultural land to its south and
east. The towers are intervisible and would have provided good views to
all major routes by land and sea. Second, these
towers were also clearly visible both from the land routes through the region
and from the Saronic Gulf. If the function of these towers were only for
local land owners to protect their human or material property, one can imagine
less obvious locations that would provide similar views toward the land and sea
but without being so prominent in the landscape. A third
and final piece of evidence is that none of these three sites produces the
variety of ceramics that would be consistent with longer-term habitation.
Certainly the Lychnari and the Ano Vayia tower may have supported habitation (in
addition to military functions), but the dearth of kitchen wares and fine
wares at least suggests that occupation of these towers was on the low-
investment and short-term end of the spectrum. We can contrast the rather
bare-bones ceramic assemablage of these three sites with the typical Classical-
Hellenistic assemblage observed elsewhere, on the Corinthian Isthmus, where
amphora, cooking wares, and fine wares are typically found together and in
abundance. The utilitarian character of the Vayia and Lynchnari assemblages,
when taken together with the evidence from topography outlined above, are more
consistent with what we would expect from a fortified garrison than a family
farm. It is, of course, possible that further clearing and excavation
would reveal a wider diversity of ceramics that could change this
interpretation. Historical evidence for Corinthian
fortification during the Classical to Hellenistic period tend to focus on
efforts to block military forces from moving through the Isthmus. In
general, the various states that sought to fortify the Isthmus were not
concerned with defending Corinthian territory, per se. In contrast to
these better-known fortifications, the towers in the vicinity of Lychnari did
little to protect the Peloponnesus generally [SLIDE]. Armies that bypassed
the fortifications along the Isthmus by sea en route to the Peloponnesus avoided
the fortifications at Lychnari as well. Consequently, it is logical to
read these sites as installations of the either the Corinthian state or even
local residents in an effort to fortify its territory. The ease with which
an army could pass north from the bay at Lychnari or even Frangolimano into
Corinthian chora south of Oneion made the fortification of this stretch of
coastline a crucial component of any strategy to protect Corinthian
territory. [SLIDE] Unlike the massive trans-isthmian efforts built in
response to particular threats, the Corinthians could have built these smaller,
regional towers at almost any point over the course of the Classical and
Hellenistic period.
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TITLE: Digital Humanities White Paper at the University of North Dakota
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: digital-humanities-white-paper-at-the-university-of-north-dakota
DATE: 01/07/2009 07:21:50 AM

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BODY:
Crystal Alberts (Department of English, UND) and I have submitted a white
paper to the President of the University in response to his call for trans- and
inter disciplinary working groups at the University of North Dakota. The
plan is apparently to target groups with outstanding potential and to facilitate
funding either from campus sources or from elsewhere. Consequently, our
White Paper stressed the potential of our group and its need for funding.
<a
e-potential-and-role-of-digital-humanities-at-the-university-of-north-
dakota.html">As I noted previously in this blog</a>, the president seems to have
assumed that a "center" dedicated to the digital humanities already exists on
campus; it does not. I am not sure whether this will help or hinder our
chances! Here's the white paper: White Paper
for a Digital Humanities Group at the University of North Dakota
Digital technology has come to play an increasingly important role in the
humanities (i.e., history and literature), the arts, and archaeology.
Scholars are more and more dependent on digital resources ranging from online
publications to text queries, archives of digitized historical sources,
collections of photographs, and databases. Students and faculty have found
in the new media a way to travel beyond the classroom, to analyze and explore
diverse types of historical evidence and data, and to build learning communities
together. The impact of the digital humanities extends beyond the walls of
the university and holds forth the potential not only to bring our research and
teaching to a broader audience, but also to forge new local and global
communities committed to the intellectual and academic mission of the
university. Institutions committed to interpreting, producing, and
teaching the emerging, digital media in the humanities will shape the future of
the information or knowledge economy. While some work in the digital
humanities has already occurred on this campus, a more substantial online
presence would allow us to open our doors to the wider public and invite them to
engage in research and learning in the field, library, and classroom.
Institutions like the University of Virginia and University of North Carolina-
Chapel Hill have long-standing programs in the digital humanities and
archaeology; less august institutions like the University at Buffalo, the
University of Nevada-Reno, the University of Vermont, and the University of
Kentucky have already followed their lead in creating institutional entities to
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cultivate the development of digital humanities on their campuses.

Centers, Institutes, and Working Groups focus the intellectual resources and
develop the cyber-infrastructure necessary to promote research and teaching
projects in the digital humanities, arts, and archaeology. Most federal
funding bodies for the humanities now require such established, institutional
commitment to cyber-infrastructure and core digital resources before they will
fund research projects. The Office of Digital Humanities (ODH) at the NEH
clearly states that preference will be given to projects that include freely
available digital components that are maintained by an institution. In the
private sector, our expanding information economy demands graduates with degrees
in the humanities who have levels of digital literacy that go beyond simple web-
browsing to engage the theoretical and conceptual foundations of digital
knowledge management. The University of North Dakota is poised to expand
the teaching and research work of digital humanists (in their many guises),
which, in turn, will increase the intellectual possibilities for our students,
as well as the intellectual, infrastructural, and financial resources available
to individual researchers. Fortunately, the core for such a center exists
among our current faculty in the departments of history, English, philosophy,
archaeology, art, music, and aerospace, as well as the staff of the Chester
Fritz Library (CFL), because they are currently engaged in digital research and
scholarship. For example, based on his archaeological fieldwork in the
Eastern Mediterranean, Dr. William Caraher of the Department of History produces
digital data ranging from GIS maps to databases, photographs, and new media
productions, including two documentaries. Dr. Crystal Alberts of the Department
of English worked with students to digitize the UND Board of Regents Minutes
from 1883 to 1893; this full-text collection is currently available through the
CFL. She serves as the technical editor for the National Endowment for the
Humanities (NEH)-funded Elizabeth Barrett Browning Project. Dr. Jack
Weinstein of the Department of Philosophy and Religion has also asked her to
assist him with the digital archive for the proposed Institute for Philosophy in
Public Life, a group formed in partnership with the North Dakota Humanities
Council and Prairie Public Radio. In addition, the CFL already has a
number of open-access digital collections available, such as UND Image
Collection, W. P. Davis Columns, and the MacDonald Cartoons. The English
department has also offered a 400-level course in digital humanities or the past
two semesters, each had an enrollment beyond capacity. To remain competitive
with our peer institutions and produce students capable of succeeding in a
dynamic and challenging economy, it is necessary to develop the infrastructure
to support sustained synergistic, transdisciplinary, research and teaching in
the digital humanities. A center or working group in the digital humanities will
promote the sharing of knowledge among practitioners of digital humanities on
campus, collaborative research, and unique instructional opportunities.
Such intellectual adjacency will both promote and develop faculty and student
expertise in new media and emerging technologies. The students‚Äô interest in
new media has been demonstrated not only by their enrollment in digital
humanities courses, but also by their continued involvement with digital
projects on campus. In addition to integrating intellectual resources,
this group will allow for physical adjacency in the centralizing of technology.
Finally, the creating of a center or working group will focus important
attention on the various collections, datasets, audio-visual materials, and new
media productions developed at UND. Bringing these resources together in a
single, transdisciplinary portal created by our organization will produce data
central to assessing the impact, reach, and success of the group and their
projects. Moreover, administrative recognition and commitment to a group
dedicated to digital research and scholarship improves the chances that federal
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grants will be awarded to UND faculty. At present, we have faculty members
who have both the technological skills and interest in forming a group dedicated
to the digital humanities, arts, and archaeology on campus. Our group will
have three goals. First, we will promote and support teaching and research
in the digital humanities, arts, and archaeology by creating a transdisciplinary
working group. Second, we will use this working group to create a center
on campus recognized by the State Board of Higher Education. Finally, we
will seek to make this center self-sustaining through individual and group
grants in the digital humanities. In support of these goals, we have
already been working with the help of and in collaboration with the library to
ensure that our projects comply with the established standards and best
practices across our disciplinary fields (literature, history, art, archaeology,
philosophy). The library also currently has a subscription to CONTENTdm,
digital collection management software (limited to 10,000 objects), which is
primarily designed for storage and retrieval of images. In addition, thanks to
the fundraising efforts and initiative of Dr. Caraher, we have access to five
terabytes (TB) of server space for data storage and online delivery.
Because our projects our research oriented, the server space is connected to the
high performance computing cluster and will be supported by ITSS through EPSCoR
funding. The formation of this group is also a high priority in the Arts
& Sciences campaign. Despite these initiatives, we need additional
resources to make this group and its work function to maximum potential.
Specifically, we would like physical space allocated on campus that is wired for
our technological requirements. Wilbur Stolt has suggested that the
library may have such a space for us in the library. We believe that this
space, with minimal remodeling and expense, would be logistically and
symbolically ideal. It is centrally located, and, perhaps more
importantly, would allow faculty immediate access to the institution‚Äôs
information repository. We would also like $1000 a year for at least the
next three years dedicated to increasing the library‚Äôs scholarly resources
related to digital scholarship and research. Because this group is meant
to facilitate discussion and the exchange of information, we would like to
establish a lecture series that would provide a forum for both on campus and
off-campus scholars to present their digital research scholarship. Because
this field is ever changing, we would like to offer workshops to train
interested faculty in digital technology, again, tapping the knowledge of on
campus faculty, as well as bringing off-campus experts in various related fields
to UND. Finally, while we already have dozens of files stored in Text
Encoding Initiative (TEI) compliant XML, the standard for full-text
digitization, UND does not currently have the technological capability to make
them fully searchable online. As such, we would like to purchase the
middleware that would enable these files to be fully functional. This middleware
will move our collections beyond static web pages and make them comparable to
ones available at the University of Virginia, the University of Nebraska at
Lincoln, and the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. Neither the
University of Minnesota nor North Dakota State University currently have the
capacity for sophisticated text anaylses and queries provided by this
software. This software will serve as an instant catalyst for the text
digitization projects taking place on campus and garner national recognition.
The digital humanities, as all humanistic inquiry, is inherently
transdiciplinary. Developing the synergy on campus to tap into existing
faculty, staff, student, and technological resources will maximize the
university‚Äôs commitment to engaging the emerging information and knowledge
economy. This keeps us competitive with the activities of our peer
institutions and represents an area of expertise that does not yet exist in the
832
state or the region. It will also make our research freely available to the
entire state of North Dakota, the region, and the world. These criteria
alone ensure that the UND would be an attractive center for external
funding. In an environment of increased competition for resources, funding
a digital humanities working group provides an opportunity to capitalize on
resources already available on campus and to perpetuate the very kind of
synergistic adjacency that the College and University has already made great
sacrifices to achieve.
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TITLE: Considering Early Christian Archaeology
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: considering-early-christian-archaeology
CATEGORY: Byzantium
CATEGORY: Religion
DATE: 01/06/2009 08:15:01 AM

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By chance, I stumbled upon a rather recent article by Kim Bowes in a
relatively new journal called Religion Compass: "<a
href="http://www.arts.cornell.edu/Classics/faculty/KBowes_files/early%20christia
n%20archaeology%20religion%20compass.pdf">Early Christian Archaeology: A State
of the Field</a>". It just so happened that I was looking (weakly) for
just such an article to frame an informal reading that I plan to conduct this
spring on "Space, Ritual, and Text in Late Antiquity" (or some variation).
It's a nice survey of the odd beast that is Early Christian Archaeology.
Bowes concludes that the field is becoming increasingly attuned to he
relationship between text and archaeology (although not attuned enough to delve
very deeply or confidently with the standard tools of textual interpretation
used by scholars elsewhere in the humanities (p. 578-579)). At the same
time she also detects a growing interest in the economies of Early Christian
material culture especially the influence of Christian ways of thinking on
practices of euergetism in the Mediterranean world. I devoted a
substantial part of a chapter to this in <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/59019454">my dissertation</a>, so it was nice
to see that my ideas fell within general trends in the field. This
article has much to recommend it as a broad overview of the discipline.
There are, however, several areas where Bowes missed an interesting chance to
consider the broader significance of the field of Early Christian
833
Archaeology. After all, it is relatively unusual that a field exists that

studies a particular type of archaeological material, Christian material, in the
context of a master narrative (presumably the development and spread of
Christianity) that no longer asserts an exclusively "totalizing"
discourse. That is to say, most scholars who study Early Christian
material do not necessarily regard the spread of Christianity or its development
to be the central narrative to their own research, much less the study of the
past more broadly. While one could point out that archaeologist who study
the Classical period rarely make explicit claim to the narrative assumptions
implicit in the notion of a Classical period (right?), this term has become
somewhat (if not problematically) generic in defining a particular date range
(say 480-338 BC) of material. The term Early Christian, however,
does not stake as strong a claim to particular date range and, in fact,
represents just one of any number of overlapping terms to describe the 3rd-8th
centuries A.D. (Although it is worth pointing out that in some circles the
notion of Early Christianity can extend back to the 1st century AD. This,
I think, genuinely reflects differing interpretations of the origins and
development of Christianity. As far as I know, no one pushes the Classical
period back to 7th century (which is different from saying that developments in
the 7th century did not influence institutions of the Classical period).)
I tend to tell people that I study Late Antiquity or the Late Roman period,
although my dissertation title refers to "Early Christian Greece". In some
quarters I might even refer to some Early Christian material as Early
Byzantine. There is even the shifty and confusing term "Dark Ages" which
refers to the 7th and 8th centuries that could also be Late Antique or (and I am
making this up to some degree) Late Early Christian. Silliness
aside, each of these terms imply master narratives that exert a lingering
influence on the perception, overarching questions, and basic organization of
the fields. For example, Early Christian archaeology clearly assumes that
the religious development of Christianity can be extracted, to some extent, as
an independent variable from its broader historical and archaeological
context. While one can hardly dispute the significance of Christianity in
the history of the west, one wonders whether the notion of a specific Early
Christian archaeology remains a viable approach to understanding the past.
 These comments should not be regarded as a critique of Bowes fine
article. In fact, she demonstrates that the field of Early Christian
archaeology is far from isolated or parochial in its approach to the past and,
moreover, quite aware of its baggage as a field. What was a bit striking,
however, is that she did not really engage much with the sticky question of the
archaeology of religion in a general sense. The material culture of ritual
activities, iconography, holy places, much less belief itself have a far more
contested discourse both within the specific field of Early Christian
archaeology (how can you be sure that the people were Christian?) and
within the field of archaeology more broadly. One of the key powers of an
Early Christian archaeology is its ability to force archaeologists to
problematize religion (and its myriad manifestations) as a category of
archaeological analysis in general. Bowes touches upon some of these
things in her article -- noting the difficulty in identifying monastic
establishments (598-602), the archaeological ephemeral nature of of house
churches (579-582), and the religious ambiguity of the catacombs (582-586) --
but does not really engage the significance of this debate. If
Christianity (and religion more generally) ends up being a relatively
unimportant (or invisible) component in the material assemblage marking
individual identity in Late Antiquity, where does that leave the discipline of
Early Christian archaeology?
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Victoria Silvers
EMAIL: vicky.silvers@gmail.com
IP: 68.196.208.224
URL:
DATE: 04/15/2010 12:29:39 PM
Hi,
This is Victoria Silvers, Asst. Editor for Christian.com which is a social

network made specifically for Christians, by Christians, to directly fulfill
Christian's needs. We embarked on this endeavor to offer the ENTIRE christian
community an outlet to join together as one (no matter denomination) and better
spread the good word of Christianity. Christian.com has many great features
aside from the obvious like christian TV, prayer request or even find a
church/receive advice. We have emailed you because we have interest in
collaborating with you and your blog to help us spread the good word. I look
forward to an email regarding the matter, Thanks!
God Bless,
Victoria Silvers
vicky.silvers@gmail.com
-----
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TITLE: Landscape Archaeology and Photography at the Pyla-Koustopetria
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: landscape-archaeology-and-photography-at-the-pyla-koustopetria-
DATE: 01/05/2009 07:42:58 AM

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BODY:
This winter, I've been working to recruit a talented photographer to my
project in Cyprus. As part of that processes, it seemed like a good idea
to attempt to articulate exactly why a photographer with an interest in sacred
landscapes and place would be a good fit for our project. After all, we
would not be asking him to take photographs of pottery or trenches or any of the
835
other things that traditionally play a role in archaeological Photography and Landscape on a Mediterranean Archaeological
Project Introduction: The <a
href="http://www.pkap.org">Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project</a> (PKAP)
has investigated the 2 sq. km coastal zone of Pyla Village in Cyprus since
2003. The project is a transdisciplinary, landscape-oriented
investigation that has drawn upon an international team of archaeologists,
historians, geologists, illustrators, and other specialists to produce a vivid,
diachronic, archaeological history of a significant coastal site. In
conjunction with this work, we have maintained a strong interest in engaging the
wider public through the innovative use of the new media (interactive websites,
blogs, podcasts, et c.) and through an "artist-in-residence" program. In
2005 and 2007 Josiah Patrow, an award winning filmmaker, served as artist-in-
residence and produced two well-received documentaries. In 2009, we have
invited <a href="http://axisofaccess.blogspot.com/">Ryan Stander</a>, a
photographer and M.F.A. student at the University of North Dakota, to join the
PKAP team. As artist-in-residence, he will have complete artistic freedom
to engage the landscape of Cyprus, archaeological fieldwork, and the
personalities and individuals of the PKAP team. Ryan's interest in sacred
landscapes, the creation of place, and the interplay of human and natural
environments coincides well with the project's archaeological interest in
landscape approaches to understanding the human past. By subjecting both
project and place to the photographer's gaze, we hope to introduce an exciting
new context both to our work as archaeologists as well as the landscape in which
we work. Summary: Landscape
archaeology, in the broadest sense, is the study of the relationship between the
natural and man-made environment over time. Generally speaking, a
landscape approach to archaeology looks beyond the relatively narrow confines of
a single site in order to apprehend the myriad environmental, cultural, and
political relationships that shaped a particular group or community's
relationship access to resources. Most landscape archaeological projects,
therefore, have emphasized methods that go beyond excavation to include methods
for documenting more spatial extensive areas. The most recent wave
of landscape archaeologists have come increasingly to recognize the role of the
archaeologist in the construction of archaeological landscapes. This work
has placed the researcher within the landscape and emphasized the archaeological
method itself as an artifact of the intersecting influences that recursively
define and produce a distinctly modern sense place. In this context
archaeological fieldwork emerges as one of any number of processes that create
meaningful landscapes, rather than a method for creating a singular, unified
landscape that contains an exclusive command of relationship between the past
and place. This repositioning of archaeology has opened the door to
productive dialogues with other fields that are similarly concerned with the
issues of material culture, landscape, and place. This dialogue has
encouraged the discipline to think critically about the methods that they use to
create landscapes and realize that documenting archaeologists' engagement with
the landscape forms a crucial part of contextualizing (and legitimizing)
archaeological knowledge. Since its inception, photography has played a
key role in archaeological research. Tendencies to view the camera's eye
uncritically as an objective representation of material reality have gradually
given way to more sophisticated understandings of the camera's role in producing
the kind of illusive objectivity that formed a compelling foundation for
archaeological knowledge. While photographs of artifacts, architecture,
and even topography will continue to appear as evidence for archaeological
arguments, there has been less attention to work of photographers in creating
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the same kind of dynamic, discursive landscapes that archaeological knowledge

imagines. By incorporating an experienced landscape photographer into a
landscape archaeological project, we seek to problematize in an explicit way the
role of photography in the creation of archaeological knowledge.
 To do this, we have charged a landscape photographer with producing a
vivid and independent counterpoint to the landscapes produced through more
traditional archaeological techniques and analysis. By maintaining our
fieldwork at the center of the photographer's gaze, we seek not only to produce
an alternate image of the physical environment, but also to create a perspective
on the archaeological landscape in the process of being created. The
tension between the photographer's perspective, the natural and man-made
environment, and the ongoing fieldwork will serve to contextualize
archaeological knowledge as well as the subjective power of the photographer's
gaze. Photography in Context:
 The Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project takes place against four
different backdrops. Each environment reveals a different engagement
archaeological knowledge and the social dynamics that make such knowledge
possible. While Stander will be free to interpret the project however he
sees fit, we thought it might prove the viability of the project by establishing
a mis-en-scene for the day-to-day activities. 1) The Project in the
Field. Most afternoons and many mornings teams from the project will be active
at three sites in the field. During the 2009 fieldseason we will conduct
small scale excavations on the prominent coastal heights of Pyla-Kokkinokremos
and Pyla-Vigla as well as on the coastal plain at Pyla-Koutsopetria. These
three areas are intervisible and stretch over 1.5 km along the coast. The
field teams consist typically of groups of 4-6 student excavators and a trench
supervisor. The directors of the project, William Caraher, David
Pettegrew, and Scott Moore, and generally on hand as well. 2) The Project
at the Museum. Most mornings are occupied with work at the Larnaka
District Archaeological Museum. The work here consists of washing pottery
excavated the previous day and processing finds from the previous seasons of
fieldwork. Generally work at the museum comes under the supervision of the
registrar of finds and our ceramicist, Scott Moore. The team at the museum
is typically rather smaller than the team in the field usually consisting of 5
or 6 students and various specialists who are assisting with the analysis of
finds. 3) The Project at Base Camp. The evenings are spent at "base
camp" which is a series of rooms at the Petrou Brothers' Holiday Apartments in
downtown Larnaka. The work at base camp consists of preparing the evening
meal, data entry, planning meetings, and informal conversations regarding the
functioning of the project. Since the quarters are quite close, work at
the base camp appears chaotic. 4) The Project in the City. Unlike
many archaeological projects we live and work in the bustling small city of
Larnaka. Like so many Mediterranean cities, the history of the city is
deeply inscribed in urban fabric. Byzantine churches, Frankish monasteries,
mosques, and modern concrete buildings crowd and jostle each other attention in
the densely built up urban center. 
Goals: The goal of this project is to produce a
public exhibition of the photographs in the fall of 2009 and present a selection
of these work online as an online gallery with commentary and discussion.
The expectation is that the images that Stander provides will complement and
challenge the image of the landscape produced through archaeological fieldwork
and problematize the notion of a stable photographic and archaeological
reality. Along with the work of Joe Patrow during the 2005 and 2007
fieldseasons, Stander's work will continue the project's commitment to a
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reflexive position toward archaeological research and form a vital component to

the project's final archive.
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Happy New Year everyone. Here is a little batch of Friday stuff:
<ul> <li>Brandon Olson's <a
ical Archaeology in the Ancient Mediterranean</a> celebrated <a
al_archaeology_in/2008/12/one-year-of-blogging.html">its one year anniversary
this week</a>. He blames me. Brandon is a long-standing member of
the <a href="http://www.pkap.org">Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project</a>
and a graduate student at Penn State. He did one of his M.A. degrees with
me at the University of North Dakota. He'll present part of his research
at <a
al_archaeology_in/2009/01/aia-paper.html">the annual meeting of the
Archaeological Institute of America next weekend</a>.</li> <li>This is an
ominous and interesting tease on <a
href="http://digitalhistoryhacks.blogspot.com/">Digital History Hacks</a>.
For the past three years he has presented his research in a blog based
format. From what I can gather he is moving to <a
href="http://digitalhistory.wikispot.org/">a wiki</a>. I've been tempted
to experiment with wiki's more systematically. In fact, we used a wiki
last year to work to organize <a href="http://www.pkap.org">PKAP</a> and I use
wiki's in my History 101 class. In some ways a wiki is superior for the
presentation of ongoing research. It's easy to update and allows a user to
navigate in a more topic oriented manner (familiar to so much scholarly
inquiry). The public face of a wiki erodes however (or at least de-
emphasizes) the linear narrative structure that a blog imparts (understanding,
of course, that one can view every edit to a wiki and see the very process of
construction).</li> <li><a href="http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/59103.html">The
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2008 Cliopatria Awards were announced</a>. Archaeology of the

Mediterranean World was once again snubbed. In fact, I was so snubbed as
to not even be nominated. I feel like Kanye West. But some great
blogs were recognized including one of my regular reads, <a
href="http://tenured-radical.blogspot.com/2009/01/its-radical-new-
year.html">Tenured Radical, for her post: "What Would Natalie Zemon Davis Do? A
Few Meditations on Women's History and Women in History."</a> Congrats!!!</li>
<li>I get enough spam both on my blog's comment pages and in my various email
accounts to have a skeptical eye toward all of it. That being said I did
get <a href="http://www.bachelorsdegreeonline.com/blog/2008/top-50-ancient-
history-blogs/">this link recently</a> and it seems more or less harmless and
perhaps even useful. </li> <li>A quick reminder, the Archaeological
Institute of America's Medieval and Post Medieval Archaeology Interest Group
will meet from 7:00 AM - 8:30 AM on Sunday January 11th at the AIA Annual
Meeting. See you all there!</li></ul> Finally, if you were miffed by <a
rry-christmas.html">my Merry Christmas post</a>, rest assured that it was -15
this morning (not the -18 announced on the Weather Channel) and we are expecting
4-6 inches of snow. I am back in North Dakota and all is right with the
world. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2010536abb6e9970
bottom: 0px" height="183" alt="BoatinFlorida"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2010536abb6ed970c
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TITLE: Hala Sultan Tekke: Thoughts on an Overlooked Cypriot Site
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CATEGORY: Byzantium
CATEGORY: Religion
DATE: 12/31/2008 09:09:54 AM

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In the most recent fascicule of the Journal of Modern Greek Studies Nassos
Papalexandrou offers a short study on the mosque of Hala Sultan Tekke outside of
Larnaka (N. Papalexandrou, " Hala Sultan Tekke, Cyprus: An Elusive Landscape of
Sacredness in a Liminal Context," JMGS 26 (2008) 251‚Äì281). Our
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team at the <a href="http://www.pkap.org">Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological

Project</a> visits the site every year, and I was regularly embarrassed by how
little I knew of this impressive, picturesque, and curious site.
Papalexandrou's article includes many interesting observations on the site,
particularly from the perspective of early travelers, and I was vaguely
heartened to learn how little people actually know. His article sought to
contextualize the monument within the dynamic religious landscape of the Larnaka
area in the early modern period. This is a valuable addition to our
understanding of the religious landscape of Larnaka as well as a valuable
methodological experiment as Papalexandrou sought to imagine a past for the
mosque as a counterpoint to potentially simplistic observations made largely by
non-local travelers or visitors with particular ideological or religious
perspectives. Papalexandrou captures the ambivalence of sites like Hala Sultan
Tekke by placing them within the shifting context of historical change,
religious attitudes, and varying perspectives of textual sources. <a
bottom: 0px" height="600" alt="Hala_Sultan_Tekke_1"
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> This article will definitely appear
among our regular reading for PKAP, in part because it offers a nice method for
reading the dynamic religious landscape of Larnaka today. To
Papalexandrou's thorough reading, I can add five additional observations:
1) Papalexandrou rightly highlighted the various polarities that enveloped
the mosque of Hala Sultan Teke. The main polarity in the context of this
mosque was the distinct Christian and Muslim religious places. But his
resistance to polarities could be extended to very notion of well defined sacred
and profane places within the landscape. It may be that the concept of
"holiness" works better in a pre-modern world. It is clear, for example,
that Hala Sultan Tekke was a holy spot in a very rich sacred landscape.
The Larnaka Salt Lake itself, for example, formed part of a sacred landscape as
it origins were deeply embedded in Christian miracle stories. The nearby
Stavrovouni, "Cross Mountain", amplified the sanctity of the monastery on its
peak which held the fragment of the True Cross given by St. Helena. So, as
Papalexandrou demonstrates, the mosque itself is not just a sacred place (in a
profane world) but a holy place in a landscape where the profane was not only
absent, but unlike to exist at all. 2) Papalexandrou brings out the
liminal nature of the mosque. One of the standard stories told at the
mosque today is how Muslim ship captains would fire off their cannons when they
came in sight of the mosque as a sign of respect. Today, the mosque is
situated on the main road from the Larnanka airport (the main airport in the
Republic of Cyprus) to the city of Larnaka. Thus the mosque continues to
stand in a liminal place as it appears not only on the outskirts of the city of
Larnaka but between the city and the airport (a site often reserved in other
places for all kinds of transient and marginal activities: storage, traveler's
hotels, duty-free zones, maintenance, et c.). The liminality of the site
is further echoed by the nearby Bronze Age site of the same name which has been
regarded as an important ancient harbor. Thus, the more recent mosque is
situated within a landscape of liminality that stretches from antiquity to the
modern period. 3) Papalexandrou did not mention that behind the mosque
and its elaborate grave is a tree bedecked with strips of cloth (these are
sometimes called "Wishing Trees"). This traditional Eastern Mediterranean
practice dates to antiquity and is exactly the kind of religious practice that
transcends simple polarities between Christian and Muslim, sacred and profane,
840
formal ritual and informal practices. In fact, the same practice occurs at
the site of Throni tis Panayia in the Troodos mountains and is sometimes
associated with the grave of the Archbishop Makarios (a polarizing figure). 
4) In the city of Larnaka, the church of Ay. Lazaros and the nearby mosque of
B√ºy√ºk Cami both have interesting relationships with the kinds of polarities
that Papalexandrou sought to explore in the narrative of Hala Sultan Tekke. In
the case of Ay. Lazaros, the church functioned as a Catholic monastery during
the Frankish rule on the island (another tradition has that it was used by the
local Armenian Uniate population) before functioning perhaps only briefly as a
mosque and then being returned to Orthodox population. Even then, the
Orthodox and local Catholic population had an agreement to share the building
during various times of the month (this phenomenon is recorded by various
travelers). Less than 200 m toward the coast the B√ºy√ºk Cami mosque
preserves a tradition of similar religious ambiguity. Several guides claim
that the building was the former church of the Holy Cross. While this is
possible, there is no obvious evidence of this transformation form the
architecture of the building. A guess would be that this story developed
as much from the traditions of religious ambivalence characteristic of holy
sites within Larnaka as any real evidence for the building's
transformation. Similar stories occur regularly for the location of Early
Christian churches on former pagan holy sites. 5) The final, interesting
aspect of the Hala Sultan Tekke site is that its restoration was funded by USAID
and UNDP. The funding of projects like the restoration of the mosque is
not without political overtones. The careful preservation and restoration
of a Muslim site in the Republic of Cyprus could easily be read in contrast to
the reported looting and destruction of Christian churches in the north.
It serves as a useful reminder that polarities of the type described by
Papalexandrou are, indeed, politically constructed. <a
bottom: 0px" height="304" alt="OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA "
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Sunny Climes!
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While this is in no way a proper or sophisticated analysis of my grades in
Western Civilization (and is completely anonymous), I wanted to follow up
briefly on <a
aching-thur-2.html">a post from the middle of the semester</a>. I noted
then that I gave my Western Civilization students options on what kind of
midterm they wanted take. The students could choose between an all essay
test, a part multiple guess and part essay test, and an all multiple guess
test. For the final exam, I continued this practice except that I required
all the students to write a cumulative essay. There were some
interesting trends that I think reflect student engaging in some strategy to
maximize their chance at doing well. For example, 7 fewer students took
the all multiple guess final exam. This was probably reflective of the
lower grades on the all multiple choice midterm (and the realization that they
would have to write an essay anyway). Of the group that took that all
multiple guess final, however, there were 7 new students who had taken either
the half-multiple-choice and half-essay or the all-essay midterm. I can't
explain this particular trend except that it suggests that students were unhappy
with their performance on another version of the test and wanted to try their
chances in a different format. More students took the all-essay final than
took the all-essay midterm. In general, the students who took that all
essay final performed better in the writing parts of the class. I require
a weekly online discussion board post (of around 150 words) as well as a short
paper. The all-essay takers also had markedly better final grades as
842
well. On the one hand, I'd love to take credit for this group and
cultivating good writer and critical thinkers, but in reality, they probably
self-selected to their strength. From anecdotal evidence alone, it seems
that students have more confidence taking multiple choice exams and this seems
particular true among students who believe that they can beat the system.
So while the risk is higher on a multiple choice test where it is possible to
get a question completely wrong (unlike an essay question where even the most
vague and passing familiarity with a concept can count as a partially correct
answer), it is still more appealing than the more arduous course of an essay
test. One more little test to assess student "engagement" with the course
material is comparing the kind of test that the student opted to take against
the paper that they chose to write. I have three papers due at various
times throughout the semester, and the students are only required to write one
out of the three papers. The first and second papers are due at 5 weeks
and 10 weeks into the semester respectively while the third paper is due on the
day of the final. The papers are similar to the essay questions that I ask
on the midterm and final exams so it is possible to write a practice essay, in
effect, and get feedback on it before writing either the midterm (in week 7) or
the final exam. Moreover, if you write the first or second paper and don't
like your mark, you can write a later paper and if the grade is higher, I will
replace the grade received on the earlier paper. An engaged student who
wrote one of the first two papers, then, could have not only a fairly good idea
of how I will grade the midterm and final essays, as well as a chance to improve
their grade on the paper which was worth 20% of their grade. So, comparing
the paper that the students chose to write against the kind of test that the
students chose to take might indicate whether students who take the multiple
guess exam are less engaged in the course. I found that 39% of the
students who took the all-multiple guess final wrote one of the first two
papers. For the two essay based exams, 50% of the students wrote an
earlier paper. While that might suggest that the essay writing students
are more engaged in the class and more active in working to get the mark that
they want, they weren't that much more engaged than their multiple guess taking
peers! In any event, someday I compare the data from this semester to the
two previous semester in which I allowed students to take different formats of
tests. And while I don't think that this kind of data alone tells me
everything about how my students engage a 100 level Western Civilization class,
I do think that collecting this kind of data might provide a basic road map for
student expectations and tendencies. I am not so naive to think that my
class can change the ways that students think about a class like History 101,
but the more I understand about how they want to engage the material, the better
I am able to accommodate or challenge these ways of thinking...
 More Teaching Thursdays: <a
Vibe</a> <a
Templates</a> <a
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Lecture</a> <a
Teaching</a> <a
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This fall I was invited to present my research on campus in the spring. The
talk will be to a general audience and sponsored by the Graduate School here at
the University of North Dakota. There are relatively few opportunities for
junior faculty to present their research on campus, so it's an exciting
opportunity, but I need to come up with a topic. The process of thinking
about a topic gave me a chance to reflect on my ongoing research and try to find
a way to bring together my various interests or at least prioritize my research
so that I can have a productive spring. So, my research agenda in no
particular order... 1. Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological
Project. As any reader of <a
petria_archaeological_project/">this blog would know</a>, I co-direct the <a
href="http://www.pkap.org">Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project</a>. I
am quickly learning that an archaeological project will expand to fill any time
left unoccupied by other research or teaching demands (and it will often try to
bully those projects to the sideline as well!). That being said, the
project also provides any number of opportunities for productive and interesting
digressions ranging from methodologies, to general considerations of Cyprus in
Roman Antiquity to more focused studies on Late Roman trade, ecclesiastical
architecture, and the history of ancient Kition. Moreover, my experiments
with video, podcasts, and blogs have formed the basis for emerging ideas about
narrative, archaeology, and the new media. This would certainly be the
most entertaining project to present to a general audience in that it could be
rooted in narrative and include photos, videos, and even audio clips. 2.
Early Christian Architecture in Greece. I spent a good
part of the last two years wrestling with my long moldering dissertation
manuscript. I have presented various fragments of it over the past few
years to generally positive results, but as I spin parts off from it, the entire
project begins to lose its conceptual cohesion. Despite its conceptual
fragmentation, I am working on a rather lengthy article which explores the role
of churches in the process of Christianization in Greece. I have posted
versions of this work on this blog. My most recent work has emphasized the
role of churches as dynamic, hybrid space that served as a place of convergence
for the many interests at play within Late Antique Greek society. This
work seeks to undermine the singular, hegemonic church so often portrayed in
literary sources of the period and replace it with a more fluid institution
which embraced ambiguity in its efforts to translate a universalizing discourse
on a local level. 3. Dreams, Inventio, and the Memory of
Early Christianity. This project complements project 2 in looking
at the remains of the Early Christian architecture in the archaeological record
of Byzantine and post-Byzantine times. I hold out the hope that I can
somehow bring this project and project 2 together in a cohesive book
manuscript. I presented some of this research for the first time <a
845
eam-archaeology-working-paper.html">this fall at North Dakota State
University</a> and received some valuable feedback from colleagues there.
The core of this project is an effort to show that the massive number of
basilica style churches built in Early Christian times had a profound impact on
religious landscape of Byzantine Greece (and the entire Eastern
Mediterranean). At my most ambitious moments, I sometimes imagine that
Early Christian architecture might have served as a vital filter between the
remains and memory of Classical antiquity and the needs of Byzantine and even
post-Byzantine society. The frequent appearance of Early Christian spolia
in Byzantine churches and their not uncommon appearance in Byzantine texts
suggests that Byzantine society recognized the importance of the Early Christian
period in the formation of their identity. This challenges the more
pervasive perspective that Byzantines sought primarily to establish ties to
Classical antiquity. In fact, I'd tentatively suggest that scholars'
tendency to overlook Early Christian spolia speaks more to the traditional
aesthetic values of Byzantine architectural historians than those of the
Byzantine architects. 4. The Continuing Corinthia.
I continue to dabble in the fortifications and landscape of the <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/korinthian
_matters/">Eastern Corinthia</a>. Most of this is in collaboration with <a
href="http://home.messiah.edu/~dpettegrew/">David Pettegrew</a> and comes from
our ongoing work with the data produced over the course of the <a
Korinthia Archaeological Survey</a>. Some of this involves our work
documenting an Early Modern settlement at a site called Lakka Skoutara. We
have documented this site over the course of almost 10 field seasons with
particular attention to archaeological formation processes in the Greek
landscape. David has also helped me continue to document the
fortifications of the Eastern Corinthia (Project Fortress Corinthia).
David Pettegrew and I will present some of our recent research in this
particular direction next month at the annual meeting of the Archaeological
Institute of America. I am also working with <a
href="http://history.osu.edu/people/person.cfm?ID=689">Tim Gregory</a> to
digitize and normalize the context pottery from the Ohio State Excavations at <a
href="http://isthmia.osu.edu/">Isthmia</a>. 5. Thivi-Kastorion
Archaeological Project. This is <a
orion_archaeological_project/">another archaeological reclamation
project</a>. I am working to re-analyze survey data collected by the Ohio
Boeotia Project in the vicinity of Thisvi, Boeotia with Tim Gregory. We
are collaborating with Archie Dunn who is conducting an <a
href="http://www.arch-
ant.bham.ac.uk/bufau/projects/Abroad/Thisve/Thisve%20survey.htm">archaeological
field survey of Thisve/Kastorion, Greece</a>. Our hope is to produce new
maps of the Thisvi basin that combine the archaeological data collected in the
late 1970s and early 1980s by the Ohio Boeotia project and Archie Dunn's more
recent work at the site. So, this spring one of these projects (perhaps
more) needs to come together in an engaging public lecture (at least) and ought
to move forward toward a publication phase (and to be fair some of these
projects have some good traction right now!). 
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: vitor oliveira jorge
EMAIL: vojorge@clix.pt
IP: 87.196.129.61
URL: http://trans-ferir.blogspot.com
DATE: 12/22/2008 09:50:01 AM
Hi
Do you know my blog?
It is about archaeology and much more...
Regards
Vitor Oliveira Jorge
http://trans-ferir.blogspot.com
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Snow has been blowing lately and creating dramatic snowscapes
across our yard. You can see the nicely plowed path filled with blown
snow. <a
bottom: 0px" height="484" alt="snowscape"
-pi" width="364" border="0"></a> Each gust of wind leaves a
fine layer of snow atop the last layer. You can see the tiny contour lines
which preserve a record of the formation process across the snowscape. <a
bottom: 0px" height="484" alt="snowscape3"
-pi" width="364" border="0"></a> Snow drifts look like
frozen waves poised to crash against the side of the house. <a
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-pi" width="364" border="0"></a> Hope it's warmer
where you are!!
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Some random quick hits at the end of a long semester: <ul> <li>An Aaron
Barth note. Aaron got his M.A. in history at the University of North
Dakota in 2006 (I think). He has remained active in history. <a
href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVh6B0OM1w8">Here's a link to a video</a>
on Ft. Lincoln to which he contributed. As Barth would say: <a
href="http://www.historians.org/info/AHA_history/clbecker.htm">Everyman His Own
Historian</a>.</li> <li>Another Aaron Barth note. He has internalized the
lessons learned at UND. A gratuitous reference to <a
nsons_autobiography/">Elwyn B. Robinson</a> <a
href="http://www.kxnet.com/video.asp?ArticleId=309355&VideoId=24523">in a
"man on the street" interview</a>:</li></ul> <blockquote> "Historian Elwyn B.
Robinson wrote history of North Dakota, he said the cold weather challenges us
and makes us more industrious... but when it gets this cold and you're out in
it, you're like hey maybe we don't need it this extreme."</blockquote> <ul>
<li>An interesting and "edgy" piece over at <a href="http://tenured-
radical.blogspot.com/">Tenured Radical</a> called "<a href="http://tenured-
radical.blogspot.com/2008/12/so-you-want-to-be-blogger-few-thoughts.html">So you
want to be a blogger: a few thoughts on what a blog is not</a>". Nothing
motivates folks to engage a new medium than a blunt statement of what they won't
be able to do. I think it is related to the <a
href="http://www.hulu.com/watch/4183/saturday-night-live-down-by-the-river">Matt
Foley school of motivational speaking</a>: "Well, I'm here to tell you that
you're probably gonna find out, as you go out there, that you're not gonna
amount to Jack Squat!!" You're gonna end up eating a steady diet of government
cheese, and living in a van down by the river!" Ambition is always fueled
by a studied detachment from reality.</li> <li>Finally, don't make plans for
tonight. Settle into your favorite chair and watch <a
href="http://richmondspiders.cstv.com/">my RICHMOND SPIDERS</a> play for the
National Championship in ESPN2. They'll need all the help they can get,
848
but they've made it this far. Let's go SPIDERS!</li></ul> Have a good

weekend!
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TITLE: Teaching Thursday: Rethinking Lectures, Content, and the Classroom Vibe
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This past week I've begun to experiment with podcast lectures. I teach
our Western Civilization survey one day a week, at night, for two and a half
hours. The class enrolls between 80 and 150 students and meetings in an
"lecture bowl" type room. Traditionally, I lecture for part of the class
(say an hour and a half) and then found something else to do over the remaining
hour. This sometimes involved breaking into groups, this sometimes
involved focusing on a particular skill -- say, paper writing -- and this
sometimes involved a more Socratic style "discussion" focusing on a book or a
primary source. Despite my efforts to liven up the class, the most
consistent complaint from the students is that the class is too long. On
the one hand, the class doesn't go any longer than the schedule dictates.
On the other hand, it is a long class particular for freshmen and at the 100
level. Long or not, I am still required to teach a certain amount
of content and a certain number of skills, techniques, and methods. So, next
semester I am going to try to shake things up some. I am in the process of
recording all of my lectures as podcasts. This will move the longest and
most tedious part of the class online for the students to engage at their
leisure. In fact, I find that I can trim about a half an hour from each
lecture by doing it as a single uninterrupted podcast. I have worked to
eliminate many of my "pregnant pauses", grand rhetorical gestures, questions (<a
href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091042/quotes">"... in an effort to alleviate
the effects of the... Anyone? Anyone?... the Great Depression, passed the...
Anyone? Anyone? The tariff Bill?..."</a>), and digressions. The lectures are
somewhat less entertaining (at least to me!), but nevertheless reflect the core
concepts and narrative in the class. It is worth noting that this is
incredibly time consuming. It takes me about 3 hours to record a 1 hour
lecture. (Ok, on <a href="http://web.gunsnroses.com/index.jsp">some level
that's not too bad</a>, but with 14 lectures, I reckon it will take about 40
hours). On interesting side effect of doing all my lectures over a few
weeks is that it has led to them being far more cohesive and coherent. It
is easier for me move back and forth across the lectures because, quite simply,
849
it is easier to remember what I emphasized earlier in the week than to remember

what I emphasized weeks or even months earlier. With my lectures (and
much of the formal course content; that is those things that make this course
Western Civilization rather than, say, the History of Portugal) posted online,
it frees up time in class to do other things. My hope is to spend more
time on the the primary and secondary source readings, in-class writing, basic
composition skills, and the historical method. More importantly, it gives
me a considerable amount of freedom in the classroom and allows me to break the
routine of lecture, stilted discussion, and Socratic questioning. My
impression is that this routine contributes to the sense that the class is so
long as much as the actual length of the class. My goal is, in effect, to
change the classroom vibe. Of course, this "new approach" depends on the
students actually listening to the podcasts. This is especially
significant since my lectures (and subsequently the podcasts) basically replace
the course textbook which I made optional because the students never read
it. With the textbook already optional (I replaced it with a more thematic
introduction to pre-industrial society), I reckon that podcasts will fit more
easily into the rhythms and habits of student life. So, this is
the fourth "technological, new media, computer" kind of post this week.
For my dedicated archaeological readers, do not despair! I have a few
interesting archaeological posts dreamed up for next week and a draft of my
paper for the Archaeological Institute of America's Annual meeting should appear
soon (as I write it!). More Teaching Thursdays: <a
Templates</a> <a
Lecture</a> <a
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Teaching</a> <a
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TITLE: Archaeology, Space, and Old School Computer Adventure
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CATEGORY: Web/Tech
DATE: 12/17/2008 08:39:40 AM

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Since I've posted on tech like things the past couple of days, I thought I'd
continue. During an almost random Google search, I came across this
line: <blockquote> West of House You are standing
in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. There is a
small mailbox here. </blockquote> Anyone who had a computer in the
early 1980s should immediately recognize these sentences. They are the
first lines of the computer game Zork. Zork was a text based computer game
originally released in 1980. I played the game in the early 1980s (after
1982 at any rate) on our CP/M based Kay-Pro II personal computer.
Compared to the massive multi-player role-playing games popular today, Zork
is amazingly simple. A set of simple text commands open the "Great
Underground Empire" to our intrepid adventurer (that is, if you can figure out
how to get into the house!). Filled with nostalgia, I quickly found that
the first three Zork games are available <a href="http://www.infocom-
if.org/downloads/downloads.html">for free download</a>, and after playing the
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game for a bit, I began to consider how this game could be used in a classroom
setting or as a thinking tool. First, Zork required a kind of persistence
that I found confounding at first. Recently I have had several
interactions with students that reminded me that persistence is a learned
trait. I've spent considerable time telling students to keep doing
research, keep searching the library, archives, or internet, and keep trying to
refine language in a paper. The simple dead-ends in Zork and profoundly
foreign interface (compared to the graphics laden interfaces of today's games)
engaged my curiosity but also confounded me quickly as I had almost no assurance
that I would be able to discover anything through my series of simple
commands. More importantly, however, is the spatial aspect of Zork.
While the three-dimensional space of Second Life or other games provides a
plausible representation of reality, Zork requires the player to reconstruct
space through a series of simple, if vivid, descriptions. Navigation by
the cardinal directions adds a layer of realism (and universality) to the
interface. Even in Zork land, north is north (most of the time!).
Even with several nice maps of the Great Underground Empire available on the
web, it would be an interesting exercise to produce a map of the space described
by Zork. Making the leap from text to space and back again is a common
task for archaeologists who often rely on notebooks and published, textual
descriptions as often as carefully wrought plans. <blockquote>
You are standing in an open field west of a white house,
with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here. >go west Forest This is a forest, with trees in all
directions. To the east, there appears to be sunlight. >go west You would need a machete to go further west.
 >go north Clearing You are in a
clearing, with a forest surrounding you on all sides. A path leads
south. On the ground is a pile of leaves. >kick leaves Kicking the pile of leaves has no effect.
 >move leaves Done. In disturbing the
pile of leaves, a grating is revealed. </blockquote> Finally, the
textual interface itself is an archaeological artifact. Exploring the
earliest "interactive fiction" type computer games provides a perspective on the
earliest efforts to create an immersive world on a computer. The spatial
consistency in Zork echoes the spatial metaphors used today to produce
understandable places of interaction and communication on in cyberspace.
It would be silly to attribute the overarching spatial metaphors of
cyberspace exclusively to Zork, but it certainly marks an accessible
point of entry for students to understand how the historical metaphors of the
internet continues to frame our expectations, experiences, and the potential of
the medium.
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TITLE: Computers and Convergence for an Academic Archaeologist
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DATE: 12/16/2008 08:13:57 AM

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Over the last few years I have worked hard to upgrade my personal cyber-
infrastructure. This has involved developing a computer tool-kit tailored
to my various interests: archaeology, history, blogging, writing, teaching, et
c. While some continue to dream of single devices that bring together all the
basic functions necessary for successful living, I have discovered quite the
opposite. As my interests have continued to develop, I have found the need
to use more and more specialized tool. With each tool, however, comes the
demands of upkeep, a learning curve, transition time (moving from one device to
the next is no more seamless than moving from one application to the next), and
a predictable gaggle of frustrations. Over the past two years I
have had the good fortune (and funding!) to purchase four new computers.
Since I travel for my research, they are all portable to some degree. Each
computer, however, serves a specific function in my little world. My boon-
companion is my MacBook Pro. It is my writing computer, my blogging
computer, and my image manipulation computer. It is sufficiently powerful
to do these things with grace and has a large enough hard-drive to allow me to
carry most of my research with me wherever I go. The most recent addition
to my mini-computer center has been my 17-inch Dell XPS laptop. It's an
absolute monster. It is portable in the same way that my family's Kay-Pro
II was portable. It weighs over 10.5 lbs (close to the Kay-Pro's 26 lbs!)
is amazingly fast and runs ArcGIS 9.3 without even breaking a sweat. This
is my "mobile GIS workstation" since ArcGIS is Windows only (as is Microsoft
Access) and most of our archaeological data currently lives in this
format. So while I deeply attached to my MacBook, when the processing gets
tough, I need to use the brute strength of the massive Dell. <a
bottom: 0px" height="240" alt="kayproii"
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20105367050fa970
bottom: 0px" height="240" alt="kayproiicase"
-pi" width="219" border="0"></a> I have also purchases two
little net-books. The <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/pylakoutsopetria_season_s/2008/06/mi
ni-micro.html">famous mini-micro</a> (which received no end of derision in
Cyprus, but ultimately and heroic saved the day!) is a Asus Eee PC. With
little chicklet keys, it is hardly suited for anything more than the shortest of
emails, but it nevertheless stood us in good stead when we needed an extra
laptop to complete final reports on Cyprus. Its Linux Xandros operating
853
system booted super fast and handled our basic word processing and web surfing
needs. But the little tiny keys were killer. So, with a tiny bit of
extra grant money, I ordered a Dell Mini. It's a cute, little Windows
based machine (XP Home) with normal sized keys! It will hopefully serve as
a supplemental computer on Cyprus and work well-enough for blogging, emails,
word processing (Open Office 3.0), and even some basic image manipulations (with
<a href="http://www.gimp.org/">Gimp</a>). XP Home is slow and laggy, but
at the size (<3.0 lbs and price (around $300), it works just fine. In
fact, I posted my <a
north-dakota-blizzard.html">Sunday blizzard blog</a> from it. While no one
would want to write their dissertation on one of these mini-computers, they work
just fine on an archaeological projects where small size and economy are more
important than computing power. So despite the promises of
all-in-one devices that serve all of our computing needs, even the middle of the
road computer user like myself finds utility in specialized machines that handle
specialized tasks well. 
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COMMENT:
IP: 99.184.131.214
URL:
DATE: 12/16/2008 08:53:56 PM
So jealous. Those Dell Mini's seem appealing. Tempted by the return to Apple (my
last one was a Classic box), but the GIS/AutoCAD problem seems insurmountable.
Have you seen the Umberto Eco article from a few years ago about PC vs Apple
equivalent to Protestantism vs Catholicism? Textual treatment might need its own
tool.
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TITLE: Archaeologists, the Media, and the Real Story
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BASENAME: archaeologists-the-media-and-the-real-story
CATEGORY: Teaching
CATEGORY: Television
DATE: 12/15/2008 10:07:40 AM

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854
As an <a href="http://www.asor.org/">ASOR</a> (American Schools of Oriental

Research) member, I look forward to getting my glossy copy of <a
href="http://www.asor.org/pubs/nea/index.html">Near Eastern
Archaeology</a>. This past issue (September 2008) had an interesting
forum focusing on the relationship between archaeologists and the [traditional]
media. The forum was interesting for several reasons. First,
several scholars offered the typical plaintiff cry that archaeology is
misrepresented in the so-called mass media. Even those producers and
directors (in short "Hollywood types") inclined to use real archaeologists as
talking heads rarely allow scholars to exert much influence over the direction
of the documentaries or programming. The result are documentaries and
programs, even on "good" channels, that at best represent only the sensational
side of archaeology, and at worse contort the goals, methods, and results of
fieldwork into implausible and simply untruthful shapes. The cause for
these evils is that the film and documentary industry is driven by the desire
for profit over the desire for truth. The funny thing is that the model
of the media explored in this forum is hardly as dominant as it once was.
Hollywood style archaeological documentaries still occupy a niche market and it
is clear that feature films with archaeological themes (mummies, lost arcs, et
c.) will remain popular. On the other hand, it is clear that the hegemony
exerted by large scale productions is waning. The former mass media has
become increasingly fragmented across a whole range of platforms and media
ranging from viral videos, to podcasts, to blogs. So, despite the
feeling that archaeologists have lost the war with the mass media, there are
unprecedented opportunities for archaeologists to take control of the
discourse. Some observations: <ol> <li>Producing an archaeological
documentary has never been easier (in fact, <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/Emerging_Cypriot.html">I've
produced two</a>!). Broadcast quality video cameras are inexpensive and
digital editing tools are available on most campuses. "Hollywood" has
always had a surplus of talent -- the stories of the next great film-maker
biding time delivering coffee on-set are not far from the truth -- and there are
directors who would jump at the chance to work with an archaeological team to
produce a documentary that is both entertaining and with scholarly
quantities. Even if digital video is beyond the expertise and resources of
a project, <a
e-final-pkap.html">podcasts are amazingly popular and have the same potential
for viral distribution as you-tube clips</a>. <a
la-koutsopetr.html">Even a simple, daily, blog</a> can attract a wider audience
to the work of real archaeologists and "counteract" the sensationalizing
tendencies of "mass media" documentaries. </li> <li>While re-enactments by
casts of thousands still have a particular dramatic effect, it is now possible
for only moderately tech-savvy scholars to produce digital reconstructions of
buildings, landscapes, stratigraphy, et c. So, it is possible to produce videos
with a high degree of graphic and technological sophistication on a desktop
computer with basic software. Technology has democratized the "wow"
factor.</li> <li>And reality t.v. has made the wow factor less important.
Archaeological projects produce fantastic reality t.v. The decision
making, personality conflicts, romance (I met my wife on an archaeological
project!), and setting all make archaeological projects compelling. More
importantly, many of these aspects of archaeological fieldwork have pedagogical
value as well. Archaeological decision making, conflict resolution in an
academic setting, and the basic logistics of archaeological work are sometime
855
hidden from public view (because, perhaps, of our insistence on appearing

scientific, objective, empirical), and this impoverishes our students
understanding of how archaeological data is produced.</li> <li>Two interrelated
intellectual trends - an interest in reflexivity and in performance - form an
important scholarly component to archaeological investigation that complements
the potential for video, audio, and text that increases transparency of practice
and method. These trends in the framing of archaeological research makes
it not only more feasible to argue for a video or audio component of the
project, but also ensure that the results of this work contributes to ongoing
scholarly discussions. The sophistication of the reflexive and
performative discourse provides a fine point of departure for archaeological
documentaries that take full advantage of the new media.</li></ol> While
archaeologists will probably never stop bemoaning their representation in the
media, the days when we could argue that we are being victimized by the
motivations of for-profit producers and studios are probably nearing an
end. The potential for producing competing narratives of archaeological
work that have both significance in the popular eye and in the scholarly realm
has arrived. Today archaeologists should worry less about being shut out
from the mass media and be more concerned about producing competing narrative of
their own that take advantage of the fragmented habits of our media culture and
inform and influence the status of our discipline (and its practitioners) in the
public eye.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Aaron B.
IP: 96.3.50.77
URL:
DATE: 12/15/2008 06:06:26 PM
Yes, in the North American high-Plains realm, we're finding fewer and fewer
Nazis to fight... kidding aside, this harkens back to Carl Becker re-visiting
the phrase <a
href="http://www.historians.org/info/AHA_history/clbecker.htm">"Everyman His Own
Historian"</a> some years ago (off hand perhaps when he was the AHA president).
Media such as YouTube has provided another way in which any historian, no matter
how Ivy League or provincial (a loaded term itself), can deliver their scholarly
findings to a broader audience. At the international level, YouTube was
popularized even more during the last presidential debates. And comics such as
Jack Black have brought their <a
href="http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/6eff3fba0d/drunk-history-vol-2-featuring-
jack-black-from-drunk-history-jack-black-derekwaters-and-jeremykonner">boozy
interpretations</a> to the fore. If we historians are going to complain, we can
only go so far until we turn to media such as YouTube ourselves.
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TITLE: A North Dakota Blizzard

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DATE: 12/14/2008 10:02:56 AM

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I am supposed to be winging my way to New York right now, but instead I am
snug at home waiting out a North Dakota style blizzard. It has winds up to
40 mph which make it difficult to know whether snow is falling or just blowing
blowing around. It's also -10 F and it has become colder since we got up
this morning. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20105365bcaed970
bottom: 0px" height="537" alt="Blizzard1"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20105365bcaf5970b
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20105365bcaf9970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20105365bcb08970b
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src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20105365bcb11970b
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> A sign that our house is
not as insulated as it could be: snow blowing in under the door. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20105365bcb17970
bottom: 0px" height="537" alt="SnowDoor"
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TITLE: A Snowy Visit to Montreal and McGill
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I cannot express enough appreciation to my gracious hosts <a
href="http://www.mcgill.ca/history/faculty/faculty/fronda/">Mike Fronda</a> and
<a href="http://people.mcgill.ca/hans.beck/">Hans Beck</a> during my snowy <a
la-koutsopetria-in-the-context-of-roman-cyprus-at-mcgill.html">visit to Montreal
and McGill</a>. The colloquium was thought provoking and collegial, <a
href="http://ancienthistory.altertum.uni-
halle.de/3435_97382start/99253_mehl/">Prof. Andreas Mehl's</a> paper was well-
considered, and the University and the city (particularly the food!) lived up to
its billing. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20105365eb637970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20105365eb63e970c
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20105365663fd970
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> I was able to visit the <a
href="http://www.saint-joseph.org/en_1007_index.asp">Oratory of St.
Joseph</a>. It is a spectacular church, but more importantly, the Oratory
ranks as one of the most popular healing shrines in North America. In
particular, the church is associated with the Blessed Brother Andre. His
simple piety earned him veneration as a holy man during his lifetime. In
particular the intercession of Brother Andre was known to heal the sick.
His efforts to promote the cult of St. Joseph resulted initially in the
construction of a small chapel dedicated to the saint and then the much larger
oratory. He was beatified by John Paul II and the Oratory remains an
important pilgrimage site. The tomb of Brother Andre is surrounded by
candles, images an statues of St. Joseph, and numerous crutches testifying to
the healing power of the holy man's intercession. <a
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20105365eb66b970c
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> The Original Oratory <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20105365eb67a970
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> The "new" Oratory We
also visited the cathedral of Montreal dedicated to Notre Dame. It was a
spectacular example of 19th century Gothic architecture. The massive
amount of exposed and painted wood gave it a palpably Canadian feel. 
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TITLE: Place, Identity, and Authority in Late Roman Cyprus
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Just a short post today, here is my paper that will be delivered
in a few hours at McGill sans citations and illustrations Enjoy: "Place, Identity, and Authority in
Late Roman Cyprus: A Response to A. Mehl's 'Cyprus: The Role of a Province
in the Roman Empire'". Delivered at McGill University, Montreal,
Canada December 10, 2008 William Caraher, University
of North Dakota Introduction Prof. Mehl's
excellent paper reconstructs crucial aspects of the history of Roman Cyprus on
the basis of administrative sources such as inscriptions, coins, and the brief
mentions of the island in literary sources. He noted, as had the
generation of commentators prior to him, that the dearth of traditional
administrative sources for the island has stymied efforts to understand its
place in the Roman empire. In contrast to the absence of material useful
for writing an administrative, prosopographical, or military history of the
island, the archaeological record holds forth an embarrassment of riches
pertinent to understanding how the long engagement with the Roman state
transformed the economic, cultural, and authoritative landscape of Cyprus.
In my brief, and hopefully complementary response to Prof. Mehl's paper, I will
look beyond the better known excavations of major Roman period sites like
Paphos, Kourion, Salamis, and Amathous and even many increasingly important
smaller sites like the early Roman period sanctuary on the island of Yeronisos
and excavations a Marion-Arsinoe. [SLIDE] Instead, I will follow the lead
of Susan Alcock turn my attention to the countryside to document the impact of
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Roman authority on the island. Recent work by both survey archaeologists

and excavators has shed light on a surprisingly vital Roman and Late Roman
countryside extending from a well-developed maritime landscape to the rich
material culture of the villas, industrial sites, hamlets, villages, and small
towns that formed the suburban, ex-urban, and rural fabric of a Roman province
in the East. While it is important to emphasize that identifying specific
agency or policies that indicate a link between Roman administrative presence on
the island and changes in the urban and rural landscape remains difficult,
evidence for the transformation of the island under Roman rule is nevertheless
sufficiently robust for scholars to argue for a pervasive and significant Roman
influence on Cypriot life. [SLIDE] Our site, of
Pyla-Koutsopetria, on the southern coast of Cyprus provides a useful example of
how recent fieldwork holds forth potential for re-imagining the relationship
between Roman imperial authority and the organization of life on the island of
Cyprus. [SLIDE] The site itself is situated on the coast about 8-10 km
from the harbor of ancient Kition. Stray finds from the area since the
19th century indicated that it was a center of ancient activities. At the
nearby site of Pyla-Kokkinokremos, systematic excavations since the middle years
of the 20th century revealed a substantial Bronze Age fortification.
[SLIDE] At the site of Pyla-Koutsopetria proper, excavations in the 1990s by the
Department of Antitquities revealed a well-appointed Early Christian
basilica. [SLIDE] Since 2003, the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project
has worked to place the previous fieldwork in this area in a broader, diachronic
archaeological context. [SLIDE] Using intensive pedestrian survey (and
beginning last year targeted excavation), our work has produced evidence for
continuous activity in the coastal zone of Pyla Village from as early as Cypro-
Archaic period. [SLIDE] There is evidence that the site began to expand
considerable during the Late Hellenistic and Early Roman period before reaching
its peak during Late Antiquity. In the 6th and early 7th century, the site
extended for over a kilometer along the coast and had a densely built up center
of close to 40 ha. Less intensive activity contemporary with the coastal
site extended several kilometers inland encompassing an area of well over 150
ha. A diverse assemblage of local and imported transport amphora,
finewares, and architectural fragments attest not only to the wealth of the
site, but also to its well-connected position within both local and regional
trade networks. [SLIDE] [SLIDE] A marshy depression drained in recent
times by the British Military likely represents the remains of a substantial
ancient embayment which would have formed a protected harbor well into Late
Antique and Medieval times. The location, size, influence, and wealth of
the site marks it as more than a villa site or even the largest village.
In fact, it probably represents a "market town" of the kind mentioned by John
Moschos as existing on the island. Place and Space in
Roman Cyprus It was quite remarkable to discover a site as
extensive as Pyla-Koutsopetria in the hinterland of the city of Kition. As
Mitford noted so many years ago, there is no evidence for any autonomous
villages in the chora of Kition, although this does not mean that such
settlements did not exist. The absence of a known settlement outside of
the city of Kition might hint at the relatively centralized organization of the
city's chora during the Iron Age. It would appear that our site of Pyla-
Koutsopetria remained anonymous into Roman times, although some scholars have
suggested that the site may be the ancient town of Dadai or Tadai which appeared
in Ptolemy (5.15) and John Moschos. Even if we accept that the site
was Dadai, it nevertheless fell outside of the 12 or 13 Cypriot cities
recognized as the basic administrative units on the island under Hellenistic and
Roman rule. The nominal autonomy of these cities, however, appears to have
860
had relatively little impact on the Roman perception of province. As Prof.

Mehl pointed out, Rome continued the practice of the Hellenistic rulers of
island and regarded the island as a single unit administered first from Paphos
and later from Salamis-Constantia. Governing the island
as a single administrative unit redefined the relationship between urban centers
and their peripheral settlements. As Prof. Mehl has observed, the Romans
constructed a road network that continued the Hellenistic policy of ignoring the
boundaries of the Iron Age cities in favor of linking copper producing regions
to the coast. A rationalized pattern for extracting copper ore and trees
from the Troodos range, however, only represents one aspect of the economic
changes associated with the Roman administration of the island. Pliny and
Strabo both comment on the agricultural prosperity of the province.
Ammianus Marcellinus observed that Cyprus could not only build and outfit her
own transport vessels but also fill them with produce. Even as late at the
7th century, the unusual Christian tale called the Vision of Kaioumos featured
an aristocrat from Salamis named Philentolos whose wealth came "from land and
sea, from businesses, lands, and ships". Lands in this portfolio
presumably represent agricultural wealth which we can add to the list of
resources extracted from the island alongside copper and trees. The link
between ships and agricultural resources might explain the extensive coastal
warehouses at sites like Ay. Georgios-Peyias in the west and the Governor's
beach site on the Akrotiri peninsula which served to facilitate the large-scale
"commercial" exportation of foodstuffs. As I will discuss later, the
agricultural productivity of the island may also account for the wide
distribution of Late Roman 1 amphoras some of which were undoubtedly produced on
the island. It goes without saying that the exploitation
of agricultural produce represents a lower level of administrative commitment
and economic intensity than the extraction of copper or trees. The
sustained expansion of settlement in the Cypriot countryside nevertheless
reveals a vibrant economy which was largely dependent the upon peace and
prosperity introduced by the Roman empire. The pattern of prosperity on
the island during the Roman period reflects the complex interaction between
Roman and pre-existing settlement patterns. In the eastern part of the island,
for example, a longstanding network of roads linking the major metropolitan
areas, particularly along the coast, continued to function during the Roman
period. With the growing irrelevance of the borders between the Iron Age
cities, these same roads became corridors which allowed formerly peripheral
coastal sites to exploit their immediate hinterland. This is particularly
visible at Pyla-Koutsopetria. [SLIDE] In the Cypro-Classical period and
earlier, activity appears limited to the fortified coastal height of
Vigla. [SLIDE] The Roman period, however, saw the site expand south onto
the coastal plain. The growth in both size and complexity ultimately
peeked during the Late Roman period where activity stretched for over a
kilometer east to west along the coast likely following the course of the
ancient road. While it is always dangerous to propose monocausal
explanations for the expansion of a site, it seems probable to attribute some of
the growth of Koutsopetria to changes in political and economic organization
under Roman rule. Koutsopetria marked the junction of several important routes
through this area of the island. [SLIDE] [SLIDE] The major east-west road
linking Kition with Salamis-Constantina departed from the coast at Koutsopetria,
another road continued east toward Cape Greco and the Roman site of Thronoi
which was traditionally in the territory of Salamis, and the site probably
marked the southern terminus of a road moving south through the Pyla pass from
the Mesoria. The protected harbor at the site further enhanced the ability
of Pyla-Koutsopetria to engage traffic and trade along these routes.
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[SLIDE] Moreover, by rendering the border between Salamis and Kition irrelevant,
Roman, rule transformed Pyla-Koutsopetria from a peripheral settlement in
relation to the city of Kition to a modest, yet central place on the
southeastern coast of the island. A similar phenomenon occurred that the
site of Ay. Georgios-Peyias which stood at Cape Drepanon near the border between
Paphos and its western neighbor of Marion. Contacts and
Connections The administrative unification of the island
under Hellenistic and the Roman rule and the consequent re-organization of the
Cypriot countryside represents just one manifestation of Roman rule on the
island. The peace and stability that the Romans brought to the eastern
Mediterranean not only expanded the potential markets for Cypriot goods, but
also gave Cypriots access to a new range of objects and practices with which to
mark their identity. The tremendously diverse assemblage of pottery
collected over the course of our fieldwork at Pyla-Koutsopetria provides a
robust guide for understanding local engagement with a Romanized Mediterranean
economy and brings to the fore the local implications of being a part of the
Roman Empire. While the island of Cyprus had long history of participation
in Eastern Mediterranean trade from at least the Bronze Age, the assemblage of
Roman pottery present at Koutsopetria represents a distinct artifact of Roman
rule particularly when cast in light of recent efforts to re-examine the
structure of the ancient Mediterranean economy. Holden and Purcell's
influential Mediterranean synthesis, The Corrupting Sea, proposed an approach to
understanding Mediterranean trade that separated its position in the
Mediterranean economy from the its place in the administrative structure of
Roman provincial organization. Mid-sized sites like Koutsopetria, which
are larger than rural villages and smaller than the major urban centers of the
Roman period, may have had relatively autonomous relationships with regional
exchange networks. [SLIDE] For example, the assemblage collected from
Pyla-Koutsopetria revealed a distinctly higher percentage of imported African
Red Slip fine wares than other sites on the island. [SLIDE] While the
locally produced Cypriot Red Slip dominated formed a significant part of the
assemblage, African Red Slip occurred far more frequently than the regionally
prevalent Phocaean Red Slip. (The real significance of this discovery will
be easier to assess once the final publication of Late Roman material from
Kition appears.) The wealth present at the site seems to
have been a product of local agricultural production. The site is too far
removed from the copper producing regions of the Troodos to have benefited from
copper extraction and the tree covered foothills that rise up to the west of
Kition had far more plausible outlets than our harbor. So far, we have
seen no evidence for any large-scale production of ceramics, quarrying activity
seems relatively modest and best assigned for local construction, and there is
no clear reason to suppose that our site had any substantial administrative or
military function during the Roman period (such as garrison camp). [SLIDE]
We do have evidence for agricultural processing at the site including several
components of a olive press of likely Roman to Late Roman date. [SLIDE] A
more telling piece of evidence comes from the thousands of fragments of Late
Roman transport amphora. [SLIDE] [SLIDE] Late Roman 1 amphora dominate
this assemblage. These tremendously common amphoras were probably produced
on the island as well as at other sites along the coast of Asia Minor. The
wide variation in fabric present at our site suggest that Koutsopetria likely
received and exported goods in these vessels to regional markets. Scholars
have suggested that these amphora mostly contained olive oil and wine and may
have served to provision troops on the Danubian frontiers and elsewhere.
Late Roman 2 amphoras were also found in some quantities. These vessels
derive from the Aegean and while they may be in reuse at Koutsopetria, they
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nevertheless the demonstrate the range of commercial contacts present at the

site. Finally, the concentration of these vessels at the eastern extent of
the site suggests that their presence here is more than simply the discard from
domestic practices. Instead it is reasonable to suppose that this area had
a specialized function presumably tied to the export or import of bulk
goods. To consider briefly the administrative aspect of this pattern of
trade, it is worth noting that under Justinianian Cyprus was linked with the
Cyclades, Asia Minor, Scythia, and Moesia Secunda to form a single quaestura
under single commander. This not only secured under a single
administrative entity the main route from Egypt to Constantinople, but also
linked a group of agriculturally productive provinces to a stretch of the
frontier with a substantial contingent of troops. The
presence of a distinct assemblage of Late Roman fine wares and the more typical
assemblage of transport amphora reveal a community with access to the commercial
life of the Roman Mediterranean. While Bakirtzis has speculated that
western port of Ay. Georgios-Peyias was a stop on the Late Roman anona route
from Egypt to Constantinople, there is no reason to believe that Pyla-
Koutsopetria served this function. Thus the prosperity of this site is
unlikely to be tied to formal administrative trade. Instead the place of
this site in the regional economy is a byproduct of Roman political power both
on the island and in the Mediterranean more generally. The choice of the
residents at the site to prefer African Red Slip to local or even regional
alternatives is ultimately conditioned by the options made available to them by
the political organization of the Roman empire. [SLIDE] As C. Kondleon
showed in her study of the House of Dionysios in Paphos and is likewise apparent
in the House of Gladiators in the thoroughly Roman city of Kourion, the place of
a province in the Roman empire was not simply an administrative reality, but a
cultural reality as well. A Topography of Authority in Late Roman
Roman Cyprus The increasingly Romanized character of the
assemblage present at Koutsopetria as well as location of the site suggest a
complex interplay between settlement structure, economic organization, and even
cultural identity in Roman and Late Roman Cyprus. Despite the Romanization
of the province, Prof. Mehl has noted, few Cypriots appear in the Roman
administration. By late Antiquity however, this appears to have changed.
While a number of Cypriot saints are known from antiquity, the two most famous
are bishops, St. Epiphanius of Salamis and St. John the Almsgiver.
Epiphanius was a late 4th century bishop of Salamis. He began his
ecclesiastical career first as a monk in Egypt and then in Palestine before
becoming the bishop on Cyprus. From this post he exerted influence
extensively in the region and in the early 5th century even journeyed to
Constantinople where he briefly clashed with John Chrysostom. John the
Almsgiver was born on Cyprus at Amathous in the mid-6th century to the governor
of the island. Under Herakleios, he became the Chalcedonian patriarch of
Alexandria. In 614, however, the Persian threat drove him out of See at
which point he returned to Cyprus where he died. While it is hardly
surprising that members of the ecclesiastical and imperial aristocracy crossed
paths in Late Antique Cyprus, it nevertheless reveals that by Late Antiquity,
Cypriots had come to occupy significant places within the Empire.
 [SLIDE] The activities of elite Cypriot churchmen,
however, speaks little to how Roman authority became manifest on the island
outside of urbanized areas. The spread of Christianity in rural areas on
the island may capture a key aspects of the relationship between Cyprus and
"Rome" (or more properly the Roman state). While it always dangerous to
project Late Antique phenomena back into earlier centuries, an examination of
the distribution of ecclesiastical architecture might offer an example for the
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way in which elite, administrative authority manifest itself on the local

level. Whereas the most obvious and monumental reminders of Roman
authority in the first four centuries of Roman involvement on the island appears
largely restricted to urban areas, the building boom of Late Antiquity saw the
spread of Christian basilica style churches throughout the island. Thus
far, archaeologists have documented well over 100 churches on the island largely
dating to the 5th -7th centuries. The 6th century church excavated at
Pyla-Kousoptria with its elaborate opus sectile floors, wall painting, and
moulded gypsum decorations represents just one of many examples of relatively
elaborate church architecture in rural areas. [SLIDE] Our site only has one
known church, but the similar site of Ay. Georgios-Peyias has at least five, the
smaller and more rural site at Kopetra has three, the coastal site at Maroni-
Petrera has one, as does the rather remote anchorage on the Akamas peninsula,
Ay. Kononas. The similarities between these buildings and their counterparts in
urban areas is significant in that they project not only urban architecture into
the countryside but also a specific ritual experience. The hierarchical
rituals that took place within Christian churches on Cyprus ensconced the clergy
in a position of authority which resonated with the architecture and ritual life
of the urban centers on the island. The autonomous status of the bishop of
Cyprus, granted in first in 431 and then again in 488, reinforced the position
of the island as an independent Roman province. This status framed the
common ritual experiences of rural and urban life on Cyprus, but also made clear
that the autonomous church was only one scale of engagement with structures of
authority extending far beyond the boundaries of the province. 
 Conclusion To conclude: I have strayed rather far
from the topic, methodology, and chronological boundaries of Prof. Mehl's
paper. Nevertheless, both our works broached central questions to the
study of the Roman Empire today. Any conclusions regarding the
cohesiveness of the Roman state, the nature of local and imperial identity, and
the manifestation of imperial authority require scholars not only to consider a
wide range of evidence, but also to test a wide range of theoretical approaches
that offer distinct methods for unpacking the complex intersection of Roman
authority, imperialism and local identity . Part of this effort, of
course, are colloquiums like this where archaeologists and historians with
similar interests exchange ideas, approaches, and conclusions. Such
dialogues hold forth the potential not only for a more synthetic approach to the
Cypriot past, but also for a multivocal history that captures the diversity of
experiences present in Roman empire. 
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AUTHOR: Kition
EMAIL: admin@journeyidea.com
IP: 203.188.230.240
URL: http://www.journeyidea.com/primeval-kition-part-i/
DATE: 09/07/2009 12:39:49 AM
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Kition, former primeval city concealed beneath Larnaca; Cyprus, is city of great
historical, archeological, architectural consequence. From wars of Mycenaeans
and the Phonicians to native hero, Zeno, from pre-greek era to Significent
incidences of life of Jesus to arebic raiders, the city has it all.
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DATE: 12/09/2008 07:57:01 AM

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My blogging comrade, Kostis Kourelis, over at <a
href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/">Buildings, Objects, Situations</a> offered
<a href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/2008/12/baby-and-blog.html">an interesting
post</a> on his own blogging habits. <blockquote> "For one, I must stop
belaboring over my postings and make them snappier. Blogging should be done
quickly, like an open email to a friend. Even if only for a few minutes a day, I
feel that frequent postings are mandatory. Otherwise, potential readers cannot
themselves establish reading regularity. So I hope to start a different style of
posting that is perhaps more in-tune with the spirit of blogging."
</blockquote> I blog for about an hour a day, usually the first thing in
the morning. I get into my office around 7 am and try to get my post done
by around 8. Today is a little different as I am blogging from the <a
href="http://www.gfkairport.com/">Grand Forks International Airport</a> en route
to destinations international (via Minneapolis!). Being in a different
(although not unfamiliar environment) has disrupted my blogging mojo in fairly
significant ways. First, I am constantly looking at the little battery
monitor on my laptop. While it says that I have 2:45 minutes, I don't
trust it. (About 10 minutes ago, it said that I had closer to 3:30
minutes). Second, I feel fairly certain that a blog written on the road
should have different feeling than a blog written in the comfort of my
office. This is to suggest that my physical environment, channeled through
the blog, influences the content of my blog. This gets me back to
Kostis's post. He declared that blogging "should be done quickly".
Quickly, however, is a relative term. In the world of academic publishing,
a three month turn around can be considered quickly for a peer-reviewed
article. Or, publishing an archaeological report 6 months after the
completion of field work (or even 6 weeks) is quickly (see my series on the <a
chaeological-institute-of-america-annual-meeting-the-corinthian-countryside-at-
the-aia.html">Corinthian Countryside</a>). In the world of journalistic
blogging (see for example <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200811/andrew-
sullivan-why-i-blog">Andrew Sullivan's "Why I Blog" article in the August 2008
Atlantic</a>), hourly blogging is quickly compared to the rhythm of daily
newspaper publishing. These different definitions of quickly suggest the
obvious point that blogging has a broader context, and this context might go far
to developing the idea of genre (or sub-genre) within the still-expanding field
of blogging. This disintegration of blogging as a general term for rapid
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dissemination of new links, news, specific information, attitudes, experiences,

and impressions into a myriad of sub-genres and specific blog types will demand
a more discernment on the part of the reading audience (not to mention the
authors) as they encounter blogs whose content needs to be read within even more
specific generic contexts. (This may be part of a larger trend in modern
literature descending ultimately from the modern construction of the
novel.) The ability to take the act of blogging mobile adds
another dimension to the reading of blogs that we may not have encountered in
our notions of reading honed on the generic complexities of the novel. It
goes without saying the reading a blog on a mobile device in different contexts
(from a university office, to the comfort of baby and home, to the train on the
way to work,) re-contextualizes the text in even more ways.
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TITLE: Cyprus and the Roman Administration: People and Ritual
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BASENAME: cyprus-and-the-roman-administration-people-and-ritual
CATEGORY: Byzantium
DATE: 12/08/2008 07:52:42 AM

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I was able to (almost) complete <a
la-koutsopetria-in-the-context-of-roman-cyprus-at-mcgill.html">my paper for
Montreal</a> on Wednesday. This paper is a short response <a
re-roman-cyprus.html">to a paper by Andreas Mehl</a> entitled "Cyprus: The Role
of a Province in the Roman Empire". In the final section of my paper I
consider the degree to which Cyprus was engaged in Roman affairs during Late
Antiquity. This brief and relatively superficial analysis is designed to
consider how deeply Cyprus was engaged in the affairs of the Late Roman
Empire. It stands in response to the observation offered by Mitford, Mehl,
and others that almost no Cypriots appear in the administration of the High
Empire, and this led them to conclude that Cyprus must have been a relatively
insignificant province in the Empire or that the province did not participate in
many of the typical activities that allowed for individuals to advance into the
Roman administration. In Late Antiquity, however, things appear to have
changed. On the one hand, there are two particularly prominent bishops
with Cypriot ties: the late 4th century St. Epiphanius of Salamis and the early
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7th century St. John the Almsgiver. While Epiphanius was not a Cypriot by
birth, he was perhaps the most celebrated Late Antique bishop of Salamis.
He began his ecclesiastical career first as a monk in Egypt and then in
Palestine before becoming the bishop on Cyprus. From this post he exerted
influence extensively in the region and in the early 5th century even journeyed
to Constantinople where he briefly clashed with John Chrysostom. John the
Almsgiver was the son of the governor of the island. He was born at Cyprus
at Amathous in the mid-6th century. Under Herakleios, he became the
Chalcedonian patriarch of Alexandria. In 614, however, the Persian threat
forced him from his See at which point he returned to Cyprus where he
died. While it is hardly surprising that members of the ecclesiastical and
imperial aristocracy crossed paths in Late Antique Cyprus, it nevertheless
reveals that by Late Antiquity, Cypriots had come to occupy significant places
within the Empire. The deeper engagement of the island in empire wide
affair may not simply reflect a top down phenomenon. After all, the island
<a
e-early-chris.html">featured well over 100 Late Antique period
churches</a>. By the late 5th and 6th century, churches had appeared in
communities all across the island ranging from major urban centers to the small
villages. Our site at Pyla-Koutsopetria had at least one well appointed
basilica. The much smaller village of Kopetra had three basilica style
churches. The similarities between these buildings in non-urban or ex-
urban sites and their counterparts in urban areas is significant in that they
projected not only urban architecture but also a specific ritual experience into
the countryside. The hierarchical rituals that took place within Christian
churches on Cyprus ensconced the clergy in a position of authority which
resonated with the architecture and ritual life of the urban centers on the
island. The autonomous status of the bishop of Cyprus, granted in first in
431 and then again in 488, reinforced the position of the island as an
independent Roman province. This status framed the common ritual
experiences of rural and urban life on Cyprus, but also made clear that the
autonomous church was only one scale of engagement with structures of authority
extending far beyond the boundaries of the province. So evidence
for elite engagement at the level of bishop suggests that by Late Antiquity
Cyprus has emerged as a more significant participant in the ecclesiastical
affairs of the Eastern Roman empire. As the affairs of the church became
more deeply embedded in the affairs of the state, particularly over the course
of the 6th century, the role of Cyprus and Cypriots appears to have
increased. The island's ability to assert its ecclesiastical independence
from the See of Antioch twice in the 5th century further attests to the
prominence of Cypriot churchmen in the eyes of the ecclesiastical and imperial
administration. Cyprus' engagement in the life of the church in the
Eastern Mediterranean does not appear restricted to merely elite
individuals. The proliferation of churches across the island ensured a
degree of continuity in ritual life in rural, urban, and suburban
contexts. This continuity of experience represented an important aspect of
the "liturgification of Late Roman society. The liturgy with its distinct
rituals, language, and organization served as a kind of common language for
expressing political, social, and even economic identity across the entire
Mediterranean basin. 
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Here some interesting and fun links for a winter Friday: <ul> <li>From
the <a href="http://www.archive.org/index.php">Internet Archive</a> via Nathan
Harper through Scott Moore: <a
href="http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=Cyprus%20AND%20mediatype%3Atexts">
Some important texts for the study of Cyprus</a>. It includes Cobham's
Excerpta Cypria, Cesnola's Cyprus: Its Cities, Tombs, and
Temples, and Hogarth's Devia Cypria.</li> <li>I am not usually a
big fan of "blog carnivals" but <a
href="http://www.crankyprofessor.com/archives/002004.html">Carnivalesque 45</a>
is pretty good.</li> <li>It alerted me that Alun Salt had begun blogging again
at <a href="http://archaeoastronomy.wordpress.com/">Archaeoastronomy</a>.</li>
<li>Ian Straughn has posted a great article called "<a
href="http://traumwerk.stanford.edu/archaeolog/2008/11/trashed_out_an_archaeolog
ical.html">'Trashed Out': An Archaeology Reading of the Foreclosure Mess</a>"
over at <a
href="http://traumwerk.stanford.edu/archaeolog/">Archaeolog</a>. This
resonates with my own interest in a suburban archaeology (<a
all-town-arch.html">here</a>, <a
re-small-town.html">here</a>, <a
e-streets-of.html">here</a>, <a
e-streets-of-grand-forks-2-a-small-town-streetscape.html">here</a>, and <a
burban-archaeology-a-detroit-jewel-in-the-attic.html">here</a>), but in a far
more timely manner.</li> <li><a
href="http://antiquatedvagaries.blogspot.com/">Antiquated Vagaries</a> has a
great <a href="http://antiquatedvagaries.blogspot.com/2008/11/greece-origin-of-
western-civilization.html">post (with some great pictures)</a> on Athenian
Graffiti and street art.</li> <li>Ryan Stander's <a
href="http://axisofaccess.blogspot.com/">Axis of Access</a> is a great
blog. His photographs are amazing and we hope to recruit him to visit work
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with us in Cyprus this summer. </li> <li>Finally, the 2009 Graduate School
Scholarly Forum Call-for-Papers has appeared. If you are a graduate
student or faculty at UND, this is a great opportunity to share your
research</li> The 2009 Scholarly Forum ‚Äì Call for Abstracts The
Graduate School is now calling for abstracts for the 2009 Scholarly Forum. The
two day campus-wide event focuses on graduate student and faculty research and
creative scholarship at UND. The Scholarly Forum will be held March 11 & 12
in the Memorial Union, featuring oral presentations, panel sessions and a poster
session. The deadline for abstracts is Monday 2 February, 2009. Sessions times
are limited so submit your abstract early! All abstracts must be submitted on
the electronic form provided on our web site. It is also important to read the
submission guidelines. We look forward to receiving your abstracts. The
submission form and guidelines can be found here on the web site (<a
href="http://www.graduateschool.und.edu/docs/2009ScholaryForum/Forum%20Guideline
s.pdf">submission guidelines here</a> and <a
href="http://www.graduateschool.und.edu/docs/2009ScholaryForum/SubmissionForm.pd
f">submission form here</a>)</ul>
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TITLE: Teaching Thursday: Teaching by Templates
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BASENAME: teaching-thursday-teaching-by-templates
DATE: 12/04/2008 07:48:32 AM

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I've been thinking a good bit about templates for assignments this
semester. Some of this was prompted by a series of discussions organized
by our Office of Instructional Development around the Gerald Graff book They
Say/I Say. As I have noted earlier, this book offers some basic templates
to help students organize the relationship between the scholarly discourse
("they say") and their own contributions ("I say"). I tend to follow such
templates myself, in fact, beginning (at least the first draft) of many papers
with the phrase "Many scholars have argued..." in order to set up my own
(presumably) different perspective on a particular historical problem.
Graff's templates for this rhetorical "move" are far more complex and
sophisticated offering students such useful phrases like "Although X does not
say so directly, she apparently assumes _______" (23) or "X is right that
_______, but she seems on more dubious ground when she claims ______"
(60). Such templates certainly introduce students the kind of techniques
and templates that are common in academic writing. This is particular
important in lower level courses because we cannot expect students here to have
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had much, if any, contact with academic writing (and textbooks commonly work to
downplay authorial voice in favor of implied consensus). While we can
complain that books like Graff allow students to work around the arduous task of
deciphering academic prose and discerning the stylistic ticks that make formal
writing work, the book does provide a way to get students thinking more
carefully about language, arguments, and presentation. Teaching by
templates certainly leads to more aesthetically appealing final products.
I teach our introduction to historical methods class (The Historians Craft) and
I require students to give a professional style conference paper on their
research at the end of the course. I encourage them to follow a fairly
strict template for these papers. 1. Present your
topic clearly. 2. State your
thesis. 3. Place it within the historiography of your
field. 4. Discuss your sources and
method. 5. Demonstrate your argument‚Äôs
validity. 6. Conclude with reference to this thesis‚Äôs
broader implications. The results of this rather formal structure are papers
that are similar in form and vary in content. On the one hand, this
structures and limits the students' creative impulses. On the other hand,
it produces papers that are easy to understand and evaluate. The final paper
for my graduate historiography class is a thesis prospectus. Such papers
typically follow a fairly restricted number of templates. Nevertheless,
I've been reluctant to provide a template for this assignment, and this has
caused some consternation among my students in this class. Some of
my reasons are selfish: I dread reading 20 cookie cutter papers. On the
other hand, I also want to encourage students at the graduate level
(particularly in a graduate level historiography class) to recognize the
vitality and variability in our field. Part of the process of discovering
one's own academic voice and understanding the discipline at the graduate level
is recognizing the huge diversity of template available for any aspect of the
academic process. This causes the class some consternation, but I'd like to see
that as a product of academic and perhaps even intellectual growth. More
Teaching Thursdays: <a
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Lecture</a> <a
Teaching</a> <a
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TITLE: The Potential for Digital Humanities at the University of North Dakota
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north-dakota
CATEGORY: Web/Tech
DATE: 12/03/2008 08:08:38 AM

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As readers of this blog know, <a
first-steps.html">we are beginning to explore the potential for a digital
humanities center here at the University of North Dakota</a>. The
Department of English already has invested in a digital humanities class and has
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several faculty members with research interest in the field. My interest

in the Department of History is in the emerging fields of digital history and
digital archaeology. So far, a small working group has fashioned some
basic material that sought to define digital humanities here on campus and
outline potential directions for our work. This past week, <a
href="http://www.und.edu/president/">UND's new President</a> circulated an
invitation for "White Papers" asking for resources that would help
interdisciplinary groups on campus develop new ideas or shift the emphasis of
exiting groups. We plan to organize some of our existing material into a
white paper and request funding that will help develop digital humanities here
on campus. The trick is to translate our groups goals into a viable
request for resources. One thing that is striking about our
campus is that there are a number of ongoing digital projects in draw upon
digital technology and resources already on campus. This work ranges from
the creation of digital texts to the use of GIS in archaeological and
geographical research to innovative use of digital audio, video, and
photography. The goal of any Center or Working Group here would be to
create a center of gravity not only to promote these projects to the
administration and wider public but also to encourage the kind interaction
between individuals that will likely stimulate collaborative research, cross-
disciplinary projects, or new technologies. As anyone who has worked in
academia knows, the best way to stimulate research is to make lots of money
available to collaborative projects. This is probably not a viable option
at present so we have worked to come up with other ways to focus the
intellectual infrastructure already present on campus is a productive
way. The hope is that this group or center would form a crucial component
in helping the campus and scholars in the humanities transition from analogue
perspectives on their research to embracing the wide range of digital
technologies and methods that will characterize the next generation of research
and teaching. The ironic thing about many of our efforts is that they
involve distinctly non-digital methods and resources. First we all
concluded that some kind of space on campus for our Working Group or Center
would foster faculty collaboration. I work mostly in my office and I am
sure that many of my colleagues have their favorite productive spaces, but a
central location for informal or formal discussions about digital approaches to
the humanities would nevertheless represent an important aspect of the kind
legitimacy and visibility necessary to promote our work. We also
discussed the need for a lecture series. My vision would be to run two a
year and pair a faculty lecture with an outside speaker. We will likely
ask for resources to fund two graduate students who would help prepare external
grant applications, maintain the web site (a digital projects portal), and
support various campus projects in the digital humanities. Since
the resources would only be available once (as opposed to sustaining support) we
decided not to ask for much in the way of hardware or even software (although we
will include several <a href="http://www.dlxs.org/index.html">crucial and
expensive software packages</a>) which have well-established horizons of
obsolescence and little value unless backed by sustainable funding. It
seems that funds right now would best serve to foster the kind of social and
intellectual infrastructure on campus that would be largely self-sustaining in
the future. It's always hard to know how any proposal will be
received. There is reason, however, for optimism as <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2008/11/gi
s-day-and-the-digital-humanities-at-the-university-of-north-dakota.html">the
President has already assumed that a center for digital humanities</a> exists on
campus. We hope that we won't disappoint him too much when we tell
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him that our work is still in early stages and needs support from the
administration to reach its fullest potential.
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TITLE: The Cypriot Landscape, Pyla-Koutsopetria, and Rome
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<a
re-roman-cyprus.html">As I mentioned yesterday</a>, <a
la-koutsopetria-in-the-context-of-roman-cyprus-at-mcgill.html">my paper in
Montreal</a> will focus on the archaeological aspects of the Roman presence on
Cyprus in an effort to complement a paper that emphasizes the administrative
aspects of Roman rule. I spent most of the day yesterday thinking about
how Cyprus position in the Roman empire influenced Cypriot landscape. <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/26014005">Susan Alcock's Graecia
Capta</a> was at the forefront of my thought as was <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/186710945">Marcus Rautman's</a> work on the
"busy countryside" of Late Antique Cyprus. So, the question that I
tried to answer is how was Cyprus' place in the Roman empire visible at our site
of <a href="http://www.pkap.org/">Pyla-Koustopetria</a>. In some
ways, our site is typical of other non-urban Roman-Late Roman sites on the
island. For example, it lacks a strong signature of material from the 2nd-
3rd century and has a tremendous increase of material in the later 5th, 6th, and
early 7th centuries. The absence of 2nd and 3rd century material might be an
artifact of our understanding of Roman ceramics; after all out site produced a
good amount of pottery that can be generically dated to the Roman period.
Thus, we can probably argue that our site had continuous activity throughout the
Roman era. This would distinguish it, in part, from trends in both Greece
and Cyprus which seem to suggest that economic and political turmoil of the
later high empire saw a contraction of rural settlement. On the other
hand, our site is not simply a Roman period settlement. We have activity
at Koutsopetria continuously from the Archaic period including what appears to
be a fortified settlement perhaps dating to the Classical-Hellenistic
time. The arrival of Roman material on the site, then, could be read as
the changing material culture of the long-standing settlement. While this
would qualify as a kind of Romanization (especially as some of the material may
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suggest a deeper involvement in markets made available by Roman rule over the
entire Eastern Mediterranean), it hardly represents the creation of a distinct
Roman landscape of the kind recognized by Alcock in Greece and typified by large
scale agricultural exploitation of the countryside, centuriation, and wholesale
founding of cities. It is interesting, however, to compare the
position of Koutsopetria in pre-Roman Cyprus to its position in the
administratively unified island under Roman rule. In pre-Roman times,
Koutsopetria sat at the periphery of the city of Kition's chora (or
territory). In fact, one possible interpretation of the fortification at
the site is that they are a coastal border fort near the eastern limits of
Kition's territory. With the arrival of Roman administrative organization
on Cyprus, inter-city rivalries on the island presumably continued, but
political and economic boundaries between these cities (for example Kition and
its eastern neighbor Salamis) would have become increasingly irrelevant.
It seems worth considering that the rise in prosperity at Koutsopetria over the
course of the Roman period, was stimulated in part by a new degree of economic
coherence present on the island under Roman rule. Koutsopetria may have
gone from being a peripheral settlement to Kition to its own kind of central
place occupying the gap between the political and economic centers at Kition and
Salamis. Perhaps it was the political unification of the island
during the Roman period which set the stage for the rapid expansion and increase
in prosperity of the site during Late Antiquity. The full array of Late
Roman finewares and <a
la-koustopetr.html">transport vessels</a> at the site shows a deep engagement
with Mediterranean markets. Moreover, <a
ovisional-pro.html">the material at Koutsopetria appears somewhat different from
the material found at other sites in the immediate vicinity</a> suggesting a
degree of economic autonomy. What happened during the Late Roman period to
encourage this kind of economic expansion? In a general sense, Rautman and
others have suggested that the stability of the Late Roman Mediterranean and the
general prosperity of Mediterranean markets stimulated the exchange of highly
visible (in an archaeological sense) products. So in this sense,
Koutsopetria represents one of any number of Roman period sites that cashed in
on the general prosperity of the Eastern Mediterranean. When cast
against the backdrop of Roman rule on the island of Cyprus, the site history of
Pyla-Koutsopetria appears distinct in that activity at the site is not
a pure artifact of Roman administrative priorities, economic resturcturing, or
political intervention. On the other hand, its expansion during this
period and into Late Antiquity suggests that Roman rule did influence the
development of the site. Its location on the coast and at the junction of
several Roman roads surely provided opportunities for the residents to engage
more fully the local trade on the island as well as the larger external markets
made accessible through Roman control of the Mediterranean basin. This
assessment, of course, says nothing about the cultural, religious, or even
social influences of Roman rule which surely conditioned the archaeological
signature of the site in the landscape as well. More on this... I hope...
later in the week.
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TITLE: More Roman Cyprus...
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<a
pping-roman-pottery-at-pyla-koutsopetria.html">My recent blog entries</a> on
Roman Cyprus center on two projects. One is a article that we have been
working on for almost three years now that places the assemblage produced by the
<a href="http://www.pkap.org">Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project</a> in
the context of other similar sites in the Eastern Mediterranean. It
focuses particularly on how the economic relationships between sites in the
region led to the creation of a distinct assemblage of pottery at Koutsopetria
in Late Antiquity. The second project is <a
la-koutsopetria-in-the-context-of-roman-cyprus-at-mcgill.html">a paper at a
small colloquium at McGill University in Montreal</a>. I was invited to
present a response to a paper by Andreas Mehl. Prof. Mehl's paper presents an
administrative sketch of the province of Cyprus during the Roman period.
Without giving too much away, his paper's primary emphasis was on the role of
the province in the Roman Empire. As with many papers of this kind, Mehl
relies heavily on epigraphical evidence and, by his own admission, takes little
stock in the archaeological evidence from the island. Such administrative
and provincial histories were once the foundations for regional histories of the
Roman Empire. Even today, any discussion of Roman Cyprus begins with the
epigrapher T.B. Mitfords, "Roman Cyprus," (ANRW II 7.2 (1980): 1285-
1384). The tradition was carried on further, albeit with a slightly
broader perspective, in David Potter's article "Roman Cyprus" which appeared
originally in Greek translation (2000) but has circulated widely in an English
manuscript for years. More recent work has concerned itself less
with the administrative component of Roman domination on Cyprus and emphasized
it its place the economic and cultural components of Roman rule on the
island. To do this, scholars have drawn more and more heavily on
archaeological data. In part, this is because the traditional material for
Roman administrative history on Cyprus is lacking. There are relatively
few inscriptions from the Roman period which give insight into the workings of
Roman rule there and even fewer inscriptions give any information on Cypriots
abroad; without such texts, the traditional narratives of Roman authority that
relied upon prosopography and Roman legal history falter. As a result,
875
scholarship on Roman Cyprus has come to emphasize archaeological data and this
data has encouraged us to consider different kinds of questions from those
traditionally addressed using epigraphical data and considered by scholars
interested in the administrative apparatus and individuals central to Roman
rule. Thus, responding to a paper like Prof. Mehl's will be a particular
challenge. On the one hand, the questions and interests of historians who
have committed to using archaeological data have diverged considerably from the
kind of analysis produced by Mehl. On the other hand, our work should have
points of contact and mutually inform each others' conclusions. Recent
work on Roman Cyprus -- particularly <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/162144116">John Leonard's dissertation</a>
and the steady stream of publications from recent fieldwork on Roman and Late
Roman sites -- should exert an influence over more traditional questions
regarding the expression of Roman administrative power on the island. Our
site at Pyla-Koutsopetria for example must be in part an artifact of Roman
administrative authority on the island. It reached its largest extent in
the Late Roman period. The material at the site shows that it benefited from
well-worn trade routes which linked the length and breadth of the Roman
Mediterranean most likely through a now infilled harbor. This harbor was
well-situated to take advantage of the location of the site within the Roman
road network on the island. The main route from Kition to Salamis-
Constantina would have departed the coast near our site, and this made
Koutsopetria the first place that a traveler from the east would reach the
coast. Despite the site's status as a central place (albeit most likely on
a very local level), the "town" does not appear to have acquired any
administrative identity. It presumably fell under the local political
control of Kition, but its size alone suggests that it must have enjoyed a
certain degree of autonomy. In fact, the material present on the surface
of the site does not find ready parallels with any of other site or region in
the hinterland of Kition suggesting that size of the site might also mark out
some degree of economic autonomy. This is to say that the residents of
Koutsopetria had their own model for engaging Mediterranean commerce. Such
concentrations of wealth in the countryside have contributed to fundamental
economic and administrative changes in the empire over the course of Late
Antiquity as the state sought to develop new methods for extracting resources
from such a "busy countryside" at the same time as the traditional urban elite
progressively lost status. The Roman administrative system was hardly
known for its dynamism or ability to respond to changes. Moreover, it is
likely that economic changes and changes in settlement were tied at least in
part to changes in the administrative structure of the empire. An
opportunity to engage someone like Prof. Mehl in a conversation about
administration, economic, settlement, and politics, on Roman Cyprus holds forth
considerable potential. More soon...
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Some quick hits for a sleepy Friday after Thanksgiving: <ul> <li><a
href="http://mediterraneanceramics.blogspot.com/2008/11/more-on-
sharing.html">Sebastian Heath</a> pointed out a recent article by <a
href="http://csanet.org/newsletter/fall08/nlf0801.html">Charles Watkinson in the
CSA Newsletter</a> that encapsulates many of the recent discussions about
digitally publishing archaeological material. <li>A podcast of my "<a
eam-archaeology-working-paper.html">Dream Archaeology</a>" paper is now <a
href="http://www.ndsu.edu/instruct/isern/colloquium/">up at North Dakota State
University's Department of History web site</a>. So you don't even have to read!
<li><a href="http://tarpipe.com/">Here's an interesting new way to manage work
flow</a>. It's called Tarpipe, and while it is still in beta, it looks to
be way to disseminate information through various media in a much more
streamlined way. Even with my limited engagement with the "New Media", I
often find it difficult to manage my e-mail correspondence, blog, twitter
tweets, course webpages, et c. This could help. <li>Some more interesting
links between Punk Rock and Archaeology (with a Michigan focus!) at <a
href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/2008/11/michigan-is-best.html">Buildings,
Objects, Situations</a>.</li></ul> Just so that you don't think that I all I
do all day is think up things to post on my blog: <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20105362079cc970
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2010536291e4b970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20105362079dd970b
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TITLE: Kilns at the University of North Dakota
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BASENAME: kilns-at-the-university-of-north-dakota
DATE: 11/26/2008 08:06:06 AM

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<a href="http://ndpcs.org/und.htm">The University of North Dakota has had a
long tradition of producing ceramics</a>. This grew initially out of the
University's interest in exploring the potential of natural resources in the
state. <a href="http://www.pottery.und.edu/index.htm">In 1910, the
Department of Ceramics (originally in the College of Engineering) hired Margaret
Cable, a noted potter,</a> to direct a program dedicated to the use of North
Dakota clay. Today, "Cable Pottery" produced by Margaret Cable or her
students at UND, is a sought after collectors item and many would argue that it
marked the high-point of the North Dakota ceramics industry. This past
weekend, the modern descendents of Margaret Cable, <a
href="http://www.und.edu/dept/art/html/staff/wesbio.html">Wes Smith, an
Assistant Professor in the Department of Art</a>, invited me and my wife over
the check out their firing of a wood kiln on UND's campus. Since I spend
lots of time looking at pottery on the ground, on my computer screen, and
converted into pixels in various funky-colored GIS maps, I figured it was a good
opportunity to do some ethnoarchaeology and attempt to understand the process of
pottery production. The first thing that struck me was how small and
simple the kiln was. It was built of dry bricks (no mortar) with a simple
vaulted roof which was constructed initially in a wood form. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20105361bf009970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2010536246ae7970c
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> One side of the kiln has the chimney and
the other a brick wall that is constructed after the pots have been put in the
kiln. The kiln has several sets of "passive dampers" which were basically
loose bricks that the operator could slide in and out to control the amount of
oxygen entering the kiln space. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20105361bf00b970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20105361bf00d970b
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> When some of the dampers near the
chimney were closed causing the kiln to draw more violently from one end, the
resulting flame was impressive. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2010536246af0970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2010536246af2970c
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> Students were in charge of stoking the
kiln with wood and it fired to over 2000 degrees!! It ran all day on less
than a chord of wood. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2010536246af9970
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href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20105361bf01e970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20105361bf023970b
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> I was struck by the relatively simple
construction of the kiln and its efficiency. Wes built the kiln in less
than a weekend. Certainly these kinds of kilns must have dotted the
ancient landscape producing much of the everyday utility wares. 
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TITLE: Mapping Roman Pottery at Pyla-Koutsopetria
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BASENAME: mapping-roman-pottery-at-pyla-koutsopetria
DATE: 11/25/2008 08:45:32 AM

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Over the last two weeks, I've been working to map the distribution of Roman
and Late Roman pottery from the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project.
Roman and Late Roman pottery was collected over the course of intensive
survey. The intensive survey mapped the overall density of pottery across
the site on the basis of field-walkers spaced at 10 m intervals who counted all
visible pottery 1 m to either side of the their swath through the unit.
While it is typically necessary to adjust the sample size (and the estimated
densities) on account of surface visibility (e.g. density of vegetation covering
the surface), it has nevertheless proven to be a consistent measure of
archaeological material on the surface of the ground. In fact, intensive
surveys from across the Mediterranean have used this technique with only minor
variation for the last 20 years of intensive survey. To sample the
variation of pottery within this sample, our project asks each field-walker in a
unit to collect one example of each unique artifact type. We call this the
chronotype sampling method and I have talked about it here on my blog. We
consider it an improvement over earlier methods of sampling variation in surface
assemblages (that is all the material present on the surface of the
ground). Some techniques which relied upon the unsystematic collection of
"diagnostic" pieces (often rims, handles, or sherds with some outstanding
879
features) failed to account for our ability to analyze subtle differences in

fabrics that might not appear to be diagnostic to a relatively untrained field-
walker. Other projects have used total collection, but this would not be
feasible for a survey area with large, high-density concentrations of material
like Pyla-Koutsopetria where artifact densities often exceeded 5,000 artifacts
per hectare. While we are confident that the chronotype sampling
system produces a representative sample of the variety of material present in
the unit (and we have done experiments that have supported this assertion), we
are less sure how to proceed in mapping the distribution of artifacts across the
site. The chronotype sampling strategy tends to under-represent very
common artifact types and, in any case, makes no effort to produce a sample that
has any correlation to the actual number of artifacts of a particular period
visible on the ground. In this regard, it is no better than collecting
diagnostic material, although we have argued that the variation in the
chronotype sample is often representative of more intensive use of a particular
area in a particular period. Even if a greater number of chronotypes (or
unique types of artifacts) does correlate in some way with more intensive use of
a particular unit, the opposite is probably not true: certain kinds of sites --
for example a warehouse -- might produce a substantial assemblage of relatively
homogenous material which would be radically underrepresented by the chronotype
sample. Even total collection from each unit (or even just one swath of
each unit) would not necessary produce a sample of chronological distribution of
artifacts in the landscape in the same way that field-walking produces a sample
of artifacts present on the surface. As many scholars have pointed out,
our ability to identify particular types of artifacts (say, coarse wares) varies
widely across the periods possible across the landscape. The "differential
visibility" of particular types of pottery -- particularly less well-known local
ware and utility wares -- means that certain types of pottery which are the
present of particular economic conditions or functions of the landscape will be
systematically underrepresented. Thus, we are less able to map the
distribution of material from periods represented heavily by local wares or by
less diagnostic coarse. Site based surveys often define their sites
based on overall artifact densities and then sample for chronology within the
limits of this elevated densities. Thus the site definition and the
distribution of material from a particular period across the landscape of
individual sites are, in effect, separate functions. Siteless survey,
however, requires that we develop a method for mapping period distributions
across the landscape that works more closely with more traditional maps
representing the overall distribution of pottery. Our current methods
makes it challenging to identify concentrations of single periods in the
landscape and this is a vital task if we seek to embrace the arguments central
to siteless survey. As a case study for this difficulty, our site
at Pyla-Koutsopetria has two well defined zones of elevated, overall artifact
density on the coastal plain. The material collected from these two areas
are overwhelmingly Roman and Late Roman in date. We have been able to
argue that these two areas represent functionally different activities during
the Late Roman period by comparing the artifacts from each zone. Last
week, I attempted to compare another area of the site to the distribution of
Roman and Late Roman pottery in zones 1 and 2. This third zone represented
an area of overall artifact densities that was comparable to those found in zone
2, but the assemblage of material in zone three was far more chronologically
diverse than that found in zones 1 or 2. In particular, the Roman and Late
Roman material from zone 3 represented a smaller percentage of the overall
assemblage than the Roman and Late Roman material in zone 1 or 2. So,
since our sample of Roman material does not represent the overall density of
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material in a particular unit, how do I compare in a meaningful way the three

areas? My goal here is to evaluate the distribution of Roman and Late Roman
material in zone 3. What is the relationship? 
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TITLE: Suburban Archaeology: A (Detroit) Jewel in the Attic
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DATE: 11/24/2008 08:10:21 AM

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When my wife and I bought our house, we discovered a very strange
thing. There was an old stove in the attic. This certain defies
certain kinds of archaeological logic. Traditionally we think of discard
behavior as following the path of least resistance, especially for an object of
new obvious symbolic or religious value. Our house does not have a proper
basement, only a root-cellar. It may be that whoever put this old stove in
the attic sought to protect it from the general dampness of the cellar not to
mention the regular floods in the Red River Valley. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20105361cf388970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201053614e4dd970b
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> This past week we had a layer of
additional insulation added to our attic and the crew who did this offered to
remove the heavy stove. By Thursday afternoon we had the stove back in the
kitchen where it deserved to be. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201053614e4e2970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20105361cf397970c
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> On closer inspection, the stove appears
to be a late 1920s-1930s Detroit "Jewel" Stove. These stoves were the
classic model produced by the Detroit Stove Company which during its heyday in
the late 19th and early 20th century was the largest producer of cast iron
stoves in the world. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201053614e4f2970
b-pi"><a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20105361cf3a5970
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bottom: 0px" height="147" alt="detroit_400"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20105361cf3a9970c
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a></a> <img style="border-
right: 0px; border-top: 0px; border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="304"
alt=""
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20105361cf3af970c
-pi" width="404" border="0"> I am guessing that the stove was made
sometime in the late 1920s. By 1926, the Detroit Stove Company had merged
with the rival Michigan Stove Company to form the Detroit-Michigan Stove
Company. Our stove still only features the Detroit Stove Company
name. The stove itself was a gas model, but the elements have been removed
and lost. The lovely Detroit Jewel name plate cleaned up
well. <a
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20105361cf3ba970c
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> It was remarkable to discover how easy
(and relatively un-manufactured) the stove was. I managed to disassemble
many parts of the stove using only a flat-head screwdriver. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20105361cf3c7970
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> My wife and I are able to envision
almost any piece of archaeology as a bar (baby-grand piano, stove, LR2 amphora,
you name it). So we promptly re-used (spolia!) the stove as a bar/cabinet.
To do this we used magnets to add some funky lights (no damage to the actual
stove itself). Next spring we will give it a new paint job. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e201053614e52e970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20105361cf3e7970c
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COMMENT:
IP: 99.168.80.241
URL:
DATE: 11/24/2008 02:54:58 PM
I absolutely LOVE it. Last Spring, I rescued a 1920s safe from storage in South
Carolina to Connecticut. It once belonged to my aunt's husband, Greek immigrant
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from Peloponnese. The safe was used in a candy factory he opened in Columbia, SC
in the 1920s. Transporting it became an odyssey, but it's now safe (but un-
cracked) in our garage.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Maddy Bray
IP: 76.170.0.106
DATE: 11/30/2008 11:23:00 PM
Neat!
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: rev barky
EMAIL: aredant@comcast.net
IP: 24.118.178.53
URL:
DATE: 12/12/2008 10:02:02 PM
Hi, I had an old A-B that was very much like yours in my basement and wanted so
much to restore it but it was so rusty that I ended up selling in pieces to a
guy for $5 in a garage sale. i probably should have kept it I guess. Oh well.
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TITLE: Friday Varia and Random Notes
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DATE: 11/21/2008 08:02:14 AM

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Just a few quick things this cold Friday morning.; First, a new member
of the blogosphere: <a href="http://www.gradspace.und.edu/blog/">The Blog at the
Graduate School of the University of North Dakota</a>. This is my wife's
invention and it seeks to be: <blockquote> "a place for information,
updates, dialogue and other fun and newsworthy items that relate to graduate
education. We hope to engage you in discussions on a variety of topics and to be
informative. In addition to topics relating to our own Graduate School at the
University of North Dakota, we will post items of national interest in graduate
education, events, conferences and more."</blockquote> According to my
inside sources, the first week up and running has proven the value of this kind
of outlet for an organization like UND's Graduate School. They have
received a constant flow of traffic and had hits from all over the world.
Next, here are two blogs that have recently become part of my weekly reading
list: <a href="http://antiquatedvagaries.blogspot.com/">Antiquated
Vagaries</a> has continued the tradition of blogging from the <a
href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/">American School of Classical Studies at
Athens</a>. It's been a cool way to look in on the day-to-day (trip-to-
trip) activities of the Regular Members. Another blog that consistently
has interesting things is Diana Wright's <a
href="http://surprisedbytime.blogspot.com/">Surprised by Time</a>. It has
883
a nice blend of musing about Greece. Finally, <a

href="http://www.wordle.net/">Wordle</a> is a great waste of time. Now I
have pictures of my recent posts: <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20105361534db970
bottom: 0px" height="266" alt="WordleAMW"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e20105360cdd3b970b
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> And my <a
href="http://www.gradspace.und.edu/blog/">The Blog at the Graduate School of the
University of North Dakota</a> (in <a
href="http://www.und.edu/dept/our/html/webtools.html">UND's officially approved
web site colors</a>, of course!) <a
bottom: 0px" height="262" alt="WordleGradSchoolBlog"
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> Have a good weekend and cheer on on
those Spiders as they play that evil team from William and Mary for the 118th
time (that's the 4th oldest in Division 1 and the 8th longest running rivalry in
college football)!.
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TITLE: Teaching Thursday: A Historical Perspective on Teaching Research Methods
with Kate Turabian
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CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 11/20/2008 07:47:39 AM

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<a href="http://library.und.edu/Collections/Robinson/home.html">Elwyn B.
Robinson</a> provides some interesting comments on teaching a research methods
class in the 1950s. His careful documentation of the books that he used
over his career at the University of North Dakota is one of the most valuable
aspect of his autobiography. Of particular interest to me this semester
is that he notes his adoption of <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/254320584&ht=edition">Kate Turabian's
A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations</a>,
which first appeared in 1955. This has remained the standard guide for
advice on footnotes, bibliographies, and other technical aspects of formal
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writing in our department. The book's organization is obscure to today's

students and even the best students find the complexity of her citation style
almost impossible to replicate. <blockquote> "The diary shows that I was
apparently preparing to teach a course on research methods, for a diary entry
shows that I was memorizing portions of <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/987875&ht=edition">Sherman Kent, The
Writing of History</a>, on scholarly style in footnotes. I later used
the book, an excellent one, in my course on Introduction to Research in
History. Kent was a professor at Yale. His book was, I believed, by
far the best on the subject. I learned a good deal from it. I also
had the copy of Homer C. Hockett's book that I had used while a graduate
student. I believe its title was something like <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/2619495">Introduction to Research in
History</a> that I chose as the title of the course. Kent's book had
much good advice on writing as well as on note-taking and scholarly style.
I believe that Hockett's book had more on bibliographical aids and government
documents. I believe that some years earlier I had purchased a copy of the
<a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/51553085">Chicago Manual of
Style</a>, the most respected and substantial book of the sort. It
detailed the practices of the University of Chicago Press and was followed,
perhaps with some modifications, by many university presses and by the journals
of learned societies such as the Americn Historical Association. I suppose
that it was about this time that I bought a copy of <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/6465181&ht=edition">Kate Turabian's style
manual</a> (I don't recall the title). Miss Turabian worked at the
University of Chicago Press, and her small, paperbound book was an adaptation of
the Chicago Manual of Style to the practical uses of graduate
students. It became the standard and authority for the Graduate School at
the University of North Dakota. I may have had a hand in that step, for I
was then a member of the university graduate committee, elected to that
committee by the faculty of the College of Science, Literature and Art. I
don't believe that I required members of my course to buy a copy of Turabian's
book, but graduate students in history did so. The students in the course
were both seniors majoring in history and graduate students in history. I
enjoyed teaching the course very much and learned a great deal in doing it -
both on writing and scholarly style. I gradually became a semi-authority
on the contents of Turabian among my faculty associates who noe and then asked a
question on some point that puzzled them. I also bought about this time a
copy of the pamphlet issued by the Modern Language Association and entitled
<a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1471928&ht=edition">The MLA Style
Sheet</a>. Some of the usages described in it differed from those
recommended in Turabian. I believe that in 1956,1957, or 1958 I gave Steve
a copy of the Turabian book." </blockquote> I teach the undergraduate
version of this class almost every semester. Alongside Turabian I also
assign <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/233547782&ht=edition">Strunk
and White's, The Elements of Style</a>, which appeared <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/226204968&ht=edition">in its present
format almost 50 years ago</a>. I add to these classic works <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/64511082">J. Presnell's The Information
Literate Historian</a> and, next semester, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/227016692">G. Graff's They Say/I
Say</a>. It's hard to imagine that either of those works will have
the staying power of Turabian and Strunk and White. More Teaching
Thursdays: <a
885

Lecture</a> <a
Teaching</a> <a
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IP: 129.24.46.18
URL: http://phdinhistory.blogspot.com/
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DATE: 11/23/2008 06:18:39 PM

I like the range of books you use. I hadn't heard of _They Say/I Say_. I have
used Rael's _Reading, Writing, and Researching for History_ instead:!
!
http://www.bowdoin.edu/writing-guides/!
!
How do you think they compare?
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TITLE: GIS Day and the Digital Humanities at the University of North Dakota
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BASENAME: gis-day-and-the-digital-humanities-at-the-university-of-north-dakota
DATE: 11/19/2008 07:52:06 AM

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You may not realize this but today is <a
href="http://www.gisday.com/">International GIS (Geographic Infromation Systems)
Day</a>. While I don't think that ESRI has "GIS Day" cards yet as the
leading producer of GIS software, their fingerprints are all over this
international celebration of their product. (And to be fair, the
National Geographic Society and other non-profit groups co-sponsor the
celebration!) In any event, the influence of GIS software on archaeology
has been immeasurable. Landscape and survey archaeologists now depend upon
GIS software not only to manage primary data collection in the field, but also
to conduct a whole range of analyses from displaying basic artifact densities to
estimating the most efficient routes through the landscape. GIS
software represents one of the core technologies in <a
first-steps.html">Digital History, Archaeology, and the Humanities</a>.
The ability to create easily <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/EKASTimeMap/disk_EKAS.html">dat
a-rich maps</a> of everything from archaeological finds to real and imagined
landscape of works of fiction plays a key role in our increasingly visual
culture. Even such simply GIS interfaces as Google Earth provide a vital
classroom tool and provide a kind of flexibility and dynamism that even the best
paper maps cannot replicate. The University of North Dakota appears to
be interested in exploring the potential of digital resources across the
Humanities. In fact, in his first "<a
href="http://www.und.edu/State_of_University_2008/">State of the University
Address</a>" Robert Kelley (<a
e-inauguratio.html">UND's new president</a>) referred specifically to Digital
Humanities in his speech. <blockquote> I'd like to spend just a
few moments at the beginning of this address highlighting some of the
outstanding achievements within this institution... I would like to showcase a
sample of what faculty, staff, and students of the university have achieved as a
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reflection of where we are at the moment and why we should be justifiably proud
of our university. First UND has a remarkable faculty and staff. The
University has recruited very well over the years and we will continue to put
priority emphasis on allocating resources into faculty and staff compensation
and professional development. The efforts of UND's faculty and staff have
resulted in new centers and institutes, new advances in science and technology,
creative new performances in music and in the visual and performing arts and the
development of innovative new technologies like the Ag Cam that was recently
delivered to the international space station by NASA on the Shuttle last
Friday. Faculty have developed centers that focus on such diverse themes
as Digital Humanities, sustainable energy, human
rights, digital archiving, neuroscience, natural resource law, human behavior,
the regulation of the gaming industry, and the list goes on and
on."</blockquote> The interesting (and exciting) thing is that there is
no Digital Humanities center on campus. In fact, the entire "program" at
present includes one class in the English Department. It looks like the
president is giving those of us involved in the digital humanities a green light
to expand our efforts and make his optimistic (and premature) pronouncement a
reality.
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IP: 71.210.226.120
DATE: 11/19/2008 06:54:52 PM
Congrats on the mention. I hope it works out for the best.
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COMMENT:
EMAIL: daniel.sauerwein@und.nodak.edu
IP: 24.230.59.134
DATE: 11/19/2008 11:38:01 PM
Bill,!
!
Is there any possibility of our department putting together a course, as I think
it would be an exciting way to increase the use of blogging by students as
outlets for their personal interests in history. While I am one of the few in
the department who blogs actively, at least among students and on history, I
would be happy to help in any way to encourage the creation of blogs and other
websites by students and faculty in the department. One of the things that I
always stress with my blogs is that I provide opportunities for people
interested in history and new to blogging to write for my sites, as it provides
me more voices and content than my own, and it builds networks with other blogs
888
and scholars out there. I will do my best to keep the Digital Humanities in mind
and hope to work with it in the future.!
!
Take care,!
!
Daniel
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COMMENT:
EMAIL:
IP: 134.129.133.190
URL: http://profile.typekey.com/billcaraher/
DATE: 11/20/2008 07:56:10 AM
Daniel,!
!
I've thought about offering a Digital History course. In fact, I had planned on
doing that next semester, but other things came up. If other students have an
interest, I'd be happy to do something informally next semester.!
!
Bill
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TITLE: Elwyn Robinson in the Grand Forks Herald
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DATE: 11/18/2008 07:37:43 AM

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It didn't take much prompting for Mike Jacobs, the editor of the Grand Forks
Hearald, <a
href="http://www.grandforksherald.com/articles/index.cfm?id=93270&section=Op
inion">to offer a few words on the 50th Anniversary of Elwyn B. Robinson's
"Themes of North Dakota History" speech</a>. In his usual plain-spoken
style, Jacobs contrasted the experience of watching the Space Shuttle Endeavor
(which may or may not have carried a satellite built by the University of North
Dakota into space) blast off and his father's experiences living in the state
100 years ago. This kind of reflection seems common here in North
Dakota. In fact, my experience has been that North Dakotans think more
about their varied pasts than any place where I have lived. This interest
in the past of the state (always tied in some ways to the future) has
occasionally been shared by the national media. <a
href="http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/2008-01/emptied-north-dakota/bowden-
text.html">National Geographic's</a> article on the abandoned landscape of North
Dakota, for example, <a
andoned-lands.html">received some attention</a>. Closer to home, the
recent opposition surrounding <a
889
ving-from-mer.html">the move of the Department of History from Merrifield
Hall</a> has been articulated at least in part is an affront to the history of
the Department and the University (see <a
Opinion/Letter.History.Majors.Dismissed-3521366.shtml">here</a>, <a
href="https://secure.forumcomm.com/grandforks/articles/index.cfm?page=purchase&a
mp;id=91518&CFID=121102748&CFTOKEN=88674424&jsessionid=88305e11ddeb6
128286b">here</a>, <a
mp;id=91959&CFID=121102748&CFTOKEN=88674424&jsessionid=8830bf67e2424
7774242">here</a>, <a
mp;id=90489&CFID=121102748&CFTOKEN=88674424&jsessionid=88303a05756d7
467472e">here</a>). Knee-jerk appeals to history can be depressing and
pointless. Jacobs avoid this in the final paragraphs of his editorial
where he critiques Robinson's six themes going forward: <blockquote>
"Here is a vivid challenge to Robinson‚Äôs themes. The remoteness
that he identified, and that North Dakotans of my generation grew up with, has
largely vanished, though distance remains a major challenge. North
Dakota is no longer so dependent as it was. The economy is more
diverse, and hence more stable. Still, the vagaries of weather and world markets
exert an enormous influence. Similarly, the state‚Äôs position has shifted
away from economic disadvantage, and that has moderated the
radicalism that so characterized the political history of the state during
most of my father‚Äôs life. The remaining themes are paired. North Dakotans
built too many of almost everything, and we‚Äôve been paring back ever
since. Adjustment meant the loss of thousands of farms and
businesses and hundreds of towns and villages. These adjustments took thousands
of citizens with them. But history has made a turn. The 20th century was a
time of constant challenge and frequent failure, as Robinson saw, but the new
century has brought unprecedented opportunity. Nothing demonstrates that so
clearly, for me, as Friday‚Äôs launch. Robinson‚Äôs themes help us to
understand the past, and they help to define the present. But they don‚Äôt
determine the future. They are admonitions, not axioms, and it was clear Friday
that North Dakota will live with them, and not by them."</blockquote>
It's nice to see the history of the department invoked in a positive way.
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TITLE: Pyla-Koutsopetria in the Context of Roman Cyprus at McGill
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DATE: 11/17/2008 07:27:40 AM

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On Friday <a
eam-archaeology-working-paper.html">I presented some of my research</a> for
colleagues at North Dakota State University in Fargo. The conversation
after my paper was most helpful and will form a key role in my revisions. But
for now, I need to focus on my next paper at McGill Unversity in a scant three
weeks! It will focus on our work with the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological
Project and continue our efforts to place our fieldwork in the larger context of
the Roman Mediterranean. Here's the notice: Roman
Cyprus: Space and Power in an Island Province The McGill University
Department of History and Classical Studies and the Pyla Koustopetria
Archaeological Project (PKAP) will host a one-day colloquium on "Roman Cyprus:
Space and Power in an Island Province." The colloquium will feature a key note
lecture by Prof. Andreas Mehl (Martin-Luther-Universit√§t, Halle-Wittenberg) and
a formal response by Prof. William Caraher (University of North Dakota), co-
director of the PKAP. The presentations will be followed by a roundtable
discussion. The colloquium will be held on Wednesday, December 10, 2:30-5:30 PM,
at McGill University in Thomson House, 3650 McTavish. Colloquium Schedule
Presentations (2:30-4:00) Andreas Mehl, "Cyprus: the role of a province
in the Roman Empire" William Caraher, "Response: the Archaeological
Perspective" Break (4:00-4:15) Roundtable Discussion (4:15-5:30)
Hans Beck (McGill University) Michael Fronda (McGill University,
PKAP) John Serrati (McGill University) For more information, contact Hans
Beck (tel: 514-398-2234).
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TITLE: Dream Archaeology: Working Paper
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BASENAME: dream-archaeology-working-paper
CATEGORY: Byzantium
DATE: 11/14/2008 08:11:53 AM

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I'm off to Fargo to give my talk on Dream Archaeology. It is supposed

to be Skype-cast to some remote locations (like Jamestown!) and maybe recorded
for a podcast. If we make a podcast, I'll post it here next week.
In the meantime, a good, old-fashion paper copy will have to suffice: <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/WorkingPapers/Dream
Archaeology_Working_Nov2008.pdf">Dreams, Excavation, and the Archaeology of
Christian Greece</a> William R. Caraher University of
North Dakota Delivered November 14, 2008 North Dakota
State University Fargo, North Dakota Introduction
 Scholars rarely regard dreams as playing a key role in
serious archaeological inquiry. This attitude, however, is a particular
characteristic of modern, western archaeological practice. From antiquity
until recent times dreams have occupied an important place in the archaeological
imagination of the Eastern Mediterranean. The Christianization of the
Mediterranean during Late Antiquity made room for Dreams within the emerging
Christian discourse, and Dreams play an important role in archaeological
practices common to the Byzantine Empire. This paper will extend a
discussion of Dream Archaeology later still into the context of 19th and 20th
century Greece where an archaeology of dreaming has contributed to the
production of national religious landscapes on the local level... (<a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/WorkingPapers/Dream
Archaeology_Working_Nov2008.pdf">read more</a>) Since Dream Archaeology
will go onto the back-burner for a couple months after this weekend and I don't
want anyone to experience withdraw, here's a full index of my work on Dream
Archaeology: <a
Christian West</a> <a
re-dreams-rel.html">Blindness, Dreams, and Relics</a> <a
re-dreams-rel.html">More Dreams, Religion, and Archaeology</a> <a
re-byzantine.html">More Byzantine Dreams...</a> <a
eams-pausania.html">Dreams, Pausanias, and Archaeology</a> <a
eams-inventio.html">Dreams, Inventio, and Archaeology</a> <a
zani.html">Kozani</a> As always, have a good weekend!
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TITLE: Teaching Thursday: Teaching Time
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BASENAME: teaching-thursday-teaching-time
CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 11/13/2008 07:55:10 AM

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Two incidents this week prompt a post that explores the concepts of teaching
and time in an undergraduate and graduate environment. First, I received
an <a
aching-thursday-a-day-early-teaching-the-election.html#comments">interesting
comment</a> from <a href="http://phdinhistory.blogspot.com/">fellow blogger
Sterling Fluharty</a>. He wondered what needed to happen to ensure that
students have read prior to attending seminar. The second issues was that
the second papers in my graduate historiography seminar are due today. I
received the typical barrage of requests for extensions. The thing is,
this paper was originally due on October 30th and had already been pushed back
twice for various reasons. So, I was not particularly sympathetic toward
students who needed extensions, but it did get me thinking about how students
manage time and how that fits into the expectations that I can have as an
instructor. Responding to Sterling, I can only speculate really. My
class is a seminar made up mainly of majors and depends on the students
completing daily and weekly reading assignments without many of the standard
checks that keep students on the ball (e.g. tests, weekly quizzes et c.).
Some weeks the reading rate in this small class is abysmal (2 or 3 out of 10). I
think that such low reading rates reveal some fairly complex issues regarding
how students manage time. In general, I suspect that students prioritize
other work above readings for a seminar style class. This is particular
acute among students who take too many credits (17+!). This means that
they are always being compelled to prioritize the most pressing
obligation. In general, students intelligently prioritize those
obligations that involve a clear link between the performance of a task and a
grade. So, papers, test-preparation and other problem-based assignments
take priority over reading for discussion. This is fair. The second
issue is less noble. Students don't study enough. The University of
North Dakota is notorious for this. In fact, the <a
href="http://www.princetonreview.com/college-rankings.aspx?uidbadge=">2009
Princeton Review</a> ranking of colleges and universities rated the University
of North Dakota #7 on its list of Universities where students study the
least. It seems likely that the perception (or maybe even the reality)
that students don't need to study much for classes here has probably leads some
undergraduates to take too many credits. A class like my seminar
consequently suffers since I don't usually build in a consequence for a student
not doing the reading (aside from a boring class). So, there are two
potential solutions. One is that I could require some kind of assignment
with the readings -- say a response paper. I don't do this because one of
my goals of the class (and I state this) is to make the students more
responsible for their own education. By assigning grades I feel like my
evaluation goes too far toward establishing how much the students should learn
in a particular environment (i.e. if they earned an "A" then that's all there
was to learn.) What I try to do is to convince them that they should
want to read and have good discussions in a class that is central to their
893
major. It would undermine this goal if I required them through some

assignment to do the reading. Another potential solution is to cut back on
the amount of reading so that the prospect of a boring class is a greater
inconvenience than 30 minute reading assignment. As for time management
among our M.A. level graduate students, I think that some of the same decision
making processes apply. The top priority is always the most pressing issue
rather than say their area of interest or the issue that would benefit them the
most in the long run. Again, this is quite reasonable. In most
cases, this process ensures that papers arrive on time and in fairly decent
shape. In cases where students consistently miss deadlines, however, there
is reason to suspect other issues are at play. This week, I have suggested
to one good student that he keep more close track of his time by keeping a daily
research log. I suspect that some students who are always rushing around
trying to fight the most pressing fire, begin to lose track of how long it takes
them to perform basic tasks (read a book, write a 5, 10, 20 page paper, prepare
for seminar, et c.) My hope is to encourage <a
href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093822/quotes">repeat offenders</a> to
develop more thorough and conscious awareness of how long it takes them do
perform particular tasks, it will be easier for them to manage their time. So,
when I granted a couple of extensions, I made it contingent on <a
href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093822/quotes">the recidivists</a> ("not a
pretty name, is it...?") keeping a time diary for the final paper (due on
December 10th). More Teaching Thursdays: <a
Lecture</a> <a
894
Teaching</a> <a
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COMMENT:
IP: 128.123.51.4
DATE: 11/13/2008 04:36:02 PM
Thanks for the response. I wonder if a content management system would help.
It could allow your students to break their assignments into smaller pieces,
record their progress online where their classmates can watch, and promote
feedback and interaction between students. If you included research papers in
your seminar, the students could be required to post their sources, questions,
notes, thesis, outline, etc., on the course web site, where some peer pressure
from classmates might keep everyone on track and interested in each other's
progress.
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TITLE: Dream Archaeology in the Early Christian West
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BASENAME: dream-archaeology-in-the-early-christian-west
DATE: 11/12/2008 08:32:04 AM

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It's coming down to the wire for the first "working" draft of my Dream
Archaeology paper. I am due to present it to my colleagues at North Dakota
State University on Friday at 3:00 pm! I hope to have a working draft
posted by the end of the week. One area where the weakness in my research
is more than apparent is in the analysis of Dream Archaeology in the Early
Christian West. To make a modest start at redressing that, I offer four
observations (of no particular significance or order here): 1. Ambrose of
Milan had a serious interest in Dream Archaeology. His best known vision
led to his discovery of the Saints Gervasius and Protasius in Milan
(Epist. 20.1-2): (1) "For after I had dedicated the basilica,
895
many, as it were, with one mouth began to address me, and said: Consecrate this
as you did the Roman basilica. And I answered: "Certainly I will if I find any
relics of martyrs." And at once a kind of prophetic ardour seemed to enter my
heart. (2) Why should I use many words? God favoured us, for even the
clergy were afraid who were bidden to clear away the earth from the spot before
the chancel screen of SS. Felix and Nabor. I found the fitting signs, and on
bringing in some on whom hands were to be laid, the power of the holy martyrs
became so manifest, that even whilst I was still silent, one was seized and
thrown prostrate at the holy burial-place. We found two men of marvellous
stature, such as those of ancient days..." Ambrose also included the earliest
known story of St. Helena and the True Cross in his Funeral Oration of
Theodosius (De Ob. Theod. 40-49). In his account, he does not
state that a Dream guided St. Helena, but that she was motivated by the Holy
Spirit. Ambrose must have been partially motivated by a desire for relics
to fill his newly constructed churches in Milan (and to validate his
construction of a sacred landscape: cf. <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/7740982">R. Krautheimer, Three Christian
Capitals: Rome, Constantinople, Milan. (Berkeley 1983</a>)). 2. St.
Augustine, Ambrose younger contemporary, had a far more circumspect attitude
toward Dream Archaeology. It seems like that his ongoing struggles with
the Donatists shaped his attitude toward Dreams. Donatists favored dream
inspired baptism and it appears that such practices were common even among
Augustine's Orthodox congregation. Augustine also seemed concerned that
dreams of martyrs would feed the irregular and sometimes subversive practices
associated with the cult of the saints. This resulted in his condemning
"inventio per somnia" at the Council of Carthage in 401 (<a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/17621497">J. LeGoff, The Medieval
Imagination. trans. A. Goldhammer (Chicago 1988)</a>, 223). 3. It is
interesting to note that Peter Brown devotes relatively little attention to
Dream and inventio in his <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/318213">work on
Augustine</a> or in his short, but seminal <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/6043068">work on the cult of the
saints.</a> What makes this particularly curious is that Brown's work
(particularly his early studies) show the influence of E.R. Dodds (particularly
his <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/258437899">Pagan and Christian in
an Age of Anxiety</a> and <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/2746538">The Greeks and the
Irrational</a>). Brown himself admits as much in remarks made in 1997 to
commemorate the 25 anniversary of <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/138222">The World of Late
Antiquity</a> in Symbolae Osloenses 72 (1997), 19. Dodds, of
course, dedicated an entire chapter of Greeks and the Irrational to the power of
dreams. 4. I need to read <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/44704794">I.
Moreira's Dreams, Visions, and Spiritual Authority in Merovingian Gaul.
(Ithaca 2000).</a> For more on Dream Archaeology see: <a
eams-pausania.html">here</a>, <a
zani.html">here</a>, <a
eams-inventio.html">here</a>, <a
re-byzantine.html">here</a>, <a
re-dreams-rel.html">here</a>, and <a
896
indness-dreams-and-relics.html">here</a>.
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TITLE: Archaeological Institute of America Annual Meeting: The Corinthian
Countryside at the AIA
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DATE: 11/11/2008 07:37:45 AM

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The Archaeological Institute of American released it preliminary schedule of
papers yesterday. I haven't had a chance to look carefully at all the
panels, but I did discover that our paper was accepted. Here is our
abstract: <blockquote> Three New Sites in the
Corinthian Countryside William R. Caraher (University of North
Dakota) and David K. Pettegrew (Messiah College) The nature
and function of rural towers in the Greek countryside has long interested
scholars of the Classical and Hellenistic period. Scholarship has
particularly focused on the function of towers in Attica, Boeotia, the Argolid,
and the islands. Proposed functions for these building range from purely
agricultural to exclusively military, as well as combinations of the two. The Corinthia has largely been ignored in this debate. A
recent comprehensive article by Morris and Papadopoulos, for example, cites no
examples of rural towers from the Corinthia. Recent work in the Eastern
Corinthia, however, has produced several new sites that can be read along side a
small corpus of known buildings to contribute to how we understand both the
countryside of the Corinthia and Greek rural architecture more broadly. This paper will focus on three sites in the immediate vicinity of
Lychnari bay in the Eastern Corinthia. In 2003 and 2008, a small team from
the Eastern Korinthia Archaeological Survey documented two Late Classical to
Hellenistic towers and a rubble fortification. In doing so, we integrated
careful topographic study, intensive survey and architectural analysis in order
to bring these three unpublished sites in the Corinthia into the ongoing
discussion of rural sites in the Greek countryside. We argue in this paper
that while the position of these sites in the local topography emphasizes their
military function, the ceramic material and architecture of these buildings
requires a more dynamic reading of the place of these structures in the
897
Corinthian landscape. </blockquote> Some of the material in this

paper will be familiar to regular readers of this blog. The paper will
include the results of what was probably the most fun "micro" field season that
I have had for years: all of the archaeology (long hikes, good conversation,
spectacular views, nice finds, good architecture, interesting landscape, focuses
research questions) and none of the hassle (logistics, crazy
undergraduates/graduate students, computer problems, bizarre meetings, endless
arguments, complicated plans). I recorded a good bit of information
regarding our work in a series of posts on the Corinthian Countryside in the
late summer and fall: <a
Corinthia</a> <a
e-corinthian.html">The Corinthian Countryside: History and Archaeology</a> <a
Thoughts</a> Here's the time and place of our session. The panel
looks fairly cohesive for the notoriously random "open sessions" at the AIA:
<blockquote> <a
href="http://www.archaeological.org/webinfo.php?page=10300&action=display&am
p;sid=1F">Session: 1F: Archaeological Field Work in Mediterranean</a>
Timeslot: Friday, January 9, 8:30 AM - 11:00 AM Session
Papers 1. Priniatikos Pyrgos and the Classical Period
in East Crete Brice Erickson, University of California at Santa
Barbara 2. Survey of the Bouro--Kastri Peninsula in
the Southern Karystia, Euboea, Greece Jere M. Wickens Lawrence
University 3. Explorations around Karpathos 1923 and
2008 D. J. Ian Begg, Trent University and Michael Nelson, Queens College,
City University of New York 4. Three New
Sites in the Corinthian Countryside William R. Caraher, University of North
Dakota and David K. Pettegrew, Messiah
College 5. The Albanian Coastal Survey:
2007-8 Campaigns Jeffrey G. Royal, Archaeological Director, RPM Nautical
Foundation 6. Archaic Olive Oil Production at Azoria
in Eastern Crete Donald C. Haggis, University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill Margaret S. Mook, Iowa State University C. Margaret Scarry, University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill 7. A Preliminary Study
of Two Early Archaic Wrecks at Kekova Adasƒ± and Kep√ße Burnu,
Turkey Elizabeth S. Greene, Brock University and Justin Leidwanger,
University of Pennsylvania</blockquote> I'd be remiss not to note a
another paper that touches on the Eastern Corinthia: <blockquote> <a
898
p;sid=3C">Session: 3C: Mycenaean Periphery</a> Timeslot: Friday, January 9,
1:30 AM - 4:30 AM 3. The Saronic
Harbors Archaeological Research Project (SHARP): A Second Season at Mycenaean
Kalamianos Thomas F. Tartaron, University of Pennsylvania and Daniel J.
Pullen, Florida State University</blockquote> And a poster from the Pyla-
Koutsopetria Archaeological Project: <blockquote> <a
p;sid=2I">Session: 2I: Poster Session</a> Timeslot: Friday, January 9, 11:15
AM - 3:00 PM 11. The Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project:
Documenting the Experience of Archaeology R. Scott Moore, Indiana University
of Pennsylvania, Brandon Olson, Penn State University, and Michael Brown,
University of Edinburgh </blockquote> It will take some time to digest
the program and make decisions on where to be when. So, stay tuned!
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COMMENT:
IP: 136.244.13.209
URL:
DATE: 11/11/2008 08:16:49 AM
I'm psyched!!!
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TITLE: More Corinth in Late Antiquity: Corinth in Context?
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DATE: 11/10/2008 08:27:56 AM

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<a href="http://home.messiah.edu/~dpettegrew/">David Pettegrew</a> dropped me
a line a few weeks ago that <a href="http://romangreece.com/">Amelia Brown's</a>
dissertation, <a
href="http://romangreece.com/Brown2008_CorinthDissUS.pdf">The City of
Corinth and Urbanism in Late Antique Greece</a>, was done and available <a
href="http://romangreece.com/Brown2008_CorinthDissUS.pdf">on line</a>.
It's great that she is making her important work on Corinth easily available on
the internet. Her dissertation takes its place along the growing list of
dissertations (and books) that focus on the Corinthia in Late Antiquity.
899
 Over the past couple of years, I've noted the boom in interest in Late
Antiquity. The first issue of the Journal of Late Antiquity, for example,
seemed a natural development for this expanding area of specialization and
interest. I have also noted, however, that the the field has tended to
emphasize a rather limited number of paradigms for analyze "post-classical"
antiquity. As a rule, students of Late Antiquity continue to find
irresistible tired arguments for "continuity vs. change" under various guises
(prosperity vs. decline, centralization vs. dissipation, economic sophistication
vs. economic stagnation, paganism vs. Christianity, et c.). Moreover,
these arguments almost all depend upon an ironic interpretation of the
traditional good/bad (classical antiquity/post-classical antiquity)
dichotomy. So far, this paradigm has produced a significant body of new
knowledge and may have even started to de-center the traditional areas of
emphasis in the field of "Classical Archaeology". Nowhere is the
continuity/change (good/bad, classical/post-classical) debate more engaged than
in Greece where the field of Classical Archaeology has a kind of prestige that
borders on veneration. The city of Ancient Athens with its "Sacred Rock"
and sprawling Agora in the middle of the modern metropolis plays a crucial role
in making visible and tangible the significance and value of Classical
Antiquity. Down the road from Athens stand the ruins of the ancient
Corinth. Corinth, with its neighboring sites in the Corinthia (Isthmia and
Kenchreai in particular), has begun to stand out as a counter-weight to
Classical Athens. Set amidst olive and citrus groves in small villages
across the Isthmus, the Corinthia has become a center in Greece for significant
work on Late Antiquity over the past two decades. In American academic
circles in particular the American excavations in the Roman (and Late Roman)
Corinthia represent a counter weight to the American excavations at the Archaic
and Classical Athenian Agora. This is not to suggest that these sites
cannot make significant contributions to the work on other periods. There
has been plenty of interesting work on Roman and Late Roman Athens and pre-Roman
Corinth, for example, but Corinth is a Roman city and Athens a Classical one in
both the popular and academic imaginations. Whatever the cause of
the Corinth/Athens dichotomy, credit for the recent rise in interest in the Late
Antique Corinthia falls largely to the efforts of American archaeologists in the
region, most significantly Tim Gregory at Isthmia and Charles Williams and Guy
Sanders at Ancient Corinth. Williams, Sanders, Gregory, Slane and others
have produced a massive bibliography which has not only transformed the Late
Roman topography of the Corinthia but revised in substantial ways the chronology
of the region. Students associated with these sites and scholars have
produced a bumper crop of works which drawn in whole or in part from Corinthian
comparanda (<a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/43615467">R. Rothaus</a>, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/86115995">D. Pettegrew</a>, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/46680697">R. S. Moore</a>, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/50497698">B. Robinson</a>, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/197161577">J. Frey</a>) with assurances of
more on the way (particularly J. Rife's important Isthmia volume on the Roman
period burials there and his recent work at Kenchreai, the proceedings of a
conference celebrating 50 years at Isthmia with several articles specifically
dealing with the Corinthia in Late Antiquity, a dissertation of the Roman and
Late Roman wall painting from Corinth, et c.). It is interesting
to consider the effect of this relatively recent boom in work on the Corinthia
on how we think about Late Roman Greece more widely. On the one hand, the
status of Corinth as the capital of the province of Achaea justifies some of the
recent archaeological attention. It was clearly an important city in
Greece and stood at an important cross road of Mediterranean trade. Its
900
place in Christian scriptures more than makes up for the relative dearth of
archaeological evidence for a Christian community in Corinth prior to Late
Antiquity. So, the emphasis on the Late Roman period in Corinth fits
within long-standing administrative, economic, and religious narratives of the
period. On the other hand, Corinth and the Corinthia represents
just one important center in the "busy" rural and urban landscape of Late
Antique Greece. My work on Late Antique Basilica style churches (with its
strong emphasis on the Corinthian buildings), for example, has enumerated the
vast number of these buildings throughout Greece. Other centers throughout
Greece certainly shared he prosperity, religious dynamism, and administrative
centrality of Corinth even if on a smaller scale. Even sites on a
comparable scale, like Nikopolis in Epirus, Nea Anchialos in Thessaly, Argos,
Patras, and Sparta have received far less attention than Late Roman
Corinth. Should this disproportional focus on Corinth and the Corinthia be
a matter of some concern for how we understand the development of Late Antiquity
in Greece? Even if we understand fully the reasons why Corinth has become
so central to our reading of Late Antique Greece (on account of structures
within the narrative of American archaeology in Greece, the support of specific
American scholars, and the history of careful and relatively open excavations)
what are the implications of this emphasis? Do we see Late Antique Corinth
pulling scholarly attention and intellectual resources away from other parts of
Greece or is our ever expanding knowledge of the Corinthia pushing the study of
the 4th-8th centuries elsewhere in the southern Balkans. It is safe to say
that both a certain amount of pushing and pulling are in play here. Since
I know some of my colleagues who study the Late Antique Corinthia are sometime
readers of this blog, I invite them to respond to this! How do we
understand both the academic traditions of Corinthian Archaeology and the
narrative of the Late Antique city of Corinth "in Context"?
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Amelia Brown
EMAIL: amelia@romangreece.com
IP: 86.129.217.196
URL: http://www.romangreece.com
DATE: 11/11/2008 05:46:01 PM
Dear Bill,!
Thanks for including me in your thoughtful comments on Late Antique Corinth and
its study. In researching my dissertation, I was most struck by how prominent
features of the present Greek landscape- the Parthenon and other monuments of
the Acropolis in Athens, the Temple of Apollo and Hexamilion wall at Corinth-
guide archaeologists and casual visitors alike to form certain ideas of the
relative importance of certain eras of history at those cities. How difficult it
is in the present to balance the visible and invisible pasts! Cheers, Amelia
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TITLE: Friday Varia: Two Quick Notes on Academic and Administrative Blogs
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DATE: 11/07/2008 09:32:26 AM

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BODY:
Congratulations to the <a href="http://www.asor.org/">American Schools of
Oriental Research</a> on their slick new website. The site includes <a
href="http://www.asor.org/blog/index.shtml">a blog</a> that will presumably join
Archaeological Institute of America's <a
href="http://www.archaeology.org/news/">Archaeology News weblog</a> in my
regular reading list. It's becoming regular practice for institutional
websites to include a blog where quick notes, timely comments on news stories,
or address controversial issues. In fact, quite a few university
presidents (e.g. From big public institutions like <a
href="http://president.asu.edu/blog">Arizona State</a>, <a
href="http://president.msu.edu/index.php">Michigan State</a>, <a
href="http://www.wright.edu/admin/president/presidentblog.html">Wright State</a>
and <a href="http://www.usm.edu/blogs/president/">Southern Mississippi</a> to
small private colleges like <a
href="http://rononmiddlebury.wordpress.com/">Middlebury College</a> and <a
href="http://roth.blogs.wesleyan.edu/">Wesleyan University</a>) and deans
have taken to using blogs as a way of connecting with their stake holders across
the University and community. While many of these blogs make pretty
tedious reading, occasionally a blog can capture the drama of the moment in the
life of a University. I must admit to reading former University of West
Virginia President Mike Garrisons's blog (now only available at the Internet
Archive with large gaps in its content (<a
title="http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://mikesnotes.blogs.wvu.edu/"
href="http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://mikesnotes.blogs.wvu.edu/">http://web.
archive.org/web/*/http://mikesnotes.blogs.wvu.edu/</a>)) as he attempted to deal
with the various controversies that would ultimately doom his position at that
school. His effort to address concerns and criticisms voiced by alumni and
students in the comments section of his blog showed gumption and provided a
window into the drama that engulfed that University community. I imagine
that it is only a matter of time before most publicity conscious officers at
Universities begin to write blogs to keep the community informed about their
views of the present and future. As always, have a good weekend.
They say that we'll have snow here, but so far nothing but rain. 
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Tom Elliott
IP: 74.239.78.188
DATE: 11/07/2008 10:55:56 AM
Hi Bill: !
!
Thanks for the pointer to the ASOR site and blog. !
!
I'm chagrined though to see that a brand new, shiny blog doesn't seem to have
web feeds (or they aren't surfacing links to them at least). Frankly, it makes
it unlikely I'll be reading the blog regularly as I have such a broad reading
list I need to manage it in a feed reader.!
!
Your comments on the widening institutional role for blogging are interesting in
welcome.!
!
Best,!
Tom!
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Chuck Jones
IP: 128.122.167.53
URL:
DATE: 11/07/2008 11:10:47 AM
Tom beat me to the punch on this problem, though I might use the term "annoyed"
rather than "chagrined".!
!
-Chuck-
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COMMENT:
EMAIL:
IP: 134.129.133.190
DATE: 11/07/2008 11:22:36 AM
Tom and Chuck,!
!
It's funny. The announcement of their new site in the ASOR Newsletter makes
specific mention of RSS feeds being available on the site
(http://www.asor.org/pubs/news/58_3.pdf). So, this might just be a
developmental thing rather than an overall design issue.!
!
Bill
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COMMENT:
IP: 99.168.80.241
URL:
DATE: 11/08/2008 09:09:55 PM
903
Wesleyan's blog has been very interesting. A few weeks ago, the New York Times
magazine had an article about a Wesleyan adjunct who was "mistreated" based on
student evaluations. The article was very strange and under-reported. You should
have seen the student responses on the Wesleyan blog. Thanks to the blog, we got
a fair representation of how bad (after all) this professor actually was.!
!
-Kostis
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TITLE: Themes of North Dakota History: Looking Back Over 50 Years
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BASENAME: themes-of-north-dakota-history-looking-back-over-50-years
DATE: 11/06/2008 07:38:09 AM

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50 years ago today the University of North Dakota celebrated its 75th
Anniversary with an elaborate Convocation. The President of the
University, George Startcher, invited Elwyn B. Robinson to give the Convocation
Address that day. He delivered a paper entitled "Themes of North Dakota
History", and this paper was destined to become one of the most influential
statement on the history of the state. The Themes that Robinson identified
echoed through his major work, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/33266680">The History of North
Dakota</a>, and continue to appear even today in the way in which the
public, the media, and scholars think about the development of the state over
time. <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/dept/library/Collections/Robinson/themes.html">A
link to a version of this speech is here</a>. I've also included an
excerpt from Robinson's Autobiography that places this important text is a more
personal context. "In 1957 or early in 1958, I believe, the committee
planning the Seventy-Fifth Anniversary Convocation to celebrate the university's
seventy-fifth birthday, invited me to give an address at the convocation in
November 1958. Dr. Christopher Hamre, dean of the Graduate School,
and Dr. William Koenher, then chairman of the Department of Economics, were on
the committee. They suggested my topic, "The Themes of North Dakota
History". Because of the early invitation, I had a long time to think
about the topic. The invitation was one of the great good fortunes of my
life because it made me think for a long time about the meaning of North Dakota
history. As a result I worked out six themes that ran through the state's
history. I talked a great deal with Robert P. Wilkins about the themes as
I was working on my essay. He may or probably did suggest some of the
ideas as we talked as well as confirming my ideas. I wanted to
give names to the six themes. The most happy invention was the name the
"Too-Much Mistake" for the persistent tendency to over expand. I read my
essay on the evening of November 6 in the Field House to a great concourse of
people. Before Robert Wilkins introduced me there was special music, "The
Towering Vision", composed for the anniversary. That evening was the first
event of the three-day convocation with many leaders in higher education from
904
throughout the nation. I believe that there were several university

presidents. I remember especially the president of Columbia
University. For a month or so before the event,
I was concerned that I should not be understood. Very frequently speakers
in the Field House were not heard very clearly. I talked to
John Penn of the Speech Department and possibly to Myron Curry, seeking ways of
avoiding the common problem. They told me that the problem arose from the
fact that the speaker did not keep his mouth close to the microphone, but would
sometimes turn away. So as I read my essay I took great pains to keep
close to the microphone and to enunciate very clearly. I expect that it
took me forty-five minutes to an hour to read my essay. 
 I worked hard on it. On October 2 I wrote to my
mother that I was busy with it. On November 14 I wrote her that my lecture
had gone extremely well - "a triumph of the first magnitude". The audience
had given me prolonged applause, and a great many people came to the platform to
congratulate me. Later, some people told me that my address was the best
one at the convocation. Dean Theodore Harwood said that it was a
"classic". President Starcher sent me "a letter of warm praise". A
reporter for the Fargo Forum, Roy Johnson, called it "a great
document". The comments at the time I read the essay and later showed that
many people believed that my themes were true and significant ones, that I had
illuminated the history of the state. My interpretation has become the
accepted interpretation of North Dakota history. The Forum
for November 16 carried a report on my essay and an editorial that day said
that it "should be required for every resident of North Dakota". The
editorial continued: <blockquote> "Dr. Robinson's observations about the
'typical' North Dakotan make interesting reading but there is far deeper
significance in his 'six great themes' which he says have been the primary
influences on the state. "Of particular import is his
conclusion that one of the main influences upon our economy has been what he
calls the 'too much mistake' of our pioneers. He outlines these as too
many farms, railroads, roads, towns, banks, schools, churches, and governmental
institutions, 'a supply that history has shown has been far beyond the ability
of the state to maintain' with its sparse population. 
"Accepting this premise requires a different approach to the changes that are
taking place in North Dakota today. If Dr. Robinson's conclusions are
correct, the declining numbers of farmers mean only that steps are being taken
to correct an original mistake. "Likewise, efforts
of railroads to abandon uneconomical facilities are only an attempt to adjust to
changing times. Extended branch line trackage once was necessary when
grain was hauled by team and wagon, when passenger trains were the only fast
means of travel, but trucks, passenger cars, and highways have made much of the
trackage and other facilities obsolete. "Dr. Robinson
cites many thought-provoking arguments to prove his point, and he offers many
startling statistics such as "in 1958 government work on all levels is the
second largest class of non-agricultural employment, standing just behind
retail." "Full judgment of Dr. Robinson's research and
conclusions must await publication of his book, but even the brief report in
today's edition heralds his work as an important contribution to North Dakota
history. "Whether North Dakotans today will profit from
the study of the past remains for future historians to record, but at the very
least Dr. Robinson should inspire searching thinking in us all."
</blockquote> On November 30 I wrote to my mother that
President Starcher wanted my essay published so that he could send copies to
every member of the legislature. I went to work on revision
905
which was mostly a matter of putting in footnotes. I had not had time for
them before I read it to the convocation on November 6. I wrote to Russell
Reid, superintendent of the State Historical Society and editor of its quarterly
North Dakota History about its publication. As I remember his
reply, he was critical of my interpretation of North Dakota history and hesitant
about publishing it." In the end, North Dakota History did publish a
version of the speech appeared in the Winter 1959 volume of the journal.
It was republished in the <a
href="http://www.nd.gov/hist/digital/NDHAnthology.pdf">Centennial Anthology
of the North Dakota History which can be downloaded for free here</a>. 
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TITLE: Teaching Thursday (a day early): Teaching the Election
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BASENAME: teaching-thursday-a-day-early-teaching-the-election
CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 11/05/2008 07:47:17 AM

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While many of my colleagues and students spent last night watching election
returns, I spent it in the classroom. I teach Western Civilization I on
Tuesday nights. It meets once a week for two-and-a-half hours. About
40% of my students showed up for class, but they were a boisterous and excited
group. We took breaks every half hour to watch the election results come
in and the students provided all sorts of punditry -- sometimes on a county-by-
county level -- especially as it became clear that North Dakota was going to
fall to John McCain. It was a great class. I also had to
teach. Medieval history waits for no man (or woman). It just so
happened, however, that I was teaching on the reform movement of the 11th and
12th centuries. I explained how the monastery at Cluny elected its own
abbots and this helped keep the monastery (with its particular observance) free
from external influence and autonomous. This practice ultimately manifest
itself in the practice of the Papal Curia electing the Papacy which was
introduced by reforming Popes like Leo IX and Nicholas II. The autonomy of
the church, supported in part by the elected status of the Papacy became a
significant feature in the emergence of the "imperial" Papacies of the 11th-13th
centuries. Lecturing of Medieval history on such a significant election
night seemed a bit odd and maybe even a bit out-of-touch, but I kept thinking
about two things. First, considering the long history of the "West" will
help us keep this moment in perspective. While history has the power to liberate
the lost voices of the past, it can also swallow up even the greatest moment of
906
triumph. Second, listening to my students talk about their home towns and
counties and their views on the election challenged the idea that today's
college students are apathetic and disengaged. My students had an idea of
what was going on and definite hopes for the future. In my afternoon
class, The Historians Craft, we talked about the uneasy relationship between
historians and the "public realm". I had the class read <a
href="http://www.historians.org/info/AHA_History/weleuchtenberg.htm">William E.
Leuchtenburg's American Historical Association, Presidential Address
entitled "The Historian and the Public Realm</a>". Aside from the fact
that only two or three students (of a class of 10) read it, we were nevertheless
able to think about how historians should engage as professionals in political
activism. The response from the class was unexpected. Despite the
persistent rhetoric that academics should maintain a position above the fray,
students almost universally felt that historians should take a more public role
in decisions being made in the US. Knowing the past, my class argued, was
vital to understanding the consequences of policy and the way forward as a
society and state. Exciting politics makes it easy to be an exciting
teacher, but next week I'll again be left to my own devices. And Teaching
Thursday on a Wednesday! Well, tomorrow is an exciting anniversary for the
Department of History, the University, and the State of North Dakota. Stay
tuned. For more Teaching Thursdays: <a
Lecture</a> <a
Teaching</a> <a
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IP: 129.24.252.40
DATE: 11/10/2008 09:59:16 PM
Did you see this article? !
!
http://insidehighered.com/news/2008/11/10/nsse!
!
I thought it might provide an interesting comparison on reading rates. What
does it take, in your estimation, to increase the number of students who come to
seminar having read the material beforehand?
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TITLE: Election Day in North Dakota
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BASENAME: election-day-in-north-dakota
DATE: 11/04/2008 07:47:44 AM

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href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2010535d7bf69970
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2010535d14f11970b
-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> Beautiful fall morning (in the mid
40s!) for <a
href="http://www.grandforksherald.com/pdfs/1102wheretovote08.pdf">voting in
Grand Forks, North Dakota</a>. There were lines at 7 am at my polling
place, but that might be normal here (this was my first time voting in North
Dakota). It was historically interesting to see all the Democrats on the
ballot listed as Democrat-NPL. <a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non_Partisan_League">The Non-Partisan
League</a>. The only real radical party to ever gain a substantial
foothold in the US. And they talk about East Coast radicals and
liberals. Real radicals come from <a
e-streets-of-grand-forks-2-a-small-town-streetscape.html">small towns</a>.
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AUTHOR: Brian
IP: 134.129.193.248
URL: http://picasaweb.google.com/elucidarian/ElectionDay2008#
DATE: 11/04/2008 10:20:28 AM
I went in the other door, and then I went for free coffee!!
!
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TITLE: Why Blog?
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DATE: 11/03/2008 08:10:58 AM

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There have been a couple interesting contributions over the last few weeks on
why people blog. <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200811/andrew-
sullivan-why-i-blog">One was offered by Andrew Sullivan</a>, whose political and
cultural blog the Daily Dish has made him a celebrity far beyond the
blogosphere. A group of blogging historians wrote gave papers at
Berkshire Conference of Women Historians on their experiences as bloggers
(including <a href="http://tenured-radical.blogspot.com/2008/10/radical-goes-to-
genteel-academic.html">Tenured Radical</a>, <a
href="http://cliobluestockingtales.blogspot.com/2008/10/little-berks-women-and-
blogging.html#links">Clio Bluestocking Tales</a>, and <a
href="http://hmprescott.wordpress.com/2008/10/03/outline-for-little-berks-
talk/">Knitting Clio</a>). Last week, several friends and colleagues forwarded
to me <a href="http://hughmcguire.net/2008/10/26/why-academics-should-blog/">a
link to a post at hughmaguire.net</a> which provided a list of arguments for why
academics should blog. With these scholars' encouragement, it
seemed like a good time to return a bit to thinking about why I blog.
(And such a reflection is particularly useful on weeks like this when I feel
completely overextended and swamped!). 1. I like to write and find the
discipline of writing valuable. Writing my blog helps structure my day
around a pleasurable task. I compose my blog as I get ready for my day
and write it up as soon as I arrive in my office. This simple routine
ensures that each morning has a predictable structure and a feeling (no matter
909
how fleeting) of accomplishment. 2. A desire to make visible the

process of writing, thinking, and revising. Every now and then I am
reminded of the brilliant line from Ghost Busters: "Personally, I liked the
university. They gave us money and facilities, we didn't have to produce
anything! You've never been out of college! You don't know what it's
like out there! I've *worked* in the private sector. They expect
results." For better or worse, even the university expects
results now! Our production as academics is increasingly judged by
publications, grants received, students taught, theses completed, and other such
quantifiable "results". Writing a daily blog serves to shine a
bit of light on the other side of the examined intellectual life: the process of
formulating ideas, writing, revising, rethinking, reformulating. In
short, it exposes all the time that academics spend doing things that don't
necessarily always lead to directly quantifiable results. While one can
certainly argue that even the most ill-conceived and poorly executed argument
does, in some small way, contribute to a larger project as academics we often
try to keep these failures of thought hidden. In an environment where our
performance is increasingly driven by results hiding the failed hypotheses, the
dead-end research, and the poorly articulated arguments, is counter
productive. We have a responsibility to demonstrate the vagaries,
failures, and wanderings intrinsic to the creative process. By blogging,
I try to show anyone who bothers to read, how the production of scholarship
actually proceeds and to generate sympathy and understanding of the kind of
productive inefficiency that may someday be threatened even in the academy.
3. A feeling of social obligation to a wide range of "stake
holders". As a employee at a state institution, I feel a certain
obligation to make what I do all day (see point 2) visible to the wider
public. I teach ancient history in North Dakota. This is a not a
natural fit. I hope that I justify my position at the University and in
the community in some small way by each post that I write. And I hope
that by taking the time to engage the larger community, I actually build more
support for the important work done at the University. 4. Finding
community. Academics have always worked within communities whether they
are the university communities of the department or college or communities of
like-minded scholars at professional organizations or conferences. My
academic posts have introduced me to new communities of scholars, many of whom I
would not have been likely to interact with through the tradition circuit of
meetings and conferences. While I have only been blogging for a year-and-
a-half some of these new relationships have already produced significant
scholarly interaction. I will never argue that blogs represent the same
kind of product as a scholarly journal, but they can nevertheless encourage
high-quality academic interaction. This potential suggests that someday
(and perhaps soon), blog posts may have a place amidst the recognized genre of
academic production alongside seminar papers, conference papers, academic
journals, et c. 5. The Death of the Note. It was fairly common some
twenty or thirty years ago for scholars to publish short academic notes on
topics. Often running to less 1000 words, these notes typically amounted
to little more than well-developed footnotes on a familiar text or a short
comment on a new archaeological discovery. Notes seem to have been
logistically demanding for journal editors as they required some of the same
energy as full-length articles, but filled less space in journals. So,
accepting numerous short notes had the potential to put pressure on editorial
correspondence as each note required some of the same attention as longer
articles but with less academic significance. Today, few journals accept notes
and short comments on discoveries, textual notes, and the like have quietly
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vanished. Some of my posts are essentially notes. Short

observations, comments, critiques of scholarly matters. They hardly
warrant the time and energy required for proper publication, but nevertheless
advance some small part of scholarly discussion. These arguments for
academic blogging are deeply interrelated and hardly meant to supercede or
challenge the views advanced in the recent contributions to the topic of
academic or intellectual blogging. I do hope, however, that they shed a
slightly different light on the ideas advanced by others, and if nothing else
make the content of my blog more understandable.
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IP: 99.168.80.241
URL:
DATE: 11/03/2008 09:43:16 AM
excellent
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Kudzu Fire
EMAIL: byteme@kudzufire.com
IP: 65.33.244.40
URL: http://waitingonthenewmoon.wordpress.com/2008/01/21/angel-sightings/
DATE: 11/04/2008 02:19:15 PM
so blogs have replaced academic notes? I guess they have arrived.
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COMMENT:
IP: 134.129.168.212
DATE: 11/12/2008 11:57:00 AM
A little quip from my favorite canadian show...!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rV2Hs2rgto8!
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TITLE: Pyla-Koutsopetria Fall Update
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DATE: 10/31/2008 08:59:54 AM

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It seems like the Pyla-Koustopetria Archaeological Project begins earlier
every year. Fall is grant writing season with three grants, two external
and one internal, waiting to go off my desk in the next two weeks. David
Pettegrew, Scott Moore, and I met this past week (in Second Life!) and began to
discuss matters of staffing, student programs, and logistics. Our research
goals for this next season are fairly well-established as we have received
considerable encouragement and support from the Department of Antiquities.
Maria Hadjicosti, the curator of the Cyprus Museum and our collaborator, urged
us to conduct a few more soundings to ground-truth some of the more intriguing
results from our intensive pedestrian survey and geophysical survey on Vigla and
Kokkinokremos. We will also conduct some soundings at Koutsopetria in
order to clarify some stratigraphic and architectural issues in advance of the
final publication of Dr. Hadjicosti's earlier excavation at the site in the
1990s. Finally, we are working on an advanced publication of the results
from the survey. This paper will be more synthetic and interpretative than
our preliminary reports in the Report of the Department of Antiquities of
Cyprus. We'll also have a poster once again at the Archaeological
Institute of America's Annual Meeting in Philadelphia this January. It's
exciting that our project is taking shape this early in the year and bodes well
for the 2009 season!
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TITLE: Teaching Thursday: Making Room for Experiments
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DATE: 10/30/2008 07:54:54 AM

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This week my graduate seminar has read <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/14412413">Hayden White's The Content of
the Form</a> and <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/35362398">Dominick
LaCapra's History and Criticism</a>. For most students in the
class, these books are unfamiliar territory and their critiques of narrative
form pose potent challenges to the way that most of our graduate students think
about history as a craft. The one thing that I try to communicate through
these books (if everything else these scholars offer is lost) is that history to
be renewed, relevant, and significant needs to embrace experiment. The
"Ironic perspective" held by most historians who continue to occupy their
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superior position with regard to the actors, events, and structure of the past
encourages the kind of self-aware historical practice that could allow scholars
to surpass the limitations imposed by our discipline's commitment to Irony.
This is undoubtedly heady stuff for a room full of M.A. students.
Moreover, many of the students enjoy history in part because of the comfortable
familiarity with the narrative structure. So not only does White and LaCapra ask
them to critique the very core of the historical practice that they have just
recently committed to pursuing at the graduate level, but these scholars also
challenge us all to reconsider many of the basic assumptions of historical
expression (and by extension historical practice). The question is how
do you get a seminar room full of M.A. students to experiment, to test the
limits of historical expression, and feel at ease with history as a creative
process that could have far closer bonds to fiction, "creative writing", or even
poetry? I'll be the first to admit that I am not some kind of wildly
experimental historian although my willingness to blog (for example) and <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/Emerging_Cypriot.html">play
with video</a> in non-linear ways represents some of my willingness to at least
consider avenues for historical expression that make more transparent the
historical process. Of course, the standard answer to this question is
that we need to expose students to experimental kinds of writing both in the
discipline of history and across the humanities, and this is almost certainly
the case. But I am not entirely convinced that we succeed in encouraging
experimentation by using the classroom imprimatur to show how
experimental historical writing is not unconventional. It's at moments
like this when I realize how conservative history is as a discipline (which
despite our current political climate is not meant to be an attack), and how
hard it is to create room, both mentally and within the disciplinary confines,
to experiment. More Teaching Thursday: <a
Lecture</a> <a
Teaching</a> <a
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IP: 64.106.24.242
URL: http://phdinhistory.blogspot.com
DATE: 10/30/2008 06:46:34 PM
Did you see the forum about Digital History in JAH? It had some interesting
thoughts about experimenting with non-linear narratives.
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TITLE: Blindness, Dreams, and Relics
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BASENAME: blindness-dreams-and-relics
CATEGORY: Byzantium
DATE: 10/29/2008 08:18:29 AM

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The Life of St. Nikon "Metanoeite" contains a small variation on
the standard pattern of Dream Archaeology and brings in an interesting new
component to this study. The saint worked to build churches on the island
of Crete after the Byzantine's had regained control of the island in
961. The following story comes from the Life of St. Nikon, 21:
Having decided the depart from he island, he traveled from Gortyn and along the
way stopped on night to rest at the remains of an older and now ruined
church. It is worth noting that St. Nikon displayed some archaeological
acumen: he was able to determine that the church was old because of the
fragments of "cornices" (geison). As he slept he had a dream
that St. Photeine appeared to him, asked him to rebuild the ruined church, and
threatened that he would not leave the island if he did not do so. St.
Nikon awoke and could not tell whether the vision of the St. Photeine was a
"dream (oneiroxanta) or a vision enlightened by grace." He
ultimately decided that it was the former and continued on his way. But
then, suddenly, he lost his sight. This showed him that the vision was
certainly divine will, and once he decided to return to the site of the ruined
church his vision returned. Returning to the site and committed to
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following the St. Photeine's request, St. Nikon lacked the tools for the
work -- namely spades and shovels (ptuon -- a winnowing shovel!) -- but God
provided him with a column of fire which attracted the attention of the local
residents who soon came to help him rebuild (and apparently excavate) the
church. The role of St. Photeine in this story is quite
interesting. St. Photeine is typically associated with the Samaritan
woman from John 4:8-26. By the 10th century, however, her cult was
centered in Constantinople where they celebrated both her martyrdom (March 20th)
and the discovery of her relics (August 20th). A 11th or 12th
century life preserves the story of how her relics were discovered. A
epidemic of blindness has swept through the city of Constantinople and a man
called Abraham (Abraamios) was distraught having lost his sight. He cried
out to: <blockquote> "God not to neglect him who was in mortal
danger, but to show him the path whereby he should not be deprived of the light
that is sweetest to all men. As he was thus despondent and lamenting his
condition, he found respite from his despair in sleep, and while he was asleep
he saw a divine vision: the vision was of a woman who was already elderly and
aged and quite advanced in years, wearing a garment of linen, with a pleasant
and charming face. She seemed to carry a large candle, and touched his eyes and
said in a cheerful voice: "Blind men, recover your sight, and those who are
in darkness, receive the light; for behold, through me, the perfume-bearing
martyr Photeine, Christ will grant light to your darkened eyes and will bring an
end to your affliction and relieve your suffering. And this is a sign for you. A
thickly wooded and dark cave holds my <remains> in its depths, and if you
dig you will find me and light will shine II on you and all your household and
everyone who calls on my name through Jesus Christ." As she spoke these
words, she indicated the place with her hand, and he made a mental note of it.
Therefore he quickly shook off his drowsiness, and ran to the spot, after
sharing word of his vision with others. And after laboring hard for a short time
they found concealed beneath an underground chamber the inviolate treasure, the
true pearl, the blooming lily, the venerable remains of the great martyr
Photeine, which dimly preserved the features <of the saint as revealed> in
the man's vision. Straightaway then the afflicted man embraced, clasped and
kissed the <relics>, washed them with his tears, lifted his eyes up to
them, and was immediately delivered entirely from his dim sight." (A. M.
Talbot "The Posthumous Miracles of St. Photeine" Analecta
Bollandiana 112 (1994), 90.)</blockquote> There are obvious parallel
between the inventio of St. Photiene's relics and the story in the
life of St. Nikon. First, the appearance of St. Photeine, a saint
associated with healing eye ailments, makes makes it clear why St. Nikon lost
his sight after ignoring her appearance to him. Moreover, both stories
involved pious men losing their sight and regaining it only after the recovery
of lost sacred object or place. It is also worth noting that another
Cretan saint, <a
-crete-with-j.html">our old friend St. John Xenos</a>, lost his sight briefly
while resting in a very large, old, Greek building on Crete. In this
case, he is told by the Virgin to build a church to her nearby and when he
agrees his sight is restored. The link between divine revelation and
vision is as old as Homer and continues into our own times -- surely the blind
blues singers of the American south (Blind Lemon Jefferson, Sleepy John Estes,
et c.) acquired some of their mystique and inspiration from their lack of
sight. The lack of vision also highlighted the obscured or lost relic or
holy place which divine intervention made visible again. In the case of
St. Nikon, the refusal to accept the vision of St. Photeine, both made him blind
915
physically and showed that he was, in fact, blind spiritually to the will of
God. In this context, the close parallels with the conversion of St. Paul
would have been clear to a Byzantine audience. For more on Dream
Archaeology see: <a
eams-inventio.html">here</a>, <a
re-byzantine.html">here</a>, and <a
re-dreams-rel.html">here</a>.UPDATE: Over a year after I posted this I
discovered an article that made a similar observations regarding the
relationship between St. Nikon and St. Photeine: A.-M. Talbot and A. Kazhdan,
"The Byzantine Cult of St. Photeine," in A. R. Dyck and S. A. Takac,
The Presence of Byzantium: Studies Presented to Milton V. Anastos in Honor
of His Eighty-Fifth Birthday. Byzantinische Forchungen 20 (1994), 103-112.

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TITLE: Digital Humanities, History, and Archaeology at the University of North
Dakota: First Steps
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BASENAME: digital-humanities-history-and-archaeology-at-the-university-of-north-
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CATEGORY: Web/Tech
DATE: 10/28/2008 07:31:09 AM

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We've begun to make the first steps toward institutionalizing the Digital
Humanities at the University of North Dakota. The statement here is a
rough first draft that I drew up with a colleague in the English
Department. We intentionally tried to create a statement that was
different from the many good examples available at established digital
humanities centers across the US in order to force ourselves to define in an
accessible way the basic terms and parameters that define the rather expansive
concept of the digital humanities. This statement with some modification
will be circulated to administrators and potential donors to help us establish
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the intellectual and conceptual foundations for this kind of work on UND's
campus. Digital Humanities ¬∑ Digital History ¬∑
Digital Archaeology at the University of North Dakota 
New Approaches to the Humanities. Digital Humanities is a term
that refers to the use of digital technology to explore the traditional subjects
of humanistic inquiry. In doing so, Digital Humanities continues to
explore and challenge the core values of academic humanism, while also embracing
the emerging digital technologies that enable the study, teaching, and
dissemination of texts in innovative ways. Digital Humanities both
complements and expands the traditional ways that scholars and students of
literature, languages, history, and archaeology interpret, analyze, and
influence the world around them. The Digital Humanities cultivate skills
that not only shed new light on old texts, but also to inspire different ways of
thinking, reading, and viewing our culture. New Texts, New Methods,
New Goals. Digital Humanities seeks new answers to traditional
questions in the humanities through a whole range of techniques, methods and
approaches. ‚Ä¢ The Digital Humanities includes converting traditional media
(texts, photographs, video) into digital formats that follow recognized
guidelines in order to make it available to scholars and students across campus
and the world. So far at UND, work by Digital Humanists had made some of
the earliest records of the University and other unique collections available
to a wider public through the internet. ‚Ä¢ It includes processing
quantitative data collected over the course of archaeological or archival field
work. Scholars at UND have long experience in analyzing complex datasets
ranging from 19th century ship manifests to archaeological data, using
sophisticated computer programs. ‚Ä¢ It also includes the production of new
digital texts, video, and audio that explore and redefine the limits imposed by
more traditional media. Already at the University there are weblogs,
digital video, podcasts, photographic projects, and interactive texts that seek
to redefine how scholars interact with their students, the community, and their
peers. ‚Ä¢ It recognizes the need to preserve traditional texts by migrating
them to digital media, as well as archiving various ‚Äúborn digital‚Äù
texts. By embracing and developing specific protocols and standards for
the creation and preservation of digital media, the Digital Humanities ensure a
global audience for fragile or geographically limited materials.
Teaching and Learning in the 21st Century. The Digital
Humanities recognizes that teaching and learning are ongoing requirements in the
rapidly changing world of new media, technology, and digital approaches to texts
and culture. Thus, teaching the broad theoretical approaches to
understanding the new media and the specific technical skills necessary to
produce digital media is at the very core of the Digital Humanities project.
Cultivating the Future. The commitment to the Digital
Humanities ensures that the University of North Dakota maximizes the visibility
of existing Digital Humanities projects, cultivates the scholarly activity in
this vibrant and innovative discipline, and encourages the teaching of skills
necessary to compete in a world increasingly dominated by digital
technology. A Center for the Digital Humanities would form a focal point
for the energies, technologies, expertise, and infrastructure required for the
University to embrace the challenges of humanistic inquire in the 21st century.

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COMMENT:
IP: 64.106.24.242
URL: http://phdinhistory.blogspot.com
DATE: 10/30/2008 06:49:49 PM
What role would information professionals in the library play in this proposed
program?
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TITLE: The Streets of Grand Forks 2: A Small Town Streetscape
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DATE: 10/27/2008 07:42:01 AM

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With all the talk about Small Town America this election season, it sometimes
comes as a bit of a surprise to realize that I live in one of those small towns
that are invoked so frequently by candidates for higher office. While <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/Grand_Forks_ND.kmz">Grand Forks,
North Dakota</a> has its share of strip malls, a Super Wal-Mart, and, of course,
the state grain mill and elevator, its streets (<a
e-streets-of.html">whether paved with wood or not</a>) capture a kind of
authentic simplicity that develops hoped to capture in their subdivisions of
foreclosed mcmansion. Being on the prairie, most of the trees in Grand
Forks (except for those that grow on the banks of the Red River or the various
coulies that inscribe the flat bottom of the Red River Valley) are planted. The
elm lined streets filter the raking light of the morning sun in the autumn.
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2010535c2595e970
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-pi" width="404" border="0"></a> That is, <a

e-first-snow.html">until it snows</a>...
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TITLE: The First Snow
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DATE: 10/26/2008 09:30:03 AM

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The first snow of Winter 2008/2009 in <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/Grand_Forks_ND.kmz">Grand Forks,
North Dakota</a>. The photos are from this morning. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2010535b96cd7970
b-pi"><img alt="" border="0" height="537"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451908369e2010535b96cfc970b
-pi" style="border: 0px none ;" width="404" /></a> <a
c-pi"><img alt="" border="0" height="537"
-pi" style="border: 0px none ;" width="404" /></a>
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BASENAME: friday-quick--2
DATE: 10/24/2008 07:49:01 AM

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Some quick thoughts for the weekend: <ul> <li>More Merrifield Moving:
Gordon Iseminger made his feelings known regarding the Department of History's
impending move from Merrifield Hall on the <a
href="http://www.grandforksherald.com/articles/index.cfm?id=90489&section=ho
mepage">front page of the Grand Forks Herald</a>. His rear guard actions
captured the significance of the event well and ensured that the campus and the
community realized that the Department's departure from its long time home in
Merrifield will be a loss. He evoked the spirit of the building and of
Robinson and Libby: </li></ul> <blockquote> "Designed by famed architect
Joseph Bell DeRemer, Merrifield Hall was built in 1929 and immediately elevated
the aesthetics of the young campus, where earlier construction had been more
utilitarian. Windows have been updated, and hallway ceilings were lowered to
accommodate new heating and cooling systems, but there have been no additions to
alter its external elegance. It has a worn, familiar feel
inside, where the terrazzo floors are original and the staircases curve into
those sun-dappled window seats. </blockquote> <blockquote> Down
the hall from the core cluster of history faculty offices, one classroom is
outfitted with maps and framed portraits of former history department leaders,
including Elwyn Robinson, author of the 1966 ‚ÄúHistory of North Dakota,‚Äù and
Orin G. Libby, often called ‚Äúthe father of North Dakota history.‚Äù 
‚ÄúIt was in this building that Robinson and Libby made their careers,‚Äù
Iseminger said, and that tradition ‚Äî that history ‚Äî should matter to the
larger university community." As the Departmental Historian, I was a bit
surprised to see Iseminger's assertion that Libby "made his career" in
Merrifield. Libby was hired in 1902 and published <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/248317474">his dissertation</a>, by far his
most significant piece of scholarship some 5 years earlier. In 1914, Libby
arranged to hold the Mississippi Valley Historical Association (the predecessor
to the Organization of American Historians) on campus, and this was surely his
finest hour. Libby's high profile battles with President Kane in the 1920s
had tarnished his reputation on campus and weakened the position of the
department as Kane sought to undermine Libby's power on campus by dividing the
department into separate departments of European and American History.
Despite these battles, he nevertheless had the privilege of new offices in
Merrifield Hall where he would work until his retirement in 1945. While he
worked hard during his final 15 years on campus to maintain North Dakota
Historical Society during the darkest years of the depression, his scholarly
output waned and <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2008/09/or
in-g-libby-an.html">even his teaching fell behind the times</a>. Libby's
career was made before he came to Merrifield Hall and continued despite the
move. This gives our department hope.</blockquote> <ul> <li>Read
Quickly. The American Council of Learned Societies is making one of their
humanities ebooks available to the public for one month only, after which it
will only be available to subscribers. <a
920
href="http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-
idx?c=acls;idno=heb90014">Women's Letters from Ancient Egypt, 300 BC-AD
800. eds. Roger S. Bagnall, Raffaella Cribiore, with contributions by Evie
Ahtaridis (Ann Arbor 2008, 2006).</a> Lots of really cool stuff in
it. The letters on ostraca are particular striking.</li> <li>Write
Quickly. Andrew Sullivan considers <a
href="http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200811/andrew-sullivan-why-i-blog">"Why I
Blog" in the most recent issue of The Atlantic</a>.</li></ul> Cheer
on the Phils this weekend. 
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TITLE: Teaching Thursday: More on Writing
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
ALLOW PINGS: 1
BASENAME: teaching-thur-5
CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 10/23/2008 08:43:59 AM

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One of my classes this semester, History 240: The Historians Craft, is fairly
writing intensive. The goal of the class is to teach a small group of
students basic historical method, to introduce them to a smattering on
historiography and philosophy, and, finally, to produce a 10-15 page term
paper based on independent research (a paper that should be substantially better
than a term paper for a typical, "content based" class). The papers are to
be rooted in the academic discourse and based upon primary sources. I am
encouraging a kind of slow writing in this class. We build through a
series of assignments from short book reviews and an annotated bibliography, to
a formal prospectus, to an outline, and then a series of at least three
critiqued drafts. I work hard to make the student aware of their writing
and insist on a formal style across all of the projects that build toward the
final product. The greatest frustration, however, is with students who for
whatever reason, just don't get it. They either continues to write in an
painfully informal or agrammatical (that is not ungrammatical, but seemingly
devoid of any awareness of grammatical rules) style. Or more frequently,
fail or even refuse to engage the scholarly discourse either in their research
or in their writing. Last week, I met with a group of faculty from across
campus to discuss Gerald Graff's and Cathy Birkenstein's little book,
<a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/63108472">They Say/I Say: Moves
That Matter in Academic Writing (New York 2006).</a> The little
seminar put on by our Office of Instructional Development and the Writing Center
focused on the books techniques for encouraging writers to understand the
921
scholarly discourse. This is the "They Say" part of the books title.
Graff and Birkenstein propose teaching students a series templates or formulas
which force the writer to engage their fellow scholars. Most of the
templates are so familiar to scholars as to be almost second nature. For
example, "In their recent work, Y and Z have offered harsh critiques of Dr. X
for __________." (Graff and Birkstein 21). For students, however, these
"moves that matter" set a paper up from the start as a kind of conversation with
the broader world of academic research. While the book has its flaws, such
a kind of patronizing tone that might rub struggling student writers the wrong
way, its basic approach to writing is compelling. Our students
lack of familiarity with these kind of verbal cues that define so much of the
rhetoric and substance of academic writing reflects our students lack of basic
academic literacy. In large part, I consider it my biggest challenge and
responsibility to encourage students to read and write. Even in my 100
level, introductory class, I encourage the students to write weekly. On
the of the thing that is remarkable about this is that students who take the
weekly writing assignments serious did much better on the midterm exam. <a
aching-thur-2.html">As I described before,</a> I gave the students options on
the exam. They could either do an all multiple guess, a half multiple
guess and half essay, or an all essay exam. Students who regularly
contributed weekly writing assignments scored statistically better on the
exam. They were also more likely to take essay versions of the exam, which
had higher grades in general, and average weekly writing score for the students
who took the all essay exam was marked better than for those who took the
multiple choice exam. What I think this indicates is that students who
like to write, feel comfortable writing or at least feel obliged to write.
This is hardly surprising (although it is nice to have statistics of a sort to
back it up), but it does add another component to my goals as a teacher.
Not only do I need to encourage a kind of slow writing, and teaching writing,
but it is clear that I need to encourage the students to see writing as
something interesting, challenging (in a good way), and even fun.
 More Teaching Thursday: <a
Lecture</a> <a
922
Teaching</a> <a
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COMMENT:
IP: 64.106.26.50
DATE: 10/23/2008 08:38:02 PM
Do your students see the big picture? Do they understand why it is important
and necessary to write in the way you are asking? You and I take it for
granted. But how about them?
-----
COMMENT:
EMAIL:
IP: 134.129.133.190
DATE: 10/24/2008 07:15:32 AM
Thanks for the comment. On the one hand, many read my blog so have followed my
discussion of teaching and writing. This, of course, is no guarantee that they
buy my argument, but at least they realize it exists. More importantly, I
justify how I teach in class. On the other hand, this is different from saying
that my students buy into the larger project of the academy on any level.
Students in a 100 level course or even a 200 level course are sometimes not
particularly predisposed to see the value in academic forms of expression. I do
teach this, but it can only go so far as these attitudes derive from deeply set
social expectations. It is possible to change these attitudes over time, and I
do my part, but changing basic values of society is not likely to be
accomplished in a single course.!
!
Bill
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TITLE: Teaching Thursday: More on Writing
STATUS: Draft
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
ALLOW PINGS: 1
923
DATE: 10/23/2008 08:43:48 AM

-----
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One of my classes this semester, History 240: The Historians Craft, is fairly
writing intensive. The goal of the class is to teach a small group of
students basic historical method, to introduce them to a smattering on
historiography and philosophy, and, finally, to produce a 10-15 page term
paper based on independent research (a paper that should be substantially better
than a term paper for a typical, "content based" class). The papers are to
be rooted in the academic discourse and based upon primary sources. I am
encouraging a kind of slow writing in this class. We build through a
series of assignments from short book reviews and an annotated bibliography, to
a formal prospectus, to an outline, and then a series of at least three
critiqued drafts. I work hard to make the student aware of their writing
and insist on a formal style across all of the projects that build toward the
final product. The greatest frustration, however, is with students who for
whatever reason, just don't get it. They either continues to write in an
painfully informal or agrammatical (that is not ungrammatical, but seemingly
devoid of any awareness of grammatical rules) style. Or more frequently,
fail or even refuse to engage the scholarly discourse either in their research
or in their writing. Last week, I met with a group of faculty from across
campus to discuss Gerald Graff's and Cathy Birkenstein's little book,
<a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/63108472">They Say/I Say: Moves
That Matter in Academic Writing (New York 2006).</a> The little
seminar put on by our Office of Instructional Development and the Writing Center
focused on the books techniques for encouraging writers to understand the
scholarly discourse. This is the "They Say" part of the books title.
Graff and Birkenstein propose teaching students a series templates or formulas
which force the writer to engage their fellow scholars. Most of the
templates are so familiar to scholars as to be almost second nature. For
example, "In their recent work, Y and Z have offered harsh critiques of Dr. X
for __________." (Graff and Birkstein 21). For students, however, these
"moves that matter" set a paper up from the start as a kind of conversation with
the broader world of academic research. While the book has its flaws, such
a kind of patronizing tone that might rub struggling student writers the wrong
way, its basic approach to writing is compelling. Our students
lack of familiarity with these kind of verbal cues that define so much of the
rhetoric and substance of academic writing reflects our students lack of basic
academic literacy. In large part, I consider it my biggest challenge and
responsibility to encourage students to read and write. Even in my 100
level, introductory class, I encourage the students to write weekly. On
the of the thing that is remarkable about this is that students who take the
weekly writing assignments serious did much better on the midterm exam. <a
aching-thur-2.html">As I described before,</a> I gave the students options on
the exam. They could either do an all multiple guess, a half multiple
guess and half essay, or an all essay exam. Students who regularly
contributed weekly writing assignments scored statistically better on the
exam. They were also more likely to take essay versions of the exam, which
had higher grades in general, and average weekly writing score for the students
who took the all essay exam was marked better than for those who took the
multiple choice exam. What I think this indicates is that students who
like to write, feel comfortable writing or at least feel obliged to write.
This is hardly surprising (although it is nice to have statistics of a sort to
924
back it up), but it does add another component to my goals as a teacher.

Not only do I need to encourage a kind of slow writing, and teaching writing,
but it is clear that I need to encourage the students to see writing as
something interesting, challenging (in a good way), and even fun.
 More Teaching Thursday: <a
Lecture</a> <a
Teaching</a> <a
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TITLE: More Dreams, Religion, and Archaeology
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
ALLOW PINGS: 1
BASENAME: more-dreams-rel
CATEGORY: Byzantium
925
DATE: 10/22/2008 08:07:39 AM

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One key element to my study of Dream Archaeology is emphasizing its
relationship to the discipline of scientific archaeology as it developed in the
late 19th and early 20th century. Episodes of Dream Archaeology
predictably found little place in mainstream discussions of archaeological
methods, it did, however, attract the attention of ethnographers and students of
folklore both in Greece and elsewhere in Europe. Ethnography (or
laography) in Greece shared a focus with archaeology in that it sought to
"excavate" contemporary folk traditions for ancient artifacts that linked
contemporary Greeks with their ancient ancestors. This complemented the
work of archaeology by validating the historical basis for the existence of the
nation and the fundamental continuity between ancient and modern Greeks.
 Outside of Greece, the nationalistic aims of studying folklore were
muted considerably, but scholars such as John Cuthebert Lawson (following in the
footsteps of scholars like E.B. Tylor), in his <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/59400811">Modern Greek Folklore and
Ancient Greek Religion (Cambridge 1910)</a> relied upon the work of Greek
laographers/ethnographers particularly Nikolaos Politis (<a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/7572384">M. Herzfeld, Ours Once More;
Folklore, Ideology, and the Making of Modern Greece (Austin 1982)</a>, 103-
104). Politis carefully documented Greek folklore and deployed it to
demonstrate historical continuity among the Greeks. Among the myriad
stories and types recorded by Politism, he notes numerous stories, some quite
complex, related to dreams and excavation often of buried treasures. 
Lawson's assessment of such stories, in part drawn from his own experiences
doing research in Greece at the end of the 19th century, views tales of Dream
Archaeology with a typically modern and skeptical eye: <blockquote> "One
of the pieces of information most frequently imparted to men in dreams is the
situation of some buried treasure. The precautions necessary for
unearthing it, namely complete reticence as to the dream, and the sacrifice of a
cock, have already been mentioned. This kind of dream has been utilized by
the Greek Church. There is no article of ecclesiastical property of more
value than a venerable icon; to any church or monastery which aspires to become
a great religious centre an ancient and reputable icon, competent to work
miracles, is indispensable. Now the most obvious way of obtaining such
pictures is, it seems, to dig them up. A few weeks underground will have
give the right tone to the crudest copy of crude Byzantine art, and all that is
required, in order to determine the spot for excavation, is a dream on the part
of some person privy to the interment. It was on this system that the
miracle-working icon of Tenos can to be unearthed on the very day that the
standard of revolt from Turkey was raised, thus making the island the home of
patriotism as well as of religion. And this is no solitary example; the
number of icons exhumed in obedience to dreams is immense; wherever the traveler
goes in Greece, he is wearied with the same reiterated story, and if the picture
in question happens to be of the Panagia, there is often an appendix to the
effect that the painter of it was St Luke ‚Äì an attribution which can only have
been based on clerical criticism of the style." (Lawson, 301-
302)</blockquote> Despite the skepticism, the link between these stories
and the goals of the modern state is already obvious. Thus, not only has
the modern, scientific discipline of archaeology developed to support the
national narrative, but so has at least some traditional "folk" understanding of
the archaeological process. It seems likely that the parallels between
926
longstanding views of archaeology as preserved <a

re-byzantine.html">in hagiography</a>, in particular, and the emerging modern
discipline facilitated the transfer of meaning from the local and religious
sphere to the national sphere. The place of Dream Archaeology in the folk
tales recorded (no matter how cynically) by Lawson and especially Politis
further validate the significance of such stories in the national narrative.
For more on Dream Archaeology see <a
eams-inventio.html">here</a>, and <a
re-byzantine.html">here</a> . 
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: David Gill
EMAIL: d.w.j.gill@swan.ac.uk
IP: 88.202.210.107
URL: http://bsahistory.blogspot.com
DATE: 10/25/2008 08:15:05 AM
For more on Lawson and other students at the BSA working in this area prior to
1914 see:!
http://bsahistory.blogspot.com/2008/08/bsa-students-and-folklore.html!
-----
COMMENT:
EMAIL:
IP: 134.129.133.190
DATE: 10/25/2008 10:23:08 AM
David,!
!
Thanks for the this link. I checked out your blog before I wrote the post and
then forgot to make the link. !
!
Bill
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TITLE: More Cyprus, More Hybridity, More Pyla-Koutsopetria in Print
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
927

ALLOW PINGS: 1
BASENAME: more-cyprus-mor
DATE: 10/21/2008 08:32:04 AM

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The most recent issue of the <a href="http://www.ajaonline.org/">American
Journal of Archaeology</a> has a pair of forum articles that continue the
work of trying to understand the complex events and processes that took place in
Cyprus at during the later Bronze Age and early Iron Age. <a
href="http://www.ajaonline.org/index.php?ptype=content&aid=347">In "Cultural
and Political Configuration in Iron Age Cyprus: The Sequel to a Protohistoric
Episode", Maria Iacovou</a> provides a nuanced reading the Bronze Age to Iron
Age transition with an emphasis on the emergence of a powerful Greek speaking
group on the island by the Geometric period. She emphasizes, in
particular, the exceptional character of a Bronze Age migration to Cyprus and
undermines efforts to see parallels between what happened in Cyprus and on other
islands in the Mediterranean like Sicily. Of particular significance in
this article is that she saw the arrival of a distinct group of Mycenaean Greeks
to have stimulated the re-organization of the island over the course of the late
Bronze and early Iron Age and did so unevenly across the island. In some
places, Greek migrants found fertile ground and relatively quickly asserted
political influence, in other places the emergence of Greek influence was more
gradual and in other places still, it is barely detectable at all. For
Iacovou, then, the notion of "hybridity" recently applied by Knapp to Cyprus
only obscures the real geopolitical context for the establishment of Greek power
on the island. The emergence of Greek cultural hegemony on the island was
a product of political and social calculations and was closely associated with
the persistence of certain centers on the island and the decline of others.
In response to this <a
href="http://www.ajaonline.org/index.php?ptype=content&aid=348">Knapp and
Voskos ("Cyprus at the End of the Late Bronze Age: Crisis and Colonization or
Continuity and Hybridization?")</a> reiterate the arguments recently <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2008/08/hy
bridity-in-cy.html">offered in Knapp's recent book</a>. They see the
emergence of Greek cultural authority on Cyprus to be part of a gradual process
taking place over the course of centuries. This gradual period of
migration established the basis for a hybridized community which ultimately
became the heir to political power on the island over the course of the
turbulent Late Bronze Age. Of course, most models for understanding
hybridity, at least those deriving from a post-colonial context, recognized that
the hybrid, on an individual level, acquired some kind of advantage as a result
of their hybrid status. Knapp's model, at least as I understand it, seems
weak in explaining why individuals would chose to adopt hybrid identities.
On the one hand, if contact between Cyprus and the Aegean was initiated by
merchant communities, which crossed cultural boundaries for economic reasons,
one could conceivably imagine reasons for hybridizing, although none that are
inevitable. On the other hand, hybrid individuals could be dangerous
figures capable of upsetting established cultural, social, and political
expectations. As such they could appear as threats as they destabilized
the assumptions that structured social interactions and relegated to a kind of
post-colonial third-space which vacillated between established social norms
without a clear rhythm or center. While the interpretation of the
928
evidence from the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age is far beyond my ability,
we do hope that our work at the Late Bronze Age site of Pyla-
Kokkinokremos, which did not feature particularly prominently in either
article, will contribute to how scholars understand the emergence of Greek
culture on Cyprus. In fact, to facilitate our analysis of the site, we
have assembled a "hybrid" team comprised of an archaeologist with a focus on
Cypriot Pre-History, Michael Brown, and an Aegeanist with a focus on the
Mycenaean period, <a href="http://individual.utoronto.ca/nakassis/">Dimitri
Nakassis</a>. Over the past two field season the difference in
methods, approaches, and assumptions infused the project with a kind of dynamic
tension (which at times verged on being a bit too dynamic) typified by an
environment where hybridity was both a potential outcome and feared
result. To defuse the sometimes violent tensions possible during
the hybridization process, the <a href="http://www.pkap.org/">Pyla-Koutspetria
Archaeological Project</a> has now decided only to publish in periodicals with
cute animals on the cover. That's a joke. Here's a copy of our
recent article in the British Ministry of Defence Conservation Magazine
Sanctuary. Our article runs from pages 62-63. <a href="http://www.defence-
estates.mod.uk/publications/sanctuary/sanctuary2008.pdf"><img style="border-
right: 0px; border-top: 0px; border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="517"
alt="SanctuaryCover"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/WindowsLive
Writer/SanctuaryCover.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a>
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TITLE: The Streets of Grand Forks
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
ALLOW PINGS: 1
BASENAME: the-streets-of
DATE: 10/20/2008 08:05:59 AM

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BODY:
Grand Forks was one of the first cities in North Dakota with paved
streets. Fueled by high wheat prices and expanded production of the so-
called "Second Boom" in North Dakota, communities like Grand Forks had the
resources to provide improved amenities for their populations in the first
decades of the 20th century. They paved the streets with a material called
Granitoid which is apparently a kind of concrete that uses Granite as an
aggregate and stamped it with a cobble-stone like pattern. Today there is
929
a vigorous campaign to preserve sections of this granitoid pavement. (More

on this next week!) Prior to the use of grantitoid, the streets of Grand
Forks were paved with wood blocks some of which must have remained in use until
the mid-20th century. Very little of this wood paving remains.
Apparently during Grand Forks' frequent flood sections of it would simply float
away! There is a one good example of it, however, located on the west side
of the <a href="http://www.cottonwoodcommunity.org/">Grand Forks Community
Church</a> (formerly, I believe the Presbyterian Church). The blocks were placed
in a sand bedding vertically (rather than horizontally as in medieval corduroy
roads) creating a kind of wood cobble. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/WindowsLiv
eWriter/Wood%20Paving%201.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-
width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px" height="304"
alt=""
Writer/Wood%20Paving%201_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> <a
alt=""
align="center"><a
alt=""
align="center"><a
alt=""
Writer/Wood%20Paving%203_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> I've
created a Google Earth .kmz file so you can see this pavement's location and
embedded these photographs in it as well. You can <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/Wood_Streets_Grand_Forks_ND.kmz">dow
nload it here</a> and view it in Google Earth.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Chuck Jones
IP: 24.199.91.113
930
URL:
DATE: 10/20/2008 09:39:38 AM
As recently as the late seventies and eighties I still saw a lot of wooden
street pavement in Chicago, especially in alley-way on the south side.
Apparently some is still evident http://arcchicago.blogspot.com/2007/06/cedars-
of-astor.html
-----
COMMENT:
EMAIL:
IP: 134.129.133.190
DATE: 10/20/2008 09:43:08 AM
Chuck,!
!
Thanks!! And thanks for the link to a great blog post!!
!
Bill
-----
COMMENT:
AUTHOR: BrianB
IP: 134.129.193.249
URL:
DATE: 10/20/2008 10:28:05 AM
Amazing the blocks have held out so long. I've admired the "cobblestone" roads
in town. Glad to hear there is initiative to preserve them.
-----
COMMENT:
AUTHOR: BrianB
IP: 134.129.193.249
URL:
DATE: 10/20/2008 10:37:04 AM
That Chicago link has an extra ")" at the end that should be removed to view the
page:!
!
http://arcchicago.blogspot.com/2007/06/cedars-of-astor.html
-----
COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Maddy Bray
IP: 76.170.0.106
DATE: 10/24/2008 12:32:19 PM
That's really interesting- I've never seen that kind of pavement before.
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STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
ALLOW PINGS: 1
931
DATE: 10/17/2008 09:58:30 AM

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BODY:
Just some quick hits on a Friday morning... <ul> <li>A cool new blog
called <a href="http://pretexts.blogspot.com/">(pre)texts</a> by Dimitris
Plantzos.</li> <li>A useful post for the novice digital historian called <a
href="http://digitalhistoryhacks.blogspot.com/2008/10/navigating-digital-
history.html">Navigating Digital History</a> at <a
href="http://digitalhistoryhacks.blogspot.com/">Digital History Hacks</a>.</li>
<li><a href="http://www.und.edu/dept/histdept/">The Department of History at the
University of North Dakota</a> in conjunction with Mediterranean Archaeology has
purchased 6 TB of server space this week. It should be set up by the
beginning of the winter semester. It's the cyber-infrastructure foundation
for digital history and digital archaeology.</li> <li>After a brief absence, <a
ogy of the Mediterranean World</a> is back on the re-designed and improved <a
href="http://grandforkslife.blogspot.com/">Grand Forks Life</a> blogroll!
Thanks GrandForksGuy! This is one of the most interesting "local blogs"
that I read regularly. It features a few "Open Threads" a month where
people can sound off on various issues from Grand Forks Dinning to local
politics and administration. In the past, it has a attracted a motley
assortment of established bloggers and anonymous commentators. Recently,
GrandForksGuy (not his real name) has decided to prevent anonymous posters
(those without accounts on Blogger) from posting in these open threads. A
controversial choice that could elevate the level of conversation on these rowdy
and rugged open threads, but could also make his blog less representative of the
community. A bold experiment and time will tell.</li> <li><a
href="http://www.thefee.net/delirium/index.php/site/comments/openoffice_finally_
arrives/">Open Office 3.0</a> runs natively on Mac's OS X.</li></ul> The
Phils can rest easily for a few days and watch the Sox try to survive the
ALCS. Good start by <a href="http://content-
usa.cricinfo.com/indvaus2008/engine/current/match/345670.html">India versus
Australia last night in Mohali (311/5)</a>. <a
href="http://www.jayski.com/stats/2008/entries/32mar2008-
entry.htm">Martinsville</a> this weekend.
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TITLE: Teaching Thursday: Making the Test
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
ALLOW PINGS: 1
932
DATE: 10/16/2008 08:01:32 AM

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Making a midterm exam is always a tricky thing especially in an introductory
level class. For my introductory history class there is the challenge in
determining what I am trying to test. In its classic formulation this is
deciding between testing for content and testing for technique (or
method). For a history course, a test that emphasizes content mainly (if
falsely) evaluates the ability to recall names, dates, places, events. In
contrast, testing for method, technique, or understanding centers on the
student's ability to discern or make arguments for causality in historical event
using some version of the historical method. The former is frequently,
although not always, associated with "factual" multiple-choice exams. The
latter with the dreaded essay. My introductory level class requires
writing. I have weekly writing assignments, a paper, and require the
students to write at least one in-class essay. Many of my students do not
like writing. They dread writing in-class essays, they grouse about the
paper, and they frequently fall behind in their weekly writing
assignments. In the past, I would have a midterm essay exam and the dread
in the class would be palpable for weeks in advance. As the same time that
discontent with the midterm essay was reaching its peak, I was asked to take the
Praxis II subject test in History. The Praxis II is the standard test
required for certification to teach history in North Dakota. The test was,
predictably, multiple choice and focused on, in part, crucial, but ultimately
assorted names, dates, and events. We require students who want to teach
social studies or history in North Dakota to take our complete sequence of
introductory history classes. So two years ago, I made a concession. I
gave the students an option on the exam. They can select one of three
types of tests: all multiple choice, half multiple choice and half essay, or all
essay. I modeled my multiple choice questions after the kinds of questions found
on the Praxis II; they include not only names and dates, but more complex
analytical answers which, ideally, show that the students understand the main
themes of my class as well as the basic narrative. The essays are a more
standard variety. For the all essay exam, I include a "quote
identification" question which requires the student to identify a passage from a
primary source and discuss how it fits into or represents a major theme in the
course. The second essay is the opposite. It requires the student to
produce an argument (related to one of the central themes of the class) from the
primary sources and historical "facts" that they have assembled from their
reading and my lectures over the course of the semester. Generally, the
all multiple choice exam is the most popular with the students and the grades on
this test represent the full range of possible student performance (not exactly
a bell-curve, but some students perform at every grade level from the
catastrophic to the perfect). The grades on the essay exams tend to
produce a slightly higher average as there is a slightly larger margin for
error; I am willing to accept a wider range of possible responses to the
questions. Moreover (and perhaps more significantly) the essay exam
attracts students who have more interest in history and are more experienced
writing essay test (typically upper classmen). So student grades cluster
slightly higher and the average grade is typically much higher since there are
fewer "catastrophic" exams. I can usually find a way to give even a
hopeless essay a few points, but on multiple choice the answer "B" is never even
close when the right answer is "A". I am not really sure whether the
students appreciate the choice between different kinds of exams. I also
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wonder about the fundamental fairness of the practice. I have not yet
begun to fathom the implications of different kinds of tests for different kinds
of learning in the sticky matter of <a
aching-thur-1.html">assessment</a>. Once we open a class to a wider range
of potential, student-directed, outcomes, it becomes far more difficult to
assess performance and success. More Teaching Thursday: <a
Lecture</a> <a
Teaching</a> <a
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TITLE: The North Dakota Sky
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DATE: 10/15/2008 07:32:26 AM
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About a year ago, I made a post on <a
eek-light.html">Greek Light</a>. Here's a North Dakota pendant. The
North Dakota sky is amazing. <a
eWriter/Dakota_Sky_2.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px;
border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="304" alt=""
Writer/Dakota_Sky_2_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a>
 Campus <a
Writer/Dakota_Sky_3_thumb.jpg" width="404"
border="0"></a> Mainstreet <a
Writer/Dakota_Sky_1_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> Highest Point
in Town
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TITLE: Dreams, Pausanias, and Archaeology
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DATE: 10/14/2008 08:22:36 AM

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Since <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/22092557">Frazer's translation
and commentary on Pausanias's Description of Greece</a>, scholars have
recognized the importance of this work for understanding Greek religion of the
Roman period. Pausanias's punctuated his travels around the Greece with
descriptions of temples and shrines, rituals, and stories of religious
experiences. In fact, Jas Elsner has argued that readers should understand
Pausanias's work as the description of a religious pilgrimage to sites of
importance to Greek culture and works to ignore (and subvert the visible
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features of Roman rule (J. Elsner, "Pausanias: A Greek Pilgrim in the Roman
World," Past and Present 135 (1992), 3-29.). Dreams feature
prominently in Pausanias's Description, and in a number of places he ties dreams
to archaeological activities. The best know example of this comes from
Book 4 where he describes the founding of the city of Messene. A dream
prompted the Argive general Epiteles who had fought beside the Thebans under
Epaminondas to liberate Messene from centuries of Spartans
domination, to excavated at a particular spot on Mt. Ithome: " wherever he
found yew and myrtle growing on Ithome, to dig between them and recover the old
woman, for, shut in her brazen chamber, she was overcome and well-nigh
fainting." (Paus. 4.26.7). These excavations revealed a brazen urn which
Epiteles took to the Theban general Epaminondas. In the urn was a piece of
rolled tin inscribed with the rites of the <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/123902099">Sacred Mysteries (of Andania)</a>
which would protect the Messenians from future danger. The great Messenan
general and hero Aristomenes had buried this "secret thing" on Mt. Ithome some
300 years previous while fighting a desperate war against the Spartans. An
oracle, predicting defeat, had prompted him to bury this "secret thing" because
if it was lost, the Messenians would likewise "be overwhelmed and lost forever"
(4.20.3-4). The discovery of this urn by Epaminondas and Epiteles prompted
the (re)founding of the city of Messene on the slopes of Ithome and, according
to Pausanias, inspired the mysteries conducted at Andania well into Roman times.
This episode of Dream Archaeology has fine parallels with latter examples of
this phenomenon (described <a
eams-inventio.html">here</a>, and <a
re-byzantine.html">here</a> on this blog). In fact, S. Alcock already
recognized the significance of this story and Book 4 in general, and treated
Pausanias's account of the Messenian past in some detail in her "The Peculiar
Book IV and the Problem of the Messenian Past" (in <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/43365871">S. E. Alcock, J. F. Cherry, and J.
Elsner, Pausanias: Travel and Memory in Roman Greece. (Oxford
2001)</a>). She noted that the dream had linked the recently liberated
Messenia to their pre-Spartan past, and this link was made tangible through the
physical act of excavation and commemorated through the Sacred Mysteries at
Andania. The dream archaeology recorded in Pausanias also ties the Messenians
to the soil of Mt. Ithome through the excavation of their "secret [and sacred]
thing". In this way, they share a kind of autochthonos character common to
other Greek groups throughout Pausanias' narrative (Elsner 1992, 16 esp. note
49). Moreover, as Frazier noted, buried talismans like the "secret thing" often
served to protect cities or even regions against outside threats thus linking
the safety and ultimately the integrity of a community with a kind of
archaeological artifact hidden and buried beneath the surface (Frazier 1898
[1913], 4.433-434) Thus Dream Archaeology in the case of Messenia tied the
reborn Messene with its past prior to Spartan domination and reinforce the link
between the community, the soil, and the sacred protection provided by the
"secret thing". The act of dreaming transformed excavation into a sacred
act that re-established continuity in an interrupted history.
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DATE: 10/13/2008 08:42:06 AM

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<a href="http://home.messiah.edu/~dpettegrew/">David Pettegrew</a> pointed me
in the direction of K. Slane's "The End of the Sanctuary of Demeter and Kore on
Acrocorinth," Hesperia 77 (2008), 465-496. The main goal of this
article was to clarify certain issues with the ceramic chronology at the
sanctuary of Demeter and Kore on the slopes of Acrocorinth which had been well
published by Slane, N. Bookidis, R. Stroud, and C.K. Williams over a series of
Corinth volumes. In this particular article, Slane sought to reiterate her
late 4th century dating of this sanctuary's abandonment despite some recent
evidence that lamps similar to those found at the sanctuary could date as late
as the 5th century. Holding ground on the earlier date for this pottery
clearly resists the most recent trends in the study of Late Roman ceramics which
tends to push pottery later in time. The end of this cult represents one
of a number of episodes in the neighborhood of Corinth that roughly marked the
end of a kind of monumental paganism characteristic of formal sanctuaries and
perhaps their economic, religious, and political institutions. The site
seems to have suffered a violent destruction perhaps at the hands of Christians
or during one of the late 4th century earthquakes. The end of ancient
"monumental" paganism has, of course, represented a major moment in how we
understand the emergence of Christian culture in Greece; for the Corinthia
specifically attention to this phenomenon has featured in several dissertations,
books, and a gaggle of articles over the past several decades. Slane's
article also sheds light on this site after its destruction and abandonment
as a sanctuary. The earlier date of the ceramic material from the
site maintains the gap between the site's abandonment as a sanctuary and its
reuse as a cemetery and as a quarry for building material. The ceramics
present on the site date to the final part of the 5th century and into the 6th,
and the lamps, in particular, are associated with the burials. Slane
contends that since only one lamp has a Christian symbol on it, it is unlikely
that this cemetery represented a conspicuous Christian effort to "deny" the
site's former sanctity (p. 492). The burials on site, however, only
represent one aspect of the sanctuary post-abandonment history. There were
also a definite quantity of 6th century ceramics associated with the site --
including coins of Arcadius, a 6th century African Red Slip plate, a Late Roman
C ware saucer, 6th century amphoras, and cooking pots. While this material
may be associated with the rituals that took place at tombs in Late Antiquity,
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it may also represent the everyday life of the individuals who worked to strip
the site of building material and transport them elsewhere in the city. <a
urion-and-aba.html">As similar finds at Late Antique Kourion have shown</a>, the
work of robbing a site of building material could have involved a rather
substantial crew and extended over a significant period of time (weeks?
months?). The provisioning for the crew might well involve cooking pots
and transport amphora, and the occasional fineware serving dish would be a
possible feature of this assemblage as well especially when these types of
objects are found well away from the area of later burials. The
point of Slane's article was not to clarify the later function of the site,
although establishing a definite gap between the end of cult activity at the
site and later burials and activity there certainly contributes to how we
understand the site's later phases. Nevertheless, the recent attention to
the chronology of later material has continued to cast more and more light both
on "abandonment" as a complex process and the dynamic history of site's across
the entire landscape.
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DATE: 10/10/2008 09:24:23 AM

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Some pretty interesting reading across the blogosphere this week: <ul>
<li><a href="http://tenured-radical.blogspot.com/">Tenured Radical</a> has <a
href="http://tenured-radical.blogspot.com/2008/10/radical-goes-to-genteel-
academic.html">a nice post describing why she blogs</a>. It was written
for the meeting of the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians. Her post
includes links to two other bloggers who contributed a panel at the conference:
<a href="http://cliobluestockingtales.blogspot.com/">Clio Buestocking Tales</a>
(who describes why she <a
href="http://cliobluestockingtales.blogspot.com/2008/10/little-berks-women-and-
blogging.html#links">blogs here</a>) and <a
href="http://hmprescott.wordpress.com/">Knitting Clio</a> (who provides an
outline for her <a href="http://hmprescott.wordpress.com/2008/10/03/outline-for-
little-berks-talk/">talk here</a>). I particularly appreciate Tenured
Radical's comments on the importance of blogging to her writing. I too
have found that blogging has improved my ability to write efficiently and to
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compose ideas. Like TR, my blog has also led to relationships with colleagues
across the entire range of my discipline. In many ways, my blog has helped
me understand my discipline better as it has exposed me to a group of scholars
that I had not met over the regular course of meetings, conferences, and
events.</li> <li><a href="http://landscape.blogspot.com/">Unimaginable
inscape</a> has simply blown my mind. Landscapes and Digital
Humanities. Amazing.</li> <li>People have noticed that my blog roll has
become neglected (although most of the links still work!). If you want to
see what I am reading, check out <a
href="http://delicious.com/WilliamCaraher">my del.icio.us page for a full list
of my readings</a>. At last count, I have over 80 archaeology blogs. This
makes me think that I might need to update me Blogging Archaeology/Archaeology
of Blogging article...</li></ul> Have a good weekend. 
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AUTHOR: Clio Bluestocking
EMAIL: cliobluestocking@yahoo.com
IP: 160.253.0.8
URL: http://www.cliobluestockingtales.blogspot.com
DATE: 10/10/2008 01:55:14 PM
Hey! Thank you for linking! Now I've found another interesting blog. This is
what the form does.
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TITLE: Teaching Thursday: Red pens, Reading, and Assessment
STATUS: Publish
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CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 10/09/2008 08:17:51 AM

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Grading papers always provides a good opportunity to think through the
process of writing, reading, and assessing student work. Over the last few
weeks, I've graded a stack of undergraduate papers from both a mid-level course
for history majors and an introductory-level, survey course. As I worked
my way through the stack my mind kept returning to a few points (and, yes, one
of those points was "how many papers are left in this stack.). 1.
When did people stop grading with red pens? I am always excited to rip
into my box of new pens, pull out the strangely colored ones, and set them aside
for grading. (I can't imagine taking notes at a faculty meeting in a
purple pen...). I never grade in red any more. I think somewhere,
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perhaps in graduate school, someone convinced me that it was traumatic to grade

a student with a red pen. Red stood for blood, fear, anger, and possibly
communism. So I dutifully stopped grading in red and have brought on board every
other color in the rainbow. 2. Writing and Reading. Reading student
papers, even the good ones, frequently gets me wondering about what my students
read (outside of my class, of course!). Some of the characteristics of
student writing (in a general sense) like the short paragraphs and the tendency
to rely heavily on direct quotation suggests the strong influence of
journalism. The long, tenuously organized sentences that appear in so many
student papers must reflect some other major influence on their writing.
Perhaps the wandering, grammatically ambiguous sentence does not have roots in a
written context at all, but reflects the influence of everyday speech patterns
on writing. The spoken word might even account for the tendency to write
almost exclusively in passive voice. Certainly passive voice is used by us
far more frequently in speech than in writing. 3. Assessment. Like the
hula-hoop, Cabbage-Patch Kids, and the so-called "iPod", the
assessment craze is sweeping our country. It seems to me that the goal of
assessment is to ascertain more clearly what makes a good teacher or a good
course effective. To do this, it is necessary to break down the course
into small parts -- grading, lecturing, leading discussion, witty banter,
collegiality -- and subject as many of these facets of the classroom experience
to assessment as possible. In most cases, the instructor conducts the
assessment using some kind of common template. Since it is necessary to
aggregate most assessment results for their presentation to assessment
committees or panels, most assessment techniques have a quantitative
component. As someone who feels fairly comfortable dealing with
numbers, samples, and quantitative data, it is almost fun to break down the
process of grading, for example, into assessable steps. At present our
assessment techniques focus heavily on student learning as a barometer for
faculty effectiveness. Consequently, there is less emphasis on what a
faculty member does in the classroom and more on whether the student improves
over the course of the semester or the degree program. Each students
performance on their papers, for example, gets broken down into certain
assessable categories (do they have a clear thesis, do they use evidence
successfully, do they advance a coherent argument, and is their paper structured
rationally). Invariably these categories coincide with the key categories
of the more traditional mode of assessment (i.e. grading). I record both
the assessment data and the grades to determine exactly how closely our
assessment rubric and the student's grade coincide both now at the mid-term
point of the semester and at the final papers. Improvement in grades
should correlate closely with improvements in the assessable skills, but writing
style (and, of course, grading pen color) fall to the more blurry margins of our
assessment criteria and could produce some deviation between student grade and
assessable performance.
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TITLE: More Byzantine Dreams...
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BASENAME: more-byzantine
CATEGORY: Byzantium
DATE: 10/08/2008 08:26:12 AM

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I've been working on a paper entitled, "Dream Archaeology", that I will
deliver at North Dakota State University in November. Over the past few
weeks, I've plowed my way through S. M. Oberhelman's 1981 dissertation at the
University of Minnesota: <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/10414879">The
oneirocritic literature of the late Roman and Byzantine eras of Greece :
manuscript studies, translations and commentaries to the dream-books of Greece
during the first millennium A.D., with Greek and English catalogues of the
dream-symbols and with a discussion of Greek oneiromancyfrom Homer to Manuel the
Palaeologian</a>. This dissertation includes translations and
commentaries of the seven preserved dream-books of the Late Roman and Byzantine
period. My research focuses on excavations that were prompted by
dreams. In particular, I am looking at the phenomenon of inventio, or the
discover of lost religious objects through a dream. By Late Antiquity,
this kind of dream is generally considered to be a horama or
vision. The kinds of dream that featured in the dream-books studied by
Obherlman is called simply an oneiros. To understand an oneiros,
the dreamer needs some kind of aid, either an interpreter or a dream-book, which
sets out the metaphorical meaning of the images in a dream. The most
significant work of the interpretation of oneiroi in the ancient world is
Artemidoros' Oneirokritika. This tradition of dream interpretation
comes later to influence, at least in part, Freudian methods of dream
interpretation. Horama or visions, however, have received less attention,
in part because they are relatively straightforward to understand. In
general, a religious figure in a dream instructs the dreamer to dig in a certain
place in order to find a particular sacred relic, icon or even a lost
building. Such dream narratives appear occasionally in Late Roman and
Byzantine hagiography, but have roots in the Roman tradition (see, for example,
Pausanias 8.37.3). What is particularly interesting is that the analysis
of oneiroi presented in the Late Roman and Byzantine dream-books do not seem to
overlap at all with the kinds of inventio dreams found in other
sources. In fact, when church buildings, for example, appear in dream-books they
are often interpreted as a play on words. For example, in the dream book
of Astrampsychos, Nikephoros, and Germanos, they offer this punning
interpretation: dreams of standing in a church, results in an accusation (the
Greek word for church (ekklesia) and accusation (enklesis) are similar).
Dreams of icons or the appearance of saints are interpreted (rather simply to my
mind) as signs of good fortune or joyous times. While it is redundant to
observe that different kinds of dreams are understood in different ways in the
Late Roman and Byzantine worlds, it is interesting to note that most scholarly
work has emphasized the oneiroi. Orama, particularly those that tie the
conscious, waking world to buried fragments of their past, have received less
attention (but not none at all see for example the work of C. Stewart) but may
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offer insight into the place of history at the intersection of the conscious ad
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TITLE: Being a Tourist in the Eastern Mediterranean
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CATEGORY: Travel
DATE: 10/07/2008 08:24:09 AM

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I just finished reading Philip Duke's short book, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/144773102">The Tourists Gaze, the Cretans
Glance: Archaeology and Tourism on a Greek Island. (Walnut Creek, CA
2007)</a>. Aside from the cool title, the book provides a succinct
overview of the relationship between archaeology on Crete and tourism with a
main emphasis on Bronze Age, Minoan sites. <a
href="http://traumwerk.stanford.edu/archaeolog/2008/08/a_response_to_philip_duke
s_the.html#more">There is a nice review of the book</a> over at <a
href="http://traumwerk.stanford.edu/archaeolog/">Archaeolog</a>. What
interested me the most was Duke's effort to problematize the relationship
between archaeologists, the tourist industry (ranging from efforts of the Greek
state to present archaeological sites to small, local businesses), and the
foreign tourist. The boundaries between these groups, of course, are
fairly artificial: even Duke in his role of tourist ethnographer become in some
contexts a tourist himself. This same feeling comes to anyone who spends
part of every year in a foreign country working as an archaeologist; the feeling
of shifting from coddled tourist to specialist interlocutor occurs quite
regularly as one passes from one environment to the next. The complex
interplay between being a tourist and an archaeologist is particularly
pronounced when leading undergraduate and even graduate students around Greece
and Cyprus in the summer months. For example, as a group, we've been
flummoxed when an archaeological site is poorly marked, lacking on-site (or even
published!) documentation, overgrown, or simply confusing. In some cases,
of course, the challenge of working out the relationships between the
evidence preserved on-site is invigorating and rewarding. In many more
cases, however, it is just confounding as the myriad of complex site-formation
processes conspire to obscure the process of excavation, the relationships
between the visible remains and features, and the overall significance of the
site itself. At these moments, there is a natural desire to be led through
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a site and a willingness to accept the hegemonic presentation provided by signs,

labels, paths, and pamphlets (whether produced by an archaeologist or a member
of the tourist industry or whomever). In other cases, especially
at popular destinations which tend to be thoroughly presented, the presentation
itself becomes the basis for a critique. Even a beginning archaeology
student can often see through overly nationalistic or tremendously simplified
presentations of sites. In fact, at some sites in Greece and Cyprus, I've come
to anticipate the relatively simple presentations and use them as the basis for
discussion the visible archaeology in much the same way that thoughtful tourists
would respond to Evans' reconstruction of the Minoan palaces at Knossos.
 Finally, putting together itineraries for students forces one to
consider explicitly the basic tourist infrastructure that contextualizes site
visits. For example, a stretch of lovely (if touristy) taverna restaurants
will often make a site a more appealing destination. The requirements for
a tour bus or even good access by road conditions the narrative of site visits
even for even a group of experienced archaeologist. In fact, the
accessibility of a site regularly features in the larger archaeological
narrative. Sites that are more difficult to access or presented in
confusing ways encourages a sense of remoteness, exoticism, and intellectual
privilege derived largely from the contrast to the well-marked sites visited by
the "average tourist". So, even the most intellectual visitor, tourist, or
archaeologist often draws upon expectations promoted by the "hegemonic"
narrative produced by the tourist industry in all its manifestations. Of
course, the hybrid state of the typical archaeologist/tourist is precisely the
position that allowed Duke to critique the "tourists' gaze" so well. The
real charm of his slim volume is that it seems like a nice addition to the
reading list for our own study tour/field school next summer. 
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TITLE: Metadata Monday
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DATE: 10/06/2008 08:03:26 AM

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I haven't had a "Metadata Monday" feature for some time. Since I made
my 300th post this past week and had my 30,000th page view the week before, I
thought it was a good time to look over the various statistical indicators
associated with my blog. First, I average just under 60 page views a day
(58.45 as of this morning!), and, as this chart shows, this figures seems to
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have leveled off over the last few months with just a slight upward trend.
eWriter/PageViewChart.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px;
border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="263" alt="PageViewChart"
Writer/PageViewChart_thumb.jpg" width="400" border="0"></a> Since last November, when I began to use Google
Analytics, I've averaged just over 1.5 page views per visitor. The average time
on site is just over a minute-twenty (which hardly seems like enough!). My
bounce rate remains a respectable 73.99%. The visitors hail from 118
countries with the U.S., Greece, the U.K., Canada, Italy, Australia, Cyprus,
Germany, France, and Denmark being the best represented. The top-ten
states: Pennsylvania, California, Minnesota, New York, North Dakota, Ohio,
Florida, Illinois, Texas, and New Jersey. <a
eWriter/HitMap10_2008.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px;
border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="248" alt="HitMap10_2008"
Writer/HitMap10_2008_thumb.jpg" width="400" border="0"></a> It is
interesting to me to consider who reads my blog by looking at the major
referring sites. The top five referring domains (excluding large sites
like Google Images) are: <a href="http://www.pkap.org">www.pkap.org</a>, <a
href="http://www.archaeology.org">www.archaeology.org</a>, <a
href="http://www.und.edu">www.und.edu</a>, <a
href="http://www.hnn.us">hnn.us</a>, <a
href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr">www.ascsa.edu.gr</a> The top bunch
of referring blogs includes: <a href="http://www.iconoclasm.dk/">Iconoclasm</a>,
<a href="http://grandforkslife.blogspot.com/">Grand Forks Life</a>, <a
href="http://www.atrium-media.com/rogueclassicism/">Rogue Classicism</a>, <a
href="http://electricarchaeologist.wordpress.com/">Electric Archaeology</a>, <a
href="http://archaeoastronomy.wordpress.com/">Archaeoastronomy</a>, <a
href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/">Buildings, Objects, Situations</a>, <a
ical Archaeology in the Ancient Mediterranean</a>. It is great to see the
readers of so many good blogs taking the time to click over to my modest
offerings. It is particularly heartening to see hits from Grand Forks
Life, a blog focused on local affairs here in Grand Forks, North Dakota. Part of
the goal of this blog was to engage the local community in my research and
interests and the traffic from this domain name suggests some success in this
area! For <a href="http://www.thefee.net/">Sam Fee</a>, here is my
browser data: Internet Explorer (45.35%), Firefox (42.29%), Safari (7.64%),
Opera (3.07%), Mozilla (0.71%). I've contrasted this with the metadata gathered
from some more public web pages that my wife maintains (like <a
title="http://www.und.edu/dept/grad/"
href="http://www.und.edu/dept/grad/">http://www.und.edu/dept/grad/</a>).
Hit on her site are dominated by Internet Explorer. It may be that my more
academic audience prefers Firefox. Thanks for reading my blog!
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BASENAME: friday-varia-an
DATE: 10/03/2008 09:27:29 AM

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Just some quick hits and varia on a sunny Friday morning. <ul>
<li>Technorati posted their 5th <a
href="http://www.technorati.com/blogging/state-of-the-blogosphere/">"state-of-
the-blogosphere" report</a>. Interesting reading. I am clearly part
of a dominant demographic!</li> <li>I wonder what <a
href="http://horothesia.blogspot.com/2008/09/reuters-endnote-sues-george-mason-
over.html">this</a> <a href="http://horothesia.blogspot.com/2008/09/more-on-
zotero-lawsuit.html">all means</a> for <a
href="http://www.zotero.org/">Zotero</a>. Like many academics, I am completely
dependent on Zotero for my day-to-day research. Good luck to the Zotero
folks at George Mason's Center for History and the New Media!</li> <li><a
href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/index.php/news/newsDetails/corinth-launched-on-
jstor/">Corinth Volumes on J-Stor is great news</a>. Unfortunately the
University of North Dakota does not subscribe to the <a
href="http://www.jstor.org/action/showJournals?browseType=collectionInfoPage&amp
;selectCollection=ascomp">Arts and Sciences Complement</a>. This is a nice
reminder that we should not confuse being on J-stor with universal or open
access. It's a good start though.</li> <li><a
href="http://somenotesfromthestreet.blogspot.com/">Another curious and smart
blog from a high-tech friend</a>.</li> <li>This is <a
href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mpvuz8gg79Q">fun and reminds us that India-
Australia</a> starts next week.</li></ul> Have a good weekend. Go
Phillies!!
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TITLE: Teaching Thursday: The Structure of Seminar
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STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: teaching-thursd
CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 10/02/2008 08:06:25 AM

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This semester I teach the graduate historiography seminar in our Department's
M.A. program. The class is a challenge in several ways. First, it's
a large seminar with over 20 students in it. The students come from a wide
range of backgrounds and levels of preparation -- some are "home grown" talent
from our B.A. program, but most of them come from other programs across the
country. The students' interests, as is typical for this kind of class,
range from 20th century American history to the history of the Roman
empire. Finally, their tolerance for abstraction, theorizing, and
philosophizing varies as well. Some of the students are clearly prepared
to wade into significant theoretical debates; other students prefer the
relatively comfort of concrete forms and narrative. The class meets for 3
hours on Thursday afternoon. For the past five weeks, I've tried to allow
the class to find its own intellectual and social equilibrium by reserving the
first half of class to open discussion about the readings for the week. I
begin the class with an intentionally open-ended questions: "So, what's the deal
with E.P. Thompson? Why is he significant?" So, far these open ended
questions have tended to generate the kind of wide ranging discussions that one
would expect from a class with such a diverse group of students. 
My open-ended approach, however, has had some unintended (although not
unexpected) side effects. First, the class has been dominated by a handful
of the most vocal students who not only dominate the space of debate, but also,
since the first part of the class is essentially open ended, establish the
parameters of the discourse relatively quickly. This can be good, when
they quickly seize upon particularly significant elements of the book or points
of potentially fruitful discussion. On the other hand, this can be bad,
when they struggle to find productive avenues of inquiry or stifle (sometimes by
volume of words alone!) alternative approaches to the text. The
other challenge of this approach is that it puts pressure on me. For the first
half of class, I have to allow the students to work through the texts on their
own and resist the temptation to redirect discussion toward topics that resonate
more closely with my reading of the text. During the second half of class,
I try to redirect the discussion during the first half of class toward several
salient aspects of the work or toward the relationship between the particular
work to larger trends in contemporary historiography. I also ask the class
to relate the particular approach under discussion for the day to their own
research. The upside of this more open-ended approach is that I
have a chance to observe how students create their own social and political
space within the first half of the seminar. It helps me to get to know the
students better and understand how they (albeit as a group) engage sometimes
challenging works. The downside, of course, is that the social space of
the seminar is not necessarily "fair"; students with more confidence, more
competitive instincts, or more sophisticated perspectives on the works tend to
drown out students who are more reserved, less confident, or who struggled with
the text. Some part of the class ends up frustrated each week and
sometimes it is me when the seminar's discussion goes so strange direction or
946
produces unpredictable or unproductive results. But other weeks, it's an

education in itself as I get to sit back and watch engaged, passionate, and
prepared minds struggle through the intricacies of the text. More
Teaching Thursday: <a
Lecture</a> <a
Teaching</a> <a
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TITLE: Some New Publications from the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project
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DATE: 10/01/2008 08:10:56 AM

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Two new publications features data and analysis from the Pyla-Kousopetria
Archaeological Project. R. Scott Moore, "A Decade Later: The Chronotype
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System Revisited," in W. R. Caraher, R. S. Moore, L. J. Hall, <a

href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/191758469">Archaeology and History in Roman,
Medieval and Post-Medieval Greece</a>. (Aldershot 2008), 137-151 used PKAP
data to reconsider some key features of the much-discussed Chronotype system of
sampling and pottery identification. In brief, the chronotype system was
developed over the course of several intensive survey projects in Greece and
Cyprus. It stipulates that each fieldwalker collects one example of every
unique type of artifact in their swath or path through the unit. When this
pottery comes back to the lab, the ceramicist then batches the artifacts
according to their unique chronotype which is a combination of fabric type and
function. Thus, the chronotype system provides a comprehensive sample of
all unique types of artifacts present in a unit as well as some indicator of
their frequency across the surface of the unit (that is to say, if a unit
produces several objects of the same chronotype, this should indicate that
several walkers saw similar material in their swaths). While Moore's
article includes a nice review of recent publications on the chronotype system,
it also features some new analysis. Of particular significance, is Moore's
discussion of whether fieldwalkers were able to distinguish individual
chronotypes successfully in the field. Proponents of the chronotype systm
have long argued that walkers could quickly be trained to distinguish similarity
and different in the field and therefore were able to recognize unique types of
artifacts in the field as is required by the chronotype system. The
tendency for survey pottery to be relatively cleaner than excavated pottery
makes this process easier for the fieldwalker. Moreover, most walkers were
instructed to collect an artifact if they could not determine whether it was
unique or not. Moore's analysis of PKAP data, however, showed that walkers
did not seem regularly to collect duplicate chronotypes as is shown in the
strong correlation between overall artifact densities and the number of
chronotypes in the unit. Furthermore, he was able to argue that
fieldwalkers were less selective in units with a larger number of sherds.
That is to say that walkers collected a smaller percentage of the sherds from
units in which they counted a large number of artifacts. Of course, this
could simply reflect a lack of real diversity in the units from Pyla-
Koutsopetria with the greatest number of sherds. This, however, might
simply be a characteristic of the site itself, where the highest density units
tend to have almost overwhelming Late Roman component. Moore finds further
support for his observations when he compared the number of chronotypes present
in several total collection circles to the number of chronotypes found in the
same unit sampled with the chronotype system. In general, there was a much
stronger correlation between the number of chronotypes present and the number of
sherds in the total collection circles than in typical survey units. It may be
that this shows a slight tendency for walkers to under-collect, but it may also
simply reveal the difference between carefully scrutinizing the ground in a
total collection circle versus walking across a unit using standard survey
procedure. Moore's conclusions offer another significant body of
quantitative data for the effectiveness and limitations of the chronotype
sampling system. More significantly some of his conclusions differ from
those reached by another chronotype project -- the <a
Korinthia Archaeological Survey</a> -- where there is good evidence that
fieldwalkers over-collected certain chronotypes (an issue discussed by
Pettegrew, Hesperia 76 (2007), 743-784). Despite some variation
in quality of data that the chronotype system produces, it is nevertheless
produces a body of data that allows us to critique the sampling tendencies of
fieldwalkers in a critical way. More importantly, he demonstrated that
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PKAP fieldwalkers were "remarkably consistent in their artifact collection"

(147), which may not tell us much about the artifact types that they missed, but
will at least allow us to draw confident conclusions regarding the distribution
of artifact types across a unit and throughout the survey area more broadly.
The work of the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project is also features in
the recent double issue of Near Eastern Archaeology (W. R. Caraher, R.
S. Moore, D. K. Pettegew "Surveying Late Antique Cyprus" NEA 71 (2008),
82-89) This issue is devoted to American work in Cyprus and, in part,
celebrates the 30th Anniversary of the <a href="http://www.caari.org/">Cyprus
American Archaeological Research Institute</a> (CAARI) in Nicosia as well as the
important contributions of the late Danielle Parks. CAARI serves as an
import source of support for our work on Cyprus so it was particularly
gratifying to be represented among the impressive list of American field
projects active on the island since the founding of the Institute. It is
also exciting to note how many projects featured in this issue focus on "later"
periods. Alongside the PKAP contribution, M. Rautman's reviewed upon his
important work at the Late Roman village of Kalavassos-Kopetra and Cypriot
countryside in Late Antiquity, Annemarie Weyl Carr reflects on <a
href="http://www.doaks.org/">Dumbarton Oaks</a> efforts to preserve and document
the Byzantine History of the island, and Bethany Walker highlights the role of
CAARI in supporting work on Ottoman Cyprus. And, the entire issue is
filled with spectacular technicolor photographs! 
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TITLE: More Merrifield Memories
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DATE: 09/30/2008 07:52:51 AM

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Elwyn B. Robinson carried out much of his life work in Merrifield Hall.
In fact, if the Department of History has to move, one of the greatest
disappointments will be the separation from the space consecrated by the work of
our predecessors in the Department. Robinson's first memories are worth
quoting: <blockquote> "While we were getting settled in our apartment, we
were also exploring the campus of the university. The lawns, large trees,
and shrubbery were attractive in the late summer, and with no classes there were
few people about. We gradually came to identify the buildings. My office
949
was in the basement of Merrifield Hall, the newest and largest building on the
campus. It had been completed in about 1928 [actually it was completed in
1929 ed.] and housed the College of Science, Literature and Arts, headed by Dean
William Bek, a professor of German. Just to the south of Merrifield Hall
was Old Main, the first building of the university. In it were the
administrative offices - the business office, the president, the registrar, the
extension division, buildings and grounds, and the stenographic
bureau."</blockquote> The rooms Robinson and Libby used in Merrifield are
more or less the same as we use today: "The American history classes then met in
Rooms 217 and 215 of Merrifield Hall. Room 217 had 66 seats and Room 215
had 40. Libby's classes all met in room 215." Robinson experienced
sometimes prolonged periods of ill health and the proximity (or as our
administrators on campus here say "adjacency") of classes to the Department's
offices benefited him greatly: <blockquote> "I missed teaching all of
January, the rest of semester, but went back with the start of the second
semester in February. I was still very weak, and since my office was in
the basement and my classes on the second floor of Merrifield Hall, arrangements
were made so that I did not go back to the basement after my first class.
Dr. Libby had two rooms for his office, side by side at Merrifield #221 and
#223, with a door connecting them... It had Dr. Libby's desk, a worktable, and a
lot of bookcases. The other room, #223, had bookshelves to the ceiling and
a worktable. Its door to the hallway was not used. From the books on
the shelves, I believed it was a workroom connected with Dr. Libby's editorship
of the North Dakota Historical Quarterly. That publication of the
State Historical Society was suspended for lack of funds in the Thirties, so the
room was not much used. A folding army cot was set up there, and I would
lie down and rest between classes." </blockquote> In fact, the adjacency
of the offices of History and those of Sociology, particularly the office of
John Gillette, reinforced the strong ties between those two department.
Libby and Gillette served on a number of dissertation committees together and
produced some of the most successful early Ph.D.s from the University. The
most famous of these, George R. Davies, completed <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/6931980">the first Ph.D. from the
University</a>, albeit in 1914 -- over a decade before Merrifield Hall was
built. <a
eWriter/RobinsonMerrifield.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px;
border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="299" alt="RobinsonMerrifield"
Writer/RobinsonMerrifield_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> Stephen
Robinson in the window of Merrifield Hall where the Department of History is
located on the campus of UND. Photo by Elwyn Robinson
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TITLE: Moving from Merrifield Hall?
950
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DATE: 09/29/2008 08:27:37 AM

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On Friday the Department of History received the alarming news that we might
be moving from Merrifield Hall. The Department of History has been in
Merrifield Hall since its opening in 1929 -- one year shy of 80 years -- so this
move will certainly mark a significant break with the past. While it
remains difficult to determine whether this plan will actually come to fruition
and whether it will be a positive or a negative thing for the Department of
History, it does provide a chance to reflect on the history of Merrifield
Hall. Merrifield Hall was the last campus building constructed before the
Great Depression. It was the last building completed in the great building
boom at the University in the 1920s which included the Armory, the Stadium, and
the Chemistry Building. These buildings shared the red-brick style of
earlier campus buildings and made the College Gothic style, detected in Budge
Hall (1899) and Woodworth Hall, more prominent. <a
eWriter/MerrifieldTower.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px;
border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="259" alt="MerrifieldTower"
Writer/MerrifieldTower_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> Photo: UND
University Relations The name of the building, Merrifield Hall, was
transferred from Old Merrifield Hall. This building, constructed in the
first years of the University, was the original "Old Main" before being renamed
Merrifield Hall by President McVey in 1912 to honor former UND President and
Classicist Webster Merrifield. By 1924, Old Merrifield Hall had begun to
fall down owing to its poorly constructed foundations (a common occurrence in
the soft soils of the Red River Valley). After a few years of lobbying,
the legislature approved $225,000 in 1927. This amount, however, was
not sufficient to construct the entire building according to the plans drawn up
by renowned architect <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/dept/library/Collections/og744.html">Joseph Bell
DeRemer</a> and the estimated price of $350,000 provided by the
contractors. They began to build, nevertheless, and the final $161,000
necessary for the building's completion was appropriated by the legislature in
1929. (L. Geiger, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1107281">University of the Northern
Plains</a>. (Grand Forks 1958), 340). The completed building brought
together the College Gothic style with the emerging art deco touches which would
come to mark DeRemer's later work (e.g. the North Dakota State Capitol (1932)
and the United Lutheran Church in Grand Forks). <a
eWriter/MerrifieldStairs.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px;
border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="404" alt="Merrifield Hall
staircase"
Writer/MerrifieldStairs_thumb.jpg" width="319" border="0"></a> Photo:
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UND University Relations Geiger credits Vernon Squires, the

Professor of English and Dean of the College of Liberal Arts from 1914-1930, as
the driving force behind the construction of Merrifield Hall (346). By all
accounts Squires was a difficult individual, but he most concur that he was "one
of the University's strongest exponents of old-fashioned standards of public
decorum and moral integrity and one of its most vigorous guardians of academic
standards in the classroom for both faculty and students." (346). In some
ways, Merrifield Hall became Squires "memorial on campus" and stood to remind
future generations of traditional core values of the institution, alongside his
invaluable efforts to narrate and preserve the early history of the University
(V. P. Squires, ‚ÄúEarly Days at the University,‚Äù The Quarterly
Journal of the University of North Dakota 18.1 (1927), 4-15; --, ‚ÄúThe
University of North Dakota, 1885-1887,‚Äù The Quarterly Journal of the
University of North Dakota 18.2 (1928), 105-118; --, ‚ÄúPresident
Sprague‚Äôs Administration, 1887-1891,‚Äù The Quarterly Journal of the
University of North Dakota 18.3 (1928), 201-230; --, ‚ÄúThe First
Quadrennium Under President Merrifield,‚Äù The Quarterly Journal of the
University of North Dakota 18.4 (1928), 313-344;), . 
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DATE: 09/26/2008 07:41:51 AM

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A little grab bag of odds and ends. <ul> <li>Almost a year ago I
discussed the corpse that was found on UND's campus buried in a drainage ditch
near the President's house. I discussed the possible explanations for the
interred body (<a
ansitional-sp.html">"Transitional Spaces" in the landscapes of the Mediterranean
and North Dakota</a>). This past week, the <a
News/Case-Closed.On.Human.Remains-3449530.shtml">Dakota Student reported</a>
that the body was not an unfortunate vagrant but rather a medical cadaver.</li>
<li><a href="http://www.janchipchase.com/">Future Perfect</a> is a cool (in the
<a href="http://www.williamgibsonbooks.com/">William Gibson</a> meaning of the
word) technology blog written by a researchers at Nokia Design.</li> <li>Some
excellent photos of <a href="http://pioneerwomen.blogspot.com/">Pioneer
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Women</a> (which is an altogether different kind of cool).</li></ul>

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TITLE: Teaching Thursday: The Changing Meaning of the Large Lecture
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CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 09/25/2008 08:50:36 AM

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For the first time since I've been at the University of North Dakota, I have
decided to devote the majority of my classroom time in History 101: Western
Civilization class to prepared lectures. The class is large 80-150
students, is in an auditorium style room with theater seating, and runs from 7-
9:20 pm at night. The course does not have discussion sections or
recitations, but I do have a teaching assistant for grading. The majority
of students (albeit just) are freshmen. In the past I have used a variety
of in-class discussions, group work, and in-class writing to break out of the
"sage on the stage" mode of instruction. This year, however, I have
transitioned the class to a simplified lecture format that emphasizes the
delivery of content and demonstrations of the historical method. As for
writing, group work, and opportunities for collective learning, I have moved
that almost entirely to the class's Blackboard page where my TA and I run weekly
discussion groups geared toward more careful reading of the primary sources and
a class wiki designed to produce weekly class notes. Moving away from the
unpredictable routine of in-class discussions and the chaotic logistics of group
work has opened up time in class to talk in more detail about writing, to
respond more fully to questions students might have about the course
material. I make every effort to keep my lectures open to interruptions
and digressions driven by student questions and comments. The class that I
have this semester has shown a remarkable willingness to interrupt my
presentations to ask for clarifications and (more promisingly) to ask that I
expand on a particular point or idea. The willingness of students
in a large class to interrupt my relatively well-crafted lectures was unexpected
and very much welcomed. It made me think whether my previous efforts at
perhaps overly contrived in-class discussions (, "Socratic" interludes, and
sometimes painfully awkward "group work" actually served to mark off the lecture
as a particular moment when the instructor is delivering information and
therefore specifically not an opportunity for interactivity. With my more
purely lecture style this semester, however, the boundaries between "lecture"
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and "discussion" time are not defined by neatly arranged shifts in my pedagogy,
but rather student interest in a particular topic and their willingness to
engage me (and my willingness to be interrupted!). This is to say, since
we don't have much discussion qua discussion in class, they do not realize that
lectures could represent the opposite of discussion. This all suggests
that the traditional lecture, even in a large classroom, during a long, night
class, may, in fact, be a thing of past. Students today simply do not have the
experience of sitting passively listening to a "sage on the stage". They
expect their classes to be interactive (and rightly so). Lectures only
become passive experiences when we introduce moments of "active learning" to the
classroom through such tactics as in-class discussions and group work.
Unless otherwise informed, students expect all learning to be active. For
more Teaching Thursdays see: <a
Teaching</a> <a
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Dallas
IP: 128.146.27.171
URL:
DATE: 09/26/2008 01:10:48 PM
Hi Bill,!
!
I found this post pretty interesting. I've dealt with the same problems you
outline here (most have)--overly contrived "active" learning vs. the sage
lecturer--with the same results. I'll be teaching a solo 111 next quarter, and
I've been thinking of ways to format it that use discussion, lecture, group work
and an online component. I have to admit, though, I hadn't considered the format
here--or its effects. I think I may try it. Let me know how the online primary
source discussion goes (I've done this a lot for Tim's classes--bit of a mixed
bag) and how it all pans out as the semester goes along.
954
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TITLE: Orin G. Libby and Elwyn Robinson
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BASENAME: orin-g-libby-an
DATE: 09/24/2008 07:43:32 AM

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I have been editing chapter six of <a
nsons_autobiography/index.html">Elwyn Robinon's autobiography</a>. This
chapter describes his arrival in Grand Forks and first years at the University
of North Dakota. Robinson works hard to bring to life many of the important
figures in the history of the University and the Department of History.
None of these figures is more important than <a
href="http://www.library.und.edu/Collections/og49.html">Orin G. Libby</a>, the
first professional historian at the University. While the tendency has
been to eulogized Libby as the unwavering and clear-eyes proponent of all things
right, Robinson provides a more balanced picture on Libby's scholarship,
teaching, and character. Robinson, of course, brought to fruiting Libby's
work on the history of the state. Robinson traced some awareness of this
back to his first days in Grand Forks: <blockquote> "On the first Sunday
we were in Grand Forks, Dr. and Mrs. Libby had us for dinner at their home on
South 6th Street... Soon after joining the faculty of the University of North
Dakota in 1902 (at age 38), [Libby] revived the defunct State Historical Society
and served as its secretary and editor until October 1944, shortly before
retirement. His work with the Society was an invaluable contribution to
the people of North Dakota and made him a widely known and respected person in
the state. He was a person of very considerable force of character, a
strong personality. That day Mrs. Libby told us that he was going to write
a history of North Dakota."</blockquote> He saw in Libby's sometimes
stern demeanor an underlying kindness: <blockquote> "Dr. Libby, of
course, played a very important role in my life during my early years at the
university. During the school year I saw him almost daily except for the
weekends. By the end of the 1938-39 school year, Dr. Libby was seventy-five and
still energetic and vigorous, a strong and alert, white-haired individual.
A courteous, kindly man, he tended to be formal and not given to any personal
confidences. He addressed his close personal friends with their titles,
thus the head of the sociology department whose office had been across the hall
from Libby's for years was not "John" but "Dr. Gillette." I believe he
called me "Mr." or "Dr." and Felix the other young member of his department the
same way. He was not in the least given to gossip. And he was a
stern, forbidding figure to his students. In later years, a returning
alumnae would tell me that she had been afraid of him"</blockquote>
Robinson's respect for Libby and his standing in the community and university
did not, however, extend to his teaching: <blockquote>
 Dr. Libby wanted Felix [Vondracek] and me to use a
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question-and-answer method in our survey sections. He believed that if the

students had to recite, they would study the text more diligently. Perhaps
he was right, but it made for dull, uninteresting classes.
 The text in the survey, Dr. Libby's choice, was a thick
book by <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/37267705">John Spencer Basset,
 A Short History of the United States</a>. Bassett, a North
Carolinian who had a teaching career at Smith College, had been a distinguished
scholar. He had died in 1928, age 61, after writing a fine biography of
Andrew Jackson and a volume in the American Nation series and editing many
important historical documents for publication. I believe his Short
History, originally published about 1913 [actually in 1921 ed.], was for a time
the leading college text for American survey course, but in 1935 was hopelessly
out of date even though chapters had been added on the history of the years
since its original publication.... There was more wrong with the survey
as it was taught at the University of North Dakota than an out-dated text and a
recitation method more suited to high school. There was no reserve reading
program to introduce the students to a variety of source and secondary
materials. At [Western] Reserve [University] in the survey, students were
assigned excerpts in <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/964273">American
History As Told by Contemporaries</a> edited by Albert Bushnell Hart, a
star of the Harvard history faculty, in <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1475463">American History as Seen by British
Travelers</a>, edited by the famous Allan Nevins, and in a large volume of
secondary accounts of economic developments edited by Felix Fl√ºgel and Harold
U. Faulkner, the well-known economic historian [<a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/993105">Readings in the economic and
social history of the United States</a> - ed.]. These
were great materials, but they were ignored at the University of North
Dakota. Moreover, no effort was being made to introduce the students to a
rich body of historical biographies and the writings on particular
subject. It was a sad state of affairs."</blockquote> Such
balanced and perspective views are typical of Robinson's autobiography (and many
would say his scholarship). 
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TITLE: The Butrint Baptistery Mosaics
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DATE: 09/23/2008 08:24:44 AM

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<a
eWriter/ButrintCover.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px;
margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="164"
alt="ButrintCover"
Writer/ButrintCover_thumb.jpg" width="119" align="right" border="0"></a> This
weekend I enjoyed John Mitchell's new book, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/185032796">The Butrint Baptistery
Mosaics</a>, published this year by the <a
href="http://www.butrint.org/index.php">Butrint Foundation</a>. The
circular baptistery at Butrint is among the most important Early Christian
buildings in the Balkans and a fairly well-preserved example of the art of
mosaic decoration on the Adriatic coast. (A nice line drawing of the <a
href="http://www.butrint.org/explore_9_0.php">mosaic is here</a>). The book
brings out several particularly interesting aspects of the baptistery mosaics
and their architectural context. First, The two central scenes in the
mosaic, peacocks surrounding a kantharos sprouting vines and two stages at a
fountain, are clearly tied to Christian iconography of eternal life. Peacocks
symbolized eternal life as their flesh was thought not to decompose and the
stags evoked the first verse of the Psalm 41 (33-37) in which stags and water
were combined lending the text baptismal significance. Aside from these
two panels, however, there was very little on this floor that lent itself
immediately to exegetical interpretation. The rest of this round
building's floor is covered with linked medallions filled with birds, sea
creatures, and domestic and exotic animals. Mitchell reads these critters
as representing "A New Creating and an Earthly Paradise" (41). This,
indeed, seems plausible. It is worth noting, however, that some of the
panels appear to represent rural pursuits like the hunt. Three consecutive
roundels show a hunting dog, a stage, and a net. Throughout Classical
Antiquity, the hunt was identified with aristocratic pursuits. Moreover,
the juxtaposition of exotic animals like lions and leopards with more mundane
animals like dogs and donkeys could link the life of the countryside where more
typical domesticated animals were common with the life of the city with its
exotic animals representing shows in the arena. Animal combat scenes and
staged hunts, frequently involving exotic animals, would have been a familiar
aspect of the more cosmopolitan centers of the empire into the 6th
century. The otium of aristocratic life in the countryside is a
well-developed theme in Late Antiquity and would have complemented allusions to
animal games in the urban center likely sponsored by the elite. Thus,
paradise, in part, is framed by themes tinged with aristocratic values the same
way that the presiding Bishops homilies would have been enlivened with the
aristocratic language of Classical paideia. Slight differences in
how we read the mosaic floors do little to challenge Mitchell's careful reading
of the floors at Butrint. Of particular value are his suggestions that
subtle variations in the floors -- for example, different motifs in the
interlinked roundels -- marked out places of ritual importance in the
baptistery. Checkerboard patterns in several of the outer most ring of
roundels evoke the checkered pattern immediately surrounding the central
font. Mitchell suggests that coincidence may have marked the area where
the bishop stood during the baptismal ceremony. In effect the checked
pattern marks linked the ritual power of the central font to the place where the
957
bishop presided. Finally, the baptistery at Burtint has intriguing

connections with important buildings elsewhere in the Balkans. The mosaics
floors were almost certainly the product of a workshop based in Nikopolis in
Epirus (31). The presence of a fountain in the baptistery, roughly on axis
with the font and the axial mosaic panels depicting the stags and the peacocks
has parallels with the similar fountain from the baptistery at the Lechaion
basilica in Corinth. The large, free-standing and centrally planned
baptistery finds comparanda from several other sites in the Mediterranean.
Relatively recent geophysical work in the eastern part of the city of Corinth
has produced an image that looks very much like a large octagonal baptistery
there (G. D. R. Sanders, ‚ÄúArchaeological Evidence for Early Christianity and
the End of Hellenic Religion in Corinth,‚Äù in <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/56874310">Urban Religion in Roman Corinth:
Interdisciplinary Approaches</a>. D. N. Schowalter and S. J. Friesen eds.
(Cambridge 2005), 440). This would form another link between the site of Butrint
and Corinth. Scholars have long recognized the connection between the
prominent transept basilicas at Corinth and the city of Nikopolis (and elsewhere
in the Epirus) (see: D. I. Pallas ‚ÄúCorinth et Nicopolis pendant le haut moyen-
√¢ge,‚Äù FR 18 (1979), 93-142). The Butrint baptisteries through links to
both Nikopolis and Corinth reinforce the place of the latter city in the
Adriatic world of the West with its close ties to Italy and Rome.
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TITLE: Pyla-Koustopetria and Rome
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DATE: 09/22/2008 07:51:58 AM

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<a
Moore</a> is in Rome at the <a
href="http://www.aiac.org/ing/congresso_2008/home.htm">XVIIth International
Congress of Classical Archaeology</a>. The theme of the conference this
year is "Meetings Between Two Culture in the Ancient Mediterranean". The
<a href="http://www.pkap.org">Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project</a> is
giving paper entitled ‚ÄúTrade and Exchange in the Eastern Mediterranean: A
Model from Cyprus‚Äù in a session on exchange in the Eastern
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Mediterranean. We'll make the entire paper available on our web
site once Scott returns, but for now, I will provide a teaser. The most
significant new analysis to appear in this paper is Scott's study of the Late
Roman amphoras. <a href="http://classics.uc.edu/troy/grbpottery/html/amphoras-
r.html">Amphoras</a> are transport vessels commonly used throughout antiquity to
store and ship olive oil, wine, and some dry cargos. As the following
excerpt will explain, the most common form from Pyla-Koutsopetria (and on Cyprus
in general) are classified as Late Roman 1 based on their
shape. "Amphorae from all periods make up
approximately 15% of our total quantity of pottery from <a
href="http://www.pkap.org/">Pyla-Koutsopetria</a> with Late Roman amphorae
accounting for 62% of all ancient amphorae. LR1 Amphora was the largest
category of Late Roman amphora, representing 30% of PKAP‚Äôs total amphorae from
the Late Roman period and 80% of the identifiable amphora types. Late Roman 1
Amphora was, of course, one of the most widely traded amphorae of the 4th ‚Äì
7th centuries AD in the eastern Mediterranean and is associated with olive oil
and wine production. A number of production sites for this vessel type in the
6th and 7th centuries have been located along the southern coast of Cyprus
(Zygi, Paphos and perhaps Amathous) and on the Cilician coast. We have
identified 7 subclasses of LR1 Amphora Types based on fabric differences. Such
variety in LR1 amphora fabric is not unusual on Cyprus‚Äîthere were 4 main
subclasses at <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/249640107">Kopetra</a>, for
example‚Äîbut does indicate variety in production sites and suggests that trade
on the island was not merely a matter of access to materials, but was selective,
in fact. <a
eWriter/LR_Amphora_Density.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px;
border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="312" alt="LR_Amphora_Density"
Writer/LR_Amphora_Density_thumb.jpg" width="404"
border="0"></a> Density of Amphoras at Pyla-Koutsopetria
 A closer examination of the LR1 amphorae shows that at
Koutsopetria, 25% of the LR1 amphora have a fabric type that has been suggested
was produced in Cilicia and Syria. The largest number of LR1 amphora at
Koutsopetria (58%) have a fabric whose origin is believed to have been south
central Cyprus. This LR1 fabric, often identified as Rautman LR1(1), is also the
most frequently found LR1 sherd at <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/80747849">Panayia Ematousa</a> and <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/52303510">Maroni</a>. Despite the
relatively high number of Cypriot produced LR1 amphora at our site, it is
interesting to note that none of the brick red LRI amphora produced at <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/72871373">Kourion</a> were found at
Koutsopetria. At Kopetra, however, this ratio is reversed with over 42% of the
LR1 amphora being from Cilicia and Syria, and approximately 13% being from south
central Cyprus. The greater proportion of locally produced LR1 fabrics at
Maroni and Koutsopetria might reflect their function as ports for exporting
locally produced agricultural produce rather than major hubs for importing wine
and olive oil from abroad in foreign made amphoras. <a
eWriter/LR_Amphora_Density_w_LR1.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top:
0px; border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="312"
alt="LR_Amphora_Density_w_LR1"
Writer/LR_Amphora_Density_w_LR1_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a>
 Distribution of LR1 Amphoras at Pyla-Koutsopetria
959
 Comparing PKAP‚Äôs Late Roman amphora collection with

other nearby sites suggests both significant similarities and differences. In
terms of similarities, LR1 Amphora sherds represent the dominant class of LR
amphoras at the small villages of Maroni and Kopetra, located some 50 km west of
Kition. At Maronia, LR1 accounted for 21% of Late Roman amphora by weight, while
at Kopetra, LR1 Amphoras made up 2/3 of all amphora sherds. Both sites,
however, produce much greater diversity of amphora types than
Koutsopetria. Kopetra, for example, produced 13 identifiable amphora types
compared to the 5 types identified at Koutsopetria. In fact, Koutsopetria
shows greater similarity to the village of Panayia Ematousa, another site in the
immediate hinterland of Kition -- some 6.5 km north and inland of the
city. Panayia Ematousa, like Koutsopetria, lacks Late Roman 4 amphora, the
most common imported amphora at both Maroni and Kopetra. The differences in
proportions between Maroni and Kopetra, on the one hand, and Koutsopetria and
Panayia Ematousa on the other, reinforces the hypothesis that Koutsopetria was
more heavily engaged in exporting than importing. 
 It is clear that Koutsopetria imported LR amphora from
only a few locations in the Eastern Mediterranean, primarily Cilicia and Syria
and that its importation of amphora from other regions was limited or non-
existent. Only 1 example of a Palestinian bag amphora (Peacock and Williams
Class 46) was found at PKAP, and while the numbers are low for other Cypriot
sites (Maroni <1% and Kopetra <3%) this is surprising considering the
close proximity of the Levantine coast to the southern Cypriot coast. A similar
situation holds true for amphorae imported from Africa with only 1 North African
amphora with being found at PKAP, and no Egyptian amphorae. Also uncommon are
LR2 amphorae produced in the Aegean and Black Sea region. Low numbers were
reported at all nearby sites: Kopetra (1.9%), Pyla-Koutsopetria, Panayia
Ematousa, and Maroni < 1%. These relatively low percentages of amphora
imports, especially LR4 which is common at other sites, suggests that
Koutsopetria is participating selectively in the trade along the southern
Cypriot coast and that factors other than availability are determining
Koutsopetria‚Äôs involvement."
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TITLE: A short bit of Departmental History: Walter Ellis's Prince of Darkness
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DATE: 09/19/2008 08:53:10 AM

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<a
eWriter/PrinceofDarkness.jpg"><img width="128" height="191" border="0"
align="left" alt="PrinceofDarkness"
Writer/PrinceofDarkness_thumb.jpg" style="border-width: 0px; margin: 0px 10px
0px 0px;" /></a> About a week ago, the <a
href="http://chronicle.com/review/">Chronicle Review</a> pulled an article
from their archives on Miles Davis: <a
href="http://chronicle.com/weekly/v47/i36/36b01701.htm">K. Gabbard, "Miles
Passed, Miles Ahead," Chronicle Review (May 18, 2001)</a>. In this
short retrospective on Miles Davis's career, my predecessor, Walter Ellis got
mentioned. I never met Ellis whose death made my current position
available, but he was both an ancient historian and a novelist. A number
of his novels drew on jazz and blues music for inspiration. Davis's music
formed the backdrop to his 1998 novel <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/41338342">Prince of
Darkness</a>. Here's the quote from the Chronicle Review
article: <blockquote> "Along with several biographies
and reminiscences, there are now two books of critical essays about Davis, two
books devoted entirely to the Kind of Blue LP, and two romans √† clef,
Herbert Simmons's Man Walking on Eggshells (1962) and Walter Ellis's
Prince of Darkness: A Jazz Fiction Inspired by the Music of Miles Davis
(X Press, 1998). A female character in Prince of Darkness pursues the kinds
of questions so eloquently posed by Pearl Cleage: 
"It was difficult to reconcile those sweet melodies with this man who
seemed so bitter and angry. But then she realized that the beauty and the
tenderness were part of him too. Perhaps the best part. What he could not say in
words, he blew through his trumpet. And that was his real message to the
world."</blockquote> Have a good weekend!
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TITLE: Teaching Thursday: The Modern Graduate Student
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CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 09/18/2008 08:04:04 AM

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The most demanding course in my schedule this semester is my seminar in

graduate historiography. The class is big (20+), the students are sharp,
and the class sessions can be rather intense. The course covers a grab bag
of historiography, methodology, and intellectual history with a primary focus on
the 19th and 20th centuries. There is a weekly set of readings and a few
mid-length critical analysis papers (a comparative book review, a topical
review, and a prospectus for a longer research project). As part
of course, I encourage the students to critique the syllabus and my choice of
readings and topics. After all, a historiography course should be
historiographical in nature! This past week, we read <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/20628221">A. Momigliano's Classical
Foundations of Modern Historiography</a>, the first books of Herodotus,
Thucydides, and Livy, and Tacitus, Agricola. At the end of class
I asked the students whether I should continue to include a week dedicated to
ancient historiography in the course. The class is predominantly students
of U.S. History and the 19th and 20th centuries The overwhelming majority
of students said "no" (17-4 may have been the final vote). The most
commonly advanced argument was that these sources were no longer relevant for
students of contemporary history; contemporary historians had "moved beyond" the
work of the ancients. First it is clear that Momigliano's work had
very little effect on them as a class. Momigliano argued that historical
works from antiquity served as a touchstone for historical thinking well into
the modern era. What is more interesting is how overwhelmingly modernist the
class's perspective on the past was. Their brazen rejecting of the ancient
historiographic tradition implied a historical method that not only showed
progress through time, but had, in our modern day, somehow stabilized at a
superior state that rendered its earlier manifestations irrelevant. This
modernist reading produced a historical method that was, at its very core,
ahistorical. This approach to the historical method and the development
of this discipline is not radically out of step with some of the scholars that
the seminar had read. In fact, we have thought a good bit about the the
history of historiography. We have read several classics of the historiographic
genre: <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/392272">R.G. Collingwood</a>, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/397273">E.H. Carr</a>, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/28377649">Appleby, Hunt, and Jacob</a>, and
have several more on the syllabus. Over the past few weeks, I have encouraged
them to critique the relationship between a scholar's understanding of the
development of the field of history (and historical thought) and their view of
the historical method. It is remarkable, however, to consider how deeply
modernism still holds ground in how even serious students understand the
historical method. It must warm the hearts of the opponents of post-modernism
and its ambiguity and openness to chaotic, innovative, and recursive views of
the past.
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TITLE: Content and Context in Digital History

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CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 09/17/2008 08:17:08 AM

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This past few weeks have produced an impressive body of debate on the value
and character of digital scholarship, digital media, and students in the digital
age. The September volume of the <a
href="http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/jah/95.2/interchange.html">Jour
nal of American History produced a wide-ranging forum entitled "The Promise of
Digital History"</a>. In this exchange a number of leading lights in the
field (movement?) of digital history discuss pertinent issues ranging from the
definition of the field to the attitudes, qualifications, and resources
necessary to do digital history. At the same time <a
href="http://chronicle.com/review/brainstorm/bauerlein/">Mark Bauerlein and Siva
Vaidhyanathan are engaged in a fairly dynamic</a> discussion focusing on some of
the basic assumptions and expectations rooted in the increased use of technology
both in the classroom and by particular groups in American society. The
discussions in both venues are too wide ranging to allow a pithy summary, but
one thing that stands out to me: as I have become more self-conscious about the
role of digital media in my own research and teaching, I am increasingly aware
of the challenges that come with teaching with and about digital technology. It
goes without saying that we have moved beyond the time when using Powerpoint (or
the "powerpointer") in the classroom qualifies one as technologically
sophisticated teacher. Using more sophisticated "tools", however, requires
a substantial shift in pedagogy and often considerable investment in both
preparation and classroom time. I have spent a substantial amount of time
this semester explaining, troubleshooting, and managing the relatively simple
battery of collaborative tools (wikis, class blogs, or Twitter feeds that I use
in my classrooms. Students here do not naturally "get" how these
technologies (if they can, indeed, by called that) can make their experience
richer, their time outside the classroom more dynamic, or even just the learning
process easier. In most cases my students are simply not sufficiently tech
savvy and confident to maximize fully the potential of digital media. They
seems to confirm the "<a
href="http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i04/04b00701.htm">Generational Myth</a>"
that Siva Vaidhyanathan has recently explored. <a
href="http://chronicle.com/weekly/v55/i04/04b01001.htm">Bauerlein's argument
that the web makes students hasty, inattentive, and superficial readers</a>
reveals another aspect to the difficulty integrating digital media into the
classroom. It may well be that for certain people the web promotes a
particular kind of reading that is not conducive to the careful thought and
attention to detail that most classes in the humanities cultivate. Careful
reading online is a skill that has to be taught because in any society there are
different kinds of reading. We'd all accept that reading for a graduate seminar
in history is, in fact, a different intellectual and social process from reading
for a local book club or a baseball box score. In some ways this is a kind
of technical expertise that many not, in fact, be radically different from the
963
skills that many contributors to the JAH Interchange argued was required to
engage more sophisticated digital tools like relational databases, Geographic
Information Systems, or even robust text queries. The lack of basic
technology or technical skills makes it difficult (at best) for students to
create the kind of immersive experience that so many scholars have held up as
one goal for research across the digital humanities. And it is not simply
students: faculty and administrators must often be educated to understand not
simply the potential of digital tools in the classroom and research, but also
what these tool require in terms of physical hardware, expertise, and
intellectual flexibility to cross disciplinary and institutional boundaries.
The point here is that digital history (or more broadly the digital
humanities) as a blanket term carries with it a wide range of responsibilities.
On the one hand, the need to generate digital content, particularly in history,
is paramount. Making documents and data available is a time consuming and
sometimes tedious task that nevertheless forms the foundation for the discovery
and analysis that is central to the digital humanities. On the other hand,
the digital humanities also require that we work to build a set of skills that
range from an understanding of good web design to the more technical skills
required to use the most sophisticated tools to their potential. It's more
than simply tools, however. Digital history, in particular, requires us to
reconsider at least some of our broad pedagogical goals to include digital
literacy training that will, for example, encourage a student to read a web page
more carefully and thoroughly for scholarly content. It also demands that
we work with colleagues and administrators to re-educate them as to the
requirements, expectations, and (of course) promise of digital history and the
humanities. As I ponder the possibilities for a digital history
lab and digital history course offering at <a href="http://www.und.edu/">my home
institution</a>, the goals of any project would have to integrate both content
creation as well as education designed to create a fertile and receptive context
for digital media both on campus and beyond.
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TITLE: More Small Town Archaeology...
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DATE: 09/16/2008 07:56:29 AM

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964
The archaeological landscape of Grand Forks, North Dakota continues to amaze

me. <a
all-town-arch.html">In August we noted</a> the substantial piles of earth and
bricks excavated from the foundation of a new house being built on a lot
abandoned since the <a href="http://www.draves.com/gf/">flood of 1997</a> (<a
href="http://www.geo.mtu.edu/department/classes/ge404/mlbroder/">more
here</a>). <a
eWriter/Bricks_1.jpg"><img width="304" height="404" border="0"
Writer/Bricks_thumb_1.jpg" style="border: 0px none ;" /></a> Last week
this earth has been graded into the beginnings of a proper yard around the now
half finished home. Grading the earth has distributed the bricks and other
cultural material <a
sting-the-hin.html">in a neat halo</a> around the house. <a
eWriter/GradedEarth.jpg"><img width="404" height="304" border="0"
Writer/GradedEarth_thumb.jpg" style="border: 0px none ;" /></a> <a
eWriter/GradedEarth2.jpg"><img width="404" height="304" border="0"
Writer/GradedEarth2_thumb.jpg" style="border: 0px none ;" /></a> Next
door another new foundation has been excavated. Doing our best imitation
of <a href="http://www.infiltration.org/index.html">Infiltration</a> we checked
out the big hole in the ground and snooped around the piles of dirt taken from
the hole. The foundations of the earlier house are clearly visible in the
scarp of the new foundation. <a
eWriter/Strat2.jpg"><img width="404" height="304" border="0"
Writer/Strat2_thumb.jpg" style="border: 0px none ;" /></a> <a
eWriter/Foundation.jpg"><img width="404" height="304" border="0"
Writer/Foundation_thumb.jpg" style="border: 0px none ;" /></a> It is
also possible to see in the scarp the dark earth presumably deposited by the
flood and later dumped into the basement of the house in a neat lens. 
eWriter/Strat1.jpg"><img width="404" height="304" border="0"
Writer/Strat1_thumb.jpg" style="border: 0px none ;" /></a> In the
excavated soil, we found a nice little assemblage of material including a
threaded glass stopper, a square bottle, and plates with blue and white
glaze. The square bottle, stopper and perhaps blue glazed plate date to
earlier than the middle of the 20th century and so they should not be associated
with the final phase of habitation at the site. <a
eWriter/Assembalge4.jpg"><img width="404" height="304" border="0"
965
Writer/Assembalge4_thumb.jpg" style="border: 0px none ;" /></a> <a
eWriter/Assemblage2.jpg"><img width="404" height="304" border="0"
Writer/Assemblage2_thumb.jpg" style="border: 0px none ;" /></a> <a
eWriter/Assemblage3.jpg"><img width="404" height="304" border="0"
Writer/Assemblage3_thumb.jpg" style="border: 0px none ;" /></a> 
Scrapping away the top soil nearby exposed a more haunting reminder of the
final days of the house: a plastic sand bag and sand perhaps positioned to
protect the house from the rising waters of the Red River. <a
eWriter/Sandbag.jpg"><img width="304" height="404" border="0"
Writer/Sandbag_thumb.jpg" style="border: 0px none ;" /></a> <a
eWriter/Sandbag2.jpg"><img width="404" height="304" border="0"
Writer/Sandbag2_thumb.jpg" style="border: 0px none ;" /></a> We've been
fixing up our turn of the century home this last month. These repairs and
modifications left us with a neat example of provisional discard. <a
eWriter/ProvisionalDiscard_1.jpg"><img width="404" height="304" border="0"
Writer/ProvisionalDiscard_thumb_1.jpg" style="border: 0px none ;" /></a> 
The bricks will work well in our garden, but the old aluminum shutters will
probably find their way into a modern midden. Grand Forks is a formation
process laboratory! 
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IP: 69.148.139.231
URL:
DATE: 09/16/2008 09:02:36 AM
That is awesome. Your blog should help you explain what you were doing should
your neighbors call the police.!
!
966
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EMAIL:
IP: 128.100.106.20
URL: http://profile.typekey.com/1210514844s30570/
DATE: 09/16/2008 10:52:01 AM
Great post!
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IP: 98.111.96.240
URL:
DATE: 10/06/2008 06:16:48 PM
I love these posts on formation processes in Grand Forks. Keep them up!
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TITLE: The Inauguration of a New President at the University of North Dakota
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I sat through the inauguration of our new university president on
Friday. It was a worthwhile experience providing that it only happens 10
or 11 times every 125 years. It was heartening to hear Robert O. Kelley
focus on the history of the University. He based the first part of his
inaugural address on Louis Geiger's history of the University of North Dakota,
<a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1107281">University of the Northern
Plains</a>. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2008/03/lo
uis-geiger-an.html">Geiger was a professor in the Department of History and
wrote the book to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the school</a>.
Kelley also gave a nod to the <a
href="http://www.library.und.edu/Collections/Robinson/home.html">Elwyn Robinson
Department of Special Collections</a> when he acknowledge it as the location of
the <a
urces-for-the.html">university archives</a>. So, in a speech designed to
give equal attention to almost every part of the University campus and
administration, two mentions to former members of the history faculty will have
to count as some kind of success. Kelley went on to discuss two former
presidents of the University: <a
href="http://www.library.und.edu/Collections/og116.html">William M.
Blackburn</a> and <a
href="http://www.library.und.edu/Collections/og141.html">Frank L.
McVey</a>. Blackburn, who was the first president of UND and served from
967
1884-1885, struggled to win support of the faculty or staff and was let
go. His advocacy of a more practical approach to university education did
not sit well with members of the first faculty, particularly Henry Montgomery
and Webster Merrifield, both of whom was succeed him as presidents of UND, and
they arranged for his ouster. It is worth noting that Blackburn wrote one
of the first histories of the region with his <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/27275547">Historical Sketch of North and
South Dakota</a>. McVey was a different kind of leader.
He was the first Ph.D. to hold the office of University of President at UND (a
degree in economics from Yale) and he was committed to bringing the University
out of the 19th and into the 20th century. This feature of McVey's term as
president resonated well with Kelley's own goals for the University. This
transition included a massive revision of the curriculum, new faculty hires, and
the waning influence of the 19th century "Merrifield Faculty" so-called because
they had been hired by McVey's predecessor Webster Merrifield. It is also worth
noting that McVey wrote history as well. His book <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/5282643">The government of Minnesota, its
history and administration</a>, was published in 1901 and he later wrote an
<a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/12195378">a study of the populist
movement</a>, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1852415">economic history of
Great Britain</a> (based on his Yale dissertation), and <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/962857">a history of education in
Kentucky</a>. McVey, like Blackburn, did not finish his career at UND, but went
on to serve as president of the University of Kentucky from 1917-1940.
The short terms in office enjoyed by both Blackburn and McVey hold up the
risks and benefits of being an innovator at any university. If you are
successful, like McVey, better opportunities await. If you fail like
Blackburn, the consequences can be dire. Kelley's awareness of his
predecessors and the importance of history in understanding the character of an
institution is a good sign. Hopefully the full text of Kelley's
speech will be available online soon.
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AUTHOR: BrianB
IP: 134.129.193.249
URL:
DATE: 09/15/2008 10:45:44 AM
I took some photos at the event. Here's the link:!
!
http://picasaweb.google.com/elucidarian/PresidentKelleySInauguration#
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COMMENT:
EMAIL:
IP: 134.129.133.177
968
DATE: 09/15/2008 10:51:06 AM
Thanks for the photos! They are great.
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Just some little notes for the day: <ul> <li>The University of North
Dakota will inaugurate their 11th president today, Robert Kelley.
Traditionally, an inaugurals speech sets the tone for the President's term in
office. The famous inaugural address by <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/dept/library/Collections/og41.html">Thomas
Kane</a> (1918-1933), for example, set the University on a course for
modernization, but <a
litics-and-th.html">enraged many of the more traditional faculty</a>.
Subsequent presidential addresses have been less incendiary, but no less
important for setting the course of the University.</li> <li>This fall the
University has a bumper crop of events. Note in particular the <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/jfkconference/">John F. Kennedy:
History, Memory, Legacy Conference</a>. The Department of Geography will host
the <a href="http://www.und.edu/org/gprm/">AAG Great Plains - Rocky Mountain
Division/ ASPRS Upper Midwest Chapter 2008 Annual Meeting</a>. And I can't
forget <a href="http://www.potatobowl.org/indexOne.htm">the 43rd Annual Potato
Bowl</a>.</li> <li>I've plugged it before, but if you haven't visited the <a
blog, you must. It's great. I particularly appreciated the
juxtaposition posed between the excitement of the tourists to see their
excavations and finds and the frustration of cost overruns and delayed equipment
deliveries. Such is the lot of field archaeologists!</li></ul> Have a
good weekend!
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TITLE: Teaching Thursday: Reading the Digital Palimpsest for Traces of an Analog
World
STATUS: Publish
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CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 09/11/2008 08:23:02 AM

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I have to talk to my History 240: The Historians' Craft class about doing
digital research today. As this is a required "sophomore" level class, it
will not be particularly in-depth, but will, instead, focus on basic research
tools -- from better use of the library's electronic catalogue to Google Scholar
and Wikipedia. The funny thing is this, the seminar room where I will
teach this material does not have a digital projector. So, I will
have to set up our portable digital projector and my laptop. The screen,
however, is offset to one side of the room, so there is not an easy way to set
the projector up so that it actually faces the screen. On top of this,
I'll control the computer so it limits the extent to which the class has the
opportunity to interact in a hands-on way with the technology. To be
absolutely fair, the room does have a computer and old tube-style, curved-screen
television, but for the past 5 years the screen on the old-school has been so
bad that we can not show a website on it so that the text is legible. It
was set up basically to show movies or videos. The ironic thing is
this. I teach my History 101: Western Civilization class in one of our
wired classrooms. It's an auditorium style room with a fancy, high-powered
digital projector. It is a slick set up with a document projector, video
disk player, computer all controlled through a central panel. The problem
is, to use the high powered digital projector, you need to have the screen
down. When the screen is down, it covers the chalkboards! And I am
one of those ridiculous people who use chalkboards in class as well as digital
media. In fact, the other night, I was showing the students Athens on
Google Maps during my lecture on Classical Greece, but could not entirely work
out how to give them the spelling of Cleisthenes without moving the screen up
and using the video-mute on the digital projector (which I could not figure out
while giving the lecture). <a
eWriter/SeminarRoom.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; margin:
0px 10px 0px 0px; border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="184"
alt="SeminarRoom"
Writer/SeminarRoom_thumb.jpg" width="244" align="left" border="0"></a>On the one
hand, these are rather petty complaints. We all confront some kinds of
logistical challenges during teaching. On the other, these particular
challenges reveal a bit about the archaeology of digital teaching at the
University of North Dakota. First, the seminar room: the back wall of the
room is wood paneled and covered with the austere (but kindly) portraits of the
Great Men in the Department's History (Clarence Perkins, Felix Vondracek, Philip
Green, Louis Geiger, John Harnsberger (!), Robert Wilkins, and Elwyn
Robinson). Scattered about on other walls are various trophies and plaques
for long discontinued awards and canvass maps of England the US. The south
970
wall of the room is given over to the green chalk board with its off-set screen
for projection. Several long tables are arranged into a rectangle in the
middle of the room so that the students and professor can sit facing one
another. Floor to ceiling windows cover one wall of the room. The
room feels worn and evokes the comforting weight of the seminar tradition.
Designed for the scrutiny of documents and intense discussions, the digital age
projects awkwardly onto the make-shift screen on the intrusive light of portable
data projector. The place of digital teaching in the auditorium style
room where I teach Western Civilization I is more striking. The screen
literally covers the chalk boards (and these are the really nice "two storey"
chalk boards that slide up and down on rails!). It has forced me (to a
certain extent) to make a choice between the new and old media as the students
look on from the comfortable, theater style seating. The 1970s orange wall
coverings add a dramatic edge to the entire performance. 
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TITLE: Testing the Hinterland
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BASENAME: testing-the-hin
DATE: 09/10/2008 08:48:48 AM

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<a
eWriter/TestingHinterland.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px;
alt="TestingHinterland"
Writer/TestingHinterland_thumb.jpg" width="143" align="right" border="0"></a> I
managed to work my way through <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/144525077">J. Bintliff, P. Howard, and A.
Snodgrass, Testing the Hinterland: the work of the Boeotia Survey (1989-
1991) in the southern approaches to the city of Thespiai (Cambridge
2007)</a> over the past couple weeks. A single read-through only began to
scratch the surface of this remarkably rich and dense report on the work of the
Boeotia survey around the city of Thespiai. It goes without saying that this
book should have a significant impact on how scholars present and analyze data
971
produced through intensive pedestrian survey in the future. Thespiai is

the nearest ancient polis to the city of Thisvi where I am working (in fits and
starts) with Timothy Gregory, Archie Dunn, and others to re-examine the data
gathered over the course of the Ohio Boeotia Expedition. Gregory and his
colleagues produced the data from the Thisvi survey about a decade earlier than
the work by the Boeotia Survey around Thespiai and with a much smaller
team. Consequently the data is of a lower resolution and reflects
intensive survey practices that have now endured rather significant critiques.
Nevertheless, the high quality data set available from Thespiai should help fill
in some interpretive and evidentiary gaps from the Thisvi survey and hopefully
enable us to make a more substantial contribution to the archaeology of Boeotia
(and Greece) through our rehabilitation of this data. From Testing the
Hinterland, five things struck me as particularly significant about this
volume: 1. Thespiai as Large Site. As I have noted several
times previously in this blog (<a
me-thoughts-o.html">Some Thoughts on Future of Survey Archaeology in Greece (and
the Eastern Mediterranean)</a> and <a
re-large-site.html">More Large Site Survey</a>), large sites of over 50 ha but
generally smaller than 700 ha are poised to become the basic unit for
interpreting the archaeological landscape in Greece. This first volume
from the Boeotia survey analyzed a mere 500 ha. While the total work of
the Boeotia Survey encompassed a much large territory, the resolution at which
they surveyed so much of western Boeotia made it practically impossible to
produce a single volume of interpretation that did the data justice. In
fact, of the 200 sites that the Boeotia survey documented, they included merely
18 in this volume (171). It is doubtful that future intensive survey in
Greece will even cover as much ground as the entire Boeotia survey project, but
the sophisticated and largely independent analysis of a 500 ha in a single
volume should be cause for optimism (and a model) for the next generation of
small scale intensive survey project in Greece and elsewhere. The vast
quantities of fine resolution data produced by the most recent generation of
intensive surveys can be brought to bear on problems of historical significance
(settlement patterns, rural land use, et c.) despite arguments for Mediterranean
Myopia (see: <a
rambling-abou.html">A Rambling about Survey from a Regional
Prespective</a>). 2. GIS and Survey. This volume has achieved
the full integration of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and intensive
survey. Bintliff et al. brought together view-shed analysis, least cost
path, and the integration of divergent data sets (soil types, different types of
artifact density data, et c.) into a single analytical framework. While
GIS has been a central aspect of Mediterranean survey for the last 25 years, it
has often served as a convenient receptacle for data collected in the field, but
not played as active a role in the analysis of that data. The Boeotia
survey used both viewshed analysis and a relatively sophisticated least cost
path model to understand the density values present in various parts of their
survey area; in doing this, they successfully manage the limitations of sample
size and the computational capacities available to them to produce plausible
analyses. They were able to define the site of Leondari Southeast 7
(LSE7), for example, by recognizing that the artifact densities for this site
far exceeded the off-site density values expected on their basis of their least-
cost path model. LSE7 stood in a zone of "very high 'friction' where
access is not easy" (233) 3. Density and Intensity. The Boeotia
972
survey is among the first surveys in the Eastern Mediterranean to recognize and
attempt to control for differences in density produced by different methods of
artifact collection. More intensive collection techniques produce greater
quantities of artifacts. This leads them to attempt to compensate for the
differences between densities produced my more intensive "on site" data
collection and less intensive transect field walking or off-site data collection
practices. In general they found that on-site data collection methods produced
between 2.5 and 3.5 times as many artifacts as transect walking. Using
these figures to adjust their comparison between transect density and the
densities produced by on-site collection, they were able to determine whether
specific chronological components of a site (say the Late Roman material)
actually represented particular Late Roman activity at the site or simply part
of the larger, but lower density carpet of Late Roman artifacts recorded by
transect field walking. This is a valuable contribution to survey
archaeology and can be compared to our recent experiments at the <a
href="http://www.pkap.org">Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project</a> and
published in the 2007 Report of the Department of Antiquities of
Cyprus. 4. Questions of Procedure. One
striking thing about this volume was the lack of sustained discussion of field
procedure. While I recognize that innumerable smaller publications have
proceeded this volume and it is likely that their field procedures were
discussed at length in these papers, it is nevertheless disconcerting that a
project that committed so much sophisticated thought to the analysis of their
artifacts densities would not tie this analysis directly and clearly to field
procedures. This is particularly significant when we consider the sample
of artifacts gathered from individual survey units that forms the basis for
their chronological and functional analysis. It seems to me that the day
where we can simple claim to have collected "diagnostic artifacts" from a unit
is over. The Eastern Korinthia Archaeological Survey and Pyla-Koutsopetria
Archaeological Project employed chronotype sampling which ensured that we
collected at least one example of each type of artifact present in the
unit. As we (me, <a href="http://home.messiah.edu/~dpettegrew/">David
Pettegrew</a>, Dimitri Nakassis, <a
Moore</a>) have argued, this does distort our sample, but in relatively
predictable ways. Other projects have defaulted to areas of "total collection"
to act as controls against less systematic grab samples of diagnostic sherds
from survey units. 5. Manuring the Countryside.
This volume represents the most sophisticated and sustained argument for the
manuring hypothesis. It contends that Boeotian cities transported huge
quantities of manure from the urban center to the countryside and with this
manure came pottery and other forms of domestic waste that formed a visible halo
of artifacts around both the urban center and more substantial sites in the
countryside. I must admit that the simplicity of this argument is
appealing (although I do have particular loyalty to David Pettegrew's challenge
to it!). Unfortunately by separating the analysis of the urban fabric from
the countryside as they have in this volume, it is difficult to understand the
relationship between the material remaining in the urban center of Thespaia and
the material found in the associated halo produced by manuring. The
manuring hypothesis will be more persuasive when they can show that the material
from the halo and the city center is fundamentally similar. At PKAP, for
example, we discovered that the highest density areas of the site during the
Late Roman are surrounded by lower density concentration of Late Roman
pottery. To test for the manuring hypothesis we compared the types of
material present in the highest density zone to the material present in the
973
lower density halo. The material in the halo was different. For
example, we found very little Late Roman African Red Slip in the halo (but
plenty of other contemporary, imported and local fine wares) while it is
remarkably common in the highest density units. Unless we assume that
something about ARS led to different discard behavior, it is hard to understand
how ARS did not appear in the halo if it was present at the center of the
site. While this one type of artifact alone does not completely eliminate
the manuring hypothesis as a possible explanation for the low density halo
around our highest density units, it nevertheless produces a kind of challenge
made possible by integrating the analysis of on-site data with that gathered
from off-site distributions. There is much more to this book than these 5
observations: the detailed documentation and interpretation of individual sites,
the clever ternary analysis of site function, and the effort to deal with the
post-antique survey data (albeit in a cursory way) among many other fine
points. Needless to say, this work will emerge as a point of departure for
many subsequent studies of intensive survey in the Greek countryside.
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TITLE: Late Antiquity in Ottawa
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BASENAME: late-antiquity
DATE: 09/09/2008 07:46:58 AM

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<a href="http://home.messiah.edu/~dpettegrew/">David Pettegrew</a> dropped me
a line about <a href="http://lateantiqueworld.weebly.com/index.html">Late
Antique World Workshop</a> at the University of Ottawa from September 20-21,
2008. A number of the sessions will focus on various chapters from Stephen
Mitchell's recent textbook <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/62732669">A
History of the Later Roman Empire</a> (2007). This is a really clever
idea for a conference and ensures that participants have a common basis for
conversation. While I have not read Mitchell's textbook, the very need for
a formal textbook designed, presumably, for a course in Late Antiquity (beyond
Brown's classic survey <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/138222">The
World of Late Antiquity</a> or Averil Cameron's more "monographic"
offering, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/26851176">The Mediterranean
world in late antiquity, AD 395-600</a>) surely reflects the period's
recent boom in popularity as well as a recent wave of synthetic studies in the
974
field. The conference is put on by the <a

href="http://www.arts.uottawa.ca/csla/en/">Ottawa Network for the Study of Late
Antiquity</a>. <a
href="http://www.arts.uottawa.ca/csla/en/members.html">The list of contributors
to this network</a> and their research projects reflects the interdisciplinary
nature of the study of Late Antiquity at Ottawa. The impulse toward
interdisciplinary collaboration (the emergence of centers/centres as opposed to
departments and schools) and at the same time a willingness to regard
(accessible) synthetic studies as significant contributions to the discipline
reflects the deep engagement of Late Antique studies in the language and vision
of North American universities.
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TITLE: The Corinthian Countryside: Some More Contemporary Thoughts
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BASENAME: the-corinthia-1
DATE: 09/08/2008 08:16:04 AM

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One advantage of walking through the Greek countryside is that it forces me
to confront a world for which my suburban upbringing and relatively formal
education did not prepare me. The countryside of the southeastern
Corinthia remains largely agricultural and has preserved evidence for centuries
of cultivation as well as the abrupt modernization of the Greek state in the
middle years of the 20th century. The traces of earlier practices have
left their marks on almost every terraced hillside, abandoned seasonal shelter,
and isolated valley. <a
e-corinthia-2.html">Our hike from Lychnari Bay to Frangolimano</a> revealed so
many of the common features of the Corinthian countryside, that it seems
worthwhile to record some of them here. First, the wall followed the
course of a built path. Cut into the steep, inland side of the coastal
ridge, the path created an easy decent from the Vayia river valley to the bay at
Frangolimano. The path itself was less than 2 meters wide and marked by a
slightly raised lip on its down slope side. As it wove its way across the
pine covered slopes, evidence for its continued use appear in the numerous trees
with long scars in their bark for resin collecting. Many of the trees
along the path had relatively recent aluminum resin collectors attached showing
that the path, while overgrown in spots, still served a function. <a
975
eWriter/ResinCollectors.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px;
border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="272" alt="ResinCollectors"
Writer/ResinCollectors_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> A cluster
of old oil drums stood near the intersection of the path and one of the few
roads in the area. These drums served as collection points for the resin
collectors. Further along the path and out of the range of wheeled
vehicles stood the predecessor to these drums. A roughly made mortar and
stone basin build against an exposed section of bedrock served as a temporary
collection point for resin collection. <a
eWriter/ResinBasin.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; border-
left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="272" alt="ResinBasin"
Writer/ResinBasin_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> The path opened
onto a high valley just to the south of the Vayia River. While today a
bulldozed dirt road provides access to the valley, the remains in the valley
show that it was cultivated before the arrival of the bulldozer. Today
olive trees cover the carefully terraces slopes, but it seems probable that
these terraces originally supported cereals as olive trees do not necessarily
need such elaborately constructed terraces to prosper. <a
eWriter/Terraces.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; border-
left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="272" alt="Terraces"
Writer/Terraces_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> At least two
seasonal long-houses of the kind documented throughout Greece and the Balkans
are in advanced states of collapse in the valley. They were built of stone
with mud mortar. Elsewhere in the Corinthia we have studied the historical
and archaeological context for these houses. <a
eWriter/CollapsingKalyvi.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px;
border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="272" alt="CollapsingKalyvi"
Writer/CollapsingKalyvi_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> <a
eWriter/CollapsingKalyvi2.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px;
border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="272" alt="CollapsingKalyvi2"
Writer/CollapsingKalyvi2_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> They
probably served as seasonal habitation during the cultivation of the valley --
particularly during the harvest and threshing of grain. We did not observe
any of the large threshing floors (aloni) in the valley, but they almost
certainly existed as in the Corinthia most threshing seemed to take place in the
fields. While the houses are collapsing today, it is clear that at some
point concrete and cinder blocks were brought to the valley to reinforce the
houses or perhaps even replace them. In the process, the farmer removed
some of the tiles from the collapsing field house and stacked them neatly in a
textbook example of provisional discard. Something seems to have
interrupted the process of building a new field house. The bags of
concrete brought to the valley had gotten wet and dried into bag-shaped concrete
bricks. <a
976
eWriter/ProvisionalDiscard.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px;
border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="272" alt="ProvisionalDiscard"
Writer/ProvisionalDiscard_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> The result is a countryside that is still in use, but in some ways
abandoned. The previous patterns of life characterized by seasonal
settlements and narrow paths have given way to bulldozed roads and cement farm
sheds. The older ways of life, however, continue to leave their mark as
any walk through the Corinthian countryside will show. More Corinthian
Countryside: <a
Corinthia</a> <a
e-corinthian.html">The Corinthian Countryside: History and Archaeology</a>
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Maddy Bray
IP: 76.170.0.106
DATE: 09/21/2008 12:34:48 PM
This is very cool. I appreciate that you as a classical archaeologist still make
a point to thoughtfully consider more recent history, be it in the Corinthia or
in North Dakota...My new professional requirements have forced me to focus on
more modern patterns of land use and change in California, which is pretty
fascinating and a vital part of local history.
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TITLE: Pyla-Koutsopetria in the Press and Other Varia
STATUS: Publish
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DATE: 09/05/2008 09:05:28 AM

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A bunch of odds and ends at the end of the week: <ul> <li>The <a
href="http://www.pkap.org/">Pyla-Koustopetria Archaeological Project</a> got
some <a
href="http://www.cyprusweekly.com.cy/default.aspx?articleID=7857&heading=Fea
tures">press this past week in Cyprus Weekly</a>. While the article
doesn't get everything right, the University of North Dakota got some press from
it: <ul> "The Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project, as it is called, is
jointly under the direction of Professor William Caraher, University of North
Dakota, Professor R. Scott Moore, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Professor
David K. Pettegrew, Messiah College, and Dr Maria Hadjicosti. Experts from
Europe also assisted in the excavations. Maria Hadjicosti said that each
participant contributed their own expertise and specialty in evaluating the
archaeological excavations and survey." </ul> <li>Edward L. Ayers, the new
President at my alma mater, the <a href="http://www.richmond.edu/">University of
Richmond</a>, continues to contribute to the field of digital history. His
<a href="http://www.historyengine.org/">History Engine</a> has gone live and
public and is <a
href="http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/09/04/engine">getting some good
press</a>. This is exactly the kind of collaborative enterprise possible
in a Web 2.0 environment and the kind project to which Digital History at the
University of North Dakota could someday contribute. <li>Luke Lavan's and Axel
Gering's <a href="http://lateantiqueostia.wordpress.com/">Berlin-Kent Ostia
Excavations Blog</a> is now being updated. It will be fascinating to watch
their project work to uncover the Late Antique city of Ostia.
Archaeological Project blogs is such a booming field that it might warrant more
extensive treatment... <li>Finally, a little <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/181822">advertisement for myself</a>.
Brandon Olson, over at <a
al_archaeology_in/">Historical Archaeology in the Ancient Mediterranean</a>,
deserves a good bit of credit for helping get this book done. He performed
the preliminary edits on nearly all the contributions. Scott Moore, at <a
History Ramblings</a>, was a co-editor. Kostis Kourelis, at <a
href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/">Buildings, Objects, Situations</a>, was a
contributor as was Sam Fee at <a href="http://www.thefee.net/delirium/">Arranged
Delirium</a>. It's the blogosphere in print form!</li></ul> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Archaeology-History-Medieval-Post-
Medieval-
Greece/dp/0754664422/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1220623162&sr=8-
1"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-bottom-
width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px" height="240" alt="Caraher_HiRes"
Writer/Caraher_HiRes.jpg" width="500" border="0"></a>
978
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TITLE: Teaching Thursday: Another View on High-Tech Teaching
STATUS: Publish
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CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 09/04/2008 08:30:21 AM

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<a
eWriter/Bauerlein.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; border-
left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="187" alt="Bauerlein"
Writer/Bauerlein_thumb.jpg" width="128" align="right" border="0"></a> I just
finished Mark Bauerlein's new book: <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/196305501">The Dumbest Generation (New York
2008</a>). I won't review it here, but it offered an interesting (and
perhaps valuable) perspective on the causes and side effects of the growing use
of technology in the university classroom. Bauerlein basically argues
that students deep involvement in the New Media -- what he calls Screen Time --
derives in part from the Youth Movement in the 1960s and its rejection of both
adult authority and the intellectual traditions of the previous
generations. The ability of the New Media Universe to cater to the
individual tastes of the user has merged with the intensely self-centered
perspective of most adolescents to shield them from adult culture and to
validate their rejection of traditional values. In the end, this has
produced a generation of Americans who lack the skills necessary to be
successful in American society largely because their immersion in the world of
the internet has allowed them to ignore their teachers, adults, and mentors. To
support this, Bauerlein marshals an impressive array of studies that show that
despite the advantages provided by access to the "information superhighway" this
Dumbest Generation performs no better and in many cases worse than their
predecessors. He singles out reading levels for particular scrutiny and agues
that the myriad of distractions - from social networking sites, to blogs, to
YouTube - detracts from the time that an earlier generation of students
dedicated to reading books. The result is that students' reading levels
(and writing levels) have steadily declined as they become more and more
immersed in a world of their own making. Critics counter, of course, that
traditional literacy is being replaced with a kind of technological literacy:
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the ability to navigate the information rich spaces on the internet is a skill
that has a much greater relevance in a world where books represent obsolete
technology. Bauerlein frets over this notion, of course, and considers it
particularly detrimental in that it empowers students to dig themselves more
deeply into their protected world of adolescent delights, rather than the more
challenging environment of produced by mentors, teachers, and adults and the
accrued weight of traditional knowledge. Perhaps more troubling is the
notion that despite students' rejection of traditional modes of learning (e.g.
book reading, standard lecture formats), they have not necessarily developed the
kinds of skills necessarily to successfully gather, collate, and process the
information that they encounter on the internet. Sam Fee, at <a
href="http://www.thefee.net/delirium/">Arranged Delirium</a> posted a link to a
well-known 2007 article on InsideHigherEd.com entitled: "<a
href="http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/11/15/infolit">Are College
Students Techno Idiots?</a>" This article suggests that most university
students use the internet in a superficial way. Following a set of well
trod paths, they rarely venture into unknown territories in search of
challenges, but frequent a relatively limited set of places and, in turn,
practice and develop a rather limited set of skills. For yet
another perspective on this, we can consider the debate over whether faculty
should use <a
href="http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3251&utm_source=wc&u
tm_medium=en">social networking sites</a> to improve their ability to deliver
content and capture students attention. Some students, of course, are
appalled that faculty are willing (and able!) to invade their private
domains. Some faculty on the other hand, see this as an important way to
challenge and transform the intellectually safe (and sterile in Bauerlein's
view) environment of student space on the web. The various critiques of
the value of integrating more "New Media" or Web 2.0 content into university
level classes have come back to me this week as I have begun to see the initial
results from my experiments with Twitter and a class Wiki. On the one
hand, I've been impressed with the ability of some students to work together to
produce high-quality content, particularly on the class Wiki for a 100 (intro)
level history course. On the other hand, the gap between students who are
comfortable on the web and those who find basic navigation a challenge is
remarkable. More importantly, perhaps, is whether these applications
improve the quality of classroom time and encourage the students to become more
deeply invested in the course material. It is still too early to tell on
either of these points, but the tools and concepts that make us the Web 2.0
world are not essentially incompatible with increased student involvement in
intellectual life. The responsibility may fall to faculty in their roles
as leaders and mentors to transform student expectations of the internet
experience and shepherd them gently toward the places where real learning --
with books, ideas, and intellectual challenges - takes place.
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TITLE: Provisional Processed Pottery from Pyla-Koutsopetria
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DATE: 09/03/2008 08:19:38 AM

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While Scott Moore, <a href="http://www.pkap.org/">Pyla-Koutsopetria
Archaeological Project's</a> ceramicist and co-director, handles most of the
pottery processing in the field, when it gets back to the U.S., I generally work
with the processed pottery in its digital form. This past few weeks we
have generated a provisional database containing almost all the pottery
collected from 5 years of intensive survey at Pyla-Koustopetria. This same
database will eventually house the pottery from the excavations last year and
from earlier excavations conducted at the site in the 1990s. With our
ceramic data in digital form we are able to conduct queries, transfer it to our
GIS (Geographic Information Systems) interface, and even produce the basic
structure for our publishable catalogue. With the inclusion of material
collected during the 2007 and 2008 survey season we have produced a sufficiently
robust dataset to conduct some basic quantitative analysis. We have over
18,000 artifacts (not a particularly large number from an intensive survey)
collected over the course of our standard intensive survey (with another couple
thousand generated through various experimental survey procedures). Of
this group about 40% date to the Roman or Late Roman period. Particularly
prevalent in this assemblage of Late Roman material are finewares which account
for over 8% of all Late Roman pottery. Fine wares are useful because they
can generally by associated with a particular production center in the
Mediterranean and are distinctive enough to have relatively secure chronologies
(thanks in large part to the tireless work of John Hayes whose monumental Late
Roman Pottery remains the point of departure for almost any analysis of this
class of material). One of the advantages of our significant
assemblage of Late Roman finewares is that we can compare it sites elsewhere on
this island. The locally produced Cypriot Red Slip (CRS) remains the most
common type of Late Roman fineware at the site accounting for about 45% of the
material on the site and another type of Late Roman fine ware Phocaean Red Slip
(PHW) probably produced in Asia Minor, accounted for close to 30% of the
assemblage. The most notable feature of the fine ware at our site, however, is
that African Red Slip (ARS), a type of Roman fineware imported from North
Africa, accounted for close to 20% of the assemblage. (The other common
Late Roman fine ware, Egyptian Red Slip barely appeared at all. John Hayes
has recently suggested that this type of pottery may represent the final phase
in Late Roman pottery imports to the island where Egyptian Red Slips imported in
the mid-7th century replaced African Red Slip which had become increasingly
difficult to procure do to disruptions in Mediterranean trade at the "end of
antiquity". (see Hayes "Pottery," in Megaw, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/72871373">Kourion: Excavations in the
Episcopal Precinct</a>, 436). It may be, if this is indeed the case,
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that our site simply went out of use prior to the period when Egyptian Red Slips
were most prevalent). The recent publication of the finds from the
site of <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/220316165">Panayia Ematousa</a>
provide an interesting point of comparison. Panayia-Ematousa is, like
Pyla-Koutsopetria, another "ex-urban" site situated 6.5 kilometers north of
Kition and probably less then 15 km from Pyla-Koutsopetria. Unlike our
site, Panayia-Ematousa produced very little African Red Slip (only 2% of the
Roman Red Slips). In contrast the most common pottery was Phocaean Ware,
followed by Cypriot Red Slip. The two sites were basically contemporary
and seemingly reached their Late Roman peaks in 6th century. The forms
present at both sites (that is the shape of the vessels of the various types)
are basically similar. Panayia-Ematousa likewise produced little Egyptian
Red Slip. The presence of a significant quantity of Phocaean Ware at
Panayia-Ematousa argues against the idea that this site was less connected to
Mediterranean trade -- after all, Phocaean Ware was imported to the island as
well. In fact, the fine ware from Panayia-Ematousa seems to suggest that,
at least for fine table wares, the residents of the site were less interested in
the locally produced Cypriot Red Slip which is by far the most common type of
Late Roman fine ware on the island. In fact, at other rural and ex-urban sites
on the island, Cypriot Red Slip is typically the most common type of Late Roman
Pottery. At present the Late Roman pottery from Kition remains
unpublished (although we have heard that its publication is imminent), so it is
impossible to compare the material from Panayia-Ematousa and Pyla-Koutsopetria
to the closest urban center. The differences between the two assemblages,
at least based on our provisional analysis of our assemblage at Pyla-
Koutsopetria, is striking. It would appear that these two nearby and
nearly contemporary sites had very different relationships with the pottery
available in the local market. While matters such as function, wealth, and
site size (i.e. size of market) might well influence the kinds of material
present, the prevalence of ARS at Pyla-Koutsopetria nevertheless appears to be
one of its most striking characteristics. In fact, we might even suggest
that the difference in pottery used by residents of Panayia-Ematousa and Pyla-
Koutsopetria reflected differences in how they chose to identify
themselves. This is all the more significant considering that Roman fine
wares were the kind of elite, imported goods that likely contributed to
opportunities for elite display like dining. Scott Moore is working on
the material from <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/206991357">a survey
conducted around Athienou</a> some 20 km inland from Kition and our site and
this material should cast even more light on the patterns of pottery in
southeastern Cyprus during Late Antiquity.
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TITLE: Elwyn Robinson and the First Semester
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CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 09/02/2008 07:47:46 AM

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As readers of this blog know, I am working on editing Elwyn Robinson's
Autobiography, A Professor's Story. So far, I've managed to read
and annotate three chapters. These chapters cover Robinson's childhood on
his grandparents farm in Ohio, his school age years in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, and
his college years at <a href="http://www.oberlin.edu/">Oberlin College</a>
(1924-1928). Robinson's descriptions of his surroundings are particularly
vivid. He has a sure knack for describing equipment, buildings, and
places. He then fills these spaces with smartly drawn characters.
 His sense of place and character provides the backdrop for his own
reminiscences. Despite his eventual achievements in the scholarly realm
(if you have not read his magisterial <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/190890">History of North Dakota</a>,
you should), he is nowhere above revealing his own struggles and failings in the
academic realm. His transition from small town Ohio education to the
demanding (if friendly) expectations at Oberlin was particularly
difficult. As freshmen at the <a href="http://www.und.ed">University of
North Dakota</a>, where Robinson taught for so many years, work to make this
same transition, it is perhaps useful to excerpt a section from his
autobiography: <blockquote> I might have done better
scholastically if I had not chosen English as a major. None of the "A's" I
made were in my major. I think (I have no transcript to refer to though
there is one somewhere <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/dept/library/Collections/Robinson/og198.html">in
my papers in the manuscript division of the Chester Fritz Library</a>) that I
may have made an "A" in trigonometry, possibly one in one semester in zoology,
and perhaps one in Latin American history. On examinations I believe that
often I knew all or nearly all the answers, but I could not express them with
the sharpness and grasp of their meaning and relevance that the best of the
students could. So generally when I tried the hardest I ended up with a
B+, not an A. And that was right. In such company I was not at the
top. And I might very well have fared better in one of the sciences,
mathematics, or history. But I came to Oberlin enamored with
literature. And English was the most popular major at Oberlin. The
department had a number of attractive professors. And so I selected it as
a major without any hesitation or questioning. I had
some difficulty scholastically at the beginning of my freshman year. I was
having difficulty, apparently, in freshman composition, so Brit Tenney [a friend
of Robinson's from Chagrin Falls] helped me by reading over my compositions and
making corrections before I recopied them and turned them in. I don't
recall any trouble in French, English literature, or trigonometry, but on the
first test in Ancient History (Greece) I received a"D" even though I had studied
conscientiously. I was badly shaken by the "D" and went to talk to the
instructor, Professor Alexander, a former Rhodes scholar. The problem was
that I had not learned how to study in high school. Professor Alexander
gave me suggestions on how to prepare the history material, and I rapidly
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improved, earning a "B" for the semester in History of Greece. [N.B. Leigh
Alexander was a Princeton-trained Classicist and head of the department for
years at Oberlin. His <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/64367528">1911
dissertation</a> was on fragments of Nicholas of Damascus on the Lydian Kings
and was written under William K. Prentice.] </blockquote> Good
lessons for anyone struggling in their first semester: have someone read your
work before you turn it in, talk to your professors, and accept that studying in
college is different from studying in high school.
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TITLE: The Corinthian Countryside: History and Archaeology at Classical Vayia
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DATE: 09/01/2008 08:36:47 AM

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One of the confounding aspects of the Classical-Hellenistic Corinthia is the
dearth of ancient sources that make any clear reference to the
countryside. Most of what we can say about the rural Corinthia in
Classical antiquity is either drawn exclusively from archaeological sources or
teased out of obscure and difficult references in the literary tradition.
For some rural fortifications, such as the rubble walls on Oneion, scholars have
been able to offer a series of possible events leading to their
construction. Stroud (Hesperia 40 (1971), 139-145) argued that these
fortifications on Oneion may have been built by Spartans (or their allies) in an
effort to block the passage of the Theban general Epaminondas into the
Peloponnesus in the early 4th century. Or they may represent the camp of
Athenian mercenaries who the Corinthians invited in to fortify particularly
vulnerable stretches of their territory. In general, scholars have seen
fortifications on the Isthmus proper as being the work of foreign troops who had
an interest in preventing the main route into the Peloponnesus from being
occupied or easily passed. <a
eWriter/TowardtheIsthmus.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px;
border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="272" alt="TowardtheIsthmus"
Writer/TowardtheIsthmus_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> Lychnari
Bay and the View Toward the Isthmus The Corinthia, however, is more
than the Isthmus as our rural installations around Lychnari bay show.
Moreover, the Corinthians would have had significant motivations to protect
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their own coastline and coastal territory. During the Peloponnesian war,
the Athenian raided the unfortified coastal community of Solygeia in the rolling
hills immediately south of Mt. Oneion (Thuc. 4. 42-45). Later in Book 8
(10.2-11.2) Thucydides tells how another Athenian fleet landed troops at a the
last Saronic harbor before the Epidauria (most recently and plauisibly
identified by Dixon (and others) as Korphos). The account (and apparently the
battle) between the Athenian fleet and the Peloponnesian forces is a bit
confused, but it seems that the Athenian troops on land withdrew owing, perhaps,
to Corinthian forces present "in the neighborhood." The events of
the 5th century would have undoubtedly reinforced the vulnerability of the
Corinthian coastline to attacks. The rubble fort at Vayia may have been a
small camp for a detachment of troops positioned to defend the bay at
Lychnari. To speculate: these troops might have been the Athenian
mercenaries who were defending the Corinthian countryside in the 4th century
(Xen. Hell. 7.4.4). While such speculating is fun -- it
puts a story to otherwise silent stones -- it is hardly conclusive and in no way
makes these humble fortification more important. The key significance of
the fortification in the neighborhood of Lychnari bay is to demonstrate that the
Corinthian countryside was indeed fortified during the Classical to Hellenistic
period and that Lychnari bay was worthy of particular attention as manifest in
towers and a rubble "fortified camp". More Corinthian
Countryside: <a
Corinthia</a> <a
e-corinthia-3.html">The Corinthian Countryside: Classical Vayia</a>
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DATE: 08/29/2008 08:30:32 AM

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Some fun links this week: <ul> <li>I like blogs produced by institutions
because they are generally full of fun ideas and events. Here's Notre
Dame's Medieval Institute's blog: <a title="http://www.ndmedinst.blogspot.com/"
href="http://www.ndmedinst.blogspot.com/">http://www.ndmedinst.blogspot.com/</a>
. Some good, interesting news, observations, and events. <li>I've been
pummeled over email by the folks at the <a href="http://mmhc.slu.edu/">Midwest
Medieval History Conference</a>. So, I reckon I better post something here
about it (again). <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/MMHCProgram.pdf">Here's the
program</a> for their meeting this fall at Dennison University. <li>The <a
href="http://www.beyondboundaries.info/">7th Annual Beyond Boundaries Conference
on Integrating Technology into Teaching</a> and Learning will be held next month
at UND. I am sure there will some good papers, although nothing leaps off
<a href="http://www.beyondboundaries.info/schedule.php">their program</a> at me
right now. <li><a
href="http://www.graduateschool.und.edu/web_assets/movies/Humanities.mpg">Here's
a fun UND advertisement</a> for the Graduate School with some cool historical
photographs and video footage including Old Science Hall and the Adelphi
Fountain. You can also <a
href="http://www.graduateschool.und.edu/web_assets/movies/Brain%20Research%20Bio
chemist.mp4">check out their newest ads which ran during the Olympics</a> in
these parts. <li>Sam Fee's clever blog <a
href="http://www.thefee.net/delirium/">Arranged Delirium</a> has been
redecorated and revived. He's a fun source of knowledge about all things
Mac. Maybe he know why there is no good blogging software for Macs so I am
forced to run Parallels to use Windows Live Writer!</li></ul> Have a good
looooong weekend!
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TITLE: Teaching Thursdays: Transmedia Teaching
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CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 08/28/2008 08:05:38 AM

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I have almost finished Henry Jenkins' <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/64594290">Convergence Culture</a>
and his chapter on transmedia storytelling particularly captured my
attention. Jenkins used the Matrix franchise of films, video
games, and animated shorts as an example of a transmedia narrative. The
story told in the movies represented only one perspective or aspect of the
Matrix narrative (or narratives) that were created across a series of
platforms by a whole group of authors. Closely related to the phenomenon
of fan-fiction, such transmedia narratives often included fan generated
components that slowly blurred the line between interactive and participatory
relationships across a whole range of generally web-based media. Most of
us would admit to being storytellers, of some description, in the
classroom. The best courses that I have taught draw the students into the
story-telling experience to the point where they come increasingly to contribute
to the narrative (or narratives) that I weave in the course. The most
common format, in my classes, for student contributions to course narratives is
in-class discussion, but I have also experimented with online threaded
discussions and, this semester at least, wikis. I've come to realize that
both discussion posts and wikis provide a very simple form of participatory
experience in the educational narration process and represent one intersection
between media and educational theory and practice. My archaeological
project, the <a href="http://www.pkap.org">Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological
Project</a>, has attempted to take transmedia narration a step farther with
blogs, podcasts, and video. We encouraged the participants on the project
to develop their own narratives of the archaeological experience and hoped that
the blogs and other interfaces enabled us to juxtapose and interweave these
perspectives. One goal of mine over the last few years is to work toward
reimagining the classroom experience. Transmedia Teaching with its
participatory aspects is an appealing approach to courses like my History
101. History 101 is a large class (80+ students) that meets one day a week
at night for two and half hours. The class always attracts a large
percentage of freshmen. It is very easy for students to forget about a 100
level course that meets one day a week. Plus, the lecture bowl environment
with theater style seating and two and half hour format is hardly conducive to
creating a vibrant, interactive, classroom environment. What it is really
best suited for is the traditional lecture format, delivered at a leisurely pace
with time for questions and some Socratic interludes. I have worked over
the last few years to move more interactive components of the class to an online
environment. Course discussions, for example, appear online.
Students work together in a range of "knowledge communities" to create
authoritative sets of class notes from the lectures. Of course, none of
this captures the most adventurous imaginings of the transmedia experience in
that it does not incorporate podcasts, twitter feeds, or video. User
generated content is limited to text and in most cases (with the exception of
the wiki) this text is individually authored and relatively static. The
greatest hurdle to achieving a genuinely transmedia environment in a course
(aside from the much broader issue of student engagement with the class and
material!) is getting students to be comfortable with the tools of the New
Media. Since the start of class on Tuesday, I've had almost a dozen emails
from students who simply cannot figure out how to post on a discussion board
(UND uses Blackboard, which while somewhat less than intuitive is hardly cryptic
in its interface). Many of my students did not quite understand what a
wiki is; so it is possible that the interface itself will discourage some
students from engaging their colleagues in the class fully. Baby steps on
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the part of both the students and the teacher. Much of my conceptual
experimenting this semester is in preparation for a possible course in Digital
History next semester. For that class, my hope is to create a course that
not only introduces some of the "tools" of the Digital Historian, but also
challenges the students to understand the relationship between the tools, their
historical imagination, and the discipline of history and thus to move away from
a simplistic, instrumental approach to technology. My current vision for
the class involve the course "meeting" across a whole range of media from simple
threaded discussions to dynamic immersive environments like Second Life.
By building digital media in numerous forms into the class we will be encouraged
to experience and articulate from a first hand perspective the implications of a
deeper, transmedia, engagement with the past. For more Teaching Thursdays
content see: <a
aching-thursd.html">Teaching Thursday</a> (on this blog) <a
Thursday</a> (at Kostis Kourelis's blog) If anyone else decides to post a
weekly "Teaching Thursday" column let me know! 
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TITLE: The Roman Site of Kokkinokremos on Cyprus
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BASENAME: the-roman-site
DATE: 08/27/2008 08:38:35 AM

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This past weekend, I began to process the survey data from the <a
href="http://www.pkap.org">Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project</a>.
The goal was to produce a provisional data set that would serve as the basis for
our work this fall. We want need to write our paper for the AIAC in Rome
and we are working on an article on the Roman period at Koutsopetria to submit
to the Journal of Roman Archaeology. While I won't steal the
prehistorian's fire and report on any of their results, I can't resist offering
a sneak peak (with complimentary off-the-cuff interpretation) of the Roman
period material from the prehistoric site of Kokkinokremos. Kokkinokremos
is an important Late Bronze Age fortified site which overlooks the eastern part
of our site. In 2007 we conducted intensive survey on the site, ably
supervised by Dimitri Nakassis and Michael Brown, and in 2008 Mara Horowitz and
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<a href="http://www.ancienthistory.typepad.com/ancient_history_ramblings/">Scott
Moore</a> read the prehistoric and historic period pottery respectively from our
survey. While scholars had long known that some later material existed on the
site, no one had taken the opportunity to consider this material
carefully. Our survey has been the first project to systematically
document the post-prehistoric component of this site. Our survey work on
the nearby Koutsopetria plain, the adjacent coastal height of Vigla, and the
various flat-topped ridges that run north from the coast in the area allows us
to place the post-prehistoric material from Kokkinokremos in a broader
context. While this is not the place for a systematic or definitive
analysis, I will report that the site has produced a substantial assemblage of
material from the Archaic period through Medieval times. There is very
little evidence for early Iron Age material so we can't argue for any type of
continuity between the Late Bronze Age remains and subsequent periods. On
the other hand, the evidence for Cypro-Archaic material and ceramics from every
subsequent period indicates that the site of Kokkinokremos was re-occupied at
around the same time as the rest of the Koutsopetria coastal region. <a
eWriter/KokkinokremosRAF.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px;
border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="271" alt="KokkinokremosRAF"
Writer/KokkinokremosRAF_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> Low
Altitude Photo of Kokkinokremos The most exciting thing is that the
site comes alive during the Roman period. Early Roman finewares,
particular Eastern Sigillata A, appear more commonly on Kokkinokremos than the
Koutsopetria plain. Along side these finewares is a nice scatter of
kitchen wares and various medium coarse utility wares suggesting a domestic
assemblage. Roman material persists into the Late Roman period, but the
finewares almost entirely disappear aside from a few pieces of Cypriot Red Slip,
and the coarse wares become more common. The lack of roof tile or other
architectural material suggests that any activity on Kokkinokremos would have
been at a smaller scale than the massive quantities of Late Roman rooftile
produced by the more substantial architecture on the Koutsopetria plain.
Michael Brown has pointed out that the Bronze Age remains at the site of
Kokkinokremos might have continued to be visible into the historical
period. Its hard to imagine that the wealth of building material present
in the Bronze Age ruins would not have attracted the local inhabitants. As
this stretch of coastline came alive again in the Archaic-Classical period,
Kokkinokremos might have been the site of small scale habitation, although our
evidence for this is scant. It is also reasonable to suspect that the
inhabitants of the fortified site at nearby Vigla would have removed building
material from Kokkinokremos for, say, the fortification wall at Vigla. <a
eWriter/DaveDimitriKokkinokremos.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top:
alt="DaveDimitriKokkinokremos"
Writer/DaveDimitriKokkinokremos_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> The
Roman period may have seen continued looting as well as some more intensive land
use. The increase in quantity of material from Rome to Late Roman period
suggests an increase in intensity of activities at Kokkinokremos. The
finewares, kitchen wares and storage vessels make Roman habitation at the site
possible, although other more ephemeral activities cannot be ruled
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out. Surely some of the activities there are tied to bustling

settlement of this period on the coastal plain of Koutsopetria. <a
eWriter/RomanKokkinokremos.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px;
border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="400" alt="RomanKokkinokremos"
Writer/RomanKokkinokremos_thumb.jpg" width="292" border="0"></a> Roman
Pottery on Kokkinokremos overlaid on overall artifact densities In
her book, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/49859958">Archaeologies of
the Greek Past</a>, Susan Alcock has considered how the Romans may
have looked at the Bronze Age remains on Crete. She not only noted the
differences in how the Hellenistic and Roman residents of Crete understood the
prehistoric past there and adopted different commemorative practices in
constructing their relationships to the ruins in the landscape. We are
still at a very preliminary stage of interpreting the post-prehistoric material
from Kokkinokremos but the strategies employed by Alcock would certainly have
some utility at our site. The political, economic, and even "cultural"
character of this region of Cyprus underwent significant changes between the
Archaic period and Late Antiquity seeing Phoenician, Greek, and Roman
influences. The material at Kokkinokremos could well shed light on how
these different regimes engaged the Bronze Age ruins that remains visible in
their midst. 
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TITLE: Libby, Evolution, and North Dakota
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BASENAME: libby-evolution
DATE: 08/26/2008 08:06:22 AM

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This weekend, <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/24/education/24evolution.html">the New York
Times had a front page story on the difficulty of teaching evolution in high
schools in Florida</a>. My wife reports that Phil Jackson, (the coach of
the Lakers and UND alumnus) <a
href="http://www.grandforksherald.com/articles/?id=85131&section=homepage">w
ho was on campus yesterday to receive an honorary degree</a>, mentioned learning
about evolution among his memories of his time at the University. 
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All this evolution talk reminded me of a series of correspondence in the Orin

G. Libby papers (OGL#49) in the eponymous <a
href="http://www.library.und.edu/Collections/oglmain.html">University of North
Dakota's Orin G. Libby Manuscript Collection</a> (at the Elywn B. Robinson
Department of Special Collections). <a
href="http://www.library.und.edu/Collections/og49.html">Orin G. Libby</a> was
perhaps the best known member of the University of North Dakota's Department of
History where he taught from 1902-1945. Folks tend to remember Libby as
stern and conservative figure, and in many ways this is certainly the case, but
Libby was quite progressive in many of his views. Alongside his friend and
ally John M. Gillette, Libby participated in the Women's suffrage movement, was
active in progressive causes in the tumultuous decade of the 1920s, and was
involved in establishing the local chapter of the American Association of
University Professors. Among his causes was the opposition
to anti-evolution legislation proposed in the North Dakota legislature in 1927
(#OLG 49, Box 1, Folder 3). According to Libby's correspondence, rumors
that an anti-evolution bill began to circulate as early as late January of
1927. Such bills were in the air all across the country in the immediate
aftermath of the Scopes-Monkey Trial. Libby's papers show that he not only
corresponded with <a
href="http://web1.stthomas.edu/libraries/special/archives/rs_div/inventories/reu
terdahl.html">Arvid Reuterdahl</a>, a leading member of the Minnesota Theistic
Society -- a group who offered support to groups who opposed anti-evolution
legislation -- but also figures like A. W. Jamison, a sociologist at the
University of Arkansas who played a role in the fight against ant-evolution
legislation in that state (Gillette, himself a sociologist, seems to have put
Jamison in contact with Libby). Libby was also in touch with <a
href="http://content.cdlib.org/xtf/view?docId=hb338nb1j4&doc.view=frames&amp
;chunk.id=div00008&toc.depth=1&toc.id=">Samuel Jackson Holmes</a> the
renown geneticist, scholar of evolution, and zoologist at the University of
California - Berkeley whose mysterious sounding "Committee M" had
prepared a report on evolution designed to be circulated to legislators and
interested parties. These individuals and groups circulated pamphlets and
encouragement in the fight to oppose a ban on states teaching evolution.
When the bill was presented in the North Dakota House Committee on Education
in February of that year (by L.S. Richardson), Libby began to correspond
regularly with Attorney General George F. Shafer (who would later serve as
governor of the State). In a letter dated to February 8, 1927, Shafer assured
Libby that "I hardly think the bill will get any where, as there seems to
be little interest in it. I will keep you advised as to the situation.‚Äù
It seems that Libby kept close tabs on the Bill as it languished in
committee. His colleagues in the fight against the banning of evolution
corresponded words on encouragement and reported on their own victories.
Jamison reports on February 11, 1927 that the bill opposing evolution was
defeated in Arkansas. On February 22nd, Shafer wrote to Libby telling
him: <blockquote> "You probably noticed in the Press the fact that
the Anti-evolution bill was indefinitely postponed in the House of
Representatives the other day without objection. I understand that there
was some sentiment on the Committee favorable to the bill, but there was so much
sentiment against it, not only among the members of the Committee on Education,
to which it was referred, but was among the members of the Legislature
generally, that the proponents did not make an effort to put it
across"</blockquote> Libby was clearly pleased with the decision,
and in a letter three days later to Jamison in Arkansas, he congratulates
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Jaminson on his success "in clearing the atmosphere of this pestilential

fog."
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TITLE: The Corinthian Countryside: Classical Vayia
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DATE: 08/25/2008 08:09:16 AM

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I have a soft spot for rubble fortifications. As a budding
archaeologist working on the <a
Korinthia Archaeological Survey</a>, the directors of that project encouraged me
to publish a series of rubble fortification along Mt. Oneion -- the mountain
ridge that forms to the southern border to the Isthmus. While modest in
construction style (and perhaps even significance), their informal nature and
close relationship with the local topography seemed (at least to my mind) to
summarize the close relationship between human energy and the physical
environment. Moreover, to discover a rubble fort was a challenge and
required luck and diligence. They are typically built of the local stones
-- field stones in fact -- so they blend in with their physical environments and
in many cases are virtually invisible until you are on top of them. And,
declaring a rubble feature to be something ancient required familiarity with the
local countryside and the ability to discern the difference between animal pens,
field walls, terraces, piles of cleared stones, and the myriad other features
constructed of loose stones. Studying a rubble fort makes me feel like an
archaeologist as it taxes my abilities to define, map, and interpret a feature
in the landscape. <a
eWriter/VayiaRubble.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px;
border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="272" alt="VayiaRubble"
Writer/VayiaRubble_thumb.jpg" width="404"
border="0"></a> David Pettegrew drawing... what
exactly? So, it was particularly gratifying to spend a few days
documenting a rubble fortification on the Vayia peninsula in the
Corinthia. Dimitri Nakassis and I originally stumbled upon the feature
when exploring Vayia peninsula several years ago. <a
href="http://home.messiah.edu/~dpettegrew/">David Pettegrew</a> and I returned
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to this site this summer and tried to piece together the hodge-podge of walls
standing some 250 m to the east of the Early Bronze Age structures already
documented and published by the EKAS team. The Vayia rubble walls appear
to encircle a narrow stretch of level ground on the spine of the Vayia
ridge. While the wall has disappeared in places and in other areas is
overgrown, it seems to run for about 85 m east to west and 20-25 m north to
south (around 2000 sq. m). <a
eWriter/VayiaWall.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; border-
left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="272" alt="VayiaWall"
Writer/VayiaWall_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> This is a
wall The walls are very similar to those on Mt. Oneion. They
consist of two faces of unworked stones and a cobble fill. In the few
areas where both faces are still visible and standing, the walls are slightly
over 1 m in width. Unlike the walls on Mt. Oneion which are relatively
well preserved, the walls on Vayia often disappear into disorganized tumble,
presumably disturbed by the centuries of goats and shepherds who continue even
today to bring their flocks to the relatively "marginal" land of the peninsula
to graze. The only obvious features associated with this series of rubble
walls are a few well-defined, right-angle turns which may represent rooms or
even the foundations for towers built against the wall in a casemate
fashion. Similar towers occurred along the rubble walls at Koroni above
Port Rafte in Attica (this was published by Eugene Vanderpool, James R.
McCredie, Arthur Steinberg in Hesperia 31 (1962), 26-61). <a
eWriter/VayiaWall2.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px;
border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="404" alt="VayiaWall2"
Writer/VayiaWall2_thumb.jpg" width="272" border="0"></a> More
wall... The greatest challenge with any rubble wall in the
countryside is assigning a date to the structure. Excavation, like those
conducted by Vanderpool, McCredie, and Steinberg is the surest way to ascertain
the date of any wall, but sometimes there is enough evidence visible on the
surface to allow an educated guess. On Mt. Oneion, for example, the
overwhelming majority of material present on the ridge top was Classical-
Hellenistic making it difficult to imagine any other date for the wall
there. The same appears to be true at Vayia. The assemblage of
material present both on the surface of the ground and amidst the tumble of the
rubble walls is almost identical to the material that we documented at Ano Vayia
and Lychnari. The only difference appears to be that the assemblage at Vayia
includes more highly diagnostic fine wares -- including Late Classical-
Hellenistic black-glazed pottery. Painted tile, pithos and amphora sherds,
and cooking pots made up the rest of the assemblage. Considering the
proximity of the Early Bronze Age settlement, it was a surprising that we did
not see any material clearly datable to an earlier period. <a
eWriter/VayiaFor.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px;
border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="276" alt="VayiaFor"
Writer/VayiaFor_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> A
Plan... not a stone-by-stone For more on our work in the Corinthian
countryside see: <a
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Corinthia</a>
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TITLE: Friday and the Quickest of Quickhits
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BASENAME: friday-and-the
DATE: 08/22/2008 07:28:58 AM

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The start of the semester is upon me: I am still reading three books
(how did this happen: Freud's Interpretation of Dreams, Henry Jenkins',
<a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/64594290">Convergence
Culture</a>, and R. G. Collingwood's, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/392272">The Idea of History</a>.
I have at least three articles started but not finished: "Three New Sites in
the Corinthian Countryside", "Hybridity, Ritual, and Authority in Early
Christian Greece", and "Dream Archaeology and Christian Memory" I have
three classes (see <a
aching-thursd.html">yesterday's post</a>). I need to work on the survey
data from the <a href="http://www.pkap.org/">Pyla-Koustopetria
Archaeological Project</a>. And I need to update <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/HomePage.html">my web
site</a>. Wow.
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TITLE: Teaching Thursday
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CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 08/21/2008 08:02:36 AM

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The new semester is looming and my classes begin on Tuesday at 12:30.
This semester I will teach three courses, and I am thinking about running a
"Teaching Thursday" feature on the blog which recounts my adventures in
educating the finest undergraduates (and graduate students) on the Northern
Plains. This semester I'll teach: History 101: Western
Civilization: Beginning of Time to 1400. I am slowly transitioning this
class from a "traditional" Western Civilization style class to a World History
type course in anticipation of a gradual move toward World History in our
department. Since I am dealing entirely with "pre-industrial" societies
the transition to a World History type format is somewhat less
challenging. Patrician Crone's almost venerable text <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/18984512">Pre-Industrial
Societies</a> will serve as my guide as I try to put the civilization of
the Mediterranean in a broader context. Since I teach the course at night
and it meets only 1 day a week, I have worked gradually to develop a more robust
online component for the class. It is also a big class (100+) without
recitations or discussion sections. To make up for this, I break the class
into groups of about 25 and assign them short discussion questions focusing on
the analysis of primary source readings. These discussions are conducted
online via a threaded discussion. In theory this will give the students a
chance to interact with a smaller group of their peers, respond to their
classmates interpretation of texts, and encourage a kind of "collective
intelligence" in their reading of the primary sources. This is, of course,
best case scenario. Since I require one discussion posting from each
student and it must be 10 lines long, worse case scenario is that the students
are required to write a very short essay each week. Complementing the
threaded discussion, I am going to attempt a Weekly Wiki component in the
class. I will make available a Weekly Wiki page for each lecture (and
perhaps for each primary source reading) where the students will be encouraged
to develop weekly class notes, highlight certain themes in the course, and
propose test questions. It's another study in collective intelligence
which will encourage the students to pool their understanding of the material
and produce some kind of synthetic summary. We'll see how this
works. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/History_101_AU2008_Syllabus.htm">Her
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e is the syllabus</a>. History 240: The Historians Craft. Named

after <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/390753">Marc Bloch's significant
little work</a> on the writing and study of history, this course is required for
all undergraduate majors. The course has two components. One part is
a cursory introduction to historiography and the historical method.
Generally speaking students have received some introduction to these topics in
their mid and upper level history course already. The second part of the
course is a research seminar. I allow the students to pick any topic that
they want and provide them with structure for writing a research paper.
The goal is for them to develop a more systematic approach to research and
writing. This will ideally serve them will when they have to write the
capstone paper that all history majors are required to write (History
440). I am using for the first time, Jenny Presnell's <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/64511082">The information-literate
historian : a guide to research for history students</a>. This little
(and relatively inexpensive book) has some good, practical advice, and is
particularly strong with regard to the use of the internet and other digital
tools for historical research. My hope is that this will help bridge the
gap between the more digitally savvy students and those less comfortable with
internet and library searches, research databases, and e-texts of various
descriptions. The goal of the class is a 15 page paper and a 15 minute
"professional" style presentation. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/Syllabus_2.2_AU2008.htm">Here is the
syllabus</a>. History 502: Graduate Historiography. This is the
required historiography class for all graduate students in history. It's a
pretty standard course with the usual units on major historical movements
(Annales School, British Marxists, New Cultural History et c.) and related
phenomena to the field of history. Since the University of North Dakota's
M.A. in History is designed as a two-year program and most students take this
class in the first semester of their first year, I usually encourage them to see
the big picture readings in this class as a key component in building a
historiographic background for their M.A. Thesis. The final assignment in
the course is a preliminary prospectus for their M.A. which explores their own
specialized research with larger historiographic trends in the discipline.
The only nod that I will make toward "innovation" in this class is I will run as
an experiment a <a href="http://twitter.com/home">Twitter feed</a>. If
enough students are willing to join, it will help keep the class in contact with
one another (and this is especially useful in helping the students share
books). I also hope to encourage students to post questions to the Twitter
feed as they read. These questions will help to introduce the readings at
the beginning of our weekly meetings. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/History_502_Syllabus_AU2008.htm">Her
e is the syllabus</a>. All the syllabi are in "beta" still, but will need
to be finalized by the end of the week. I hope to report on my various
experiments in these courses in this very space over the next 16 weeks...
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Bigfoot
IP: 134.129.137.93
URL:
DATE: 12/01/2009 02:01:55 PM
Could a plebian's text be venerable, too?
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TITLE: More Late Antiquity
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BASENAME: more-late-antiq
DATE: 08/20/2008 07:56:40 AM

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Circulating on various blogs and email lists is the announcement of a new
monograph series published by Oxford University Press and edited by Ralph
Mathisen (who also is the editor of the new <a
href="http://www.press.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_late_antiquity/">Journal of
Late Antiquity</a> (<a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2008/07/jo
urnal-of-late.html">for my impressions of its first volume</a>): <blockquote>
OXFORD STUDIES IN LATE ANTIQUITY: Late Antiquity has unified what in the past
were disparate disciplinary, chronological, and geographical areas of study. In
this spirit, Oxford Studies in Late Antiquity will provide a venue for the
finest new late antique scholarship, with coverage extending from the late Roman
world to the Sassanid, Byzantine, and early Islamic and Carolingian worlds. The
series welcomes proposals relating to a wide array of methodological approaches
including, but not limited to, history, society, culture, religion, literature,
archaeology, art history, papyrology, epigraphy, numismatics, palaeography,
demography, prosopography, linguistics, gender studies, family history, and
rhetorical and literary theory. Series Editor: Ralph Mathisen is Professor of
History, Classics, and Medieval Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-
Champaign and the Editor of the Journal of Late Antiquity.</blockquote>
The purview of this journal is predictably wide in a geographic,
chronological, and disciplinary sense. We can hope that it will join the
University of California's Press's <a
href="http://www.ucpress.edu/books/TCH.ser.php">Transformation of the Classical
Heritage Series</a> (edited by Peter Brown) in shaping the contours of the
discipline. Along similar lines, Gillian Clark has a nice, short piece in the
Fall 2008 Journal of Early Christian Studies ("‚ÄúThis strangely
neglected author‚Äù: Translated Texts for Historians and Late Antiquity" 16
(2008) 131-141) focusing on the origins and development of the Translated Texts
for Historians series at Liverpool University Press. Most scholars who study
Late Antiquity, east or west, have at some point availed themselves to these
handy "candy-colored" (133) texts for their neat translations or handy
historical commentaries. This short article is completely in keeping with
the recent (last 10 years?) interest in looking back over the development of the
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field of Late Antiquity. From the world of the new media, I've yet to
find a "blog of record" for Late Antique history and archaeology. Several
blogs do make regular reference to Late Antique matter (e.g. <a
href="http://www.iconoclasm.dk/">Iconoclasm</a>, <a
href="http://judithweingarten.blogspot.com/">Zenobia: Empress of the East</a>
and even here <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/late_antiq
uity/index.html">from time to time</a>) the most consistently informative among
them is the regularly updated blog <a href="http://www.heroicage.org">The Heroic
Age</a>. Where else would I be likely to stumble across such a cool
conference as "<a
href="http://home.vicnet.net.au/~medieval/conference2008/conferencehome.html">We
lcoming the Stranger in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages</a>" put on by
the <a href="http://home.vicnet.net.au/~medieval/welcome.html">Australian Early
Medieval Association</a>. <a
href="http://home.vicnet.net.au/~medieval/conference2008/programme.html">The
program(me) for this conference looks pretty interesting</a>! Plus you get
to visit Brisbane... one of my favorite cities!
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TITLE: The Corinthian Countryside: The Passes of the Eastern Corinthia
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DATE: 08/19/2008 08:04:02 AM

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Those of you who are regular readers of this blog know that I have been
serializing research that David Pettegrew and I completed this summer in Eastern
Corinthia in the vicinity of Lychnari Bay. There are links to the previous
blogs in this series at the end of the post so you can catch up with the
story! <a
e-corinthia-1.html">Last week</a> I described a tower overlooking Lychnari Bay
that we have cleverly called Lychnari Tower. Standing amidst the ruins of
the tower we were able to clearly make out the <a
e-corinthian.html">site of Ano Vayia</a> that I described a few weeks
earlier. Ano Vayia consists of a circular tower and a north-south oriented
building of relatively imposing construction. The site lines
linking Ano Vayia and Lychnari Tower made us begin to wonder how these two sites
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interacted with each other in antiquity. The material present at the sites
appears to be almost identical and the construction techniques -- namely the
rough polygonal style -- suggest that the two sites were at least roughly
contemporary. Our curiosity regarding the function of these two sites led
us to explore more carefully the local topography. We knew, for example,
that both sites overlooked a rolling valley bottom that continues today to be
used for agriculture. This valley runs east to west passing by the village
of Katakali and immediately inland from the coastal ridge that defines the
abrupt Saronic coastline of the Corinthia. So it is possible to walk, for
example, from Lychnari Bay to the town of Kenchreai on the Isthmus passing over
the eastern part of the Oneion ridge near Stanotopi. The tower at Lychnari
is well-situated to observe movement through this valley and to see along the
coastline of the Corinthia to the east. So this tower could observe any
one coming from the east along the coast and trying to land in the shelter of
Lychnari Bay and then walking west through the inland valley. <a
eWriter/Lychnari%20to%20Katakali.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top:
0px; border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="284" alt="Lychnari to
Katakali"
Writer/Lychnari%20to%20Katakali_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a>
 Lychnari is to the right and Katakali to the left <a
eWriter/AnoVayiaViewWest_3.jpg"><a
eWriter/AnoVayiaViewWest_3.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px;
border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="272" alt="AnoVayiaViewWest"
Writer/AnoVayiaViewWest_thumb.jpg" width="404"
border="0"></a></a> View from Ano Vayia West through
Valley <a
eWriter/LychnariViewEast_3.jpg"><a
eWriter/LychnariViewEast_3.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px;
border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="272" alt="LychnariViewEast"
Writer/LychnariViewEast_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a></a>
 View from Lychnari East along Coast The site of Ano Vayia was
not as well situated to observe the coastline or the east-west valley.
Instead the site of Ano Vayia overlooks the Vayia River -- a seasonal torrent
that descends steeply from the rugged interior of the Corinthia. This
river opens into the Saronic Gulf at a pebbly beach that is not as sheltered as
Lychnari Bay, but gradual enough to allow ancient ships to come ashore.
Here's where things get interesting: from the Vayia river valley it is possible
to proceed east. Climbing the eastern side of the river bank, one can
ascend into a valley that runs to the north of the coastal ridge. This
valley allows one to walk to east toward another Corinthian bay called
Frangolimano. This route in an important pass because it means that it is
possible to walk from Kenchreai on the Isthmus, to the area around Lychnari Bay,
to Frangolimano and then onto the main routes south into the Epidauria further
south. And this isn't just topographic speculatin' either! David
Pettegrew and I walked this pass and noted the remains of a built path in
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numerous places. So, some time in the pre-automotive (pre-modern) past,

this route from Lychnari Bay/Vayia to Frangolimano actually functioned as a
transportation route. Moreover, a little library work (particularly <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/24380812">I. Peppas 1990</a>) turned up at
least two fortifications situated along this pass: one is rubble fort which is
difficult to date. The other is a "Frankish" (or Byzantine?) fortification
situated to guard the route from Frangolimano to points southeast near the
village of Sophiko. <a
eWriter/Lychnari%20to%20Frangolimano.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-
top: 0px; border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="284" alt="Lychnari to
Frangolimano"
Writer/Lychnari%20to%20Frangolimano_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a>
 Lychnari on the left to Frangolimano on the far right <a
eWriter/PassViewWest_3.jpg"><a
eWriter/PassViewWest_3.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px;
border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="272" alt="PassViewWest"
Writer/PassViewWest_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a></a> View
from Pass east of Ano Vayia to West. The hill in the background is Ano
Vayia. So our topographic study of this region revealed that this
was not just an isolated corner of the Corinthia turned over to fish-farming and
ramshackle vacation homes like it is today, but in antiquity, it may have
represented a significant transportation corridor served by two harbors (at
Lychnari Bay and Frangolimano) and a well-define route linking them to the
bustling Isthmus or the southeastern Corinthia and Epidauria beyond. Is it
possible that our sites were situated to take advantage of travel along this
route? For more on our work in the Corinthian countryside see: 
<a
e-corinthia-1.html">The Corinthian Countryside: The Lychnari Tower</a>
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Maddy Bray
1000
IP: 76.170.0.106
DATE: 08/23/2008 03:18:55 PM
This is really interesting. Do you know of any good references on this topic (in
English)?
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TITLE: A Double Post on the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
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BASENAME: a-double-post-o
DATE: 08/18/2008 07:58:13 AM

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A New PKAP Web site First, PKAP has unveiled its new
web page. Designed by <a href="http://www.thefee.net/">Sam Fee</a> and his
students at <a href="http://www.washjeff.edu/">Washington and Jefferson
College</a>, this is the third version of the PKAP page. Our original PKAP
page, developed by R. Scott Moore, was fairly minimalist and showed its "old
school" roots by using frames (<a
href="http://web.archive.org/web/20050306045529/http://www.chss.iup.edu/pkap/">y
ou can check it out here via the Internet Archive</a>). Two years ago we
redesigned the web page to show off better some of the multimedia aspects of the
project. The site incorporated more flash and employed an opening page
that was different from the pages inside the site. I am not sure that we
were ever satisfied entirely with its appearance or functionality. Our
content lives on multiple servers across at least three blogs, various streaming
media servers, and three university systems and despite our efforts to maintain
the site, we were never able to really integrate all this content.
Somewhere along the line we acquired the web address of <a
href="http://www.pkap.org">www.pkap.org</a>. The new site, now at <a
href="http://www.pkap.org">www.pkap.org</a> is cleaner, leaner, and more
"typical" in appearance. We hope that a more minimal approach will allows
us more flexibility in the wide range of content. At present, though, we
haven't brought everything into the new page (note that there are no links to <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/Emerging_Cypriot.html">Emerging
Cypriot</a>, recently released <a
e-final-pkap.html">"Voices of Archaeology" podcasts</a>, or our interactive
map. Nor have we integrated an RSS aggregator (<a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/BlogFeedPageGoogle.html">like
here on my page</a>), but these are things that will come. So, if you
have a chance, please go and check out our new page and give us some feedback
here on its general appearance and content! Either post a comment here or
<a href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/ContactInfo.html">contact
me</a>! PKAP Sightings in the Big Apple <a
href="http://www.xanga.com/jpatrow">Joe Patrow</a>, our contact with the bright
lights of Hollywood, UND and PKAP alumnus, and the director of both <a
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Cypriot</a> and <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/Multimedia.html">Survey on
Cyprus</a>, has gone big time, but fortunately he hasn't forgotten his
roots. The New York gossip blog <a
href="http://justjared.buzznet.com/">Just Jared</a> recently reported <a
href="http://justjared.buzznet.com/2008/08/14/kevin-jonas-taylor-swift-
couple/">a sighting of Kevin Jonas and Taylor Swift on the set of their 3D
concert video in New York</a> (I have no idea who they are or what it means, but
bear with me...). In the back ground of one of the photos you can see <a
href="http://justjared.buzznet.com/gallery/photos.php?yr=2008&mon=08&evt
=jonas-swift&pic=kevin-jonas-taylor-swift-couple-03.jpg">Joe Patrow wearing
a UND Mediterranean Archaeology t-shirt</a>!! <a
eWriter/kevin-jonas-taylor-swift-couple-03.jpg"><img style="border-top-width:
0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px"
height="376" alt="kevin-jonas-taylor-swift-couple-03"
Writer/kevin-jonas-taylor-swift-couple-03_thumb.jpg" width="204" border="0"></a>
<a
eWriter/BigTimePatrow.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width:
0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px" height="376"
alt="BigTimePatrow"
Writer/BigTimePatrow_thumb.jpg" width="147" border="0"></a> <a
eWriter/PatrowColors.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width:
alt="PatrowColors"
Writer/PatrowColors_thumb.jpg" width="204" border="0"></a>
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COMMENT:
IP: 129.133.127.101
URL:
DATE: 08/19/2008 03:23:57 PM
This is hilarious. I've never heard of these celebrities, but Celina had (as
well as the celebrity gossip website)
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Common Japanese words
EMAIL: japanesewords@gmail.com
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IP: 113.197.131.215
URL: http://ezinearticles.com/?Studying-Common-Japanese-Words-to-Gain-
Fluency&id=2083116
DATE: 03/30/2009 09:48:44 PM
The new site looks a little bit dry (i think it is the light blue on white), but
is much better. Also, glad you decided to get rid of the opening page.
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DATE: 08/15/2008 07:44:35 AM

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Just some odds and ends for the end of the week: <ul> <li><a
href="http://www.pkap.org">Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project</a> in the
News: <ul> <li><a
href="http://blogs.messiah.edu/news/2008/08/13/archaeological/">Messiah College
did a short feature on David Pettegrew</a>'s involvement in PKAP. He's a
co-director and brought over 3 students this year to help us with excavation.
<li>The Grand Forks Herald also showed PKAP some love in their <a
href="http://www.grandforksherald.com/articles/index.cfm?id=83908&section=Ne
ws&freebie_check&CFID=70568571&CFTOKEN=18014586&jsessionid=8830e
eb8eb711116362c">Sunday Higher Education Notebook</a>. The Herald
consistently prints the press releases that we circulate and we appreciate their
support in helping bring our project to the community!</li></ul> <li><a
href="http://geography.unco.edu/GPRM/">American Association of Geographers Rocky
Mountain/Great Plains</a> division and the <a
href="http://www.asprs.org/">American Society for Photogrammetry & Remote
Sensing</a> (Upper Midwest Chapter) will co-sponsor <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/org/gprm/index.htm">a conference at the
University of North Dakota this September</a> hosted by UND's Department of
Geography (good friends and supplier of invaluable technical support to PKAP).
<li><a href="http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/">Bryn Mawr Classical Review</a> has
gone all "Web 2.0" on us!! <a href="http://www.bmcreview.org/">They now
have a blog and invite responses to their reviews</a>. So far, there have
only been a few responses, one of which says only "yeah" -- which is a bit
minimalist for my taste, but cool. <li><a
href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/">Buildings, Objects, and Situations</a> has
come to life over the last month!! This is a great blog. <li>Another good
read that keeps appearing whenever I search for material for a Digitial History
class that I am developing: <a
href="http://digitalscholarship.wordpress.com/">Digital Scholarship in the
Humanities</a>. It will likely join my little cadre of Digital Humanities
blogs: If I was a bit smarter and more tech savvy, I would understand and
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appreciate more fully the intelligent posts over at <a

href="http://digitalhistoryhacks.blogspot.com/index.html">Digital History
Hacks</a>. I always follow the <a
href="http://electricarchaeologist.wordpress.com/">Electric
Archaeologist</a>. I try to keep up with <a
href="http://horothesia.blogspot.com/">horothesia</a>. <li>How cool is
Sebastian Heath's <a href="http://classics.uc.edu/troy/grbpottery/html/amphoras-
r.html">"provisional" online publication of Roman Amphora from Troy</a>? <li>A
little Metadata: After my little vacation, my blog readership fell off a
bit. It's nice to see it bounce back to Springtime levels thanks to the
some good PR from my university and people who did not lose faith in my interest
in blogging!</li></ul> Have a good weekend!
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TITLE: Hybridity in Cyprus
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: hybridity-in-cy
DATE: 08/14/2008 08:21:15 AM

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I‚Äôve just managed a quick read of Bernard Knapp‚Äôs new book, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/167764381">Prehistoric and Protohistoric
Cyprus</a>. He employs a whole range of different approaches in an
effort to grasp the complexity of the Bronze Age and early Iron Age
Cyprus. In particular, he appeals to concepts of insularity and
connectivity to frame the development of Bronze age culture on the island.
Of particular interest to me was his use of post-colonial theory,
particularly the idea of hybridity to reposition discussion of cultural
interaction on Cyprus. Rather than relying on older, but still prevalent
discussions of invasion, colonization, and acculturation, Knapp reads the
complex material record of the Cypriot Bronze Age as the product of a hybrid
society where Cypriot identity is continuously renegotiated against the backdrop
of a wide range of influences. This approach works well with his
overarching emphasis on island archaeology in that Cyprus' insular position,
while clearly exposed to outside influences, offers a geographically delimited
zone of interaction which has obvious, if only implicitly defined, cultural
analogs. More importantly, Knapp does a good job of tying the idea of
hybridity to identity. The hybrid confounds preconceived notions of
cultural identity (both in the past and in our own academic discourse) in an
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effort to gain advantage, to subvert repressive cultural regimes, or to enable

mobility between groups with divergent sets of cultural expectations. (As
an aside, it was curious that Knapp did not apply the concept of hybridity to
the architecture of particular sites. In his discussion of Pyla-
Kokkinokremos he continued to appeal to rather functional
interpretations of the site's architecture and consequently its place within the
Bronze Age settlement hierarchy on the island. A hybrid interpretation
might propose that the inhabitants of the Pyla-Kokkinokremos employed
aspects of architecture -- like the casemate design of the site's outer wall --
in ways that were quite distinct from their function, say, in a Near Eastern or
Aegean context. E.g. there are several "Mediterranean style" homes here in
Grand Forks, North Dakota, that reflect neither the presence of a Mediterranean
community in the town, nor some kind of functional advantage to Mediterranean
architecture in the local environment. Is it possible that the curious
architectural choices at Pyla-Kokkinokremos are intended to distinguish
the site and its inhabitants from other centers on the island?) <a
eWriter/Siteviewtowest.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px;
border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="272" alt="Siteviewtowest"
Writer/Siteviewtowest_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> Such an
approach becomes more difficult in later periods, I think, but still holds
remarkable potential. By Late Roman times, for example, the island of
Cyprus is part of a vast, multi-cultural empire. Its position as an island
astride busy sea lanes provides it with an exceptional level of connectivity (to
use <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/42692026">Horden and Purcell's</a>
term) with surrounding regions. Thus, identifying specifically "Cypriot"
practices, becomes an exercise in recognizing explicit links between the
communities on Cyprus and sources of power or authority both on the island and
elsewhere in the Eastern Mediterranean. In some contexts, <a
e-early-chris.html">like Early Christian architecture</a>, the willingness to
combine various features common to buildings in Asia Minor, the Levant, and the
Aegean in different ways results in a bewildering array of church forms and
types. The diverse forms of Early Christian architecture presumably
represent some part of the diversity of liturgical practice on the island and,
as I have argued elsewhere, this variation while still incomprehensible to me,
most likely provides insights into a whole range of aspects of Early Christian
life ranging from the patronage of ecclesiastical architecture, to the existence
of immigrant, heretical, or monastic groups, to the rivalry between episcopal
sees both on the island and elsewhere in the region. At the <a
href="http://www.pkap.org">Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological
Project</a>, we have considered the productive tension between hybridity and
connectivity in the ceramic assemblage produced by our coastal site. The
similarities and differences between the material present at our site and on
contemporary site's elsewhere in the region could well represent the efforts of
individuals at our site to negotiate a distinct cultural identity. The
particular assemblage of Late Roman finewares at the site could reflect the
effort of the inhabitants at Pyla-Koutsopetria to distinguish
themselves from the inhabitants of surrounding communities. Any
similarities between the assemblages can be understood as both their similar
place within the larger economic network of the Eastern Mediterranean as well as
the need for present identity in a way that was broadly understandable in the
region. A hybrid reading of even subtle variations in such things as
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ceramic assemblages and architecture at even "mid sized" sites like Pyla-
Koutsopetria and Pyla-Kokkinokremos enables us to understand
these places as "<a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/28113876">locations of
culture</a>" and further undermine the essentialized, urban monopoly on cultural
production proposed by earlier generations of scholars. 
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TITLE: Spolia in the Garden
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
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BASENAME: spolia-in-the-g
DATE: 08/13/2008 08:10:43 AM

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This summer I got a chance to hang out a bit with Jon Frey at the site of <a
href="http://isthmia.osu.edu/">Isthmia</a>. For the past several years,
he's been working on understanding the use of spolia -- that is bits and pieces
of older monuments -- that were built into the <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/26158265">Hexamilion wall</a> in Late
Antiquity. His interests derive from his excellent dissertation on the
topic: <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/197161577">Speaking through
spolia : the language of architectural reuse in the fortifications of late Roman
Greece</a>. In Late Antiquity, the use of spolia became a regular
practice in monumental architecture. Scholars from the "bad old days"
understood this Late Antique practice as evidence for the decline in skills
among Late Antique craftsmen and the weakness of the Late Roman economy.
For this earlier generation of scholars, the use of spolia reflected the decline
of ancient culture. Now most scholar recognize the use of spolia as an
intentional choice on the part of Late Antique architects, and the combination
of old blocks, columns, and even inscriptions gave Late Antique buildings the
desired variatio (variation) that was central to the aesthetic of the day.
Scholars who study spolia have used it to explore issues of Late Antique and
Byzantine attitudes toward earlier buildings and how they sought to incorporate,
appropriate and even commemorate these earlier structures in their own
monumental environment. As I mentioned in my brief note on the <a
urion-and-aba.html">Kourion basilica on Cyprus</a>, the desire for spolia among
Late Antique and Byzantine builders presumably influenced the archaeological
processes at play during the abandonment of Late Antique and earlier
buildings. At Kourion, for example, a there is evidence for a group of
1006
workers who systematically dismantled parts of the episcopal precinct in

preparation for the transfer of parts of that building to another site.
Similar systematic quarrying of site appears elsewhere in the Eastern
Mediterranean. The energy exerted to obtain high quality spolia does not
appear to have been much less intensive than the initial quarrying of
stones. In my own community, Grand Forks, North Dakota, <a
all-town-arch.html">recent construction projects have uncovered the remains of
earlier buildings destroyed a decade ago in a catastrophic flood</a>. The
scatter of bricks, concrete, pipes, and even everyday objects form a halo around
a new home. Eventually, I would guess, these fragments of the past will be
removed or turned under a well manicured lawn. As my wife and I begin to
do some rather significant restoration work on our own 100 year old house, we've
had opportunities to produce spolia of our own. Being archaeologically
inclined we could not simply discard these fragments of earlier
construction! I was admiring my wife's herb garden the other day and
noticed that she had lined the space with bricks that had been quarried from a
wall in our house. These bricks had surrounded a hole in an interior wall
of our house through which the chimney for a coal or wood stove passed.
Judging by the color and fabric of the bricks, they were probably made from Red
River clays -- most likely at the local Red River Valley Brick Company.
They are soft, buff to red in color and tend to have a fair amount of lime in
them. Similar bricks can be seen in our now crumbling foundations. <a
eWriter/GardenSpolia1.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px;
Writer/GardenSpolia1_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> <a
eWriter/GardenSpolia2.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px;
Writer/GardenSpolia2_thumb.jpg" width="304" border="0"></a>
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COMMENT:
IP: 71.185.140.31
URL:
DATE: 08/25/2008 09:59:42 AM
I couldn't resist presenting some more garden spolia, see
http://kourelis.blogspot.com/2008/08/spolia-in-garden-fernwood-cemetery_25.html
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TITLE: The Corinthian Countryside: Lychnari Tower
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
ALLOW PINGS: 1
DATE: 08/12/2008 08:04:38 AM

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This is the fourth in a series of posts on new research in the Corinthian
countryside (for links to the previous posts see below). In particular, I
am focusing on recent fieldwork conducted by <a
href="http://home.messiah.edu/~dpettegrew/">David Pettegrew</a> and me this past
summer in the vicinity of Lychnari Bay. <a
eWriter/TowardLychnari.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px;
border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="272" alt="TowardLychnari"
Writer/TowardLychnari_thumb.jpg" width="404"
border="0"></a> Lychnari Bay This post will focus on
the site of Lychnari Tower. The substantial remains of a round tower stand
on the low, but steep hill that forms the western side of Lychnari bay.
The tower shares many features with the remains at the site of Ano Vayia.
It is built in the rough polygonal style -- meaning that the builders only
trimmed blocks to fit with their neighbors rather than shaping them into clearly
defined courses as one might see in more formal ashlar construction -- and
employs massive stones some over 1.5 m in length. Unlike the tower at Ano
Vayia, the inner and outer face is preserved on the 1 m thick wall. The
space between the faces is filled with small, cobble sized, rubble. 
eWriter/LychnariTower.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px;
border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="272" alt="LychnariTower"
Writer/LychnariTower_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> There are a
few curious aspects to the Lychnari tower. First, when we first
encountered the tower, 5 years ago, we initially thought that the tower was
stepped. Only on closer inspection did we come to realize that the inner
face stood to a greater height than the outer face to create this
impression. In several places we soon noticed that the outer face of the
wall stood at least as high as the inner face. The another odd feature
about this tower was the lack of associated tumble. This was even more
troubling when we realized that it was over 8 m in diameter. (J. Young, a
mid-century scholar interested in towers in Attica, once proposed that the
height of a tower was approximately 2 x its diameter meaning that our tower
could have stood to over 15 m in height!). We were able to clarify this
issue this past summer when we noticed that the nearby geodetic marker (a point
used in preparing maps) stood on a considerable mound which elevated it above
the remains of the collapsed tower. This mound consisted of numerous large
cut blocks as well as earth and other tumble that seems likely to have come from
the collapse of the tower (see below): <a
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eWriter/GeodeticMarker.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px;

border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="272" alt="GeodeticMarker"
Writer/GeodeticMarker_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> Finally,
the top of the collapsed tower has a small depression. This is a common
feature in many of the so-called Corinthian Cairns. These are odd piles of
stones found scattered throughout the countryside of the eastern
Corinthia. Scholars have proposed any number of explanations and dates for
these piles of stones: from Hellenistic boundary markers to the remains of Early
Bronze Age fortifications. The wide range of functions, contexts, and
dates noted for these cairns, many of which feature depressions very similar to
that in our collapsed tower, suggest that these odd depression are not related
to these monuments' original functions, but rather reflect some kind of post
depositional phenomenon like informal excavations of what are clearly
archaeological remains or shelters for shepherds' fires. <a
eWriter/LychnariTower2.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px;
border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="404" alt="LychnariTower2"
Writer/LychnariTower2_thumb.jpg" width="272" border="0"></a> The
consider scatter of material surrounding the tower all appears to be Late
Classical to Hellenistic in date and is almost identical to that found
surrounding the structures on Ano Vayia. The most challenging (and
entertaining) thing about this site was figuring out how to illustrate it!
The tower is round so our traditional technique of laying out a baseline and
then measuring from that line would not work (although at one point we discussed
creating a round line... we'd been in the sun for a while...). We realized
that we had to set up a grid that would allow us to measure the stones from two
lines. The challenge was that the tower, as these photos show, formed a
mound and couldn't just run our grid lines over the mound without creating a
good bit of distortion. After several visits, arguments, and discussions
(including: "do you really think that we need to draw this?"), we found a way to
set up two baselines on relatively level ground that would allow us to create a
virtual grid (without all the grid lines, in effect). This was not an easy
way to illustrate, but David was up to the task. This illustration is his
handiwork: <a
eWriter/LychnariPlan.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px;
border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="404" alt="LychnariPlan"
Writer/LychnariPlan_thumb.jpg" width="269" border="0"></a> For more on
our work in the Corinthian countryside see: <a
of Ano Vayia</a>
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COMMENT:
IP: 129.133.127.101
URL:
DATE: 08/19/2008 04:06:56 PM
I'm so glad you took the time to survey the tower, most people don't bother. But
you know well that a) god is in the detail, and b) the proof is in the pudding.
It's good to have more and more of these suckers properly cataloged.
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TITLE: Funding Mediterranean Archaeology at the University of North Dakota
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
ALLOW PINGS: 1
BASENAME: funding-mediter
DATE: 08/11/2008 08:01:58 AM

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As the readers of this blog certainly know, this year has been a banner year
for Mediterranean Archaeology at the University of North Dakota. The
success of field programs in both <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/EKASPage/EKASHome.html">Greece<
/a> and in <a href="http://www.pkap.org">Cyprus</a> has been made possible by
the support from a whole number of institutions ‚Äì from private foundations
like the <a href="http://www.aegeanprehistory.net/index.html">Institute for
Aegean Prehistory</a> to the various universities that work together to make our
research program possible, like <a href="http://isthmia.osu.edu/">Ohio
State</a>, UND, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and Messiah College.
The generosity of these institutions, however, only provided part of the support
than an active research and education program in the Mediterranean requires.
eWriter/PKAPTeaching.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-
alt="PKAPTeaching"
Writer/PKAPTeaching_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> Site
Tour at Kokkinokremos on Cyprus We are fortunate to have a small,
but dedicated group of private donors who have supported our work. Thanks
to these donors we have collected over $15,000 for the study of the material
culture of the Mediterranean world at UND. Over the next two years,
however, we hope to add another $15,000 to take the next step in developing our
efforts to bring the Mediterranean world to the University and to develop a
long-term presence for the University in Greece and Cyprus. We have three
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clear goals that contributions made over the next year will benefit:
1) We‚Äôd like to become a member institution at the <a
href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/">American School of Classical Studies</a>.
The American School is the official representative of all American
archaeological research in Greece. Supporting this institution ensures
that faculty and students at the University have an academic home in Greece for
their research and teaching. Membership for a University like UND is
approximately $500 a year. 2) Mediterranean Archaeology
at UND is committed to graduate education both in Grand Forks, but more
importantly in the Mediterranean. Over the past 3 years, we‚Äôve had 5 UND
students (and more than 10 students from other graduate institutions) work with
us in Cyprus . This program has not only allowed graduate students at UND
to gain hands on experience in archaeology, but also brought them in contact
with their peers from around the world. It costs around $3,000 dollars for
a graduate student to come and work in Cyprus. We‚Äôd like to create a
$1000 scholarship to defray some of the costs of travel and work on
Cyprus. The best Mediterranean archaeology programs in the US provide
funding for their students to do fieldwork in the Mediterranean, and we feel
that this a good investment in the continuing development of our program. <a
eWriter/PKAPWalking.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-
alt="PKAPWalking"
Writer/PKAPWalking_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> Fieldwork
on Cyprus 3) Computers play a more and more
central role in Mediterranean archaeology. They are central to processing
the archaeological data in the field, analyzing results of our summer seasons on
campus, and disseminating our findings to our classes and the public. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/">Blogs</a>, <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/Emerging_Cypriot.html">video</a
>, <a
e-final-pkap.html">podcasts</a>, <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/disk_PKAP.html">interactive
webpages</a>, and eventually an online Museum will provide almost unprecedented
access to the whole range of Mediterranean archaeology to students at UND.
To maximize the potential of the ‚Äúnew media‚Äù, however, we need to commit to
developing ‚Äúcyber infrastructure.‚Äù This blanket terms includes
everything from access to digital storage and space on a maintained servers, to
funds to support the development of innovative techniques to deliver both
archaeological data (of interest to researchers) and multimedia
experiences that bring the Mediterranean world to our students and the general
public. $5000 over the next two years would go a long way to ensuring that
our program of research and education has the high tech tools to complement the
opportunities our field work in Cyprus and Greece have provided. Funds
raised from private donors are particular crucial for developing the kind of
infrastructure that Mediterranean Archaeology at the University of North Dakota
needs to succeed and grow. For information on how you can support our
work, contact me (<a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/ContactInfo.html">Bill
Caraher</a>) or Mike Meyer at the <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/dept/artsci/giving_opportunities.html">College of
Arts and Sciences at the University of North Dakota</a>. <a
eWriter/PKAPDavidTerry.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-
alt="PKAPDavidTerry"
Writer/PKAPDavidTerry_thumb.jpg" width="272" border="0"></a> UND
Student David Terry in the field
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BASENAME: friday-varia--1
DATE: 08/08/2008 08:58:21 AM

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Varia from my wanderings on the web: <ul> <li>The Olympic opening
ceremonies are happening even as I write this. <a
href="http://ehistory.osu.edu/osu/">Ohio State's History Departments
eHistory</a> publication <a
href="http://ehistory.osu.edu/osu/origins/">Origins</a> features an
interesting article on political controversies and the Olympic games: "<a
href="http://ehistory.osu.edu/osu/origins/article.cfm?articleid=17">Playing
Politics: Olympic Controversies Past and Present</a>".
Origins provides a podcast as well!</li> <li>For some fantastic and though
provoking work on archaeological ethnography, check out the work of Yannis
Hamilakis, Aris Anagnostopoulos, and Fotis Ifantidis at <a
href="http://kalaureia.org/">The Kalaureia Research Program</a> on Poros.
They maintain an interesting photoblog: <a
href="http://kalaureiainthepresent.org/">Kalauria in the Present</a>. They
also hosted a workshop on <a
href="http://porosworkshop.wordpress.com/">Archaeological Ethnographies</a>
which featured a <a href="http://porosworkshop.wordpress.com/abstracts/">series
of very interesting papers</a>, at least judging by the abstracts. It
would be great if some of these papers were made available on the web!
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</li> <li>The ubiquitous and always interesting Troels Myrup Kristensen of the
University of Aarhus (and the iconic blog <a
href="http://www.iconoclasm.dk/">Iconoclasm</a>) is co-organizing a panel at the
<a href="http://www.tagconference.org/">Theoretical Archaeology Group</a>
conference in December on "<a
href="http://www.tagconference.org/content/archaeologies-
destruction">Archaeologies of destruction</a>". Quite interesting!</li>
<li><a href="http://ancientworldbloggers.blogspot.com/2008/08/broklyn-myseum-
adds-social-component-to.html">Chuck Jones called</a> our attention (but it's
worth repeating) that the <a
href="http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/collections/">Brooklyn
Museum's collection has gone online</a>. The most interesting thing about
it is that <a
href="http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/community/blogosphere/bloggers/2008/08/01/ta
g-youre-it/">they built "tagging" into their interface</a> allowing visitors to
tag images in their collection. They've even created an ingenious game out of it
modeled on Google's Image Labeler. This will help them not only to sort
and organize their collection in a way that is meaningful to the public, but
will also give their collection a social, interactive aspect that, in effect,
makes the community a key component in creating meaning from the wide ranging
material available online. This ingenious use of "Web 2.0" practices
highlights how web communities can work together to structure content and make
the internet a more useful and socially engaged environment.</li> <li>More,
Chuck Jones: <a
tadata-monday.html">He posted an interesting comment on my Monday Metadata
post</a> asking whether the tools I use to monitor readers on this blog
(primarily TypePad's Statistics page and Google Analytics) record viewers who
read the blog via aggregators like Bloglines or Google Reader. I clearly
record hits from Bloglines and perhaps from Google Reader, but the person has to
click through to my blog's actual URL. The issue here is more than the
vain desire for statistically observable traffic. If readers don't click
through to the actual blog page and only view it via an aggregator, then it
undermines a key feature that bloggers use to create community: namely their
blog rolls -- those lists of blogs that most bloggers keep to show their readers
what they are reading. These blog rolls -- which date to the earliest days
of blogging -- do not come through on the typical RSS feed. Of course,
most RSS aggregators do have some social function -- the most sophisticated, for
example, show you how many other people subscribe to a particular blog's feed
and some can even recommend feeds that are common among other individuals who
subscribe to the same feeds as you. This, of course, is another example of
the acephalus (or radically democratic) nature of internet communities as the
interests of the community replaces the opinion of an individual blogger who
offers up his or her carefully tended (ha!!) blog rolls! One can detect
similar tension in the post offered on the Brooklyn Museum's blog piece "<a
href="http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/community/blogosphere/bloggers/2008/07/15/co
llection-preview-and-re-thinking-tagging/">Collection Preview and Re-thinking
Tagging</a>" : At the same time that they use tagging to allow for a kind of
community curration, "The curatorial staff felt is was important to only release
works with vetted data. While there are all kinds of arguments both for and
against this kind of thinking, we felt it was important to honor their wishes.
Records will move out more slowly, but it also means the data will be in good
shape when it does and that‚Äôs a good thing." </li> <li>The <a
href="http://www.und.edu/dept/our/">UND Office of University Relations</a>
circulated <a href="http://www2.und.edu/our/uletter/story.php#4809">a gently
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tweaked (and improved) version of the press release</a> for the 2008 season of
the <a href="http://www.pkap.org">Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological
Project</a>. </li> <li>Finally, if you are in North Dakota watch the
opening ceremonies to see UND's new television advertising. My sources
tell me that this is a key step in re-branding the University and making sure
that the wider community understands what the flagship university in the state
system has to offer!</li></ul> Have a good weekend!
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: pwork
EMAIL: a.anagnostopoulos@soton.ac.uk
IP: 85.72.140.46
URL: http://kalaureiainthepresent.org/
DATE: 09/02/2008 02:38:00 AM
Thank you very much for the Kalaureia link! FYI, the workshop papers are going
to be published as a special issue of 'Public Archaeology' in 2009.!
!
Aris
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TITLE: Kourion and Abandonment
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
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BASENAME: kourion-and-aba
CATEGORY: Byzantium
DATE: 08/07/2008 09:07:17 AM

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I finally had a chance to make my way through A.H.S. Megaw's <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/72871373">Kourion: Excavations in the
Episcopal Precinct.</a> (Washington, D.C. 2007). I am not going to
try to review this imposing book here, but merely to point out one part of the
Megaw and Company's interesting analysis. A few years ago, I gave a paper
at a panel at the <a
tm">Annual Meeting of the Archaeological Institute of American in San
Diego</a>. I argued that the master narratives that influence the
excavation, description, and even analysis of Early Christian architecture in
Greece have tended to obscure events associated with these buildings'
abandonment. The desire among archaeologists to fit their analysis of
remains into the neat periodization schemes that have held sway in our
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discipline since the Enlightenment (i.e. a site "ends" when the period ends)
combined with a long held preference among archaeologists for studying
monumental architecture (as opposed to more humble structures) to lead scholars
to overlook the often dynamic histories of buildings and sites after their most
monumental phase had ended. <a
eWriter/KourionBasilica.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px;
border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="272" alt="KourionBasilica"
Writer/KourionBasilica_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> The
Kourion volume is not a revolution in this area, but the team of scholars
associated with this excavation do bring out -- in various places throughout the
text -- some significant observations concerning the abandonment and afterlife
of this building. The most well-known aspect of this building's history is
that after its abandonment some of its architectural elements and liturgical
furnishings were transferred to the site of Sarayia Chapel in the nearby village
of Episcopi. This use of Early Christian spolia in a slightly later
building led the excavators to conclude plausibly that this three-aisle chapel
replaced the episcopal basilica at Kourion as the seat for the bishop after the
site of Kourion reduced to ruin by a late 7th century earthquake. The
removal of material from the site, however, did not occur in a single
episode. In fact, the excavations revealed that initially, the residents
or bishop of Kourion made an effort to repair the church. For example,
even though the top floor of the diakonikon to the west of the main nave had
collapsed, the first floor was nevertheless cleared out, perhaps to serve as a
temporary chapel while repairs continued on the larger main basilica.
These efforts however proved inadequate and were perhaps stymied by additional
seismic activity and the economic and political disruptions resulting from
several 7th century raid and the eventual occupation of the island by Umayyad
forces. According to the excavators, once the bishop or the
community made the decision to abandon the church, the systematic quarrying of
the precinct commenced. The small settlement of workers established in the
atrium of the church made new provisions for storing water (since the aqueducts
for the city must have been damaged) and left behind various tools for
processing food and late types of cooking pots and transport amphoras. The
workers removed debris from the site, collected objects that could be easily
salvaged, like roof tiles, and carried off prestige or symbolically significant
items like marble furnishings, sections of opus sectile floors, and champleve
revetment. A lead seal from the 8th century Bishop Damianos suggests that
the quarrying of the basilica took some time. Clearly, then, the
church continued to be a "site" well after it ceased to function as a religious
center. The attention that Megaw and his colleagues paid to the "later"
life of the buildings at Kourion is certainly not unique (in fact, just this
week, I've been catching up on the careful "late" history of the site of <a
href="http://isthmia.osu.edu/">Isthmia</a> in the Corinthia), but neither is it
as common as it could be in the study of important monuments in the Eastern
Mediterranean.
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TITLE: Visit to Ft. Totten, North Dakota
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: visit-to-ft-tot
CATEGORY: Travel
DATE: 08/06/2008 07:46:30 AM

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My parents were in town this weekend and we took a trip to <a
href="http://www.nd.gov/hist/totten/totten.htm">Ft. Totten, North
Dakota</a>. It's a remarkably well preserved "Dakota frontier era"
fort. It functioned initially as a frontier fort with a garrison who
guarded railroad construction and communication lines around Devil's Lake,
ND. In 1890 it was turned over to the Bureau of Indian Affairs and began
life as an Indian School. In 1960 it was given to the State of North
Dakota who have subsequently opened it as a historic site and worked to restore
and maintain its buildings. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/Ft_Totten.kmz">Here's a Google Earth
KZM file showing its location</a>. <a
eWriter/Ft_Totten_Parade_Ground.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-
alt=""
Writer/Ft_Totten_Parade_Ground_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> 
The way the fort is presented enables the visitor to understand its past as a
military installation and as a school. This is no easy thing considering
that several buildings -- like the armory -- changed functions considerably over
that time. While hardly lavish in presentation, I thought that the simple
signs and informational posters wove together the two, very different, stories
of this site in a thought provoking and understandable way. <a
eWriter/Ft_Totten_Baracks_Dorm_1.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top:
0px; border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="404" alt=""
Writer/Ft_Totten_Baracks_Dorm_thumb_1.jpg" width="304" border="0"></a> 
More interestingly still, is that parts of the site have been given over to
local historical organizations, a theatre, and a bed-and-breakfast. These
buildings not only take advantage of the extensive facilities available at the
site, but also must also help with the maintenance of the site by keeping it in
the public eye. Coming from Greece where so many sites with substantial
remains are simply closed to the public, it was striking to see how the State of
North Dakota can find ways to keep a site visible in the public eye while still
maintaining some aspects of its "historical integrity". <a
1016
eWriter/Ft_Totten_Office_Quarters.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px;
height="304" alt=""
Writer/Ft_Totten_Office_Quarters_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> This photo is gratuitous... Wind power on the prairie. <a
eWriter/WindPower.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width:
0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px" height="304" alt=""
Writer/WindPower_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a>
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TITLE: The Corinthian Countryside: Distributional Data from the Site of Ano
Vayia
STATUS: Publish
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DATE: 08/05/2008 08:16:00 AM

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I introduced the site of Ano Vayia in several earlier blog posts (<a
e-corinthian.html">The Corinthian Countryside: The Site of Ano Vayia</a>, <a
Microregion</a>). It is basically a Late Classical - Hellenistic fortified
site in the southeastern Corinthia. <a
href="http://home.messiah.edu/~dpettegrew/">David Pettegrew</a> and I documented
the architectural remains and the local topography. We also managed to
conduct a very small intensive survey in the area. Designed to produce
data fundamentally compatible with the data collected over the course of the <a
Korinthia Archaeological Survey</a>, we followed the same method. A team
of field walkers spaced 10 meter apart walked a series of units which, in
general, were under 2000 sq. m in size. The walkers looked 1 m to each
side of their swath in the unit and collected one example of each unique
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artifact (following the "chronotype" system). For more on our method, we

have posted a good bit of bibliography on the <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/EKASPage/EKASBibliography.html"
>EKAS Bibliography</a> page. Our goal was to determine the extent of the
ceramic scatter associated with the features atop Ano Vayia Hill and sample the
artifacts present on the surface of the ground to provide some chronological and
functional definition for the site. The only difficulty with this was that
the hill was densely wood with rather mature fir trees making typical survey
work difficult going. Consequently, we decided to sample the sides of the
hill rather than attempt to cover the entire slope. This we hoped would
give us a good idea whether the tower was part of a larger settlement on the
hill itself or more of an isolated structure in the countryside while still
giving us some sense of the kinds of artifacts present in the immediate
vicinity. <a
eWriter/AnoVayiaDistribution.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-
alt="AnoVayiaDistribution"
Writer/AnoVayiaDistribution_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> As
the distribution map above shows, the site appears to be at the center of a
rather isolated spread of artifacts. (We did not systematically record
densities or collect from the actual tumble of the building, but rather gathered
diagnostic grab samples from the feature.) It is, of course, possible that
erosion and vegetation effected our recovery rates from the slopes of the
hill. Moreover, there could well be additional material beyond the extent
of our field work; modern development (as well as the limitations of time and
man-power) kept us from extending our survey units further afield. The
relatively uniformity of material collected from these survey units -- a high
percentage of painted Classical-Hellenistic rooftile and a significant scatter
of pithos sherds -- suggests that most of the material in the units on the
slopes originally derived from site itself. While we are still analyzing
the material collected from the site, we can make some observation with a fair
degree of confidence. Aside from the large quantities of tile, the largest
category of material from the site is storage and transport vessels. There
is no fine ware and very little kitchen ware. Like most surveys we
produced a fairly substantial collection of difficult to date or interpret
"medium coarse red body sherds" none of these artifacts explicitly contradict a
Late Classical to Hellenistic date. The only indication of later use for
the site are a few piece of Early Modern utility wares, a couple of medium
coarse sherds of possible Late Medieval date and a cut stopper, apparently of
Late Antique date. It seems probable that these artifact represent
episodic re-occupation of the site during later periods. The standing
remains would have made it an ideal shelter for shepherds or even local sentries
watching the coastline. There was no evidence for earlier material.
 It's rare that intensive survey produces such a chronologically and
functionally homogeneous data set, and our very limited survey of the hill
should not be the last word on the distribution of material in this area.
Indeed, some 400 m to the northwest, the lower site of Vayia produced a far more
chronologically diverse assemblage with material dating from the Early Bronze
Age through the Early Modern period. <a
eWriter/AnoVayiaSurveyArea.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-
alt="AnoVayiaSurveyArea"
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Writer/AnoVayiaSurveyArea_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a>
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TITLE: Metadata Monday: Does Anyone Really Read Archaeological Project Blogs?
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
ALLOW PINGS: 1
DATE: 08/04/2008 08:25:43 AM

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One of the really common questions that I get when people learn that we have
integrated blogging into our archaeological project is "does anyone read
it?". To answer that question, I'll present some of my metadata from the
blogs that we ran this summer as part of the <a href="http://www.pkap.org">Pyla-
Koutsopetria Archaeological Project</a>. As a bit of background, we began
to run PKAP blogs last season. Several directors wrote on this blog here
and we made available a separate blog called "<a
Koutsopetria Graduate Student Perspectives</a>". I required my graduate
students to write for the blog as part of the writing and reflection component
of a class that our work in Cyprus counted for. The other graduate
students wrote -- quite eloquently and prolifically -- on their own volition,
except one who refused to write. This year, we created a separate blog for
Senior Staff as our staff had grown and my blog had become "crowded" with my own
threads and ramblings. The senior staff blog and the graduate student blog
featured more or less regular activity from around May 10th to the last week of
June. They were all multi-author blogs. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/pylakoutsopetria_season_s/">The PKAP
Season Staff Blog</a> was the most frequently updated with over 60 posts, but it
had seven authors. This blog received almost 1000 hits (998) and averaged
over 12 a day since its inception on May 10th. Several strands developed
over the course of its short life -- including the Saga of the Sifters, the
astute musings of our introspective camp manager, Scott Moore's traditional
Twitteresque short updates, and our inaugural experiment with podcasts.
We've had positive feedback, although a relative dearth of comments, on many of
these strands. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/pylakoutsopetria_graduate/">The
Graduate Student Perspectives</a> blog had three regular contributors and
produced correspondingly fewer posts (about 35), but these posts had
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substantially the same volume of readership with 991 hits since mid-May.
The posts not only chronicled the work in the field, but also the travels and
site visits by the graduate students on the island. We attempted to run
an <a
duate Perspectives blog</a>, but the undergraduates did not really take to
it. They managed only 9 posts, but it was nevertheless encouraging to see
that they had almost 500 hits (473) or over 8 views a day. On the surface,
it would appear that the Undergraduate Perspectives blog would be worth
attempting again next year and a little bit of encouragement on the part of the
senior staff could perhaps help to produce a blog with a substantial
readership. If we are to believe the experts, undergraduates are far more
"wired" than their slightly more senior peers and have access to savvy audiences
through their online social networks. This blog, which basically
mirrored my posts from the Season Staff blog and sought to drive traffic (as
much as it was possible) received around 6,000 hits (70 per day) over this same
time. To sum up, the short term results for these blogs --
inasmuch as hits correlate with a real audience -- were quite encouraging.
The interesting thing about the Graduate Student Perspectives blog is that it is
in its second year and the posts from the 2007 season continue to be
viewed. It attracts a consistent, if low level, flow of traffic.
Part of the goal of the PKAP blog enterprise was to create an online archive for
the project that prospective volunteers, interested observers, and our students
could view in order to get a flavor for life on a small archaeological
project. For example, we direct prospective graduate student participants
to the Graduate Student Perspective blog to get one view on what to expect once
on Cyprus. PKAP Alumi/ae also frequent the Graduate Student Perspectives
blog (as well as the other blogs) to keep tabs on what is going on on-site each
season. On the other hand, the lack of comments on these blogs suggests
that their audience is not fully comfortable with the interactive potential
(i.e. Web 2.0) aspects of weblogs. They continue to appear to be rather
static delivery of information rather than a dynamic medium that offers the
wider community the offer to participate in the archaeological (as well as
social, intellectual, and collegial (e.g. witty banter)) discourse. Some
of this may be solved by the occasional "send us your questions!" post on the
blog or even the tradition "open discussion thread". It may also be that
over time our audience will become increasingly comfortable with the dynamic and
interactive potential of the internet and the blog medium. So, thanks for
readings our PKAP blogs this year and look for them to return to life next
spring. In the meantime, check back here and over at Scott Moore's <a
History Ramblings</a> for updates on the PKAP front.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Chuck Jones
1020
IP: 128.122.167.53
URL: http://www.etana.org/abzu
DATE: 08/07/2008 01:00:25 PM
I wonder, Bill, if there is any way to calculate the number of readers you have,
like me, via your feeds. I rather suspect that these are a significant portion
of your careful readers. I read this blog in bloglines, which claims to have 6
subscribers via the atom feed and another pair via the rss feed, but this is
only bloglines. Do you know of anyway to tabulate the feed readership? My
general sene is that we put far too much weight on the hit counters in the
analysis of our readership.
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STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
ALLOW PINGS: 1
CATEGORY: Byzantium
CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 08/01/2008 08:35:19 AM

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BODY:
A real grab bag of things (many of them catch-up posts): <ul> <li><a
href="http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibitions/byzantium/">Byzantium at the
Royal Academy of the Arts</a>. The exhibit is being organized by Robin
Cormack and is a collaboration between the Benaki Museum in Athens and the Royal
Academy. It will feature objects <a
href="http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibitions/byzantium/about/">from across
the Byzantine world</a> (ranging from the Antioch Chalice to the Rhia Patten to
a splendid 12th century icon from the Byzantine Museum at Kastoria), some of
which have not traveled much. <li> <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/jfkconference/">UND is hosting a
conference to commemorate the 45th anniversary of John F. Kennedy's visit to
campus in 1963</a>. The conference will be held September 25-28 in Grand
Forks. The <a
href="http://www.und.edu/instruct/jfkconference/JFKPanels.html">conference
program</a> appears interesting bringing together a substantial group of
scholars from across campus and the region. The organizers of the
conference brought together <a
href="http://www.und.edu/instruct/jfkconference/JFKArchive.html">a nice
selection of material</a> related to Kennedy's presidency including the text and
<a href="http://www2.und.edu/our/itunes/index.php">a digital recording of his
speech at the University (available through UND's iTunes U page)</a>. <li>I
have begun to experiment with <a href="http://twitter.com/">Twitter</a> (as have
many of my colleagues) with an eye toward using it in my classes that meet only
once a week. In fall, I'll teach two of these once-a-week classes, History
101 and History 502. They are at opposite sides of the academic
scale. 101 is a large lecture class filled largely with Freshmen and
Sophomores. 502 is a large (15+) graduate seminar. I was perplexed by how
1021
a single Twitter feed could serve both of these classes. So, I began to
experiment with multiple Twitter feeds which would allow me to Twitter different
things to the different classes. Twitter does not seem to be set up with
this kind of functionality in mind -- as each feed requires a separate log-in
and a separate email. Clever Web types, however, have developed a solution
to this problem: <a href="http://www.themattinator.com/">Matt (Multiple Account
Twitter Tweeting)</a>. It allows you to send from one page Tweets to
various different accounts (or combinations of accounts). Pretty slick,
although it doesn't have the full functionality of the Twitter interface.
Now that the technological issues are accommodated, I need to figure out the
pedagogy of Tweeting, <a href="http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/2699/a-
professors-tips-for-using-twitter-in-the-classroom">fortunately others have</a>
already <a href="http://academhack.outsidethetext.com/home/2008/twitter-for-
academia/">worked in that direction</a>. <li>The 2009 Princeton Review ranking
of colleges and universities rated the University of North Dakota #7 on its list
of Universities where students study the least. It's funny that I don't
get that impression from my students. <li>This looks to be <a
href="http://www.amazon.com/Archaeology-History-Medieval-Post-Medieval-
Greece/dp/0754664422/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1217597663&sr=8-
1">an interesting new book</a>...</li></ul>
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TITLE: Journal of Late Antiquity
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
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BASENAME: journal-of-late
DATE: 07/31/2008 08:28:09 AM

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BODY:
I know that I am a bit late on this one, but I am still catching up from my
summer fieldwork break. I've spent the last few days reading over the
first volume of the <a
href="http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_late_antiquity/">Journal of Late
Antiquity</a>. As I have noted previously in the blog, <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/late_antiq
uity/index.html">Late Antiquity</a> has gone from being "the next big thing" to
a more or less established (sub)discipline in the academic establishment.
In fact, over the last decade that the number of <a
href="http://www.ocla.ox.ac.uk/">Centers</a> (and <a
href="http://arts.stage.manchester.ac.uk/cla/">Centres</a>) for <a
href="http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/clarc/">Late Antique</a> <a
1022
href="http://www.lateantiquity.dk/">Studies</a>, conferences and symposia, and

monographs have exceeded what even a determined scholar can easily process in a
year. This is to say that the field has grown from a determined minority
who could nibble around the edges of any number of well-established disciplines
(e.g. Patristics, Classics (particular Roman Studies), (Early) Medieval Studies,
Roman Archaeology, even Islamic Studies), to a complex transdisciplinary body of
scholars capable of enjoying full meals at a specially prepared academic
buffets. It is clear, now, that the study of Late Antiquity as not simply
a distinct time period -- variously defined from 200-800 or even 1000 AD -- but
as a particular academic discourse has emerged. The inaugural issue of the
Journal of Late Antiquity seems to encapsulate the borders of this disciplinary
discourse rather well. The first four articles in the journal seek to set
the stage for the concerns in the discipline at present: A Long Late
Antiquity?: Considerations on a Controversial Periodization Arnaldo
Marcone The Rise and Function of the Concept ‚ÄúLate
Antiquity‚Äù Edward James Decline, Fall, and Transformation Clifford
Ando Barbarians, Historians, and the Construction of National
Identities Ian Wood What do these four articles tell us about the
state of Late Antique studies? (1) We are still bothered by our ill-
fitting place in traditional periodization schemes, (2) this is tied to the
interesting and international historiography of the term "Late Antiquity, (3) as
well as our lingering preoccupation with concepts of decline, fall, continuity,
and change (and their cousin "transformation"). (4) The problems and
opportunities inherent in these concerns are most eloquently problematized in
the claims made, most famously by Peter Brown, but not uniquely his, that the
"Late Antique Period" marked a key watershed in the development of our
contemporary ideas of political, social, and religious organization and
identity. None of these things are bad of course, but
it leaves no doubt that our field still considers the fight for disciplinary
definition (even just chronological and "moral" elbow room) a vital part of any
discussion of Late Antiquity even among scholars committed to the study of the
period. While the articles presented in this journal are all of good
quality and are "interesting reads" it seems a bit odd that such apologetics
continue to be necessary especially in a journal designed to serve a
(sub)discipline that is on the brink of maturity in the academy. The
continued vitality of the field requires that we move beyond metadiscursive turf
wars and move beyond continuity, change, and transformation. (<a
href="http://home.messiah.edu/~dpettegrew/">David Pettegrew</a> and I had a good
conversation about this riding the train from Athens to Corinth this
summer. He rightly pointed out that historians like to
periodize...). As another point of departure, the study of Late
Antiquity claim (and perhaps position themselves as heirs to) one of the
distinct characteristics of Classical Studies (and to a lesser extent Medieval
and Byzantine Studies): namely the inherently transdisciplinary character of our
field. On a practical level, scholars of Late Antiquity find homes in
departments of Classics, history, religion, and art history (and
archaeology). Intellectually, the study of Late Antiquity has embraced a
wide range of theoretical and conceptual perspectives drawn from intensive
contact with discourses nurtured in relative disciplinary isolation. For
example, Late Antique scholars have been relatively quicker to embrace intensive
pedestrian survey in archaeology, certain aspects of critical theory (e.g. post-
colonial theory), and sophisticated models of religious interaction, all of
which have been encouraged by the willingness of scholars of Late Antiquity to
ignore disciplinary boundaries and their associated theoretical constraints.
 The goal here is not to criticize what will become an important new
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journal for the study of Late Antiquity, but to point out that the field will
soon move beyond disciplinary boundary marking and its attendant apologetics and
will begin to articulate its contribution to the study of the past in different
ways. The hope of any field, of course, is to develop paradigms of
thinking that will influence not just scholars working within the relatively
narrow boundaries of a particular discipline, but will extend to influence how
scholars (and the public) think more generally.
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TITLE: The Corinthian Countryside: The Site of Ano Vayia
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
ALLOW PINGS: 1
DATE: 07/30/2008 08:20:49 AM

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As noted already on this blog (<a
Microregion</a>), David Pettegrew and I worked to document a series of Late
Classical-Hellenistic monuments in the Vayia Microregion this past July.
While our official report on our work will hopefully be complete by the winter,
we can preview some of the results of our research here. Our
primary goal this summer was to document the architecture from a site that we
called "Ano Vayia" (or upper Vayia) so as not to be confused with Vayia proper -
- a recently documented multi-period site with an important Early Bronze Age
component. The site is situated on a low hill immediately to the south of
the Vayia peninsula. Today the hill is heavily wooded making an ascent from the
coast rugged going. It is possible, however, to walk up to the top of the
rise from the southwest where the hill slope is less crowded with trees and
brush and gentler in aspect. The eastern side of the hill drops away quite
abruptly above a seasonal torrent known as the Vayia River. While the hill
is quite steep, the top of the hill does have a small level area, and our site
is located on the western side of this level area overlooking the Vayia
river. <a
eWriter/VayiaRegionSM_Annotated.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-
alt="VayiaRegionSM_Annotated"
Writer/VayiaRegionSM_Annotated_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> 
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The site itself consists of a north-south oriented building filled now with
the tumble from its collapse. The best preserved feature of this building
is its particularly imposing western wall. This western wall shows the
rough-polygonal style masonry that is so common in the Late Classical-
Hellenistic Corinthia. The stones, some of which exceed a meter in length, are
slightly trimmed to fit with one another. <a
eWriter/AnoVayiaScale.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width:
alt="AnoVayiaScale"
Writer/AnoVayiaScale_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> This wall
faced the small level area on the top of the hill. The rest of the
building consisted of less well constructed walls, several of which might
represent later phases. The northern part of the north-south building
shows the clever use of exposed bedrock outcroppings. <a
eWriter/AnoVayiaBedrock.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-
alt="AnoVayiaBedrock"
Writer/AnoVayiaBedrock_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> To take
full advantage of the exposed bedrock, the wall runs at an oblique angle to the
rest of the building. Perhaps the most interesting feature on the site of
Ano Vayia is the remains of a round tower immediately to the east of the north-
south structure. While only the lowest courses of this tower are
preserved, there is enough remaining for us to estimate it's diameter at a
little over 6 meters. The stones in the outer face of the wall are neatly
drafted with the curved profile of the tower's circumference. Initially we
were concerned about whether this tower stood to any substantial height
since so little of the tower was preserved. A quick look down the steep
eastern slope of the hill, however, revealed several cascading piles of tumble
made almost entirely of blocks with the familiar curved shape of our tower. 
eWriter/CurvedTumble.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width:
alt="CurvedTumble"
Writer/CurvedTumble_thumb.jpg" width="272" border="0"></a> We were
able to date this little compound of buildings based on ceramic materials
scattered around the hill top and embedded in the tumble of the north-south
building. This summer we prepared a stone-by-stone illustration of the
walls. <a
eWriter/DavidDrawing.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width:
alt="DavidDrawing"
Writer/DavidDrawing_thumb.jpg" width="272" border="0"></a> <a
eWriter/AnoVayiaPlan.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width:
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alt="AnoVayiaPlan"
Writer/AnoVayiaPlan_thumb.jpg" width="269" border="0"></a> Stay tuned for
more archaeology of the Ano Vayia Microregion...
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COMMENT:
IP: 71.175.123.224
URL:
DATE: 07/30/2008 08:47:46 AM
Nice work on Upper Vayia. Intriguing round tower. Any chance it might be post-
classical (or even an early modern kalyvi). I'll send you a drawing of an
unpublished tower I discovered a few years ago on Movri Mountain in Achaia.
-----
COMMENT:
EMAIL:
IP: 208.107.230.122
DATE: 07/30/2008 09:03:53 AM
Kostis,!
!
I don't think that we ever considered it to be post-Classical. We haven't found
much in the way of post-Classical material in the area nor did we find any
mortar, tile chinking, et c. that we would associate with post-Classical
construction techniques. I'd be interested, nevertheless, to consider it. It
seems likely that the tower either antedated the north-south structure (perhaps
only by a few years) or post-dated that destruction of the north south building
(i.e. post classical??). As we've interpreted it, its function would be to
guard a pass (that I. Peppas has argued (somewhat persuasively) was fortified in
the post-Classical period) and there would be no real need for a round tower if
the rectangular buildings were already there. !
!
We have another round tower in the area, so any help with comparanda would be
excellent.!
!
Bill
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TITLE: The Final PKAP Podcasts
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
ALLOW PINGS: 1
1026
BASENAME: the-final-pkap
DATE: 07/29/2008 11:46:18 AM

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It is sometimes difficult to tell whether a concept like podcasts from the
field works when you are still in the field. I am not sure that it was a
total success, but we received enough positive feedback to post the final two
podcasts that we prepared this summer (they're numbers 1 and 8 here). The
Introduction and Orientation is <a
href="http://home.messiah.edu/~dpettegrew/">David Pettegrew</a>'s excellent
introduction to the project. He outlines the history of our work in the
area and talks about some of the larger research questions that we seek to
answer. It's a bit on the long side and the audio is far from perfect, but
it is a useful post for anyone wanting to get a grasp on our project without
reading our reports and publications. From the serious to the silly, the
final podcast is a discussion of precisely how much fun pottery washing is and
features some of the students from Indiana University of Pennsylvania and
Messiah College. They were all good sports, as were my colleagues, when I
appeared with the little digital tape recorded asking strange questions.
If our podcasting experiment will continue next year, I will need to upgrade
some of my equipment to include a mic that will cancel out some of the wind
noise. We were not able to visit the trenches as much as we would have
liked because afternoons on the coastal heights tend to be windy and the wind
noise muffled he audio. Despite the challenges, I do hope that these
podcasts brought you closer to our work in the field and introduced you to some
of our Voices of Archaeology. Voices of Archaeology Podcasts <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/PodCasts/01 Introduction and
Orientation to P.mp3">1. Introduction and Orientation</a> <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/pylakoutsopetria_season_s/WindowsLiv
eWriter/podcasticon_thumb1_thumb2.gif"><img height="16"
alt="podcasticon_thumb1_thumb2"
src="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/pylakoutsopetria_season_s/WindowsLive
Writer/podcasticon_thumb1_thumb2_thumb.gif" width="61" border="0"></a> <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/PodCasts/02%20The%20Mundane%20M
atter%20of%20Sustenance.mp3">2. The Mundane Matter of Sustenance</a> <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/PodCasts/03%20Excavations%20on%
20Vigla_%20Week%20One.mp3">3. Excavations on Vigla: Week One</a> <a
eWriter/podcasticon_thumb1_thumb2%5B4%5D.gif"><img height="16"
alt="podcasticon_thumb1_thumb2[4]"
Writer/podcasticon_thumb1_thumb2%5B4%5D_thumb.gif" width="61"
border="0"></a> <a
20Vigla_%20Week%20Two.mp3">4. Excavations on Vigla: Week Two</a> <a
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href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/PodCasts/05 A Saturday Morning
at Bronze Ag 1.mp3">5. A Saturday Morning on Bronze Age
Kokkinokremos</a> <a
Writer/podcasticon_thumb1_thumb2%5B6%5D_thumb.gif" width="61" border="0"></a>
 <a href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/PodCasts/06 The
Ceramicist at the Museum 1.mp3">6. The Ceramicist at the Museum</a> <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/PodCasts/07 An Afternoon with
the Registrar.mp3">7. An Afternoon with the Registrar</a> <a
 <a href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/PodCasts/08 How Fun is
Pottery Washing.mp3">8. How Fun is Pottery Washing</a> <a
border="0"></a>
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TITLE: Small Town Archaeology
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: small-town-arch
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DATE: 07/28/2008 08:20:43 AM

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Michael Fronda, an old friend at McGill University, sent along some photos of
a collapsing building in downtown Montreal. It is a nice example of
archaeological formation process in a modern urban setting. <a
eWriter/CollapseMontreal2.jpg"><img width="204" height="154" border="0"
Writer/CollapseMontreal_thumb.jpg" alt="IMG_1450.JPG" style="border-width: 0px;"
/> <img width="204" height="154" border="0"
Writer/CollapseMontreal2_thumb.jpg" alt="IMG_1448.JPG" style="border-width:
0px;" /></a> On one of my regular walks around Grand Forks, I noticed
another interesting example of the archaeological process. After the flood of
1997 which inundated almost the entire town (see <a
href="http://www.draves.com/gf/">here</a> and <a
href="http://www.geo.mtu.edu/department/classes/ge404/mlbroder/">here</a>)
numerous lots were left vacant. Some of these lots were promptly rebuilt,
but others owing either to specific circumstances of the property or to their
vulnerable position were not reconstructed. The entire Lincoln Drive
neighborhood, for example, vanished as it fell on the river side of the new
flood walls. With the flood walls completed this past year, the
city is selling several of the properties which had not been redeveloped on the
city side of the flood wall. <a
eWriter/GrandForksProperties.jpg"><img width="404" height="304" border="0"
Writer/GrandForksProperties_thumb.jpg" style="border-width: 0px;" /></a> 
The only physical reminders of the past use of these properties are the
driveways that lead nowhere or the alleys that abruptly end in open lots.
eWriter/Alley.jpg"><img width="304" height="404" border="0"
Writer/Alley_thumb.jpg" style="border-width: 0px;" /></a> In a few cases
the brick foundations or concrete pavers of the vanished houses continue to peak
through the carefully mowed city lawns. <a
eWriter/BricksandLawns.jpg"><img width="304" height="404" border="0"
Writer/BricksandLawns_thumb.jpg" style="border-width: 0px;" /></a> Now
that some of these properties are being redeveloped, the foundations of the new
homes have been cut through the remains of the earlier structures. From an
archaeological perspective, the material excavated for these new foundations
provides insights into another kind of formation process. Substantial
piles of rubble from concrete basement floors and scatters of brick from
foundation walls surround the new foundation holes. At one site the bricks
and earth are being graded around the new foundation. <a
eWriter/CementFloor.jpg"><img width="404" height="304" border="0"
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Writer/CementFloor_thumb.jpg" style="border-width: 0px;" /></a> <a
eWriter/BricksandDirt.jpg"><img width="304" height="404" border="0"
Writer/BricksandDirt_thumb.jpg" style="border-width: 0px;" /></a> <a
eWriter/Bricks.jpg"><img width="304" height="404" border="0"
Writer/Bricks_thumb.jpg" style="border-width: 0px;" /></a> Amidst this construction debris, there are a few remnants of
everyday life: a broken plate and the neck of a blue bottle really stood
out. They combine to make a nice assemblage of building material and
household goods some of which will surely fill in the foundation trenches of the
new walls and form part of the stratigraphic record of the buildings on this
plot of land. <a
eWriter/DinnerPlate.jpg"><img width="404" height="304" border="0"
Writer/DinnerPlate_thumb.jpg" style="border-width: 0px;" /></a> <a
eWriter/BottleTop.jpg"><img width="404" height="304" border="0"
Writer/BottleTop_thumb.jpg" style="border-width: 0px;" /></a> From a landscape perspective, the new homes on these plots will not
only fill in gaps left by the flood which served as reminders of this difficult
hour in the community's past, but also create the top layer of the
archaeological palimpsest that urban historians and archaeologists find to be
such a useful metaphor. 
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: BrianB
IP: 134.129.193.248
URL:
DATE: 07/29/2008 09:17:05 AM
Great perspective on otherwise overlooked present reality. Thanks for the
insight.
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STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
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ALLOW PINGS: 1
DATE: 07/25/2008 08:05:47 AM

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I've been slowly making my way along my blogroll and catching up with some of
my favorite reads after a couple months away. As one could predict, there
was a bunch of interesting stuff going on over the summer months... Here are
some of my favorites: <ul> <li>Project Blogs <ul> <li>Brandon Olson, <a
href="http://www.pkap.org">PKAP</a> alumnus, <a
al_archaeology_in/">dedicated blogger</a>, and some of his graduate student
colleagues, are <a href="http://realtimearchaeology.blogspot.com/">blogging from
the Mopsos Survey Project in Turkey</a>. <li>UCLA recently featured <a
href="http://www.magazine.ucla.edu/summerdigs/">a series of posts from the field
work of their undergraduate students</a>. It earned mention in <a
href="http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/3134/point-and-click-
archaeology">Chronicle of Higher Education's Wired Campus</a> blog. <li>The <a
href="http://mountlykaion.wordpress.com/">Mt. Lykaion Excavation and Survey
Project</a> (for more about it <a
href="http://corinth.sas.upenn.edu/lykaion/lykaion.html">read here</a>) will
begin its 2008 season presently and like the last couple of years will keep a
blog. <li>My co-director Scott Moore has continued to post over at his <a
History Ramblings Blog</a>. </li></ul> <li>Shawn Graham, The <a
himself, has a <a
href="http://electricarchaeologist.wordpress.com/2008/06/30/archaeology-in-and-
archaeology-of-second-life/">great little video (now close to a month old) on
his work on archaeology in Second Life</a> and has <a
href="http://electricarchaeologist.wordpress.com/2008/07/24/eja-review-piece-
second-lives-online-world-for-archaeological-teaching-and-research/">a short
contribution on the same topic</a> to a special section of the <a
href="http://eja.sagepub.com/current.dtl">European Journal of Archaeology</a>
(<a href="http://www.iconoclasm.dk/?p=285">edited by Troels Myrup Kristensen</a>
of <a href="http://www.iconoclasm.dk/">Iconoclasm</a>), along with several other
significant players in the digital archaeology movement. The only bummer
here is that you need a subscription to get access to the articles. One
thing that Shawn did not observe (although it has been observed elsewhere) is
that Second Life, as a persistent world (that is to say a virtual world where
the work of its participant can remain even after that individual leaves),
allows for a kind of archaeological investigation of its own history.
Cruising around the old "mainland" (before the creation of islands) reveals, for
example, how the original creators of SL saw most travel through their virtual
world in cars on the ground rather than by flying or teleporting. More
interestingly, it is possible to explore numerous "abandoned parcels" created by
ambitious designers who have, for whatever, reason left the parcel for new
projects. While traditional formation processes do not effect these
neglected corners of Second Life, it is, nevertheless, archaeological to
consider the original intentions and meanings of their creators and attempt to
piece together a typology of parcels, features, and places. Also be sure
1031
to check out the <a

href="http://traumwerk.stanford.edu/archaeolog/2008/05/digital_desires_and_the_f
uture.html">Shanks and Webmoor post on Second Life at Archaeolog</a>. <li><a
href="http://traumwerk.stanford.edu/archaeolog/">Archaeolog</a>, probably the
most intellectually robust and sophisticated archaeological weblogs (not to
mention one of the few weblogs that actually make you feel more cool by reading
it; it is superhip), <a
href="http://traumwerk.stanford.edu/archaeolog/2008/05/focal_things_and_digital_
enfra.html#more">celebrated its 100th post</a>.</li></ul>
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Shawn
IP: 24.150.9.7
DATE: 08/15/2008 07:55:32 PM
Thanks Bill, for the mention! It was so brutal, trying to make that video, that
I forgot in the recorded talk itself to mention just that very thing: the spooky
virtual archaeology of the abandoned lands of SL. In my paper for the Brock
Virtual Worlds conference last year, I did touch on that, and if you trawl
through june-july 07 of my blog, you'll find an audio version of it... sorry I
don't have the proper link; am on dialup, everything is painful! Meant to leave
this note before my good internet access was cut off...
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TITLE: A PKAP Thesis Defense: Latin- Greek Relations in Frankish Cyprus
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
ALLOW PINGS: 1
BASENAME: a-pkap-thesis-d
DATE: 07/24/2008 07:49:43 AM

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BODY:
David Terry, a <a href="http://www.pkap.org">Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological
Project</a> alumnus successfully defended his Master's Thesis here in the <a
href="http://www.und.edu/dept/histdept/">Department of History at the University
of North Dakota yesterday</a>. His work was entitled "Authority and
Cultural Interaction on Frankish Cyprus, 1191-1374." His defense was good
fun as he ably engaged his committee and members of the general public on all
topics related to his research. I learned a tremendous amount from his
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thesis, and I suspect it will continue to inform my interest in the contours of

authority and religion in pre-modern Europe. At his defense, David
graciously claimed to have been inspired to work on the Frankish period in
Cyprus by his time on PKAP and his personal visits to numerous Frankish period
monuments on Cyprus (you can read his blog postings from his time on <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/pylakoutsopetria_graduate/david_terr
y/">Cyprus here</a>). (I can also detect the influence of an informal
seminar that some of his colleagues and I participated in a couple of years ago
which focused on Authority and Religion in the Early Christian East!).
His visit to Cyprus was partially funded by the <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/dept/grad/">Graduate School at the University of
North Dakota</a> as part of Graduate School Summer Professorship. David
will study next year at Western Michigan University in their Ph.D. program in
History. He hopes to continue working in some capacity with PKAP and
continue to pursue research in the Medieval Eastern Mediterranean. He is
also a member of the <a href="http://www.squinch.und.edu/">Medieval and Post
Medieval Mediterranean Interest Group of the Archaeological Institute of
America.</a> <a
eWriter/KitiTowerSM.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width:
alt="KitiTowerSM"
Writer/KitiTowerSM_thumb.jpg" width="139" border="0"></a> <a
eWriter/DSC_0210sm.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width:
alt="DSC_0210sm"
Writer/DSC_0210sm_thumb.jpg" width="304" border="0"></a> Abstract
Many treatments of cultural interaction on Frankish Cyprus depict the Latin
and Greek cultural identities as historic, monolithic constructions and the
society of Frankish Cyprus as a multicultural society. However, sources
suggest that similarities between Greek and Latin cultural traditions were
numerous and that there was a considerable amount of ambiguity between the two
groups. This thesis will examine the cultural practices of the Latin
Cypriots and the origins of these practices and argue that Latin Cypriot
communal identity was less dependent upon identification with the Roman Church
than it was with a pan-Christian view of Cypriot society. The subsequent
chapter will examine the approach that the king and nobility of Cyprus took to
protect this developing cultural milieu and argue that, in addition to a need to
protect the island, the Latin secular leadership also felt a communal bond with
the island's non-Latin majority. Last, a discussion of intermarriage
between Latins and Greeks shows how easily the two groups could cross the
confessional line as well as the Latin Church's ability to prevent them from
doing so.
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TITLE: New Research on the Corinthian Countryside: Vayia Microregion
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
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BASENAME: new-research-on
DATE: 07/23/2008 08:00:58 AM

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BODY:
From June 25th to July 16th, David Pettegrew and I returned to the Corinthia
and conducted fieldwork in the region of Vayia. The immediate vicinity of
Vayia was investigated by the Eastern Korinthia Archaeological Survey (EKAS) in
2002 and 2003. This work focused primarily on a substantial and complex
Early Bronze Age site which has since been published in Antiquity (Tartaron, T.
F., D. J. Pullen, and J. S. Noller. 2006. ‚ÄúRillenkarren at Vayia:
Geomorphology and a New Class of Early Bronze Age Fortied Settlement in Southern
Greece,‚Äù Antiquity 80, pp. 145‚Äì160). In the same
neighborhood or microregion, however, there are several significant later sites
including a series of Late Classical to Hellenistic structures. I found
most of these structures over the course of extensive survey in the area in
2002. We tentatively identified one of them as a possible farm
house. David Pettegrew, a colleague both on PKAP and with EKAS had a
fairly serious interest in farmhouses of the Classical to Hellenistic period
(see "Chasing the Classical Farmstead: Assessing the Formation and Signature of
Rural Settlement in Greek Landscape Archaeology," Journal of Mediterranean
Archaeology 14.2 (2001), 189-209). I was interested in the
Hellenistic fortifications of the Isthmus (with Timothy Gregory,
‚ÄúFortifications of Mount Oneion, Corinthia,‚Äù Hesperia 75 (2006),
327-356), so we decided to team up to document the various small sites from the
Classical to Hellenistic period that dot this microregion. We also sought
to place these sites a bit more firmly within the local topography of the
southeastern Corinthia. While there has been some substantial work on the
Western Corinthia which emphasizes routes into the Argolid, Sykionia, and
Kleonid (these are the territories of the cities that border on the polis of
Corinth), there has been relatively little work done on the eastern Corinthia
(with the exception of <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/45703753">Mike
Dixon's dissertation</a> which focused primarily on the southeastern corner of
this territory). In a short 2 week season, David and I were not
only able to document rather carefully the three main Classical to Hellenistic
sites in the Vayia Microregion, but also establish an important, but largely
overlooked ancient route running through the eastern Corinthia. The work
proved to be both intellectually and physically tiring as we not only
illustrated the archaeological remains and hiked all over the area, but also
argued (around and around and around) about the functions of these sites and
their relationship to other sites both locally and in the larger context of
Greece. Over the next few weeks, I'll post some of our work on the blog
here in an effort to fill in some of the gaps in our understanding of the
eastern territory of Corinth. The end goal of this fieldwork is a
short(ish) study of the microregion in the Classical-Hellenistic period which we
1034
hope to submit to Hesperia this fall or winter. <a

eWriter/VayiaRegionSM.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px;
border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="272" alt="VayiaRegionSM"
Writer/VayiaRegionSM_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a>
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Maddy Bray
IP: 76.170.0.106
DATE: 07/30/2008 11:21:03 PM
Neat. I'm looking forward to hearing more about this.
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TITLE: Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project 2008 Press Release
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
ALLOW PINGS: 1
DATE: 07/22/2008 08:21:29 AM

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BODY:
One of the final tasks of the season, after the final report is completed, is
to prepare a press release for the Department of Antiquities and for our home
institutions. Each year the press release, along with other documents
produced by the PKAP team serve to communicate the goals, methods, and
discoveries to our students and local communities. The goal of these
little documents is to capture some of the romance of archaeology as well as
some of the more systematic (scientific?) flavor of our work. I am never
sure that I strike the right balance, but here it is in any case:
<blockquote> Press Release The 2008 Season of the Pyla-Koutsopetria
Archaeological Project The Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project
(PKAP) under the direction of Professor William Caraher (University of North
Dakota), Professor R. Scott Moore (Indiana University of Pennsylvania),
Professor David K. Pettegrew (Messiah College), and Dr Maria Hadjicosti (Cyprus
Department of Antiquities) recently completed its sixth season of fieldwork at
the site of Pyla-Koutsopetria on Cyprus. The project conducted its field
season between 15 May and 25 June 2008 with the help of a team of
undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty members from universities in the
U.S. and Europe. For the past 5 years, PKAP concerned itself primarily with
1035
the archaeological remains present on the surface of the ground. The goals of
this kind of fieldwork is the collect data without disturbing the archaeological
remains protected beneath the surface. The results of this work include the
discovery of what may be a previously unknown shrine from the Archaic to
Classical periods (600-300 B.C.) and an extensive Roman to Late Roman (100 B.C.-
700 A.D.) settlement at the site. In 2008, PKAP conducted limited
excavations for the first time in large part to confirm and expand the results
of the surface survey. A series of small trenches brought to light the remains
of a fortified settlement on a prominent coastal ridge called Vigla. This
settlement appears to have been occupied from the Cypro-Archaic to the
Hellenistic period (600-100 B.C.). The most dramatic feature of this settlement
was a fortification wall that ringed the entire plateau. It seems probable the
shrine of the same date served this small community. Nearby, the PKAP team
excavated three small soundings near the known site of Kokkinokremos. This work
expanded the extent of this Late Bronze Age site (ca. 1200 B.C.) We based this
conclusion on the discovery of a section of wall datable to the Late Bronze Age
that was located considerably outside the area of use proposed by earlier
studies. The 6 seasons of fieldwork in the region of Pyla-Koutsopetria
revealed a dynamic and wealthy Mediterranean landscape filled complete with
towns, fortifications, and religious centers. The careful documentation of this
material is particularly important as more and more of the Cypriot coastline
succumbs to development. As in previous seasons, PKAP has sought to document
the our work in various digital media allowing for instantaneous distribution
via the internet. It was possible to track our progress during the 2008
fieldseason through a series of regularly updated weblogs written by graduate
students (<a
editerraneanworld.typepad.com/pylakoutsopetria_graduate/</a> ), undergraduates
(<a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/pylakoutsopetria_undergra/">http://m
editerraneanworld.typepad.com/pylakoutsopetria_undergra/</a> ), and senior staff
(<a
editerraneanworld.typepad.com/pylakoutsopetria_season_s/</a> ). In addition to
texts, photographs, and illustrations, we also included a number of podcasts
done from the field. The blogs and podcasts continue the tone of our documentary
films from the 2005 and 2007 seasons by capturing both the serious and frivolous
side of life on an archaeological project. The project enjoyed the generous
assistance of the Estate Manager of the British Sovereign Area - Dhekelia
Garrison, the Larnaka District Archaeological Museum, and the Cyprus American
Archaeological Research Institute. The 2008 season‚Äôs fieldwork was funded by
grants from the University of North Dakota, Indiana University of Pennsylvania,
Messiah College, American Schools of Oriental Research, Institute for Aegean
Prehistory, the Brennan Foundation, the Mediterranean Archaeological Trust, and
generous private donors. All field work was completed with the permission and
cooperation of Director Pavlos Flourentzos of the Department of Antiquities,
Cyprus. </blockquote>
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TITLE: The Last Days of PKAP 2008
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
ALLOW PINGS: 1
BASENAME: the-last-days-o
DATE: 07/21/2008 08:46:47 AM

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BODY:
The 2008 PKAP season ended with a flurry of activity. We completed
three chaotic, but important challenges faced PKAP as we rushed through our last
days on Cyprus. 1. We lost the services of our loyal and efficient camp
manager Bret Weber. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/pylakoutsopetria_season_s/bret_weber
/">His blog posts</a> at the PKAP Season Staff Blog became quite popular among
our readers. More important than his blogging however was his culinary
expertise. He planned, coordinated, and in most cases cooked our meals for
the three busiest weeks of the season. When he departed, the senior staff
had to suddenly find it in them to not only run the project but to cook for our
crowd of hungry, hardworking, undergraduate and graduate volunteers! We
managed through, but with far more fast food and far less elegance. We
hope we can lure Bret back to the project next year! 2. Final report
writing! We collected a vast quantity of qualitative and quantitative data
this season from both the survey and the excavation. Typically the data gets
entered daily as we collected it from the field, but since we were working flat
out this past season, some of our data was not recorded digitally until the very
end of the season. I spent much of the last few days digitizing trench
plans. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/pylakoutsopetria_season_s/2008/06/tr
ench-plans.html">We digitized each SU</a> (or stratigraphic unit which was the
basic unit of excavation), and we will eventually be able to link data from our
ceramic finds (and other finds) as well as elevations digital photos and
qualitative information all to a unit in the GIS. This is relatively easy
in concept, but a substantial amount of work in practice. At the end of
the season, we needed to get enough of the material digitized and processed to
allow us to compose our final report to the Department of Antiquities and our
various donor agencies. The report will be made public by the end of the
summer, but most of the writing took place in the field on Cyprus. <a
eWriter/DimitriandBill.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px;
border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="271" alt="DimitriandBill"
Writer/DimitriandBill_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> 3. Finally,
as I have already alluded, we had to backfill our trenches. Since we
excavate on a British Military base, they quite reasonably asked that we
backfill our trenches so that someone did fall into it during maneuvers or the
like. Unfortunately we could not begin to backfill until the day before we
were scheduled to leave the island because Maria Hadjicosti, our collaborator
1037
and patron at the Department of Antiquities, could not visit our trenches until
then. The result of her late visit was that we were backfilling our
trenches for almost 5 hours on the day before we were scheduled to leave.
At one point we were using the car headlights to illuminate our work! The
day we were to leave we returned to the field at 5 am to continue our
backfilling. It was a lot of work and we almost got all the trenches
filled! <a
eWriter/SusieandBill.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px;
border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="404" alt="SusieandBill"
Writer/SusieandBill_thumb.jpg" width="271" border="0"></a> Despite the
hectic, end-of-the-season pace, PKAP 2008 was a huge success. Our systems
for recording data in the field and in the lab were up to the challenge of
excavation and the team worked well together. I was especially pleased how
the team pulled together over the last week of the season, working hard both in
the field and in the office (so to speak) preparing final reports, food, and the
trenches. 
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COMMENT:
IP: 96.227.103.52
URL:
DATE: 07/21/2008 12:58:30 PM
Welcome back. We missed you! Although your Macintosh is putting me into a
crisis. Just finished loads of ArcGIS, which is binding me to PC, but I guess
all the rest is better on Mac. Have a safe return.
-----
--------
TITLE: What I did on my summer vacation...
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
ALLOW PINGS: 1
BASENAME: what-i-did-on-m
DATE: 07/19/2008 06:37:30 AM

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1038
So, this blog took a month long hiatus, but it is now ready to resume in all
of its blogging glory. So to speak. Over the next week, I will do
what I can to account for this month long gap in the otherwise consistent
blogging routine. It partly derives from the reality that the dirt we so
eagerly removed from our trenches on Cyprus... <a
eWriter/DirtPilePhoto.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px;
border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="271" alt="DirtPilePhoto"
Writer/DirtPilePhoto_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0" /></a> ... had to
somehow be returned to its proper place in the ground. While this hardly
accounts for a 4 week disappearance, it is the kind of thing that had to happen
at the end of the <a href="http://www.pkap.org">PKAP</a> excavation
season. At the end of the very last day of the PKAP season, I
left Cyprus for Greece for a two week field season with David Pettegrew.
The goal of this season was to work on moving toward publication some of the
more exceptional sites discovered over the course of the <a
Korinthia Archaeological Survey</a>. With only two weeks to work and about
2 and half weeks of work to be accomplished, we continued a rather frantic
pace. On top of this, the village where we stay, Ancient Corinth, does not
have much in the way of public internet access (although an internet cafe opened
the week that David and I left for the US). <a
eWriter/PettegrewAnoVayiaSM.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px;
border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="272" alt="PettegrewAnoVayiaSM"
Writer/PettegrewAnoVayiaSM_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0" /></a> The
final excuse is that I finally succumbed to the pressure of my more tech savvy
colleagues (and my 65+ father!) and made the big migration to Macintosh.
At present I am terrified and at one point, I am fairly certain my super hip
MacBook Pro mocked me. This led me to immediately open Parallels or reboot
into Windows XP and cower in the comfortable environment of Windows. Of
course, almost immediately Windows told me that it would have to reboot in 5
minutes and began the ominous countdown numerous times (no matter how often I
told it that I wanted to reboot later). I will eventually get up the
courage to use the Mac OS, but it's going to be a slow transition. In
fact, I am writing this blog in Live Writer in a Parallels window... 
eWriter/MacBook%20Pro.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width:
alt="MacBook Pro"
Writer/MacBook%20Pro_thumb.jpg" width="250" border="0" /></a> The
upside to my month long vacation from blogging is that I filled with ideas for
blog posts! So over the next week or so, I plan to fill in the details
from the last four months, show off the results from some of our fieldwork, and
talk a little about my return to proper classroom duties after my year of
decadence at the American School. I was gratified to see that all
my regular blog traffic had now abandoned me! So, thanks for sticking around
over my little break from the blog and stay tuned...
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Maddy Bray
IP: 76.170.0.106
DATE: 07/30/2008 11:08:25 PM
Ancient Corinth has an internet cafe? What has the world come to??
-----
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TITLE: PKAP PodCasts from the Museum Team
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
ALLOW PINGS: 1
BASENAME: pkap-podcasts-f
DATE: 06/18/2008 10:47:00 PM

-----
BODY:
The busiest time of the season is upon us: the last day in the field is
today, we are preparing our final report to the Department of Antiquities and
our paper for the annual CAARI conference. And work in the museum is
reaching its conclusion ... so a few quick podcasts from the PKAP team at the
Larnaka Museum... Voices of Archaeology Podcasts 1.
Introduction to PKAP. coming soon <a
1040
 <a href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/PodCasts/06 The
Ceramicist at the Museum 1.mp3">6. The Ceramicist at the Museum</a> <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/PodCasts/07 An Afternoon with
the Registrar.mp3">7. An Afternoon with the Registrar</a> <a
For more on the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project see our sister
blogs: <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/pylakoutsopetria_graduate/">Pyla
-Koutsopetria Graduate Student Weblog</a>, <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/pylakoutsopetria_undergra/"></a><a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/pylakoutsopetria_undergra/">Pyla
-Koutsopetria Undergraduate Perspectives</a>, and <a
Koutsopetria Season Staff Blog</a>.
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TITLE: Trench Plans
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
ALLOW PINGS: 1
BASENAME: trench-plans
1041
DATE: 06/16/2008 12:21:35 PM

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<img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-bottom-
alt="ViglaWestSchematic"
Writer/ViglaWestSchematic_thumb.jpg" width="200" align="left" border="0">I am
working on preparing conceptual and schematic illustrations of our
trenches. This involves digitizing them with elevations in our GIS program
so that they can be properly located on our new 1 m topographic maps of Vigla
and Kokkinokremos. To the left is Brandon Olson's trench from Vigla
divided into the stratigraphic units that have associated top plans. In
some ways these graphics are meaningless from an analytical perspectives (it
assumes, for example, that all the features in the unit can be "sectioned" to
one elevation). It does, however, provide an easy template for
understanding the relationship between strata of soil, features, and in some
cases the locations of finds (each of which have a designated elevation that
could be plotted within the trench schema). Each trench requires
this level of documentation which will hopefully assist our efforts to explain
our excavation to students and colleagues in the US. Moreover, it may help
us to discover correlations between trenches at various places across the
site. For more on the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological
Project see our sister blogs: <a
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TITLE: A Saturday Morning on Bronze Age Kokkinokremos
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
ALLOW PINGS: 1
BASENAME: a-saturday-morn
DATE: 06/14/2008 11:08:03 AM

-----
1042
BODY:
Michael Brown, one of our Bronze Age specialists and a graduate student at
the University of Edinburgh, has been working hard at the Late Bronze Age site
of Kokkinokremos. His work has successfully expanded the built up area of
this important Bronze Age site. Last Saturday he gave us a quick tour of
his favorite trench... Voices of Archaeology Podcasts 1.
blogs: <a
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TITLE: More Excavations on Vigla
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
ALLOW PINGS: 1
BASENAME: more-excavation
DATE: 06/12/2008 10:59:20 PM

-----
BODY:
This past week we've made considerable progress on Vigla... Here is a short
description of the trenches by David Pettegrew. Voices of Archaeology
Podcasts 1. Introduction to PKAP. coming
soon <a href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/PodCasts/02 The
Mundane Matter of Sustenance.mp3">2. The Mundane Matter of Sustenance</a>
<a
eWriter/podcasticon_thumb1_thumb2.gif"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-
top: 0px; border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="16"
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/PodCasts/03 Excavations on
Vigla_ Week One.mp3">3. Excavations on Vigla: Week One</a> <a
eWriter/podcasticon_thumb1_thumb2%5B4%5D.gif"><img style="border-right: 0px;
border-top: 0px; border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="16"
Vigla_ Week Two.mp3">4. Excavations on Vigla: Week Two</a> <a
eWriter/podcasticon_thumb1_thumb2%5B6%5D.gif"><img style="border-right: 0px;
border="0"></a> For more on the Pyla-Koutsopetria
Archaeological Project see our sister blogs: <a
-----
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TITLE: What is it exactly that I do all day?
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
ALLOW PINGS: 1
BASENAME: what-is-it-exac
DATE: 06/12/2008 10:58:01 PM

-----
BODY:
My big project this season has had almost nothing to do with excavation,
museum work, or any of those things traditionally associated with
archaeology. Aside from the basic tasks associated with running a small
archaeological project, my day has largely been occupied with producing a new
high-resolution topographical map of our site. The impetus behind this
came two years ago when one of our Bronze Age experts noted that the 1:5000
topographical map of the height of Kokkinokremos was not terribly
accurate. As we began to study our area more close we noted more and more
little inaccuracies in our rather large scale maps. As a result this
season we decided to remap the most important features in our micro-region (the
height of Vigla, Koutsopetria, and Kokkinokremos) with our differential
GPS. This is a painstaking process that involves taking thousands
of individual points with GPS. Bret Weber (our camp manager!) and I have
wandered the micro-region for 4 or 5 hours a day taking points ever 10 m or so
across every kind of terrain from coastal plains to almost shear slopes of
cliffs. This week we began to process the elevation data in our desktop
GIS software and have some of our first enhances topographical maps. We
now have maps that have sub-1 m accuracy for much of Vigla and Koutsopetria
complete and we are 60% of the way through producing our map of
Kokkinokremos. Below is our new map of Vigla and Koutsopetria with 1 meter
contours... <a
eWriter/TopoFun.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px;
border-bottom-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px" height="232" alt="TopoFun"
Writer/TopoFun_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> For more on the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project see
our sister blogs: <a
1045
Koutsopetria Season Staff Blog</a>.
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TITLE: PKAP Podcast 2: The Substance of Sustenance
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
ALLOW PINGS: 1
BASENAME: pkap-podcast-2
DATE: 06/10/2008 06:23:02 AM

-----
BODY:
Archaeological fieldwork is more than simply our time in the field or at the
museum. Part of the appeal of archaeological work is the comradery that it
produces as a group of scholars and students from different backgrounds,
disciplines, and countries come together working toward a (more or less) common
goal. Meals, in particular, become an engaging and intellectually
productive time, but certain guidelines must be observed! In our second
PKAP Podcast Bret Weber, our camp manager, regular contributor to the PKAP Staff
blog, and a specialist in US Social Policy History, lays down the basic
procedure for keeping "camp" life happy and healthy during our field season.
 Voices of Archaeology Podcasts 1.
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/PodCasts/02 The Mundane Matter
of Sustenance.mp3">2. The Mundane Matter of Sustenance</a> <a
eWriter/podcasticon_thumb1.gif"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-
alt="podcasticon_thumb1"
Writer/podcasticon_thumb1_thumb.gif" width="61" border="0"></a> <a
eWriter/podcasticon_thumb1.gif"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-
alt="podcasticon_thumb1"
Writer/podcasticon_thumb1_thumb.gif" width="61" border="0"></a> For
more on the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project see our sister blogs:
<a
1046

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TITLE: PKAP Theses
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
ALLOW PINGS: 1
BASENAME: pkap-theses
DATE: 06/10/2008 06:22:33 AM

-----
BODY:
One of the most invigorating aspects of PKAP this year is that we have three
active graduate theses in progress based at least in part on research conducted
in our area and during our field seasons. Michael Brown is writing on the
Late Bronze Age remains at Pyla-Kokkinokremos at the University of Edinburgh and
has co-direct fieldwork at that site with us for the last three years. He will
make a major contribution to our final volume dealing with the Bronze Age
settlement structure in the area. Brandon Olson, at Penn State
University, plans to include in his dissertation a corpus of inscribed sling
pellets found on Vigla many years ago. He spends time each season at the
Nicosia Museum documenting them. He will contribute an appendix on the
inscribed military equipment to our final publication. Finally, I
spent the weekend reading the first draft of David Terry's Master's
thesis. His thesis came into focus last year when he was a member of the
PKAP survey team. He wrote on the relationship between the Latin church,
the various Eastern Christian religious traditions present on Cyprus, and the
Latin Crusader rulers of the island during the 13th and 14th centuries.
He'll complete his M.A. at the University of North Dakota this summer and
matriculate at Western Michigan University in the fall for his Ph.D. We
hope that he'll rejoin the PKAP field team in the near future! For
<a
1047
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TITLE: PKAP Podcast 1: Week One on Vigla
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
ALLOW PINGS: 1
BASENAME: pkap-podcast--1
DATE: 06/08/2008 09:13:20 AM

-----
BODY:
Loyal readers of this blog know that PKAP has long been interested in
experimenting with multi- and New Media approaches to archaeological
experiment. In that spirit we are pleased to introduce the first in a
series of PKAP Podcasts. Entitled Voices of Archaeology,
these podcasts will introduce you the various work of the PKAP team in the voice
of the archaeologists, volunteers, and staff who are doing it. Our
series of Podcasts will begin with a brief introduction to our work on Vigla by
David Pettegrew and his team excavating there. The Podcasts are all in MP3
format, easy to upload to your portable music play or on your desktop.
Voices of Archaeology Podcasts 1.
Introduction to PKAP. coming soon 2. The Mundane Matter of
Sustenance. coming soon <a
eWriter/podcasticon.gif"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width:
Writer/podcasticon_thumb.gif" width="61" border="0"></a>
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TITLE: PKAP Podcast 1: Week One on Vigla
STATUS: Draft
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
ALLOW PINGS: 1
BASENAME: pkap-podcast-1
DATE: 06/08/2008 09:12:13 AM

-----
BODY:
Loyal readers of this blog know that PKAP has long been interested in
experimenting with multi- and New Media approaches to archaeological
experiment. In that spirit we are pleased to introduce the first in a
series of PKAP Podcasts. Entitled Voices of Archaeology,
these podcasts will introduce you the various work of the PKAP team in the voice
of the archaeologists, volunteers, and staff who are doing it. Our
series of Podcasts will begin with a brief introduction to our work on Vigla by
David Pettegrew and his team excavating there. The Podcasts are all in MP3
format, easy to upload to your portable music play or on your desktop.
Voices of Archaeology Podcasts 1.
Introduction to PKAP. coming soon 2. The Mundane Matter of
Sustenance. coming soon <a
eWriter/podcasticon.gif"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width:
Writer/podcasticon_thumb.gif" width="61" border="0"></a>
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TITLE: The Vanished Basilica
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
ALLOW PINGS: 1
BASENAME: the-vanished-ba
DATE: 06/08/2008 07:13:02 AM

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1049
BODY:
It's taken me almost a whole week excavating to let go of our year long
belief that we would find an Early Christian basilica atop the height of
Vigla. We simply could not find any evidence of the feature that we had
interpreted as an apse on the geophysical work done last year. Moreover,
we have turned up almost no Early Christian (Late Roman) pottery in our
excavations. Our excavations have reveal, however, monumental
architecture. At least one massive wall (close to a meter in width) as
well as a very complex trench with several large ashlar blocks. Moreover,
the vast majority of pottery appears to be Hellenistic in date. Our new
hypothesis, which relies on only a very, very small sample of material, is that
there was a sanctuary on the height of Vigla. Hopefully our excavations,
designed as they were to determine the length and width of an Early Christian
church, will produce enough chronological and functional evidence to allow us to
press this point. The fact remains that parts of the fortification wall
around the circumference of the height still appear Late Roman in construction
style -- in particular the use of a white, gypsum based mortar that is very
similar to the mortar used in the clearly the Late Roman buildings on the plain
of Koutsopetria. Unfortunately most of the wall does not show any signs of
this diagnostic mortar. Our confidence has been sufficiently shaken in our
ability to date a monumental phase on Vigla to a Late Roman date that we have
decided to dig a small probe to try to date a particularly well preserved
stretch of fortification wall. The biggest challenge is that the wall runs
along the slope of the steep rise making it difficult to excavate. We have
a small section of the wall that is not only characteristic of the
chronologically ambiguous sections of the wall in general (i.e. not clearly Late
Roman) and situated on a relatively stable slope. We began excavating this
wall on Friday and hope to find datable foundation deposits. For
<a
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As readers of this blog know, this week we've started running morning and
afternoon sessions as the British ranges are not being used in the
mornings. So teams head out into the field a little before 7 am for
excavating and around 7:30 for mapping. We come back from the field around
12 for lunch and then return to the field with full field teams (around 20
people) in the PM. We've gotten so desperate to work that we've even
impressed our camp manager into service! The PKAP directors -- me. David.
and Scott -- assisted by Dimitri Nakassis, our field manager, are left to
oversee numerous tasks each day. In the mornings, along with one
excavation team, a team of 2 continues to map Vigla and Koutsopetria with our
now-functioning Trimble differential GPS. Another team of two is doing a
scale drawing of Maria Hadjicosti's excavated room at Koutsopetria. At the
same time a team of 5 is processing artifacts from the 2007 field season, Maria
Hadjicosti's 1993 and 1999 excavations, and the finds coming in from our
excavations this year. They are also checking the pottery that we prepared
formal, detailed catalogue entries for in 2006 and 2007 (this was pottery
collected from the survey in 2004 and 2005). In the afternoon we have two
areas of excavation open and two trenches in each area each with a trench
supervisor. At the same time we are mapping with the Trimble GPS and
running a survey team of 5 which is completing the last few areas that remain
unsurveyed after three fields of fieldwork. Almost all of this data is
brought together in our GIS and access databases with a bewildering array of
location numbers, names, and accession numbers. And it should largely be
comparable between areas, survey methods, and different times! It feels
chaotic on a day to day basis, but every now and then when things are running
smoothly there is a moment of serenity -- a brief gap in the bustle -- that
makes me feel like our goals for the 2008 field season, might, in fact, be
possible... Now if we can just find the apse for our theorized (and
increasingly theoretical) Early Christian basilica on Vigla rather than an
alarmingly straight wall, bits of mud brick, and much earlier artifacts.
blogs: <a
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IP: 71.185.143.66
URL:
DATE: 06/07/2008 12:48:27 PM
Don't despair on Vigla basilica. In many ways, a straight wall and mud brick
might be much more interesting. Have enjoyed following your day-to-day.
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TITLE: Depositional Processes
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DATE: 05/31/2008 11:55:05 AM

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Archaeologists are particularly interested in the various processes whereby
artifacts become deposited in "archaeological" (that is documented by
archaeologists) contexts. Our site on Vigla is littered with modern trash
that is in the process of becoming physically embedded in the soil matrix and
working its way out of sight. <a
eWriter/ViglaTrash2.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width:
alt="ViglaTrash2"
Writer/ViglaTrash2_thumb.jpg" width="272" border="0"></a> <a
eWriter/ViglaTrash.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width:
alt="ViglaTrash"
Writer/ViglaTrash_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> Plastic and aluminum are the modern equivalents of the ceramics
from antiquity that provide the basic framework for understanding the chronology
of ancient sites. Like ceramics, plastic bottles and beer cans are hardy
and will not break down easily in the soil and will surely assist the
archaeologists of the future in establishing the chronologies of various
stratigraphic levels. Moreover, the discard of modern trash is a
relatively well-understood practice allowing archaeologists to make the easy
link between the material evidence on the ground and the human practices that
produced them. Some despositional events, however, defy
explanation. For example, we discovered a nice assemblage of Hellenistic
pottery in a small and incredibly thorny bush! <a
eWriter/PotBush1_1.jpg"><a
eWriter/PotBush2.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px;
border-bottom-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px" height="272" alt="PotBush2"
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eWriter/PotBush1_1.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width:
alt="PotBush1"
Writer/PotBush1_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> We
quickly determined that the result of some bizarre depositional process (perhaps
involving looters or a massive collapse of a local cliff face) created a version
of ceramicist hell. Our ceramicist, Scott Moore, had to sacrifice flesh to
these thorny guardians to get his hands on these well-preserved sherds. At
least one sherd remains persistently out of reach leading to our ceramicist to
repeatedly thrust his hand into the thicker bush to trying to extricate it!
blogs: <a
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TITLE: A Sense of Place at Pyla-Koutsopetria
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DATE: 05/30/2008 12:10:50 AM

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We were visited by Maria Hadjicosti today and she spent the morning walking
our site with us. We are collaborating with her and the Department of
Antiquities to publish the results from her excavations at <a
href="http://www.pkap.org/">Pyla-Koutsopetria</a> in the 1990s. These
excavations were conducted on her family's lands which now fall within the
British Sovereign Area on the island. The remains at the site were initially
discovered by her cousin during the deep ploughing of the land (see on Pottery
and Plowzones). Maria and some colleagues undertook the excavations at the
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site on their own time, digging on weekends and days off uncovering a single
room and part of the apse. The room included the collapsed remains of an
impressive double vault spanning a space decorated with plaster wall painting,
Proconnesian marble revetment, and moulded gypsum decoration. She was very
encouraging concerning our work at the area which was important for the success
of the project this year. More important than this, however, was
that she shared with us some of the recent history of the place of Pyla-
Koutsopetria. She told us about her grandfather's gardens
along the coastal road which grew watermellons and described her childhood
visits to these gardens and the sea. She told us about how the women in
the family used to bring meals down from Pyla Village to the laborers in their
fields down along the coast during the harvest time. The fields that her
family worked were gradually distributed through the various members of her
family, many of whom now live in the UK and the US, and some of them became part
of the British base at Dhekelia. The long ridgeline of Kokkikokremos and
Vigla was Kazama which she called "our mountain" and villagers from Pyla and the
other villages in the area would travel to the mountain to collect herbs, horta,
flowers during the springtime, and honey. Finally, her visit
officially began the excavation season. As per usual with all things PKAP
a slight GIS/GPS glitch delayed the ceremonial first trowel-ing of the soil at
Vigla and Kokkinokremos, but I am working this morning to un-glitch our data and
we'll be ready to go for real this afternoon. Hopefully we'll have
photographs of our first day excavation posted by the weekend. For
<a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/pylakoutsopetria_undergra/"><a
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TITLE: On Pottery and Plowzones
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DATE: 05/26/2008 02:02:01 PM

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The plow (or plough as our British colleagues would say) is an inelegant tool
for excavating, but nevertheless regularly produces interesting results.
The site of <a href="http://www.pkap.org/">Pyla-Koutsopetria </a>remains largely
under cultivation (and we enjoy good relations with the farmers who lease their
land from the British Ministry of Defense)so every year the plow brings up
expected and sometimes exciting results. This past year a farmer put in some
beautifully tilled and irrigated fields immediately adjacent to an area
excavated in the mid 1990s by Maria Hadjicosti. <a
eWriter/Plough1.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width:
alt="Plough1"
Writer/Plough1_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> The hill of
Vigla with the tilled fields Around the edge of the field the farmer
used a tool that looks like a giant hook. He dragged around the base of a
raised area that almost certainly represents a buried structure. <a
eWriter/Plough2.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width:
alt="Plough2"
Writer/Plough2_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> The work of
the hook The results were impressive including sizable chunks of
architectural gypsum that you can see in the photo below. The white is
roof tiles, plaster and mortar that was pulled up by the plow. <a
eWriter/Ploughgypsum.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-
alt="Ploughgypsum"
Writer/Ploughgypsum_thumb.jpg" width="272" border="0"></a> Plows,
Pottery, and Gypsum Our entire site was tilled this
past year pulling up a whole new range of material and the dry soil makes the
pottery and plaster brought up over the past year particularly visible.
Part of our season goals will be to document some of this material. For more on the <a href="http://www.pkap.org/">Pyla-
Koutsopetria Archaeological Project</a> see our sister blogs: <a
Koutsopetria Graduate Student Weblog</a>, <a
Koutsopetria Undergraduate Perspectives</a>, and <a
Koutsopetria Season Staff Blog</a>.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: David Terry
EMAIL: david.terry@und.edu
IP: 24.230.58.53
URL: http://profile.typekey.com/david_terry/
DATE: 05/29/2008 09:28:57 PM
Very interesting. This sort of goes to support your theory that you can never
survey too much, eh?
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TITLE: New Arrivals (Mo' Peoples, Mo' Problems)
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DATE: 05/25/2008 09:32:31 AM

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Over the weekend the <a href="http://www.pkap.org/">Pyla-Koutsopetria
Archaeological Project</a> doubled in size. On Thursday, my wife,
Susan Caraher, and Bret Weber, our camp manager arrived. Friday saw the
arrival of David Pettegrew, his wife Katie, and three students from Messiah
College in Pennsylvania as well as Chris Gust, a UND graduate student in History
and three students from Scott Moore's home institution, Indiana University of
Pennsylvania. On Saturday Dallas DeForest, a graduate student at Ohio
State arrived and the final undergraduate is slated to arrive later this
afternoon. The new arrivals add to the excitement and bustle of PKAP, but
also add a significant level of complexity. The project needs now to
coordinate buying food and cooking for a group of 20, organizing activities and
work schedules for a group spread over 4 apartments in the building, and
bringing 20 folks of varying archaeological experience up to a basic level of
competence quickly. Such complexity begets meetings as the project slid
from a comfortable "low grid" collegiality toward the beginnings of a "higher
grid" and more bureaucratized level of hierarchical management. Meetings
absorbed nearly half of the day on Saturday as various groups of senior folks in
PKAP sat down to discuss everything from publication plans to our itinerary for
next week. For example, Mara Horowitz our Bronze Age ceramicist leaves on
Sunday, so it was vital that we all agree to her role in the project's final
publication. Our final publication will have as many as 10 co-authors of
various sections so we needed to make sure that, on the one hand, no one felt
that their speciality was infringed upon and understood their specific
responsibilities in the final product, and, on the other hand, that all of the
various authors understood the goals, organization, and tone of the final
monograph. The challenge will be, of course, balancing between our desire for
multiple narratives and discourses produced by individual authors who will each
focus on a specific aspect of the project, and the need to produce a text
broadly legible by scholars interested in the diachronic history of the micro
region of Pyla-Koutsopetria. Even as we accept a certain
element of multivocality in our approach to the monograph, we were planning an
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orientation for undergraduates and our new graduate student volunteers.

This orientation seeks in part to impose a common methodological and procedural
basis for the project. We suggest (rather than impose?) a common
archaeological and practical map on the city of Larnaka, for example, as well as
reinforcing the students' understanding of the basic procedures in the museum
and in the field. We strongly emphasize the relationship between the
material collected during survey and excavation and the project's databases and
Geographic Information Systems interface which form the basis for the
quantitative analysis of at least our ceramic evidence. So while allowing
for a alternative voices and narratives in our interpretation, our procedures
and methods for the student volunteers are, for the time at least, are quite
linear and direct. Of course, the perspectives of students and the
staff -- like those that will appear in this and the other PKAP blogs -- form
another narrative component of our fieldwork and a particularly chaotic and
multivocal one at that. The goal is a balance between the procedural
consistency of our fieldwork and the swirling contradictions and irregularities
in the narratives that make up the experience of archaeology. For
<a
-Koutsopetria Undergraduate Perspectives</a>, and <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/">Arch
aeology of the Mediterranean World</a>.
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TITLE: The Drudgery of Data
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DATE: 05/22/2008 11:31:10 AM

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While Scott Moore and Mara Horowitz, ably assisted by Michael "Bolton" Brown
and Brandon Olson, produce more data by reading the artifacts collected during
the 2007 field season, I have spent today processing artifacts analyzed during
2006. In particular, I've been relabeling the near 2000 digital photos
taken last year. This is merely a prelude before checking them against the
data in our data base. With the advent of digital photography,
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photographing huge quantities of artifact is no longer a prohibitive

expense. We have produced close to 10,000 digital photographs of the site
and of artifacts over the last 5 years almost all of them in high resolution
digital formats. They all need to be labeled in a standard way and linked,
somehow, to attribute data produced by the field teams and the ceramicist.
I also worked on developing our new database for the excavation which will allow
us to record systematically our descriptions of stratigraphy (that is the layers
of soil that form the context for all cultural material) and the features in the
trenches as well as trench photographs, top plans, and sections. <a
eWriter/BillData.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px;
border-bottom-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px" height="271" alt="BillData"
Writer/BillData_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> Dimitri Nakassis
and I (together we are filling in for my wife, Susan, as registrar at the
museum) experienced another aspect of this data drudgery earlier in the day when
we visited remote warehouse for the Larnaka District Archaeological Museum
looking for five crates of pottery from our site that were stored remotely last
year. The Larnaka Museum houses the material from the entire Larnaka
district as well as material from various other excavated sites that are now in
the occupied northern half of the island. The amount of finds from these
sites is as immense as any district in the Mediterranean basin. The remote
warehouse reflects this in its vast size. Three or four warehouse
buildings flank an industrial yard strewn with all the elements necessary for
the proper excavation and maintenance of an archaeological site: chain fence,
wood planks, scaffolding, cement footings, roof tiles, et c. The
industrial metal doors of the warehouse slid aside to reveal several huge rooms
with 12 foot ceilings, lined with glass cases which were filled with trays
labeled by site. The rows upon rows of neatly stored and labeled material
evoked the shelves of a research library. The finds, broken, mundane, and
magnificent, bore the names of the major sites in the area: Kition, Halla Sultan
Tekke, the sites of the Kalavassos and Maroni Valleys, along with trays
inscribed with legendary words like Enkomi. Archaeology produces
data -- intellectual, material, ceramic, paper, and digital -- and this data
requires constant maintenance. The work is tedious. The scale, even
for a small project, can seem colossal. Good practices, however, are
essential to the continued vitality of the field and the ability for future
generations of scholars to revisit and restudy the results.
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TITLE: On Frustration and Patience in Archaeological Field Projects
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BASENAME: on-frustration
DATE: 05/20/2008 11:01:02 AM

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One of the key elements of working on any collaborative project is the
ability to mitigate frustration with patience. The goal of archaeology, no
matter how systematic and routine, is the moment of discovery. In the case
of survey projects like ours at <a href="http://www.pkap.org/">Pyla-
Koutsopetria</a>, discovery is rarely the kind of eureka moment
sensationalized in the gripping narratives of the opening of a tomb in Egypt or
the uncovering of a piece of monumental architecture. The moment of
discovery in survey archaeology is extended and derives from painstaking
processes: the systematic walking of fields, the reading of collected ceramics,
and the plotting of finds across digital maps, and the querying and re-querying
of ever expanding data sets in database programs. The protracted
moment of discovery in survey archaeology inevitably leads to a persistent
feeling of frustration as each process takes seemingly forever. Each delay
in working in the field, reading the sherds collected from the field, gathering
landscape information from the site, or processing spatial data gnaws at one's
psyche. The in evitable frustrations associated with collaborative
fieldwork attempts to drain away, little by the little, the euphoria,
excitement, and energy almost inherent in the experience of actually handling
artifacts whose meaning and significance runs from your own fingertips to an
experience and culture immediate only long before. In one sense, the
sherds waited far longer to be discovered, analyzed, and promoted to the status
of "cultural heritage" than the archaeologist has waited to produce meaningful
and significant assemblages from the data collected in the field. (As my
colleague David Pettegrew is fond to say when I get particularly impatient
"there is always more archaeology"). But this does little to make me
better when things are not going as quickly or as easily as planned. So,
today was frustrating. Our GPS unit is not working exactly as we had
anticipated. The software is not doing exactly what we want it to do
either. We are working with people in the US to resolve this and this blew
up the afternoon. I spent 3 crushing hours attempting to processes the
very small quantity of data collected yesterday to no avail. But today
had promise too. Scott and our Bronze Age ceramicist began to read pottery
collected in 2007. Moreover, Dr. Maria Hadjicosti, our Cypriot
collaborator, paid a visit to the museum and not only helped us get space in the
museum work room, but also gave us permission to work in the museum on
Mondays. Scott will begin to process the context pottery from her
excavations next week. After a visit to the site of her excavations in
1993 and 1999, I will begin to analyze the architectural fragments in
conjunction with Sarah Lepinki's work on the architectural gypsum and wall
painting. So, frustration. No moments of euphoria
today. But some signs of patience rewarded. For more on the Pyla-
Koutsopetria Archaeological Project see our sister blogs: <a
Koutsopetria Season Staff Blog</a>, <a
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Koutsopetria Undergraduate Perspectives</a>.
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TITLE: More Robinson Photographs
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DATE: 05/18/2008 11:00:02 PM

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Steven Robinson has provided me with some more photographs from his
collection of his father's, <a
href="http://www.library.und.edu/Collections/Robinson/home.html">Elwyn B.
Robinson</a>'s, photographs(see also: <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2008/05/im
ages-from-the.html">Images from the History of the University of North
Dakota</a>). The first photo shows Robinson while at Oberlin where he
received his B.A. He studied at Oberlin from 1924-1928 <a
eWriter/ElwynAtOberlin.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-
alt="ElwynAtOberlin"
Writer/ElwynAtOberlin_thumb.jpg" width="217" border="0"></a> Robinson
at Oberlin (1924-1928) Two additional photos of note were taken in the
early 1940s. Of particular note is the photograph of Clarence Perkins (<a
arence-perkin.html">Clarence Perkins and History at the University of North
Dakota</a>) evidently taken in 1941. These were presumably shot with
Robinson's Argus AF camera which he purchased in 1938 and used through 1947
. On the Argus AF camera from his autobiography (Chapter 6):
<blockquote> So I bought an Argus AF the summer or fall of 1938, an American-
made 35mm camera, for $15.00. It was a fine camera with a f 4.5 lens and a
shutter with speeds from 1/25 to 1/200 of a second and a bulb setting as well
for time exposures. I believe that my father gave me a tripod he was not
using. Later I bought a cable release, necessary for time exposures, a table-top
tripod with an adjustable top for holding the camera at any desired angle, an
Argus enlarger in 1939, and some trays. I believe I got a plastic developing
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tank as a Christmas present. (I still had that tank when I gave all my darkroom
equipment to Steve in 1979 or 1980.) The Argus enlarger, $12.50, was a most
ingenious design. With the back of the camera removed, it fitted into the
enlarger so that the camera lens became the enlarger lens and the diaphragm of
the shutter could be used to regulate the light passing through the lens and
also the depth of focus. </blockquote> The captions on these
photos were kindly provided by Steve Robinson. I am not entirely certain
who "Brown" is in the first photo, but I suspect he is the land owner.
Marie Thormosgaard must be the Dean of the Law School's wife. <a
eWriter/perkins1941.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-
alt="perkins1941"
Writer/perkins1941_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> Brown, Dr.
Perkins, Marie Thormosgard ca. 1941 <a
eWriter/EBR-ca1944.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width:
0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px" height="254" alt="EBR-
ca1944"
Writer/EBR-ca1944_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> Robinson at 425
Princeton looking North, ca. 1942-4 
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TITLE: Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project at the International Association
for Classical Archaeology Congress, Rome.
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DATE: 05/17/2008 07:20:53 AM

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The Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project will be presenting a paper at
the <a href="http://www.aiac.org/ing/congresso_2008/home.htm">International
Association for Classical Archaeology Congress in Rome</a> (22-26 September
2008). It will be in a panel on Exchange in the Eastern
Mediterranean. The other papers in the panel and our abstract are listed
below. For more on the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project
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see our sister blogs: <a

Koutsopetria Season Staff Blog</a>, <a
Koutsopetria Undergraduate Perspectives</a>. Session
Title: Exchange in the Eastern Mediterranean Session Co-
ordinator: James Whitley, University of Cardiff Discussant:
Professor Carla Antonaccio, Duke University Session
Abstract This session looks at a number of interrelated issues
covered by the word exchange (which necessarily covers, but is not limited by,
all forms of trade), and the technological and geographical conditions that made
such exchange possible (particularly Mediterranean ‚Äòconnectivity‚Äô). First it
looks at the exchange of goods, whether primarily social (as gifts or other
‚Äòentangled objects‚Äô) or commercial (as commodities), and the social and
economic networks these exchanges create. Second, it looks at how the exchange
of goods mediates changes in technology, ideas and culture ‚Äì exchange, that
is, as a medium of acculturation. It seeks to relate these wider patterns to the
particular, local circumstances of two of the East Mediterranean‚Äôs larger
islands, namely Crete and Cyprus, whose respective social and economic
development take radically paths in the Early Iron Age and Archaic periods.
 PAPERS Transport of goods in the
Mediterranean region from the Geometric to the Classical period -
Images and meanings Athina Chatzidimitriou, Hellenic Ministry of
Culture This paper presents various aspects of the iconography and
sources related to the transport of goods, as attested from the Geometric to the
Classical period. The paper focuses on Greek finds, such as the ones from
Attica, as well as from Italian, Greek or indigenous Mediterranean centres. A
small number of clay models of wheeled animals shown loaded with transport
amphorae were deposited as offerings in Greek graves as early as the Geometric
period. Later, carts (hamaxa or ap√®n√®) used for transporting people on special
occasions such as weddings, funerals and religious festivals, as well as heavy
goods, are depicted in the Archaic and Classical Attic and Boeotian vase
painting. A number of vases bear representations of two-wheeled carts drawn by
mules, loaded especially with amphorae, the main storage vessel for the trading
of wine and oil throughout the Mediterranean. The easy carrying of the amphorae
and other products over short distances by the use of a pole, usually held by
two men is also attested. In the same period, two-wheel wagons, with
similar construction and constituent parts to those of the Attic vase painting
occur in the art and finds of the region of Etruria and in the colonies of Magna
Graecia. In the 5th to the 4th century B.C. a number of figurines of mules and
horses, loaded with vases and other goods, are found in the workshops of Greek
coroplastic centers as well as in Cyprus. Merchant ships, although the
most common means of goods-transportation, are seen to have been rarely
represented on vase painting, when compared to war ship images. Clay models and
depictions of merchant ships, found in Greece and Cyprus, tend to share
construction similarities with depictions of the same on Etruscan vessels. 
From the study of transport methods, we can therefore trace the development
of commercial relations between various Mediterranean centers. These relations
underline the primary role of trade and exchange of goods in the development of
cultures in the Mediterranean area. Trade and Exchange in the Eastern
Mediterranean: A Model from Cyprus William R Caraher, University
of North Dakota <a href="mailto:william.caraher@und.nodak.eduR"> </a>R.
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Scott Moore, Indiana University of Pennsylvania David K.

Pettegrew, Messiah College Traditional work on the Late
Roman economy focused on the role of urban areas as large coastal commercial
centers. More recently, however, scholars have begun to recognize the important
place of mid-sized coastal sites in Late Antique exchange systems. These smaller
nodes of exchange supported independent trade routes standing between urban
centers and more rural areas of agricultural production and allowed inhabitants
of non-coastal and ex-urban areas the opportunity to participate in
economic and cultural exchange. This paper provides a case study of a Pyla-
Koutsopetria, a mid-sized, Late Antique harbor town of between 30 and 50
ha. situated 10 kilometers east of ancient Kition, Cyprus. Five seasons of
archaeological fieldwork by the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project
have produced archaeological evidence for local and interregional exchange on
the micro-regional level. The midsized site of Pyla-Koutsopetria suggests
a decentralized pattern connectivity which links exurban and rural regions in
Cyprus to broader Mediterranean currents. This connectivity not only provided an
economic lifeline but also an opportunity for cultural exchange independent from
dominant urban areas. This study considers how greater Mediterranean
connectivity supported by an increased number of recognized autonomous economic
nodes challenges the longstanding view of ancient culture as an urban
phenomenon. Social networks and exchange in ancient Greece: the
evidence of weight standards (a case study) . Katerina
Panagopoulou, University of Crete The present paper
capitalizes on the key convention in identifying monetary networks in antiquity,
that of a weight standard. A weight standard may be defined as a unit of weight,
the fractions or multiples of which provided the various denominations of a coin
issue. The unit of weight adopted often varied from place to place. It was
normal for a state to adopt (and adapt) for its coin issues the weight standard
employed in the economic transactions in which it participated. A state (as an
issuing authority) might also employ different weight standards for different
coin issues, in order to facilitate transactions lying on different monetary
conventions. In order to investigate the nature of the market defined through
this convention, I will explore the structure of the market in a specific area
through the application of the social networks‚Äô theory. I will then examine
the processual history of the integration of this given area into more global
monetary systems dominated by standards as widely accepted as the Attic in the
Hellenistic period. I will then focus on the impact that the integration of this
area into the lingua franca of the Classical and Hellenistic period had
upon local networks. Pottery production in Iron Age Crete viewed in
the context of regional and external trade networks: A ceramic petrology
perspective Marie-Claude Boileau, Fitch Laboratory, British School
at Athens, Greece James Whitley, School of History and
Archaeology, Cardiff University, UK Anna Lucia D‚ÄôAgata, Istituto di
studi sulle civilt√† dell‚ÄôEgeo e del Vicino Oriente, CNR, Rome, Italy 
This study uses an integrated approach combining ceramic petrology to
stylistic and contextual data to investigate how production of coarse
utilitarian pottery in Central Crete was influenced by regional and external
trade networks from the 12th to the 7th centuries BC. The gap in the textual
record makes the Cretan ‚ÄòDark Age‚Äô highly dependent on material evidence to
study the social developments which led to the emergence of the polis. Yet,
scientific analyses of ceramics from this post-prehistoric period have been very
few and deal mainly with fine decorated wares. In this regard, the scientific
analysis of stratified pottery from the British excavations of Knossos in North-
Central Crete and the Greek-Italian excavations of Thronos-Kephala (ancient
Sybrita) in Central-Western Crete, two settlements showing uninterrupted Early
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Iron Age occupation with deposits belonging to domestic, funerary and ritual
contexts, will significantly contribute to the current understanding of the
early Greek period. The comparative study of the two assemblages is expected to
provide a better understanding of the long-term changes and impact of external
influence on the island‚Äôs potting traditions, especially from the 10 c.
onwards. The Cypriot Kingdoms in the Archaic Age: a
Multicultural Experience in the Eastern Mediterranean. Anna Cannav√≤,
Scuola Normale Superiore ‚Äì Pisa and Maison de l'Orient et de la
M√©diterran√©e ¬´Jean Pouilloux¬ª - Lyon The Cypriot kingship in the
Archaic Age is an interesting case of interaction between cultural experiences
of different origin. Far from being merely a survival of the Mycenaean-type
royalty or an imitation of the Phoenician city-kingdoms, it presents some
features of both these institutions, modified and adapted to a different, very
heterogeneous cultural context. Spurred and conditioned from time to time by
greater and more complex realities active at the border of their world ‚Äì the
Neo-Assyrian empire, 26th dynasty Egypt, the Phoenician city-states, the
expanding Greek world ‚Äì the Cypriot kingdoms evolved during the Archaic Age in
original and partially recoverable manners. During the analysis the
results of the excavations conducted in different sites of the island ‚Äì
Kition, Amathous, Paphos, Salamis - shall be considered. A comparison with the
data resulting from the epigraphic and literary evidence shall be proposed: the
textual evidence originates largely from the outside of the island, so the
documents have to be read with the greatest attention to their context of
provenance. At the end a development model, which accounts for the role and the
contribution of each culture involved in the process, shall be proposed, thanks
also to the comparison with similar realities in the Mediterranean world of the
Archaic Age. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/pylakoutsopetria_undergra/"></a>
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TITLE: Byzantine Dreams in Athens
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BASENAME: byzantine-dream
CATEGORY: Byzantium
DATE: 05/15/2008 07:54:24 AM

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<a
1064
eWriter/image_50.png"></a><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width:

0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; margin: 0px 10px 0px 0px; border-right-width:
0px" height="244" alt="image"
Writer/image_thumb_41.png" width="198" align="left" border="0"></a>I was just
sent the program for a conference at the end of this month in Athens on
"<a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/DreamsAthensMay2008Program.pdf">Drea
ms and Visions in Late Antiquity and Byzantium</a>". The program looks
full of interesting approaches to dreaming ranging from the literary to the
psychoanalytical. The afternoon panel on the first day looks particularly
interesting with papers by Steven Obherhelman, Maria Mavroudi, and Charles
Stewart, the first and the last of which consider the relationship between
Ancient or Byzantine and Modern dream practices. None of the papers appear
explicitly deal with the relationship between archaeology and dreams (as in some
of my earlier posts: <a
eams-inventio.html">Dreams, Inventio, and Archaeology</a>), judging from the
titles, with inventio, so my research might have had something to add to these
proceedings. It's always heartening to open a conference program like this
one and not see paper dealing with my current research. It is all too predictable that a conference with a focus that falls
near one of my current research areas would happen less than two weeks after I
leave the country!
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TITLE: Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project Blog Carnival
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As many of my regular readers know, the <a href="http://www.pkap.org/">Pyla-
Koutsopetria Archaeological Project</a> has experimented with using the "New
Media" to expand the accessibility of our fieldwork on Cyprus. In
particular we've used video and blogs to introduce our project, its
participants, and our site to the wider community both on Cyprus and around the
world. This year we are planning the most ambitious project yet. In
terms of archaeology, we are planning to both survey and excavate as well as
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continuing our geophysical work, creating high-resolution maps of the entire

site, and completing the documentation of the material collected during last
year's fieldwork. The team will be larger than ever before and at most
times this season we will average more than twenty people ranging from faculty
with extensive fieldwork experiments to the least experienced undergraduate
volunteers. The experiences of the Pyla-Koutsopetria Team will appear
on the internet with an unprecedented degree of transparency. PKAP is
planning an almost continuous blog carnival documenting the various perspectives
on the the project. To do this we have set up three new blogs where we
hope to be almost continuous activity. The <a
Koutsopetria Season Staff Blog</a> will document the reflections of the PKAP
staff including the project's directors, Scott Moore and David Pettegrew, the
field director Dimitri Nakassis, our prehistoric specialist, Michael Brown, our
registrars, Susie Caraher and Katie Pettegrew, and our camp manager Brett
Weber. The <a
Koutsopetria Graduate Student Perspectives</a> Blog began last year and this
year will continue to provide a venue for the reflections of our graduate
students: Brandon Olson, from Penn State, Chris Gust, from the University of
North Dakota, Dallas DeForest, from Ohio State, and Mat Dalton, our illustrator
and leader of the survey team. This group has already begun to blog on
their experiences as they prepare for our field season! The <a
Koutsopetria Undergraduate Perspectives</a> Blog is a new feature for this
year. It will feature undergraduates from Messiah College and Indiana
University of Pennsylvania blogging on all aspects of the project. 
So follow one or all of these blogs over the next six weeks and share with us
the excitement, tedium, frustration, and comradery of an archaeological
project.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Maddy Bray
IP: 76.170.0.106
DATE: 05/17/2008 08:16:35 PM
blog carnival- sounds fun! I look forward to reading about your field season as
it happens.
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TITLE: The End of One Thing and the Beginning of Something Else...
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DATE: 05/13/2008 12:36:18 AM

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I leave the comfortable confines of the American School early tomorrow
morning for the beginning of my field season in Cyprus. It was an exciting
year to be at the American School for many reasons. First, I was able to
focus heavily on my own research including my work on Cyprus on the <a
href="http://www.pkap.org/">Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project</a>, on
Early Christian epigraphy, architecture, and decoration. I was able to
develop a small (but rapidly growing) project on "dream archaeology" and begin
to conceptualize more formally how to approach editing the autobiography of a
scholar as accomplished as <a
href="http://www.library.und.edu/Collections/Robinson/home.html">Elwyn B.
Robinson</a>. I was also able to form many new professional and personal
relationships. I learned more about the Archaic religion in Athens, the
Peloponnesian agora, the Great Mother, Greek landscape and survey archaeology,
Roman figurines and magical objects from the Athenian Agora, and the official
and unofficial history of the American School. I also had front-
row seats for some of the interesting changes taking place at the School.
The lecture series at <a href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/cotsen/">Cotsen Hall</a>
was more extensive than I could remember or even imagine. The regular
program included a trip to Western Macedonia and lectures on GIS and Survey
Archaeology. There was a new website. Women wearing uniforms with
the words "Cleaning Team" on the back introduced a new policy where all members
of the school community will be required to wear uniforms clearly marking their
position in the community ("<a
href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/index.php/admission-
membership/memberships#regular">Regular Members</a> Team", "Academic Team",
"Management Team", and the very important "Board of Trustees Team"). This
will certainly cut down on those awkward moments when you accidentally assume
that a member of the Board of Trustees is the person responsible for cleaning
your office! The <a href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/index.php/Blegen-
Library//">Blegen</a>, <a
href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/gennadius/g_index.htm">Gennadius</a>, and
neighboring British School Libraries continue to amaze me. If you think
that you need a book that is not in one of these three excellent libraries, it
is probably the first sign of a much deeper problem with your own research
model. I might be kidding, but it is hard to say. I also was
supported by a good group of colleagues in the new director, Jack Davis, who
generously gave me time off to pursue my own research, in the Mellon Professor,
John Oakley, who welcomed my onto his flawlessly organized trips and encouraged
my regular contributions, and the two Whitehead Professors, Kirk Ormand and
Barbara Barletta. Chuck Jones at the Blegen consistently impressed me with
just how much he understands about the digital media and Maria Georgopoulou at
the Gennadius gave me a venue to pursue and present my research. The staff
at Loring Hall made the American School a welcoming place to call home and
patiently saw to the slow improvement of my Greek. <a
eWriter/OxiDay2007_1.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px;
border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="272" alt="OxiDay2007"
1067
Writer/OxiDay2007_thumb_1.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> The other people that I need to thank here are all those back at
the <a href="http://www.und.edu/">University of North Dakota</a> who allowed me
to take advantage of this year away. My colleagues in the <a
href="http://www.und.edu/dept/histdept/">Department of History</a> kept me in
the loop on things. More importantly, however, my wife made my stay here
possible with her patient support. I leave for Cyprus
tomorrow and the beginning of the PKAP season. This will bring some
exciting changes to this blog! So stay tuned even as I end one thing and begin
something else...
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Chuck Jones
IP: 194.219.34.195
DATE: 05/13/2008 08:16:58 AM
Bon Voyage Bill! It was good to get to know you a little.
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COMMENT:
IP: 64.252.254.182
URL:
DATE: 05/14/2008 03:07:12 PM
My daily routine will be much impoverished without Bill's blogging from Athens.
I'll stay tuned on PKAP's postings. A huge thanks goes out to Bill from all of
us in the US who kept in touch with the ASCSA program through his blog. Have an
unbeatable field season.
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COMMENT:
IP: 83.97.61.253
URL:
DATE: 05/22/2008 05:07:57 AM
I have really enjoyed reading this blog over the past academic year. Bill
points out some very important aspects of spending time the ASCSA. One of them
is that the people one meets there are an incredibly valuable resource. A
second is that the talks given at the foreign schools in Athens frequently
disseminate valuable information from ongoing archaeological projects. This
results in an environment where it is possible to learn a great deal about
current, often still unpublished, research. This means that those who are
studying at the ASCSA (or merely take lunch, tea, and ouzo there) can learn
about ongoing research in Greece to an extent that is impossible stateside.
That is one reason that I think Bill‚Äôs blog is particularly valuable. He has
1068
provided those of us teaching in the US, and anywhere else in the world, an ear
to the discussions at the ASCSA that I found so valuable during my time there.
Cheers! Have fun in Cyprus!
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COMMENT:
IP: 83.97.61.253
URL:
DATE: 05/22/2008 05:09:32 AM
I have really enjoyed reading this blog over the past academic year. Bill
points out some very important aspects of spending time the ASCSA. One of them
is that the people one meets there are an incredibly valuable resource. A
second is that the talks given at the foreign schools in Athens frequently
disseminate valuable information from ongoing archaeological projects. This
results in an environment where it is possible to learn a great deal about
current, often still unpublished, research. This means that those who are
studying at the ASCSA (or merely take lunch, tea, and ouzo there) can learn
about ongoing research in Greece to an extent that is impossible stateside.
That is one reason that I think Bill‚Äôs blog is particularly valuable. He has
provided those of us teaching in the US, and anywhere else in the world, an ear
to the discussions at the ASCSA that I found so valuable during my time there.
Cheers! Have fun in Cyprus!
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TITLE: Images from the History of the University of North Dakota
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: images-from-the
DATE: 05/12/2008 12:58:11 AM

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Steven Robinson has generously provided me with some photos take by his
father <a href="http://www.library.und.edu/Collections/Robinson/home.html">Elwyn
B. Robinson</a>. Those included here were primarily taken by him in 1947
(with exception of the photograph with Dr. Robinson in it!). 
Elwyn Robinson was an avid photographer (as was Robert Wilkins), and he came
by this honestly as his father owned a professional photography studio in
Chagrin Falls, Ohio. In his autobiography you can feel his excitement in his
description of purchasing the camera presumably responsible for these
photographs in 1947: <blockquote> "On May 8 I had purchased a second-hand
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leica_III">Leica, a model IIIb</a>
manufactured before the war, paying $175.00 for the camera, case, four filters,
and a sunshade. I was much excited to have one of the famous German-made cameras
with an Elmar f 3.5 lens and a focal plane shutter with speeds from one second
to 1/1000 of a second. In June I bought a copy of the <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/625445">Leica Manual by Morgan,
Lester, and others</a>, and spent a good deal of time with it. I must have taken
a lot of pictures that summer in the enthusiasm of having a fine camera. I can't
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remember what I did with my Argus AF, but looking back I expect that I could
have taken as good pictures with that $15.00 camera as I could with the Leica. I
soon devised a way I could use the Leica lens with the Argus enlarger. I owned
the Leica until the 1970's when I sold the Leica to a collector for almost as
much as I had paid for it. I devised a system for saving and filing the films
that I took, numbering and dating them. They were finally thrown out in
preparation for the move to Tufte Manor."</blockquote> His photographs
capture life in Grand Forks in the late 1940s and some of the character of the
figures that populate Geiger's history of the University and my own meager
offering in the history of the department. I particularly like the
photograph of Dean Bek who must have died less than a year after this photograph
was taken. Bek did much to see the University through the Depression and
the Second World War and his famous address to President West and the faculty in
1944 captures the optimism of the post war university: <blockquote> ‚ÄúThe
University is coming out of the blight and fog of depression. A new day is
dawning. The depression did some terrible things to us‚Ä¶ Before the university
was hamstrung by insufficient funds it had an enviable reputation among sister
institutions‚Ä¶‚Äù (‚ÄúRemarks of Dean W.G. Bek at the Faculty Meeting of the
University of September 23, 1944,‚Äù Orin G. Libby Manuscript Collection.
William Bek Papers. Collection #120, file 1. Elwyn B. Robinson Department of
Special Collections, Chester Fritz Library, University of North Dakota, Grand
Forks.)</blockquote> <a
eWriter/Wheeler.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; border-
left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="404" alt="Wheeler"
Writer/Wheeler_thumb.jpg" width="341" border="0"></a> George Wheeler longtime head of the Biology Department and Famous
Friend of Orin G. Libby. He served with Libby and Gillette on the
committee that recommended the appointment of John C. West as University
president. He was known to represent the old guard well into the 1960s
when he resisted the idea of rotating department chairs introduced by President
George Starcher. <a
eWriter/Wilkins.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; border-
left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="267" alt="Wilkins"
Writer/Wilkins_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> Robert
Wilkins longtime member of the Department of History <a
eWriter/Lincoln.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; border-
left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="287" alt="Lincoln"
Writer/Lincoln_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> Arleigh Lincoln
(Sociology) and daughter Ann. The Lincolns lived at the SW corner of the
intersection of Hamline & 5th Ave N. <a
eWriter/Butler.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; border-left:
0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="384" alt="Butler"
Writer/Butler_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> Francis Butler (founder
of the Butler Construction Co) who lived in the second house to the south
of 425 Princeton <a
eWriter/RobinsonGordon.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px;
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border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="271" alt="RobinsonGordon"

Writer/RobinsonGordon_thumb.jpg" width="404"
border="0"></a> Elwyn Robinson with Gordon <a
eWriter/Thormosgaard.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px;
border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="331" alt="Thormosgaard"
Writer/Thormosgaard_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> Dean Thormosgaard
(Law) <a
eWriter/Bek.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; border-left:
0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="352" alt="Bek"
Writer/Bek_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> Dean Bek
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CATEGORY: Byzantium
DATE: 05/09/2008 01:21:11 AM

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Some quicker quick hits: <ul> <li>Cyril Mango's lecture, "<a
href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/index.php/news/eventDetails/walton-lecture-by-
cyril-mango/">Imaging Constantinople</a>", here in Athens was very well-
attended. <a href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/cotsen/">Cotsen Hall</a> was
packed! He imagined Middle Byzantine Constantinople to be much less
monumental than the Constantinople of Justinian's time. Sounds like
discontinuity... <li>The <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/Mangosymposium.pdf">symposium
celebrating Mango's 80th birthday</a> picked up on some of these themes
particularly Anne McCabe's discussion of the Byzantine remains from the Athenian
Agora. Of particular notes was <a
1071
href="http://www.helsinki.fi/hum/kla/sironen/sironeneng.html">Erkki
Sironen's</a> discussion of verse inscriptions from the Late Antique and Early
Byzantine period in Athens. His volume of Inscriptiones Graecae is to
appear by the end of this year and will supercede his presently invaluable
Helsinki dissertation: <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/40388704">The
late Roman and early Byzantine inscriptions of Athens and Attica</a>.
<li>An interesting <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7381738.stm">preview of
the new Acropolis Museum done on the BBC</a>. Word on the street here is
that none of the considerable remains of the Christian Parthenon will be
displayed inside the new museum including the considerable and important
fragments of the church's ambo. This seems hard to believe as it
represents such an important piece in any argument for the continuity of Greek
culture from antiquity through Christian times. It is particularly
surprising since there is so much interest at present in <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/166357707">Hellenism in Byzantium</a> (e.g.
see "<a
href="http://www.lsa.umich.edu/UMICH/modgreek/Home/_TOPNAV_WTGC/Lectures%20at%20
U-M/ParthenonKaldellis.pdf">A Heretical (Orthodox) History of the Parthenon</a>"
as a preview of Kaldellis forthcoming book: The Christian Parthenon:
Classicism and Pilgrimage in Byzantine Athens (Cambridge University Press,
forthcoming)., also <a href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/2008/02/writing-off-
wall-transcription-as.html">Writing off the Wall: Transcription as
Resistance</a>). <li>IV International Cyprological Congress was two weeks ago
in Nicosia. I forgot the blog about it! I did not attend, but
everyone who did has reported that is was both well-organized and intellectually
productive. <a
href="http://www.cypriotstudies.org/English%20HTMLs/ENkiprProgramme.html">Here's
a link to the program and abstracts</a>.</li></ul> Two random links: <ul>
<li>I am looking forward to reading newly released <a
href="http://niche.uwo.ca/programming-historian/index.php/Main_Page">The
Programming Historian</a> by <a
href="http://history.uwo.ca/faculty/turkel/">William J. Turkel</a> & <a
href="http://history.uwo.ca/faculty/maceachern/">Alan MacEachern</a>. <li>And I
enjoyed Natalie Zemon Davis's reading of Michel de Certeau in the New York
Review of books, "<a href="http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21375">The Quest of
Michel de Certeau</a>".</li></ul>
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TITLE: A Rambling about Survey from a Regional Perspective
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A very recent article in the Journal of Archaeological Research (S.
A. Kowalewski, "Regional Settlement Pattern Studies," JAR 16 (2008),
225-285) offers another in a recent spate of critiques of intensive survey in
the Eastern Mediterranean (and in Greece, in particular). Kowalewski's
general treatment of regional settlement archaeology is an interesting read and
brings together examples around the world demonstrating how settlement
archaeology is indeed a global paradigm for understanding human behavior in
space. He singles out Mediterranean archaeology for particular
criticism, however, pointing out that most Mediterranean projects do not cover
sufficient territory to address questions at a regional scale. Drawing on
definitions of regions developed in the discipline of geography, Kowalewski
suggests that the smallest possible unit of study capable of providing useful
conclusions regarding regional settlement is 150-250 sq. km (p. 257). As
in his earlier publications (most notably Kowalewski and S. K. Fish eds., <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/19516061">The Archaeology of Regions: The
Case for Full Coverage Survey. Clinton Corners, NY 2008 (originally
Washington, D.C. 1990)</a>) he recommends full coverage survey rather than
employing any kind of regional sampling model. Thus Kowalewski singled out
projects like the <a href="http://www.scsp.arts.gla.ac.uk/">Sydney Cyprus Survey
Project</a> for particular criticism: <blockquote> "The Sydney Cyprus
project spent five field seasons walking fields at hand-holding spacing, in 50 m
transects 500 m apart, for 6.5 km sq., only 10% of the target region, which was
small anyway. The well-executed color maps still look like the world as
seen through prison bars. The data are not adequate for settlement pattern
analysis; the surveys are actually something else, perhaps what Bintliff
revealing terms "surface artifact survey." (p. 250)</blockquote> Blanton
offered a similar critique of Mediterranean Survey in his now famous
"Mediterranean Myopia" article (R.E. Blanton, Antiquity 75 (2001), 627-
629). Both Blanton and Kowalewski's arguments, however, fail to account
for the contributions of Mediterranean survey toward the history of settlement
in the region (many of which were summarized in the M. Galaty, "European
Regional Studies: A Coming of Age?" JAR 13 (2005) 291-363).
Indeed, the contributions of any one project might appear meager, the aggregate
accomplishments of Mediterranean survey are impressive by any standard.
More importantly, the criticism of Blanton and Kowalewski are fundamentally
incompatible with the kinds of surveys possible in places like Greece
today. Most survey projects find themselves restricted by limitations
imposed by host countries (both in terms of time and area covered), the rapidly
expanding and widespread rate of development, and the expense of doing fieldwork
in Europe. At the same time, the intensity of Mediterranean survey exceeds
that of the kinds of regional surveys proposed by Kowalewski in part because
regional studies in the Mediterranean (and in Greece in particular) operates in
a discourse dominated by longstanding, large-scale excavation. This
creates a very particular set of expectations for survey projects by demanding
very high degrees of chronological, spatial, and functional precision (i.e. like
one finds in an excavation); see for example D. Haggis's review of M.
Cosmopoulos, The Rural History of Ancient Greek States: The Oropos Survey
Project in the American Journal of Archaeology (AJA 107
(2003), 305-307) for an interesting example of the influence of excavation on
survey in Greece. These demands for precision fueled a particularly active
discussion over the nature, notion, and definition of the site in the
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Mediterranean world. The slippery definition of site in a Mediterranean

context and the continuing challenge in assigning a clear functional component
to most agglomerations of pottery in the landscape has pushed regional survey
projects to engage in somewhat different paradigms than those offered by
"regional settlement archaeology". Thus scatters of ceramic material in
the Greek landscape are more likely to represent concentrations of particular
kinds of resources at a particular place and provide insights into the complex
network of economic, social, and even political processes that made such
concentrations of material possible. Paradigms that understand
regions as networks of interaction (see for example <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/42692026">Horden and Purcell's</a> treatment
of the Mediterranean) rather than geographically bound places in the landscape
tend to privilege robust assemblages of material (namely pottery) derived from
the increasingly narrow windows available for the study of the Mediterranean
landscapes. Mediterranean survey's deft adjustment to a peculiar set of
practical and discursive conditions has pushed increasingly for cooperation and
comparability between projects that employ similar degrees of methodological
sophistication (see for example, the S. Alcock and J. Cherry, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/52920721">Side-by-side survey : comparative
regional studies in the Mediterranean World</a>). Survey projects in
the Mediterranean emerge as methodologically-defined windows into the material
culture of place and appreciated the wide variation of scales at which
interaction occurs in the landscape. While recent challenges to the notion
of the site has eroded the kind of clear functional assessment of the landscape
at a chronological scale suitable for traditional historical analysis, it has
privileged approaches that recognize the variation within survey assemblages as
an important indicator of the vitality of larger networks of regional
interaction. Thus the kinds of regions identified by Kowaleswki (and
others), which are external to the methods employed by archaeological survey,
have given way to networks of interaction across space that are fundamentally
tied to the archaeological methodology. In a larger perspective it seems
possible that survey archaeology in the Mediterranean represents a significant
example of bridging the kind of mid-range theory that has become a kind of holy
grail for processual and post-processual archaeologists alike.
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IP: 208.107.224.223
URL:
DATE: 05/21/2008 10:40:46 PM
The "holy grail for processual and post-processual archaeologists alike" -- wow,
I'm getting goosebumps ...
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TITLE: PKAP Site Visits

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BASENAME: pkap-site-visit
DATE: 05/07/2008 01:01:58 AM

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One week before I leave for Cyprus and I am beginning to prepare for the
upcoming season in earnest now. In particular, I've been preparing
material for our site visits with students. Site visits are an integral
part of our season at the <a href="http://www.pkap.org/">Pyla-
Koutsopetria Archaeological Project</a>. Visiting a while range
of archaeological sites -- from prehistoric to modern -- helps familiarize the
students with the impressive array of archaeological material present on the
island and often begins the process of creating a body of comparanda
(objects of comparison) for helping us to understand our site. We
also work with the students on how to <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2008/03/si
te-reports-re.html">"read" an archaeological site</a> and encourage them to
formulate and address questions that put the site into a historical,
archaeological, and environmental context. This can be a bit tricky, of
course, as the student volunteers on PKAP range from relatively experienced
archaeologists to almost totally inexperienced undergraduates. So, we
attempt to frame our site visits in a way that will appeal to the entire range
of students. (You can see more about our site visits in the <a
ging Cypriot</a> short entitled "<a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/Movies/Siteseeing.m4v">Sightsee
ing</a>") This year in order to focus our discussion of the various sites
that we will visit, we're including three "site visit questions" on our
handouts. I've been working on them this week and include a sampling here
(type-os and all!): Paphos Site Visit Questions
1) Mosaic floors are an important, if complex, source for the cultural
history of the Eastern Mediterranean. What do these floors tell us about the
people who lived and visited these fancy buildings? 2) Scholars have long
sought to understand the use of rooms in houses as a key to understanding social
organization. In Paphos, you can see several relatively well-preserved examples
of Roman and Late Roman domestic space. What conclusions can you draw regarding
the function of houses in the Roman and Late Roman period? What arguments can
you make regarding the function of particular rooms in these houses? 3) The
site of Paphos was an important place on the island of Cyprus for over 1000
years. What made this site so important? What advantages did it have compared to
other sites on the island? In what ways was it similar to other Hellenistic and
Roman sites on Cyprus? Ay. Neophytos Site Visit Questions:
1) Examine the various phases of wall painting in the Enkleistra. What are
the basic differences between earlier and later wall painting? 2) What are
the major themes in Byzantine and Post-Byzantine wall painting? What is the
significance of these themes in their architectural context? Can you recognize
any pattern? What is the goal of Byzantine wall painting? 2) The Enkleistra
represents an extreme in the practices of Byzantine monasticism. What does such
an extreme say about the values of this strain of Byzantine Christianity? Ay.
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Neophytos became a popular figure even during his lifetime. What does it say
about the values 12th and 13th century society in Cyprus society more broadly?
Ay. Georgios Site Visit Questions 1) The excavated
churches at Ay. Georgios are the most impressive remains from the site. What can
these buildings tell us about the other, unexcavated, components of the
settlement at this site? 2) Unlike many larger sites where the urban centers
have been excavated, only a small part of the remains have been excavated at Ay.
Georgios. Looking at the remains present around the large Basilica A, what are
the potential functions of these spaces? How do they relate both spatially and
functionally to the Basilica? 3) Compare the topography and remains at Ay.
Georgios to the site at Pyla-Koutsopetria. How are these sites similar?
How are they different? Kourion Site Visit Questions 1)
At Kourion you can get a clear sense of the urban area of a Roman site and at
least some idea of how it developed over time. What kinds of buildings clustered
around the main forum? What do these buildings have in common and what does it
say about the site through antiquity? 2) As a coastal site it has certain
similarities to other coastal sites that we have (and will) visit including
(albeit distantly) Pyla-Koutsopetria. What the similarities and differences
between the site of Kourion and others that we know? How does this make it
unique? Can we generalize about coastal sites on Cyprus? 3) The House of the
Gladiators and the House of Eustolios represent another pair of Roman houses on
Cyprus. Like at Paphos, these houses can tell us some thing about both their
owners and what Roman Cypriots regarded as important. Produce an informal list
of the things common to these houses. How are they different from the way modern
Americans decorate their homes? Amathus Site Visit Questions
1) Like Kourion, Amathus features a well-preserved paved forum/agora area
surrounded by public structures. Judging from the preserved remains at the site,
what features are the most commonly encountered in the public space of the city?
2) The sanctuary on the acropolis is one of the rare sites on Cyprus where
the pagan and Christian sanctuaries are directly superimposed upon one another.
How did the Early Christian basilica incorporate or erase the earlier sanctuary?
What does this tell us about Cypriot Christianity at Amathus and specifically on
the acropolis there? 3) The site of Amathus was situated to take advantage of
several natural features. How did the residents of the site shape their
environment to take the best advantage of the natural landscape and resources?
Angeloktiste Site Visit Questions 1) Walking around the
outside of this church, how can you tell the different phases of construction?
How many phases can you recognize? Can you assign them dates relative to one
another ‚Äì earliest to most recent? 2) The apse mosaic is particularly
important in the history of Byzantine art. How is it similar to other mosaics
that we have seen from a slightly earlier period (e.g. Paphos or Kourion)? How
is it different? 3) The church at Kiti stands amidst a modern village. What
does its existence say about this area in antiquity and after? Zygi
Site Visit Questions 1) The site of Zygi appears along an otherwise
unexceptional stretch of Cypriot coastline. What environmental advantages does
the site of Zygi have? Why would there be a coastal site here? 2) The nature
of Zygi-Petrini as a ‚Äúself-excavating sites‚Äù provides an profile view of an
abandoned site and a window into the site‚Äôs stratigraphy. What can we say
about the processes that created the site? Are their specific events that appear
in the archaeological remains that are invisible in thoroughly excavated and
cleaned sites? 3) The modern village of Zygi provides an intriguing point of
comparison for the nearby ancient site. How does one go about comparing ancient
and modern sites on Cyprus? What historical events must a scholar recognize in
order to make valid or useful comparisons?
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IP: 208.107.224.223
URL:
DATE: 05/21/2008 10:52:05 PM
Looks good, Professor Caraher; I look forward to the tour/discussions. !
!
When I was in Europe, it bugged me that I was nearly always touring by myself
without anyone with whom to discuss the sites. The few times that I had a
captive audience (e.g. at Carcassonne, Perigueux and Aix-en-Provence) I fear
that I talked their ears off. These are some good, discussion-provoking
questions, though. I'll start warming up ...!
!
;-j
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TITLE: Christian Spolia in Medieval Greece
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: christian-spoli
CATEGORY: Byzantium
DATE: 05/06/2008 12:46:40 AM

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The study of spolia in a Medieval context is certainly not new and it has
received particular intensive attention in the last few years. Most
scholars, however, have focused on the use of Ancient spolia in a Medieval
context and focused on monuments like the 9th-century Panayia at Skripou (see in
particular A. Papalexandrou, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/40099239">The church of the Virgin of
Skripou : architecture, sculpture and inscriptions in ninth-century
Byzantium</a> (Ph.D. Thesis, Princeton University, 1998)) or, here in
Athens, the Little Metropolis. One almost wonders whether this emphasis on
the use of Classical stones represents a lingering apologia for Medieval period
monuments -- an effort to prove that even the Byzantines recognized the
importance of Classical Antiquity or reinforces the timeless aesthetic of
Classical monuments or an abiding sense of continuity with the Classical past.
 We know, however, that by far the largest class of spolia reused in
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Byzantine monuments did not date from antiquity, but rather the Early Christian
period. Columns, column capitals, marble chancel barriers, inscriptions,
even mosaic decoration complemented obvious efforts to mark the place of earlier
buildings in the landscape. Two relatively recent works highlight
the significance of studying this Christian spolia in a Medieval context. L.
Nixon's <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/70104789">Making a Landscape
Sacred: Outlying Churches and Icon Stands in Sphakia, Southwestern
Crete.</a> (Oxford 2006) (for more on this book see my: <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2008/04/sa
cred-landscap.html">Sacred Landscapes in Crete and the Corinthia</a>) focuses
some attention on the reuse of Early Christian spolia in Venetian era buildings
in Crete. She argues: <blockquote> "I suggest that what we have in
Venetian Sphakia is the expression of a particular chronology of desire, made
material and visible through the incorporation of earlier Christian elements,
especially in the case of he churches built over basilicas, but also in the
churches which include palaeo-Christian spolia. The desired chronology is one
that links local Orthodox Christianity with an earlier authentic and original
Christian presence, ruined but not destroyed (according to local tradition) by
the Arabs. The placement of new churches over basilica sanctuaries shows a
precise awareness of the older structures, and a desire to bind two points in
time into one authoritative chronology." (p. 72)</blockquote> Oddly, she
over looks the work of John Xenos (for more on him see: <a
-crete-with-j.html">To Crete with John Xenos</a>) who many centuries earlier on
Crete showed a similar sensitivity to reconfirming the Christian landscape of
the island. It can perhaps be added to her argument that this was not only
building physical continuity with Early Christian remains on the island, but
also in practice by re-performing deeds documented in the texts of their
Byzantine predecessors. Another recent article shines valuable
light on this matter as well. B. Kiilerich, "Making Sense of the Spolia in
the Little Metropolis," Arte Medievale 4 (2005), 95-114 not only offers a
relatively radical re-dating of this building, but also notes the important role
of Christian spolia in a building perhaps better known for its wide array of
ancient stones. The basis for redating the building to the 16th century is
an inscription built into the church but recorded by Kyriakos of Ancona among
stones said to be near the agora. Kyriakos was unlikely to record an
inscription built into a church without noting the church and its wide array of
other spolia suggesting that the building was, in fact, not built until after
his visit to Athens in 1436. Kiilerich argues fairly convincingly for a
date in the 1450s after the city had fallen to the Ottomans. More
interesting for a discussion of spolia, however, is her idea that the church
sought to integrate both pagan and Christian spolia into a monument as a mark of
a distinct Byzantine and Greek identity. Her final paragraph summarizes
this nicely: <blockquote> "The most prevalent sign on the spoIia is the
cross. It is presented more than fifty times on the exterior of the church, and
on the northern wall, inscribes itself upon a particular large number of ancient
and medieval reliefs. In this context the many crosses - some of which were
probably inserted into the ancient images long before the stones were reused in
the church - were hardIy due to superstitious minds fearing pagan imagery;
rather, they were aimed at the Ottomans as a visual manifestation of religious
identity, The Little Metropolis was a monument to Athens and the Orthodox faith
in the form of a church that displayed tangible physical evidence of Athens'
Byzantine and antique culture. The spolia with the dominant sign of the cross
were markers of identity, visual reminders of Christianity, the auctoritas of
which was rooted in antiquity." (p. 111)</blockquote> Both Nixon and
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Kiilerich demonstrate a willingness to see spolia in a Medieval context as

capable of evoking an Early Christian past as much as what scholars would see as
an ancient one. Kiilerich in particular is even willing to see pagan
spolia in a Medieval context noting that some of the material used in the Little
Metropolis may have had crosses already inscribed in it from previous
reuse. Thus, some ancient spolia might not necessarily function to evoke a
Classical past that at times seems to be of more interest to contemporary
archaeologists and historian than to Medieval Greeks who reused the
stones. 
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TITLE: Modern Jeremiahs
STATUS: Publish
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DATE: 05/05/2008 01:19:54 AM

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<a
eWriter/image_49.png"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px;
border-bottom-width: 0px; margin: 0px 10px 0px 0px; border-right-width: 0px"
height="204" alt="image"
Writer/image_thumb_40.png" width="134" align="left" border="0"></a>Since Monday
has somehow become my North Dakota day , it seems appropriate to give a short
plug for <a href="http://business.und.edu/homepages/mjendrysik/">Mark
Jendrysik's</a> new book: <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/185021462">Modern Jeremiahs: Contemporary
Visions of America's Decline</a>. He's the head of the Political
Science Department at UND, a <a href="http://www.pkap.org/">PKAP</a> fan, and a
good buddy. The book develops further ideas that he introduced in
an important 2002 article in the Journal of Popular Culture ("The
Modern Jeremiad: Bloom, Bennett, and Bork on American Decline," JPC 36
(2002), 361-383). In this article, Jendrysik defined the modern character
of the longstanding genre of the Jeremiad as manifest in works of William
Bennett, Robert Bork, and Allan Bloom. He draws examples from their
popular and influential books dating from the late 1980 to the late 1990s
(The Closing of the American Mind, Slouching toward Gomorrah,
The De-Valuing of America, and The Death of Outrage).
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These books attacked in a rather formulaic way the excesses of American culture
and attributed the decline of American society to the expanding influence of
relativism, the expanding power of external influences, and the lack of moral
and social discipline of the masses. Rather than critiquing these
propositions based on their internal logic, philosophical rigor, or historical
accuracy, Jendrysik places these texts in the historical context of the
rhetorical Jeremiah who is braced between wanting his audience to "repent!" and
needing conditions to get worse to prove the fundamental accuracy of their
claims. You can <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Jeremiahs-
Contemporary-Visions-
American/dp/0739121928/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1209964033&am
p;sr=8-1">get it from Amazon</a>, and I have been told that it makes a great
Mother's or Father's Day gift!
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TITLE: Big Week at the Gennadius
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: big-week-at-the
CATEGORY: Byzantium
DATE: 05/03/2008 12:11:39 AM

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Quick Saturday blog post just because there is so much activity at the <a
href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/gennadius/g_index.htm">Gennadius Library</a> this
week. If you can't find something here that interests you, you just aren't
interested in Greece! On Monday, May 5, Sinan Kuneralp will lecture on "From
Baghdad to Berlin: the itinerary of Yanko Bey Aristarchi, a 19th - century
Ottoman diplomat of Greek origin". The lecture will be held at 7:00 pm in Cotsen
Hall. The lecture will be in English - a summary in Greek will be available.
On Tuesday, May 6, Professor Cyril Mango will deliver the 27th annual Walton
lecture at 7:00pm in Cotsen Hall. The topic of his lecture is
"Imagining Constantinople" (in English). On Wednesday, May 7, has
been scheduled a symposium in honor of Prof. Mango's 80th birthday. <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/Mangosymposium.pdf">Here's the
program</a>. <a
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Writer/image_thumb_39.png" width="121" align="right" border="0"></a> On
Thursday, May 8: "Cavafy's Memory. 75 years from his death" events: Tour
of the Cavafy exhibition (Gennadius Library, 7:00 pm) Book presentation
of "C. P. CAVAFY - THE COLLECTED POEMS", a translation by Evangelos Sachperoglou
under the aegis of the British School at Athens; followed by recitation of
Cavafy's poems in English and Greek by British actress Claire Bloom and Greek
actor Kostas Kastanas (Cotsen Hall, 8:00 pm).
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CATEGORY: Byzantium
DATE: 05/02/2008 12:56:53 AM

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A rather short and whimsical Friday Varia and Quick hits today: <ul>
<li>Tucked away in a further recess of the World Wide Net Web is John Wortley's
<a href="http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~wortley/index.html">A Repertoire of
Byzantine "Beneficial Tales"</a>. It's a massive compilation of summaries
of the short beneficial tales that we so popular in Late Antique and Byzantine
times. It has <a
href="http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~wortley/general.html">various indices</a>, <a
href="http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~wortley/bibliography.html">bibliography</a>,
and a nice <a
href="http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~wortley/intro.html">introduction to the
genre</a>. It's all text file so that the summaries can be searched
through your browser. <li>Scott Moore at <a
href="http://ancienthistory.typepad.com/ancient_history_ramblings/">Ancient
History Ramblings</a> has posted a link to a <a
href="http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L21786447.htm">Reuters story</a>
about the severe draught on Cyprus. Water rationing is never good.
<li>I received a flyer the other day about <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/MMHC_flyer.pdf">Midwest Medieval
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History Conference</a> which will be held at Dennison University on October 3

and 4. Of particular note: "Graduate students are encouraged to submit
proposals, and those presenting will receive a $100 honorarium." What a
nice encouragement for graduate student participation! If you need more
encouragement, Dennison will be absolutely lovely that time of year.
Watching a Division III football game at <a
href="http://www.denison.edu/athletics/deeds_field_piper_stadium.html">Deeds
Field-Piper Stadium</a> is one of life simple pleasures. In October the
lowset stadium would just begin to be surrounded by fall colors.
Unfortunately the Big Red is away that weekend so you'd have to content yourself
with the conference. Alas. <li>Rumor has it that there will be a little
symposium on Byzantine Athens here at the <a
href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/">American School</a> next Wednesday, perhaps at
the <a href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/gennadius/g_index.htm">Gennadius
Library</a>, in honor of Cyril Mango's lecture, <a
href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/index.php/news/eventDetails/walton-lecture-by-
cyril-mango/">Imagining Constantinople</a>, the day before. Oddly there is
no mention of it on the <a href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/">School's fancy-pants
web page</a>, so it might be a secret. <li>Mary Beard has posted on <a
href="http://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_life/2008/04/ten-excellent-b.html">10
Excellent Blogs</a>. <li><a href="http://phdiva.blogspot.com/">PhDiva</a>
is back. It's a great blog. Here's a simply brilliant post (among
many): <a href="http://phdiva.blogspot.com/2008/04/rules-of-blog.html">The Rules
of The Blog</a>; it includes one of my favorite rules:</li></ul> <blockquote>
"Feel free to email me ‚Äì you‚Äôll generally get a reply. But please do not
confuse friendliness with romance or anything else ‚Äì a few too many people
have recently. I also have a habit of blocking addresses if men are either too
rude or amorous." Needless to say, I have decided to implement the exact
same policy. Since I've started this blog, I have become
irresistible. I've recently had to block my wife's email address.
 All teasing aside, it is a very good blog even if you don't know what a
<a href="http://phdiva.blogspot.com/2008/04/new-kim-brandstrup-ballet-at-
roh.html">Givenchy dress is</a>.</blockquote>
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Dorothy King
EMAIL: dorothy.lists@gmail.com
IP: 86.143.4.28
URL: http://www.dorothyking.com
DATE: 05/02/2008 02:18:19 AM
Whoops - have corrected the typo ... many thanks. Not sure if it was just
written in a hurry, or was subconsciously hoping to fell a couple of the worse
offenders.!
Love your blog, by the way, and wish I could come to Athens for the Mango day.
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1082
AUTHOR: Dorothy King

EMAIL: dorothy.dee@gmail.com
IP: 83.205.250.54
URL: http://www.dorothyking.com
DATE: 12/31/2008 12:22:20 AM
Givenchy - late great French fashion designer. Dress Audrey Hepburn, notably in
Breakfast at Tiffany's ...
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TITLE: The Rebranding of Byzantium
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: the-rebranding
CATEGORY: Byzantium
DATE: 05/01/2008 02:23:00 AM

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Kostis Kourelis posted a valuable defense of the study of Byzantine Art
entitled <a href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/2008/04/byzantium-
now.html">Byzantium N O W</a> on his <a
href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/">Buildings, Objects, Situations</a>
blog. It complements earlier critiques (<a
href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/2008/03/embodied-bodies-in-coffin-of-
medieval.html">Embodied Bodies in the Coffin of Medieval Art History</a>) of the
direction of the study of Byzantine Archaeology, Architecture and Art. He
again bemoans the decline in Byzantine Studies in the American Academy.
His professional plaint clashes perceptibly with Tim Gregory's optimism for the
contribution of the discipline to persistent problems in the field (see his <a
-archaeologic.html">An Archaeological Perspective on the History of Byzantine
Greece</a>), and reminds us that the decline of Byzantine Studies is not because
of intellectual impasses within the field. The decline of Byzantine
Studies' fortunes also stands out against the growing visibility of Byzantium
across various aspects of popular culture and in expanded offering available for
undergraduate courses (see, for example, <a
re-springtime.html">More Springtime for Byzantium</a> and <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2008/01/sp
ringtime-for.html">Springtime for Byzantium</a>). Thus, Byzantine Studies
seems to be at a crossroads where the increase in cultural capital and scholarly
resources is braced by a decrease in the positions available for Byzantinists
within the Academy. I'd argue that this contrast is in some ways reflects
of the particular academic history of the study of Byzantium in the US.
The growth of Byzantine Studies in the US over the course of the 20th century
was largely the product of political events in Europe -- from World War II to
the rise of Communism in Eastern Europe -- which drove a concentrated and
prestigious body of European Byzantinists to the US. Over time they found
a happy home in the American Academy at a time when the American culture (not to
mention the US government) had distinctly political interest in encouraging
research on the cultures located on the other side of the "Iron Curtain", and as
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Kostis, has pointed out elsewhere, at a time when there was a
growing appreciation of the Byzantine ascetic all along the ragged edge of the
Modernist movement. The fortuitous coincidence of Modernist interests, the
Cold War, and a body of mature, rigorous, and productive immigrant scholars
created an American presence in Byzantine Studies that continued through the
final decades of the 20th century as the intellectual heirs and students
produced by these movement continued their academic appointments. In fact,
one could go a step further and imagine the recent flourish of Byzantium in the
popular eye as the high-tide of a wave of influence generated by a very peculiar
moment in academic history. The declining positions available to
Byzantinists within the academy marks the return to a kind of academic and
professional equilibrium. But does this simplistic (and admittedly
arbitrary) view of Byzantine Studies accurately describe the status of Byzantine
studies as a discourse within the American Academy? I'd argue that
appearance of Byzantine Studies' decline has been exaggerated by a significant
"rebranding" of the field in the last four decades. The emergence of the
study of Late Antiquity has made significant inroads into both the chronological
span of Byzantium, but also appropriated many of the crucial elements of its
discourse. A century ago it was reasonable and common to
understand Byzantium as the vast period spanning from the conversion of
Constantine in the early 4th century to the fall of Constantinople in
1453. By the mid 1960s and the publication of A.H.M. Jones monumental
<a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/173808192">Later Roman Empire 248-
604</a>, a significant chronological chunk of Byzantium was cut away and
appropriated for the new interest in the study of the Late Roman Period.
Peter Brown's <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/138222">The World of
Late Antiquity A.D. 150-750</a> pushed this even further by
conjuring up a Late Antiquity that persisted into the 8th century in some
places. This trend has continued in a flurry of scholarship in the last
three decades. Garth Fowden's 1993 work, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/27034803">Empire to Commonwealth</a><a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/27034803">: the Consequences of Monotheism in
Late Antiquity</a>, located the roots of even the venerable <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/214064">Byzantine Commonwealth</a> (tellingly
dated 500-1453) in a quintessentially Late Antique discourse, the rise of
monotheism. Chris Wickham's <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/58998790">Framing the Early Middle
Ages</a> claims for its dates 400-800 and Michael McCormick's
influential book, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/44860892">Origins of
the European economy: communications and commerce, A.D. 300-900</a>,
embraces an even more extensive period finding it productive to study a period
from before the reign of Constantine until after the end of Iconoclasm.
The growing autonomy of the period from 4th century until the 9th or 10th
century appropriated the entire Early Byzantine period (312-843?) and encroached
menacingly into "Middle Byzantine" (i.e. 843-1204) heartland of Byzantine
Studies. The intellectual categories of the Late Roman, Late Antiquity, and the
Early Middle Ages owe far more to Western conceptions of the decline of
"antiquity" and the "Middle Ages" than to the chronological divisions most
commonly understood among Byzantinists. Thus within the academy certain
aspects of the Byzantine narrative have been effectively hijacked by a group of
intellectually impressive scholars whose understanding of the history of the
Mediterranean is rooted in fundamentally different discursive propositions and
assumptions. At the same time, the study of Late Antiquity has
proven to be particularly capable of absorbing certain key themes in Byzantine
studies. For example, one of the fathers of the discourse of Late
1084
Antiquity, Peter Brown makes clear in his important 1973 article, "A Dark-Age
Crisis: Aspects of the Iconoclastic Controversy" (EHR 88 (1973), 1-34)
that the veneration of icons is not only best understood within a Late Antique
context, but, in fact, so is iconoclasm. Thus, one of the central events
in the narrative of Byzantine history is recontextualized or re-branded (as we'd
say today) as part of the great tapestry of Late Antiquity that Brown and his
students would go on to construct. Recent work on the rise of icons has
continued to emphasis its origins earlier in both Neoplatonic ways of thinking
and the distinct elements of Late Antique religiosity. Brown's influence
on another major element of the Byzantine discourse, the Byzantine Saint and
hagiography, is almost too well-known to elaborate here. His "The Rise and
Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity," was tellingly published in the
Journal of Roman Studies (61 (1971), 80-101), and contributed another
key component to the raising cult of Late Antiquity. Outside the
immediate penumbra of Peter Brown's work, emphasis on economic and settlement
history, long mainstays of the Byzantine discourse, have become increasingly
prominent features in the study of Late Antiquity. For every new city in
the Byzantine period, like Monemvasia, there are cities for which there is
increasing evidence for continuity spanning the former discursive rupture
between the Ancient and Byzantine World (e.g. Guy Sander's recent work on
Corinth which hadn't yet exert its full significance in his <a
href="http://www.doaks.org/EconHist/EHB30.pdf">synthetic summary of the
Corinthian economy in the Economic History of Byzantium</a>.) <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/52930136">Recent research on the Late Antique
countryside</a> has sought to recontextualize some of the most prominent changes
associated with the rise of a Byzantine economy (rise of a rural elite,
emergence of villages as key sites of production, et c.) as at least strongly
flavored by phenomena best understood as Late Antique. While the jury
remains out on many of these matters, the great synthetic works of McCormick and
Wickham cited earlier in this post, have gone far to mark out new discursive
parameters for the discussion of what a past generation of scholars might have
considered fundamentally a topic for Byzantine historiography. The exact
reasons for the rise of Late Antiquity and its absorption of significant strands
of the Byzantine discourse, particularly in the Anglophone world, where
Byzantium's roots were far shallower, are surely complex. Perhaps Late
Antiquity was a way to ground the study of later period in the thriving, safe,
and familiar world of Classical Studies (i.e. the "Antiquity" in Late Antiquity)
rather than the unfamiliar, mystical, and Oriental confines of Byzantium.
Whatever the reason, some of the consequences are clear. Byzantine Studies
became increasingly relegated to a smaller and smaller discursive and
chronological range. What once majestically spanned 1100 years of European
history now occupies a period of sometimes less than half that (from 1000-
1453?). Its religious, economic, and even literary significance has become
transformed as a post-script to the imposing and healthy edifice of Late
Antiquity with its Janus faced comportment that seeks in equal parts sound roots
in the safe confines of antiquity and validation in their Byzantine
consequences. 
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TITLE: The Final Episode: A Note About Survey
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
ALLOW PINGS: 1
BASENAME: the-final-episo
DATE: 04/30/2008 12:40:23 AM

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<a
eWriter/SurveyNoteRO.jpg"><a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/Emerging_Cypriot.html"><img
style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; margin: 0px 10px 0px 0px; border-
left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="164" alt="SurveyNoteRO"
Writer/SurveyNoteRO_1.jpg" width="244" align="left" border="0"></a></a>The
final installment of <a
ging Cypriot</a> is now available. This episodes is a particularly
fitting way to conclude the documentary as it shows off the one aspect of
archaeological fieldwork that sometimes gets lost in our sober assessments of
the process. Archaeology is fun. So, as the 2008 field
season for the <a href="http://www.pkap.org/">Pyla-Koutsopetria
Archaeological Project</a> bears down on us with all of its attendant
stresses, it is really nice for us to remember (and share!) how fun and
entertaining and wacky most archaeological projects and experiences are.
The discipline brings together a range of folks with different interests and
personalities. From the fastidious an detail oriented ceramicists, to the
procedural and methodological rigor of the field director, the big picture
sensibilities of the project directors, and the various types of personalities
present among the fieldwalkers, field projects depend on the sense of humor of
everyone involved to keep from descending into interpersonal chaos. The
music for this final section comes compliments of Brice Pearce (for more of his
music see his band <a href="http://www.myspace.com/drakesfolly">Drake's
Folly</a> on Myspace) who is a Graduate Student in History at the University of
New Hampshire and dutifully walked fields for us as a graduate student volunteer
in 2007. Thanks to all the folks who cooperated to make this film
happen, particularly the good spirited <a
href="http://www.pkap.org/staff.htm">PKAP volunteers and staff</a>.
Special mention goes to University of North Dakota's <a
href="http://www.und.edu/dept/our/">Office of University Relations</a>, and <a
href="http://www.iup.edu/">Indiana University of Pennsylvania</a> who provided
funding and support. <a href="http://www.xanga.com/jpatrow">Joe Patrow</a>
is the director. <a href="http://www.chss.iup.edu/rsmoore/">Scott
Moore</a>, <a href="http://www.xanga.com/jpatrow">PatrowVisual</a>, and I
produced the film. Fieldwork on Cyprus was done with the permission of the
Cyprus Department of Antiquities with the cooperation and support of the British
1086
Ministry of Defense and the Larnaka District Archaeological Museum. The

PKAP/UND Mediterranean Archaeology t-shirts were provided by <a
href="http://www.und.edu/dept/artsci/">College of Arts and Sciences</a> at the
University of North Dakota. A few technical notes The
video is all in <a href="http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/">QuickTime</a>
which you will need to download to watch it. If you right click and
download the video, it is formatted for viewing on your iPod or even iPhone or
iPod Touch. When a new installment is made, the image will become a
rollover image. We'll add a short a week. I borrowed the idea for
this format from <a href="http://www.theromansarecoming.com/webisodes">a video
series at the Indianapolis Museum of Art</a>. The center square in the
last row is a link to the <a href="http://www.chss.iup.edu/pkap/">Pyla-
Koutsopetria Archaeological Project</a> web page where you can read more about
everything that you see in these film shorts. We have <a
erging-cyprio.html">posted a particularly frank interview</a> with the director
of <a
Cypriot</a> and <a
vey on Cyprus</a>, and you can read the commentaries on the first twelve
shorts (with links to those shorts) below. <a
erging-cypr-1.html"><img height="78" alt="Landscape_MontageRO7"
Writer/Landscape_MontageRO7%5B5%5D.jpg" width="116" border="0"></a><a
isode-2-emerg.html"><img height="78" alt="Learning_FieldwalkingRO5"
Writer/Learning_FieldwalkingRO5.jpg" width="116" border="0"></a><a
isode-3-an-ar.html"><img height="78" alt="ArtifactsJourneyRO4"
Writer/ArtifactsJourneyRO4%5B3%5D.jpg" width="116" border="0"></a><a
isode-4-forme.html"><img height="78" alt="FormerStudentRO4"
Writer/FormerStudentRO4.jpg" width="116" border="0"></a><a
isode-5-basec.html"><img height="78" alt="BaseCampRO6"
Writer/BaseCampRO6%5B3%5D.jpg" width="116" border="0"></a><a
isode-6-findi.html"><img height="78" alt="FruitCratesRO12"
Writer/FruitCratesRO12%5B3%5D.jpg" width="116" border="0"></a><a
isode-7-the-w.html"><img height="78"
alt="KokkinokremosWallRO4_thumb[7]_thumb[1]_thumb[1]_thumb[3]"
Writer/KokkinokremosWallRO4_thumb7_thumb1_t%5B3%5D.jpg" width="116"
border="0"></a><a
isode-3-an-ar.html"></a><a
1087
isode-8-the-w.html"><img height="78" alt="WallViglaRO4654"

Writer/WallViglaRO4654.jpg" width="116" border="0"></a><a
href="file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/bcaraher/Application%20Data/Windows%
20Live%20Writer/PostSupportingFiles/06c0a0c5-91ac-40ef-973b-
0c13fefd6241/GeophysicalRO3.jpg"></a><a
isode-9-geoph.html"><img height="78" alt="GeophysicalRO474"
Writer/GeophysicalRO474.jpg" width="116" border="0"></a><a
isode-10-the.html"><img height="78" alt="TheHoleRO46"
Writer/TheHoleRO46.jpg" width="116" border="0"></a><a
isode-11-a-di.html"><img height="78" alt="DipintheSeaRO4"
Writer/DipintheSeaRO4_thumb.jpg" width="116" border="0"></a><a
isode-12-sigh.html"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px;
border-bottom-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px" height="78" alt="image"
Writer/image_47.png" width="116" border="0"></a>
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TITLE: Sacred Landscapes in Crete and the Corinthia
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
ALLOW PINGS: 1
BASENAME: sacred-landscap
CATEGORY: Byzantium
DATE: 04/29/2008 12:51:24 AM

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<a
1088
Writer/image_thumb_38.png" width="137" align="right" border="0"></a> I have just

finished reading L. Nixon's <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/70104789">Making a Landscape Sacred:
Outlying Churches and Icon Stands in Sphakia, Southwestern Crete.</a>
(Oxford 2006). She deals precisely with some of the issues that I am
exploring with my work on Dream Archaeology (which is now far enough along to
deserve capital letters). Her book has numerous interesting observations,
many of which articulate observations that most anyone who has spent times
looking at the churches in the Greek landscape might have. Her
observations regarding the location of churches and their relationships to
communities are perhaps overly schematic, but nevertheless helpful (see
particularly, pp. 14-31). She notes the churches often represent
boundaries of villages, access to resources, liminal locations, earlier
important structures, or places of contact with supernatural forces. The
final category, of course, draws upon the four previous -- the boundary between
humans and the divine tends to be the thinnest at the borders of habitation and,
as I have begun to articulate elsewhere, near earlier structures. Reading
Nixon's book sent me scrambling back through some of my field notes from a walk
around the village of Korphos in the Summer of 2001. (For the most recent work
in this area see: <a href="http://mailer.fsu.edu/~dpullen/SHARP/">Saronic
Harbors Exploration Project</a>) These notes were recorded "on the fly" or
during a short "cookie" break in my perambulations so they are clearly not the
final word on this church and its landscape, but nevertheless evokes many of the
same themes that appear in Nixon's work. I've added some notes in
brackets: <blockquote> "The small and relatively unremarkable church of
Ay. Anna serves as a good example for expression of community in the
ecclesiastical landscape. According to the lengthy inscription in fresco on the
west wall of the church, the impetus for its construction was the appearance of
the Theotokos and her mother Anna to a farmer from the village of Sophiko who
had come to the vicinity of Korphos to work his fields. The village of Sophiko
is some 5 km inland from the site of the church, but is a much more sizable
settlement with many things Korphos lacks ‚Äì such as an abundant supply of
water, large stretches of arable land, and relatively easy lines of
communications to the Argolid, communities in the western Korinthia and, the
fertile plains of the Isthmus. The Panayia appeared two or three more times to
the farmer and demanded that he build a church for her mother, Anna. The farmer
did this and with a large group of priests from Sophiko, he dedicated the church
in 1744. The painter of the walls hailed from the town of Adami in the Argolid.
[For the text of this inscription see: T. A. Gritsopoulos,
"ŒßœÅŒπœÉœÑŒπŒ±ŒΩŒπŒ∫Œ¨ ŒúŒΩŒ∑ŒºŒµŒØŒ± œÑŒ∑œÇ Œ†ŒµœÅŒπŒøœáŒÆœÇ Œ£ŒøœÜŒπŒ∫Œøœç"
Œ†ŒµŒªŒøœÄŒøŒΩŒΩŒ∑œÉŒπŒ±Œ∫Œ± (1975), 161-171] The church sits outside of the
village of Korphos, but its founder hailed from the larger settlement of
Sophiko. The clergy associated with the church came from Sophiko and the
inscription described the entire community of Sophiko as responsible for the
churches construction. The painter of the fresco, however, declared his village
of origin as Adami in the Argolid, thus associating himself with that community.
The church is tied in spatial terms to the villages of Korphos and Sophiko, and
in human terms to the villages of Sophiko and Adami. Other communities receive
definition and realization here as well. On the exterior wall of the church an
inscription offers the church for the salvation of the inhabitants of Sophiko.
Also the priest Ioakim Nikoloas is mentioned and defined as the archpriest in
the bishopric of Damala (Troezene) near Methana. [This part of the
Korinthia was closely tied to the greater Saronic community of which Damala and
Adami were part]. The role of the Virgin, interceding on behalf of her
mother works to demonstrate the order of heaven and express it in human terms.
1089
The reference to the Virgin would have also almost certainly invoked an
association of the small church of Hag. Anna with the more significant church of
the Panayia of Stiri some two km distant on the opposite side of the village of
Korphos. This elaborate cross-in-square type 12th century Byzantine church was
clearly linked to a large and probably wealthy monastic community. The local
villagers even today attest to the relationship between the church of Hag. Anna
and the Panayia of Stiri*, and the latter church is further associated with the
important monasteries at Chiliomodi and Agnountas in the northern Argolid. A
single poorly maintained and unstudied 18th century church might hardly warrant
even a passing notice in a traditional study of the ecclesiastical architecture,
wall painting, or epigraphy of the region. When placed within the physical,
human, and spiritual landscape of the region, however, this church, and others
like it, opens an important window into the web of interconnected communities
represented by the material culture of the Eastern Korinthia." * [The story
in rough outline: There is a story about the bells of Ay. Anna ringing
incessantly one day and no one understood why. Eventually they figured out
that the bells of Ay. Anna rang when the candles at the Panayia at Stiri went
out -- a touching gesture of motherly affection between St. Anne and her
daughter. For the Panayia at Stiri see: Orlandos, ABME 1 (1935),
1ff., M. Dixon, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/45703753">Disputed
Territories: Interstate Arbitration in the Northeast Peloponnese, ca. 250-150
B.C</a>., Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, Ohio State 2000, and <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2007/11/tw
o-new-byzanti.html">Two New Byzantine Churches in the
Corinthia?</a>]</blockquote> <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/Two_Korphos_Churches.kmz">Here's a
Google Earth kzm file</a> with the location of these the two church mentioned
above. Ay. Anna is along a route that ascends the northern side of the
rugged valley inland toward Sophiko. This route was probably never the
primary route between the two areas (for a long description of the routes in
this region see Dixon, Disputed Territories). I have more to say about this
book... but I will save it for another post.
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AUTHOR: bernard
EMAIL: skyehorse@aol.com
IP: 195.93.21.7
URL:
DATE: 04/30/2008 04:09:40 AM
great site. When more time I shall follow closely.Small chapels on Crete. South
west.Anidri. Azoriges. etc etc.!
bernard.!
And do you know the tiny one at the back of Elos. There were students working
there last year. I've got a photo if I can find it of some icons that had gone
missing. How can I post them to you?!
bernard.!
1090
How did this site have my name and email ad ? Interesting.

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TITLE: Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project Reader for 2008
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
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BASENAME: pyla-koutsope-1
DATE: 04/28/2008 01:38:39 AM

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Each season we put together a short(ish) reader for the participants on <a
href="http://www.pkap.org/">Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological
Project</a>. We include our publications on the site with some of the
earlier work (generally in English because this reader is designed primarily for
our undergraduate volunteers -- the best overview of work on our site prior to
Maria Hadjicosti's excavations (reported in <a
href="http://cefael.efa.gr/detail.php?site_id=1&actionID=page&prevpos=15
&serie_id=BCH&volume_number=118&issue_number=2&cefael=eae9aa4e0c
94613b8188738e2a876a86&x=16&y=20&x=11&y=10&sp=413">BCH
1994</a> and <a
href="http://cefael.efa.gr/detail.php?site_id=1&actionID=page&prevpos=1&
amp;serie_id=BCH&volume_number=124&issue_number=2&cefael=eae9aa4e0c9
4613b8188738e2a876a86&x=8&y=9&sp=290">BCH 2000</a>) is <a
href="http://cefael.efa.gr/detail.php?site_id=1&actionID=page&prevpos=70
&serie_id=BCH&volume_number=90&issue_number=1&cefael=eae9aa4e0c9
4613b8188738e2a876a86&sp=2">O. Masson, ‚ÄúKypriaka II: Recherches sur les
antiquit√©s de la r√©gion de Pyla‚Äù, BCH 90 (1966), 1-21</a>.).
The reports from the Director of Antiquities (entries 1 and 2) provide short
summaries of fieldwork at Pyla-Koutsopetria and are basically English
versions of what appears in the BCH. Entries 3-5 represent our
contributions to the study of our area (<a
href="http://www.pkap.org/publications/papers.htm">a similar sample of
material</a> can be found on the project's webpage). Entry 6, Rautman's
"Busy Countryside" is the best single source overview of non-urban sites on
Cyprus during the Late Roman Period. The phrase, "Busy Countryside" has become a
bit of a rallying cry among scholars (for "scholars" read: <a
href="http://home.messiah.edu/~dpettegrew/">David Pettegrew</a>) interested in
the complex phenomena taking place in the Late Antique countryside across the
Eastern Mediterranean (see, for example, D. Pettegrew, "The Busy Countryside of
Late Roman Corinth: Interpreting Ceramic Data Produced by Regional
Archaeological Survey," Hesperia 76: 743-84). Entries 7-9 contextualize
the prehistoric work at Pyla-Kokkinokremos. (And more on the
prehistoric components of the project soon, I promise!) In addition to the
selection listed at the end of this post we include a Further Readings
bibliography (which I have linked here) and recommend that our students pick up
Tim Boatswain, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/57170061">A Traveller's
History of Cyprus</a> (Northampton, Mass 2005), which is not a
perfect book, but does provide the most accessible (price wise and availability
wise) short history of the island. <a
1091
eWriter/clip_image002_1.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-

alt="clip_image002"
Writer/clip_image002_thumb_1.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> 2008
Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project Reader 1. D. Christou,
‚ÄúExcavations at Pyla-Koutsopetria,‚Äù ARDA (1993). 2. P.
Flourentzos, ‚ÄúExcavations at Pyla-Koutsopetria,‚Äù ARDA (1999) 3.
W. Caraher, R.S. Moore, D.K. Pettegrew, ‚ÄúKoutsopetria: Surveying a
Harbor Town,‚Äù NEA. Forthcoming. 4. W. Caraher, R. S. Moore, J.S.
Noller, D. K. Pettegrew, ‚ÄúThe Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project: First
Preliminary Report (2003-2004 Seasons),‚Äù RDAC (2005). 5. W.
Caraher, R. S. Moore, J.S. Noller, D. K. Pettegrew, ‚ÄúThe Pyla-Koutsopetria
Archaeological Project: Second Preliminary Report (2005-2006 Seasons),‚Äù
RDAC (2007). 6. M. Rautman, ‚ÄúThe busy countryside of late Roman
Cyprus,‚Äù RDAC (2000) 7. V. Karageorghis and M. Demas, Pyla-
Kokkinokremos : a late 13th-century B.C. fortified settlement in Cyprus.
(Nicosia 1984), excerpts. 8. M. Yon, & A.P. Childs, ‚ÄúKition in the
Tenth to Fourth Centuries B.C.‚Äù BASOR 308 (1997). 9. S.
Sherratt, ‚ÄúSea Peoples and the Economic Structure of the Late
Second Millennium in the Eastern Mediterranean,‚Äù in Seymour Gitin,
Amihai Mazar, and Ephraim Stern, eds. Mediterranean Peoples in Transition:
Thirteenth to Early Tenth Centuries BCE. In Honor of Professor Trude
Dothan. (Jerusalem 1998). <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/Further_Reading_PKAP_Reader.pdf">10.
Further Reading</a>
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TITLE: A Special Friday Quick Hits and Varia
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
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BASENAME: a-special-frida
DATE: 04/25/2008 12:41:30 AM

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1092
Today is an important Friday for two reasons. It's Good Friday in the
Orthodox Church and it's Anzac Day in Australia, New Zealand, and a few other
South Pacific countries. I'll write about Holy Week tomorrow and Anzac Day
at the end of the blog. First some quick hits: <ul> <li>I've linked
to <a href="http://archaeolog.org/">Archaeolog</a> before, but another
interesting post: <a
href="http://traumwerk.stanford.edu/archaeolog/2008/04/the_other_acropolis_proje
ct.html">The Other Acropolis Project</a> by Yannis Hamilakis. It
introduces his newest web project: <a href="http://theotheracropolis.com/">The
Other Acropolis</a>, a photoblog which aims "to produce a range of alternative
media interventions which will take the iconic site of the Athenian Acropolis as
their centre, their point of departure, or their target (in all senses of the
word)." It's run by The Other Acropolis Collective which includes, among
others, Fotis Ifantidis who runs the super-hip (in a <a
href="http://www.williamgibsonbooks.com/blog/blog.asp">William Gibson</a> way)
<a href="http://visualizing-neolithic.blogspot.com/">Visualizing Neolithic</a>
blog. <li>Over the <a href="http://classicaljournal.org/forum.php">Classics
Journal Online Forum</a> there is a noteworthy article: Daniel N. Erickson, <a
href="http://classicaljournal.org/Erickson.pdf">‚ÄúPractical Ways of Saving a
Classics Program: A Report From the Front‚Äù</a>, 103.3 (2008) 301‚Äì6.
Dan Erickson is my erstwhile colleague in the Language Department at UND and has
given his passion to developing the Classics program there. This short
article sketches out the main outlines of the history of his work and gives us
room for optimism! <li>Brandon Olson, <a href="http://www.pkap.org/">Pyla-
Koutsopetria Archaeological Project</a> veteran and UND History alumnus, gives a
short summary of his recent paper at the <a
href="http://www.camws.org/">CAMWS</a> Annual Meeting on the inscribed sling
pellets from Vigla. <li>Amanda Flaata gave an interesting Tea Talk on
Meter (the Mother of the Gods) in Phrygia and Greece. Among other things
she mentioned how sanctuaries of Meter in Greece often included references to
her sacred topography in Asia Minor. In particular the cult in Greece
sometime employed the names of mountains near sacred sites elsewhere to create a
kind of imaginary topography. <li>A couple of interesting links to scholars
bridging the gap between the academy and "the real world". <ul> <li><a
href="http://ehistory.osu.edu/osu/origins/">Ohio State's Origins
eHistory Project</a> with an interesting article and podcast "<a
href="http://ehistory.osu.edu/osu/origins/article.cfm?articleid=10">(Fore)Closin
g on the American Dream</a>" by <a
href="http://ehistory.osu.edu/osu/members/memberview.cfm?memberid=503">Lawrence
Bowdish</a> <li>The North Dakota Humanities Council's blog <a
href="http://prairiepolis.blogspot.com/">Prairie Polis</a> features a cool essay
"<a href="http://prairiepolis.blogspot.com/2008/04/what-are-free-markets-for-or-
what.html">What Are Free Markets For? Or, what should we think about before we
think about voting?</a>" by UND Philosophy Professor, <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/weinstei/">Jack Russell
Weinstein</a>.</li></ul></li></ul> Anzac Day commemorates the role of the
Australian and New Zealand Army Corps in the difficult and bloody Gallipoli
Campaign of 1915. The Australian War Memorial site has <a
href="http://www.awm.gov.au/commemoration/anzac/anzac_tradition.htm">a nice web
site</a> explaining the ceremonies and commemorative aspects of the
observance. Cities and towns in Australia often hold ceremonies
commemorating the exact moment of the Gallipoli landing (in Brisbane this was
04:28 (AEST); <a
href="http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/gallery/0,23816,5031206-
17382,00.html">for photographs</a>). Among the more interesting things is that
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the Gallipoli campaign forged a special relationship between Australia, New

Zealand, and Turkey. As early as 1934, Ataturk reassured Australians and
New Zealanders with words now inscribed on the several monuments both at
Gallipoli and elsewhere: <blockquote> "Those heroes who shed their blood
and lost their lives, you are now lying in the soil of a friendly country.
Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the
Mehmets to us where they lie side by side in this country of ours. You, the
mothers who sent their sons from far away countries wipe away your tears, your
sons are now lying in our bosoms and are in peace. After having lost their lives
on this land they become our sons as well." </blockquote> Another
important part of Anzac day are Anzac Biscuits. According to the story,
Anzac Biscuits use Golden Syrup rather than eggs as a bonding agent so that the
sweet treats would survive the long journey from Australia to Europe. My
wife and mother-in-law sent me a tin and in a faint way, re-performed the
actions of families during World War I who sent biscuits to their loved ones
serving in Europe. A very tasty way to be made to feel part of an
Australian family! <a
eWriter/Anzac%20Biscuits.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-
alt="Anzac Biscuits"
Writer/Anzac%20Biscuits_thumb.jpg" width="244" border="0"></a>
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: David Gill
EMAIL: d.w.j.gill@gmail.com
IP: 88.202.192.168
URL: http://bsahistory.blogspot.com/
DATE: 04/25/2008 03:55:19 AM
For members of the British School at Athens at Gallipoli see
http://bsahistory.blogspot.com/2008/04/gallipoli-remembering-lives-lost.html
-----
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TITLE: PKAP News: Where to Excavate in 2008
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
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BASENAME: pkap-news-where
DATE: 04/24/2008 12:59:59 AM
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The big conversation over the last month among the <a
Project</a> staff is where exactly do we plan to excavate this summer. We've
received generous permission from both the Cyprus Department of Antiquities and
the British on whose base we will be digging, and we know in a general sense
that we plan to place two trenches on the ridge of Vigla and two on the ridge of
Kokkinokremos. Beyond that, we have established three criteria that have
influenced our decision making. My interest is primarily centered on the
trenches on Vigla, so I will focus on that part of the site. 1. Our
primary goals for excavating on the ridge of Vigla are to ground truth our
geophysical and intensive survey work conducted there in 2007. This
includes determining whether the structure revealed by our electrical
resistivity is, in fact, an Early Christian basilica and to attempt to
understand why the vast majority of pottery on the surface of the ridge is
Hellenistic or slightly earlier rather than, say, contemporary with the possible
basilica there and what appear to be Late Roman fortification walls. 
2. We have only asked to conduct limited soundings rather than a full scale
excavation. There are a few reasons for this. First, it was clear
that the Department of Antiquities would not approve our request to excavate
unless it was within the parameters of the survey work that we have already
conducted there (i.e. Point 1.). We plan 2008 to be the end of the first
phase of field work at Pyla-Koutsopetria and will work next year to move our
results toward publication. Finally, our project has generally been
committed to low-impact archaeology and using non-invasive (and destructive)
techniques to the extent that it is possible. Limited soundings offer the
best opportunity for gaining archaeological knowledge within the context defined
by survey and geophysical work while preserving as much of the subsurface
archaeological record as possible. Consequently our plan is only to set in
two trenches on Vigla (and two on the neighboring ridge of Kokkinokremos), and
back fill at the conclusion of the field season. 3. From an architectural
standpoint we would like to be able to estimate the overall size of the possible
Early Christian basilica. The eastern end of the building is secure as the
apse appears clearly on our resistivity. The south wall possibly north
wall of the church is also relatively secure. The only place that we have
not been able to determine with absolute confidence is the wall of the narthex
or western end. So we would like to position our trenches to best be able
to capture this part of the building with would allow us to estimate an overall
length. <a
eWriter/Viglatrench.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-
alt="Viglatrench"
Writer/Viglatrench_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> The
Apse is the semicircular feature just right of center. 
An additional issue makes the matter of actually, physically
placing the trenches a bit more of a challenge. As you can see by the
photo of the top of the Vigla ridge (below) there is nothing in the topography
to help guide us. Moreover, last year we did not have high resolution GPS
units so the location of the geophysical transect (seen above) was established
by a combination of old fashion surveying (over a rather dramatic change in
elevation) and less accurate GPS coordinate (produced by a 2-3 m accuracy
Trimble XH handheld GPS units). If we plan for our soundings to be small -
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- as close to 2 m x 2 m (or 3 m x 3 m) as possible -- then it will be necessary

to make sure that we have good control over the precise location of our
geophysical units on the height of Vigla. A small error in our planning
this summer compounded by the 2-3 m margin of error inherent in our mapping
techniques from last year could result in our trenches "missing" the apse of the
church. <a
eWriter/Koutsopetria%20006.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-
alt="Koutsopetria 006"
Writer/Koutsopetria%20006_thumb.jpg" width="404"
border="0"></a> Vigla The result of all this is that
we are going to re-do a single geophysical transect across the top of Vigla in
order to secure the location of the eastern apse where we plan to place our
first trench. Since our geophysical transect from last year is accurate
relative to itself we should then be able to locate on the ground a reasonable
location for the second trench. The best case
scenario is that our excavations of the apse provides some good chronological
and stylistic information on the building there. We also hope to
successfully locate the southeastern corner of the church so that we can
estimate the length and width of the building (churches are generally
symmetrical east - west). Finally, we hope that our two soundings hit some
earlier stratified deposits that can shed light on the earlier chronology of the
ridge and provide some clue as to why the survey discovered so much Hellenistic
material on the ridge. As you can see, planning for the 2008
field season is ramping up quickly. Check back next week for more...
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TITLE: Episode 12: Sightseeing
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: episode-12-sigh
DATE: 04/23/2008 01:14:25 AM

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<a
eWriter/SiteSeeingRO.jpg"><a
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left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="164" alt="SiteSeeingRO"
Writer/SiteSeeingRO_1.jpg" width="244" align="left"
border="0"></a></a>Episode 12 of <a
Cypriot</a> is now posted! It looks at sightseeing with
students on Cyprus over the course of the <a href="http://www.pkap.org/">Pyla-
Koutsopetria Archaeological Project</a>. This aspect of the
project is always a challenge. We have three goals when we go to visit
sites. First, we try to teach the students how to read an archaeological
site just as we would teach students how to read a text (for a longer discussion
of this process <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2008/03/le
ssons-from-th.html">see here</a>). This doesn't mean that we show the
students the single authoritative meaning of the archaeological text, but rather
ask pertinent questions about what they see. Our goal with this is help
them become more careful readers of our site while working in the field.
Our second goal is to give the students exposure to as many periods and places
on the island as possible. Consequently, our visits range from (as the
short shows) sites of modern importance -- like the <a
href="http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/04/03/europe/EU-GEN-Cyprus-Ledra-
Street.php">Ledra street</a> wall between north and south Nicosia -- to the
aceramic Neolithic site of Khirokitia with a hodgepodge of monasteries,
Classical sites, Roman sites, Late Roman sites, and Frankish sites in between
(<a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/pylakoutsopetria_graduate/david_terr
y/index.html">David Terry</a>, PKAP Alumnus, does a nice job introducing this
period on the short) . Finally, the goal is simply to give the students a
break from the routine duties of archaeological work. While site tours are
exhausting for the PKAP staff (and the students too, I would guess!), they give
the students a chance to use a different part of their brain for a day and talk
and think about something just a bit different from daily tasks associated with
archaeologcial work. This year, we re-evaluated our regular site visit
schedule. While in the past we have generally added or dropped one or two
sites from our circuit, we generally do it in a fairly impulsive way (hey! let's
stop at this monastery!). This year we went through our list of places
visited and considered each one in turn. So, we now have a list (Included
at the end of the post!). It is always a challenge to eliminate sites from
our list and come up with at least some kind of informal criteria to determine
which sites we will visit. Finally, in this short Joe Patrow
captures the dizzying vacillations and juxtapositions on any project that
includes students. One minute you are encouraging the students to follow
<a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/31133440">Christine Kondoleon</a>'s lead
in understanding the social context for Roman period Cypriot mosaics
floors. The next moment we are looking away as one student removes
splinters from another students feet (because she wore sandals to an ancient
site!) or dealing with a case of severe sunburn! A few
technical notes The video is all in <a
href="http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/">QuickTime</a> which you will
need to download to watch it. If you right click and download the video,
it is formatted for viewing on your iPod or even iPhone or iPod Touch.
When a new installment is made, the image will become a rollover image.
We'll add a short a week. I borrowed the idea for this format from <a
href="http://www.theromansarecoming.com/webisodes">a video series at the
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Indianapolis Museum of Art</a>. The center square in the last row is a

link to the <a href="http://www.chss.iup.edu/pkap/">Pyla-Koutsopetria
Archaeological Project</a> web page where you can read more about everything
that you see in these film shorts. We have <a
of <a
vey on Cyprus</a>, and you can read the commentaries on the first eleven
isode-3-an-ar.html"><a
isode-8-the-w.html"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; border-left:
0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="78" alt="WallViglaRO4654"
0c13fefd6241/GeophysicalRO3.jpg"><a
isode-9-geoph.html"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; border-left:
0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="78" alt="GeophysicalRO474"
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isode-10-the.html"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; border-left:
0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="78" alt="TheHoleRO46"
Writer/TheHoleRO46.jpg" width="116" border="0"></a><a
eWriter/DipintheSeaRO4.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px;
border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="78" alt="DipintheSeaRO4"
Writer/DipintheSeaRO4_thumb.jpg" width="116"
border="0"></a> Here's our current list
 Bolded sites are those that we consider indispensable (and initials
afterward represent the votes of the directors) The big 3
[DKP][RSM] Paphos Kourion Amathous Monasteries and
the History of the Cypriot Church Ay. Neophytos
[RSM] Kykkou Stavrovouni Churches of the Troodos Ayios
Ioannis Lambadistou [WRC][RSM] Angeloktisti
[DKP][RSM] Hala Sultan Tekke [DKP][RSM] Ay.
Lazarus [DKP][RSM] Pyrga Ayios Irakleidios Monastery
Comparanda Type Sites: Ziyi [WRC][RSM] Panayia
Ematousa Ay. Georgios-Peyia [DKP][RSM] Eastern
Cyprus Coastal Sites [WRC] Prehistoric
Cyprus: Khirokitia [DKP][RSM] Kalavassos-
Tenta Lemba Maa-Palaeokastro Modern
Sites Famagusta Overlook [DKP] Kokkinochorio
Villages Pyla Village [DKP] Lefkara
Village Green Line in Nicosia [DKP][RSM]
Museums Paphos Museum Peirides
[DKP][RSM] Larnaka District Archaeological Museum
[DKP][RSM] Nicosia Museum [DKP][RSM] Byzantine
Icon Museum Kykkos Museum Limisol Museum Polis Museum Other
Sites: Tombs of the Kings [DKP] Pyla
Tomb [DKP][RSM] Pyla Tower
[DKP][RSM] Kolossi
Castle Polis Paliopaphos Athienou Idalion Tamassos Li
massol
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TITLE: More Dream Archaeology and Abandoned Landscapes
STATUS: Publish
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DATE: 04/22/2008 12:55:29 AM

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<a
Writer/image_thumb_37.png" width="134" align="right" border="0"></a> I have just
finished reading H. Forbes, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/76820937">Meaning and Identity in a Greek
Landscape</a>. (Cambridge 2007). The book is another important
contribution to the archaeology and history of the Methana Peninsula <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/14918417">complements Forbes's earlier
ethnoarchaeological work there</a> and his 1997 survey volume edited with C. Mee
(<a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/37628298">A Rough and Rocky Place.
The landscape and settlement history of the Methana Peninsula</a>.
(Liverpool 1997). I am tempted to post a more substantial review of
Meaning and Identity here perhaps next week, but for now, I will just offer a
quick observation. One thing that makes this book fairly
remarkable is his attention to the religious landscape of the peninsula.
He places the churches so carefully documented by Th. Koukoulis in Mee and
Forbes ("Catalogue of Churches," pp. 211-256) in a ethnographic context.
He looks at two aspects of the religious landscape that I have appeared in this
blog (and in my research). First, he analyses the processes that led to
the refurbishment of churches in the countryside. Forbes argues that the
population of Methana largely arrived since the Greek War of Independence and
that this population found numerous churches on Methana when they arrived.
Over the 200 years since their arrival the communities on Methana have restored
and rebuilt these churches in many cases multiple times and integrated these
buildings into their new understanding of the religious landscape. This is
one of the few works that shows the process whereby churches persist in the
Greek landscape and defy our simple ideas of abandonment. According to
Forbes, churches endure as persistent features in the landscapes not because of
a kind of inherent sacredness, but because of consistency in the ideas of
religious space among the various groups who inhabited the landscape of Methana.
 The second interesting aspect of Forbes's discussion of the religious
landscape was his brief analysis of an inventio story (360-364).
The community on Methana built the church of St. Barbara after one resident had
a dream telling them to go and dig at a particular spot. When the
villagers dream was reported to the local priest and then circulated in the
village, the villagers came out en masse to excavate the site. This
divinely inspired excavation led to the discovery of the bones of St. Barbara
and St. Juliana, and the subsequent construction of a church on the spot.
Apparently this all happened around the beginning of the 20th century perhaps in
the context of the worldwide Spanish Influenza epidemic which hit Greece in
1918. Forbes demonstrates that today there are several versions of the story and
the chronology of the tale of the church's founding is becoming chronologically
unstable. Nevertheless, the story shares features common to other versions
of this story from elsewhere in Greece including the tie between a dream and the
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discovery of relics, the cooperation and presence of the entire village during
the act of excavation, and the subsequent construction of an important church on
the spot. The association with a pressing local need, in this case
protection from the influenza, and an ancillary story about the discovery of a
pot with gold (or ashes) links the tale on Methana to narratives of divine
protection and "hidden treasure" common elsewhere in Greece. Moreover, the site
where the excavations took place was likely the site of some ancient
tombs. These tombs acquired local significance through the agency of
dreams which were a popular medium for understanding both the contemporary
landscape and the future. I discuss many of these themes elsewhere: <a
eams-inventio.html">Dreams, Inventio, and Archaeology</a>, <a
re-archaeolog.html">More Archaeology of Sacred Spaces</a>, <a
ur-views-of-t.html">Four Views of the Corinthian Landscape</a>. 
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TITLE: A Restrospective on One Year of Blogging
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
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BASENAME: a-restrospectiv
DATE: 04/21/2008 01:04:09 AM

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In my Friday post,<a
tadata-milest.html">Metadata Milestones</a>, I promised to offer some of my
observations on blogging after one year. On the one hand, blogging for one
year is hardly enough time to enjoy real perspective on the genre or the
medium. On the other hand, blogging as a phenomenon is so recent, there is
little "time depth" available even to the most savvy commentators on the
blogosphere. This latter condition is sufficiently liberating for me to
offer some observation on my experiences that I think have some bigger
implications. 1. Blogging is mixed media platform, but my blog is
not. It is really quite remarkable how good blogs can integrate and bring
together podcasts, videos, photographs, and text into a single space.
Academic blogs don't seem to do this quite as effectively. It seems like
we are committed (and I am part of the problem here) to make our blogs resemble
as much as possible traditional print media. Even as I have attempted to
experiment with podcasts and video, I have consistently located this material
1101
outside the blogging interface. In some cases this is because it fit in

better elsewhere on the web, but I think that it mostly reveals a particular
view of a blog as a coherent, textual entity. 2. A Blogging Voice.
I speculate in one of <a
href="http://www.archaeology.org/online/features/blogs/index.html">my first
reflections on blogging</a> that bloggers develop distinct voices, and that I
was not sure whether I had (at that point) discovered a comfortable blogging
voice of my own. This was 5 months ago. I think that I might have it
now. In fact, I think that the strength and weakness of my current blog is
the diversity of voices in which it speaks. Of course, most of us in real
life use different voices. For example, we talk to our colleagues in a
different voice from the one we use to talk with our spouses, students, or
parents. On my blog, I try to give voice to my various academic interests
(these overlap heavily with my personal interests; I don't really have hobbies)
each of which requires a slightly different inflection that both reflects my
view of my audience as well as the parameters of discourse. I like to
think at least that I use a different voice when I blog on Survey and Landscape
Archaeology, archaeological projects that work on and think about (especially
and the <a
Korinthia Archaeological Survey</a>), Early Christian architecture and ritual in
Greece, Late Antiquity, Archaeology and the New Media, North Dakotiana including
both historical and archaeological observations and the institutional history of
the Department of History, and, at least for this year, the cultural and
programs at the American School (see the categories to the left for
links). The inevitable overlaps between these topics (and their respective
voices) represent the best areas for my future work. 3. Traffic
management. I've become increasingly interested in understanding how
people find my blog. Some of it comes via the typical search engines --
predominantly <a href="http://www.google.com">Google</a>, but the majority of
hits come from referring sites of one kind or another. A strategically
placed link on, say, the <a href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/">American
School's</a> web page increased my volume over 100% one day as did a mention on
the popular blog for Greek expatriots, <a href="http://www.dailyfrappe.com/">The
Daily Frappe</a>. Longer term links from Archaeology Magazine web page and
my <a href="http://www.und.edu/">home institution's</a> main web page (the <a
href="http://www.und.edu/">University of North Dakota</a>) also clearly drove
some traffic. The heartening thing is that while a strategically placed,
short-term link from a high volume site can cause a spike in visits on a
particular day, long term links from pages like Archaeology, University pages,
and, perhaps most importantly, my fellow bloggers seemingly attract longer term
repeat visitors. 4. A Blogging Network. The most
intellectually productive moments on my blog come from the occasional back and
forth with other bloggers -- some of whom I know in the flesh -- but many of
whom I only know from the blogosphere. It doesn't happen to often, but
these spontaneous carnivals occupy my time for disorganized thinking. 5.
Episodic readers. Even as heartening as spontaneous blogging carnival can
be, there is no doubt that the majority of my readers only read my blog
occasionally or episodically. In fact, about 65% of my readers each day
are "new readers" (that is come from an IP address that had not previously been
recorded). This has come increasingly to condition how I write each post.
On the one hand, I want to make sure that my post is as self-contained as
possible so that a reader can understand the larger context of the blog post
without having read the blog from the beginning. On the other hand, I want
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a potential reader to explore material on my blog (and elsewhere on the web) so

I provide as many links as possible to other posts. I am not sure how well
this has worked to convert episodic or occasional readers into regular readers,
but it does remind me to work hard to keep each post accessible to as wide an
audience as possible. 6. Few academics take blogging seriously. I did not
go into this expecting to have a vast and intensely interested academic
audience, but with all the talk about the public humanities over the last
decade, I reckoned that blogging would be widely accepted as a valid and
commendable way to bring our humanities scholarship to a broader audience.
I am genuinely surprised how many of my younger colleagues are simply not
interested in the medium as a place to expand the audience for our work.
There are of course notable exceptions to this, and you can generally read their
blogs from my blogroll on the left of this page or through the links on <a
href="http://del.icio.us/WilliamCaraher">my del.icio.us page</a>. In
contrast to academics, however, I have had a good bit of positive feedback from
non-academics who read my blog. They seems to genuinely be interested in
what we are doing and are even willing to work with our somewhat esoteric
language to get to it. Is this simply another example of academics being
out of touch with what ordinary folks find interesting? 7. Blogging
Time. When I first mentioned blogging, my wife warned me not to get
carried away. I am not sure whether I am carried away yet, but I have not found
that blogging interferes much with my regular routine. In fact, writing of
an hour or so in the morning, even in a relatively informal way, often serves as
a good opportunity for me to gather my thoughts for the day and get settled into
the quiet and careful attitude of "work mode". Moreover, my blog has
increasingly become a place where I first articulate ideas typically weeks or
even months before I am ready to compile them into a proper academic
draft. This early writing has often brought to light aspects of my
thoughts that need refinement and new directions and prospects for research.
8. Future of Blogging. There has been plenty of debate now about the
future of the blog and its place within internet culture (Scott Moore pulled
together some of this in this short post: <a
href="http://ancienthistory.typepad.com/ancient_history_ramblings/2008/04/bloggi
ng.html">Blogging</a>). The emergence of tools like <a
href="http://twitter.com/">Twitter</a> which allows users to create spontaneous,
micro-blogs on their day to day activities, or <a
href="http://www.shyftr.com/">Shyftr</a> which aggregates blog posts from across
the internet and brings them together in a social-network kind of environment so
that your friends can see what you read and comment on it without actually
having to go to the blog site itself. Both Twitter and Shyftr show the
expansion of the internet as a space for the construction of meaningful social
networks. This is not inherently incompatible with the notion of blogging,
of course; the earliest group of bloggers was a close nit group and even today
blogrolls serve to place a particular blog in a network of like minded
sites. These networks have been expanded through services like <a
href="http://del.icio.us/">del.icio.us</a> which allows one to create a public
list of bookmarks, shows you who else has book marked particular sites, and
encourages users to form communities of like minded readers. At the same
time, there may be a difference between the blog with its stable and regulated
interface (particularly blogs like mine which (see point 1) are fairly
conservative in content and style) and "the flow" which has increasingly become
metaphor of choice to describe the unstable and fluid environment of the
internet of the future. The flow would be characterized by user/reader
structured content that interacts and responds seamlessly (and recursively) with
similarly structured content across the web. In such environments "mash
1103
ups" of content, structure, style, and media would become the norm leading,
inevitably, to the fragmentation and decontextualization of more formally
organized and articulated content. This is both exciting and scary!
As scholars we have been trained to respect context, genre, and structure as
important aspects of academic communication. The future of the internet
might actively work to subvert these stalwart features of the academic
discourse. 
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TITLE: Tea Talk Podcast: Toward a (New) Agora
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: tea-talk-podcas
DATE: 04/19/2008 12:24:24 AM

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<a
Writer/image_thumb_36.png" width="80" align="right" border="0"></a> As a proof-
of-concept, Jamie Donati, a Ph.D. Candidate at the Institute of Fine Arts at New
York University, and I worked together to podcast his <a
href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/">American School</a> Tea Talk: <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/Toward%20a%20New%20Agora.html">
Toward a (New) Agora: A Case Study of Three Peloponnesian Cities (Argos, Elis,
and Corinth)</a>. Tea Talks somewhat less formal 30-40 minute papers that
typically focus on a work-in-progress. The talk is divided into
three case studies which form the individual tracts to the album. Here's
an abstract: <blockquote> The Greek agora was a complex social and
physical entity within an ancient city. It was inherently heterogeneous, and
evolved under different circumstances. In this paper, I explore the structure of
the Archaic and Classical agora at three different cities in the Peloponnese
(Argos, Elis, and Corinth). I point out some of the unique features at each of
these sites, and, in doing so, highlight some common misconceptions about the
Greek agora. Since the Peloponnese is an area of the Ancient Mediterranean that
is generally neglected in studies on Greek urbanism, agoras in these centers
1104
often present diverse patterns of development. Failure to understand the agora

within its context risks a misguided interpretation of its spatial setting, best
exemplified in trying to understand the agora through the prism of an
Athenocentric model.</blockquote> Here's the URL: <a
title="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/Toward%20a%20New%20Agora.html"
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/Toward%20a%20New%20Agora.html">
http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/Toward%20a%20New%20Agora.html</a>
Enjoy!
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TITLE: Metadata Milestones
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DATE: 04/18/2008 12:38:47 AM

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I have now officially been blogging for a year. Originally I had
planned to do this lengthy retrospective on my experiences blogging, the
development of a blogging identity, and my plans for the future, but I ran out
of time and it sounds like a lazy weekend job rather than something that I do
during a hectic week. So for the time being I will put together
some interesting metadata.<a
Writer/image_thumb_35.png" width="304" align="right" border="0"></a>
Total Posts: 205 Total Comments: 106 Total Words: (est) 120,000
Total Page Views: 18,362 Total Blog Views: (est.) 11,300 Absolute
Unique Visitors: (est.) 5,200 Average Views per Day: 50 Average Time on
Site: 1:40 Hits from 100 countries and every state. Top 10
Countries:<a
eWriter/Blog_Hit_Map%20copy.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-
alt="Blog_Hit_Map copy"
Writer/Blog_Hit_Map%20copy_thumb.jpg" width="304" align="right"
border="0"></a> 1. United States 2. Greece 3. United Kingdom 4.
Canada 5. Italy 6. Australia 7. Denmark 8. Germany 9.
1105
France 10. Turkey Top 10 States: 1. Pennsylvania 2.

California 3. New York 4. Minnesota 5. Ohio 6. Florida 7. North
Dakota 8. Illinois 9. Michigan 10. South Carolina Top
Referrers: 1. <a
href="http://www.archaeology.org/">archaeology</a>.org 2. und.nodak.edu (the
<a href="http://www.und.edu/">University of North Dakota</a>'s domain) 3.
chss.iup.edu (<a href="http://www.iup.edu/">Indiana University of
Pennsylvania</a>'s domain) 4. <a
href="http://www.iconoclasm.dk/">iconoclasm</a>.dk 5. <a
href="http://hnn.us/blogs/2.html">hnn</a>.us 6. <a
href="http://grandforkslife.blogspot.com/">grandforkslife</a>.blogspot.com
 7. <a href="http://www.pkap.org/">pkap</a>.org 8. <a
href="http://ancientworldbloggers.blogspot.com/">ancientworldbloggers</a>.blogsp
ot.com 9. <a
href="http://archaeoastronomy.wordpress.com/">archaeoastronomy</a>.wordpress.com
 10. <a
href="http://electricarchaeologist.wordpress.com/">electricarchaeologist</a>.wor
dpress.com 11. <a href="http://www.atrium-
media.com/rogueclassicism/">atrium-media</a>.com 12. <a
href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/index.php">ascsa</a>.edu.gr Browser Breakdown
(for my wife!): 1. Internet Explorer (46%) 2. Firefox (41%) 3.
Safari (9%) 4. Opera (2%) 5. Mozilla (1%) 6. Camino (<1%) - and you
know who you are! 7. Konqueror (<1%) Most Popular Posts: 1. <a
al-snow-in-at.html">Real Snow in Athens</a> 2. <a
ogging-archae.html">Blogging Archaeology or the Archaeology of Blogging:
Metablogging the Ancient World</a> 3. <a
ogging-arch-1.html">Blogging Archaeology or the Archaeology of Blogging:
Metablogging the Ancient World Part 2</a> 4. <a
erging-cyprio.html">Emerging Cypriot: An Archaeological Documentary</a> 5. <a
walk-through.html">A Walk through Byzantine Athens</a> 6. <a
e-byzantine-a.html">The Byzantine and Christian Museum</a> 7. <a
stern-korinth.html">Eastern Korinthia Archaeological Survey on the Web</a> 8.
<a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2008/01/sn
ow-in-athens.html">Snow in Athens</a> 9. <a
la-koutsopetr.html">Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project in Second
Life</a> 10. <a
ogging-arch-2.html">Blogging Archaeology or the Archaeology of Blogging:
Metablogging the Ancient World Part 3</a> Thanks for reading this
year! And, as always, stay tuned for more...
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TITLE: Susan Sutton at the American School
STATUS: Publish
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DATE: 04/17/2008 12:45:54 AM

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Susan Sutton gave a fascinating talk at the Trustees Lecture here at the <a
href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/">American School</a> on Tuesday. She
reviewed her long career as an archaeologist and anthropologist who studies the
modern Greek landscape. She worked on several of the most influential
intensive survey projects in Greece including the Southern Argolid Survey, the
Kea Survey, and the <a href="http://classics.uc.edu/nvap/">Nemea Valley
Archaeological Project</a> and made it almost a requirement for every subsequent
project to have someone who uses ethnography, archival research, and archaeology
to study the modern landscape. Her talk like much of her research
emphasized the "liquidity" of the Modern Greek landscape. She stressed how
older models rooted in a kind of Orientalism romanticized the Greek peasant and
imagined them to be unchanged over countless centuries. In place of this
patronizing and colonial image, Sutton showed how the Greek countryside,
particularly the village, was a dynamic and fluid place shaped by engagements
with international markets, a long tradition of flexible agricultural and
settlement strategies, and nationalism. For the second part of her
talk she explored the relationship between her carefully wrought view of the
Greek village and countryside and that understood and promoted (in some ways) by
Classical archaeology. In particular she discussed the relationship
between the Sanctuary of Zeus at Nemea and the village of Iraklio where she had
conducted so much of her fieldwork during the Nemea Valley Archaeology
Project. She noted how the site of the temple of Zeus with its three
standing columns had long been abstracted from the landscape. This was
first done by the early travelers who drew the remains and often consciously
removed any signs of the modern settlement nearby in their illustrations.
It has been continued by the archaeological treatment of the site which is now a
40 acre archaeological park, set off from the village by a high fence, and
further decontextualized through its austere "excavated" appearance and strict
rules governing a visitors engagement with the place. The results of this,
she argued, is that visitors to the Temple of Zeus rarely recognize the modern
village in which it stands (much like the ancient travelers), although she makes
allowances for recent efforts by the excavators there to make the site more
accessible and more integrated in its surroundings. Her
ethnographic work among the villagers in Iraklio allowed her to introduce their
perspective into her reading of the archaeological landscape. She noted
1107
how they had a much stronger attachment to the "Lion's Cave" where Herakles was
said to have killed the Nemean Lion. Unlike the Temple of Zeus the Lion's Cave
was not fenced off, largely unstudied by archaeologists, and well-integrated in
the local landscape. Moreover, she argued that the story of the Nemean
Lion had special significance to the local population who had moved down from
mountain villages into the plain in the 19th century and worked hard to tame the
wild and uncultivated environment. Sutton's talk resonates well
with some of the themes in this blog (in particular see: <a
ur-views-of-t.html">Four Views of the Corinthian Landscape</a>); in fact, it was
largely through her work that I first endeavored to understand the modern Greek
landscape. Her talk resonated well with Tim Gregory's talk last Tuesday,
<a href="http://www.squinch.und.edu/GregoryPodCast.html">A New History of
Byzantine Greece: An Archaeological Perspective</a> (click the title for a
podcast of the talk; for some comments see: <a
-archaeologic.html">An Archaeological Perspective on the History of Byzantine
Greece</a>) which began by placing the Byzantine archaeological landscape in the
historical context of 20th century Greek scholarship and its views of this
period. Unfortunately no podcast on her talk, but we do have a <a
href="http://www.squinch.und.edu/PodCasts.html">podcast on her talk from the AIA
in Chicago</a> earlier this year where she explored some of the same ideas.
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TITLE: Episode 11: A Dip in the Sea
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DATE: 04/16/2008 12:27:01 AM

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<a
eWriter/DipintheSeaRO.jpg"><a
left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="164" alt="DipintheSeaRO"
Writer/DipintheSeaRO_1.jpg" width="244" align="left"
border="0"></a></a> Episode 11 of the <a
1108
Cypriot</a> is now posted. While the last few episodes have been
technical and archaeological, this one provides a different view of an
archaeological field project. Many archaeological projects are based in
the countryside, but the participant in the <a href="http://www.pkap.org/">Pyla-
Koutsopetria Archaeological Project</a> live in the middle of the bustling city
of Laranka. Almost every year our project intersects with the week long
summer festival called <a
href="http://www.visitcyprus.com/wps/portal/!ut/p/c0/04_SB8K8xLLM9MSSzPy8xBz9CP0
os3hXN0fHYE8TIwN_b09TAyNDSyNLE0tXQwNXQ_2CbEdFALwyDyA!/?WCM_GLOBAL_CONTEXT=/Engli
sh__en/CTO+B2C/Tourist+Information/Events/Pentecost_Kataklysmos">the
Kataklysmos</a> which celebrates both the Biblical Flood and Pentecost.
The festival involves everything from music concerts, to parades, to midway
rides and games, to booths full of gadgets and toys which break almost before
they leave the sellers hand. The festivities are a great
opportunity to unwind after a long day in the museum and the field and give the
students a chance to enjoy themselves. Sometimes there are bumper car
crashes and retaliatory "dips in the sea." As with many forms of
retaliation, there is almost inevitably some collateral damage in the
process. This short shows the lighter side of archaeological work.
Enjoy. A few technical notes The video is all in <a
of <a
vey on Cyprus</a>, and you can read the commentaries on the first ten
1109
isode-8-the-w.html"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px;
border-bottom-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px" height="78"
alt="WallViglaRO465"
0c13fefd6241/GeophysicalRO3.jpg"><a
isode-9-geoph.html"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px;
alt="GeophysicalRO47"
isode-10-the.html"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; border-left:
0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="78" alt="TheHoleRO4"
Writer/TheHoleRO4.jpg" width="116" border="0"></a>
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Brandon
EMAIL: bro118@psu.edu
IP: 71.58.110.51
URL:
http://historicalarchaeologyintheancientmediterranean.typepad.com/historical_arc
haeology_in/
DATE: 04/16/2008 09:42:51 PM
1110
Wow I thought Joe left that one on the editing table, oh well it is pretty
funny!
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TITLE: More Large Site Survey
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DATE: 04/15/2008 01:06:21 AM

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Boeotia is known as the home of Large Site or Urban Survey in Greece.
The work of the Cambridge-Bradford Boeotia Project in the 1970s and 1980s
created some of the most significant methodological innovations in intensive
survey in Greece by conducting not only some of the first "siteless" artifact
level survey but also using intensive survey to document the urban areas of
several important Boeotian urban sites. The recently published
preliminary report of the Plataiai Research Project clearly works in this
tradition (A. Konecny, R. T. Marchese, M. Boyd, V. Aravantinos, "Plataiai in
Boiotia: A Preliminary Report on Geophysical and Field Surveys Conducted in
2002-2005," Hesperia 77 (2008), 43-71). The site of Plataiai with
its prominent acropolis and well-known circuit wall encompassed an area of over
80 ha in southern Boeotia. Their publication is particularly
remarkable for its effective use of geophysical survey combining magnetometry
and resistivity to produce a vivid map of the polis of Plataiai. The
intensive survey component of the project inspires a bit less confidence as its
methods were less fully explained and the data it produced seemed to difficult
to reconcile with the field procedures that they described. They seem to
have combined "the zigzag method" of walking across the site with random 1 m
squares sampled to determine density and chronology of the various
concentrations of artifacts. As they say: <blockquote>
"Sherd density was determined by a modified subjective approach since an
absolute numeric counting of sherds per area was not possible. Density was
determined by surveyors walking in a zigzag pattern across the sampled area.
Concentrations of ceramic data and physical features were noted and discussed at
the end of each transect. Random 1 m squares were also selected in which
to determine the density of sherds and other artifacts such as brick fragments,
roof tiles, worked stone, and metal. Artifact concentrations were assigned to
rough numerical categories ranging from 0 to 6, with 0 indicating a lack of
artifactual material, 1 with 2‚Äì3 artifacts per m2, and 6 indicating more than
100 fragments of material per m2. (p. 44)"</blockquote> It appears that
this technique allowed them to make some quantitative assessments of the
distribution of artifacts across the site, but it is perhaps not as
comprehensive or intensive as most contemporary large site/urban surveys.
Nevertheless, this project managed to make some interesting arguments including
that the site of Plataiai contracted during Late Roman times and continued to be
occupied throughout the Medieval period. The decrease in size of the
nucleated settlement during Late Antiquity seems to be consistent with urban
1111
sites across Greece and may well represent a the adoption of a more dispersed
settlement pattern that corresponds with increase in activity in the
countryside. This project marks one more example of the major increase in
Large Site/Urban Survey in the Eastern Mediterranean and in Greece in
particular. I have discussed some of this before on this blog (<a
me-thoughts-o.html">Some Thoughts on Future of Survey Archaeology in Greece (and
the Eastern Mediterranean)</a>. In particular, I noted the recent
publication of the <a href="http://extras.ha.uth.gr/sikyon/en/">Sikyon Survey
Project</a> (check out their impressive web page) another urban survey project
(for discussion see: <a
cent-work-on.html">Recent Work on Survey Northeast Peloponnesus</a>).
Recent publications and ongoing field work seems to suggest that we are entering
an era of small-scale intensive survey in Greece, succumbing in Richard
Blanton's words to "Mediterranean Myopia" (Blanton, "Mediterranean Myopia,"
Antiquity 75 (2001), 627-629). In an oft-sited 1993 article by
Stephen Dyson ("From New to New Age Archaeology: Archaeological Theory and
Classical Archaeology-A 1990s Perspective," AJA 97 (1993), 195-206) he
predicted the demise of large scale excavations in the Mediterranean:
<blockquote> "The center of the fieldwork tradition, based on the "big dig,"
is dying, the victim of the economic rise of Europe and the Mediterranean and
the decline of the United States as an economic, political, social, and
educational power. A few of the dinosaurs survive, sustained by national
archaeological politics, private patronage, and archaeological nostalgia. This
era of the Classical archaeological Cretaceous, however, is drawing to an end.
We will probably see few, if any, new Sardis, Cosa, or Athenian Agora projects
in the mega-dig tradition. (p.204)"</blockquote> One wonders if the
recent rise in small-scale intensive survey projects reflects the death of large
scale regional survey for some of the same reasons. Small scale intensive
surveys can not only avoid the political, economic, and logistical problems
associated with large regional projects (which are in many ways every bit as
challenging as the "mega-digs"), but also avoid the interpretative difficulties
that continue to bedevil the results of large scale regional projects. As
Robin Osborne noted in his survey of recent work in Greek Archaeology ("Greek
Archaeology: A Survey of Recent Work," AJA 108 (2004), 87-102) for many large-
scale regional survey projects the quantity of data collected has so far
exceeded our ability to produce significant interpretations from it. 
In contrast, smaller scale large-site, like the work at Plataiai, Sikyon, and
our work at <a href="http://www.pkap.org/">Pyla-Koutsopetria</a> in Cyprus have
produced data sets that allow for a more comprehensive control over both
archaeological and interpretative variables. At the same time, the limited
size of these projects coincides with more focused research questions and
typically depend more heavily on earlier work to provide context for their
results. This requires a priori that the material from small-
scale intensive surveys contribute to pre-existing debates and share common
ground that it shares with other intensive surveys and excavations. While
large scale regional surveys will continue to produce valuable data and
interpretation (as will "mega-digs"), in some ways their significance will
continue to be judged against the both the time and resources invested and the
optimism of the early days of survey archaeology. 
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TITLE: More History of History at the University of North Dakota
STATUS: Publish
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DATE: 04/14/2008 12:25:24 AM

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I know that I stated that the three part study of the <a
litics-and-th.html">Libby-Kane Controversy</a> was the final installment of my
history of the <a href="http://www.und.edu/dept/histdept/">Department of
History</a> at the <a href="http://www.und.edu/">University of North
Dakota</a>. As so often happens, things change. I have begun working
with the sons of Elwyn Robinson to bring together the manuscript of his
autobiography which I discussed briefly before in this blog in <a
urces-for-the.html">Sources for the Department of History at the University of
North Dakota</a>. <a
eWriter/RobinsonHeroesofDakota.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-
left-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 0px 10px; border-
right-width: 0px" height="190" alt="RobinsonHeroesofDakota"
Writer/RobinsonHeroesofDakota_thumb.jpg" width="244" align="right"
border="0"></a>Elwyn Robinson began his autobiography in January of 1982 and
continued working on it until his final illness in January 1985. Much of
this manuscript can be found in the <a
href="http://www.library.und.edu/Collections/oglmain.html">Orin G. Libby
Manuscript Collection</a> at the <a
href="http://www.library.und.edu/Collections/spk.html">Elwyn B. Robinson
Department of Special Collections at the University of North Dakota</a>.
Recently Steven Robinson, Elwyn's eldest son offered me a copy of Chapter 13,
which does not seem to appear in the manuscript and typescript preserved at the
University of North Dakota which ends which at Chapter 12 and Robinson
submission of the manuscript of the <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/190890">History of North Dakota</a> to
the University of Nebraska Press. Also included in the papers that I
recently received is a very brief introduction by Robinson. He offered
this eminently reasonable prologue to his task at hand: <blockquote> "I
believe that my guidelines are essential to the success of the effort. They are:
(1) to put down all that I can remember without any concern about whether it
will be of any interest to anybody or whether it is presentable (2) to not worry
1113
about the literary quality or the organization of what I am recording, and (3)
not to be in any hurry to accomplish the task and not to work on it too long at
a time. I want, however, to spend some time on the job every
day."</blockquote> Later he offers another piece of wisdom: <blockquote>
"Robert Wilkins remembers an aphorism of either Anthony Eden or Harold
Nicholson: 'Old men do not remember, they invent.' So what I am writing is more
the way I remember it, not necessarily the way it was."</blockquote>
Here's the table of contents: <blockquote> Chapter I. Childhood
on the Russell Farm, 1905-15 Chapter II. Growing up in Chagrin Falls,
1915-24. Chapter III. Oberlin College, 1924-28 Chapter IV.
Teaching School, 1928-30 Chapter V. Graduate School, 1931-35 
Chapter VI. Early Years at the University of North Dakota, 1935-39
Chapter VII. Stevie and the move to Princeton Street, 1939-42 Chapter
VIII. Gordon and the War Years, 1942-45 Chapter IX. "Heroes of Dakota"
and a Promotion, 1946-49 Chapter X. Three Operations and the Start of
History of North Dakota, 1950-53 Chapter XI. Progress on History, 1954-
58 Chapter XII. Completing the History of North Dakota, 1959-64 
Chapter XIII. Years of Triumph, 1965-1970</blockquote> My goal with
this is to find a publisher and gradually begin editing the manuscript filling
in details as I go. There is a lot to edit (although Robinson's prose is
spare and clean) and many small points that need elaboration. My hope is
that this text will provide a distinct insight into the academic career of an
individual who while remarkable and important for the history of both the state
of North Dakota, is also representative of a particular place in the history of
both the university and academic culture in the United States as it crossed the
gap between pre-war and post-war worlds. The text also provides
myriad interesting insights into the various people and places Robinson
experienced during his academic career. At Oberlin College in Ohio, for
example, he appreciated the courses offered by Leigh Alexander. Alexander
was a Princeton-trained Classicist and head of the department for years at
Oberlin. His <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/64367528">1911
dissertation</a> was on fragments of Nicholas of Damascus on the Lydian Kings
and was written under William K. Prentice. There are numerous
other little interesting bits of information that will come out as I re-read
this manuscript, and I will from time to time post them here.
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1114

DATE: 04/11/2008 01:29:56 AM

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Some quicker quick hits: <ul> <li>Two Talk Thursday. The more I
think about it, the more I think that the afternoon talks are the most valuable
component to the program here at the <a href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/">American
School</a>. Some people have complained that there are too many talks and
when you have two, back-to-back in one afternoon there is a certain point to
that. On the other hand, the talks do allow you to engage with some of the
newest and most exciting research in the archaeology of Greece. I'd say
that if you attended every Tea Talk, you'd walk away from the year with a fairly
accurate image of the future of the discipline. The graduate student paper
in particular present a nice overview of the kind of material being studied, but
(more importantly) the methods, theoretical models, and style that will come to
influence the discipline in the near future. <ul> <li>Jamie Donati presented a
thought provoking Tea Talk called: "Towards a (New) Agora: A Case Study of Three
Peloponnesian Cities (Argos, Elis, and Corinth)." We made a digital
recording of it and hope to post it as a podcast over the weekend. So stay
tuned... <li>I survived my talk yesterday graciously hosted by the <a
href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/index.php/gennadius">Gennadius Library</a> in
their Work-in-progress Seminar. My paper was entitled "Some New Readings
of Early Christian Architecture". It was well attended and seemingly well
received.</li></ul> <li>The <a href="http://www.pkap.org/">Pyla-Koutsopetria
Archaeological Project</a> continues to plan their upcoming season. We
were pleased to receive permission from the company that manages the British
Bases on Cyprus to conduct soundings on Vigal and Kokkinokremos this
summer. That was the last formal hurdle in our receiving permission to do
fieldwork has been cleared. We are now deeply involved in the discussion
of where exactly to excavate on both sites. Our survey and geophysical
data have provided us with a rough idea of where to excavate, but the
determining exactly where we should locate our modest soundings to achieve the
best results is another matter entirely. Our primary research concern it
to test the results of our geophysical work and survey. The garbled
stratigraphy on Vigla -- where a surface assemblage biased very strongly toward
the Hellenistic period overlies what appears to be a Christian basilica style
church -- makes our trenches there particularly interesting both in terms of
understanding the formation processes at play in the creation of the surface
assemblage, and for refining our chronology for the whole range of past activity
there. <li>I have spent part of the last two summer normalizing the Isthmia
context pottery data so that someday we can compare it with the data from the <a
Korinthia Archaeological Survey</a>. Recently, <a
href="http://isthmia.osu.edu/teg/">Tim Gregory</a> has posted many of the recent
season reports from the <a href="http://isthmia.osu.edu/">Ohio State University
Excavations at Isthmia</a> on line here: <a
title="http://isthmia.osu.edu/reports.html"
href="http://isthmia.osu.edu/reports.html">http://isthmia.osu.edu/reports.html</
a>. <li>If you are interested in the history of the archaeology of Cyprus
you should definitely check out David Gill's <a
href="http://bsahistory.blogspot.com/">History of the British School at
1115
Athens</a> blog. It includes some interesting bits of info on the <a

href="http://bsahistory.blogspot.com/search/label/cyprus">BSA's role in the
archaeology of the island</a>. <li>Two interesting pieces from Archaeolog:
</li> <ul> <li>On the role of blogging in a regional archaeological project: <a
href="http://traumwerk.stanford.edu/archaeolog/2008/04/presentation_of_the_creat
ive_r.html">Presentation of the creative, relativist and multicultural blog of
the Neix√≥n hillforts archaeological project (Galicia, Spain)</a> <li>Related to
our Punk Archaeology Project (<a href="Punk Archaeology: Some Preliminary
Thoughts">part 1</a>, <a
nk-archaeolog.html">part 2</a>, <a
href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/2008/02/punk-suburbs.html">part 3</a>): <a
href="http://traumwerk.stanford.edu/archaeolog/2008/04/history_on_the_line_davis
_squa.html">History on the Line, Davis Square</a></li></ul> <li>Finally if you
are a North Dakota reader you will certainly be interested in this talk: <ul>
The University of North Dakota chapter of Phi Beta Kappa will host Dr. Roger
Bagnall, Director of the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, at New
York University;4 p.m., Monday April 21, at the North Dakota
Museum of Art. Bagnall is part of the visiting scholar program which invites
distinguished scholars to visit 100 colleges and universities with chapters of
Phi Beta Kappa. The topic for his discussion is "Excavating a Town in an
Egyptian Oasis." Dr. Bagnall will describe recent discoveries at Amheida, a site
in Dakhla Oasis in the western desert of Egypt with a history stretching from
the third millennium BC to the late Roman period. He will describe the interplay
of Egyptian, Greek and Roman cultures in artifacts as humble as food remains or
as artistic as mythological wall paintings for the late Roman
period.</ul></li></ul>
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TITLE: An Archaeological Perspective on the History of Byzantine Greece
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CATEGORY: Byzantium
DATE: 04/10/2008 01:29:27 AM

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Timothy Gregory delivered a lecture entitled, <a

href="http://www.squinch.und.edu/GregoryPodCast.html">A New History of Byzantine
Greece: An Archaeological Perspective</a>, on Tuesday night at Cotsen Hall
at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. The lecture was
apparently the first to be cross-listed in both the Directors Lecture Series
(typically archaeological and focusing more on ancient and prehistoric Greece)
and the Lloyd Cotsen Lecture Series hosted by the Gennadius Library (which
brings in lecturers on topics important to the study of post-Classical Greece
more generally). An abstract of the talk and <a
href="http://www.squinch.und.edu/GregoryPodCast.html">a full podcast of
Gregory's lecture is available here</a> (graciously hosted on the <a
href="http://www.squinch.und.edu/Homepage.html">Squinch</a> web page). In
the interest of full disclosure, I'll say that Tim was my adviser at Ohio State,
so I am somewhat partial to his perspective on things, but that never stops me
from having opinions (of course), and with the <a
href="http://www.squinch.und.edu/GregoryPodCast.html">podcast
available</a> you can always check my remarks against the original!
Tim's main argument was that an archaeological approach had much to
contribute to the history of the Byzantine period in Greece. From the
start, he sought to differentiate archaeological approach to Byzantine material
culture from approaches more typically associated with art history . He
emphasized that this was not to suggest that one approach was better than the
other, but rather to argue that the study of the Byzantine period in Greece
remains relatively untapped by scholars using both the archaeological methods
and evidence, whereas there art historical approaches (stylistic, typological,
and increasingly theoretical) have continuously made meaningful contribution to
our understanding of this period. While one could quibble that making
disciplinary divisions between art history and archaeology are not particularly
productive in the discipline (as the best scholars in either discipline draw on
largely a common body of methods, research questions, and theories), there is
certainly a feeling in the field that there is a clear divide between how
scholars read material culture and those committed to archaeological approaches
receive less attention than they deserve (for similar sentiment see: <a
href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/2008/02/priest-houses-sacred-or-
profane.html">"Priest Houses": Sacred or Profane?</a>, <a
href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/2008/03/embodied-bodies-in-coffin-of-
medieval.html">Embodied Bodies in the Coffin of Medieval Art History</a>).
The talk began with a general introduction to the study of Byzantine history
in Greece starting with Gibbon and proceeding through to scholars of the last
generation with particular attention to Greek scholars of the 19th and 20th
centuries. He then presented three case studies showing how archaeology
has made a contribution to the Byzantine History of Greece: Christians and
Pagans in the 4th and 5th centuries, the Byzantine "Dark Ages", and the
Frangokratia. Each case study blended material familiar to me --
particular from Corinth and Athens -- with material from sites that may be less
familiar such as Messene, Ay. Vasilios (in the Corinthia), and Tim's own work on
deserted islands in the Corinthian and the Saronic Gulfs. For example, he
included a nice summary of the important work being done in Messene which holds
forth promise to expand how we think about both Pagan-Christian conflict and
Greek during the 7th century. At the same time, his talk paid appropriate
tribute to the importance of the work of Charles William whose excavations at
Corinth revealed so much about Frankish settlement there. (He also said
nice things about the contribution of the "new generation" of survey
archaeologists like <a href="http://home.messiah.edu/~dpettegrew/">David
Pettegrew</a> and Dimitri Nakassis both of whom work at the <a
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Korinthia Archaeological Survey</a> and with us at <a
href="http://www.pkap.org/">Pyla-Koutsopetria</a>!) The talk was
good and brought together a whole number of significant issues.
Nevertheless, Gregory's approach reproduced some of the persistent parochialism
of Greek archaeology. The issues that Tim chose to highlight
Christian/Pagan clashes, the "Dark Ages", and the Frangokratia were couched in
explicitly Greek context without much mention to the study of these phenomenon
in the wider context Eastern Mediterranean. To be fair, some of this
reflected the need to have a narrow and manageable topic for his paper, i.e.
"Byzantine Greece" as well as an awareness of the audience for his remarks.
Nevertheless, the archaeology of Byzantium extends far beyond the borders of the
modern nation-state of Greece and the problems and methods of interest to
scholars elsewhere in the Mediterranean received only passing reference in
Gregory's remarks. For example, Late Antique urbanism, the Medieval
Mediterranean economy, changes in the structure of authority and society, and
the dynamics of cultural interaction all represent topics of longstanding and
significant interest among scholars of Byzantine archaeology in regions outside
of Greece (and within Greece as well). In fact, art historical approaches
to Byzantine Greece, particularly those that focus on changes in the style of
wall painting or architecture, often take a more cosmopolitan approach to the
problems of this period than is currently offered by archaeological
investigation. This is not meant to criticize or undermine the value of
developing regional or even site specific questions as a key component of
focused archaeological research: on the one hand, in the pre-modern world almost
all society was local society, and, on the other hand, national archaeological
policies exert a strong influence over the nature of research within their
borders. The cultural, social, economic, religious, and political
structures that characterize what we recognize as "Byzantine", however,
stretched far beyond the borders of Greece and the affairs of the wider empire
inevitably influenced the development of what in the 19th and 20th century has
become seen as a phase of "Greek (National) History". Archaeologists
studying "transnational" phenomena like pre-modern Empires have the opportunity
to critique often divisive nationalist histories by recontextualizing local
phenomena within a larger regional context. Of course, regional approaches
are neither new nor immune from their own problems and risks (after all
Orientalism was a regional approach!). Nevertheless, it is not hard to
imagine that the next major stride in understanding the history and archaeology
of Byzantine Greece won't have some roots in the vast amount of high quality
work being done at present elsewhere in the post-Classical Mediterranean.
Enjoy the <a
href="http://www.squinch.und.edu/GregoryPodCast.html">podcast!<
/a>
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TITLE: Episode 10: The Hole

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DATE: 04/09/2008 12:10:08 AM

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<a
style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px;
margin: 0px 10px 0px 0px; border-right-width: 0px" height="164" alt="TheHoleRO"
Writer/TheHoleRO.jpg" width="244" align="left" border="0"></a> Episode
10 of the <a
Cypriot</a> is now posted! This Episode deals with one of the more
intriguing features confronted by the <a href="http://www.pkap.org/">Pyla-
Koutsopetria Archaeological Project</a>. The Hole is just that: a
deep hole on the height of Vigla. It seems almost certainly that this
apparently natural feature functioned at least at some point as a cistern for
the fortifications on Vigla (See <a
isode-8-the-w.html">Episode 8: Wall on Vigla</a>). Moreover, its location
to the west of our proposed Early Christian basilica on this prominent coastal
height (see the discussion surrounding <a
isode-9-geoph.html">Episode 9: Geophysical</a>) would be consistent with the
relationship between large cisterns and Early Christian basilicas elsewhere on
the island (e.g. the basilica on the Acropolis of Amathous and the Extra Muros
Basilica at Kourion; for a general discussion see: <a
e-early-chris.html">The Early Christian Ecclesiastical Architecture of Cyprus:
First Impressions</a>). These cisterns were typically pre-existing
features that are incorporated into the atrium areas of the church. The
best comparanda for our feature is probably the larger cistern on the Acropolis
of Amathous which likely provided water for the sanctuary, fortifications, and
later the church on that site. From a methodological standpoint,
exploring The Hole represents another way to gain knowledge of subsurface
features! In fact, it was probably the most exciting day of archaeology on
the project last year. We sent Michael Brown and Mat Dalton down in The
Hole to check it out. When I first told some colleagues that we were
producing a documentary on our work in Cyprus, several responded incredulously,
"Isn't survey archaeology... boring?" Of course, I said "no" and pointed
out that survey archaeology is often confused with excavation which is, in fact,
boring. (That's a joke. Maybe). This short provides a good insight
into how exciting survey archaeology can be and shows the point where routine
fieldwork can capture just a bit of the spirit of Indiana Jones (for a good
discussion of this see the recent blog post by Cornelius Holtorf at <a
href="http://archaeolog.org/">Archaeolog</a>: <a
1119
href="http://traumwerk.stanford.edu/archaeolog/2008/03/hero_real_archaeology_and
_indi.html">Hero! Real archaeology and ‚ÄùIndiana Jones and the Kingdom of the
Crystall Skull</a>). While we didn't discover the Ark of the Covenant or
The Crystal Skull (we also did not unleash a horrible curse on our project), we
did contribute to our archaeological knowledge of the area. 
A few technical notes The video is all in <a
of <a
vey on Cyprus</a>, and you can read the commentaries on the first nine
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alt="WallViglaRO46"
eWriter/GeophysicalRO3.jpg"><a
isode-9-geoph.html"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px;
alt="GeophysicalRO4"
Writer/GeophysicalRO4.jpg" width="116" border="0"></a>
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TITLE: Sharing Matters in Archaeology
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DATE: 04/08/2008 12:53:03 AM

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I like Sebastian Heath's final line <a
href="http://mediterraneanceramics.blogspot.com/2008/04/ecosystems.html">in his
recent contribution to our ongoing discussion</a> of data sharing in
archaeology: <blockquote> "So I am an optimist on the basis of quickly
formulated principle, on the basis of current observation, and due to the
resulting extrapolation of future trends. But I'm a little grumpy, too. If you
don't share, you won't matter. Simple as that."</blockquote> This is a
great attitude, but it remains difficult to imagine a future in which this will
be true. In fact, there is a basic power-knowledge relationship in
archaeology which is in some ways predicated on not sharing or at least
not sharing as it is recognized by American archaeologists in the first decade
of the 21st century. In fact, a school of thought holds that you matter
more when people know you that have things that they can't see. The more
material that you have, the importance of your site or sites, and the intensity
of interest in the archaeological community to get a glimpse of your finds all
contribute to the significance of unpublished and unshared material. In
this regard, the field continues to be influenced by a kind of archaeological
1121
panoptics which ensure that most scholars have only a partial view of the entire
assemblage of excavated material. In contrast, the "great directors" of
the discipline (who are different from <a
href="http://www.charleswatkinson.com/2008/04/only-panthers-share-
archaeological-data.html">Charles Watkinson's Gray Panthers</a>) through complex
personal networks, wealth, standing in the broader professional community, and
positions of authority and responsibility within the field avail themselves to a
unique big picture understanding of the discipline that they are loath to
cede. While it is easy to attack these "great directors" for their
short sightedness and selfishness, as often as they have used their knowledge to
maintain a personal power base within the discipline, in some cases they have
used their knowledge to resist encroachments from external, often thinly veiled
colonial forces. By not sharing archaeological data they are able to
maintain hidden valleys of archaeological knowledge where they can resist trends
and expectations in the discipline that are incompatible with their
understanding of material culture, archaeological practice, and positions within
local power structures. Anglo-American attitudes toward
archaeological material has tended (at least over the last 30 years) to see that
material (whether published or otherwise) as part of the public domain of
knowledge almost as soon as it emerges from the ground. Other more
proprietary models of archaeological material persist and intersect with
institutional and even national agendas that understand the material culture of
a site, region, or country in profoundly different ways. American projects
often funded from public money, collaborative in nature, and highly focused in
scope regard the publication of the results to be the ultimate goal of the
archaeological project. This may not be the case for excavations conducted
by a overburdened office of a local archaeological service or a long-term,
large-scale excavation. For example, excavation itself may represent the
goal as uncovering the past and extracting it from the ground is part of
performative action that reifies the right and privilege of a government to
engage in the inherently destructive task of removing artifacts from their
archaeological context. In other cases public display of material takes
precedence over academic or formal publication. The formal "scientific"
archaeological context for the material extracted from the ground is not in
these cases the primary intellectual context of the archaeological project, but
one of a whole spectrum of potential narratives for understanding
artifacts. (Consider: my understanding is that Greece considers all images
of archaeological sites (that is photographs) to be the property of the Greek
state and requires specific permissions for anyone seeking to publish
them). Data sharing assumes a highly modern almost
utopian view of archaeology. Again, I generally agree with Sebastian and
look forward to sharing the data produced by <a
Project</a> (once we have it collected, that is!). But I am also just a
bit skeptical of a day when all material is made available for any interested
and responsible party to study. To painfully mix metaphors, the importance
to the discipline of "valleys of resistance", is that they provide a kind of
intellectual balk that reminds us of the importance and complexity of context
for all archaeological material. Sharing data is part of re-
contextualizing archaeological data and as commendable as it is, it nevertheless
represents just one (and certainly not a mutually exclusive) understanding of
the significance of material culture. To contextualize my
comments, check out <a
href="http://mediterraneanceramics.blogspot.com/2008/04/ecosystems.html">Sebasti
an's summary and links</a>: <ol> <li><a
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href="http://www.charleswatkinson.com/2008/03/drill-down-dilemma-why-cant-we-
link.html">Charles Watkinson wrote about "drilling-down" in archaeology.</a>
<li><a href="http://mediterraneanceramics.blogspot.com/2008/03/drilling-down-
and-up.html">Sebastian responded</a> <li><a
archaeological-data.html">Charles replied.</a> <li><a
la-koutsopetr.html">I joined in </a> <li><a
href="http://horothesia.blogspot.com/2008/04/which-archaeo-data-animal-are-
you.html">Tom Elliot took us into orbit</a> <li><a
href="http://www.alexandriaarchive.org/blog/?p=104">Eric Kansa took note</a>
<li><a
junior-schola.html">I re-upped</a> <li><a
href="http://www.earlham.edu/%7Epeters/fos/2008/04/classifying-archaeologists-
by-their.html">The whole thread hit the Big Time.</a> <li><a
href="http://ancientworldbloggers.blogspot.com/2008/04/drills-small-and-large-
animals-sharing.html"><a
href="http://mediterraneanceramics.blogspot.com/2008/04/ecosystems.html">Sebasti
an Summarized</a> </a> <li><a
href="http://ancientworldbloggers.blogspot.com/2008/04/drills-small-and-large-
animals-sharing.html">Chuck Jones expanded our perspective</a> <li><a
href="http://www.charleswatkinson.com/2008/04/archaeology-as-
ecology.html">Charles Watkinson refined our ecosystem</a> <li>I tried to have
the last word...</li></ol>
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Chuck Jones
IP: 87.203.89.15
DATE: 04/08/2008 01:51:10 AM
Sorry Bill, bump yourself to 12, and insert:!
9: http://ancientworldbloggers.blogspot.com/2008/04/drills-small-and-large-
animals-sharing.html!
and!
10: http://www.charleswatkinson.com/2008/04/archaeology-as-ecology.html
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Bill C
EMAIL: billcaraher@yahoo.com
IP: 194.219.34.195
URL: http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/
DATE: 04/08/2008 04:39:05 AM
Duly noted! !
!
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Thanks, Chuck!
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Tom Elliott
IP: 74.239.78.188
DATE: 04/08/2008 09:51:25 AM
There ought to be a better way to track this discussion constellation than
maintaining manual lists ... hmmmmmmmm ....
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: CamArchGrad
IP: 24.80.232.75
URL:
DATE: 04/09/2008 01:10:40 PM
Very interesting, as I was sitting with a friend at the SAA's discussing data
sharing from a different perspective.!
!
What is missing so far is the concept of "Greater risk". As much as keeping
certain area's of archaeological knowledge grayed out provides theoretical
checks and balances, there is the greater risk that the mortality of the
archaeologists who knows those areas will render those area's permanently off
limits. !
!
For example the Winchester excavation from the 1950's, where Harris developed
his matrix, is still unpublished and there is one lone archaeologist desperately
trying to publish it before he passes on.When he does, we lose our last living
link and our understanding of the site is permanently compromised. !
!
Of course knowledge loss happens over time regardless of mortality, but death,
natural or accidental emphasizes the danger of keeping data out of general
circulation. !
!
There is a risk to sharing archaeological data, however when set against the
greater risk of permanent data loss, we cannot afford the luxury of !
balkanizing our data sets.
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TITLE: Politics and the Presidency at UND: Reflections on the Past at the Dawn
of a New Era - Part 3
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DATE: 04/07/2008 12:07:41 AM

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This may be the final installment of my weekly feature on the history of

the Department of History at UND. It will appear as a three-part case study (<a
litics-and-th.html">Part 1</a>, <a
litics-and--1.html">Part 2</a>, Part 3) examining the clash between Professor
Orin G. Libby of the Department of History and President Thomas Kane. Its
greater purpose is to shed light on the University of North Dakota at a crucial
crossroads in its history. In the early decades of the 20th the University
found itself with a new University President, suffering through the leading edge
of a significant economic crisis, and facing a time when particularly divisive
local and national politics manifest themselves in University life. At the
center of the resulting maelstrom stood Professor <a
href="http://www.library.und.edu/Collections/og49.html">Orin G.
Libby</a> of the Department of History. I have not provided a
full biography of Libby here, but rather an overview of the important and
complex clash between Libby and President Thomas Kane. Hopefully this
serves a prompt to reflect on the history of the university at a moment when it
is facing an important crossroads. UND is <a
href="http://www2.und.nodak.edu/our/news/story.php?id=2253">welcoming a new
president</a>, the nation faces a likely economic downturn, the state
of North Dakota is deep into a major demographic shift, and many politicians are
becoming increasingly sensitive about the politicized nature of university
faculty. The final clash between UND President Thomas Kane and Orin G.
Libby occurred in 1922. The conflicted and confused discourse evident in both
Libby‚Äôs and Kane‚Äôs ideas of professional propriety was again apparent when
Kane attempted to force Libby to retire, as well as two other members of the
faculty who in a broad sense tended to side with Libby in the tumultuous
university politics of the day. In a letter dated May 4, 1922, Kane outlined his
grievances against Libby. In particular, Kane accused Libby of being
erratic as a teacher and as an administrator. For Kane this reflected a general
‚Äúvacillating‚Äù attitude that manifest itself in Libby‚Äôs shift from being a
‚Äúpatrioteer‚Äù during the World War I to a supporter of the NPL (Non-Patisan
League) once they had come to power. In fact, Kane‚Äôs alleges that Libby‚Äôs
political leanings led him to be a member of ‚Äúone of the most radical
organizations in the state‚Äù which apparently had only nine members (this
organization was apparent so radical and secretive no one could find any record
of it. It was likely meant as an allusion to the Communist Party). Kane also
leveled that Libby frequently interfered with the running of the university
including violating the <a
litics-and-th.html">so-called Hagan Agreement of 1920</a> by contacting George
Totten, a member of the Board of Administrators over the course of <a
litics-and--1.html">the Taylor controversy the previous year</a>. In light of
these charges, Kane recommended that Libby retire. Libby having no desire to
retire asked that President Kane follow the University Constitution by bringing
the matter before a special Committee of the University Council who would then
offer their recommendations to the State Board of Administration. Kane agreed to
this, but noted that he did not consider the University Constitution a binding
document as it had not been approved by the present Board of Administration.
For the meeting of the Committee of the University Council Libby prepared a
point-by-point response to Kane‚Äôs charges in a letter pointing out that many
of the charges against him were unfounded, lacked evidence, or preceded the so-
called Hagan agreement which stipulated the slate be wiped clean. Despite a
1125
rhetorically thorough refutation of Kane‚Äôs position, the Committee of the

University Council submitted the recommendation that Kane and the three faculty
members could not work together and that the three faculty members, including
Libby should retire. The Board of Administration after considering the report of
the committee agreed with its recommendations. It was only a later injunction by
the Board of Administrators that saved Libby‚Äôs career at the University.
The final major clash between Kane and Libby shares many characteristics of
the earlier clashes. These controversies show a number of important aspects
regarding the growth and development of the university as an institution. First,
as much as Libby reflected the new wave of professional academics at the
University, his view of the role of faculty in University governance and life
developed under President Merrifield who presided over a far more intimate
institution in which faculty had come to expect much greater influence. Kane, in
contrast, held the clear idea that the university president had the authority to
oust an individual or force him to retire. In Kane‚Äôs view, the position of the
faculty was largely a concern of the administration who would have the final say
in hiring as well as firing individual faculty members. Grounds for dismissal
need not be gross negligence, but could be tied to being a good citizen ‚Äì not
being part of radical political groups, or being a ‚Äúpatrioteer‚Äù or being
vacillating and wavering. The deep rifts cut in North Dakota society by the
contentious politics of the day had created seemingly accepted political
pretenses for dismissing or at least challenging the position of an individual
in the University. While Libby‚Äôs relationship with Kane over the next decade
is difficult to ascertain, there seems to have been a mutual d√©tente which
allowed Libby not only to carry on his responsibilities as the head of the
Department of American History but to expand its faculty and offerings.
Despite the difficulties between Libby and Kane, the University and the
Department of History survived and even prospered. Let's hope that the
words of William Schaper, prior to his dismissal from the University of
Minnesota for political reasons, may still ring true when he advised Libby prior
to taking the job at the University of North Dakota: ‚ÄúThe University of North
Dakota is still young and small. Its future is before it.‚Äù Over the
last several weeks I have blogged a series of short essays on the history of the
<a href="http://www.und.edu/dept/histdept/">Department of History</a> in
honor of the <a href="http://www.und.edu/">University of North Dakota</a>'s <a
href="http://www2.und.edu/our/125th/">125th-iversary</a>. <h6><a
urces-for-the.html"></a></h6> <a
North Dakota</a> <a
uis-geiger-an.html">Louis Geiger and the University of the Northern
Plains</a> <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2008/03/fe
lix-vondracek.html">Felix Vondracek and History and the University of North
Dakota</a> <a
Dakota</a> <a
race-b-woodwo.html">Horace B. Woodworth and History at the University of North
Dakota</a> <a
ttites-in-nor.html">Charles Carter and the Hittites in North Dakota</a>
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TITLE: Special Saturday Edition of Varia and Quick Hits
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DATE: 04/05/2008 12:23:50 AM

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A Special Saturday Edition of Quick Hits and Varia. There was too much
excitement in my life this past week to include all the important stuff.
So I'll share some odds and ends here: <ul> <li>Brandon Olson, <a
al_archaeology_in/">an accomplished blogger</a>, UND M.A., and <a
href="http://www.pkap.org/">PKAP</a> veteran, continues to work on inscribed
sling pellets from the site of Vigla and from across the Mediterranean more
broadly. His work on these enigmatic objects will contribute to his
dissertation which is a larger study of military liturgy. He presented a
<a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/Olson_Poster_SLingPellets2008.pdf">n
ice poster</a> at Penn State's <a
al_archaeology_in/2008/03/graduate-exhi-1.html">Graduate Exhibition</a> where he
is pursuing his Ph.D.</li> <li>A buddy sent me a copy of a story in the March
Happer's Magazine entitled "<a
href="http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/03/0081945">Mississippi Drift: River
Vagrants in the age of Wal-Mart</a>". The story talks about a planned trip
by a group of modern "hobos" down the Mississippi on a homemade raft. A
bit of incidental detail might interest readers of this blog. At one point
the author mentions the sugar beet harvest in Grand Forks "which has become
something of an annual pilgrimage for the punk traveler community. From
three weeks of driving forklifts or sorting beets on a conveyor belt, enough
money could be earned to fund months of travel" (p. 56). The NoDak angle
reminded me of the body excavated <a
ansitional-sp.html">from near the President's house at UND in the
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fall</a>. Former UND President Tom Clifford referred to an area adjacent

to campus and the railroad tracks as a kind of "hobo jungle" during the
1930s. It would appear that lure of seasonal labor continues to draw
modern day "hobos" (albeit of the "punk traveler" variety) to Grand Forks.</li>
<li>The University of North Dakota hosted the third annual Red River History
Conference this past weekend. This is a graduate /undergraduate history
conference started three years ago by members of the Phi Alpha Theta and the
History M.A. Program. Congratulations on keeping it going. This year
there were papers from UND, NDSU, Minnesota State University - Moorhead, Minot
State, and Penn State and featured a keynote address by Claire Strom of NDSU at
the North Dakota Museum of Art. Check out the program <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/RedRiverHistoryConference2008.pdf">h
ere</a>.</li> <li>It's rare that Grand Forks has as much excitement as it has
had this past week. First, both <a
href="http://www.grandforksherald.com/ap/index.cfm?page=view&id=D8VRFAJ00">B
arack Obama and Hillary Clinton were both in Grand Forks</a> last night stumping
at the State Democratic-NPL Convention. Next, the <a
href="http://www.worldmenscurling2008.com/index.php">World Curling
Championship</a> is being held at the Ralph Engelstad Arena. UND's hockey
team is in the <a href="http://www.uscho.com/">Frozen Four</a>. It may be
too much for my little town to handle...</li> <li>Scott Moore offers a nice
reminiscence of the "Early Days" of PKAP: <a
odds-and-e.html">PKAP Odds and Ends</a>. </li></ul>
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Vigorous conversations on scholars and data continues: Charles
Watkinson: <a href="http://www.charleswatkinson.com/2008/03/institutional-
response-to-challenges-of.html">An Institutional Response to the Challenges of
Digital Scholarship in Archaeology at the American School of Classical Studies
at Athens</a>, <a href="http://www.charleswatkinson.com/2008/03/drill-
down-dilemma-why-cant-we-link.html">The "drill down" dilemma. Why can't we link
archaeological publication to the underlying data?</a>, <a
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archaeological-data.html">Only Panthers Share Archaeological Data</a>
Sebastian Heath: <a
href="http://mediterraneanceramics.blogspot.com/2008/03/drilling-down-and-
up.html">Drilling Down (and Up)</a> Me: <a
la-koutsopetr.html">Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project and Its
Data</a> Tom Elliot: <a
href="http://horothesia.blogspot.com/2008/04/which-archaeo-data-animal-are-
you.html">Which archaeo-data-animal are you?</a> Eric Kansa: <a
href="http://www.alexandriaarchive.org/blog/?p=104">Archaeological Data
Critters</a> One issue that caught my attention Charles Watkinson's
suggestion that <a href="http://www.charleswatkinson.com/2008/04/only-panthers-
share-archaeological-data.html">Only Panthers Share Archaeological
Data</a>. He argues that senior scholars have the resources and the
professional security to share data. This is further supported by <a
href="http://www.alexandriaarchive.org/blog/">Eric Kansa</a> who, while noting
exceptions, suggests that junior scholars tend to be more risk adverse and
therefore less willing to share data. Several other thoughts
occurred to me as I slipped into idle speculation on why the squirrels, baby
armadillos and raccoons (i.e. junior scholars like myself) have not en masse
embraced digital data sharing. On a very simple and obvious level, junior
scholars tend not to have unfettered access to archaeological data. We
tend to collaborate with Panther-types who have varied attitudes toward sharing
data. The more people who have a vested interest in a particular set of
data, the more difficult it tends to be to get them all to agree on anything
regarding publication in electronic or even print form. That being
said, I am not sure that we squirrels see data sharing per se as a
risky proposition. I seems that most junior scholar have come of age in an
era where proprietary attitudes toward archaeological material are being
challenged openly and widely. In fact, from my perspective here in Greece,
the dominant attitude among juniors scholars is frustration that archaeological
data is not available. One can only hope that this frustration will be a
powerful impetus toward making archaeological material accessible to the
scholarly community quickly and openly. More significantly, I am not sure
what the perceived risk about making one data available, say, online would
be. I suppose a publisher could reject a manuscript if the material was
readily available online, but, then again, publishers are hardly banging down
the door to publish raw archaeological data these days. I suppose a
scholar could use someone's data to challenge his or her conclusions. In
some ways, however, this is why you make data available in the first place and
it hardly seems a likely occurrence at present. From what I have seen
scholars have barely started to use the available data that is now freely
available and have not necessarily done it without the collaboration of the
individuals who produced the data. Even the most data-centric
archaeologist recognizes that only certain kinds of archaeological knowledge can
be made available, and it is generally that kind of material that can be
tabulated, organized, and reproduced. The valuable cognitive and
phenomenological patterns, for example, that comprise an archaeological "sense
of place" would form a kind of metadata that does not translate easily into
print or digital media. From my perspective, it remains the technical
matters that prevents data being made regularly available. These matters
range from such issues as stable long-term electronic storage, to questions of
format (which must be kept up to date), to creating a interface that would
satisfy a potential end user. The emergence of projects like <a
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href="http://www.opencontext.org/">Open Context</a> and the work of the team at

<a href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/index.php/digital-library/">the American
School</a> will likely ameliorate some of the technical challenges related to
sharing data electronically, but even then, the first wave of archaeological
data going online must be an exercise in informed speculation in an effort to
anticipate exactly what the scholarly community will find useful. Making
data available in a format that requires either a high degree of technical
knowledge to study or in a way that does not reflect how a potential user thinks
about the material is only a theoretical improvement on the current situation of
data parochialism, not a practical one. Perhaps the greatest risk
confronting the current generation of data-squirrels is the investment of time
and energy into preparing data for digital publication without a complete
understanding of our audience, the technological complexities, and the long-term
implications. The work of the Grey Panthers and their collaborators will
certainly resolve many of these issues in the near future, but for now with all
the other pressures of data collection (i.e. archaeological fieldwork), writing,
and teaching, we can only do so much toward making our data publicly available
electronically. As someone committed to the concept, however, it is my
hope that in the near future greater technical and financial resources will make
it easier to do the right thing.
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Charles Watkinson (<a
href="http://www.charleswatkinson.com/2008/03/institutional-response-to-
challenges-of.html">An Institutional Response to the Challenges of Digital
Scholarship in Archaeology at the American School of Classical Studies at
Athens</a>, <a href="http://www.charleswatkinson.com/2008/03/drill-down-dilemma-
why-cant-we-link.html">The "drill down" dilemma. Why can't we link
archaeological publication to the underlying data?</a>, <a
archaeological-data.html">Only Panthers Share Archaeological Data</a>) and
Sebastian Heath (<a
href="http://mediterraneanceramics.blogspot.com/2008/03/drilling-down-and-
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up.html">Drilling Down (and Up)</a>) have been engaged in an entertaining

discussion regarding the future of digital repositories for archaeological
data. The discussion was vigorous and interesting for me and my
collaborators at the <a href="http://www.pkap.org/">Pyla-Koutsopetria
Archaeological Project</a> (PKAP) as we are beginning to look toward making
our data available online. In this spirit we have posted <a
href="http://www.pkap.org/publications/papers.htm">papers</a>, our <a
href="http://www.pkap.org/reports/reports.htm">annual reports</a>, video (<a
ging Cypriot</a>, <a
>Survey on Cyprus</a>), <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/disk_PKAP.html">maps backed by
real data</a>, and even some of our <a
href="http://www.pkap.org/publications/posters.htm">poster
presentations</a>. We are even beginning to fool about with <a
href="http://omeka.org/">Omeka</a> to develop an online "museum". But none
of this, at least to my mind, really counts as "data" in an archaeological
sense. While folks like Charles and Sebastian have a firm grasp of
many of the technical and theoretical aspects to making data available, most
small to mid-sized projects supported by small to mid-sized universities and
directed by folks like me with small to mid-sized brains struggle to get their
heads around the real practical issues of making data available to colleagues
elsewhere on the web. (I would be what Charles Watkinson refers to as a
baby armadillo or raccoon (I prefer <a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Common_Squirrel.jpg">squirrel</a>) as
compared to the Grey Panther types, like Jack Davis and Ian Hodder). In
particular, I struggle to envision what my end-user will do with out data.
This is not rooted in the fear of someone doing something untoward or
threatening with our data or an unwillingness to share. Rather I am not
sure how to present our data in in a way that would be effective and useful to a
outside user within the technical expertise at our disposal. On the one
hand, for our project, the metaphor of "drilling down" from the solid surface of
interpretation to the data below (if I understand the metaphor) represents a
reasonable extension of the sound rhetorical tactic for any archaeological
argument. Most well-published sites and surveys include some kind of
catalogue of finds that at least allows for some kind of down-drilling from
interpretation and analysis to the actual artifacts that provide evidence for a
project's conclusions. In this sense, presenting data to allow for drilling down
is not a phenomenon that is new to archaeological argument or presentation, but
one that would simply be enhanced by exploring electronic forms of data.
This, however, is does not necessarily coincide precisely with how we
envision our archaeological data being useful. PKAP is a small scale,
highly intensive pedestrian survey. Despite the claims of "artifact level
survey", a single sherd from a project like ours rarely has much "intrinsic"
meaning. Of course, if we say that a particular artifact is African Red
Slip 105 and an expert looks at it and says that it is a local Hellenistic
cooking pot, then we have a problem. More commonly, however, a single
artifact gains meaning from its spatial distribution, frequency, and
relationships to other artifacts. Thinking about our data in this way, the
metaphor of drilling down from interpretation to a stable artifactual foundation
is less helpful (although I can understand how it would be extended to include
the context of the artifact). When we at PKAP think about data sharing we
primarily think about presenting data in such a way that it can be
recontextualized and recombined to form the basis for yet unanticipated
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interpretations. Perhaps this line of discussion is a red herring:

while not a technical wiz like Sebastian, I know enough about database structure
to know that data "drilling" and regrouping and comparing should all be possible
within well-conceived data structure. Nevertheless it remains difficult,
for example, to export data from the <a
href="http://docs.classics.uc.edu/fmi/xsl/prap/pottery_list.xsl?-findall">PRAP
Pottery Database</a> in a tabular form for analysis (although I suspect that
this is possible). Other data sets which are available as tables (for
example some that are available through the <a
href="http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/">Archaeological Data Service</a>) lack the metadata
necessary to understand what the tables actually represent or seem too raw and
irregular to trust entirely for analysis. When we have thought
about publishing our data, we've conceived of it almost exclusively in a raw
format which would make it more difficult for an inexperienced user to drill
down through, but perhaps more useful to a professional who seeks to do
quantitative analysis. Again, I recognize that these models for data
distribution are not mutually exclusive (<a
href="http://www.opencontext.org/">Open Context</a>, for example, seems to allow
queries to be exported in tabular form) but for a project like ours that is
approaching its final field season and is looking to share our data in the short
term there are some very basic issues that would facilitate our progress toward
that goal: (1) On a budget and with present technology how should a
project go about making its data available? The ASCSA has invested a major
grant in preparing the complex data sets of the Agora and Corinth
Excavations. PRAP and other major archaeological project have well-
designed interfaces prepared by highly skilled experts. At the same time,
there are services like <a href="http://www.opencontext.org/">Open
Context</a>. How do we understand and sort through these options for
making data available? What are the salient issues? Is this
something that individual projects should do or is the future of data
distribution going to ultimately reside with outside services? Will data
distribution become as idiosyncratic and fragmented as, say, academic
publishing? (2) Is drilling down still the best way to conceptualize the
presentation of our data. That is to say, how raw can our data be?
Do we need to contextualize our data within interpretative narratives that can
then form the "surface" from which "excavation" can take place? Or do we
present our "raw" data with appropriate metadata with the hope that it can serve
as the raw material for independent comparisons and analysis? (3) An more
practical concern is stable storage. As recent discussions of digital
infrastructure has made clear, just getting long term, stable server space at a
mid-sized university is a struggle and maintaining it is a long-term investment
(just as maintaining a apotheke for physical artifacts). What is the
relationship between a long term commitment to data storage (on a certain
server) and reference stability that is necessary if we want to cite in our
academic papers a particular artifact from a particular data set? Is our
end user someone who simply wants to download a data set with appropriate meta
data and manipulate it via their own software and according to their own
whims? Or does our end user want an interactive interface? Or
both? Will it increasingly be the obligation of a project to have
well-thought-out answers to these collections before we begin to
collect data to begin with? I can't shake the feeling that my inability to
answer these questions or even properly understand the debate reflects a kind of
archaeological irresponsibility on my part! This is confusing
business.
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TITLE: Episode 9: Geophysical
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<a
eWriter/GeophysicalRO.jpg"><a
margin: 0px 10px 0px 0px; border-right-width: 0px" height="164"
alt="GeophysicalRO"
Writer/GeophysicalRO_1.jpg" width="244" align="left"
border="0"></a></a>Episode 9 of <a
Cypriot</a> is now posted! This episode focuses on the geophysical
work that the <a href="http://www.pkap.org/">Pyla-Koutsopetria
Archaeological Project</a> conducted during the 2007 field season and introduces
John Hunt who collects our geophysical data for us. The technique that we
used during the 2007 season was electrical resistivity. John described it
fully in this week's short. It is the most commonly used technique in the
Eastern Mediterranean largely owing to its simplicity and cost
effectiveness. As I have noted in other posts our results were all that we
hoped for as I have noted elsewhere in this blog (e.g. <a
la-koutsopetr.html">Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project Mid-Winter
Update</a>). The outline of a possible Early Christian basilica and
highly-suggestive bedrock cuts on the ridge of Kokkinokremos will become the
targets of excavations during our rapidly-approaching 2008 field season.
As excited as we are about the discoveries produced by the geophysical work,
we are equally excited about our success in implementing a multi-stage research
strategy rooted in survey archaeology. The first phase of fieldwork in 2003, as
readers of this blog know, was informal "extensive" type survey that did little
more than allow us to gain a broad understanding of the distribution of
artifacts across the site. In 2004, 2005, and 2007 we first increased the
intensity of our survey employing a gridded collection of the highest density
1133
areas of the site and then expanded out intensive survey to the surrounding area
using larger units. The next stage in our fieldwork saw us conduct
geophysical prospecting of the highest density areas and this will continue in
2008. The final stage will be focused excavation of two areas documented
by geophysical work. This tiered approach will enable us to analyze not
only the varied success of the techniques used to document the site, but also to
ensure that any finds from both excavation and survey have reciprocal
archaeological context. We can correlate excavated material with the
spatially more extensive material from survey and (hopefully) correlate the
unstratified material collected by survey with stratified deposits from the
excavation. Finally, survey and geophysical work minimizes the area
requiring excavation. Excavation is not only costly, labor-intensive, and
time consuming, but it is also a far more destructive method for gaining
knowledge about past activity than even our relatively intensive survey
collection. By implementing a multi-stage approach to the landscape we not
only protect the archaeological remains at Pyla-Koutsopetria, but we
are also producing a far more meaningful context for those that we collected
(i.e. removed from their depositional or "archaeological" context) than we could
using any one technique alone. A few technical notes The
everything that you see in these film shorts. We have <a
of <a
vey on Cyprus</a>, and you can read the commentaries on the first eight
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alt="WallViglaRO4"
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TITLE: More Archaeology of Sacred Spaces
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CATEGORY: Byzantium
DATE: 04/01/2008 12:31:41 AM

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 In <a
eams-inventio.html">Dreams, Inventio, and Archaeology</a>, I began to think
about the link between dreams, the sacred, and the formal, modernist discipline
of archaeology. Since then I've noticed several examples of this
phenomenon. In his, "Three Vaulted Basilicas in Cyprus" JHS
66 (1946), 48-56, A.H.M. Megaw describes the excavation of the Panayia
Skyra on Cyprus as follows: <blockquote> "Further details of the first
basilica were disclosed about fifteen years ago, when in a period of drought the
1135
cultivators of the neighbourhood cleared the debris from the interior, to

appease the Panayia, and summoned a priest to pray there for rain. The floor of
the reconstructed church was reached and broken through, revealing parts of the
original pavement about 30 ccntimetres below it. In the central apse a simple
synthronon was laid bare. In the course of the same clearance works fragments of
a marble ambon and of chancel panels came to light." (52)</blockquote>
Elsewhere Vassos Karageorghis in his engaging autobiography, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/153885421">A Lifetime in the Archaeology of
Cyprus</a> (Stockholm 2007), describes a regret he still has from his early
days as the Director of the Department of Antiquities of Cyprus:
<blockquote> "one day a priest of the Astromeritis (a village near Morphou
Bay), came to my office, bringing on melon and one watermelon. We had
never met before. He put them on my table and said that this was a reward
in advance, I had to discover the tomb of Ayios Afxivios (a local saint) in the
area of his village. I tried to say that I was not sure that I could, but
he insisted. He left my office full of hope. I never managed to satisfy
his expectations and I have many regrets for having accepted his reward in
advance." (77)</blockquote> It is worth noting that a French translation
of the Life of St. Afxivios (Auxibius) appears as an appendix to J. Des Gagniers
and Tran Tam Tinh's <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/19881492">Soloi I:
dix campagnes de fouilles</a> (1964-1974). (Sainte-Fox 1985)
pp. 132-144. Both of these anecdotes look at the relationship between
archaeology and the sacred in the Cypriot landscape. The first example
viewed a form of excavation as a devotional practice which unintentionally
revealed the long standing history of the site as a sacred place. The
second example, in contrast, reflects the view of the modern, "scientific"
archaeologist as the agent of inventio. In this example, Karageorghis
became the individual vested with the responsibility for discovering a sacred
place that had been lost and thereby returning the eternal sacred landscape to
view. This passage is a good example of a phenomenon recently
discussed in Y. Hamilakis, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/122424890">The Nation and its Ruins:
Antiquity, Archaeology, and National Imagination in Greece.</a> (Oxford
2007) where he compares the role of the archaeologist in Greek society to the
role of the priest. Archaeologists are sometimes said to perform a
leitourgima (ŒªŒµŒπœÑŒøœçœÅŒ≥Œ∑ŒºŒ±): "The modern connotations of the
word denote not only an operation but also the religious church ceremony.
This last meaning is perhaps closer to the public perception of archaeologists
as people who mediate between the world of the past ancestors and the modern
world." (39). Archaeologists, in Hamilakis analysis, emerge as priests of
a "secular religion". 
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 <a
ttites-in-nor.html"></a>This may be the final installment of my weekly
feature on the history of the Department of History at UND. It will appear as a
three-part case study (<a
litics-and-th.html">Part 1</a>, Part 2, <a
litics-and-th.html">Part 3</a>) examining the clash between Professor Orin G.
Libby of the Department of History and President Thomas Kane. Its greater
purpose is to shed light on the University of North Dakota at a crucial
faculty. The second clash between Orin G. Libby and
President Thomas Kane erupted only a month after the Hagan Agreement came to
pass in 1920 (for details see <a
litics-and-th.html">Part 1</a>). The central point of this second Libby-
Kane controversy regarded the proper procedure for expanding the history
department. From the days of President Frank McVey, Libby had sought to expand
the department by either adding faculty which only occasionally exceeded Libby
and a part-time instructor like George R. Davies, who was primarily a
sociologist and would have an important career at the University of Iowa). Since
1916 Libby‚Äôs requests for additional faculty had become all the more urgent,
as the University required that all students take a semester of History and this
taxed the limited faculty resources in the department. In the Spring 1920 Libby
became interested in hiring a certain Robert R. Russell who had been teaching at
Ottawa University in Kansas. At the time, Russell only held an M.A. completed at
the University of Kansas under Carl Becker and F. H. Hodder, but he was enrolled
in the Ph.D. program at the University of Illinois. Libby regarded Russell as
having sufficient teaching experience and, being enrolled in a Ph.D. program, he
would soon complete the necessary requirements for eventual promotion to full
1137
professor serving alongside Libby as the Professor of European History.

After meeting with Russell in Minneapolis for what appears to have been an
impromptu interview, Libby forwarded a letter to Kane recommending that the
University hire Russell. Kane responded that he did not see any need to hire
Russell at present because the classes were being taught by a man named John W.
Taylor. If there was to be a faculty change, Kane would require some
justification from Libby to dismiss Taylor and hire someone new. At the same
time, Kane contacted Russell and inquired to his qualifications for the job. In
response to Kane‚Äôs request, Libby provided a detailed argument regarding the
need to hire Russell and a careful enumeration of his qualifications. Kane
received Libby‚Äôs recommendation of Russell, but regarded this as avoiding the
larger question of whether Taylor should be dismissed. Moreover, he criticized
Libby‚Äôs plan to expand the department suggesting that the candidate he
favored, Russell, was in fact no more qualified than Taylor who Libby evidently
deemed inadequate. Kane, perhaps posturing here, suggested that the department
would benefit by hiring a ‚Äúfull fledged man‚Äù rather than relying on Taylor
or Russell. Moreover, before any change could be made Kane insisted again that
Libby provide evidence for Taylor‚Äôs incompetence in the classrooms of the
Department of History in order to justify dismissing him. Libby steadfastly
refused to do this, and this evidently was the sine qua non for any further
action from Kane. In fact, for President Kane, Libby‚Äôs inability
to provide grounds for Taylor‚Äôs dismissal invalidated Libby‚Äôs recommendation
that the university hire Russell. As this dispute gradually escalated, Kane
kept Russell informed of the issues at stake with the appointment of Taylor and
the behavior of Libby, thereby providing the unsuspecting candidate with quite
an insight into the workings of both the department and the administration of
the university. Libby, who had become increasingly impatient with what he saw as
Kane‚Äôs stalling tactics, finally referred the matter to the Board of
Administration. The board in this instance sided with Kane who in turn created a
separate Department of European History and hired <a
arence-perkin.html">Clarence Perkins</a> as a full professor to be the chair of
this department. He had been an Associate Professor at Ohio State University and
received his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1908. The second round of the Kane-Libby
controversy, much like the first, reflected the growing pains of the University
as new and old faculty and administrators sought to accommodate their personal
ideas of how a university should function with growing body of professional
standards. Libby, for his part, arrived at the University with sterling
professional credentials, a willingness to be active in University life, and an
expectation that the faculty‚Äôs views be respected in the running of the
University. Moreover, he reinforced this view of faculty‚Äôs place on campus
through such as activities as founding a Grand Forks branch of the American
Association of University Professors. Nevertheless and perhaps ironically,
Libby‚Äôs behavior often seemed to represent more traditional approaches to
academic life. It seems likely that Libby‚Äôs preference for an individual like
Russell who would have been quite junior in status to Libby, would have ensured
his continued control over departmental affairs. Kane‚Äôs choice, Perkins‚Äô
held qualifications that were certainly more significant than either Taylor or
Russell, suggesting that Kane, for all his faults, sought to hire a more
substantial scholar than Libby‚Äôs choice. In a sense, then, Kane‚Äôs view of
the development of the department was perhaps more in keeping with later
standards, and Libby, or so it would seem, sought to rely on older models of
academic practices more dependent on personal acquaintances and a hierarchy
based on seniority and professional prestige. Furthermore, Libby‚Äôs willingness
to move Taylor aside without being willing (or perhaps able) to articulate a
1138
reason contrasted with Kane‚Äôs willingness to support Taylor‚Äôs appointment.

Kane‚Äôs perspective in this matter was consistent with his ideas of faculty
promotion articulated in his inaugural address. Kane professed his
unwillingness to dismiss a successful member of the faculty without clear
reasons. In this sentiment, Kane clearly meant to state his willingness to
protect faculty from the arbitrary dismissals that characterized the tumultuous
wartime years when some faculty, like Libby‚Äôs friend William Schaper at the
University of Minnesota had lost their positions due to academic, political, or
personal animosities. Over the last several weeks I have blogged a
series of short essays on the history of the <a
href="http://www.und.edu/dept/histdept/">Department of History</a> in
Plains</a> <a
Dakota</a> <a
Dakota</a> <a
Dakota</a> <a
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DATE: 03/28/2008 02:07:39 AM

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Four diverse quick hits! Something for everyone! <ul> <li><a
Writer/image_thumb_33.png" width="128" align="right" border="0"></a> Kostis
Kourelis (see: <a href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/2008/02/new-books-
peripatetic-history.html">New Books: Peripatetic History</a>) encouraged me to
read R. Solnit's <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/57316646">A Field
Guide to Getting Lost</a>. It's a brilliant little book combining the
spirit of Simone Weil with the lyrics of the Clash. Her chapter entitled
Abandon is particularly compelling. She weaves together themes of personal
loss, the image of the abandoned city (and an abandoned hospital), and the
unconscious mind: "The city is built to resemble a conscious mind, a network
that can calculate, administrate, manufacture. Ruins become the
unconscious of a city, its memory, unknown, darkness, lost lands, and in this
truly bring it to life." (p. 89) This certainly brings into focus the
importance of dreams in archaeology; the excavation is part of the process of
bringing the unconscious to the fore, reifying it, and coming to terms with the
details that lead to its disappearance from our conscious mind. <li>My blog has
apparently created a buzz. The word in the halls of the <a
href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/">American School</a> is that someone did not like
this blog post: <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2007/11/in
side-looking.html">Inside Looking In: A Wondering about the American School of
Classical Studies</a>. I don't know who or exactly why, except the floors
whispered that it was perhaps related to this line: "It seems hard to imagine
that the social experiences of each cohort here at the school, which in their
intensity can approach a kind of hazing (hearing a talk about an Archaic temple
in a steady rain!!), would have no impact on how the various interrelated
disciplines (archaeology, philology, history, art history) developed." In
any event, I have been quite open in my critique of the American School (you can
find these posts <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/notes_from
_athens/index.html">here</a>), but in general, I have am positive in my overall
assessment of the institution and its programs. So, the buzz is good, and
I am glad folks are reading my blog and discussing the points that I bring up,
but I'd like to learn more. It's exciting to see such a venerable
institution that supports and encourages a robust and critical culture.
<li>I've just finished reading Maria Iacovou's article in the November 2007
volume of the Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research
(BASOR) entitled "Site Size Estimates and the Diversity Factor in Late
Cypriot Settlement Histories," 1-23. In it she critiques some of the
methods commonly employed to determine the size of Late Cypriot (LC) sites and
the implications of these estimates in how we understand the settlement
hierarchy in the LC period. She rightly stresses that function is a
crucial variable in determining the relationship between site size and the
1140
relationships between settlements on the island. She notes for example that the
site of Pyla-Kokkinokremos where we have conducted fieldwork:
</li></ul> <blockquote> "The site commands a superb view of the sea and the
fertile plain but, geographically speaking, there is no possibility that it had
wells. Its founders, then, did not choose it to set up a long-loved and
prosperous urban center. They obviously had another, specific objective in
mind. In fact, the houses -- estimated as at least 200 units -- were built
along the edges of the plateau, forming a continuous outer wall which has been
described as "the fortification wall" The space within could have been,
for all we know, completely free of house structures. The 27 ha of the
plateau should not, then, be interpreted as 27 ha of built-up space; nor should
they be compared naively to the "small" size of the urban fabric of Enkomi or
Ay. Demetrios. Far from being similar, they are very different types of
settlement." (p. 11)</blockquote> <blockquote> He observations are
interesting and touch upon some of the basic research questions that we hope to
test this summer (see <a
other-pyla-ko.html">Another Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project
Update</a>). As for site size, Dave Pettegrew and I have been working on a
very similar project, albeit for a later period. In particular, we have
focused on how intensive pedestrian survey defines "large sites" and determining
how these methods have influenced our understanding of places in the
archaeological landscape. In fact, we submitted and had rejected an
article that dealt with a very similar topic. Here's the
abstract:</blockquote> <blockquote> "The study of large sites has been
vital to Mediterranean archaeological survey for some thirty years. In regional
environments where palace complexes, urban centers, and sizable primary and
secondary settlements are ubiquitous, large-site survey has emerged as a key
component of research design. Despite a scholarship recognizing large-site
survey as a distinct facet of landscape archaeology, there has been relatively
little scholarship addressing the relationship between intensive method, data
production, analysis, and archaeological interpretation. This article provides a
synthetic overview of major problems and issues in surveying and interpreting
large sites in the Eastern Mediterranean and offers two case studies from
Corinth, Greece, and Larnaca, Cyprus, that offer new directions in understanding
extensive surface scatters at the archaeological and historical level. The paper
advocates large-site survey as a fundamental vehicle for exploring the concept
‚Äúsite‚Äù‚Äîconstructed in the encounter between archaeological fieldwork, the
artifactual landscape, and the desire to produce discursively meaningful
interpretations of the Mediterranean past."</blockquote> <ul> <li>I received
an email just this morning from Dr. Stephen Robinson, the son of Elwyn B.
Robinson who was a longtime professor in the Department of History at the
University of North Dakota and the author of <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/190890">The History of North
Dakota</a>. He introduced himself and was kind enough to send along a copy
of a touching memoir that his father Elwyn Robinson composed on the death of his
wife Eva in 1984, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/11380503">Remembrances of Eva Foster
Robinson</a> (1903-1984) and photograph. </li></ul> <a
eWriter/image_42.png"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width:
0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px" height="299" alt="image"
Writer/image_thumb_34.png" width="404" border="0"></a> Stephen
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Robinson in the window of Merrifield Hall where the Department of History is

located on the campus of UND. Photo by Elwyn Robinson 
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COMMENT:
IP: 130.127.64.160
URL:
DATE: 03/28/2008 10:27:46 PM
I don't know what the vibe might be inside the ASCSA, but for those of us in the
US, William Caraher's blog has brought us so much closer to the daily activities
of the School. Reportage is obviously subjective and knowing the author adds a
human voice. In the 10-years I've been an ASCSA alumnus and the 20-years I've
worked in its excavations, I haven't heard the voice (Akoue) of the ASCSA so
vividly as in this blog. For me, the postings were a celebration of the ASCSA
and its dispersed, complex, multi-national, multi-aged community. I haven't
noticed negativity but quite the opposite, the affirmation of critical inquiry
and a refreshing honesty. My greatest worry now is what will happen when Bill
comes back home. Who will provide my daily ASCSA fix?
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TITLE: The Early Christian Ecclesiastical Architecture of Cyprus: First
Impressions
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
ALLOW PINGS: 1
BASENAME: the-early-chris
CATEGORY: Byzantium
DATE: 03/27/2008 01:57:59 AM

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Over the last two weeks, I have been collecting research on the Early
Christian architecture of Cyprus. These are my first impressions. Five
quick impressions of the Early Christian basilicas of Cyprus in tacit comparison
to those of Greece. 1. The churches of Cyprus demonstrate a remarkable
diversity in decoration, architecture, and organization. Some of this can be
attributed to the multiple influences present on the island. The raised
stylobates, western narthex and atrium evoke churches from the Aegean, the
widespread use of opus sectile seems to be a distinctly Cypriot element
as does the creative and unique use of molded gypsum plaster, and the mosaic
floors show the influence not only of the southern coast of Asia Minor, but also
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from the vicinity of Antioch and Beirut in the Levant as well as points further
west including the Aegean. From a diachronic perspective, these multiple
influences have framed some of the main questions regarding Cypriot culture
throughout antiquity and prehistory. Where do the constituent elements in
Cypriot culture ‚Äì including architecture, decoration, and liturgical
organization ‚Äì derive? The diversity of influences reflect in part the wide
range of economic contacts between the island and the various regional centers
nearby and the degree and nature of external has continued to inform the reading
of the design and decoration of Early Christian basilicas in Cyprus (Most
famously outlined by A.H.S. Megaw in his "Byzantine Architecture and Decoration
in Cyprus: Metropolitan or Provincial?" DOP 28 (1974), 57-88). It is
worth noting, however, that the different styles of buildings, sometimes in the
same community, also reflect the strategies employed by local populations to
mark out their identity. External influence is not simply the passive side
effect of economic or political contact between areas that make certain cultural
traits inevitable in a particular context, but rather evidence for cultural
interact reflects the deliberate and conscious modes of expression in a
particular community. <a
Writer/image_thumb_32.png" width="148" align="right" border="0"></a>2. Megaw
early attention to post-classical monuments and levels has been continued in the
impressive record well published churches from Cyprus. Whereas in Greece
only a handful of Early Christian basilicas have received dedicated monographs
(Demetrias, Aliki on Thassos, for example). In Cyprus at least six buildings
have complete monographs: <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/19881492">Soloi</a>, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/40110272">Kampanopetra</a>, the three
churches at <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/186710945">Kopetra</a>, the
basilica at <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/52303510">Maroni-Petrera</a>,
the church at <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/175138459">Alassa</a>, and
the very recently published (and long awaited) <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/72871373&referer=brief_results">Kourion:
Excavations in the Episcopal Precinct</a>. These churches provide well-
documented, if not necessarily well-dated base points, for assessing the lesser
known buildings. 3. Like in Greece, Early Christian basilicas in Cyprus are
places of continuous investment in the landscape: a. Most churches show
several phase of construction. When the phases are close chronologically they
often reflect large scale repairs and refitting typically owing either to
earthquake damage to the original structure or the desire to build a more
expansive and elaborate building. Two phases of decoration, at very least, are
visible at Ay. Kyriaki in Paphos, the basilica at Soloi, and the Kampanopetra
and Ay. Epiphanios at Salamis. b. In other instances, much later buildings
stand atop earlier foundations. The more convenient examples of this come from
the three barrel vaulted basilicas documented by Megaw in his 1946 JHS (A.H.S.
Megaw, "Three Vaulted Basilicas in Cyprus," JHS 66 (1946), 46-56). There
are many other instances, however, including the several examples in which the
decoration of the early church continues to be visible in the later building.
Three such buildings preserved examples of earlier, pre-iconoclastic mosaic work
in apses incorporated from earlier buildings: Angeloktiste at Kiti, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/4153078">Panayia Kanakaria</a> ‚Äì
Lythrankomi, and Panayia tis Kyras ‚Äì Livadia. c. Finally, the practice of
reutilizing Early Christian spolia occurred in Cyprus. The later basilica of Ay.
1143
Lazaros in Larnaka includes numerous examples of Early Christian architectural

sculpture in its walls. The most interesting example, however, might come from
the Episkopi Sarayia which incorporated large amounts of material from the
Episcopal Basilica at Kourion into its fabric and decoration. Megaw has argued
that this occurred when the Episcopal see was transferred from Kourion to
Episopi at some point after the Episcopal Precinct at Kourion was abandoned.
(See: A.H.S. Megaw, "The episcopal precinct at Kourion and the evidence for re-
location," in A. Bryer and G.S. Georgallides eds. <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/31097067">Sweet Land of Cyprus</a>
(Nicosia 1993)). <a
eWriter/KourionBasilicaSM.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top:
0px; border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="272" alt="KourionBasilicaSM"
Writer/KourionBasilicaSM_thumb.jpg" width="404"
border="0"></a> Kourion Episcopal Precinct 4. Churches
in bunches. Thoroughly excavated sites show evidence for multiple churches. The
sites of Kopetra, Pyla-Koutsopetria, and Ay. Georgios Peyeias are examples of
relatively small (i.e. non polis sized) sites with multiple churches. Large
sites like Salamis-Constantina, Kourion, or Paphos have produced multiple large
basilicas. This is not necessarily a feature distinct to Cyprus. Indeed,
multiple basilicas are common even around smaller communities in Greece and
elsewhere. How this phenomenon is to be understood is the more pressing matter.
Functional differentiation is one potential explanation for the large number of
churches. Even modest settlements might have a designated ‚Äúcemetery‚Äù
basilica and perhaps a nearby monastic establishment. Church building was an
important aspect of the ‚Äúsacred economy‚Äù. The temporal personal prestige as
well as genuine piety associated with building a church might also account some
of the large number of churches. Finally, it seems likely that the Christian
community had a diversity is that is often overlooked by archaeologists. Various
heretical groups ‚Äì from the relatively harmless rigorist sects like
Novatianism to more aggressive Monophysites congregations ‚Äì would have likely
fed the proliferation of ecclesiastical architecture throughout the east. <a
eWriter/AmathousBasilicaSM_1.jpg"><a
eWriter/AmathousBasilicaSM_1.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top:
0px; border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="271" alt="AmathousBasilicaSM"
Writer/AmathousBasilicaSM_thumb.jpg" width="404"
border="0"></a></a> Amathous "Foot of the Acropolis"
Basilica 5. The Long Late Antiquity. While there is very little
evidence for significant Early Christian architecture in Cyprus prior to the end
of the fourth century, the Early Christian basilicas on the island continue to
be built well into the 7th century. This is about a century later than the dates
regularly attributed to Early Christian basilicas in Greece, but in keeping with
the later dates for sites in elsewhere in the Eastern Mediterranean. It suggests
that despite the disruptions of the Persian Wars and perhaps even the early days
of the Arab invasion, sufficient wealth continued to be available to build
relatively elaborate buildings. The ceramic evidence seems to show that Cyprus
drew at least some its wealth from its deep engagement in Eastern Mediterranean
networks of exchange. Thus, the continued prosperity manifest in the commitment
to monumental construction suggests (although it does not prove in a proper
sense) that the exchange networks continued to function and generate wealth for
1144
the inhabitants of the island. In 1966 A. Papageorghiou noted that
around 60 Early Christian basilicas were known in Cyprus (A. Papageorghiou, "H
Œ†Œ±ŒªŒ±ŒπŒøœáœÅŒπœÉœÑŒπŒ±ŒΩŒπŒ∫Œ∑ Œ∫Œ±Œπ ŒíœÖŒ∂Œ±ŒΩœÑŒπŒΩŒ∑
Œ±œÅœáŒ±ŒπŒøŒªŒøŒ≥ŒØŒ± Œ∫Œ±Œπ Œ§Œ≠œáŒΩŒ∑ ŒµŒΩ ŒöœçœÄœÅœâŒπ Œ∫Œ±œÑŒ± œÑŒø 1967-
68," ŒëŒí (1970)) and by 1985 that number had exceeded 80 (A.
Papageorghiou, "L'architecture paleochretienne de Chypre," CCARB 32
(1985), 299-324). I include a list here of around 60 major Early Christian
basilicas (and a few minor one). The list in not exhaustive, but a start.
List of the Major Early Christian basilicas of Cyprus : 
Acheiropoiitos - Lambousa Agios Georgios hill (PASYDY) -
Nicosia Alassa Amathous - Akropolis Amathous - Ay. Tychonas Amathous
- Ay. Varvara Amathous - Foot of the Acropolis Amathous - The Great
Southeast Basilica Angeloktistos - Kiti Arsinoe - Polis
Chrysochous Asomatos-Aphendrica Ay. Barnabas - Salamis Ay. Barnabas and
Hilarion Ay. Epiphanios - Salamis Ay. Georgios - Peyias - Basilica
I Ay. Georgios - Peyias - Basilica II Ay. Georgios - Peyias - Basilica
III Ay. Heracleidios - Politico Ay. Kononas - Akamas Ay. Kyprianos -
Menico Ay. Kyriaki - Panayia Chrysopolitissa Ay. Mamas - Morphou Ay.
Philon - Karpas Ay. Photios - Yialousa Ay. Procopius Ay. Spyridon -
Tremethoushia Ay. Thekla Ay. Trias - Yialousa Ay. Tychikos Ayia
Moni Bedestan - Nicosia Episkopi Saraya Giorkous Hagiasma of
Nicodemus Kampanopetra - Salamis Katakymata Katalymata ton Plakoton -
Akrotiri Kato Katalymata - Akrotiri Kopetra-North Church Kopetra-
Sirmata Kopetra-South Church Kourion - Episcopal Kourion - Extra
Muros Kourion - Harbor Ktima Lysi Marathovouno Maroni-
Petrera Panayia Kanakaria - Lythrankomi Panayia Limeniotissa -
Paphos Panayia Pergamenotissa Panayia Syka - Karpas Panayia tis Kyras -
Livadia Panayia-Aphendrica - Karpas Paphos - Toumbelos Pyla-
Koutsopetria Pyla-Vigla Shyrvallos - Paphos Soloi
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TITLE: Episode 8: The Wall on Vigla
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
ALLOW PINGS: 1
BASENAME: episode-8-the-w
DATE: 03/26/2008 01:40:06 AM

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<a
1145
alt="WallViglaRO"
Writer/WallViglaRO.jpg" width="244" align="left" border="0"></a>
</a> Episode 8 of <a
ging Cypriot</a> is now posted. Similar in theme to <a
isode-7-the-w.html">Episode 7: The Wall on Kokkinokremos</a>, this short
documents in the in-field component of the process of archaeological analysis on
the <a href="http://www.pkap.org/">Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological
Project</a>. Specifically, <a href="http://www.xanga.com/jpatrow">Joe
Patrow</a> captures my initial rumination on the wall on Vigla. 
The full extent of this wall became evident after the dry winter ended with
torrential spring rains. These rains cleared earth and vegetation away
from parts of the wall allowing us to follow it for much more of its length than
during previous seasons. On the ground, the wall is very difficult to see
and almost impossible to video or photograph in a convincing way. From the
air, however, its course along the south face of Vigla is clearly visible.
On the photo to the left below note the parallel lines just to the right of the
cultivated area. The northern approach to Vigla was fortified by another
stretch of wall and a dry moat, or taphros which is also more visible from the
air than the ground as is clear from the two parallel lines separated by a line
of bushes on the right of the the photo to the right. <a
eWriter/ViglaWallDetail.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-
alt="ViglaWallDetail"
Writer/ViglaWallDetail_thumb.jpg" width="124" border="0"></a><a
eWriter/ViglaTaphros%20copy.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-
alt="ViglaTaphros copy"
Writer/ViglaTaphros%20copy_thumb.jpg" width="304" border="0"></a> This
short also captures one of the archaeological problems that we face at
Vigla. The material on the plowed surface of the hill is predominantly
Late Classical or Hellenistic (i.e. 4th-2nd c. BC). We are fairly
convinced that the construction techniques used in the wall and dry moat are
Late Roman or Early Byzantine in date (i.e. ca. 600 AD). Moreover, our
geophysical work (stay tuned for Episode 9!!) produced an image suggestive of an
Late Roman basilica style church. Excavations this summer should shed
considerable light on this archaeological mystery. I think some of my
confusion about this seeming incongruity (a Classical-Hellenistic overburden?)
is evident in this short. <a
eWriter/ViglaWalls_1.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width:
alt="ViglaWalls"
Writer/ViglaWalls_thumb_1.jpg" width="400" border="0"></a> A few
1146
technical notes The video is all in <a

of <a
vey on Cyprus</a>, and you can read the commentaries on the first seven
shorts (with links to those shorts) below. <a
erging-cypr-1.html"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px;
alt="Landscape_MontageRO7"
Writer/Landscape_MontageRO7%5B5%5D.jpg" width="116"
border="0"></a></a><a
isode-2-emerg.html"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px;
alt="Learning_FieldwalkingRO5"
isode-3-an-ar.html"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px;
alt="ArtifactsJourneyRO4"
isode-4-forme.html"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px;
alt="FormerStudentRO4"
Writer/FormerStudentRO4.jpg" width="116" border="0"></a></a><a
isode-5-basec.html"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px;
border-bottom-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px" height="78" alt="BaseCampRO6"
isode-6-findi.html"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px;
alt="FruitCratesRO12"
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border="0"></a>
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TITLE: March 25 Parade in Athens
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
ALLOW PINGS: 1
BASENAME: march-25-parade
DATE: 03/25/2008 06:50:32 AM

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I looked over my blog for the past month and realized that there were almost
no pictures. March 25th seemed like a good day to fix that. I took
part of the morning off (only part!) and checked out the military parade through
downtown Athens. We weren't in an ideal place for photographs, but I did
click off a few that are more or less presentable. <a
eWriter/EvzonesSM.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width:
alt="EvzonesSM"
Writer/EvzonesSM_thumb.jpg" width="404"
border="0"></a> Evzones in their fustanellas <a
eWriter/ParadeTrucksAthens.jpg"><a
eWriter/ParadeTrucksAthens_1.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top:
0px; border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="272" alt="ParadeTrucksAthens"
Writer/ParadeTrucksAthens_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> </a>
 Some kind of fighting trucks <a
eWriter/GunTrucksSM.jpg"><a
eWriter/GunTrucksSM_1.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px;
1148
border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="167" alt="GunTrucksSM"

Writer/GunTrucksSM_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> </a>
 Trucks with Large Guns <a
eWriter/TanksSM.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width:
alt="TanksSM"
Writer/TanksSM_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> Proper
Tanks <a
eWriter/HelocoptersAthensSm.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-
alt="HelocoptersAthensSm"
Writer/HelocoptersAthensSm_thumb.jpg" width="404"
border="0"></a> Everyone gets into the act... <a
eWriter/DrinkingPlanes.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px;
border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="272" alt="DrinkingPlanes"
Writer/DrinkingPlanes_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a>
 Drinking planes for firefighting <a
eWriter/Firefighters.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px;
border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="247" alt="Firefighters"
Writer/Firefighters_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a>
 Firetrucks Parades are great. I love trucks
although the ones with the big guns were a bit scary. The biggest applause
was for the Evzones and especially the firefighters who worked so hard this past
summer. If the pictures aren't your style, I did do a proper
blog post for the day <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2008/03/pl
anning-the-py.html">here</a>.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Maddy Bray
IP: 76.170.0.106
DATE: 03/26/2008 12:01:52 AM
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The great thing about blogs is that you can discuss some highly intellectual
topic one day, then show lots of photos and talk about how cool big trucks are
the next. Keep up the good work! !
P.S. I'm a little jealous of your extended stay in greece.
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TITLE: Planning the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
ALLOW PINGS: 1
BASENAME: planning-the-py
DATE: 03/25/2008 02:10:27 AM

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March 25th is a National holiday in Greece. There will be parades and
ceremonies to commemorate the raising of the Greek flag in revolt from the Turks
on this day in 1821. March 25 is also the Feast of the Annunciation as it
falls exactly 9 months before Christmas. Finally (and I am the only one
"celebrating" this), March 25 is almost exactly 2 months before the beginning of
field season. The planning stage of the project is going full bore
now and the PKAP planning wiki has filled up with all kinds of discussions
regarding the field season. The major discussions center on three
interrelated issues: 1) Daily Schedule. In the past the PKAP team
has been small enough that we were able to plan each day as it arrived.
This has generally been necessary as the schedule of the British firing ranges
varies a good bit, and we can only get access to the site when the British are
not firing. They almost never use the ranges in the afternoon so we can
generally count on being in the field during that time of day (say, after 2 pm),
but sometimes they do not have firing scheduled in the morning allowing us to
have a complete day in the field. This year with a bigger team we will
lose some of our scheduling flexibility and we will have to be more
disciplined. Each morning, we will work in the museum (8-12) and then go
into the field in the afternoon (3-7). We still have a good bit of pottery
to wash, read, and process from last year's survey so there is museum work to
occupy the students each day. Two days a week we will run seminars for the
students that will both get them out of the museum for a morning and provide a
more structured learning environment. The other issue related to our
daily schedule is how many days a week we will work. I am generally in favor of
working every day that we are on Cyprus. It seems fair since it costs us money
to be there whether we work or not. <a
href="http://home.messiah.edu/~dpettegrew/">David Pettegrew</a> has suggested a
six day a week schedule. He's probably right here. It gives us a
chance to recharge, take care of personal business (laundry!), write and enter
data, read, and most importantly meet to plan the next week. So, Sundays
will likely be days off. The other big change in our daily
schedule will be that this year we'll have a camp manager, Bret Weber.
This frees up the senior staff from handling the logistics like daily grocery
shopping, cooking, and making sure that the students are contributing to the
general upkeep of our living arrangements. It should give us more time to
focus on museum work -- since we won't have to leave the museum at 12 to go
1150
shopping and can work straight through to our 1 pm lunch time (the museum closes
at 2 and we try to clean up our workspace and leave before then).
Moreover, we can work in the field until 7 and not have to worry about rushing
home to prepare and then cook dinner. He'll be a great help. The
fact that he has a Ph.D. in history, is a gifted teacher, and has a strong
interest in environmental history is an added bonus. 2) Equipment and
Supplies. This will be our first excavation season, and it will require a
new set of equipment. On top of that, we are going to bring some new tools
for mapping (like a Trimble R8 DGPS) and documenting artifacts. Scott
Moore has been talking about learning the new tools over at his <a
History Ramblings</a> blog. The tools that we bring over to Cyprus or
purchase there will depend closely upon the field procedures that David, Michael
Brown, and Dimitri Nakassis develop for our investigation. Since we are
not attempting large-scale open-field excavations, but rather four small
soundings, we will require slightly different set of tools than a full scale
excavation. We do, however, want to introduce as many of the standard
excavating tools to students as possible so we will inevitably bring more
equipment that is strictly necessary. Archaeologists are nothing if not
inventive and have developed techniques to do almost anything in an accurate and
precise way with a minimum of equipment. Once we figure out exactly what
we need, we then need to determine what to bring from the US and what we can get
in Cyprus. It has always been more economical to bring big-ticket items
from the US, but with the Europ being as strong as it now is, it is increasingly
viable to bring over even less expensive equipment. In any event, our list
of supplies is growing. Once it is close to being finalized, I will post
it here as I did last year (<a
ap_season_pre.html">PKAP Season Preparations Continue</a>). 3)
Teaching. We have also begun to set a schedule for the pedagogical aspects
of the program. While I have talked in this blog (<a
isode-5-basec.html">Episode 5: Basecamp</a> with links) how learning happens in
the field, we will also conduct site visits and run seminars. The site
visits in particular are challenging because (1) our students tend not to have
much formal training in ancient history and the reading of archaeological sites
and (2) their interests will vary from early prehistory (aceramic Neolithic
sites like Khirokitia) to the Late Antique (like Kourion) and the Medieval
period (like Kolossi Castle). Visiting representative sites from every period is
easier in Cyprus than elsewhere, because of its small size, but still requires
that we plan our weekend excursions well. We also work to expose the
students to sites that are similar in size and organization to Pyla-
Koutsopetria like Ay. Georgios-Peyias on the western part of the island
with its impressive set of Early Christian churches, tombs, and elite
buildings. Once our list of sites to visit is finalized, I will post it
here as well. All this requires not only academic coordination, but also
logistical coordination (i.e. cars, drivers, and scheduling -- particularly the
delicate balance between fieldwork and trips). Two months may seem like
plenty of time to get this all planned, and it is, but if we don't start
thinking about it and discussing it now, late April and May becomes frantic and
we end up cutting corners to get things ready in time. So the planning
begins now and over the next 8 weeks, I will post on our progress toward
PKAP. Stay tuned!
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BASENAME: politics-and-th
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This may be the final installment of my weekly feature on the history of
the Department of History at UND. It will appear as a three-part case study
(Part 1, <a
litics-and--1.html">Part 2</a>, <a
litics-and-th.html">Part 3</a>) examining the clash between Professor Orin G.
Libby of the Department of History and President Thomas Kane. Its greater
purpose is to shed light on the University of North Dakota at a crucial
faculty. The tensions and changes during the first several decades of
the 20th century coincided with a period of significant political and economic
tensions within the state. The so-called Second Boom of the early 20th century
had ended and the difficult economic times of the 1920s and the 1930s presented
the University with a new set of challenges. The economic problems of the state
not only led to serious financial difficulties for the University but also fed
the rise of powerful political organizations, such as the NPL, that charged many
aspects of public life with a political current. This political current tracing
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just below the surface infused the sometimes tumultuous discourse of university
life with a factional and conspiratorial tone. Conservatives, in particular, had
attacked economist James Boyle and sociologist John Gillette for the political
elements of their research in agricultural economics and sociology of the rural
poor respectively. Typical of this moment was the efforts of N.C. Young‚Äôs, an
avowed conservative and head of the Board of Administration of the University,
to oust law school professor Joseph Lewinsohn who was an active supporter of
Theodore Roosevelt‚Äôs Progressive Bull-Moose Party while on the law school
faculty in 1912. Lewinsohn was not attacked simply on the basis of his
involvement in controversial local politics, but also on account of his alleged
incompetence as a teacher. This blending of political motives with
allegations of a genuine academic character led several leading members of
faculty, including Orin G. Libby and his more progressive friend and colleague,
John Gillette, to form a local branch of the American Association of University
Professors. While the A.A.U.P. often remained strangely silent during the
turmoil of the late teens and twenties, the great challenges and changes facing
both the University and the department frequently played themselves out at the
intersection of political, academic, and even pedagogical discourses.
Throughout this tumultuous period at the University, the discipline of
history underwent its own transformation to acquire a very different appearance
by the 1930s. Enrollments steadily increased as did the size of the faculty who
tended to possess credentials not dissimilar from those expected of faculty
today. This properly credentialed faculty produced an impressive array of
publications, a solid reputation in the state and university, and a group of
prestigious and influential alumni. It is with only a little exaggeration that
the department‚Äôs faculty of the mid-century looked back on this period of the
department‚Äôs history as a ‚Äúgolden age‚Äù. The story of the successes
and struggles of the university, department, and its faculty during this period
have survived to a relatively remarkable degree in the papers of O. G.
Libby. While numerous aspects of Libby‚Äôs career at the University and
in the state in general have become legendary, his clash with the President
Thomas Kane has remained somewhat infamous in Libby lore. <a
uis-geiger-an.html">Louis Geiger in his classic history (The University of the
Northern Plains</a>)found the tumultuous early years of the Kane presidency
deserving of no less that 13 pages in his general history of the University and
assigned Libby pride of place in his description of the clash. Libby‚Äôs
character, politics, and understanding of the role of faculty in University life
made him particularly vulnerable to attacks from the administration who sought
faculty who supported their views or remained detached from the governance of
the University. The most popular impression of Libby comes through clearly
in Iseminger‚Äôs portrayal of the man as the ‚Äúdefender of academic standards
and university protocol.‚Äù This stood in stark contrast to Kane who from his
earliest days on campus ‚Äúconsistently took the side of leniency in matters of
discipline or academic standards and that he had only casual regard for the
university constitution.‚Äù (see: G. Iseminger, "Dr. Orin G. Libby: A Centennial
Commemoration of the Father of North Dakota History." North Dakota
History. 68:4, pp.2-25) While these characterizations are perhaps fair, in
the larger context of the time, matters such as university protocol and academic
standards for both faculty and students were hardly fixed points. In fact, the
university constitution had only been implemented a scant few years before
Kane‚Äôs arrival on campus as one of the last acts of the McVey Presidency, and
few precedents had firmly established the extent of its authority. In this void
of de jure policies, men like Libby and Kane with strong personalities
held forth expectations that their views would command significant authority.
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Libby‚Äôs strong personality gave his independent perspective a particular

edge in the politically charged climate of the post-war period. Most scholars
consider the appointment of Thomas Kane as President of the University to be a
decidedly political. More Progressive minded members of the board, some of whom
were strong NPL supporters, saw the selection of Kane to the presidency as a
victory. In fact, George Totten, a leading NPL representative on the Board of
Administrators famous declared Kane ‚Äúour man.‚Äù This victory, however,
proved illusory as Kane quickly shifted from apparently progressive leanings to
a more conservative orientation. In some ways, Libby, who never wore his
politics on his sleeve even in particularly political times, shared Kane‚Äôs
tendency to straddle positions in political debates. His involvement with the
Campus War Committee, for example, might have suggested conservative leanings.
Conservatives generally touted their patriotism and support for the wars as
distinct from members of the NPL who were unfairly painted as unpatriotic and at
times subversive. Libby's close friendship with J. M. Gillette, however, an
active supporter of Progressive causes ranging from Womens‚Äô Suffrage to the
NPL's domestic agenda, suggested liberal tendencies. The obscurity of
Libby‚Äôs political views and seemingly contradictory elements of his behavior
limited the support that he received from any one side and left him open to
criticism from both. Finally, Libby‚Äôs views on University life in some
ways reflected older traditions of university administration which preserved an
important place for the faculty voice in University affairs. Kane, on the
other hand, like his predecessor Frank McVey saw the president as the ultimate
arbiter of all university life. In this assessment, shared by Geiger, the clash
between Libby and Kane, while unfortunate for both men, emerged as a key test
case in the ongoing process of professionalization of the office of professor at
the university. This, as most of my predecessors have observed, is another
aspect of the significant contributions of the Libby to the development of the
Department and the university in general. The initial salvo in the clash
between Libby and Kane is typically seen as the president‚Äôs mismanagement of
the Influenza Epidemic on campus in 1918. In fact, as Iseminger observed, the
clash between Libby and Kane might date even earlier to the president‚Äôs
inaugural address in which Kane, among other things, offered a thinly veiled
criticism of Libby‚Äôs close friend Gillette‚Äôs handling of a disciplinary case
against a fraternity. (T. Kane, ‚ÄúThe Installation Address of the President of
the University of North Dakota,‚Äù School and Society 8 (1918), 127.)
Such strangely impolitic statements, which nevertheless clearly sought to
establish the pre-eminent position of the president on campus as the final
arbiter of university affairs, came to characterize Kane‚Äôs term as President
and predictably clashed with the equally blunt Libby. In the aftermath of the
influenza epidemic in which 20 military trainees stationed at the University
died, Libby emerged as the spokesman for a group of faculty who blamed Kane for
the tragedy. In 1920, Libby along with four others ‚Äì including Gillette and E.
Ladd ‚Äì composed a 12 page memo entitled ‚ÄúMemoranda of the Unfortunate
Happenings at the University of North Dakota.‚Äù This document blasted President
Kane as unsuitable for the office of president and established the basis for
their call later that year that Kane be dismissed by the Board of Regents. As
word of the memorandum and Kane‚Äôs endangered presidency became known, the
controversy escalated drawing in students, the press, and members of the Board
of Regents. In fact, the ruckus had a seriously disruptive effect on campus
complete with the student body taking the President‚Äôs side. Such public
demonstrations perhaps motivated all parties to come to the table. Ultimately
Libby and his faction negotiated a secret deal with Kane brokered by three
members of the Board of Trustees George Totten, R. T. Muir, who were important
politicians in the state, NPL members, and apparently more or less in sympathy
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with Libby and his group, and John Hagan. This agreement became known as the
‚ÄúHagan Agreement.‚Äù Its contents like the ‚ÄúMemoranda of the Unfortunate
Happenings‚Äù are lost. Whatever the specifics in this document, the
"Hagan Agreement" appears to have established the basis for a functional, if not
to say peaceful, relationship between Libby‚Äôs faction and President Kane. Its
artificial, "negotiated" nature provided only the thinnest coating of formal
niceties to obscure their deep animosity. The peace between the two did
not last long. Over the last several weeks I have blogged a series of short
essays on the history of the <a
Plains</a> <a
Dakota</a> <a
Dakota</a> <a
Dakota</a> <a
<a href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/DHChapter_2.html#_ftn15"
name="_ftnref15_4107"></a>
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TITLE: Why Hybridity Matters for the Study of Early Christian Greece
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DATE: 03/21/2008 01:21:12 AM

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My talk yesterday was canceled or rather postponed indefinitely due to a
conflict with another talk here at the American School. I was a little
disappointed, but having a date to complete my first draft of an article was
more important (in some ways) than actually giving the talk (although I would
have liked to get the feedback!). Over the weekend, I was able to
revise my introduction (and a revised introduction is posted here: <a
e-hybrid-arch.html">Intro</a>) and complete a draft of the conclusion. My
conclusion attempts not only to wrap up the arguments that I make in the <a
e-hybrid-arch.html">Intro</a>, <a
igraphy-and-h.html">Part 1</a>, <a
lphi-mosaics.html">Part 2</a>, <a
rly-christian.html">Part 3</a>, but also articulate why this kind of analysis
matters for how we understand Late Antiquity and Early Christian Greece in
particular. Since it touches upon several of the ideas that I have talked
about in the blog (e.g. <a
eams-inventio.html">Dreams, Inventio, and Archaeology</a>) and since I have
posted informal versions of each section (see above) and since I have posted 2
versions of my introduction, it only makes sense to post the conclusion here as
well. It's a work-in-progress, an almost-working paper, fresh off the
presses with all its warts, and now it's available: Conclusion
The proceeding three case studies suggest that both patrons and viewers
recognized the potential for ambiguous and hybrid readings of architecture and
decoration in an Early Christian context. Adding to this complexity was the
character of churches as ritual space. While donors might pay for the
construction and decoration of a church drawing upon both Christian and elite
motifs, ultimately the clergy take center stage during the performance of
Christian ritual. This ritual not only played an important role in establishing
clerical authority as they are shown mediating between the divine and mundane,
but also may have also created ambiguity as inscriptions marking lay euergetism,
mosaics evoking aristocratic values, and imperial patronage competed for the
attention of the Late Antique viewer. One method for coming to terms with how we
understand Early Christian space characterized by the polyvalence of signs is
accepting the mottled and ambiguous message produced within Early Christian
architecture. The postcolonial concept of hybridity offered a paradigm for
understanding the interaction of authority and ambiguity. Moreover, the
historical situation in Greece during Late Antique finds certain parallels to
colonial circumstances at other times and places. In common with other colonial
situations, Late Antique Greece manifests the intersection of a powerful source
of institutional authority with ties extending beyond the local community, and
strongly held and long standing local needs and expectations. A postcolonial
reading of the architecture of Early Christian Greece should not disregard the
problematic nature of the archaeological and historical evidence for these
centuries in Greece. In fact, such a reading accepts the archaeological and
interpretative problems by suggesting that we abandon our efforts to find sharp
developmental, regional, or exegetical interpretations of Late Antique Greek
ecclesiastical architecture and recognize that some of the ambiguity confronting
the modern scholar would have been present for the ancient viewer as well. A
substantial revision of how we understand Early Christian architecture in the
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context of Late Antique history of Greece has the additional benefit of shedding
valuable light on the implications of more traditional interpretative paradigms.
Recent work on the historiography of Late Antiquity has revealed the strong, and
not entirely unexpected, influence of Orientalist influences in the work of late
19th and early 20th century pioneers in the discipline
like A. Riegl as well as in the long-suspect but no less significant works of J.
Strzygowski.<a href="#_ftn1_5893" name="_ftnref1_5893">[1]</a> The willingness
to consider the ‚ÄúEastern‚Äù influence on the art of the Late Roman world drew
upon contemporary practices of essentializing cultures and tracking cultural
traces through the art, architecture, and cultural syntheses that emerged from
periods of intimate contact. Flattering or unflattering critiques of the art of
Late Antiquity often depended upon assessing how much influence ‚ÄúOriental
cultures‚Äù had on the artistic development of that age and thereby reflected
the colonial judgments of Western European scholars derived in part from the
experiences of contemporary political contacts with the societies of the so-
called ‚ÄúOrient‚Äù. The desire to understand the character and boundaries of
these essentialized cultures intersected with the nationalistic goals for
archaeology in places like Greece. From the second decade of the 20th
century men like George Soteriou and Anastasius Orlandos revealed the presence
of numerous Early Christian basilicas throughout the modern boundaries of the
Greek state.<a href="#_ftn2_5893" name="_ftnref2_5893">[2]</a> The uniformity of
these buildings confirmed in the mind of these scholars the relatively
uniformity of a Christian Greek culture within and perhaps even beyond the
boundaries of the modern nation-state during 5th century AD.
Moreover, the emphasis reading architecture in Greece as evidence for the
development of the Christian liturgy not only established a historical
connection between the Early Christian liturgy in Greece and its Middle
Byzantine successor but also placed Greece firmly within the liturgical history
of both Constantinople and the broader Orthodox world. Thus, the architecture
and liturgy of Greece sought not only to define the ancient roots of Greek
Christian culture, but also to tie it to the culture of the Orthodox Eastern
Mediterranean at the very moment when Greek territorial ambitions had been
stifled after the disastrous Asia Minor campaigns of the early 1920s. The terms
of debate established by Soteriou and Orlandos persisted even as the discipline
of Early Christian archaeology passed into the hands of scholars with rather
different political views like Demetrius Pallas. In contrast to paradigms
rooted in the historicism of the national narrative, postcolonial theory
provides a sustained critique of the unity and integrity of culture as a
constituent component of individual or group identity.<a href="#_ftn3_5893"
name="_ftnref3_5893">[3]</a> By critiquing our reading of Early Christian
culture in the context of the art and architecture of Greece we offer a clear
challenge to the long shadows of Orientalism and nationalism that still fall
over Late Antique scholarship.<a href="#_ftn4_5893" name="_ftnref4_5893">[4]</a>
Such efforts reinforces the readings of Late Antiquity that view the emergence
of something identifiable as the Late Antique or Early Christian world less as
the coalescing of a distinct culture, and more the interplay of diverse
individuals, groups, and interests across the Eastern Mediterranean. In this
intellectual context, Early Christian basilicas no longer stand out as merely
static markers of Christian authority in the landscape and instead come to be
places where the population of Greece negotiated changing notions of authority,
social and religious hierarchy, cosmology, ritual life, and even the role of
religious and public architecture in the life of the community. By undermining
monolithic claims to cultural unity and authority, which resonate so closely
with the modern distortions of totalitarian regimes, we shift our focus from the
institutional power of the Early Christian church to the complex interplay of
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the various groups within Late Antique society in the creation of a distinct, if
unstable, Christian discourse. <hr align="left" width="33%" size="1"> <a
href="#_ftnref1_5893" name="_ftn1_5893">[1]</a> S.L. Marchand, ‚ÄúThe Rhetoric
of Artifacts and the Decline of Classical Humanism: The Case of Josef
Strzygowski.‚Äù History and Theory 33 (1994), 106-130; J. Elsner, "The
birth of late antiquty: Riegl and Strzygowski in 1901," Art History 25
(2002), 358-79. <a href="#_ftnref2_5893" name="_ftn2_5893">[2]</a> W. Bowden,
Epirus Vetus, 22-24; W. H. C. Frend, The Archaeology of Early
Christianity, a History. (London 1997), 204-205, 244-245. <a
href="#_ftnref3_5893" name="_ftn3_5893">[3]</a> H. Bhabha,
‚ÄúPostmodernism/Postcolonialism‚Äù in Critical Terms for Art History. R.
Nelson and R. Schiff eds. (Chicago 1996), 302-322. <a href="#_ftnref4_5893"
name="_ftn4_5893">[4]</a> For a sustained critique of these methods, albeit in a
different context see: F. Curta, The Making of the Slavs. (Cambridge
2001), 6-36.
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TITLE: North Dakota, Athens, and the Southwest Peloponnesus
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: north-dakota-at
DATE: 03/20/2008 02:14:22 AM

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On Monday I helped to perform the annual book inventory at the Blegen
Library. The library is a highly specialized, non circulating collection
with a focus on archaeology, classics and ancient history. The
annual inventory involved scanning the shelves to make sure that all the books
catalogued were present and shelved correctly. It was tedious work and
took most of the day as teams of two fanned out across the stacks. One
person read the call numbers from the catalogue and the other read the spins of
the books on the shelves. Two books came to my attention and
reflect the far reaching, international character of contemporary
scholarship. One of the sections that I read included Walter Ellis's
<a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/27812424">Ptolemy of
Egypt</a>. Ellis was my predecessor in the <a
href="http://www.und.edu/dept/histdept/">Department of History</a> at the <a
href="http://www.und.edu/">University of North Dakota</a>. Prior to his
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untimely death he built a loyal following of students interested in the ancient

world. This group of students formed the core of my early classes on
Ancient Rome, Ancient Greece, and the Middle Ages and greatly smoothed my
transition to full-time teaching. It was nice to see a sliver of home
tucked away in the stacks crowded with titles on Hellenistic Egypt.
Michael Laughy brought the other book to my attention: Demetrius J.
Georgacas, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/42436808">A historico-
linguistic and synonymic inquiry into some medical and cognate terms: Greek and
other terms for 'tapeworm' and 'ravenous hunger'</a>. Georgacas taught for
many years at the University of North Dakota, contributed to body of material
housed in the Historical Lexicon of the Modern Greek Language (see P. Koukoules,
"The Athens Modern Greek Lexicon," JHS 53 (1933), 1-8), and generated a
vast body of published works (running to over 40 entries in World Cat) related
to the toponyms, etymology, and lingusitic roots of the Greek language.
Some aspect of his lexographical and linguistic work have appeared in his <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/63052335">Modern Greek-English
Dictionary</a>. More interesting perhaps to readers of this blog
is Georgacas' interest in toponymys. In this capacity he worked with
William A. McDonald of the University of Minnesota. McDonald is best known
as one of the co-directors of the Minnesota Messinia Expedition. McDonald
and George Rapp published the seminal work, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/389723">The Minnesota Messenia expedition:
reconstructing a bronze age regional environment</a> (Minneapolis 1972), which
formalized many of the ideas and approaches central to the first wave of modern
regional survey archaeology in Greece. McDonald used Georgacas' work to
compile a register of place names in the Southwest Peloponnesus and together
they co-published the results of this research: D. J. Georgacas and William A.
McDonald, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/15397">Place Names of the
Southwest Peloponnesus</a>. (Athens 1967). It's clear that the final
product of this collaboration was mainly McDonald's work. The
introduction, however, provides some background on McDonald's and Georgacas's
work in the area: <blockquote> "Some thirty years ago Mr. Georgacas
became interesting in the collection and study of place names in the vicinity of
the native town of Siderokastro, which was the seat of the former demos
(municipality) of Avlon. In the course of the next ten years he collected
material from much of the area and prepared two manuscripts
(Œ§ŒøœÄœâŒΩœÖŒºŒπŒ∫œåŒΩ ŒúŒµœÉœÉŒ∑ŒΩŒØŒ±œÇ (Athens 1935) and
ŒìŒªœâœÉœÉŒπŒ∫œåŒΩ œÖŒªŒπŒ∫œåŒΩ ŒúŒµœÉœÉŒ∑ŒΩŒØŒ±œÇ Œ∫Œ±ŒØ Œ∫œÖœÅŒØœâœÇ œÑŒ∑œÇ
ŒµœÄŒ±œÅœáŒØŒ±œÇ Œ†œÖŒªŒØŒ±œÇ œÉœÖŒªŒªŒµŒ≥Œ≠ŒΩ œÑœå Œ∏Œ≠œÅŒøœÇ œÑŒøœÖ
1937. (Athens 1937)) which are now in the archives of the Athenian
Academy's Historical Lexicon of the Greek Language. Mr.
McDonald's involvement began in 1853 and derived from his participation in
Professor Carl W. Blegen's archaeological work in the vicinity of the Bay of
Navarino. At that time the decipherment of the Linear B script by the Late
Michael Ventris had made it possible to compile a list of phonetic
approximations of the names used ca. 1200 B.C. to designate the towns, villages,
and districts which belonged to the kingdom of Pylos. It therefore seemed
worthwhile, concurrently with the archaeological surface exploration to make a
collection of present-day place names on the chance that at least a few of them
might have maintained in continuous use since the late Bronze Age. It
soon became apparent that, quite apart from any bearing they might have on the
problems of the topography of the Bronze Age, the modern names merited close
attention and study, for they represented a stratification in which historical
and linguistic vicissitudes are reflected as unmistakably as in the successive
destruction layers of archaeological sites. Inhabitants whose language was
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ancient Greek, Koine Greek, Byzantine (Middle) Greek, South Slavic, Franckish
(French), Venetian (Italian), Albanian, Turkish, or Neo-Greek have all left
discernable traces in the local toponyms." (p. 4)</blockquote> The
creation of the modern toponymy of any region is as complex a phenomenon as the
creation of the archaeological landscape, but the basic act of collecting data
remains central to any analysis. <a
eWriter/BlegenBookscrpped.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-
alt="BlegenBookscrpped"
Writer/BlegenBookscrpped_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a>
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COMMENT:
IP: 129.133.179.92
URL:
DATE: 03/20/2008 03:35:52 PM
NO kidding. Demetrios Georgakas taught at North Dakota? Had no idea! His work on
the toponyms of the NW Peloponnese is truly great. Among other things, he wrote
on Slavic toponyms as early as the 1930s. I've always wondered if he might be
related to Dan Georgakas, the prominent scholar of Greek-American history at
Queens College CUNY.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Chuck Jones
IP: 194.219.34.195
DATE: 03/21/2008 04:11:01 AM
Just a minor correction Bill. The Blegen library has open stacks, that's why
you were in them and able to make the serendipitous discoveries you report here.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Bill C
IP: 194.219.34.195
DATE: 03/22/2008 01:51:15 AM
Thanks, Chuck! I fixed it and reposted.
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TITLE: Episode 7: The Wall on Kokkinokremos
STATUS: Publish
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DATE: 03/19/2008 02:14:34 AM

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<a
alt="KokkinokremosWallRO"
Writer/KokkinokremosWallRO.jpg" width="244" align="left" border="0"></a> 
Episode 7 of <a
Cypriot</a> is now available. This episode begins a series which examines
our daily fieldwork. Joe Patrow chose to focus his camera on the
personalities involved in the <a href="http://www.chss.iup.edu/pkap/">Pyla-
Koutsopetria Archaeological Project</a>. Thus, for this short you
get to meet Michael Brown who works with Dimitri Nakassis to study the Late
Bronze Age aspect of the Pyla coastline. In particular, Michael and
Dimitri are working to expand what we know about the site of Pyla-Kokkinokremos,
a major Late Bronze Age site documented over the course of several excavations
in the 1970s and 1950s (for more on the site see: V. Karageorghis and M. Demas,
<a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/14190271">Pyla-Kokkinokremos : a late
13th-century B.C. fortified settlement in Cyprus</a>. (Nicosia
1984)). Systematic intensive survey continue to reveal both additional
chronological phases at the site, as well as information regarding the extent
and nature of the prehistoric settlement there. Notice the stone basin
that Mat Dalton, our illustrator, is reassembling in the final clips of the
short. Patrow also captures a bit of the journey to the
site. On the day this was shot, Michael and Mat took the bus to site since
the project cars were occupied elsewhere. There are some shots of the low
coastal plains that are being rapidly built over as the city of Larnaka
continues to expand to the east. Finally, it has been particular
fruitful to discuss with Michael the various ways to understand the construction
of a fortified Late Bronze Age site on this stretch of coastline. The
parallels with our newly discovered Late Roman fortifications on Vigla are
striking. Both sites would have likely taken advantage of the new infilled
embayment as a harbor, but this safe harbor would have also left both sites
exposed to potentially hostile groups who wanted the wealth concentrated at the
site on account of its advantageous location. Our collaboration with
Michael and Dimitri who have sought to position the site in relation to both
Aegean and Levantine civilizations has encouraged us to consider the links
between the coastal area of Pyla and other prosperous networks of exchange in
the Late Roman period as well (for our efforts along these lines see <a
re-pkap-news.html">here</a>). A few technical
notes The video is all in <a
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of <a
vey on Cyprus</a>, and you can read the commentaries on the first six
shorts (with links to those shorts) below. <a
isode-3-an-ar.html"></a><a
alt="Landscape_MontageRO"
Writer/Landscape_MontageRO_2.jpg" width="119" border="0"></a></a><a
alt="Learning_FieldwalkingRO"
Writer/Learning_FieldwalkingRO_2.jpg" width="116" border="0"></a><a
isode-3-an-ar.html"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px;
alt="ArtifactsJourneyRO"
Writer/ArtifactsJourneyRO_2.jpg" width="115" border="0"></a><a
isode-4-forme.html"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px;
alt="FormerStudentRO"
Writer/FormerStudentRO_3.jpg" width="116" border="0"></a></a><a
isode-5-basec.html "><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px;
border-bottom-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px" height="78" alt="BaseCampRO"
Writer/BaseCampRO_1.jpg" width="115" border="0"></a><a
isode-6-findi.html"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px;
alt="FruitCratesRO"
Writer/FruitCratesRO_2.jpg" width="114" border="0"></a>
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TITLE: Dreams, Inventio, and Archaeology
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DATE: 03/18/2008 02:17:16 AM

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I have occasionally mentioned examples of inventio here in this blog
particularly as they relate to the discovery of Early Christian basilicas in
Greece. An inventio is a story in which some long lost, typically
religious object is revealed again usually by supernatural means. It is
commonly applied to the discovery of Christian relics and icons, but can also
apply to the discovery of "sacred places" like caves and abandoned churches in
the landscape. Jack Davis recounted this inventio story about
the discovery of the basilica on the Evangelistria Hill outside of Ancient
Nemea: <blockquote> According the story the church was discovered after
an old woman in the village had a dream which told her to go up on top of the
hill and dig there. She did what the dream asked and discovered an ancient
icon amidst the ruins of an old church. The villagers hearing about this
then rushed up the hill and excavated the Early Christian basilica with their
farming tools revealing its full plan. The story itself is an inventio
tale and tremendously common in the oral tradition of modern Greece.
As <a
zani.html">mentioned earlier in the blog</a>, the story has precedents in
Christian literature dating back to at least the 5th century Inventio Crucis
(discovery of the true cross). (<a
ur-views-of-t.html">More...</a>)</blockquote> While it would be easy
enough to attribute such activities to the "simple piety" of villagers, I came
across another example of this genre over the weekend. Anastasios K.
Orlandos, the important Greek archaeologist and architect (for more see: <a
href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/2008/02/writing-off-wall-transcription-
as.html">Writing off the Wall: Transcription as Resistance</a>), introduces his
summary of the excavations at the Early Christian basilica at Daphnousia in a
report to the Athenian Academy in 1929 (PAA 4 (1929), 226-230) :
<blockquote> "Around 20 km from Atalantis in the area of the Lamian coast,
the villagers of the neighborhood of Arkitsa and Lavanata of the demos of
Daphnousia driven by their religious zeal to discover an icon of St. Katherine,
revealed according to a dream by one of them, have excavated last year the apse
of a large church..." (227)</blockquote> The similarities between
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Orlandos's description of the discovery of the church at Daphnousia and the

story of the discovery of the church on the Evangelestria Hill make it possible
that the latter is a doublet of the earlier story rather than two separate
episodes (I need to determine whether there is any published account of the
discovery of the Evangelistria church), but stories like this in Early Christian
archaeology of Greece are not rare. Elsewhere in this blog, I have
mentioned the story surrounding the discovery of church at <a
zani.html">Kozani</a>. While the villager's dream is not specifically
mentioned in the rather austere descriptions of the excavation of this building,
the Archaeologikon Deltion (20 (1965), 475) suggestively notes that the
church was excavated initially by villagers. In general I had left these
stories as examples of the genre of inventio which would have been
familiar to most Greeks because if its regular place in both local traditions of
holiness and in hagiography. What I missed in these stories was the
prominence of dreams in the construction of the Greek landscape and local
archaeological knowledge. Since Antiquity dreams have been
regarded as revelatory -- something fundamental to Freudian dream analysis as
well -- and so it is not surprising that the act of uncovering (revealing) the
material remains of the past is closely associated with the interpretation of
dreams. Charles Stewart, in a recent article ("Dreams of Treasures:
Temporality, Historicization, and the Unconscious," Anthropological Theory
3 (2003), 481-500), makes just this point. He argues that the dreams
draw upon not only an individual's unconscious in a Freudian sense (i.e. the
individual's childhood), but also the larger body of collective historical
memories both suppressed actively and "forgotten." Dreams and
inventio have a close relationship in the historical understanding of
the Greek landscape. Moreover, the importance of dreams within Christianity (in
both the New Testament and in hagiography) has contributed to the close link
between dreaming and the discovery and understanding of Greece's Byzantine and
Early Christian past. The most famous episode in more recent Greek history
is the discovery icon of the Panagia on the island of Tinos in the 1820s.
A nun was told where to find the icon in a dream and since the discovery of the
miraculous icon, it has become the center of a major pilgrimage site (for a
discussion of this see. J. Dubisch, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/31375161">In a Different Place: Pilgrimage,
Gender, and Politics at a Greek Island Shrine</a> (Princeton 1995)).
The story of the icon at Tinos was well-known in Greece and certainly influenced
similar dreams and their interpretations. Stewart adds a more recent
example to this story from his own anthropological fieldwork on Naxos. In
the Korinthia during our work at the site of Lakka Skoutara (for a brief report
of our work there see: L. Diakopolos, ‚ÄúThe Archaeology of Modern Greece,‚Äù in
<a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/54966412">Mediterranean Archaeological
Landscapes</a>: Current Issues. E. F. Athanassopoulos and L. Wandsnider
eds. (Philadelphia 2006). 183-197), a local informant understood the
building a church in an isolated valley according to a similar story. His
grandfather was drawn to the build a church there because of the presence of an
earlier building. The stories of inventio collected above add an
explicitly archaeological dimension to such dreams. In a another context,
the revelatory nature of dreaming and its confirmation by (sometimes
unauthorized) archaeological excavation - which could occasionally be reinforced
by the recording of such narratives and discoveries in academic proceedings by
such archaeologists as Orlandos - contributed to the link between the past and
the present in the Greek landscape. The importance of such narratives in
the development of a nationalistic Greek archaeology is clear especially in the
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1920s. It is during this period that Early Christian archaeology of Greece

sought to affirm the Christian character of the Greek nation as a response both
to the frustrated irredentism of that decade and to the exchange of populations
with its explicitly religious definition of ethnicity (see: W. Bowden, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/48679111">Epirus Vetus : the archaeology of a
late antique province</a>. (London 2003), 24-26; W.H.C. Frend, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/60266629">The archaeology of early
Christianity : a history</a>. (London 1996), 205-206, 245-246). The
revealed truth of dreams which announced the location of Christian antiquities
or sacred objects proved the historical presence of Christian Greeks in the
landscape and tied the religious practices and beliefs of the local population
to an archaeological past. 
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IP: 129.133.179.92
URL:
DATE: 03/20/2008 04:04:00 PM
Just a quick reference. Maria Mavroudi (earlier at Berkeley, now at Princeton)
works on Byzantine dream books. I wonder if there might be some leads there.
See, A Byzantine Book on Dream Interpretation: The Oneirocriticon of Achmet and
Its Arabic Sources (2001) and a collection of essays edited by Mavroudi and Paul
Magdalino, The Occult Sciences in Byzantium (2006)
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TITLE: Sources for the Department of History at the University of North Dakota
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DATE: 03/17/2008 12:58:53 AM

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Over the last several weeks I have blogged a series of short biographies of
important figures in the history of the <a
href="http://www2.und.edu/our/125th/">125th-iversary</a>. I have received
several emails about these biographical notes , and one of the regular questions
about working on the history of the university is where to begin. Since I
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wrote <a
uis-geiger-an.html">last week</a> about L. Geiger's <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1107281">The University of the Northern
Plains</a>, I won't deal too much that important work here.
Instead, I'll bring to the fore some of the primary sources and good secondary
works on the history of the University and the history of the Department of
History in particular. The Early History The earliest
history of the University is particularly fragmentary. Some of the better
fragments derive from the President‚Äôs annual reports to the board of trustees
and the annual report of the Department of History to the President which either
exist as freestanding documents or as embedded within the President‚Äôs Report
to the Board of Trustees. The minutes of the Board of Trustees‚Äô meeting for
the first two decades of the university (1884-1904) contain odd references to <a
race-b-woodwo.html">Horace B. Woodworth</a> and his activities at the
University. Otherwise, Woodworth appears infrequently in the correspondence of
President Webster Merrifield, Dean Vernon Squires, Dean Joseph Kennedy, and
others. While some of these correspondence preserve information on institutional
matters, they contain regrettably little information regarding the man himself,
his influences, or the reasoning behind the policies, events, and decisions that
affected his role at the university. Some of that information, however, can be
gleaned from later reminiscences offered by faculty members, the local press,
and the Dakota Student, the University‚Äôs student newspaper, which
provide some background and color, but little true substance. This general
dearth of sources for the University‚Äôs early years, plagues the two best
studies of the University history ‚Äì Vernon P. and Duane Squires‚Äôs serialized
history of the University published in the late 1920s and early 1930s as well as
<a
uis-geiger-an.html">Louis Geiger‚Äôs</a> more expansive later work. V. P.
Squires, ‚ÄúEarly Days at the University,‚Äù The Quarterly Journal of the
University of North Dakota 18.1 (1927), 4-15 --, ‚ÄúThe University of
North Dakota, 1885-1887,‚Äù The Quarterly Journal of the University of North
Dakota 18.2 (1928), 105-118; --, ‚ÄúPresident Sprague‚Äôs
Administration, 1887-1891,‚Äù The Quarterly Journal of the University of
North Dakota 18.3 (1928), 201-230; --, ‚ÄúThe First Quadrennium Under
President Merrifield,‚Äù The Quarterly Journal of the University of North
Dakota 18.4 (1928), 313-344; D. Squires, ‚ÄúThe University Attains its
Majority: 1901-1905‚Äù The Quarterly Journal of the University of North
Dakota 21.4 (1931), 293-317 The Early 20th Century
The story of the successes and struggles of the university, department, and
its faculty during the first half of the 20th century have survived to a
relatively remarkable degree in the papers of <a
href="http://www.library.und.edu/Collections/og49.html">Orin G. Libby</a> (for
Libby see G. Iseminger, "Dr. Orin G. Libby: A Centennial Commemoration of the
Father of North Dakota History." North Dakota History. 68:4, pp.2-25; G.
F. Shafer, "Dr. Orin G. Libby." North Dakota Historical Quarterly. 12:3,
pp.107-110). Libby‚Äôs fastidious character ensured that a large quantities of
his private papers survived, as did much of his personal and professional
correspondence and his annual reports on the Department to the University
President. This material has formed the background for Iseminger's modern
studies on Libby‚Äôs professional and personal character and contributed to
Geiger‚Äôs general work on the University. Libby‚Äôs material on the department
found complements in the annual catalogue of courses which were updated
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throughout this period to show not only the courses but also the faculty
responsible for them. The side-effect of the Libby's large
collection of material is that it tends to skew Departmental history toward his
somewhat idiosyncratic view of the University and Departmental affairs.
Counterpoints to Libby that focus on the internal working of the department
appear occasionally in the papers of the President's of the University during
the early 20th century: Franklin McVey and Thomas Kane. The continue
albeit somewhat more rarely in the correspondence of President John C. West and
Dean William Bek, the longtime Dean of the college of the Arts, Science and
Literature. Despite the increasingly bureaucratized nature of the University
during the first third of the 20th century, the history of the department
remains frustratingly fragmentary. The Era of <a
href="http://library.und.edu/Collections/Robinson/home.html">Elywn B.
Robinson</a> The dynamism of the Robinson Era is captured in a rather
remarkable array of documents. The most interesting of these documents, perhaps,
is Elywn B. Robinson‚Äôs unpublished autobiography. Composed apparently in the
early 1980s, Robinson details his life from his early years in Ohio to the
publication of his magnum opus <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/190890">The History of North Dakota</a>
in 1966. He drew heavily on his family diary, the material in the Robinson
Papers in the Orin G. Libby Manuscript Collect, and the reminiscence of his
colleagues, particularly Robert Wilkins, and his sons Steve and Gordon. One of
my long term projects is to edit this manuscript and explore the possibility of
getting it published. The autobiography is complemented by a series of
interviews conducted by John Davenport in the early and mid 1970s. Davenport
interviewed Elwyn Robinson and his wife, Eva, members of the Departments of the
1950s and 1960s, and in one extensive interview, Robert Wilkins, who taught in
the Department of History from 1945 to 1992. The majority of information in
these sources focus on the life of the department in the 1950 and early 1960s. I
have supplemented this modestly with interviews with Gordon Iseminger, Playford
Thorson, and D. Jerome Tweton, although I have only begun to process much of the
content from these interviews. The departmental reports to the Dean from 1955-
1977 came to light in the files of the Department Head and provide basic
information on departmental affairs including a enrolment numbers. These reports
are far more robust for the 1950s and early 1960s than for later years. This,
perhaps, reflects the awareness of this period as one of particular importance
in the development of the department. Finally, Robinson provided a long
synthetic article on the post-war expansion of the University: ‚ÄúThe Starcher
Years: The University of North Dakota, 1954-1971,‚Äù North Dakota
Quarterly, 39 (Spring 1971): 5-44. Unfortunately, as is typical for the
history of the department and the university in general, several major voices go
unrepresented in the available material. <a
lix-vondracek.html">Felix Vondracek</a> left almost no papers after his
retirement from the department in 1971. Vondracek served as department head from
1945 to 1962. Equally, if not more problematic, is the absence of material from
Dean Robert B. Witmer who was the Dean of the College of Science, Literature,
and Arts. Witmer served as dean from the death of Bek in 1948 until his
retirement in the late 1960s and with the growing complexity of the university,
played an increasingly important role in the major departmental affairs. The
growing complexity of the university its expanded bureaucracy had made the paper
trail larger, more complex, and more dispersed. Consequently, this section will
depend more fully, perhaps to a fault, to those limited materials available in
the Wilkins and Robinson papers. It is important to note, however, that these
substantial and easily accessible collections present only one view of the
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department. Other Short Biographies of major figures in the Department

of History at UND: <a
Plains</a> <a
Dakota</a> <a
Dakota</a> <a
Dakota</a> <a
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TITLE: Quick Hits and Varia
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DATE: 03/14/2008 01:40:05 AM

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This has been a crazy week! <ul> <li>Monday was "Clean Monday"
(ŒöŒ±Œ∏Œ±œÅŒ¨ ŒîŒµœÖœÑŒ≠œÅŒ±). It's the first day of Orthodox Lent (and
the day after the end of Carnival). It is traditionally celebrated by
eating seafood (particularly shellfish) and flying kites. It is a
significant holiday. <li>Tuesday and Thursday saw lectures, and so will today,
Friday. <ul> <li>Tuesday was Oleg Grabar who talked about the "object in
and object of Islamic Art". He explored the history of the study of
Islamic art and sought to consider its future directions as only a scholar who
had close to 5 decades in the field could. <li>Thursday was Theo
Kopestonsky's Tea Talk which continued to develop her research on the the
sanctuary of the nymphs at Kokkinovrysi. She elegantly placed her shrine
\within a highly romanticized version of the Corinthian landscape.
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<li>Later that evening Bogdan Maleon presented the a working paper on the
political theory behind mutilation in the Byzantine state. <li>Tonight is the
Open Meeting of the American School. Jack Davis will review the work of <a
href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/">American School</a> projects. Guy Sanders
will present recent work of the <a
href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/corinth/index.html">Corinth Excavations</a> with
Ioulia Tzonou-Herbst and Sarah James.</li></ul> <li><a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/52937907&tab=editions">Linda Jones
Hall</a> was in town. <li><a
Writer/image_thumb_30.png" width="175" align="right" border="0"></a><a
href="http://www.pkap.org/">Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project</a> is
getting busy: <ul> <li>We installed <a href="http://omeka.org/">Omeka</a> on a
server at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. <li>We are beginning to use a
private wiki (an easily updated web page) to help us organize our upcoming field
season (<a title="http://pkap.wikidot.com/"
href="http://pkap.wikidot.com/">http://pkap.wikidot.com/</a>). We can
collaborate in producing lists of supplies, dates of student arrivals, et
c. Scott Moore, David Pettegrew, and I are experimenting with it
now. We'll open it up to the rest of the senior staff once we work out the
kinks. <li>The University of North Dakota's Office of University Relations
prepared a <a href="http://www2.und.nodak.edu/our/news/story.php?id=2283">nice
press release</a> for <a
Cypriot</a>. Now that we have six of the shorts posted online, we
want to begin to lure in more of the non-blog-reading public!The <a
href="http://www.und.edu/dept/our/">Office of University Relations</a> does a
great job at keeping PKAP in the public eye in North Dakota. <li>Our second
annual report has appeared in the 2007 volume of the Report of the
Department of Antiquities of Cyprus. This volume is dedicated to the
memory of Danielle Parks. Congratulations to the RDAC staff for producing
a substantial volume in a prompt way! <li>The the two volumes of the L. W.
Sorensen and K. W. Jacobsen's Panayia <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/156043236">Ematousa: A Rural Site in South-
eastern Cyprus</a> (Athens 2006) hold significant import for the study of
Pyla-Koutsopetria. Panayia Ematousa is only about 12 km inland from Pyla-
Koutsopetria and provides a well documented assemblage of pottery to
compare to the finds from Pyla-Koutsopetria.</li></ul> <li><a
Writer/image_thumb_31.png" width="127" align="right" border="0"></a>Byzantium at
large: <ul> <li>In a March 2, 2008 <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/02/books/02mcgr.html">review of his book
Lush Life in the New York Times</a>, Richard Price was quoted as
saying: "About the Lower East Side today, Mr. Price said, ‚ÄúThis place is
like Byzantium. It‚Äôs tomorrow, yesterday ‚Äî anyplace but today.‚Äù He added
that he sometimes thinks of the neighborhood as a very busy ghost town, where
many of the ghosts milling around still speak Yiddish." <li>In a <a
href="http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21131">New York Review of Books review of
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John Broughton's book</a>, Wikipedia: The Missing Manual, Nicholson

Baker compared <a href="http://www.wikipedia.org/">Wikipedia</a>'s use of the
public-domain 1911 Britannica to the Medieval use of spolia: "The fragments from
original sources persist like those stony bits of classical buildings
incorporated in a medieval wall." <li>I can't say that Julia Kristeva's
<a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/61123208">Murder in Byzantium</a>
is a quick read. </li></ul> <li>Blogs: <ul> <li>I really groove on Brandon
Olson's blog: <a
al_archaeology_in/">Historical Archaeology in the Ancient
Mediterranean</a>. For any student contemplating graduate school, read
Olson's blog to see how to do it right. <li>The "Vidi" feature on <a
href="http://archaeoastronomy.wordpress.com/">Alun Salt's blog</a>,
Archaeoastronomy, is becoming required reading. <li>Not much buzz (not any in
fact) around my recent contribution to the Ancient World Bloggers Group blog: <a
href="http://ancientworldbloggers.blogspot.com/2008/03/pdq-11-form-translation-
text-blogging.html">PD(Q) 1.1: Form, Translation, Text: Blogging on
Paper</a>. That may not bode well for <a
href="http://pdqweb.edublogs.org/">PD(Q)</a> ... with some much already to read
and do, is there room for another journal? <li>There is a new post over at
Prairie Polis: <a href="http://prairiepolis.blogspot.com/2008/03/why-is-
religion-violent.html">Why Is Religion Violent?</a> </li></ul> <li>An odds
or an ends: A recent call went out from my department head, Kimberly Porter,
that the Art Department at UND was looking to get rid of a collection of glass
type slides "of the old type"... "many of which are photos of this persons'
journeys around the world." I claimed them. </li></ul>
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TITLE: The Hybrid Architecture of Early Christian Greece
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Regular readers of this blog (both of them) recognize that I have been slowly
constructing several arguments through a series of posts; one of these arguments
draws upon Postcolonial theory to argue for the hybrid nature of Early Christian
space in Greece (<a
igraphy-and-h.html">Part 1</a>, <a
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lphi-mosaics.html">Part 2</a>, <a
rly-christian.html">Part 3</a>, <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2008/03/wh
y-hybridity-m.html">Conclusion</a>). It's my current research project and
the topic of an article currently under construction. Today's blog is an
early draft of the introduction to that article. I was conflicted whether to
release an early draft of what is definitely a work-in-progress. Over the
weekend, however, I listened to quite a few of the famous Blue Note "blowing
session" type Jazz albums; I was listening to Art Blakey's Night in Birdland
and Cannon Ball Adderly's Somethin' Else. These albums are
largely characterized by their relaxed arrangement and loosely organized
style. They were provisional by nature and sought to capture the energy of
live Jazz recordings. Consequently, they lacked the polished composition
of, say, Miles Davis' great works; in fact, you could often here the voice of
producers or the musicians making comments to one another about the melody or
time. At the same time, I noticed that Sebastian Heath had released a <a
href="http://mediterraneanceramics.blogspot.com/2008/03/research-note-dining-
and-numismatic.html">provisional draft</a> of something he had been working on
over at his <a href="http://mediterraneanceramics.blogspot.com/">Mediterranean
Ceramics</a> blog. It's in the spirit of these bold and informal offerings
that I present very early draft of an introduction to my "Hybridity and Early
Christian Architecture" article-in-progress. The citations are not done
yet and the prose is rough in places, but it does capture, for better or for
worse, the current state of my thinking. (Version 2: 21 March 2008):
Architecture and the Creation of a Christian Discourse in Greece
Since at least the 4th century, the church building has been an
iconic feature of Christianity and ubiquitous in the archaeological record of
the Late Antique Eastern Mediterranean. These building proliferated over the
5th and 6th centuries. In the Late Roman province of
Achaia alone there is archaeological evidence for well over 200 buildings,
nearly 100 of which have some significant part of their plan preserved. Outside
of Greek scholarship, these buildings have received relatively little attention
despite the recent interest in the Late Roman period across the Eastern
Mediterranean and in Greece in particular.<a href="#_ftn1_6433"
name="_ftnref1_6433">[1]</a> Some of this neglect can be attributed to the
irregular character of many of the excavations and the generally poor state of
preservation of the buildings. Further limiting scholarly interest in these
buildings is the prevalent attitude toward Early Christian churches in Greece as
relatively unsophisticated pieces of architecture designed primarily to serve
the liturgical needs of the local Christian community. Studies of the
relationship between architecture and liturgy have tended toward functional
analyses of these buildings‚Äô regular features and regarded architecture as
evidence for understanding the development of the Middle Byzantine and later
liturgies.<a href="#_ftn2_6433" name="_ftnref2_6433">[2]</a> Over the past
several decades scholars have increasingly questioned such developmental
models,<a href="#_ftn3_6433" name="_ftnref3_6433">[3]</a> but the typological
studies associated with this work have produced a solid foundation for this
study of Early Christian architecture in Greece. This body of evidence is all
the more valuable when we consider the dearth of literary sources for Early
Christian Greece as compared to elsewhere in the Late Antique Mediterranean. New
archaeological evidence and developments in how scholars interpret ancient art
and architecture have made the Early Christian basilicas of Greece more
accessible for the study of the cultural, economic, and religious history of the
1171
region during Late Antiquity.<a href="#_ftn4_6433" name="_ftnref4_6433">[4]</a>

These recent methodological developments complement an already solid foundation
of past scholarship to make it an appropriate moment to bring the Early
Christian basilicas of Greece into closer contact with the ongoing conversations
about the Late Antique Eastern Mediterranean. This [article] will focus on
Early Christian architecture as a source for the emergence of a distinctly
Christian cultural, political, and religious discourse in Greece during the Late
Antique period. The study of the so-called ‚Äútotalizing‚Äù discourse of
Christianity is a central component to understanding the Christianization of the
Mediterranean world. Scholars like A. Cameron, R. Markus, and P. Brown have
argued convincingly that the increased prevalence of broadly Christian
interpretive regimes across all aspects of society marked a significant change
in how Late Antique individuals both articulated and understood their world.
While scholarly interest in the emergence of Christianity in Greece is
longstanding, it has received renewed attention over the past several decades.
Despite the well-known evidence from the Pauline epistles, Acts of the Apostles
and other first and second century texts, scholars have puzzled at the late
appearance of the institutional church in the textual sources and archaeology
for Greece prior to the 5th and 6th centuries. This gap in
the historical record likely recommends a late date of the large scale
Christianization in Greece and suggests that the powerful institutional church
of the 5th and 6th century drove the expansion of
Christianity. One important implication of this conclusion is that the
population was largely non-Christian, or pagan for lack of a better term, up
until this point.<a href="#_ftn5_6433" name="_ftnref5_6433">[5]</a> This line of
reasoning has endowed paganism with the appearance of an indigenous and
sometimes more authentic form of religious expression.<a href="#_ftn6_6433"
name="_ftnref6_6433">[6]</a> The occasional and shadowy evidence for dramatic
and possibly violent clashes between Christians further conjures a romantic
image of a persistent paganism as a form of local resistance to institutional
church. Ultimately this persistent paganism imparts in the Greek church its
distinct character. Thus, Christianity is presented as a cultural system
projected on Greece by an outside authority, namely Christianized and
increasingly powerful pan-Mediterranean ecclesiastical and imperial hierarchy.
In this context, Christian churches become the markers of this authority. While
the model that I have presented here for viewing the emergence of Christianity
in Greece is rather simplistic, it nevertheless represents one of the most
common ways to understand the expansion of Christianity throughout the Eastern
Mediterranean. Early Christian architecture represents an essential indicator
of the institutional church in this understanding the spread of Christianity in
Greece. As elsewhere in the Eastern Mediterranean, Christian churches
contributed in important ways to the production of a distinctly Christian urban
and rural landscape.<a href="#_ftn7_6433" name="_ftnref7_6433">[7]</a> Moreover,
an approach that links Early Christian architecture to the rise of Christian
institutional authority in the Late Antique world has brought these buildings
into broader discussions of Late Antique religious, political, and urban
history. At the same time, however, Early Christian churches have tended to
remain relatively static places in the Late Antique landscape and serve
primarily to express the unambiguous message of Christian political and
religious authority.<a href="#_ftn8_6433" name="_ftnref8_6433">[8]</a> This view
of Early Christian architecture as largely representational or symbolic
inevitably privileges the intent of the patrons and builders. In this regard,
many modern studies of Early Christian architecture borrows the tone from Late
Antique literature in which the church building stands as the sign of the
triumphant faith and Christian authority.<a href="#_ftn9_6433"
1172
name="_ftnref9_6433">[9]</a> This reading of Early Christian architecture in the

Late Antique landscape largely persists even as recent interest in the genre of
ekphrasis has encouraged scholars to recognize the variety possible in the way
that Late Antique viewers saw Early Christian architecture and art.<a
href="#_ftn10_6433" name="_ftnref10_6433">[10]</a> So while the work on
epkphrastic has opened the door to considering the role of the viewer in the
creation of Early Christian art, it has done little so far to challenge the
primacy of the elite viewer and patron in how architecture and decoration is
actually understood in a Late Antique context. This [article] seeks to expand
the representational or symbol reading of churches by assuming that the
absence of a stable relationship between the viewer and Early Christian
architecture played a central role in the construction of Christian authority in
Late Antique society.<a href="#_ftn11_6433" name="_ftnref11_6433">[11]</a> This
instability is manifest both in the practices of the Late Antique patron and,
perhaps more importantly, in the diversity of perspectives available to the Late
Antique viewer in Greece. The diversity of Late Antique viewers relies on an
understanding that most, although certainly not all, Early Christian
architecture was physically accessible to wide range of Late Antique viewers
occupying a wide range of places in the social, economic, religious, and
political communities of Late Antique society. The potential viewers of Early
Christian churches would have included committed Christians, new converts, and
perhaps even the openly skeptical. Within many churches the highly literate
aristocracy would have mingled with the almost certainly illiterate urban and
rural poor.<a href="#_ftn12_6433" name="_ftnref12_6433">[12]</a> In most
communities the church would have been an important venue for contact between
the clergy and the laity. Each group and, indeed, individual brought to these
buildings a diverse range of expectations, religious backgrounds, and
interpretive tools.<a href="#_ftn13_6433" name="_ftnref13_6433">[13]</a> Indeed,
scholars have recognized the diversity present in the ‚Äúpreacher‚Äôs
audience‚Äù The potential variation among Late Antique viewers provides a strong
contrast to the sophisticated iconography and ordered theology of the Early
Christian liturgy.<a href="#_ftn14_6433" name="_ftnref14_6433">[14]</a> While
Late Antique liturgical texts and pronouncement of Early Christian theologians
tended to emphasis ritual, theological, and ecclesiastical taxis, or
order, the complex interplay of architectural spaces, decorative motifs, movable
objects, and inscribed texts almost certainly resisted a unified interpretation
and confronted the Early Christian viewer with an abiding sense of ambiguity.
The tension between the regularity of the Early Christian ritual, the diversity
of Late Antique congregation, and the potential for an ambiguous reading of the
architecture and decoration recommends that we approach Early Christian
architecture as a type of hybrid space. As this [article] will argue, the
hybrid character of Early Christian space played a key role in the development
of a compelling Late Antique discourse and contributed the production of a
distinctly, but hardly unified Christian society. Reading Hybridity in the
Early Christian Architecture of Greece The notion of the hybrid
and hybridity has received considerable attention in recent decades by
scholars seeking to understand the interaction between cultures in a colonial
and postcolonial context. The most famous use of this word in the context of
postcolonial theory derives from Home Bhabha.<a href="#_ftn15_6433"
name="_ftnref15_6433">[15]</a> Bhabha proposed an image of the colonial hybrid
as an individual who occupies and negotiates the middle ground between the
colonizer and the colonized. The emergence of a hybrid identity represents, on
the one hand, a concession to the influence and power of colonial authority. On
the other hand, the colonial hybrid had the ability to understand and to view
expressions of colonial power in a way that produced subversive readings of
1173
colonial authority. In this way, hybrids exploited the inherent ambiguity of the
colonial discourse (and perhaps any act of viewing). Nowhere is this clearer
than in the emergence of the colonial mimic who simultaneously represents the
colonizers‚Äô reluctance to permit full assimilation of the colonized individual
and the colonized individual‚Äôs potential for negotiating new, highly unstable
identities that disrupted the seemingly fixed relationships stipulated by the
traditional structures of colonial authority. The concept of hybridity has
become a popular interpretative paradigm throughout the humanities and gained
influence among scholars of antiquity over the past two decades. The application
of postcolonial theory has expanded our understanding both of the interaction
between different groups in ancient society and of modern and ancient techniques
employed to construct ethnic, religious, and social identities. Archaeological
efforts to document the colonial moment have particularly attended to the
instability of contact between indigenous populations and colonial powers and
have issued important caveats regarding any reading of the ancient world rooted
in essentialized notions of cultural identity. Peter van Dommelen‚Äôs work on
contact between Punic and indigenous populations in Sardinia is particularly
important for highlighting the inherent ambiguity present in the material
representations of colonial identities in the Sardinian landscape.<a
href="#_ftn16_6433" name="_ftnref16_6433">[16]</a> Derek Counts recent work on
the ‚ÄúMaster of the Lion‚Äù motif in Iron Age Cypriot sculpture provides a
focused study on how individual objects could reflect the deep ambiguity of the
hybrid form.<a href="#_ftn17_6433" name="_ftnref17_6433">[17]</a> These studies
are only two examples of the conceptual interdependence of the ambiguity and
hybridity in the recent readings of the ancient material culture. Scholars of
Early Christianity have also recognized the applicability of postcolonial theory
to the Late Antique world. In particular scholars have examined how the
totalizing Christian discourse of Late Antiquity has shaped our modern reading
of contact between Christians and non-Christians.<a href="#_ftn18_6433"
name="_ftnref18_6433">[18]</a> Rebecca Lyman has pointed out that long
prevailing notions of a monolithic and coherent orthodoxy have tended to
critique diversity within Early Christianity as the failure of a unified
Orthodox Christianity to assert complete control over Late Roman society.<a
href="#_ftn19_6433" name="_ftnref19_6433">[19]</a> A postcolonial reading of
this evidence, however, suggests that arguments for a monolithic Christian
identity belie far less stable reality. In fact, the process of creating a
rhetorically exclusive Christianity depended in large part on the existence of
the threatening and destabilizing hybrid; in other words, non-Christians,
heretics, and other dissenting groups helped to define the core values of the
Christian community. Consequently, the strident rhetoric of Christian
triumphalism, despite its claims to persistence and uniformity, constantly
shifted to accommodate the diversity within the Christian community as it sought
to span the complex and cosmopolitan world of Late Antiquity. Andrew Jacobs
recent work on the representation of the Jews in Early Christian sources
illuminates the delicate negotiations necessary within a Christian discourse
that both appropriated Jewish knowledge and discredited the Jewish ‚Äúother‚Äù
to reify Christianity‚Äôs privilege position.<a href="#_ftn20_6433"
name="_ftnref20_6433">[20]</a> The result of these recent readings of the so-
called totalizing Christian discourse is an Early Christian identity that had an
inherent instability deeply tied to its modes expression. Like the rhetoric of
the triumphant Early Christian literary traditional and emphasis on ritual
taxis in the Christian liturgy, Early Christian architecture projected a
wide-spread, easily recognizable, and relatively uniform presence in the Late
Antique Eastern Mediterranean. This uniformity, however, like the regularity of
the rites performed in Early Christian space, belies the deep ambiguity present
1174
in the arrangement, decoration and even epigraphy of the Christian architecture.

Postcolonial theory with its emphasis on the ambiguity and instability in
viewing the seemingly unified rhetoric of colonial authority offers useful tools
for deconstructing the productive forces at play in the emergence of a
Christianizing discourse. Applying this method of analysis to Early Christian
ecclesiastical architecture not only challenges the rhetorically potent
construct of Early Christian triumphalism and uniformity, but also reifies the
place of material culture as a constituent and productive element in the social,
cultural, economic, and even political history of Late Antiquity. The
increasing awareness of hybridity within the unified Christian discourse offers
considerable potential for reinterpreting Early Christian architecture,
decoration, and ritual and finds close parallels with the recent trend toward
recognizing ambiguity in ancient art, and Late Antique art in particular. Of
particular significance for this current project is John Clarke‚Äôs work
emphasizing the impact of imperial art in Rome on the non-Roman or
‚Äúordinary‚Äù viewer.<a href="#_ftn21_6433" name="_ftnref21_6433">[21]</a>
While he stopped short of proposing subversive readings for monuments like the
column of Trajan or the Arch of Constantine, he demonstrated that there was
sufficient ambiguity present in these potent monuments to make them meaningful
for groups often neglected in the study of the reception of Roman art. Jas
Elsner proposed that the ambiguity of the motifs in some art at Dura Europus
made it possible to communicate messages of resistance to Roman rule by the
‚Äúindigenous‚Äù inhabitants of this community.<a href="#_ftn22_6433"
name="_ftnref22_6433">[22]</a> Elsewhere Elsner and Henry. Maguire have both
recognized the potential for ambivalence and ambiguity inherent in the complex
symbolism oft utilized in Early Christian contexts and noted that the persistent
efforts of the clergy to propose exegetical interpretations.<a
href="#_ftn23_6433" name="_ftnref23_6433">[23]</a> The fruitful discussion of
ambiguity in the viewing of Early Christian art provides a suitable foundation
for considering the hybrid nature of the Christian discourse produced by the
engagement with Early Christian space. As Clarke, Elsner, Maguire and others
have realized monumental architecture is particularly valuable barometer of
social change in antiquity. It not only has a larger potential audience than
textual sources, but it also absorbs considerable resources from the community.
Consequently, monumental buildings tend to occupy significant places in the
symbolic, ritual, and social landscape of a community. Not only do the Early
Christian basilicas of Greece reflect the varied motives of their donors, but
the motifs, furnishing, and texts employed in these buildings evoked different
responses from the diverse groups who witnessed Early Christian space. In this
context, the hybrid and ambiguous nature of Early Christian space negotiated and
produced an unstable middle ground between the intent of donors who sought to
draw upon multiple contexts to create spaces rich in meaning, and equally
diverse expectations of Early Christian viewers. The three cases studies
features in this article will bring to the fore the hybrid character of Early
Christian space in Greece. The first study looks at the intersection of imperial
and local influences in the Lechaion basilica outside of Corinth. The
distinctive liturgical furnishing of this building created an environment which
would have visibly linked the local ecclesiastical hierarchy to imperial power
and perhaps the liturgy of the Eastern Capital. This link would have flaunted
the formal ecclesiastical ties between Corinth and the bishop of Rome. Neither
purely local in its arrangement and features nor obviously Constantinopolitan,
the architecture of this church encouraged the viewer to negotiate between the
familiar features required for the Greek liturgy and novel insertions heralding
imperial influence. The second case study examines a prominent mosaic pavement
found in a basilica in Late Antique Delphi. This mosaic inserts motifs
1175
traditionally associated with the aristocratic display into a liturgical

setting. The hybrid combination of aristocratic motifs and liturgical space
serves to transfer values deriving from the largely ‚Äúsecular‚Äù sphere of the
elite to the Christian rituals and perhaps even the clergy who perform them. The
hybridity introduced by the mosaic floors from Delphi could easily represent the
perspective of a secular, aristocratic donor as the desire of the clergy for
association with elite values. Moreover, the overlap of the aristocratic and
Christian discourse, whether intentional on the part of the clergy or not, like
communicates a particular view of Christian authority to at least some of the
Late Antique viewers. The final case study moves away from the imperial or even
aristocratic component of Early Christian hybridity to consider the different
modes of Early Christian epigraphy. In particular, I will focus on the
difference between elite donations to Early Christian basilicas and more modest
donations made by the artisan classes. The intersection of these two different,
if closely related, donor strategies produced not only a hybrid method of
expressing one‚Äôs identity as a donor, but may have also reflected the
emergence of a particular Christian mode of giving. Each of these case studies
highlights a particular aspect of hybridity in Early Christian space. They
emphasize hybridity not merely in the juxtaposition of the familiar with the
unfamiliar, but also as the creation of unstable interpretative regimes in which
the plurality of potential meanings derived subverts plausible modern readings
of the intended meaning of the donor, author, or clergy. In this assessment the
ambivalence of Early Christian space empowered the congregation to play a key
role in the establishment of the hybrid Christian discourse. Hybridity, then,
becomes more than simply the static combination of diverse features in an object
or the landscape, but a method of reading architecture, ritual, and objects
breaks down the unity of essentialized discourses whether they be characteristic
of Christian, pre-Christian, imperial, local, elite, or common expression. <hr
align="left" width="33%" size="1"> <a href="#_ftnref1_6433"
name="_ftn1_6433">[1]</a> A. Frantz, Late Antiquity, A.D. 267-700.
Athenian Agora 24. (Princeton, N.J 1988), ###-###; W. Bowden, Epirus Vetus:
The Archaeology of a Late-antique Province. (London 2003); A. Avramea, Le
P√©loponn√®se Du IVe Au VIIe Si√®cle: Changements Et Persistances. (Paris
1997); R. M. Rothaus, Corinth, the First City of Greece: An Urban
History of Late Antique Cult and Religion. (Leiden 2000), ###-###.
C. Kosso, Cynthia. The Archaeology of Public Policy in Late Roman
Greece. (Oxford 2003). Oikonomou-Laniado, A., Argos Pal√©ochr√©tienne:
Contribution √Ä L'√©tude Du P√©loponn√®se Byzantin. (Oxford 2003) NON
VIDI. <a href="#_ftnref2_6433" name="_ftn2_6433">[2]</a> Soteriou
‚ÄúŒë·º± œÄŒ±ŒªŒ±ŒπŒøœáœÅŒπœÉœÑŒπŒ±ŒΩŒπŒ∫Œ±·Ω∂ Œ≤Œ±œÉŒπŒªŒπŒ∫Œ±·Ω∂ œÑ·øÜœÇ
·ºôŒªŒªŒ¨Œ¥ŒøœÇ,‚Äù AE (1929), 161-254; A. Orlandos Œó
ŒûœÖŒªœåœÉœÑŒµŒ≥ŒøœÇ
Œ†Œ±ŒªŒ±ŒπŒøœáœÅŒπœÉœÑŒπŒ±ŒΩŒπŒ∫ŒÆ ŒíŒ±œÉŒπŒªŒπŒ∫ŒÆ
Œ§Œ∑œÇ ŒúŒµœÉŒøŒ≥ŒµŒπŒ±Œ∫ŒÆœÇ
ŒõŒµŒ∫Œ¨ŒΩŒ∑œÇ. Athens (1957); Lemerle ; D. I. Pallas
‚ÄúCorinth et Nicopolis pendant le haut moyen-√¢ge,‚Äù FR 18 (1979), 93-
142; --, ‚ÄúMonuments et texts: r√©marques sur la liturgie dans quelques
basiliques pal√©ochr√©tiens.‚Äù EEBS 44 (1979/80), 37-116; --,
‚Äú"L'√©difice culturel chr√©tien et la liturgie dans l'Illuricum oriental,"
Studi Antichita Cristiana 1 (1984), 544-557 <a href="#_ftnref3_6433"
name="_ftn3_6433">[3]</a> W. Bowden, ‚ÄúEpirus and Crete: Architectural
Interaction in Late Antiquity,‚Äù Creta Romana e Protobizantina 3.1 (2000), 787-
800; A. Poulter, ‚ÄúChurches in Space: the early Byzantine city of Nicopolis,‚Äù
in Churches Built in Ancient Times. K. Painter ed. (London 1994), xxx-xxx
(at 249); C. Mango, Byzantine Architecture. (Milan 1978), 7-8. <a
1176
href="#_ftnref4_6433" name="_ftn4_6433">[4]</a> For a short summary of some

recent and historical trends see: C. Mango, ‚ÄúApproaches to Byzantine
Architecture.‚Äù Muqarnas 8 (1991), 40-44. <a href="#_ftnref5_6433"
name="_ftn5_6433">[5]</a> Sanders, Gregory, et c. <a href="#_ftnref6_6433"
name="_ftn6_6433">[6]</a> Gregory, ‚Äúfirst order concerns‚Äù <a
href="#_ftnref7_6433" name="_ftn7_6433">[7]</a> O. Von Simson, Sacred
Fortress: Byzantine Art and Statecraft in Ravenna. (Princeton, N.J 1987). R.
Krautheimer, Three Christian Capitals: Topography and Politics. (Berkeley
1983). R. A. Markus, ‚ÄúHow on Earth do Places become Holy?‚Äù xxxxxxxx; --,
The End of Ancient Christianity (Cambridge?? 1990), xxx-xxx; B. Caseau,
‚ÄúSacred Landscapes,‚Äù in G. Bowersock, P. Brown, and O. Grabar eds.
Interpreting Late Antiquity: Essays on the Postclassical World.
(Cambridge, Mass. 2001), 40-45; R. Rothaus, Corinth, the First City of
Greece, ###-###. <a href="#_ftnref8_6433"
name="_ftn8_6433">[8]</a>, but see also Wharton <a href="#_ftnref9_6433"
name="_ftn9_6433">[9]</a> See also recently J. Elsner, ‚ÄúThe Rhetoric of
Buildings in the De Aedificiis of Procopius,‚Äù in L. James ed . Art and Text
in Byzantine Culture. (Cambridge 2007), 33-57. <a href="#_ftnref10_6433"
name="_ftn10_6433">[10]</a> For Ekphrasis and the growing appreciation of
ambiguity in this context: L. James and R. Web, ‚Äú‚ÄôTo Understand Ultimate
Things and Enter Secret Places‚Äô: Ekphrasis and Art in Byzantium,‚Äù Art
History 14 (1991), 1-17; P. C. Miller, ‚Äú‚ÄôThe Little Blue Flower is
Red‚Äô: Relics and the Poetizing of the Body,‚Äù JECS 2000 (8), 213-236.
<a href="#_ftnref11_6433" name="_ftn11_6433">[11]</a> For such approaches see
especially J. R. Clarke, Art in the Lives of Ordinary Romans: Visual
Representations and Non-Elite Viewers in Italy, 100 B.C. - A.D. 315.
(Berkeley 2003), 9-11; Maguire, Elsner. <a href="#_ftnref12_6433"
name="_ftn12_6433">[12]</a> Note some of the recent work on poverty. Also look
at Maxwell‚Äôs recent book on John Chrysostom. <a href="#_ftnref13_6433"
name="_ftn13_6433">[13]</a> There is a particularly well-developed body of work
that examines t <a href="#_ftnref14_6433" name="_ftn14_6433">[14]</a> H.-J.
Schulz, The Byzantine Liturgy: Symbolic Structure and Faith Expression.
Trans. Mathew J. O‚ÄôConnell. (New York 1986); R. F. Taft, The Byzantine
Rite: A Short History. (Minneapolis, MN 1992). <a href="#_ftnref15_6433"
name="_ftn15_6433">[15]</a> H.K. Bhabha, ‚ÄúSigns Taken for Wonders: Questions
of Ambivalence and Authority under a Tree outside Delhi, May 1817‚Äù in The
Location of Culture. (check: London 2004), 145-174. The basic study remains
R. Young, Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race. (London
1995) J. Nederveen Pieterse, ‚ÄúHybridity, So What?: The Anti-Hybridity Backlash
and the Riddles of Recognition.‚Äù Theory, Culture, and Society 18
(2001), 219-245. <a href="#_ftnref16_6433" name="_ftn16_6433">[16]</a> P.
van Dommelen, "Ambiguous Matters: Colonialism and Local Identities in Punic
Sardinia," in K. Papadopoulos and C. Lyons, eds. Archaeology of
Colonialism ( Los Angeles 2002), 121-147.; --, "The Orientalizing
Phenomenon: Hybridity and Material Culture in the Western Mediterranean," in C.
Riva and N. Vella eds. Debating Orientalization: Multidisciplinary Approaches
to Change in the Ancient Mediterranean. (London 2006), 135-152. See also the
work by C. Antonaccio, ‚ÄúHybridity and the Cultures within Greek Cultures,‚Äù
in C. Dougherty and L. Kurke eds. The Cultures Within Ancient Greek Culture:
Contact, Conflict, and Collaboration. (Cambridge 2003), 57-74. <a
href="#_ftnref17_6433" name="_ftn17_6433">[17]</a> D. B. Counts, ‚ÄúMaster of
the Lion: Representation and Hybridity in Cypriote Sanctuaries.‚Äù AJA
112 (2008), 3-27. <a href="#_ftnref18_6433" name="_ftn18_6433">[18]</a>
P. Brown, Authority and the Sacred: Aspects of the Christianisation of the
Roman World. (Cambridge 1996). For the term ‚Äútotalizing discourse ‚Äú see:
1177
A. Cameron, Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire: The Development of

Christian Discourse. (Berkeley 1991), xx-xx. <a
href="#_ftnref19_6433" name="_ftn19_6433">[19]</a> J. R. Lyman, ‚Äú2002 NAPS
Presidential Address: Hellenism and Heresy.‚Äù Journal of Early Christian
Studies 11 (2003), 209-222. Cf. R. Lim, ‚ÄúChristian Triumph and
Controversy,‚Äù in in G. Bowersock, P. Brown, and O. Grabar eds. Interpreting
Late Antiquity: Essays on the Postclassical World. (Cambridge, Mass. 2001),
196-218. <a href="#_ftnref20_6433" name="_ftn20_6433">[20]</a> A. S. Jacobs,
Remains of the Jews: The Holy Land and Christian Empire in Late
Antiquity. (Stanford, CA 2004). D. Boyarin, and V. Burrus, ‚ÄúHybridity as
Subversion of Orthodoxy? Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity‚Äù Social
Compass 52 (2005), 431-441. <a href="#_ftnref21_6433"
name="_ftn21_6433">[21]</a> Clarke, Art in the Lives of Ordinary Romans,
42-67. <a href="#_ftnref22_6433" name="_ftn22_6433">[22]</a>J. Elsener,
‚ÄúViewing and Resistance: Art and Religion in Dura Europus,‚Äù in Roman
Eyes: Visuality and Subjectivity in Art and Text. (Princeton 2007), 253-287;
A. Wharton, Refiguring the Post Classical City, 23-63. <a
href="#_ftnref23_6433" name="_ftn23_6433">[23]</a> H. Maguire, Earth and
Ocean: The Terrestrial World in Early Byzantine Art. (University Park 1987),
1-19; J. Elsner, Art and the Roman Viewer. (Cambridge 1995), 249-287.
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TITLE: Episode 6: Finding Fruit Crates
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
ALLOW PINGS: 1
BASENAME: episode-6-findi
DATE: 03/12/2008 01:32:06 AM

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<a
alt="FruitCratesRO"
Writer/FruitCratesRO.jpg" width="244" align="left" border="0"></a> 
Episode 6 of <a
ging Cypriot</a> is now posted. I have thought just a tiny bit about
1178
archaeology as bricolage lately. Bricolage is the practice of building or

making something in an ad hoc way with whatever material is readily
available. Punk rock is often seen as evoking bricolage in it's
tremendously provisional production (for more thoughts on that see: <a
href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/2008/02/punk-archaeology.html">here</a>, <a
href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/2008/02/101ers.html">here</a>, <a
nk-archaeolog.html">here</a>, and <a
href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/2008/02/punk-suburbs.html">here</a>) and <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2008/03/pd
q-11-form-tra.html">blogging</a> often demonstrates some aspects of this
technique. Archaeological method and field procedures are often, by
necessity, ad hoc. The <a href="http://www.chss.iup.edu/pkap/">Pyla-
Koutsopetria Archaeological Project</a> often found itself forced to confront
unexpected problems (you threw away all of our kitchen supplies and cooking
equipment?), to address lack of a permanent headquarters, to accommodate the
provisional status of much of our preliminary data collection, sorting, and and
storage, and to fix glitches in our field procedures (as viewers of our first
archaeological documentary, <a
>Survey on Cyprus</a>, learned "fixing the glitch" was a common refrain on
our project). We try each year to convey to our students the
spirit and practical realities of the "read and react" atmosphere that is
probably common on almost all archaeological projects. To introduce them
to "archaeological problem solving" we'll typically ask their help to solve
little problems. This short chronicles our students efforts to secure two
fruit crates for pottery sorting. The stackable, industrial, plastic
crates used for shipping fruit are a common feature on archaeological
projects. They are easy to acquire, stack neatly for storing pottery, and
they are fairly rugged. The only problem is that they tend to proliferate
if unsupervised. We began with around 20 of them, but each season, nature
takes its course, and 5 or sometimes even 10 more appear. Each crate is
diligently labeled "catalogued pottery", "uncatalogued", "needs to be washed
pottery", "to be drawn", "drawn", or even the dreaded "problem
units". The students did a good job and learned a bit on the
fruit crate adventure. Next season we hope to be able to return of the
crates to their proper home in the fruit market!<a
eWriter/Crates_1_1.jpg"></a> <a
eWriter/Crates_2_1.jpg"><a
eWriter/Crates_2_1.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width:
alt="Crates_2"
Writer/Crates_2_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a></a> It begins
with just two... well labeled and disciplined <a
alt="Crates_1"
Writer/Crates_1_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> A fruit crate
gathering... at night... unsupervised </a><a
1179
eWriter/Crates_3_1.jpg"><a
alt="Crates_3"
Writer/Crates_3_thumb.jpg" width="404"
border="0"></a></a> Order restored, but at what cost?
of <a
vey on Cyprus</a>, and you can read the commentaries on the first five
shorts (with links to those shorts) below. <a
erging-cypr-1.html"><img height="74" alt="Landscape_MontageRO"
Writer/Landscape_MontageRO_1.jpg" width="112" border="0"></a><a
isode-2-emerg.html"><img height="74" alt="Learning_FieldwalkingRO"
Writer/Learning_FieldwalkingRO_1.jpg" width="110" border="0"></a><a
isode-3-an-ar.html"><img height="74" alt="ArtifactsJourneyRO"
Writer/ArtifactsJourneyRO_1.jpg" width="110" border="0"></a><a
isode-4-forme.html"><img height="74" alt="FormerStudentRO"
Writer/FormerStudentRO_1.jpg" width="110" border="0"></a><a
isode-5-basec.html"><img style="margin: 0px 10px 0px 0px" height="74"
alt="BaseCampRO"
Writer/BaseCampRO.jpg" width="110" border="0"> </a>
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COMMENT:
IP: 130.127.64.160
URL:
DATE: 03/12/2008 10:48:27 AM
I LOVE FRUITCRATES!
That was so awesome: a conceptual performance piece.!
Archaeology and politics in a plastic nutshell.!
Scholars meets host country in the marketplace.!
An essay on the subtle intersections between methodology !
(sorting, rationalizing, collecting, displaying, washing, shriveling in the sun,
molding in storage)!
and ideology (expectations, language, economic value, personal charisma). !
LOVED IT
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TITLE: PD(Q) 1.1: Form, Translation, Text: Blogging on Paper
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
ALLOW PINGS: 1
BASENAME: pdq-11-form-tra
DATE: 03/11/2008 12:23:19 AM

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This is a first draft of an introduction to a section in the first fascicule
<a href="http://pdqweb.edublogs.org/">PD(Q)</a>. The blog
posts included in this sections are: <a
href="http://mediterraneanceramics.blogspot.com/2007/12/dont-buy-this-
book.html">http://mediterraneanceramics.blogspot.com/2007/12/dont-buy-this-
book.html</a> <a
href="http://electricarchaeologist.wordpress.com/2008/01/29/lulucom-and-
bypassing-the-
publishers/">http://electricarchaeologist.wordpress.com/2008/01/29/lulucom-and-
bypassing-the-publishers/</a> <a
href="http://ancientworldbloggers.blogspot.com/2008/02/re-thinking-blog-
carnival.html">http://ancientworldbloggers.blogspot.com/2008/02/re-thinking-
blog-carnival.html</a> <a
href="http://ancientworldbloggers.blogspot.com/2008/02/blog-carnival-journal-
proposal-past.html">http://ancientworldbloggers.blogspot.com/2008/02/blog-
carnival-journal-proposal-past.html</a> Much of this feels a bit stale and
returns to some of my old saws. I cross posted this on <a
Group</a> blog. In any event, here's my intro: Form,
Translation, Text: Blogging on Paper PD(Q) is an experiment
in translation. When it was first introduced on the <a
1181
Group</a> blog, I eagerly agreed to participate. Since that time I have sought
to understand what it is that we are trying to do and to recognize the
implications of translating onto paper texts developed in the digital genre and
medium of blogging. The mechanics behind the idea seemed quite straightforward,
as the following blog posts will reveal. Bloggers would submit their best posts
to a group of editors who will edit these posts, offer some form of mild peer
review, and then assemble them in a quarterly journal which will be available at
Lulu.com as either an electronic publication in PDF or in paper form for a
modest price. At the same time, the posts included in each issues would be
entered into a digital archive in a format suitable for stable, long-term
storage. The benefit of a paper version of the blog posts is to attempt to
cross the divide between the kind of people who are comfortable with online,
digital media, and people who feel most at home in the world of paper
publishing. This happens to be a very current topic, as the discussions
surrounding the Indiana University libraries announcement of the electronic
Museum Anthropology Review over the past several weeks have shown.
Some of these debates, however, reveal the persistence of considerable hesitancy
to regard online publications as equal to those distributed on paper. In
some regard, the decisions of PD(Q) to provide a print venue for web
based content reflects a kind of reverse migration from an fluidity and
instability of an electronic medium to the staid legitimacy of a the printed
page. A movement from an electronic medium to paper may well be simple for those
electronic journals which continue to employ the basic format of print
publications. The method that we will use to move the blogs from the web to
paper reflect just such a simplistic approach. The webblog posts are moved from
the web into a word-processor, edited for basic style (i.e. spelling and basic
grammar), and then formatted for the dimensions of standard paper. This
process, however, brings to the fore a number of potentially valuable questions
regarding how blogs or text native to a digital format are understood as a form
of writing (I use the term ‚Äúform of writing‚Äù to encompass the medium, genre,
and style of a text). The following blog posts reveal some of the issues
surrounding the idea and process of translation from one form to another; other
issues, however, were explored other post, in emails, and comments on these
posts which for various reasons we will not include in the print version of
PD(Q). I will take the liberty of bringing up some of these issues here
in a general, if somewhat superficial, consideration of the process of
translation from the blogosphere to the world of paper publishing. The first
step in the translation process is extracting the blog text from the context
provided by the blog itself. Blogs provide a vital context for this form of
writing. From their onset, blogs were closely tied to the ephemeral communities
and networks that appear on the internet. These communities are visible through
the practice of linking to other blogs both through hyperlinks in individual
posts and through lists of other blogs, called blogrolls, typically appearing on
the side of the webpage. Both hyperlinks to other blogs and blogrolls served to
contextualize conversations taking place in the blogosphere by validating the
work of colleagues in the community. In many cases bloggers forge relationships
through repeated references to the work of other bloggers often over the course
of multiple posts spanning week or months. Translating a single post ‚Äì or even
a whole series of posts ‚Äì from the blogosphere to paper removes some of the
markers indicating that a blogger is a member of a particular community
(although the PD(Q) community certainly replaces some of that) and strips
away some of the meaning from a post that goes beyond what is contained in text
and argument. While most of better bloggers might admit that each post can stand
like a miniature manifesto, most would also concede that what makes the
blogosphere interesting and perhaps even valuable is that links and blogrolls
1182
make visible the exoskeleton of context and community. These links between
bloggers and posts are most often made manifest through the use of hyperlinks
which allow a reader to move laterally across texts and pages. We resolved to
render hyperlinks as footnotes in our translantion of these texts from digital
format to paper. This shifts the reading of a blog post from an exercise in
intertextuality to the more traditional practice of continuous reading which
marginalized a key indicator of the texts original context. On the web,
hyperlinks in the text beg the reader to move laterally ‚Äúacross the text‚Äù
linking from page to page and promote ways of reading that destabilize the
integrity of the text. In the place of sustained argument essentially native to
the linear arrangement of printed texts, hypertext encourages experiments with
allusion, intertextuality, and at times even bricolage. The different
techniques used by bloggers to construct their texts (and anticipated by readers
of these texts) highlight the difference in form, content, and reception from
the formal printed page of academic publication. In particular, blog posts
embrace the more improvisational, allusive, and ephemeral character of the
medium bringing to the fore their provisional nature. Unlike the more linear and
consequently more definitive statements that appear more commonly in paper
journals, the provisional nature and form of blogs allows them a greater range
of experimentation and speculation. Their interactive character intersects with
their less formal tone and style of expression to evoke conversations or
perhaps, in academic circles, the less formally structured experience of
professional conferences. As such blogs represent ‚Äúworks in progress‚Äù
their formal publication in a venue such as PD(Q) with an eye toward
increased circulation reflects an critical interest in the process of
scholarship which stands apart from the more definitive works common to more
formal print journals. The interest in the provisional and in the scholarly
process parallels a movement across the humanities fueled by important
developments in critical theory. From at least the 1970s, scholars from across
disciplines have sought to demonstrate the myriad variables active during the
interpretative process. In archaeology, for example, the growing interest in
reflexivity has sought to capture the archaeological experience and the
interpretive process at the ‚Äútrowels edge‚Äù. The broader implications of this
work is a growing appreciation of the contingent and provisional nature of all
knowledge. The publication of the blog posts here, despite the recontextualizing
exercise of translation from digital media to print, serves an important
function to document the interpretative and creative processes that undergird
intellectual life. The following excerpts from a rather lengthy and more
involved discussion provide modest insights into the processes of creating a
print journal from the digital material in the blogosphere. The arguments
advanced in these posts contribute to the ongoing discussions into the nature of
digital publishes (and blogs in particular), and the role of print media in the
future of academic life. Any thoughts, comments, or open mockery would be
much appreciated...
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1183

TITLE: Louis Geiger and the University of the Northern Plains
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
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BASENAME: louis-geiger-an
DATE: 03/10/2008 12:20:46 AM

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In honor of the <a href="http://www.und.edu/">University of North
Dakota</a>'s <a href="http://www2.und.edu/our/125th/">125th-iversary</a>, I am
continuing my series of short biographies of important figures in the history of
the <a href="http://www.und.edu/dept/histdept/">Department of History</a> at the
University of North Dakota. Louis Geiger was one of the last men hired by
Clarence Perkins prior to his death in 1946. He had studied at the
University of Missouri and came to the University with the recommendation of <a
href="http://muarchives.missouri.edu/portrait3.html">Elmer Ellis</a>, a former
student of Orin G. Libby's one of the most prestigious alumi of the UND's
Department of History. His was trained in American History with a thesis
was on <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1850021">Joseph W. Folk</a> (aka
Holy Joe), a major reformer in early 20th century Missouri politics.
Geiger would serve the university from 1946-1960, and despite his frequent
frustration and continuous clashes with Department head, <a
lix-vondracek.html">Felix Vondracek</a>, he managed significant contributions to
the development of the department and the history of the university.
Moreover, he was an active scholar with a national reputation receiving a
Fullbright Award to the University of Helsinki in Finland in 1953-1954 and, the
next year, a Ford Fellowship split between Harvard University and Stanford
University. While his not always happy interactions with Vondracek have
been set out in an earlier post, this post will look at his two most lasting
contributions to the life of the University of North Dakota. The
Archives Geiger played a central role in perhaps the single most
significant achievement of the Department in the 1950s. He and Elwyn
Robinson began the difficult task of developing of a <a
href="http://www.library.und.edu/Collections/spk.html">Department of Special
Collections</a> in response to the need for a regional-and university-wide
archive. The initial impulse in the department for collecting important
historical material from the state came under Orin G. Libby. He and his seminar
recognized the importance of collecting material relevant to the state‚Äôs
history. Both unsystematic and systematic efforts, like the WPA funded
Historical Data Project, began the process of collecting, preparing, storing,
indexing, and ultimately archiving material relevant to the early history of the
state, although much of these efforts focused on the State Historical Society in
Bismarck. It was not until the 1950s that a growing awareness of the lack of
material form state‚Äôs more recent history spurred Geiger, Robinson, and John
Parker to envision a manuscript division at the library. They solicited
resources from Dean Bonner Witmer, namely a sheet of 100 stamps, and sent out
letters to a list of North Dakota notables asking them to consider depositing
their papers, or in some cases the papers of their parents, in an archive housed
at the University. This brought very few results, but did not diminish their
1184
enthusiasm for the project. This initial effort was sufficient to

encourage President John West to approve the formal creation of the manuscript
collect which he named after Orin G. Libby in honor of his contribution to the
study of history in the state of the state. At the same time, they appealed to
J. Lloyd Stone, the ambitious new director of the Alumni Foundation and an
important figure in the development of University resources during the 1950s and
1960s, to run a story on the archives in the Alumni Foundation newsletter. This
story appealed to the name recognition afforded by Orin G. Libby and Elwyn
Robinsons who had taught many alumni during their long teaching careers at the
university. The story also appealed to North Dakotan‚Äôs well-developed sense of
identity by noting that Robinson was working on the definitive narrative history
of the state. They followed up these efforts with personal appeal to both
ordinary and important personages and institutions who may have had collections
of material worthy of preservation. In 1951, Geiger and Robinson, along with
Robert Wilkins traveled to Bismarck to explore the resources of the State
Historical Society and State Government, only to realize that there was no
systematic effort to collect documents important to the history of the State of
North Dakota. Moreover, many state documents were simply stored in the basement
of the state capitol building without any order and without an archivist.
This prompted Geiger and Robinson, in particular, to begin to collect material
from various figures of political importance and in many cases their descendents
throughout the state. Initially they sought to gather the paper of Lyn Frazier
and approached his widow, apparently while she was herding cows on her farm near
Concrete, North Dakota. Unfortunately, she reported that she had none of
her husband‚Äôs papers thus eliminating one potential collection. This did not,
however, dull the enthusiasm or energy of Geiger and Robinson. By the fall of
1951, they met with the widow of William Lemke, the widow of former Governor
John Moses, the daughter of former Governor L.B. Hanna, the son of former
Governor John Burke, the son of Senator Asle J. Gronna, seeking to gather the
papers of these two important politicians for the University manuscript
collection. In 1952, they complemented these appeals to famous North Dakotans
with a call to ordinary folks to pass along material of historical significance.
To do this, Robinson, Geiger, along with George Lemmer made use of the
university radio station, KFJM, through a radio broadcast called ‚ÄúPreserving
the History of the Northwest‚Äù to solicit historically important materials from
throughout the state. The radio broadcast and countless hours and miles of
personal travel eventually attracted a substantial and important collection of
material to the manuscript collection. The highlight of their early efforts was
the William Lemke Papers which were deposited into the manuscript collection and
today account for over 50 linear feet worth of material. Through the 1950s, they
also managed to secure William Langer‚Äôs and Milton Young‚Äôs papers for the
collection. These collections in addition to the significant donations from both
famous and ordinary North Dakotans remain the core of the Orin G. Libby
Collection today. <blockquote> L. Geiger, ‚ÄúA Reminiscence on the Founding
of the Libby Manuscript Collect,‚Äù in Guide to the Orin G. Libby Manuscript
Collection and Related Research Collections at the University of North
Dakota. J.B. Davenport ed. (Grand Forks 1975), 3-8.</blockquote>
<a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1107281">The University of the
Northern Plains</a> Soon after the creation of the University
Manuscript Collection and Archives, L. Geiger utilized the resources of this
collection in his book The University of the Northern Plains which was
written for the 75th Anniversary of the University. Geiger had started
researching higher education in general while he was a Ford Fellow at Stanford
and Harvard during the 1954-1955 academic year. This led President
Starcher to approach him with regard to writing a university history. The main
1185
body of his text was written in earnest during from 1956 to 1958 when it went to
press just in time for the University‚Äôs 75th anniversary. The funding for the
project came primarily from the Alumni Foundation, in particular, a donation of
the New York financier and alumnus John Hancock who on his death in 1957 gave
$50,000 gift to the Alumni Association. Geiger received a course
reduction, a summer appointment with no teaching, and, perhaps most importantly,
assurances that he could write his book with no interference from the
President‚Äôs office or any obligation to alumni or other distinguished
people. This is not to suggest that he composed his history without
attention to audience; he states ‚ÄúI have tried to write for several audiences
and purposes: to inform faculty, students, and alumni, and to entertain them a
little if I could, to provide the historical background which must be a part of
any intelligent planning for the future and to make some small contribution to
the general history of American life and culture.‚Äù (x-xi). Geiger sought
contributions to his research from all quarters and his efforts to collect
materials for the composition of the history expanded the manuscript collection
and filled in some of the numerous gaps in the University archives. In
particular, he corresponded regularly with numerous distinguished alumnae,
particularly Edna Twamley who would become a major donor to the university as
well as Kathrine B. Tiffany, who not only endowed in her own right the East
Asian Room and the Kathrine B. Tiffany Graduate Room in the Chester Fritz
library, but also encouraged her nephew Chester Fritz to make numerous donations
to the University, including funds for the library, the auditorium, and the
Chester Fritz Distinguished Professorships. Geiger circulated drafts of his
manuscript to both of these individuals, as well as other leading members of the
university community, and Tiffany, who taught English for many years and had
graduate training, made extensive, in most cases stylistic, comments. These
connections are not intended to impugn the veracity or scholarly character of
the work, but rather to show that Geiger clearly viewed his work as a link
between alumni and the University. Certainly the help provided by J. Lloyd Stone
in securing material for the book and the Manuscript Collection and funds to
support Geiger's research did not go unnoticed or unappreciated. As the book
neared completion Geiger and Starcher sought to find it an academic publisher
who would help subsidize the printing cost, provide editorial assistance, and
ensure it a broad circulation. In the end, this effort was unsuccessful and the
University of North Dakota Press undertook its publication amidst the 75th
Anniversary festivities of the University. Despite the lack of a major academic
press, the book received a focused and successful circulation. In particular,
President Starcher gave numerous copies to ‚Äústakeholders‚Äù in the University
ranging from distinguished alumni to, perhaps as importantly, politicians at
both the state and national level. The book also served as a model for
university histories elsewhere in the U.S. as Starcher distributed copies of the
book to his fellow university presidents. Finally, to complete the circle, the
publication of the University of the North Plains ensured Geiger
promotion to full professor. Geiger‚Äôs work served as a focal point in
commemorating the Universities 75th year in existence and served as a vital link
between its past and present. Soon after the completion of his book,
Geiger left the University to serve as the Department Head at Colorado
College. In 1972 he went on to Iowa State University. He remained an
active scholar for his entire career publishing numerous books including most
prominently <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/175597">Higher
Education in a Maturing Democracy</a> (1963), and serving on such
professional organizations as North Central Association of Colleges and
Secondary Schools (publishing in the course of that service: <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/92473">Voluntary accreditation: a history
1186
of the North Central Association, 1945-1970</a> (1971)). Other Short

Biographies of major figures in the Department of History at UND: <a
Dakota</a> <a
Dakota</a> <a
Dakota</a> <a
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TITLE: Three Late Antique Conferences
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
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BASENAME: three-late-anti
CATEGORY: Byzantium
DATE: 03/08/2008 12:27:44 AM

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Since my Varia and Quick Hits feature has gone on sabbatical, here are a few
recent conferences on Late Antiquity: 1) The Eighth Biennial
SHIFTING FRONTIERS IN LATE ANTIQUITY CONFERENCE: "Shifting Cultural Frontiers in
Late Antiquity" at Indiana University, April 2-5, 2009. The Society for
Late Antiquity announces that the Eighth Biennial Conference on Shifting
Frontiers in Late Antiquity will be held at Indiana University and will explore
the theme "Shifting Cultural Frontiers in Late Antiquity" [ca. 200 - 700
AD]. The confirmed plenary speakers will be Professors Jas Elsner (Corpus
Christi , Oxford ) and Seth Schwartz (Jewish Theological Seminary).
Beneath the familiar political and religious narrative of late antiquity lies
a cultural history both more complicated and more fascinating. Late
antiquity was a time of intense cultural negotiation in which new religious
communities and new populations sifted through existing modes of cultural
expression, adopting many elements for themselves and turning others
aside. This conference seeks to understand how cultural transformation
occurred amidst the political and religious disruption that can seem
1187
characteristic of late antiquity. To this end, we seek contributions that

explore three distinct areas of late antique cultural history: 1) the
interaction of "high" and "low" culture, 2) the impact of changing and
collapsing political centers on their peripheries, and 3) the emergence of
hybrid literary, artistic, and religious modes of expression. Possible
contributions to these areas may highlight the permeable division between elite
and vernacular culture, the ease with which cultural memes were transmitted
across geographic and linguistic boundaries, the adaptability of established
cultures to new political and social realities, and the degree to which
newcomers were integrated into existing cultural communities. As in the
past, the conference will provide an interdisciplinary forum for ancient
historians, philologists, Orientalists, art historians, archeologists, and
specialists in the early Christian, Jewish, and Muslim worlds to discuss a wide
range of European, Middle-Eastern, and African evidence for cultural
transformation in late antiquity. Proposals should be clearly related to
the conference theme. They should state both the problem being discussed
and the nature of the new insights or conclusions that will be presented.
Abstracts of not more than 500 words for 20-minute presentations may be
submitted via e-mail to Prof. Edward Watts, shifting.frontiers.8 (at) gmail.com
(Department of History, Indiana University, Ballantine Hall, Rm. 828, 1020 East
Kirkwood Avenue , Bloomington , IN 47405-7103 , USA ). The deadline for
submission of abstracts is October 15, 2008. The submission of an abstract
carries with it a commitment to attend the conference should the abstract be
accepted. 2) The Netherlands Institute for the Near East (NINO) offered a
symposium on Archaeology of the Countryside in Medieval Anatolia last weekend at
Leiden. You can check out the program here: <a title="http://www.nino-
leiden.nl/activities.aspx?id=7" href="http://www.nino-
leiden.nl/activities.aspx?id=7">http://www.nino-
leiden.nl/activities.aspx?id=7</a> 3) Next weekend in London there is the
annual Late Antique Archaeology (LAA) conference. The program usually
appears on their web site (<a
href="http://www.lateantiquearchaeology.com">http://www.lateantiquearchaeology.c
om</a>), but has not yet. So, I've attached it below: LATE ANTIQUE
ARCHAEOLOGY 2008 RECENT FIELDWORK IN URBAN ARCHAEOLOGY A one-day
conference to be held on Saturday 15th March 2008 at the King‚Äôs College,
London, jointly held by the University of Kent (Department of Classical and
Archaeological Studies) and King‚Äôs College London (Centre for Hellenic Studies
/ Dept of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies). This conference will
explore innovative fieldwork in late antique urban archaeology, focusing not
only on recent careful excavations, but also on attempts to re-evaluate old
excavated sites, to recover the context of epigraphy, and to bring modern survey
methods to the study of the late antique city. 10.30 Welcome by Luke
Lavan (Kent) and Tassos Papacostas (KCL) *Urban Surface Survey* 10.40-
11.10 Kris Lockyear (UCL) Noviodunum, Romania 11.10-11.40 John Bintliff
(Leiden) Thespiae and the Boeotia Survey *Epigraphic and Archaeological
Survey* 11.50-12.20 Charlotte Rouech√© (KCL) Epigraphic survey at Aphrodisias
and Ephesus 12.20-12.50 Luke Lavan (Kent) Surface archaeology, spolia and
epigraphic context at Sagalassos *Re-evaluating Old Sites* 14.00-14.30
Axel Gering (Humboldt University, Berlin) Ostia 14.30-15.00 Vincent Deroche
(College de France, Paris) Delphi 15.00-15.30 Didier Viviers (ULBruxelles)
Apamea 15.40-16.10 Tea and Coffee *Artefact-rich Deposits* 16.10-
16.40 Mark Houliston (Kent) Canterbury: the Late Roman levels at
Whitefriars 16.40-17.10 Julian Richard and Marc Waelkens (KULeuven)
Sagalassos: the Macellum *Recent Developments in Istanbul* 17.20-17.50
Ken Dark (Reading) Recent excavations in Istanbul, and the Hagia Sophia
1188
Project. Entry is *FREE* of charge, but to reserve a place please email

Luke Lavan (<a
href="mailto:info@lateantiquearchaeology.com">info@lateantiquearchaeology.com</a
>). The meeting will be held in room K2.31 (King's College London, Strand
Campus, London WC2R 2LS: Main Building, first floor). Location details:
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/about/campuses/strand-det.html. For flights try
www.skyscanner.net. Cheap UK train tickets can be obtained in advance from
www.thetrainline.com. Direct trains from Canterbury West on Saturday morning
leave at 8.35 or 9.06 and arrive 10.00 and 10.36 respectively, at Charing Cross.
The best direct train from Oxford leaves at 9.00, and arrives at 10.01
Paddington. This meeting has been made possible thanks to the support of
Museum Selection
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TITLE: Site Reports Revisited
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
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BASENAME: site-reports-re
CATEGORY: Byzantium
DATE: 03/07/2008 01:20:38 AM

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Dedicated readers of this blog know that I have already offered some
commentary on the <a href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/">American School</a>
practice of <a
te-reports.html">Site Reports</a>. These short(ish) reports by the <a
membership/memberships#regular">Regular Members</a> have formed a central pillar
to the regular program from time in memoriam (and should generally be
distinguished from the times when the excavators of a site or scholars with some
particular expertise present the sites). Regular Member Site Reports are
largely performative (as opposed to providing information regarding the site
per se): students act out on site their scholarly persona and recite
with proper emphasis and deference the main contours of the relevant academic
debates. The best reports use the archaeological material visible at the
site to to comment on the validity of past scholars' claim; the more mundane
reports merely demonstrate an awareness of an academic tradition. Despite
these subtle variations, most sight reports are boring. They are
not, generally speaking, innovative scholarship and, at their worst, take up a
substantial amount of time on site (with the most decadent running for over 40
1189
minutes) thereby cutting into our time actually spent looking at the
archaeology (although as I noted in an earlier and not-entirely-well-received
post, spending time actually on site may be overrated: <a
ssons-from-th.html">Lessons from the Borders of Attica</a>). <a
eWriter/ASCSASiteReport.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-
alt="ASCSASiteReport"
Writer/ASCSASiteReport_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> That being
said, site reports do provide the impetus to dig deeper into the historiography
of a site. After all, it is generally because scholars have written about
these places that they appear on the ASCSA itinerary in the first place!
It would be disingenuous to ignore the scholarly debate that makes the site, in
fact, something worth seeing. Moreover, it would be inhumane to expect the
Mellon Professor who leads the trips to prepare a bibliography for every
site. The students must be involved in the presentation of the site, if
for no other reason than to drive home the point that sites in the Greek
landscape are largely products of an academic discourse. The real
issue, however, is balancing the need to be aware of the archaeological
discourse as emerging professionals in the discipline and the dreadful tedium of
site reports, which are inevitably more boring than the archaeology of the site
itself. Moreover, having at least one individual at the site who has read
over all of the excavation reports does make viewing the site more
interesting. The real issue is, then, how do you enforce the
historiographical rigor and ensure at least one very well-informed interlocutor
on site without crushing boredom of site reports? What I have done is
prepare short papers on the site which provides a good bit of descriptive and
when applicable historiographic information on each site. As I have noted,
this doesn't necessary always succeed in engaging the students in the place, but
if these short papers were distributed prior to arrival on the site, they would
not only provide an introduction to the place, but also form a handy reference
on site. They might be slightly more work for the Regular Members, but
they have the advantage of coming together to form the basis for a guide to
important Greek sites at the end of the program. The downside of this,
of course, is that it does take away the experience of lecturing on site -- an
important skill for academics who might want to lead study tours or give site
tours in the future. Moreover, the Regular Member who is responsible for
the site itself, must still be able to engage the material remains at the
site. The best alternative might be a combined system where each student
must give one formal (15-25 minute) site report and otherwise provide short
papers (2-3 pages) on each site for which they are responsible. When the
School visits the site, the students should point out features in their short
papers, but cannot go on for more than a few minutes. It's an
inelegant solution. I know. I've appended my site report from
yesterday to this post and some photos of the Byzantine Church of Holy Apostles
below. <a
eWriter/Holy_Apostles_From_Areopagus.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px;
height="272" alt="Holy_Apostles_From_Areopagus"
Writer/Holy_Apostles_From_Areopagus_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> 
1190
The Church of the Holy Apostles The earliest remains on the site appear
to be a Nymphaeum of the 2nd C. A.D. The church dates to the late 10th or early
11th century and marks it the earliest standing Middle Byzantine buildings in
Athens. Earlier churches, however, appear to have all been destroyed (John
Mangoutis (9th c.), Prof. Elias sto staropazaro (10th? c.), Taxiarchs sto
staropazaro (Early 11th ? c.). The church stood in the Solaki neighborhood
probably the name of an important Athenian family who lived nearby. The church
evidently remained in continuous use from the time of its construction serving
the residents of this area of the Agora. There is evidence for at least 4 major
modifications from its original construction until the 16th, 17th,and 19th
century including the construction of numerous tombs under the Middle Byzantine
floor level. Renovation work carried out in the 1954-1956 removed most of the
later additions and restored the church to its Byzantine form. The church was
first noted by Lenoir in 1839 and photographed by Lambakis in 1890 The plan
of the church is a tetraconch. The western apse, however, had largely been
destroyed during modifications which extended the western end of the nave into
an elongated narthex. The basic plan of the building, however, evokes typical
cross-in-square type architecture with four columns (three of Hymettian marble
with spoliated capitals) supporting a Attic-type octagonal dome on pendentives
(triangular sections of a sphere). The masonry is cloisonn√© type with double
layers of brick in horizontal courses (cf. Os. Loukas Theotokos church). The
vertical joins between the bricks received pseudo-kufic design (cf. Kapnekarea,
Ay. Theodoroi, Os. Loukas, Soter Lykodemou). Further defining the exterior the
building are a series of 5 dentulated frieze courses. The courses not only frame
the windows, but coincide with the major architectural divisions of the
building. The topmost course marked the eaves of the apse and the second course
marking the springing of the interior vaults. The windows are of the arcade-
type. The windows and masonry provide a date for the building based on
Megaw‚Äôs typology of church architecture. The arcade-type windows (cf. Skripou
(9th) and Moni Petraki (10th)) are his earliest type window. The well-wrought
Ps.-Kufic masonry design is 10th-11th in date. While the dating of the
church makes it contemporary with the major wave of Middle Byzantine church
building in Athens, the design of the church is distinct. Despite its cross-in-
square core, an octagonal shape is formed by the four major apses which project
beyond the core of the building and alternate with four smaller apses at the
angles between the cross arms. This octagonal plan has parallels with buildings
of the more imposing cross-domed-octagon types (cf. Panayia Lykodemou, the
Katholikon Os. Loukas, and Daphni). The cross arms of Ay. Apostoloi extend
beyond the northern and southern walls evoking free-cross building like the
Koumbelidiki at Kastoria. The most obvious problem that the architect needed to
overcome was joining a centralized, tetraconch plan with the western narthex.
This architect managed this with some elegance by adding two lateral spaces on
either side of the western apse and piercing the northwest and southwest apses
with doors. The wall of the western apse guides the visitor toward the doors in
its flanking apses thereby unifying the lateral space of the domed narthex with
the centralized plan of the church. It does not work perfectly but it is the
best solution among the Middle Byzantine churches in Greece. A. Frantz,
The Church of the Holy Apostles. Agora XX. Princeton 1971. A.
Lenoir, L‚Äôarchitecture monastique. Vol. 1. Paris 1852. H. Megaw,
‚ÄúThe Chronology of Some Middle-Byzantine Churches,‚Äù BSA 32 (1931-
1932), 90-130. <a
eWriter/Holy_Apostles.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width:
alt="Holy_Apostles"
1191
Writer/Holy_Apostles_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a>
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: David
IP: 71.173.184.141
URL:
DATE: 03/07/2008 06:02:42 AM
It would also help if there were a ten minute cap on site reports, forcing
students to define what is most significant about the site.
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TITLE: Thisvi Pottery at Thespies
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: thisvi-pottery
DATE: 03/06/2008 12:04:54 AM

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On Tuesday <a href="http://isthmia.osu.edu/teg/">Tim Gregory</a> and I
traveled to Thespies (Ancient Thesipeai) in Boeotia to look at the pottery from
the Ohio Boeotia Expedition (OBE). The OBE was a intensive pedestrian
survey project conducted by Gregory from 1979-1982. While it have been
published in a general way, the ceramics from the project do not have a proper,
published catalogue. Moreover, we think that it will be possible to
discuss the results of the project in a more sophisticated way by converting the
maps and data recorded in the OBE notebooks into database and GIS. Or at
least this is what we hope. As I have mentioned before, the impetus for
revisiting the OBE pottery and data is the work of <a
orion_archaeological_project/index.html">Archie Dunn and colleagues on the
Acropolis and City Center of Ancient Thisvi</a>. The hope is that we can
bring the survey data in some sort of conversation with the findings of his
work. <a
eWriter/ThespiesMuseum.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-
alt="ThespiesMuseum"
1192
Writer/ThespiesMuseum_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> The pottery

that we found (cleverly labeled with the Greek letters OXAIO -- Ohio) derived
from the several survey transects across the Thisvi plain and from work on the
island of Kouveli in the Corinthian Gulf. Much of the pottery appears to
date to Late Antiquity, but we did see some earlier material. It was
heartening that we could actually find some (perhaps all) of the pottery from
that project in the Thespies storerooms after over 20 years! It was
sufficiently well labeled that it appears that we can understand the provenience
of the artifacts. We now need to go back to the notebooks and see if we
can correlate the material that we found with descriptions of transects and
sites from the survey. It looks like this will be feasible. 
<a
eWriter/ThisviPottery.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width:
0px" height="244" alt="ThisviPottery"
Writer/ThisviPottery_thumb.jpg" width="118" align="right" border="0"></a> One of
the interesting exercises in this kind of undertaking is that it forces me to
think about larger issues in the storage, labeling, and even sampling of
pottery. In fact, I was having a conversation just the other evening with
some of the <a href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/index.php/admission-
membership/memberships#regular">Regular Members</a> about how excavations and
surveys sample pottery that they record with formal catalogue entries and enter
into long term storage. Most museums in the Eastern Mediterranean struggle
to maintain the vast collections of pottery in ways that ensures their long term
availability for scholars to restudy (and this is particularly true of context
and survey pottery). At the same time, our methodologies call for ever
more robust samples from both the surface and from excavated contexts, ensuring
that we will continue to push the reasonable (and perhaps absolute) limits of
storage space. Even projects who build their own storerooms rarely find
the resources to maintain them indefinitely (like the massive storerooms
maintained by, say, the <a href="http://www.agathe.gr/">Athenian Agora</a> or
the <a href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/index.php/excavationcorinth">Excavations at
Corinth</a>). There is no real solution for the storage problems here --
we will continue to sample the landscape in accordance with current definitions
of methodological rigor -- but it does reinforce the importance of labeling,
documenting, and preparing the material for storage so that the maximum amount
of data is preserved for future scholars. It goes without saying that the
material from the OBE would be useless without the notebooks, and these
notebooks were not kept with the pottery at the museum. It's fair to say
that Tim Gregory (and myself) were the only people capable of tying these
artifacts to their place in the landscape. <a
eWriter/ThespiesLandscape.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-
alt="ThespiesLandscape"
Writer/ThespiesLandscape_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a>
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TITLE: Episode 5: Basecamp
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: episode-5-basec
DATE: 03/05/2008 12:41:15 AM

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<h5><a
isode-4-forme.html"></a></h5> <a
style="margin: 0px 10px 0px 0px" height="164" alt="BaseCampRO"
Writer/BaseCampRO.jpg" width="244" align="left" border="0"> </a> Episode 5 of
<a
Cypriot</a> is now posted. This episode again focuses on the social
dynamic of archaeological field work as we started to see in <a
isode-4-forme.html">Episode 4</a>. Unlike Episode 4, however, Episode 5
emphasized living, eating, and working together as a good opportunity for
intellectually productive debate and discussion. One of our favorite
topics of discussion involves the nature and goals of the <a
Project</a>. At present we are not a pure field school or training
project, but have many elements of that kind of project. For example, we
try to introduce our students to many aspects of archaeological work, and this
is particularly important because most of our students do not come with a
background of archaeology. We also take the students to important sites on
the island, talk with them about the history of Cyprus, and even run informal
archaeological method seminars. On the other hand, our primary
responsibility is our fieldwork at Pyla-Koutsopetria, and this
responsibility shapes our goal to document our results in a timely and complete
way. So we are (to use my word of the year) a hybrid project. 
<a
eWriter/PetrouBrothers.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-
alt="PetrouBrothers"
Writer/PetrouBrothers_thumb.jpg" width="244" align="right" border="0"></a>Part
of the excitement of being a project that is part field school and part field
project is that we constantly evaluate and critique our day-to-day activities
to determine whether we are fulfilling our obligations both to our
1194
research and to our students. <a

href="http://home.messiah.edu/~dpettegrew/">David Pettegrew</a> and I, as this
short will show, have differing opinions on how this balance should be
struck. We've had some of the debates, in fact, right here in this blog:
<a
eld_school_or.html">Field school or field project?</a> and <a
chaeology_as_.html">Archaeology as Field School, or why Bill Caraher is
certainly wrong</a>. Most of our discussions (and arguments), however,
play out over meetings, lunches, dinners, and the odd cocktail party at our
(dramatically named) "Basecamp", the Petrou Brothers Holiday Apartments in
downtown Larnaka. One perspective to this discussion is that all
archaeology is in some ways a field school (and I recognize the risk of sounding
sappy here). Both the student and the archaeologist are constantly
learning and teaching one another through their regular interaction. In
fact, I often tell my wife, Susan, who often regrets abandoning her academic
study of archaeology, that you learn far more about archaeology from your
colleagues and students the field than you can in a classroom. Much of the
most intense archaeological debates do not take place in the remote seminar
rooms, but in the far more modest and chaotic confines of the basecamp.
 A few technical notes The video is all in <a
of <a
vey on Cyprus</a>, and you can read the commentaries on the first four
shorts (with links to those shorts) below. <a
Writer/ArtifactsJourneyRO_1.jpg" width="110" border="0"></a> <a
isode-4-forme.html"><img height="74" alt="FormerStudentRO"
1195
Writer/FormerStudentRO_1.jpg" width="110" border="0"></a>
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COMMENT:
IP: 130.127.64.160
URL:
DATE: 03/05/2008 11:09:01 PM
I think BASECAMP is my favorite episode so far because it gives a good raw
flavor of the theoretical polarities within each field project. Good job. I may
not know the scene too well, but I've personally never seen such documentary
honesty before. This is serious stuff.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Bill C
IP: 194.219.34.195
DATE: 03/06/2008 05:42:22 AM
Kostis,!
!
Thanks!!
!
Bill
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TITLE: Felix Vondracek and History and the University of North Dakota
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
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BASENAME: felix-vondracek
DATE: 03/03/2008 11:05:29 PM

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Dakota</a>'s <a href="http://www2.und.edu/our/125th/">125th-iversary</a>, I am
serializing some short biographies of important members in the history of the <a
href="http://www.und.edu/dept/histdept/">Department of History</a>. 
Felix Vondracek was one the Department of History's most controversial
figures and longest serving faculty members. He earned the enmity of
several of the important voices in the history of the Department, particularly
1196
Robert Wilkins and Elwyn Robinson, ensuring that his place in the annals of the
Department was generally a negative one. Despite his shortcomings as a
colleague, Vondracek did see the department through a time of growth and can
receive at least some credited for seeing the Department from the <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/DHChapter_2.html">Era of Libby
and Perkins</a> to the modern day. With the death of <a
arence-perkin.html">Clarence Perkins</a> in the winter 1946, the department,
recently reunited after 20 years of being divided into departments of American
and European history, rallied to ensure that his classes were taught in the
spring semester. A replacement for his position as department head, although far
less onerous post than in the modern, highly-bureaucratized, university, was
nevertheless required. Dean Bek designated Felix Vondracek, the senior member of
the department, as acting department head. Vondracek was known around campus for
his photographic memory and booming voice, which on clear summer days could be
heard across the quad. He had recently returned to the department from his
wartime service, which comprised primarily of training cadets at the University.
Libby had hired him in 1929 in the Department of American History although at
the time he was struggling to complete his Ph.D at Columbia with <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/2382730">a dissertation on the foreign policy
of Czechoslovakia</a>. He led a department composed of Robert Wilkins, Louis
Geiger, and Elwyn Robinson. All three held particularly negative views of
Vondracek as both a scholar and a leader of the department. In later accounts
they were confident that Dean Bek shared those views and resisted officially
naming Vondracek Department Head. Despite the reluctance of the previous
dean and the reservations of the faculty, the department had no choice. The
retirement of Libby and the death of Perkins had left the department at less
then full strength with only four faculty members. Robinson‚Äôs frail health
made him unsuitable and Geiger and Wilkins were newly arrived and lacked the
Ph.D. This situation and the death of William Bek in 1948 led Bek‚Äôs
replacement Bonner Witmer to elevate Vondracek to the position of department
head. Almost immediately Robinson, Wilkins, and Geiger had difficulty
with Vondracek. Both Wilkins and Robinson saw Vondracek as easily offended,
insecure, and absent during most of his term as department head. They
criticized his apparent lack of intellectual substance, his failure to provide
strong administrative leadership in the department, and his regard for his
position as department head as a means to gain a larger salary. As a typical
example of Vondracek‚Äôs behavior, Wilkins and Robinson both complained that he
used his position as department head to monopolize summer teaching in order to
supplement his income despite the fact that salaries for junior faculty remained
substantially below the national average even amidst post war prosperity.
Their criticism of Vondracek for this and other matters eventually required
personal visits not only to Dean Witmer but also to President West and his
successor Starcher. The consistently vituperative critique of Vondracek by
Robinson, Geiger, and others cast a long shadow over Vondracek‚Äôs term as
department head. There criticisms tended to obscure some key developments in the
department during that time which may give credit to Vondracek‚Äôs leadership.
Perhaps the most damning of the criticisms leveled by Robinson is that Vondracek
hindered the department‚Äôs growth from the mid-1940s to the mid-1950s during
which the university itself expanded markedly. While it is difficult to assess
the intensity and commitment with which Vondracek acted, the annual reports of
the department from the 1950s to the early 1960s nevertheless show that he
regularly requested additional resources for the department including better
offices, additional library resources, and even provisions for an archivist for
the expanding <a href="http://www.library.und.edu/Collections/oglmain.html">Orin
1197
G. Libby Manuscript Collection</a>. The manuscript collection was a pet project

of Robinson, Wilkins, and Geiger, none of whom got along well with Vondracek.
Moreover, Robinson‚Äôs and Wilkins‚Äôs critique obscures the key role that
Vondracek played in bringing to the university an ambitious, competent, and
active group of young faculty members. At the death of Perkins, the department
only registered three faculty members, down form the six members of during the
days of Libby's and Perkins's split department. Vondracek worked to increase the
number of faculty members steadily during his term as chair. Wilkins
begrudgingly notes that Vondracek was either good or very lucky in attracting
faculty members to the department, and may have been equally as instrumental in
driving them out. It should be noted, however, that one of the byproducts
of hiring good and ambitious young faculty is that one is apt to lose some of
them on account of their greater access to other opportunities. By 1948,
Vondracek had hired two Missourians, George Lemmer a fellow graduate student of
Geiger‚Äôs at the University of Missouri, and Robert Kirkpatrick who held an
M.A. from Washington University, bringing the faculty of the Department back to
5 members. Kirkpatrick earned a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford and departed in
1950 to be replaced by John Parker. Parker was the first native North Dakotan to
teach in the Department. He was a graduate student at the University of Michigan
and met Felix Vondracek purely by chance at a meeting of the Mississippi Valley
Historical Association in Madison, Wisconsin. According to Parker, he had
introduced himself to Vondracek after seeing the University of North Dakota as
his affiliation. Vondracek hired him quickly after that. While Parker‚Äôs
training was in European History, he primarily taught U.S. Economic history
which was a required course for students in the School of Commerce. The
faculty of the early 1950s, however, also proved difficult for Vondracek and the
turnover in faculty fed a period of instability in the department. While his
relationship with Robinson and Wilkins was cool at best, he did not get along at
all with Lemmer, Geiger, and Parker. At one point, Vondracek famously told
Lemmer and Geiger that President West saw them as ‚Äúdead-wood". Moreover,
he seems to have verbally attacked John Parker for reasons that remain
obscure. This increasingly hostile work environment took its tool on the
physical health of Parker leading him to resign with an ulcer in 1952. He
completed his Ph.D. in library science and served for almost 40 years as the <a
href="http://bell.lib.umn.edu/">James Ford Bell Library</a> of rare books at the
University of Minnesota. Lemmer soon left as well to take a position as a
temporary position as a civilian historian with the Air Force. During this time
he wrote a letter to Dean Witmer very critical of Felix Vondracek and this
prompted President West to fire Lemmer. Efforts by Robinson, Wilkins, and
Dean Witmer to convince Lemmer to write a formal apology and return to the
University were unsuccessful. At the same time as Lemmer‚Äôs and Parker‚Äôs
departure, Louis Geiger accepted a position as a Fulbright Fellow at the
University of Helsinki, Finland and as a Ford Fellow at Harvard University and
Stanford University. These departures, both temporary and permanent marked a
period of instability and change at both the University and the Department. John
Harnsberger, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Minnesota, replaced John
Parker. Jerry DeWitt, a graduate student at Yale University, replaced Lemmer.
Fred Winkler was invited to replace Geiger for his two years of leave. In 1960,
Playford Thorson came to the University as a graduate student at the University
of Minnesota having earned an M.A. from the University of New Mexico. He would
serve for over three decades as the department‚Äôs expert in Scandinavian
history. The new blood in the department initially calmed the turmoil incited by
the conflicts between Lemmer, Parker, and Vondracek. The calm did not persist,
however, as soon DeWitt and Harnsberger chaffed under Vondracek‚Äôs
leadership. The record for the early years of the 1960s and the end of the
1198
1950s is poor, but it appears to have been a period of growing discontent with
the leadership in the department as the early 1960s marked a significant
watershed in departmental history. Robinson, Geiger, and others complained
to President Starcher, Dean Witmer, and ultimately the newly created Vice
President of Academic Affairs (the predecessor to the position of Provost at the
University) William Koenker about Vondracek‚Äôs lack of leadership in the
department. While initially there was no response, eventually the departure of
DeWitt, Harnsberger, Wilkins, and Geiger during the early 1960s drew
administration‚Äôs attention to the department. Robinson opined that these
departures in the context of the constant complaints regarding Vondracek‚Äôs
leadership forced the administrations hand in 1962. President Starcher, however,
had been inclining toward a policy of rotating department heads. Several
long serving department heads like Libby‚Äôs old friend George Wheeler, had
resisted as these men typically held their positions for life, but over time
nearly all of the old guard were replaced. The policy of Starcher, while
immediately beneficial to an embattled department like history, was part of the
gradual expansion of administrative power at the University largely at the
expense of the faculty. Ousting long standing department heads and replacing
them with rotating faculty limited the ability of faculty groups, like a group
of powerful, longstanding, and conservative faculty called "the Wranglers", to
develop sustainable power bases and shifted some of the responsibility for
continuity of policy to the administrative level. In the Department of History,
a petition submitted to Starcher by Thorson, an emerging member of a younger,
more liberal minded, and progressive group of faculty members called the
‚ÄúYoung Turks‚Äù, and endorsed by five of the members of the department led to
the ouster of Vondracek. The next year, Starcher tried to offer the department
head to Thorson, who refused, and Robinson briefly assumed the post until his
chronic health issues led him to resign after less than a year. Glenn
Smith, a newcomer to the department hired in 1962, followed him but briefly as
chair. Vondracek continued to teach in the Department for another decade,
finally retiring in 1971 after serving 43 years in the Department of
History. Other Short Biographies of major figures in the Department of
History at UND: <h5><a
Dakota</a> <a
Dakota</a> <a
ttites-in-nor.html">Charles Carter and the Hittites in North Dakota</a></h5>
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Vincent O'Reilly (1960)
EMAIL: belisarius10541@yahoo.com
IP: 74.101.33.167
1199
URL:
DATE: 08/22/2010 05:55:06 PM
I studied Medieval History under Dr. Vondracek but until reading this had no
idea of the nature of the turmoil that surrounded him... although I knew that
there had been turmoil. He was certainly one of the more colorful professors at
UND in the 1950s with a taste for mildly off color historical tidbits with which
he would entertain us. Both during lectures and in after class discussions he
would literally be in your face. Class with Dr. Vondracek was exciting and
stimulating though I have always felt that his phenomenal memory for facts
interfered with his looking very deeply into the whys of history. Of Dr. Geiger
I remember little except an impression of his being all business. There may have
been little love between Vondracek and Dr. Wilkins but I enjoyed and benefitted
from both their classes, and from Dr. Vondracek developed a lifelong interest in
Byzantine studies. Of Dr. Wilkins I would say that he was one of the most kindly
and pleasant men I have ever met. If it is not inappropriate to say so of one's
mentor, I would call him friend. He would have fit nicely into the Prairie Home
Companion show.
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TITLE: Lessons from the Borders of Attica
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: lessons-from-th
CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 03/03/2008 12:47:20 AM

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I spent Friday at the Border Forts of Northwest Attica (which I had scouted
some weeks ago: <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2008/02/ph
yli-panakton.html">Phyli, Panakton, Eleutherai, Aigosthena in the
Rain</a>). The weather started out cold and cloudy, but by mid-afternoon
gave way to bright sunshine. I learned two important lessons leading the
<a href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/index.php/admission-
membership/memberships#regular">Regular Members</a> on a day trip. First,
despite the relatively similar background of the <a
membership/memberships#regular">Regular Members</a>, they engaged the sites that
we visited in very different ways. (Most readers of this blog recognize my
interest in ways of viewing the landscape. If not here are some earlier
posts: <a
ur-views-of-t.html">Four Views of the Corinthian Landscape</a>, <a
re-views-of-t.html">More Views of the Ancient Landscape</a>). Some staggered
around in a bit of fog. Others ambled with the stooped gate of an
archaeologist, while others still puzzled over buildings or spend time taking
photographs. Some didn't appear to look at the site at all, finding a nice
seat on some antiquity and smoke and chat or hung out on the beach taking in the
dramatic scenery of the harbor at Porto Germano. I tend to think about how
1200
I would go about documenting the site; that is, I tend to think about the site
as an archaeological problem. The penultimate site of the day, for
example, Aigosthena is relatively undocumented and produced the widest range of
responses from the Regular Members. In an effort to inform their reading
of the landscape, I provided the requisite textual description of the site,
bibliography, and plan: <a
eWriter/clip_image002.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width:
alt="clip_image002" hspace="12"
Writer/clip_image002_thumb.jpg" width="200" align="left" border="0"></a>
Aigosthena Unlike the nearby Eleutherai, Panakton, or Phylai,
Aigosthena was a city under the control of Megara. The site nevertheless had
strategic value as it controls the major route running along the north coast of
the Corinthian gulf potentially. From Aigosthena a force could either continue
south toward the Megarian ports of Pagai and Panormus or turn inland through the
Villia Valley toward plain of Mazi/Oinoe and the major passes to the Athenian
Saronic coastline. The most prominent feature at the site is the imposing early
4th-early 3rd century polygonal fortification walls. Ober has suggested that the
Athenians helped to fortify the site during the 4th century. The polygonal
masonry of the walls encompasses a low acropolis and extends south toward the
sea in a technique reminiscent of the Athenian long walls. Towers to the south
of the site linked Aigosthena to the vicinity of the mountainous region of the
Vathychoria and a system of towers that would have communicated with the Mazi
plain. Finally, the long walls would have provided Athens with a fortified naval
stronghold on the gulf of Corinth. The later history of the site is
relatively undocumented. There is evidence for Roman activity near the coast
with the remains of a cemetery and perhaps a villa. Orlandos excavated a large 5
aisled early Christian basilica some 100 m from the coast. It had mosaic floors
and a cruciform baptistery to the south. The church shows multiple phases, but
probably dates largely the late 5th century. Atop the church is a triconch
cruciform middle Byzantine church perhaps dating to the 12th c. with many in
built inscriptions and spolia. The acropolis was clearly refortified at a
‚Äúlate date‚Äù; it is tempting to associate the rubble and mortar walls with
the settlement of the Late Roman period. A Frankish date might also be possible
and is perhaps more in keeping with the construction style. The Venetian or
Ottoman period saw a small group of buildings in the upper acropolis ‚Äì
including an olive press and a church of Ay. Georgios. It seems likely that the
buildings on the acropolis which appear to be a monastic structure date from
this period as well. Benson, E.F., ‚ÄúAigosthena,‚Äù JHS 15 (1895)
314-24. Giannoulidou, K. ‚ÄúAigosthena,‚Äù Platon 16 (1964) 143-
172. Sakellariou, M. and N. Pharaklas, Megaris, Aigosthena, Ereneia
(Ancient Greek Cities 14; Athens 1972). Orlandos, A. ‚ÄúAnaskaphi tis
basilikis ton Aigsothenon,‚Äù Praktika 1954, 129-142. Many
archaeologists would argue, of course, that sites are a kind of text and that as
individuals we engaged texts differently depending upon our own
background. The act of reading traditional literary texts, both in
antiquity and the modern world, has even generated a considerable corpus of
scholarship. In contrast to the ways of reading literary texts, reading an
archaeological texts can be a much more visible process. There isn't so
much a correct and incorrect way of engaging an archaeological site (any more
than there is a "right" way to read a text), although I suppose some have the
training, experience, and interest to read a site more carefully and take more
away from the experience. I gave the students about 2 hours at the site
1201
reasoning that it took about a half an hour to walk from the coast, where we had
eaten lunch, to the acropolis. So, another hour to look around and an hour
of walking time would provide almost everyone with enough time. Some
students took the full time, others took only a small fraction of the time
allotted. <a
eWriter/AigosthenaSM2.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-
alt="AigosthenaSM2"
Writer/AigosthenaSM2_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a>
 Aigosthena I am not sure whether the students who were done more
quickly were bored or not, but I suspect that they were. And this boredom
(or "site fatigue") perhaps explains the second lesson that I learned: When
leading a trip, never leave anything to a vote. We departed Aigosthena at
around 3:30 pm, and I reckoned that it would take slightly over an hour and a
half to get back to Athens. 5 pm is generally when we return to the <a
href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/">American School</a>, so if we stopped at another
site -- namely Eleutherai which was only a short detour on our way back -- it
would probably get back later than usual, probably after 6 or even (with
traffic) 6:30. So rather than unilaterally decided to return later than
usual, I asked the Regular Members what they wanted to do. It was a close
vote but it seemed to me that the majority of students wanted to go to one more
site and did not mind returning late. So, we went to the site and since
the vote was close, I asked that we visit the site quickly as a compromise to
those who wanted to get back to Athens sooner. Here's the interesting
part. The students who didn't want to go Eleutherai decided not to
go. (This is like not paying taxes because "I didn't vote for the
guy!"). Instead they stayed on the bus (or went to a nearby coffee shop
for coffee). My logic for putting the issue to a vote was because I felt
that we would get back to Athens later than usual. Sitting on the bus
didn't help us get back to Athens any sooner and replaced looking at another
(relatively impressive site) with staring idly at the inside of a rather generic
tour bus or drinking coffee at an equally generic coffee shop. That was an
unanticipated way of viewing a site, indeed. <a
eWriter/EleutheraiSM3.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width:
alt="EleutheraiSM3"
Writer/EleutheraiSM3_thumb.jpg" width="400" border="0"></a> The
opposite of the inside of a tour bus
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Maddy Bray
1202
IP: 76.170.0.106
DATE: 03/04/2008 12:23:10 AM
What better way to experience Greece than to tour its many beautiful cafes?
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: David
IP: 71.173.184.141
URL:
DATE: 03/04/2008 06:56:10 AM
The American School should virtualize their trips so students don't even have to
leave their PC. Right!
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TITLE: Clarence Perkins and History at the University of North Dakota
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
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BASENAME: clarence-perkin
DATE: 02/28/2008 10:07:19 PM

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Dakota</a>'s 125th-iversay, I will continue to look back at some of the key
players in the Department of History's development within the University.
As before, I am not going to dwell right now on the well-known story of <a
href="http://www.library.und.edu/Collections/og49.html">Orin G. Libby</a>, but
will shine some light on a less well-known, but no less important figure in our
Department's history, Clarence Perkins. Despite his nearly 20 year career
at the University, Clarence Perkins remains an ill-defined figure in the history
of the discipline at UND. His significance was largely overshadowed by his more
cantankerous colleague, Orin G. Libby. Nevertheless, Perkins played a key role
in the expansion and development of the discipline at the University. Trained at
Harvard, he had taught in the Department of History at Ohio State University
from 1909-1920 when he was wooed to the University of North Dakota by President
Thomas Kane. Kane and Libby had clashed during late 'teens and particular
controversy arose over Libby's seemingly irregular hiring practices.
Almost from his first days on campus, Libby had criticized Kane's management
style and suitability to lead the university. A particularly violent
disagreement over Libby's right to hirer additional faculty in the Department of
History had led Kane to split the Department of History into two parts, as a
largely punitive measure against Libby. From 1920 until after Libby's
retirement in 1945, there would be a Department of American History under
Libby's chairmanship and a Department of European History Clearance
Perkins was hired by Kane to lead the Department of European History.
Affable, jolly, generous, and prone to gossip, there is no evidence that he and
the more taciturn Libby got on well. Perkins had studied at an
undergraduate at Syracuse University and received his Ph.D. at Harvard in
1908. His thesis was a <a
1203
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/76995357">The History of the Knights Templar

in England</a> and he taught medieval and modern English History.
Early in his career he produced a series of prominent articles on the Knights
Templar in both the American Historical Review (1910) and in the
English Historical Review (1909, 1910, 1930) but like scholars of an
earlier era he was qualified to teach in almost any European field from Ancient
to current affairs. During the 1920s, he demonstrated his wide ranging
competence in writing a well-regarded high school textbook, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/2641900">The History of European Peoples</a>
published by Rand, McNally, and Company in Chicago and stretching to nearly
1000 pages, as well as several study guides for the Ohio State Bookstore in
Columbus. Throughout the 1930s he continued to write popular texts like
<a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/3647452">Man‚Äôs Advancing
Civilization</a> (1934 and 1937) and <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/2989847">Ancient History</a> (1936). In
1940 he published <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1403922">Development
of European Civilization</a> with two former colleagues at UND, Clarence
Matterson and Reginald Lovell. These and other books provided him with
some income, particularly during the dark years of the late 1920s and 1930s when
the collapsing grain prices and then the Great Depression wracked the state and
gutted the University budget. Throughout his career at UND Perkins was a
successful teacher and scholar who had a national reputation and regularly spent
time away doing research both in Europe and at major American universities like
the University of Texas. Perkins‚Äôs who had far less baggage than Libby
with the administration and took time to cultivate good relations with the Kane
administration. This better relationship enabled him to hire good quality
faculty throughout the 1920s like Claudius Johnson (Ph.D. Chicago in 1927) in
1921, Albert Hyma (Ph.D. Michigan 1922) and Fletcher Brown in 1922, and Clyde
Ferrel (Ph.D. Wisconsin) in 1923. In the later 1920s, Perkins‚Äô department
hired Phillip Green (Ph.D. Chicago) and Donald Nicholson (Ph.D. Wisconsin).
Perkins, like Libby, often relied on personal connections with colleagues to
find capable professors for their departments. In an interview conducted in the
late 1970s, Robert Wilkins, whom Perkins hired in the 1940s, opined that Perkins
sought candidates who were likely to be comfortable at the University and over
time relied less upon the recommendations of colleagues at more established East
Coast institutions. In fact, Perkins had hired Wilkins on the advice of fellow
Syracuse alumnus, F. Lee Benns, a noted scholar at Indiana University where
Wilkins had received his B.A. and M.A. Despite the relatively good
credentials held by many of the faculty members of the 1920s, their appointments
in the two Departments did not necessarily coincide with their increasingly
specialized training. For example, Felix Vondracek, a specialist in Central
European history found himself teaching the Survey of American history in
Libby's American History department; Phillip Green, in contrast, a specialist in
American history, primarily taught European history in Perkins‚Äô European
History Department. Notwithstanding the odd assignments, the faculty of both
Departments tended to be productive with Libby and Perkins setting the tone for
the more junior faculty. Perkins, in particular, took pains to note the
accomplishments of his faculty in his annual reports to the president.
Perkins was particularly concerned with the difficulty in retaining qualified
faculty, a problem characteristic of the university as a whole and reflected in
the Departments of History. L. Geiger, in his book <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1107281">University of the Northern Plains: A
History of the University of North Dakota 1883-1958</a>, considered ‚Äúthe
chief cause of the turnover was the uneasy relations between the president and
the faculty.‚Äù It is perhaps unsurprising, however, that this particular factor
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does not appear prominent in the History Department's annual reports to the
President. Perkins stressed in his reports throughout the 1920s that the pay for
faculty was too low if the University hoped to compete with Eastern colleges
which regularly paid as much as 50% more than UND. In practice, it was not just
eastern universities that hired away qualified faculty from UND; one member of
the faculty, G.P. Hammond, was hired to teach Latin American History at the
University of Arizona. A. Hyma, who became a noted scholar of the Renaissance
moved on to teach at the University of Michigan (his major contributions to the
Christian Renaissance have been <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/82511474">collected here</a>). An
instructor or even Assistant Professor was unlikely to earn over $2000 a year.
Salaries from the mid-1930s through the early 1940s stood below the levels of
the turn of the century, and while jobs were scarce throughout the U.S. many of
the better qualified junior faculty were able to obtain positions
elsewhere. Perkins understood this reality, and admitted as much to
President West in a letter when he conceded ‚ÄúI believe it is far better to get
men good enough to move and have them stay only two or three years here than to
land mediocrities who stay indefinitely.‚Äù Perkin's continued to replace
faculty who left, spending considerable time working to find teachers for the
European History department. The struggle, however, to keep a full compliment of
faculty was obvious: Nicholson left in 1935, Reginald Lovell the same year for
Willamette College in Oregon, Clarence Matterson left in 1939 left for Iowa
State University at Ames where he would eventually become department head,
Charles Morely left for Ohio State in 1942. These departures distressed
Perkins, but they did allow him to hire two men who made massive and enduring
contributions to the University: Robert Wilkins replaced Phillip Greene who
sought to return to his southern roots by taking a job at Queen‚Äôs College in
Charlotte, North Carolina. Perkins also hired Louis Geiger, a Ph.D. from the
University of Missouri, on the advice of former University of North Dakota
history alumnus <a
href="http://mulibraries.missouri.edu/collections/ellis.htm">Elmer
Ellis</a>. With Perkins's sudden death in 1946 (and Libby's retirement the
year previously), Geiger, Wilkins and Elwyn Robinson emerged as the most
influential members of the Department during the 1950s and 1960s. Other Short
Biographies: <a
Dakota</a> <a
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TITLE: More Views of the Ancient Landscape
STATUS: Publish
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1205

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BASENAME: more-views-of-t
DATE: 02/28/2008 01:30:49 AM

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I lead a trip to the border forts of Northwest Attica tomorrow (report and
photos on Monday!). Preparing for the trip was a good excuse to re-read
some of the classic descriptions of Attic topography. This region of
Attica has attracted continuous attention from the days of the Early Travelers
and the work of Hammond, Edmonson, and Ober did much to establish the
archaeological landscape of the region. (This post is in some ways an
extension of my post some weeks back <a
ur-views-of-t.html">Four Views of the Corinthian Landscape</a>) Much of
the work of Hammond and Edmonson was done with rather poor maps, and this
clearly influenced their reading of the topography. In particular
Hammond's peripatetic method brought together the ancient and modern landscape
of the area. His descriptions of the fortifications, roads, and mountain
passes depended upon modern features like roads and crops as well as the visible
remnants of the pre-modern landscape. A good example: N.G. L. Hammond,
"The Main Road from Boeotia to the Peloponnese," BSA 49 (1954),
108. <blockquote> "A second path leaves the road from Megara to Pagae at
a point before one reaches the watershed. Starting from this point on
climbs up through a pass between the two peaks for Mt. Korona, follows the ridge
between the two Vathikoria basins and drops down to Tower C. This path is
very well marked, and I noticed rut-marks in the rock-bed during the
ascent. This also took me one and a half hours of walking. Although
steeper than the road past Mikro Vathikhori to Tower C, it is fresher in the
summer. Both these paths were evidently practicable for carts in the past,
so that there were three carriageable roads leading into the Vathichoria area
from the Central Megarid." From Tower C a very steep path, fit only for a
man or pack-animal, leads into Attica. I climbed for one hour to a high
saddle on Mt. Pateras between points 976 and 1108. From there one descends
by an easy route down a long valley to reach Ayios Yeoryios in one hour, and the
Paliokhori of Koundoura in a futher one and a half hours, making three and half
hours in all from Tower C. From Tower F Buchon took a path 'par un chemin assez
facile' to the ridge west of Mr. Karidhi; from there he descended to Aegosthena,
a path which he described as follows... A further path begins from Tower F,
taking the same line as <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/162634518">Buchon</a>'s path, and then turns
around the end of a spur to join the main route over the saddle of Mt.
Karidhi. These three paths are, and always were, impracticable for carts;
they ascend the very steep slopes in short zig-zags, such as mules make."
</blockquote> In this simple description he is able to bring together
both the topography of the area as well as some of the historiography of the
places and routes. Because he spent so much time walking through the
landscape, he is able to describe it on a particularly human scale. Simple
things like the number of hours that it took to walk between sites in some ways
provides a much more meaningful measure of proximity than even the most precise
cartographic treatment of the space. Compare Hammond's description, for
example, to my marking out of the sites in <a
1206
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/NWAtticForts.kmz">this Google Earth

.kzm file</a> where Tower C, Tower F, and Ay. Yeoryios (Ag. Georgios) are marked
and visible on the Google Earth photos. (You'll need to download Google
Earth for this to work). As a final note, the <a
href="http://www.scsp.arts.gla.ac.uk/">Sydney Cyprus Survey Project</a>
introduced <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/51460580">their volume</a> with
an an imaginary encounter between their survey team and a farmer from the
past. This rather overt effort to link the landscape being created by the
modern survey archaeologist to the lived landscape of the past employs in an
imagined way many of the same techniques Hammond applied some 50 years before
without the fanciful or the theoretical baggage. 
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COMMENT:
IP: 130.127.64.160
URL:
DATE: 02/29/2008 11:37:42 AM
I hope you got a chance to also visit Hosios Meletios, the late 11th/12t c.
monastery that initiated a large monastic revival on Mount Kythairon. Good
stuff. If I remember correctly, it's not too far from Phyle.
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TITLE: Episode 4: Former Students Advice
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: episode-4-forme
DATE: 02/27/2008 12:18:34 AM

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<a
eWriter/FormerStudentRO_2.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px;
alt="FormerStudentRO"
Writer/FormerStudentRO_thumb.jpg" width="244" align="left" border="0"></a>
Episode 4 of <a
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Cypriot</a> is now posted. This episode best reflects <a

href="http://www.xanga.com/jpatrow">Joe Patrow</a>'s efforts to bring the
student and volunteer voice into the project's narration. He interviewed a
bunch of the students who worked on the <a
href="http://www.chss.iup.edu/pkap/">Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological
Project</a> in the past and asked them to give advice to future participants on
the project. The next three shorts will move a bit away from the
methodological concerns of a field project to the experience of the project's
participants. Their experiences reflect both their own background and our
efforts as directors to construct a meaningful experience for the
students. The latter is something that we talk about constantly as we
think about what we need to do to ensure not only a positive interpersonal
atmosphere for the students, but also a rewarding intellectual
environment. Without spoiling the movie, one thing that came out
clearly in the interviews was the intense experience of living and working
together. This has resonated with a conversation that I have had about 20
times over the last two weeks. As the <a
href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/">American School's</a> <a
href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/Membership/description.htm">Regular Program</a> is
coming to an end, the <a
href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/Membership/description.htm">Regular Members</a>
seem increasingly tired of the routine, tired of site reports, and perhaps most
predictably tired of the bus, the lunch table, the dinner table. The
tensions created by living in close quarters are as fundamental to the
archaeological experience as the repetitive tasks of field walking, excavating,
or artifact analysis. As I have noted before, living in <a
href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/about/facilities.htm">Loring Hall</a> is an
intense experience, especially for the students who are sometimes together for
over 12 hours a day. While most intense academic discourse carries with it
a personal tone as scholars attack one another arguments and assumptions, I
continue to wonder how the <a
side-looking.html">Loring Hall Experience</a> has shaped the discipline of
Classics and Greek Archaeology by forcing a sub-set of the discipline to have
the particularly unusual experience of knowing a large number of the individuals
in the field personally. A few technical notes The
everything that you see in these film shorts. We have <a
of <a
vey on Cyprus</a>, and you can read the commentaries on the first three
shorts (with links to those shorts) below. <a
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TITLE: Early Christian Architecture and Hybrid Space
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: early-christian
DATE: 02/26/2008 01:07:47 AM

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For my regular readers, you know that I have already posted on the topic of
Early Christian architecture and the hybrid at least three times, examining <a
lphi-mosaics.html">mosaics</a>, <a
igraphy-and-h.html">inscriptions</a>, and <a
igraphy-litur.html">imperial policy</a>. The last case study in my ongoing
research focuses on the Lechaion basilica outside of Corinth and looks at the
intersection of architecture and imperial policy a little more closely.
The Lechaion basilica was one of the largest basilica churches in the
Mediterranean at the time of its construction in the 6th century.
Initially excavated by D. Pallas over a series of campaigns in the late 1950s
and early 1960s, recent work has strongly suggested a Justinianic date for its
completion, placing it among the large number of Justinianic building projects
in the Corinth (G.D. R. Sanders and K. Slane, ‚ÄúCorinth: Late Roman
Horizons,‚Äù Hesperia 74 (2005), 291-292). There is little left of
the church today above the foundation level, the size alone makes the building
impressive. <a
1209

Writer/image_thumb_27.png" width="204" border="0"></a> <a
Writer/image_thumb_28.png" width="204" border="0"></a> <a
Writer/image_thumb_29.png" width="404" border="0"></a> Floor plan and
figures from Google Earth (if you have installed Google Earth you can <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/Lechaion_Basilica.kmz">click
here</a> for coordinates with bibliography) Not only did the church extend for over 150 m in length but it was
also adorned with spectacular decoration including opus sectile floors
(made of pieces of marble and slate cut into geometric patterns) and
Proconnesian marble (this is marble from the imperial marble quarries on islands
in the sea of Marmara). The presence of these elaborate touches in the
Lechaion church make it appear to be an imperial foundation. J.P. Sodini,
one of the foremost scholars of Early Christian architecture in Greece, noted
that the church reflected an "international style" (J. P. Sodini, ‚ÄúNote sur
deux variantes r√©gionales dans la basilique Gr√®ce et des Balkans,‚Äù 587).
Such an elaborate building would not be surprising, of course,
for the reign of Justinian. The emperor was known for founding churches
throughout the empire. The furnishing of the Lechaion church probably
served alongside its elaborate appointments to mark the church as having special
ties to the imperial capital. In particular, the long pathway in the
center of nave of the church linking the eastern chapel with a centrally placed
pulpit (or ambo). This feature, called a solea, is characteristic of
Justinianic architecture in Constantinople and appears very rarely in churches
in Greece. The centrally placed pulpit is also rare in Greece; typically
Greek ambos stand offset to either the north or the south of the axis of the
main nave. Other parts of the church, however, fit in
well with churches elsewhere in Greece. The colonnade separating the nave
from the flanking aisles is set up on raised stylobates (or platforms) and the
spaces between the columns are blocked off by low barrier setting the aisles
apart from the main nave. The western part of the church has a huge atrium
which does not have a central door providing access to the narthex (the western
hemicycle in the plan above is elevated above the floor of the atrium).
The eastern apse of the church features a synthonon -- a set of seats running
around the inside wall of the apse -- designated for the clergy. All these
features are characteristic of Greek churches, and their regularity in a Greek
context suggests that they fulfilled basic requirements of the particular kind
of liturgy practiced in Greece at this time. <a
eWriter/Lechaion.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width:
alt="Lechaion"
Writer/Lechaion_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> The
north aisle of the Lechaion basilica The combining of
1210
features from the capital and features from the provinces presents imperial
power in the context of local practice and forms. Thus, Lechaion provides
another example of hybridity in Early Christian architecture in Greece.
Imperial authority not only stands out in the context of the Lechaion church
but, perhaps more importantly, it is translated and coopted by the persistence
of characteristically Greek architecture forms. Such intermingling of
features evocative of different liturgical observations also occurs in other
Justinianic foundations in the west -- most notable San Vitale in Ravenna where
the famous mosaics of the Emperor and his wife Theodora almost certainly
represent features of the Constantinopolitan liturgy (see O.G. von Simson,
‚Äú1987. Sacred Fortress: Byzantine Art and Statecraft in Ravenna.
(Princeton 1947), 30 and T. Mathews, Clash of Gods. rev. ed.
(Princeton.2003), 171.). The importance of this
hybrid expression of the 6th century liturgy can only be fully understood in the
context of the 5th and 6th century ecclesiastical organization. Greece was
ecclesiastically part of the West at this time falling within the ecclesiastical
province of Illyricum Orientalis which was under the jurisdiction of the Bishop
of Rome (the Pope). Justinian's efforts to influence ecclesiastical
affairs in the West included making regular interference in Papal
politics. Moreover, the church at Lechaion (and San Vitale) provide
evidence that he sought to influence to some extent liturgical observation as
well. This would be consistent with the growing importance of the liturgy
in the political life of the 5th and 6th centuries. It was common, for
example, to voice opposition to imperial or ecclesiastical policies by excluding
the name of the emperor or offending bishops from the lists of officials
commemorated in the liturgy. Some emperors even went so far as to insert
particular prayers in the liturgy in an effort to impose their theological
positions on the ecclesiastical hierarchy and the faithful. It is important to note, however, that such bold expressions of
imperial authority over religious matters did not go unchallenged. The
translation of the imperial politics and authority into a local context often
required negotiation some of which took place in the way imperial authority was
manifest in Early Christian architecture. Just as <a
igraphy-and-h.html">epigraphy</a> and <a
lphi-mosaics.html">mosaic floors</a> served as places where the Christian
community negotiated varying understandings of being Christianity and created a
new model of Christian authority, so the architecture of imperial foundations
like the Lechaion basilica evoked both local and imperial influences.
Through features of the church common in a Greek context, the local
ecclesiastical hierarchy asserted its control over the space and the rituals
taking place there, while the emperor or his agents challenged that primacy
through bold allusions to the liturgy, architecture, and wealth of the imperial
capital. In such hybrid spaces neither side "won" this contest. Both
sides, rather, expressed their overlapping claims in ways that demanded that the
viewer continuously renegotiate their understanding of imperial and
ecclesiastical authority. Update: Check out
Kourelis's response to this post: <a
title="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/2008/02/priest-houses-sacred-or-
profane.html" href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/2008/02/priest-houses-sacred-
or-profane.html">http://kourelis.blogspot.com/2008/02/priest-houses-sacred-or-
profane.html</a>
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Maddy Bray
IP: 76.170.0.106
DATE: 02/26/2008 10:17:30 PM
Very interesting. Was it unusual for a basilica to be situated so prominently,
almost directly on a harbor front? This would have been a striking sight for
those arriving at the port.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Bill C
IP: 193.92.187.43
DATE: 02/27/2008 12:45:25 AM
Maddy,!
!
It's not too terribly unusual for a major church to be located on the water.
Consider for example the Kenchreai basilica which would have been visible at the
harbor. Our site in Cyprus has at least two visually prominent basilicas on a
coast. Procopius describes several churches that the faithful could sail right
up to in Constantinople!!
!
What would have been particularly striking to a knowledgeable visitor (say a
visiting member of the clergy) from the west, however, would be the
architectural allusions to the liturgy of Constantinople. While Corinth was
under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Pope in Rome, the architecture
suggested that other influences were at play as well.!
!
Thanks for the comment and thanks for reading!!
!
Bill
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COMMENT:
IP: 130.127.64.160
URL:
DATE: 02/27/2008 05:33:44 PM
Inspired me to post:!
http://kourelis.blogspot.com/2008/02/priest-houses-sacred-or-profane.html
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: marija
EMAIL: marija.jo@hotmail.com
IP: 91.7.41.40
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URL:
DATE: 03/11/2009 11:51:53 AM
So what would you say that the biggest difference between the early christian
basillicas in the west and east (4-6 c.) are. I have noticed that the gallery
appears more in the east.
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TITLE: Horace B. Woodworth and History at the University of North Dakota
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: horace-b-woodwo
DATE: 02/25/2008 12:58:25 AM

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As the <a href="http://www.und.edu/">University of North Dakota</a> begins
the celebration of its <a href="http://www2.und.edu/our/125th/">125th-
iversary</a>, it's a good opportunity to look back at some of the faculty who
played important roles in creating the Department of History at UND. Most
people familiar with History at UND know of Orin G. Libby. Libby's name
graces the <a
href="http://www.library.und.edu/Collections/oglmain.html">Manuscript and
Photograph Collection</a> the Department of Special Collections, and Gordon
Iseminger and Robert Wilkins have published on his contributions to both the
study of history at UND and the formal study of the history of the State of
North Dakota (<a href="http://www.library.und.edu/Collections/og49.html">see
here for basic biographical notes and bibliography</a>). While most
scholars regard Orin G. Libby as the ‚ÄúFather of North Dakota History‚Äù, he
was neither the first man to teach history nor was he the first individual to
hold the position of Professor of History at the University of North Dakota.
Horace B. Woodworth held these honors. The former farmer from Southern part of
Dakota Territory taught history as well as philosophy, math, and even astronomy
at the University of North Dakota from his hiring in 1885, one year after the
University was founded, to his retirement in 1904. From 1902-1904 he was
Professor of History at the University. In contrast to Libby‚Äôs professional
credentials, Woodworth held a more fluid and ambiguous position at the
university and this reflected important changes at the institutions around the
turn of the century. Woodworth‚Äôs career parallels in many ways changes taking
place at the university and preserves an important perspectives on the early
years of higher education in state. Woodworth‚Äôs began as the Professor
of Mathematics, Physics, and Astronomy, became the Professor of Moral and Mental
Science, and retired as the first Professor of History at the University of
North Dakota. His career was parallel with the creation of the
professional standards in the discipline of history, and the emergence of
organization like the American Historical Association, which sought to establish
and protect the integrity of the discipline by developing a coherent set of
professional standards. Despite a career path that would look unusual by
today's standards, Woodworth‚Äôs career path was not terribly odd in his time.
Born in 1830, he grew up farming in rural Vermont and graduated from Dartmouth
in 1854 at the age of 24. After graduating he continued to farm while serving as
the principal of several New England boarding schools during the later 1850s. By
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1861, returned to school and earned a degree from the Hartford Theological
Seminary. He then preached at several Congregationalist churches in
Connecticut and New Hampshire. His choice of careers, first in teaching and then
in the ministry, was not unusual for Dartmouth College students in 1850s,
especially the sons of farmers from rural New England. These young
men sought the skills to succeed in the changing economic and social conditions
of the 19th century, and as might be expected many of them moved west. Woodworth
followed this trend and left New England first to serve as the pastor in
churches in Charles City and Decorah, Iowa, before moving to Mt. Vernon in what
is now South Dakota to farm in the early 1880s. In 1884 he applied for a
position at the University of North Dakota. He was hired beating out men
like Elwood Mead who went on to head the Bureau of Reclamantion and give his
name to Lake Mead behind Hoover Dam. His success is perhaps owed to his
acquaintance with a member of the University of North Dakota‚Äôs Board of
Regents, F. R. Fulton, whom he had known in Iowa, he was hired by the
University, an institution that was scarcely a year old, as Professor of
Mathematics, Physics, and Astronomy. By 1888, however, Homer Sprague,
the newly appointed president of the University, sought to improve the
professional credentials of the UND's faculty. He hired Ludovic Estes to
replace Woodworth as the Professor of Mathematics, Physics, and Astronomy.
Estes was more conventionally trained holding a Ph.D. in Physics from Michigan
and worked hard to develop laboratory science at the university which was seen
as a key contribution to a useful education. As a result of Estes hiring,
Woodworth moved to Chair of Didactics, Mental, and Moral Science and Principal
of the Normal Department. By 1890, he would have as part of his responsibilities
the requirement to teach history. Woodworth, however, did not like the
position as principal of the Normal Department, which was primarily responsible
for teaching secondary school teachers in the state. In particular, he
felt that it detracted from his lectures in History and Mental and Moral
Science. By 1890, Woodworth asserted his hope that ‚Äúthe course in History may
be more fully developed in the near future and that it may be giving the
prominence which its importance demands.‚Äù His hopes were fulfilled later
than year when he appeared as the Professor of Mental and Moral Science and
History. With his new position, Woodworth began to prepare a more complete and
consistent offering of University-level history courses. His first
offering were a course to juniors on the constitutional history of England and
course on the History of Civilization for students in the Letters Course (a
degree course which required less math and had a stronger emphasis on
literature). At the same time he continued to teach courses in logic,
psychology, and the history of philosophy. Woodworth saw all these course as
contibuting to the same goals: ‚Äúto encourage habit of independent thinking and
thorough investigation.‚Äù This view of history would not be out of place
among many faculty today. Woodworth's earliest offerings at the University
in the field of history reflect late 19th century interests in institutional and
constitutional history which were epitomized in the work of Henry Baxter
Adam‚Äôs seminar at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Adams and his
contemporaries viewed the rigorous study and teaching of history as a way to
ensure good and conscientious citizenship. Such an interest comes through
in Woodworth's relatively modest scholarly effort, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/8703929">The Government of the People of the
State of North Dakota</a>, which followed contemporary trends in the study
of institutional and constitutional history. Eldredge and Brother, a
textbook publisher in Philadelphia, published the work both separately as well
as bundled with Newton Thorpe‚Äôs <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/710313">The Government of the Nation: A
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Course in Civil Government based on the Government of the United States</a>.

In the preface, Woodworth notes: ‚Äúthe new interest in the study of Civics is a
hopeful sign. But the study ought not to be confined the study of the
Constitution of the United States. Home government in the township, in the
county, and in the State has more to do than the national government, in matters
connected with the home, family, and daily life of the citizen.‚Äù It begins
with a twenty page history of the state before a chapter detailing the basic
narrative of the states founding. The bulk of its pages, however, are committed
to a detailed analysis of the content, institutional apparatus, and, in some
cases, reasoning behind the text of the constitution. Woodworth‚Äôs book stands
in contrast to the work of the former President of the University, William
Blackburn‚Äôs history of the state. Blackburn's work written in 1892
and published in 1902, details the history of the territory and early statehood
of the Dakotas. Blackburn‚Äôs work apparently written during 1892 and published
1902. In general, it is highly fragmentary and anecdotal in
nature.(William Blackburn, ‚ÄúA History of Dakota,‚Äù South Dakota Historical
Collections 1 (1902), 42-162). It shows no inclination toward the
rigorous institutional history and lacks any effort to bring in primary source
documents. Woodworth‚Äôs work in contrast, includes the complete text of
the State Constitution. Woodworth's work book is only surpassed in 1910
when James E. Boyle wrote <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/4796259">The
Government of North Dakota</a>. While little is specific detail is
known of Woodworth‚Äôs private life and finances, there is no reason to assume
that he was wealthy. His appointment at the university paid a salary of $2000
which was consistent with other faculty of his rank. He was able to live
comfortably in town in a modest house at 815 S. 5th St. in Grand Forks and seems
to have enjoyed the benefits of a middle class lifestyle. Moreover, his
position as a professor at the University afforded him some social clout, and he
was active in various charitable activities in the community. In a
statement read by fellow faculty members, Vernon Squires, Joseph Kennedy and
M.A. Brannon into the minutes on the occasion of Woodworth‚Äôs retirement in
1904, it is noted that he contributed money to the university‚Äôs maintenance.
Woodworth‚Äôs family life was also consistent with a middle class and even
shows signs of upwardly mobility. He had two daughters. Alice Woodworth Cooley
worked in the administration of the Minneapolis city schools and <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/14061238">co-authored a well-regarded English
grammar</a>. In 1901 she returned to Grand Forks to teach in the School of
Education. She retired in 1905 as an Assistant Professor of
Education. With a well-developed professional reputation and access to
solidly middle class society, she married C. F. Cooley who would become a local
judge. Woodworth‚Äôs other daughter, Henrietta (Hattie) Woodworth also taught at
the University briefly in music in 1889 (interestingly her her father objected
to her appointment!). She married W. A. Gordon a New York City native and
Amherst graduate who made his fortune as a real estate developer and insurance
broker. He was a prominent citizen in Grand Forks and a supporter of the
university. In fact, during a financial crisis in the 1890s he traveled
with the president of the University, Webster Merrifield, to Bismarck to lobby
on the university‚Äôs behalf. The intermarrying of Woodworth‚Äôs daughters
with members of the local ‚Äúgentry‚Äù is a good indication that the Woodworth
family was not limited by the later breach between ‚Äútown and gown‚Äù.
Recalling the situation perhaps 15 years later, Orin G. Libby‚Äôs eldest son,
Charles, noted that university families tended to live near one another and
children of the university professors did not necessarily play with the children
in town. While the information of Woodworth himself remains modest, his
family demonstrated access to middle and upper class society in Grand Forks.
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Despite the appearance that Woodworth circulated among the elite society of
Grand Forks, it seems that Woodworth remained dependent upon income from his
position at the university. After he retired he received a modest pension from
the university of $600 a year and professor emeritus standing. UND's President,
Webster Merrifield, however, inquired whether Woodworth would be eligible for a
Carnegie Fund Pension. In this letter Merrifield specifically cited his
friend‚Äôs former salary of $2000 a year. Woodworth did not live to hear that he
had been awarded a Carnegie Pension. The letter announcing that he had been
awarded a Carnegie Pension of $1000 a year for life arrived two days after his
funeral in 1907. After his death, his name graced Woodworth Hall,
the longtime home of the College of Education at the University. When it
burned down in 1946, Woodworth's name disappeared from campus and became
eclipsed by the legend of Orin G. Libby. <a
Writer/image_thumb_26.png" width="404" border="0"></a> Woodworth
Hall For more on Woodworth check out the <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/DHChapter_1.html">first
chapter</a> of my history of the Department of History at the University of
North Dakota.
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CATEGORY: Byzantium
DATE: 02/22/2008 12:55:32 AM

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This was a pretty full week, so I have lots of quick hits: <ul> <li>More
hybridity: <ul> <li>Cristina Stancioiu, the <a
href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/index.php/gennadius/fellowships/">M. Alison Frantz
Fellow</a>, gave a Tea Talk on "Made in Italy? Italian Fashion in Late
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Medieval Crete" that considered whether the evidence for clothing in the wall
paintings of Venetian Crete shows signs of the development of a Venetian/Cretan
hybrid culture. Her work is in its early days, but the approach and
material are fascinating. <li>Sir John Boardman gave the major lecture at the
Open Meeting of the <a href="http://www.bsa.ac.uk/">British School at Athens</a>
(more on this below) and looked at Greeks going East. His main focus was
the material culture of the Greek kingdoms in Bactria from the 2nd century BC to
the first century AD. While some of his ideas were decidedly "<a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_school">old school</a>", his discussion
of these far eastern Greeks embodied a kind of romantic British intellectualism
and captured the flavor of an earlier era. His interest in Greek - Eastern
interaction conjured up the incredible creative potential that emerged both from
cultural contact in south-central Asia and from the dying embers of British
Empire.</li></ul> <li>The <a href="http://www.bsa.ac.uk/">British School at
Athens</a> held their Open Meeting last night. It was great to hear about all
the sponsored projects. Four jumped out at me: <ul> <li>There is
interesting work going at the Theatre of Sparta some of which looks likely to
reveal information on the Byzantine settlement at the site. <li>The massive
(20+ ha), multiyear resistivity campaign at the site of Plataia undertaken by <a
href="http://www.shef.ac.uk/archaeology/staff/boyd.html">Michael Boyd</a> and
Andreas Konecny has revealed huge amounts of information on the Greek city as
well as a few more Early Christian basilicas there. (Konecny, A., Boyd, M. J.,
Marchese, R. & Aravantinos, V., "Plataiai in Boiotia: A Preliminary
Report on Geophysical and Field Surveys Conducted in 2002 ‚Äì 2005",
Hesperia (forcoming... March?)) <li><a
href="http://www.ucl.ac.uk/archaeology/project/knossos/index.htm">The Knossos
Urban Landscape Project</a> is another "large site/urban" intensive survey
project centered on the ancient city of Knossos in Crete. According to the
summary provided at the Open Meeting, they have collected over 400,000 sherds
from the surface. <li><a href="http://www.arch-
ant.bham.ac.uk/research/individuals/dunn/archie3.htm">Archie Dunn</a>'s
brilliant <a
orion_archaeological_project/index.html">Thisvi-Kastorion Archaeological
Project</a> looked good in good company. I heard recently from Dr. Dunn,
and it sounds like things are well in hand for the 2008 study season.
</li></ul> <li>The conversation regarding <a
href="http://pdqweb.edublogs.org/">PD(Q)</a> continues particularly in the
comments of a post by <a
href="http://publishingarchaeology.blogspot.com/">Michael E. Smith</a> at the <a
Group</a>: <a href="http://ancientworldbloggers.blogspot.com/2008/02/is-pdq-
good-idea-academic-perspective.html">Is PDQ a good idea? An academic
perspective</a>. (Shawn Graham's response and some more discussion appears
on his <a href="http://electricarchaeologist.wordpress.com/">Electric
Archaeologist</a> blog). At the same time we learned that <a
href="http://jwest.wordpress.com/">Dr Jim West's blog</a> disappeared one day,
and then miraculously came back! This has spurred, on the one hand,
renewed interest in the permanence and stability of the blogosphere (and the
internet more generally: see S. Heath's <a
href="http://mediterraneanceramics.blogspot.com/2008/02/mediterranean-ceramics-
reference.html">monthly "Ceramics Reference Stability Reports</a>") and provided
a timely reminder for us to back up our blogs. On the other hand, it does
beg the question whether permanence and stability in the blogosphere is a good
thing. Many bloggers tend to think that it is; I've suggested that it's
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not (<a href="http://ancientworldbloggers.blogspot.com/2008/02/pdq-from-

comments-to-post-what-are-we.html">PD(Q) from Comments to a Post: What are we
blogging for?</a>) and want to explore this more. <li><a
href="http://www.und.edu/">UND</a> is gearing up for its <a
href="http://www2.und.edu/our/125th/">125th-iversary</a> (I refuse to call it
the Quasquicentennial or the "Q"-- the former is not a real word and the latter
sounds like (1) an alien from Star Trek or (2) the nickname for an undersized,
small forward at a mid-major university who got drafted in the second round,
doesn't stick with the team (despite some monstrous "slam-dunk shots" in the NBA
Summer League), and ends up having a productive playing career in Spain or
Israel -- neither of which capture the spirit or history of the University of
North Dakota). Despite the name, such occasions are a great time to look
back on the history of the University and think toward the future. My wife
has captured some of that spirit in her new advertisement for Graduate Study in
the Humanities at the <a href="http://www.und.edu/dept/grad/">Graduate School at
the University of North Dakota</a>. Notice the <a
href="http://www.und.edu/dept/our/factbook/html/adelphifountain.htm">Adelphi
Fountain</a> in the background of the movie still blow (click on the still <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/Movies/HumanitiesSM.m4v">to
watch the short ad</a>). I blogged on <a
e-pythia-in-g.html">the restoration of that fountain and its
iconography</a>. </li></ul> <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/Movies/HumanitiesSM.m4v"><img
border-right-width: 0px" height="180" alt="image"
Writer/image_32.png" width="240" border="0"></a> <a
href="http://www2.und.edu/our/125th/"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-
alt="image"
Writer/image_33.png" width="161" border="0"></a> <ul> <li> <div
align="left">The American School has a fancy-pants <a
href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/index.php">new website</a> with a news feed and
blog. </div> <li> <div align="left">Finally, another <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/181822">advertisement for myself</a>, my <a
href="http://www.archaeology.org/online/features/blogs/">Blogging Archaeology
and the Archaeology of Blogging</a> appeared on the front page of the <a
href="http://www.archaeological.org/">Archaeological Institute of America</a>'s
website.</div></li></ul>
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TITLE: Some Thoughts on Future of Survey Archaeology in Greece (and the Eastern
Mediterranean)
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BASENAME: some-thoughts-o
DATE: 02/21/2008 01:38:24 AM

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A few months ago, I presented <a
e-corinthia-a.html">an overview of the survey archaeology</a> to the Regular
Members in the Corinthia. <a
href="http://classics.uc.edu/faculty_staff/davis_informal.html">Jack Davis</a>,
<a href="http://isthmia.osu.edu/teg/">Tim Gregory</a>, and I followed this up
with <a
ur-views-of-t.html">survey archaeology day in the Corinthia</a> taking in parts
of the <a href="http://classics.uc.edu/nvap/">Nemea Valley Archaeological
Project</a> and the <a
Korinthia Archaeological Survey</a>. As a result of "teaching survey" on
site, I have begun to think about the future directions of survey as a method
for exploring, documenting, and creating the Ancient and Medieval
landscape. I have recently thought about writing a short, speculative (if
informed) article on the topic while trying to envision what the next generation
of survey projects might look like. Today's post is basically a brainstorm
written on the fringes of coherence that explores several interrelated themes
current in my own work as a survey archaeologist. Scholars have argued in
the past that survey archaeology has approached a "threshold of intensity"
(which is a version of <a
href="http://antiquity.ac.uk/ant/075/Ant0750627.htm">Blanton's Mediterranean
Myopia</a>) that involves the collection of massive data sets of both
"archaeological" data (sherds, sherd densities, features, buildings, roads et
c.-- not to mention data generated by various remote sensing techniques), but
also environmental data (visibility, land use, high resolution topographical
maps, geological and geomorphological data, et c.). This data allows
survey archaeologists to possess an unparalleled number of variable to
understand the cultural and natural formation processes and tempts us to read
these elaborately constructed survey universes as totalizing discourse of the
landscape. <a
cent-work-on.html">This increase in intensity</a> (coupled with a tendency for
increasingly limited permits particularly in Greece) has tended to produce
surveys of much smaller scope than the first generation of survey projects or
similar projects in a North or Meso-American context. Rather than covering
hundreds of square kilometers which would encompass a large percentage of a
economic or politically constituted region in the ancient Mediterranean, surveys
have become more focused endeavors emphasizing the micro-region, sometimes as
small as a few square kilometers, as the primary unit of analysis. Such
micro-regions may or may not be constituted in direct relation to any pre-modern
(pre-industrial) system. In fact, modern conditions ranging from
development, to agricultural land use, the limits of past archaeological
investigation, or even the institutional borders of the archaeological
1219
bureaucracy of the host country exert strong influences over the shape of the
intensive pedestrian survey "universe" (i.e. area of investigation). 
eWriter/ThisveWorking.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width:
alt="ThisveWorking"
Writer/ThisveWorking_thumb.jpg" width="277" border="0"></a> If survey
intends to address regional concerns, then they must find a way to overcome the
methodological and practical limits that are likely the shape the future of the
discipline. In particular, there is a need to produce results that are
compatible and comparable with the results produced by other surveys in order to
create the kinds of large scale data sets required for regional analysis.
The growing potential for digital publication of relatively "raw" survey data
holds forth one important prospect for creating large scale integrated regional
and trans-regional data sets. By manipulating the primary data from
surveys, scholars will be able to find common ground for analysis between
projects and ideally construct data sets suitable to address concerns that
exceed the scope any one survey area. This will require, of course,
substantial quantities of carefully prepared "metadata" necessary to provide an
interpretative context for any single project's data. In some cases, it
will involve creating (and maintaining!) normalized data sets in electronic
form. The re-analysis, re-processing, and maintenance of the
archaeological data from earlier projects is a tedious task, but it will be
vital for our ability to analyze systems that function on levels that greatly
exceed the scope of any single project. <a
eWriter/DokosSurvey.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width:
alt="DokosSurvey"
Writer/DokosSurvey_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> Revisiting
archaeological survey data also encourages us to reconsider the methodological
assumptions that shaped the investigation of the countryside. For example,
artifact level survey rooted deeply in the tradition of processural archaeology
has tended to view the landscape in a way that marginalizes the role of the
individual and privileges the analysis of systems, society, or even
culture. Recent work on the role of the individual and agency in
archaeology (usefully summarized in: A. Bernard Knapp & Peter van Dommelen,
"Past Practices: Rethinking Individuals and Agents in Archaeology,"
Cambridge Archaeological Journal 18 (2008), 15‚Äì34) has exposed some
of the tension between the archaeologist as interlocutor and narrator (for an
interesting recent post on this see: <a
href="http://traumwerk.stanford.edu/archaeolog/2008/02/imagination_to_interpreta
tion.html">Christa M. Beranek, "Imagination to Interpretation"</a>) and ancient
society. Michael Given et al. ( in <a
href="http://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue20/4/2_02.htm ">"Joining the Dots:
Continuous Survey, Routine Practice and the Interpretation of a Cypriot
Landscape (with interactive GIS and integrated data archive)" Internet
Archaeology 20</a>) have called for projects to work toward "verbing the
landscape" as a way recognizing the archaeological landscape as evidence for
past activities. Work such as <a
href="http://proteus.brown.edu/witmore/home">Christopher Witmore</a>'s 2005
dissertation at Stanford , <a
1220
href="http://traumwerk.stanford.edu:3455/multiplefields/Home">Multiple field
approaches in the Mediterranean: Revisiting the Argolid Exploration Project</a>,
seek not simply to resturcture the archaeological data, but to reposition the
archaeologist's relationship to the processes and the material which constitute
archaeological landscapes. So, my post today has mapped two future paths
for survey which are closely related (1) the cross-project integration of survey
data for trans-regional analysis and (2) negotiating the role of the individual
(both in antiquity and in more modern times) in creating the archaeological
landscape. Both tasks build upon the methodological self awareness
developed by survey archaeology in the last four decades and call upon its
practitioners not only to continue to be reflexive concerning methodology and
field procedure producing data that anticipates its integration into larger
regional interpretations, but also to go beyond this to consider the place of
the archaeologist amidst the modern and ancient landscape.<a
eWriter/RoadPictSM.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width:
alt="RoadPictSM"
Writer/RoadPictSM_thumb.jpg" width="218" align="right" border="0"></a>
Since, I am unlikely to re-catagorize my past postings on survey archaeology,
I have included an index of entries on survey archaeology in this blog: 
<h5><a
rvey-archaeol.html">Survey Archaeology, Pottery, and the Chronotype
System</a> <a
ur-views-of-t.html">Four Views of the Corinthian Landscape</a> <a
cent-work-on.html">Recent Work on Survey Northeast Peloponnesus</a> <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2008/01/ge
ographic-info.html">Geographic Information Systems and Regional Survey at the
American School</a> <a
stern-korinth.html">Eastern Korinthia Archaeological Survey on the Web</a> <a
e-corinthia-a.html">The Corinthia and Survey Archaeology</a> <a
arning-about.html">Filmmaking and Archaeology</a> <a
w-research-in.html">New Research in Late Roman Boeotia</a></h5>
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TITLE: Episode 3: An Artifact's Journey
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: episode-3-an-ar
DATE: 02/20/2008 01:01:50 AM

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This third episode of <a
Cypriot</a> is up on the web. This is the final short that looks in
detail at the field methods used by the <a
Project</a>'s intensive survey team on Cyprus. This short tracks an
artifact as it moves from the field to the artifact catalogue catalogue.
<a
eWriter/ArtifactsJourneyRO.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-
width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; margin: 0px 10px 0px 0px; border-right-
width: 0px" height="164" alt="ArtifactsJourneyRO"
Writer/ArtifactsJourneyRO_thumb.jpg" width="244" align="left" border="0"></a>
 The focus on the artifact is of particular significance for the kind of
intensive survey that we practice on PKAP. Artifact level survey (what is
sometimes also called siteless survey) shifts the basic unit of interpretation
from the site (or a dot on the map) to the artifact. In particular we
focus on interpreting the distribution of artifacts on the ground meaning the
location, identification, and documentation of each artifact plays a key role in
producing our larger understanding of the site. You can see the distribution of
artifact on our <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/disk_PKAP.html">interactive GIS
map here</a>. The short also shows how <a
href="http://www.chss.iup.edu/pkap/staff.htm">many people</a> have to work
together to analyze and document a substantial corpus of ceramic evidence. Each
artifact passes through multiple hands: the fieldwalker, the washing team, the
registrar, the ceramicist, the photographer, the illustrator, and the
cataloguers. Each individual has a particular perspective on the artifact
and their role on the project, and this, in effect, contributes to their
creation of a distinct and familiar archaeological landscape. Among the
differences between our first archaeological documentary <a
vey on Cyprus</a> and Emerging Cypriot is that the omniscient
narrator has given way to participant voices. This has allowed us to
present the archaeological landscape as a product of the participants in the
project rather than some overarching and anonymous analytical process.
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of <a
vey on Cyprus</a>, and you can read the commentaries on the first two
shorts (with links to those shorts) below. <a
alt="Landscape_MontageRO"
Writer/Landscape_MontageRO.jpg" width="106" border="0"></a> <a
alt="Learning_FieldwalkingRO"
Writer/Learning_FieldwalkingRO.jpg" width="104" border="0"></a>
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TITLE: Punk Archaeology: Some Preliminary Thoughts
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
ALLOW PINGS: 1
BASENAME: punk-archaeolog
DATE: 02/19/2008 01:42:10 AM

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<a href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/2008/02/punk-archaeology.html">Kostis
Kourelis recently included me on his list of Punk Archaeologist</a> -- a
complete honor! My attraction to punk, I think, comes from the self-
consciously ironic quality of the early punk movement and its easy resonance
with the predominant character of much of the academic discourse. This
should be no surprise as the punk mentality was crystallizing at the same moment
that intellectuals were trying to understand the implications of <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/700666">Hayden White‚Äôs
Metahistory</a> and <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/511209">M.
1223
Foucault‚Äôs Archaeology of Knowledge</a>. Both works, but particularly

the former recognized the ironic as the dominant force in modern intellectual
life. Such spirit of the ironic is captured in the Velvet Underground‚Äôs first
album cover which showed a realistically rendered banana with the instructions
‚ÄúPeel slowly and see‚Äù. Peeling the banana lead the viewer to discover the
bright pink (and obviously phallic) unpeeled banana inside. This somewhat
alarming discovery behind the ordinary banana encapsulated the ironic spirit of
the M. Leigh book <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/12894916">The Velvet
Underground</a> which reported on the sexually ‚Äúdeviant‚Äù practices
underlying the typical suburban landscape. Peeling the banana and listening the
album revealed the hidden tensions existing within even the most mundane
elements of society. <a
Writer/image_thumb_24.png" width="404" border="0"></a> The band, the
Velvet Underground, occupies a central place in the emergence of the punk rock
movement, first in New York and around the world. The vivid urban scenes
narrated by Lou Reed, John Cale and company helped to situate punk in an urban
context. Kourelis has brought to the fore this celebration of the urban and
linked the punk ascetic with the notion of squatting. The idea of occupying
urban space, however, reflects the mixed roots of many of the pioneers of punk
rock. While some punk rockers with clearly urban roots (particularly such key
players in the New York scene like The Ramones (Queens), David Johansen and
Johnny Thunders (Staten Island and Queens respectively), many the genres early
heroes were suburban: Lou Reed (Long Island), Richard Hell (Kentucky) and Tom
Verlaine (Morristown, NJ ‚Äì Hell and Verlaine met at a suburban high school in
Wilmington, Delaware at around the same time that Bob Marley was living in
downtown Wilmington (ca. 1965-1966)), Paul Westerberg (and the Replacements ‚Äì
Minneapolis), Bob Mould (went to Macalester!), Iggy Pop ‚Äì Muskegon, Michigan.
In fact, punk rock was closely associated with (and perhaps developed from) the
idea of the ‚Äúgarage band‚Äù which only made sense in a suburban, post-war
context. While playing in a garage was another aspect of the squatter aesthetic,
it also implied the centrality of the car and reflected their membership in (and
rejection of) a suburban middle class. In fact, the urban world created by
many punk bands brought to life the fears, myths, and contradictions derived
from the typically suburban origins of the musicians. The image of the urban
painted by these musicians resonated with suburban kids throughout the country
(including me when I first heard it). Punks viewed the city from a decidedly
suburban perspective. In punk rock, the city was both intimidating and full of
chaotic creative power (the ordinary, mundane, working classes who struggled to
survive in the <a
href="http://www.jstor.org/view/00754358/ap010056/01a00110/0">twilight of
American urbanism</a> rarely make an appearance in the early New York punk
music). The earliest and perhaps most seminal expressions of the punk rock
aesthetic, <a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Velvet_Underground_and_Nico">Velvet
Underground with Nico</a> is a great example of this; songs like ‚Äú<a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waiting_for_My_Man">Waiting for My Man</a>‚Äù
and ‚Äú<a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Run_Run_Run_%28Lou_Reed_song%29">Run, Run,
Run</a>‚Äù summarize a feeling of urban alienation and danger. Some of this
intensity seems to conjure up the earlier fascination with the ‚Äúurban‚Äù best
summarized in Norman Mailer‚Äôs essay ‚Äú<a
1224
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/12315017">The White Negro</a>,‚Äù which

extolled the virtues of the hipster many of whom, like many members of the punk
movement, were second and third generation immigrants who retained some urban
ties while at the same time seeking to reposition their identity at vital
fringes of American urban culture. The ironic in punk derives largely from
the relative bourgeois background of many of the genre‚Äôs greatest lights. Punk
created an urban experience that was both exotic and predictable. They
glamorized the suburban perspective of the urban by filling with exotic
characters, like drug-dealers (‚Äú<a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:TheVelvetUndergroundI%27mWaitingForTheM
an.ogg">Waiting for My Man</a>‚Äù, "<a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Run_Run_Run_%28Lou_Reed_song%29">Run, Run,
Run</a>"), violence ("<a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns_of_Brixton">Guns of Brixton</a>" or
Iggy‚Äôs "<a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_and_Destroy_%28song%29">Search and
Destroy</a>": ‚ÄúI‚Äôm a street walking cheetah with a heart full of napalm |
I‚Äôm a runaway son of the nuclear a-bomb‚Äù), distorted sexual tension (‚Äú<a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Wanna_Be_Your_Dog">I Wanna be Your
Dog</a>‚Äù) and ambiguity (‚Äú<a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blank_Generation_%28album%29">Blank
Generation‚Äù</a> ‚Äì totally ironic, a generation ‚Äúunder erasure‚Äù; the <a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Blankgeneration.jpg">album cover</a>
shows Richard Hell with an open shirt exposing the words "You Make Me ______"
written on his chest.) that found open contrast to the seemingly controlled and
superficial suburbia. Thus, punk held up the ‚Äúdeclining‚Äù urban centers
against the boring, mundane, and predictable suburbs while at the same time
reifying the growing criticisms of the city offered by its suburban critics. The
punk rock stories and life styles recycled a suburban vision of a vital urban
energy for suburban (re)consumption. They understood at least to some degree the
importance of the ‚Äúsafe media‚Äù of records, but that recorded performances
had to capture the live feeling and excitement of ‚Äúexcursions‚Äù by suburban
fans to such iconic venues as Max‚Äôs and CBGBs. The raw listening experience of
punk album evoked the experience of live shows and made the particularly punk
image of the urban mobile. At the same time, the heroes of the punk movement
performed their own pilgrimage and gained the requisite authenticity through
short residence at the Chelsea or Albert Hotels. Of course so many of the
pioneers of punk not only celebrated the chaotic culture of the urban world of
the suburban imagination, but also succumbed to the image that they in many ways
created, dying violent deaths or struggling with drug addiction. <a
Writer/image_thumb_25.png" width="404" border="0"></a> There is every
evidence that many punks understood the irony of their own position. Punk
rockers who experimented with narrative in their music, such as Lou Reed, openly
embraced the ironic in their lyrics (e.g. The Velvet Underground's ‚Äú<a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gift_%28Velvet_Underground_song%29">The
Gift</a>‚Äù). Punk bands regularly covered old standards (my favorites are the
Germs ‚Äú<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Around_and_Around">Round
and Round</a>‚Äù or Johnny Thunders‚Äô live version of ‚Äú<a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_You_Love_Me">Do you love me?</a>‚Äù, but
see also Sid Vicious ‚Äú<a
1225
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Way_%28song%29">My Way</a>‚Äù et c.) or

borrowed and distorted melodies from earlier pop standards (echoing of course
the practices in Hard Bop and other jazz idioms two decades earlier). Their
intentionally cacophonic versions of these tunes not only reified the enduring
value of the music from an earlier time, but also sought to distort, disrupt,
and appropriate it for subversive purposes. Punks translated the safe
features of ‚Äúclassic‚Äù pop music into barely recognizable, distorted, burned
out idiom of urban space in a highly-referential and explicitly counter-cultural
performance. Punk, in my analysis, foreground the process of translating the
sense of place. <a
href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/2008/02/101ers.html">As Kourelis has pointed
out</a>, their self conscious use of architectural fragments in their cover art,
which was designed to evoke the urban context for their music (but consider the
<a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let_It_Be_%28Replacements_album%29">Replaceme
nt's Let it Be</a> with its more suburban setting), set the stage for
their music. This work of translating and transposing the experience of
space has featured significantly in almost all archaeological approaches to the
past (and the present as well!). Punk rock and archaeology both foreground
the necessity to communicate the meaning of place. The act of uncovering,
of excavating in an archaeological context ("<a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Velvet_Underground_and_Nico">Dig slowly
and see</a>") presupposed an ironic tension between the surface of the ground
(or the expected view of a landscape) and the "reality" that emerges from
excavation (or, in the case of landscape, intensive investigation). On the
one hand, it may be fair to argue that irony represents the quintessential
narrative mode of late/post modernity (as it coincides so well with the major
epistemological positions of the modern world), but on the other hand, punk and
archaeology both embrace a spatial aspect of this ironic mode of narration that
keys upon the unexpected energy of neglected, hidden, and dangerous places and
seeks to translate the energy and knowledge of this space into media appropriate
for broader consumption and use. 
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Laura Gawlinski
EMAIL: lauragawlinski@yahoo.com
IP: 205.189.30.48
URL:
DATE: 02/19/2008 10:44:16 AM
You might be interested to know that Iggy Pop is published in a classics
journal:!
"Caesar Lives," Classics Ireland 2 (1995): 94-96.!
http://www.classicsireland.com/!
(see the editorial note too)
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COMMENT:
1226
AUTHOR: Corbouman
EMAIL: Corbouman@xs4all.nl
IP: 80.100.145.138
URL:
DATE: 04/06/2009 06:44:40 PM
James,
please listen to this !!
/Users/corbouman/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/Herman Brood & His Wild Romance/Cha

Cha
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TITLE: Monday Metadata
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
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BASENAME: monday-metadata
DATE: 02/18/2008 12:56:59 AM

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I am going to keep with my practice of reporting metadata on this blog
whenever I reach interesting milestones (<a
0-posts.html">after 100 posts</a>, <a
affic-report.html">after 2,500 page views</a>)or experience interesting changes
in volume (see <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2008/02/va
ria-quick-hit.html">the last bullet point for metadata after the Blogging
Archaeology article went up</a>). Over the weekend, I received my 10,000th
page view. <a
eWriter/image_29.png"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; border-
left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="277" alt="image"
Writer/image_thumb_23.png" width="404" border="0"></a> I am not sure
exactly how to explain this notable increase in volume, but clearly some of the
volume comes from my "<a
Archaeology/Archaeology of Blogging</a>" article on Archaeological.org.
Links from that page provide about 6% of my volume since October. Some of
the volume also must come from the number of words and phrases in the blog that
search engines like Google will find. Visitors from Google search pages
are around 30% of my volume. Links from other blogs, particular Troels
Myrup Kristensen's <a href="http://www.iconoclasm.dk/">Iconoclasm</a> (2.5%),
the <a href="http://ancientworldbloggers.blogspot.com/">Ancient World Bloggers
Group</a> (2%), Shawn Graham's <a
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(1.5%) and occasional notice on group blogs like <a

href="http://hnn.us/blogs/2.html">HNN</a> (3%) account for sizeable number of
visits (and page views). <a
href="http://grandforkslife.blogspot.com/">Grand Forks Life</a>, a blog on life
and times in my home town of Grand Forks, North Dakota does its part, drive
about 2.5% of my traffic; the <a href="http://www.und.edu/">University of North
Dakota</a>'s various pages provide another 3.3% of my visits. About 50% of
my visitors are new visitors. The average time on site has held fairly
steady (although the length of my posts have increased!) at about 1:40 per
visit. <a
href="http://www.thefee.net/delirium/index.php/site/comments/market_share/">My
buddy Sam Fee over at Arranged Delirium</a> will be pleased to know that the
majority of my hits come from browsers other than Internet Explorer (45%): 41%
from Firefox, 9% from Safari, 2.7% from Opera, and the rest from more obscure or
unrecognized sources including Camino, Konqueror, and Blazer. Most
of my hits come from the U.S. with hits from every state in the U.S. except
Alaska and Wyoming; the latter suggests that <a
href="http://www.und.edu/kelley">UND's new president</a> was not an avid reader
of this blog (that will have to change)! The top 10 states are:
Pennsylvania, California, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, North Dakota, Michigan,
Illinois, Florida, and Virginia. The top 10 countries are Greece, UK,
Canada, Australia, Italy, Denmark, Germany, France, and Cyprus. I've had
hits from every inhabited continent now. <a
eWriter/BlogMap.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; border-
left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="249" alt="BlogMap"
Writer/BlogMap_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> It is
genuinely gratifying to see that people are interested in what I write
here. Thanks for reading!
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Pamela Russell McClellan
EMAIL: prussell@aya.yale.edu
IP: 72.64.9.189
URL:
DATE: 02/18/2008 04:12:32 PM
Hi, I am Pam Russell, a relatively new reader of your blog, which I am enjoying
a lot. I was a member of ASCSA in the early 80s, so it is fun to hear the news,
as well as your stimulating essays -- thanks so much. (Reading from icy New
Hampshire right now!)
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Shelley Ramos
EMAIL: michelle@stahelitrenchless.com
IP: 216.174.214.78
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URL:
DATE: 02/18/2008 06:09:51 PM
You may have one more source for hit volume to your blog now that Brenda has
linked your blog from her blog. Thanks for the warm review of Brenda's tea.
I've known Brenda since highschool and it's great to hear a peer's review of her
talk...especially when it is a good review. :)
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TITLE: Real Snow in Athens
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
ALLOW PINGS: 1
BASENAME: real-snow-in-at
DATE: 02/17/2008 02:58:57 AM

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I've posted some photos of <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2008/01/sn
ow-in-athens.html">snow on Hymmetos</a>, but last night there was real snow in
downtown Athens, and we are said to get more today. So, the requisite
Athens snow pictures: <a
eWriter/Loring_Snow.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; border-
left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="272" alt="Loring_Snow"
Writer/Loring_Snow_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> Loring Hall in
the Snow <a
eWriter/Gennadius_Snow.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px;
border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="272" alt="Gennadius_Snow"
Writer/Gennadius_Snow_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> The
Gennadius Library in the Snow The snow is pretty, to be
sure, but the more amazing thing for Athens is the silence. The roads are
almost completely empty of cars. I'll defer to my wife <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2007/11/at
hens---broken.html">Susie's description of downtown Athens on a normal day</a>,
and post the final photo in contrast <a
eWriter/Road_Snow.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; border-
left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="272" alt="Road_Snow"
Writer/Road_Snow_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a>
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Maddy Bray
IP: 76.170.0.106
DATE: 02/18/2008 12:42:58 PM
Very pretty. My first-ever glimpse of Athens was a day after a (relatively)
major snowfall like this, although by the time I arrived it had moved beyond the
"pretty" stage to the "giant piles of grey/brown slush" stage.
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STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
ALLOW PINGS: 1
DATE: 02/15/2008 01:58:28 AM

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BODY:
Just a handful of quick hits today: <ul> <li><a
href="http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S20/17/36K39/index.xml?section=
topstories,featured">Princeton has announced the acquisition of a
collection of over 800 Medieval Greek coins minted in the 13th and 14th
century</a>. The collection is said to feature many coins from the
Villehardouin and Angevin rulers of the Southern and Central Greece.
<li><a href="http://archaeoastronomy.wordpress.com/">Alun Salt</a>'s PD(Q)
project continues to gain momentum. The conversation over at the <a
Group</a> has been productive, although it may not have added too much clarity
to exactly what kind of journal this will be and how it will relate precisely to
what we do in our blogs. I tried to frame my position in <a
proposal-past.html">a post</a> (which derived in large part <a
ogging-peer-r.html">from an earlier post here</a>) and got a <a
href="http://ancientworldbloggers.blogspot.com/2008/02/blogging-and-
pdq.html">good, sharp reply</a>. Then the public planning stopped and it
all went underground into a series of emails, which is a shame since I think
some of the issues might be of somewhat wider interest. And the
conversation might be particularly suitable for a blog which so often focuses as
much on process as real product. In any event, the conversations have resulted
in a web site. I think that it is still in draft form, but <a
href="http://pdqweb.edublogs.org/">here's the link</a>. <li>I didn't feel the
<a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4592418.stm">earthquake off the south
coast of Greece yesterday</a>, and so far I haven't heard anything about the
damage to the island of Kythera. The island is known for its painted
Byzantine churches (<a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/64446360">M.
1230
ChatzeÃÑdakeÃÑs and I. Bitha, Corpus of the Byzantine wall-paintings of Greece :

the Island of Kythera. David Turner Trans. (Athens 2003)</a>), and
some of them there are in pretty fragile shape. <li>I heard a really good Tea
Talk this week by <a href="http://www.art.uiowa.edu/directory.php?id=79">Brenda
Longfellow</a> of the University of Iowa. Tea Talks are supposedly less
formal talks held during tea time (yes, the American School still serves tea in
the afternoons). Mostly they are formal talks which run about 40 minutes
in length. Anyway, Brenda (Dr. Longfellow) talked about the use of spolia
in the Roman period (1st and 2nd c. AD). The use of spolia --
that is older material like statues or architectural sculpture built into new
buildings usually in a programmatic way -- earlier than Late Antiquity rarely
gets serious and systematic attention. One reason for this might be that
the use of spolia became a key component in the definition of Late Antiquity as
topic worthy of study. In fact, if we follow J. Elsner's argument (in J.
Elsner, "The Birth of Late Antiquity: Reigel and Strzygowski in 1901," Art
History 25 (2002), 358-379) the use of spolia in the Arch of Constantine --
particularly the juxtaposition of the 2nd century and 4th century sculpture --
was a key impetus in Riegl's description of a distinctive Late Antique style (in
his <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/74864342">SpaÃàtroÃàmische
Kunstindustrie</a>). In particular, one of the major lines in his
argument for the autonomy and independence of Late Antique art is demonstrating
its development from art of the high empire. Without the willful
juxtaposition of spoliated members in such monumental works as the arch of
Constantine, this influential argument would not have occurred.
<li>Finally, I got into work this morning and found that a friend had sent an
email with a link to a New York Times article which reassuringly told
me: "... in the other America, specifically in small cities like Austin;
Grand Forks, N.D.; Yakima, Wash.; and Salem, Mass., the
available evidence suggests the real estate market is holding up. Prices there
never boomed as crazily as they did in the big cities, and now, even though
volume is down almost everywhere, prices in many of these towns are firm or
rising." (<a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/15/business/15homes.html">More...</a>)&nbsp
; This is good news for me because we have begun some renovations this week to
our 100 year old American Four-Square.</li></ul> Have a good weekend!
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Kythera Cultural Association
EMAIL: mail@photokythera.com
IP: 85.72.73.0
URL:
DATE: 02/15/2008 08:00:29 AM
No damage has so far been reported to any of Kythera's Byzantine Churches (or,
indeed, to anything else) as a result of yesterday's two earthquakes.
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1231

TITLE: Survey Archaeology, Pottery, and the Chronotype System
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
ALLOW PINGS: 1
BASENAME: survey-archaeol
DATE: 02/14/2008 12:52:23 AM

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Over the last three months there has been some discussion of the chronotype
system of sampling and identifying pottery in the context of regional intensive
survey projects. The most recent critiques have appeared in D. Frankel,
Review of B. Knapp and M. Given, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/51460580">Sydney Cyprus Survey
Project</a>. AJA 112 (2008), 182-183 and Y. A. Lolos, B. Gourley
and D. R. Stewart, "The Sikyon Survey Project: A Blueprint for Urban Survey?"
JMA 20 (2007), 271 (for more on this article and this exciting project
see their spectacular <a href="http://extras.ha.uth.gr/sikyon/en/">Sikyon Survey
Project</a> web site and my less spectacular <a
cent-work-on.html">previous post</a>). Tim Gregory developed the
chronotype system for the <a href="http://www.scsp.arts.gla.ac.uk/">Sydney
Cyprus Survey Project</a> and it has subsequently been employed by Australian
Paliochora-Kythera Survey Project, the <a
Korinthia Archaeological Survey</a>, the <a
href="http://www.gla.ac.uk/departments/archaeology/research/projects/taesp/">Tro
odos Archaeological and Environmental Survey Project</a>, and my own <a
href="http://www.chss.iup.edu/pkap/">Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological
Project</a> on Cyprus. In very basic terms, the chronotype system involves
both a sampling strategy and a somewhat nested terminology for artifact types
designed to facilitate the reading and analysis of survey pottery. The
sampling strategy (as alluded to in the film short from <a
Cypriot</a> released yesterday) involves collecting every unique artifact
type from a survey unit to ensure that one of each kind of artifact in the unit
is represented in the collected assemblage. It was a response to an older
generation of survey projects that tended to collect only "diagnostic artifacts"
which often meant rims, handles, bases, and feature sherds. By collecting
one of every type of artifact present in the unit, the chronotype system shifted
the responsibility for determining whether an artifact was diagnostic from the
fieldwalker (who in traditional surveys would have to decide whether a sherd was
likely to be significant for establishing the chronology or function of the
site) to the ceramicist who would study an assemblage that reflected the
material present. All the fieldwalker needed to do was to determine
whether a sherd was similar or different from the ones he or she had already
collected. The nested terminology for artifact types involved the
ceramicist assigning to each sherd a standardized chronotype which was a
combination of date range (e.g. "Late Roman", "Early Bronze Age", or "Ancient"),
fabric type (e.g. "medium coarse", "fine ware", "cooking ware" et c.) and
description (e.g. "combed", "black glazed", "drip painted"). Standardizing
the way in which artifacts were described facilitated the quantitative and
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qualitative analysis of the survey pottery which demands that artifact types be
normalized consistently across the data set. It also provided a fairly
well-developed set of artifact identifiers that could be (and was) exported to
other survey projects. Frankel expressed concern that the
chronotype system, by eschewing "conventional pottery terminology" would make
inter-site and inter-project comparability more difficult. This is
certainly a concern. Inter-site comparability (e.g. <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/52920721">Side-by-Side</a>) is of increasing
significance as more and more of the Mediterranean world is covered by intensive
survey and, perhaps more importantly, as survey relies upon excavated contexts
for establishing the chronology of surface pottery. That being said, I am
not as convinced that "conventional pottery terminology" is so stable that
introducing a new set of standardized terminology designed for the vagaries of
survey pottery will have any inherent incompatibility with more traditional
nomenclature. For the periods where my research focuses (which are
generally historical), there is sufficient diversity in the conventional
terminology to require some translation between projects(consider, for example,
the typologies for Late Roman amphora). As survey and excavation data sets
make the slow migration <a
oughts-on-ope.html">to accessible digital archives</a> which will allow for more
direct comparison between projects, there will certainly be a need to create
concordances of ceramic terminology that take into account not only the variety
of terms employed to describe particular sherds, but also changes in
identification of certain types of pottery. Frankel has identified an area
that will require the attention of archaeologists in the very near future.
 Lolos et al. critiqued the sampling strategy employed by the chronotype
system. They questioned whether a fieldwalker could consistently determine
whether a sherd was "different" and therefore worthy of collection.
They also wondered if by collecting each unique sherd we would lose the ability
to talk about relative frequency of particular artifact types within a unit
. Their critiques are, indeed, valid, and we have worked to address them
in several recent publications (Caraher et al. "Siteless survey and intensive
data collection in an artifact-rich environment: case studies from the eastern
Corinthia, Greece. JMA 19 (2006), 7-43; T. Tartaron et al. "The
Eastern Corinthia archaeological survey: integrated methods for a dynamic
landscape," Hesperia 75 (2006), 453-523; Caraher et al. "Pyla-
Koutsopetria Archaeological Project: Second Report 2005-2006" RDAC
2007, in press; D. Pettegrew "The Busy Countryside of Late Roman
Corinth:Interpreting Ceramic Data Produced by Regional Archaeological Surveys,"
Hesperia 76 (2007), 743‚Äì784; R. S. Moore, "A Decade Later: The
Chronotype System Revisited," in Archaeology and History in Medieval and
Post-Medieval Greece: Studies on Method and Meaning in Honor of Timothy E.
Gregory. W. Caraher, R. S. Moore, L. J. Hall, eds. Forthcoming.) The
two salient points here are as follows: 1) We regularly tell fieldwalkers
"when in doubt regarding whether a sherd is unique, collect it." Some
recent studies (see Moore (Forthcoming) and Caraher et al 2006) have suggested
that fieldwalkers tend, if anything, to over collect; that is to say err on the
side of caution and collect too many examples of even relatively undiagnostic
sherd. While this cannot anticipate whether the walkers have overlooked
certain types of artifacts completely (i.e. artifacts that are so
indistinguishable from other sherds that they are disregarded
consistently as duplicates), it suggest that they did not. In any
case, the chronotype sampling method should ensure a more robust sample of the
variety of material present on the surface than techniques which involve only
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collecting highly visible "diagnostic" (e.g. rims, handles, feature sherds, et

c.) artifacts. 2) The chronotype sampling strategy will not create
assemblages that are as robust as so-called "total collection" strategies which
involve the collection of all the material from a unit or a walker's
swath. We conducted experiments in 2005 and 2006 and determined that,
indeed, total collection from a 5% sample of the unit would produce an
assemblage that would allow discussions of proportional representation within
the unit. This being said, it is not clear exactly what the significance
of the varying proportions present in a surface assemblage means. The
formation processes that create the surface assemblage are incredibly complex
and varied across periods; thus, for example, it is difficult to understand what
a proportionately greater quantity of, say, Classical period artifacts in a unit
means. Does it mean more Classical activity in a particular spot?
More intensive use of that spot? More people? Or does it suggest that the
Classical period material was particularly susceptible to certain site formation
processes. From my perspective we need to understand the processes that
lead to the creation of the surface assemblage much better than we do today to
find any significance in the proportion of pottery represented in a unit.
Of course, gross differences -- like the incredible, overwhelming presence of
Late Roman material at Pyla-Koutsopetria -- will come out in the chronotype
system as in almost all cases the more pottery there is from a particular period
the more diversity there is present in the assemblage. Thus, the
chronotype system, which excels in documenting diversity, will produce a use and
valid indicator of particularly prevalent periods. The point of this post
is not to attack Frankel and Lolos et al. -- far from it, in fact! -- but
to expand the dialogue into the blogosphere and, perhaps more importantly, shed
some light on an exciting (and surprisingly robust!) little debate in the world
of Mediterranean survey archaeology. 
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TITLE: Episode 2: Emerging Cypriot: Learning to Fieldwalk
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DATE: 02/13/2008 02:21:16 AM

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Episode Two of <a
1234
Cypriot</a> is up and ready for download or viewing. "Learning to

Fieldwalk" is a short introduction to intensive survey field walking. From
its first formal field season in 2004, <a
Project</a> has been part field project and part field school.
Consequently, we put a good bit of energy into teaching basic archaeological
skills to a small group of graduate student and undergraduate volunteers.
Over a 3-4 week field seasons we work closely with the students emphasizing both
the practical and the theoretical (or at least methodological) training in
archaeological survey. The short gives you some idea what their first day in the
field is like. We run the first day of practice on a very high density
unit atop the hill of Vigla where the walkers are likely to encounter almost all
of the artifact types that they will see in the survey area (with the odd
exception of large, flat, Late Roman roof tiles that are ubiquitous elsewhere!).
 This film short condenses long hours of work with the student in the
field into one blustery afternoon. It does broach the not insignificant matter
that most survey (and many surveys) have to confront: how does our training of
field walkers, diggers, or even supervisors impact the data that our projects
produces. One of the most persistent critiques of survey archaeologist is
that inexperienced field walkers produce unreliable results. We examined
our walker data for just this kind of irregularity and some of the results are
available in a short working paper: "Notes <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/PKAP_Notes_on_Walker_Collection_Figu
res.pdf">on the Relationship between Walker Collection Figures and Total
Artifact Densities</a>" based exclusively on PKAP data collected between 2004
and 2006. It clearly does not represent the last word on the effect of
walker variability on the data produced by surveys, but at least attempts to
problematize our data in a coherent way. The first three installments of
Emerging Cypriot work together to provide a brief introduction to our
field methods and expand the detail provided by the <a
>Survey on Cyprus</a>. If you are more of a text oriented person you
can read about our methods in our two articles in the Report of the
Department of Antiquities of Cyprus (2005, 2007). Next week,
we'll debut "An Artifact's Journey" which clever web-surfers have already seen
as it accidentally appeared on an early version of the Emerging Cypriot
interface. <a
href="http://mediterraneanceramics.blogspot.com/2008/02/emerging-
cypriot.html">The good news is that it received decent reviews from discerning
eyes</a>. Feel free to make comments here on each of the episodes.
 A few technical notes The video is all in <a
When a new installment is made, the image will be a rollover. I borrowed
the idea for this format from a video series at the Indianapolis Museum of
Art. The center square in the last row is a link to the Pyla-
Koutsopetria Archaeological Project web page where you can read more
about everything that you see in these film shorts. We have <a
of Emerging Cypriot and Survey on Cyprus, and <a
erging-cypr-1.html">a short commentary on the first installment</a>.
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TITLE: Four Views of the Corinthian Landscape
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BASENAME: four-views-of-t
DATE: 02/12/2008 01:14:38 AM

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Yesterday the <a
participated in a popular "optional, but mandatory trip" to the Eastern and
Southern Corinthia. <a
href="http://classics.uc.edu/faculty_staff/davis_informal.html">Jack Davis</a>
(the Director of the American School), <a href="http://isthmia.osu.edu/teg/">Tim
Gregory</a> (a professor at Ohio State and a NEH Fellow here in Athens), and I
introduced the students to they way in which regional archaeological projects,
most of whom practice intensive pedestrian survey, read the landscape. In
particular, the students saw four different views of the Greek landscape.
The different readings of the same "text" reinforced the idea that the landscape
was a constructed entity. This is to say that the landscape is not a
discrete space with a single significance but a complex mosaic of overlapping
meanings which each group assembles for their own benefit in order to create a
useful and meaningful knowledge of their environment. <a
eWriter/NemeaVillage.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px;
border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="272" alt="NemeaVillage"
Writer/NemeaVillage_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> The
Village of Old Nemea. Sanctuary of Zeus is the far right. 1)
Jack Davis provided us with a brilliant historical overview of the landscape of
the Nemea Valley from his experiences with the <a
href="http://classics.uc.edu/nvap/">Nemea Valley Archaeological Project</a>. He
pointed out the wide range and diversity of sites extending from the somewhat
isolated vicinity of Ancient Nemea with its temple to Zeus to the head of the
pass into the Argolid. Atop the Evangelistria hill we were able to look
south through the Dervenakia pass into the plain of the Argolid, past Mycenae,
Argos, and on to Nauplion. The area is now mostly given to vines --
producing the famous Nemean wines -- but was dotted with sites and settlements
throughout antiquity. <a
eWriter/DevenakiPass.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px;
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border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="272" alt="DevenakiPass"

Writer/DevenakiPass_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> South
from the Evangelistria Hill through the Argolid with the Saronic Guld in the
distance 2) On the way through the countryside of Nemea, Jack told a
story about the discovery of the Early Christian basilica on the Evangelistria
Hill above the village of Old Nemea. According the story the church was
discovered after an old woman in the village had a dream which told her to go up
on top of the hill and dig there. She did what the dream asked and
discovered an ancient icon amidst the ruins of an old church. The
villagers hearing about this then rushed up the hill and excavated the Early
Christian basilica with their farming tools revealing its full plan. The
story itself is an inventio tale and tremendously common in the oral
tradition of modern Greece. As <a
zani.html">mentioned earlier in the blog</a>, the story has precedents in
Christian literature dating back to at least the 5th century Inventio Crucis
(discovery of the true cross). The stories emphasize the discovery of
a lost sacred object typically through divine intervention. They conceive
of the landscape as having places of latent sacredness that persist through time
even if temporarily obscured from view. <a
eWriter/EvangelistriaHillChurchSM.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-
alt="EvangelistriaHillChurchSM"
Writer/EvangelistriaHillChurchSM_thumb.jpg" width="404"
border="0"></a> Early Christian Basilica on the Evangelistria Hill
with the modern church in the background. 3) After a lunch at
Ancient Corinth, Tim Gregory and I walked the students through the landscape in
a way that would complement Jack Davis's big picture view of the Nemea
Valley. We focused on a few fields and encouraged the student to look down
and take notice of the artifacts on the ground. By observing field
conditions, like visibility, small scale changes in slope and soil type, and the
variations in artifact densities students, we gave the students a fieldwalker's
eye view of survey archaeology and method. It also urged them to consider
how survey archaeology defines site in the landscape based on artifact density,
topography, and the various influences on artifact recovery. <a
eWriter/TimTalkinginCorinthia.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-
alt="TimTalkinginCorinthia"
Writer/TimTalkinginCorinthia_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a>
 Tim Gregory talking to the students in the Corinthian countryside
4) Midway though our fieldwalker's eye view of survey, we were sidetracked by
a local farmer who offered to show us the antiquities on his land. We were
standing atop a known archaeological site which had been partially documented in
the early 20th century. Since then, however, it has been part of seemingly
prosperous farm which had imported soil, changed the landscape through
bulldozing, and plowed through antiquities to improve the drainage for vines and
citrus trees. The farmer, nevertheless, was pleased to walk the Regular
Members across the landscape pointing to antiquities throughout his land.
He watched with an amused look as the students crashed, slid, and jumped down
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the tall bulldozed terraces, and pointed out various antiquities with the quiet
confidence of a man who knew the land better than almost any archaeologist could
ever hope.
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AUTHOR: Phyllis
EMAIL: pagraham@ucdavis.edu
IP: 169.237.75.170
URL:
DATE: 02/12/2008 05:45:53 PM
Thank you for those photos of memory-charged countryside. Intrigued by stories
of Sister Vasilike and her landmark chapel atop Evangelistria, I trudged up
there alone one hot July Sunday in 1981 to make her acquaintance and inspect the
Early Christian Basilica. After offering me the customary spoon-sweet and a
glass of water in her modest living space, she cheerfully escorted me
around the hilltop to see her chapel, the goat and chickens, the ancient
basilica, and a sweeping view then undefiled by telephone towers or the 'new
road' to Tripolis. I have a vivid recollection of bright eyes peering out from
beneath the black scarf. Her face was weathered, but she probably wasn't much
older than 40. I think she died only a few years later. The story I had heard
in the village involved a vision dreamt by Vasilike herself, prompting her
family to build the hilltop chapel and shelter in fulfillment of a vow. With a
group of Nemea excavation folks, I climbed an uninhabited Evangelistria again
one summer evening in the mid-90s and espied in the weeds a grooved block from
one or another of the ancient stadia (it's probably been removed to the museum
by now). Before the Tripolis highway--and all those other superfluous roadcuts -
- sliced through the countryside and disturbed old monopatia, excavation staff
often walked over a saddle south of Evangelistria to return home from evening
dinner at the Hani Enesti taverna. Those were the days.
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TITLE: Epigraphy and Hybridity in Early Christian Greece
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: epigraphy-and-h
DATE: 02/10/2008 11:07:24 PM

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Regular readers of this blog (both of them) recognize that I have been slowly
constructing several arguments through a series of posts; one of these arguments
draws upon Postcolonial theory to argue for the hybrid nature of Early Christian
space in Greece (<a
igraphy-litur.html">part 1</a>, <a
lphi-mosaics.html">part 2</a>). It's my current research project and the
topic of an article currently under construction. (Plus, it's what the
cool kids are into these days; see <a
href="http://www.ajaonline.org/index.php?ptype=content&aid=300">Derek
Count's article in the most recent AJA</a>).I've been posting on it here, in
large part, to force me to consider my research in an accessible way and to make
sure that my arguments have an essential simplicity. This, I think, is
part of the process of finding my own voice as a blogger and scholar. The
second case study exploring the notion of the hybrid in the Early Christian
architecture and society in Greece draws upon the epigraphy associated with
Early Christian basilicas there. The inscriptions in these churches are
overwhelmingly found on mosaic floors. They commemorate the donors of the
churches, in some cases, and the donors of the floors in others instances. The
language in these texts is diverse and reflects myriad cultural influences that
led to the construction of these buildings. Take three texts for
example: From the Basilica Alpha at Nikopolis a text: (<a
href="http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0070-
7546%281951%296%3C81%3ASOLAAE%3E2.0.CO%3B2-O">E. Kitzinger, "Studies on Late
Antique and Early Byzantine Floor Mosaics: I. Mosaics at Nikopolis," DOP 6
(1951)</a>, 87). <blockquote> Here you see the famous and boundless
ocean. Containing in its midst the earth Bearing round about in all the
skillful images of art everything that breathes and creeps The foundation
of Dometios, the greathearted archpriest.</blockquote> From the church at
Antikyra in Boeotia: (P. ŒëœÉŒ∑ŒºŒ±Œ∫ŒøœÄŒøœçŒªŒøœÖ - ŒëœÑŒ∂Œ±Œ∫Œ¨, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/7666362">Œ£œçŒΩœÑŒ±Œ≥ŒºŒ± Œ§œâŒΩ
Œ†Œ±ŒªŒ±ŒπŒøœáœÅŒπœÉœÑŒπŒ±ŒΩŒπŒ∫œéŒΩ Œ®Œ∑œÜŒπŒ¥œâœÑœéŒΩ ŒîŒ±œÄŒ≠Œ¥œâŒΩ Œ§Œ∑œÇ
ŒïŒªŒªŒ¨Œ¥ŒøœÇ</a>. (Thessaloniki 1987), 150). <blockquote> For her
vow, Elizabeth [together with Simian] paved this for a one gold
piece.</blockquote> From the church at Daphnousia in Locris: (A.
Orlandos, ‚ÄúUne basilique pal√©o-chr√©tienne en Locride,‚Äù Byzantion, 5
(1929/30), 229). <blockquote> Eugeneios, the illustrious, and his
wife Dionyseia for a vow of themselves and their children completed the
whole building of the holy church of God from the
foundations.</blockquote> These three texts provide three different
perspectives on the act of making donation to Early Christian churches.
The first text is from a mosaic floor at Nikopolis that shows an edenic garden
scene and the line "everything that breathes and creeps" is a quote from Homer
((Il. 17.447; Od., 18.131). The donor, a Bishop named
Dometios, is greathearted and, elsewhere, "greatest of all, a great light to the
fatherland." The Homeric quote and the grandiose language draws upon
traditions of patronage dating back to the Classical, Hellenistic and Roman
periods. The Bishop Dometios was a local elite and continued the practice of
ancient building patronage by constructing a church. He promoted his elite
identity through elaborate inscriptions that remind the reader of his learning,
piety, and loyalty to the city. The second text reflects a different
perspective on giving to the construction of a church. Here the humble
Elizabeth and Simian donate a single gold piece for the pavement of a mosaic
floor. A gold piece is a small donation, but not a tiny one. A
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skilled artisan perhaps would earn the equivalent of 5 or 6 gold pieces a year,
maybe less. A grave plot seems to be the nearest equivalent: they often
seem to have cost about a single gold piece and were seemingly purchased by
wealthier members of the artisan class for the burial of their close
relatives. The reasons for the donation are clear in this text as
well. Elizabeth pledged the donation for a vow (hyper euxis, in
Greek). Presumably she asked God for something in exchange for a donation
to the church. This simple act was then commemorated with this text which
both reflected the piety of the donor and the power of the Christian God.
There is none of the aristocratic posturing, Homeric quoting, or elaborate
decoration in Antikyra. The final text commemorates the generosity of
Eugeneios "the illustrious". The word used here in Greek (and it is poor
and potentially confusing translation) is lamprotatos, and it is a word
that denotes a particular rank in Late Roman society. Originally the
emperor awarded this rank to members of the Senatorial aristocracy (vir
clarissimi), but by the 6th century it had become a generic honorific that
placed an individual in the upper ranks of Late Roman society. Eugeneios
may not have been a Senator, per se, but he was clearly from an important
family. While so much is obvious by his donation of an entire church "from
the foundations," his proud assertion of his rank reflects a longstanding
practice of elite presentation. The text itself, however, remains very
different from the elite inscription of Dometios. There is no Homeric
language and the reasons for the construction reflect the same kind of piety
present in the humble text of Elizabeth. The family of Eugeneios, his wife
Dionyseia, and his children (a delightfully homey touch) gave the church "hyper
euxis" for a vow. The hybrid moment of Christianity emerges from the
intersection of diverse identities in the space of the Early Christian basilicas
of Greece. The humble Elizabeth and the pompous Dometios represent
differing motivations and traditions of representation. In the
"illustrious" Eugeneios and his family these identifiers intersect to produce an
rich in the Christian piety and aristocratic diction. These texts
and others like them provide another good example of the permeability of Early
Christian churches. This permeability to various influences from the
longstanding traditions of civic munificence to the piety of non-elite donors
created a space that did not produce a unified or consistent meaning but rather
displayed the ambiguity and ambivalence of continuously negotiated rules and
identities. This tension present in the iconography, epigraphy, and
architecture of church buildings stands in contrast to the representation of
Early Christian space in literary accounts, where it often appears as a space of
comfort and spiritual, theological, and ritual coherence (see for example the
exciting article by <a
href="http://muse.jhu.edu.ezproxy.library.und.edu/journals/journal_of_early_chri
stian_studies/v015/15.4shepardson.html">C. Shepardson, "Controlling Contested
Places: John Chrysostom's Adversus Iudaeos Homilies an the Spatial Politics of
Religious Controversy," JECS 15 (2007), 483-516</a>). The spread of
churches often represented the spread of Christianity, but the fluidity of
representation within their walls leaves open what that really means. I'm
off to the Nemea Valley today with the <a
href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/Membership/description.htm">Regular Members</a> to
hear Jack Davis talk about his <a href="http://classics.uc.edu/nvap/">Nemea
Valley Archaeological Project</a>. Then, Tim Gregory and I will present
something on the <a
Korinthia Archaeological Survey</a>. It's cold and maybe rainy, and the
Regular Members are getting restless. As I told them in an email -- <a
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href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/">The American School of Classical Studies</a>:

Always leave them wanting less. Andy Warhol would be proud.
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TITLE: Special Saturday Quick Hits: a New Archbishop, a New University
President, and Blogging Archaeology Again
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BASENAME: special-saturda
CATEGORY: Byzantium
DATE: 02/09/2008 06:17:42 AM

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Three quick hits in a special Saturday edition: <ul> <li>The new
Metropolitan Archbishop of Greece, Ieronymos II formerly Bishop of Thebes,
brings to his office some scholarly credentials according to the <a
href="http://www.ecclesia.gr/englishnews/default.asp?id=3452">press
releases</a>. The official church bulletin said that before entering the
clergy he served as a lector or academic assistant under Anastasios Orlandos and
pursued an academic which included studying at the <a
href="http://www.uoa.gr/">University of Athens</a> and then in Germany and
Austria -- <a href="http://www.uni-graz.at/">Graz</a>, <a href="http://www.uni-
muenchen.de/">Munich</a>, and <a href="http://www.uni-
regensburg.de/">Regensburg</a> -- but Ieronymos left slightly before
the time of that Regensburg's most famous professor -- Pope Benedict XVI --
taught there from (1969-1977). He also served for a time as the abbot of Os.
Loukas. He published two books on Christian archaeology: I. Liapes, <a
href=" http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/8016644">ŒúŒµœÉŒ±ŒπœâŒΩŒπŒ∫Œ¨ ŒúŒΩŒ∑ŒºŒµŒØŒ±
ŒïœÖŒ≤ŒøŒØŒ±œÇ</a> (Medieval Monuments of Evia) (Athens 1971) and in 2005 or
2006 a book on Christian Boeotia which I have not been able to find. I
leafed through the former at the <a
href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/gennadius/g_index.htm">Gennadius Library</a> this
morning, and it is a careful and well-done survey of the Medieval Monuments of
the island of Evia with a nice collection of plans, drawings, and plates
complete with proper academic citations and bibliography. It's interesting
that Kostis Kourelis wrote a post entitled "<a
href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/2008/01/bishops-earthquakes-
immigration.html">Bishops, Earthquakes, and Diaspora</a>" about the relationship
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between the Orthodox church and American archaeologist just a week or so ago
over at his <a href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/">Buildings, Objects,
Situations</a> blog. It will be interesting to see if having an individual
with a serious interest in archaeology as Metropolitan leads to closer ties
between the church and the <a href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/">American
School</a>. </li> <li>On the other side of the pond, my home institution, the
<a href="http://www.und.edu/">University of North Dakota</a> has a new
president, Robert Kelly formerly dean of the College of Health Sciences and
professor of medical education and public health at the University of
Wyoming. Read the press release <a
href="http://www.und.edu/kelley/">here</a>. Let's hope that he supports
the humanities at the University... particularly our archaeological fieldwork in
Cyprus! </li> <li>Finally, Alun Salt and Tom Elliot move at the pace of the
blogosphere (or blogging world as Alun puts it). From conversation to
concept in a mere few days, <a
carnival.html">a lengthy and thoughtful post by Alun</a> a few days ago, <a
ogging-peer-r.html">my slightly irreverent response</a>, and <a
proposal-past.html">an intriguing new concept</a> designed to occupy the middle
ground between a blog and a journal.</li></ul>
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AUTHOR: Lon
EMAIL: Lonpete@gmail.com
IP: 87.69.37.53
URL: http://mochafuled.wordpress.com/
DATE: 02/10/2008 05:20:27 AM
Great blog. Shalom from Israel. I am an American traveling in the Middle East
and looking for a dig(s) to volunteer at as time permits. Plus just enjoy
reading up on the history when I can. Looks like there is loads of information
here and will be back to read more.!
!
take care.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Chuck Jones
EMAIL: ce-jones@ascsa.edu.gr
IP: 194.219.34.195
DATE: 02/28/2008 04:04:46 AM
The other Liapis book is:!
!
ŒõŒπŒ¨œÄŒ∑œÇ, ŒôŒµœÅœéŒΩœÖŒºŒøœÇ ŒßœÅŒπœÉœÑŒπŒ±ŒΩŒπŒ∫ŒÆ ŒíŒøŒπœâœÑŒØŒ±: ŒëŒÑ/
ŒúŒ∑œÑœÅŒøœÄŒøŒªŒØœÑŒøœÖ ŒòŒ∑Œ≤œéŒΩ Œ∫Œ±Œπ ŒõŒµŒ≤Œ±Œ¥ŒµŒØŒ±œÇ
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ŒôŒµœÅœâŒΩœçŒºŒøœÖ. ŒõŒπŒ≤Œ±Œ¥ŒµŒπŒ¨ : ŒöŒ≠ŒΩœÑœÅŒø

Œ±œÅœáŒ±ŒπŒøŒªŒøŒ≥ŒπŒ∫œéŒΩ, ŒπœÉœÑŒøœÅŒπŒ∫œéŒΩ Œ∫Œ±Œπ Œ∏ŒµŒøŒªŒøŒ≥ŒπŒ∫œéŒΩ
ŒºŒµŒªŒµœÑœéŒΩ, 2005.!
!
It is still unclassified and incompletely catalogued, but you're welcome to come
on down to my office Bill, and have a look.!
!
-Chuck-!
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TITLE: Blogging, Peer Review, and Scholarly Publication
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
ALLOW PINGS: 1
BASENAME: blogging-peer-r
DATE: 02/08/2008 12:58:51 AM

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Over at the <a href="http://ancientworldbloggers.blogspot.com/">Ancient World
Bloggers Group</a> there is a <a
carnival.html">good post by Alun Salt</a>, with a nice little swarm of comments,
on "re-thinking the blog carnival". Blog Carnivals are coordinated
discussions held at various blogs on a set topic. He considered, in
particular, the relationship between such uses of the new media and the
"traditional media" of scholarly publication. <a
href="http://ancientworldbloggers.blogspot.com/"><img style="border-top-width:
height="289" alt="AWBG"
Writer/AWBG.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> There seems to be at least
three main issues at stake. First and perhaps most obviously there is the
vexing issue of peer review (which is both a scholarly concern (i.e. peer-review
validates knowledge as a product of the community) and professional concerns
(i.e. can we "get credit" for our output in blogs). The second issue is
archiving the production of blogs. On the one hand, this has to do with
making sure, in a practical sense, that the time and intellectual energy put
into a blog doesn't disappear with some massive server-side conflagration.
On the other hand, as the third issue, it means that if we think our scholarly
output in a blog is intellectually useful, we need to ensure that scholars can
cite a blog in a responsible way to giving the author credit where it is due and
in some cases allowing author to defend any copyright he seek to enforce.
Some fields, literature and <a
href="http://ancientworldbloggers.blogspot.com/2008/02/blog-citation-in-law-
reviews.html">apparently law</a>, have begun to see the citation of blogs as a
reasonable scholarly practice. This only really works if we have a
commitment to stable URLs and the like so that these citations are
persistent. These are all issues as we consider the place of "the
blog" as a medium/genre with a role in the future of the scholarly world.
Some bloggers, like Shawn Graham at the <a
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have experimented with creating a <a
href="http://www.lulu.com/content/1951030">"best of the blog" book via
Lulu</a>. At the iconic literary blog, <a
href="http://www.thevalve.org/">The Valve</a>, they regularly release books
pulling together the posts from their "book events" and including comments which
give the reader access to a particularly transparent kind of peer review.
Others, including <a
href="http://archaeoastronomy.wordpress.com/2008/01/22/research-blogging-bpr3-
is-in-open-beta/">Alun Salt</a> and <a
href="http://ancientworldbloggers.blogspot.com/2008/01/bloggers-for-peer-
reviewed-research.html">Tom Elliott</a>, have explored <a
href="http://bpr3.org/">bloggers for peer-reviewed research concept</a> (BP3),
which imprints a blog post with a stamp validating the work as having serious
scholarly (i.e. peer reviewed) value and allowing it to be aggregated <a
href="http://researchblogging.org/">at the BP3 site.</a> <a
href="http://mediterraneanceramics.blogspot.com/">Sebastian Heath</a> has
advocated <a href="http://creativecommons.org/">Creative Commons scholarly
licensing tools</a> -- both for his blog (as many others have done) and for <a
href="http://mediterraneanceramics.blogspot.com/2008/01/grbpilion-now-
cc.html">printed scholarly works</a>. These are all interesting and
exciting developments in the scholarly blogosphere! My only concern, and
it's a vague one at present, is that as we push blogs toward more recognizable
forms of scholarly output -- books, peer reviewed works, even the various forms
of copyrighting (and lefting) is that we slowly eat away at the things that make
blogs distinct as a medium and a genre. In some ways archiving, peer
reviewing, printing, copyrighting all take away from the freedom of the cyber-
salon. Blogs can replicate in some ways the ephemeral character of
conversations and discussions to waft thousands of miles across continents, they
remain a realm where it is possible to preserve personal and scholarly anonymity
(who was the <a href="http://www.invisibleadjunct.com/">Invisible Adjunct</a>
anyway?), and, finally, blogging allows for an unported and unregulated
output which encourages liminal, marginal, and obscurely combined ideas -- this
is to say, some blogs are worth reading because they are bad or crazy or just so
odd. Pulling the "academic" blogosphere away from the cacophonic world of
the World Wide Net Web into a discernable relationship with the larger world of
scholarly output will almost certainly work to undermine the unstructured
quality that contributes to the medium's vitality. (I think this is what
the late Mary Douglas meant by social transformations tending to go from low-
grid to high-grid). Of course such a move toward a more regulated and
critical blogosphere will undoubtedly win committed, intelligent, bloggers and
their ideas improved standing in the academic and professional world; less
cynically, it will encourage more conservative colleagues to give a some of
those ideas that are rattling around the blogosphere a more serious hearing.
This post, I suppose, doesn't propose a solution to the valid and, indeed,
important concerns voiced among committed bloggers. And it should
certainly not be read as a lack of interest or enthusiasm for <a
carnival.html">Alun's idea</a> (cf. my comments on his post!), but rather meant
to be an alternative critique (or the beginning of an idea or an explanation for
why I don't list my blog on my CV or post a Creative Common's license). In
the end, I am sufficiently cynical to see my own alternative definition to how
blogs fit into the larger world of scholarly production as another push toward
giving blogs a higher-grid kind of existence. (It could have been worse,
of course: I was thinking last night that the <a
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Group</a> might want to initiate some kind of blogging awards (kin to the <a
href="http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/46208.html">Cliopatria Awards</a> or the <a
href="http://scienceblogs.com/clock/2008/01/open_lab_2007_up_for_sale.php">Open
Laboratory Best Science Writing on Blogs book</a>) which mark out certain blogs
and their posts as exceptional and then produce every year a book of these posts
(a kind of Best Blogs of 2008)...this would have all the irony of the Rock 'n'
Roll Hall of Fame and none of the Rock or the Roll).
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TITLE: Phyli, Panakton, Eleutherai, Aigosthena in the Rain
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
ALLOW PINGS: 1
BASENAME: phyli-panakton
CATEGORY: Byzantium
DATE: 02/07/2008 12:58:17 AM

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The sites of Phyli, Panakton, Eleutherai, and Aigosthena are known for
fortifying Attica's Northwest border and forming part of the famous <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/12033923">Fortress Attica</a> of the Late
Classical period. Their imposing walls of ashlar masonry stand out in the
winter against the green cover of the Attic mountains. <a
eWriter/PhyliSM.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px;
border-bottom-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px" height="272" alt="PhyliSM"
Writer/PhyliSM_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> Phyli <a
eWriter/EleutheraiSM.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width:
alt="EleutheraiSM"
Writer/EleutheraiSM_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a>
 Eleutherai While the ashlar walls of the Classical period
are by far the most dramatic aspect of these sites, what is perhaps more
interesting from an archaeological perspective is the evidence for their
continued use and significance sometimes into the Late Medieval and Early Modern
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periods in Greece. These sites do not simply reflect an interesting

example of Classical architecture and strategy, but also represent dynamic
places in the landscape. The reasons for this vary. In many cases
the abundance of building material make these sites appealing quarries for
subsequent settlements. In other instances, the siting of a fortification
is well suited for settlement. Panakton, for example, makes use of the
blocks from the earlier fortifications there and occupies a naturally
advantageous spot about the Skorta plain (for the publication of the later
remains at this site see <a href="http://www.atypon-
link.com/ASCS/doi/pdf/10.2972/hesp.2003.72.2.147">S. Gerstel, et al., "A Late
Medieval Settlement at Panakton," Hesperia 72 (2003), 147-234</a>). <a
eWriter/PanaktonChurch.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-
alt="PanaktonChurch"
Writer/PanaktonChurch_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> Late
Medieval Church at Panakton The site of Aigosthena
likewise shows a rather dynamic history of use. It's position at the head
of the bay of Porto Germano gave it both a decent harbor but also access not
only to Boeotia but to the passes south in the Megarid and further east in
Attica. It appears to have thrived as one of the communities of the
Corinthian Gulf which probably benefits as the point of contact between East-
West trade across the northern Isthmus. Plus, the prosperity of Thebes and
even perhaps Athens ensured that there were local markets for goods. The
long term vitality of certain trading patterns ensured that sites like
Aigosthena represented the persistent nodes of wealth from exchange. <a
eWriter/AigosthenaSM.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-
alt="AigosthenaSM"
Writer/AigosthenaSM_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a>
 Aigosthena with its Middle Byzantine church on the foundations of an Early
Christian basilica with its Hellenistic fortifications in the
background I have to lead the <a
href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/Membership/description.htm">Regular Members</a> on
the tour of these sites at the end of the month. The challenge will be to
bring together the topography, architecture, archaeology, and history of these
sites in a way that reinforces the importance of their later history, but does
not diminish their specific place in the history of Classical Attica. <a
eWriter/Rainbow.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px;
border-bottom-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px" height="99" alt="Rainbow"
Writer/Rainbow_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a>
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TITLE: Emerging Cypriot is now Live
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
ALLOW PINGS: 1
BASENAME: emerging-cypr-1
DATE: 02/06/2008 12:08:46 AM

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<a
eWriter/PatrowCamera.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width:
0px" height="308" alt="PatrowCamera"
Writer/PatrowCamera_thumb.jpg" width="124" align="right" border="0">
PatrowVisual</a>, <a href="http://www.chss.iup.edu/pkap/">Pyla-Koutsopetria
Archaeological Project</a>, <a href="http://www.iup.edu/">Indiana University of
Pennsylvania</a>, and the <a href="http://www.und.edu/">University of North
Dakota</a> are proud to introduce Joe Patrow's newest documentary film project
entitled <a
Cypriot</a>. The first installment called, "Landscape
Montage", is the longest (8 min) and only one without dialogue. It focuses
on the landscape of the site of Pyla-Koutsopetria which despite its
small area represents a wide range of uses and landforms ranging from coastal
plains to abrupt cliffs and ravines. Joe Patrow's camera work presents the
landscape montage from a human perspective by keeping the activities of the
archaeologist at the center of the frame. This montage of scenes featuring
field walking, a survey of the ridge line below the Kokkinokremos ridge,
geophysical fieldwork and we feel this active montage is superior to the
panoramic photos sometimes used to show landscape because our video montage
keeps the archaeologists in the picture and uses them to frame the landscape
itself. We plan to release a new documentary short just about
every week, so stay tuned to emergence of <a
Cypriot</a>. To view the documentary you will need the <a
href="www.apple.com/quicktime/download/ ">newest version of Quicktime</a> and
it's best viewed from a broadband connect. It is formatted for easy upload
to your iPod or iPhone. We should have other formats up soon. For
an interview with the director on this project, <a
erging-cyprio.html">click here</a>. For Joe Patrow's first documentary
check out the <a href="http://www2.und.edu/our/itunes/index.php">University of
North Dakotas iTunes</a> store for Survey on Cyprus or <a
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href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/Multimedia.html">watch it on
the web here</a>.
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TITLE: Emerging Cypriot: An Archaeological Documentary
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
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BASENAME: emerging-cyprio
DATE: 02/05/2008 02:14:10 AM

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<a
eWriter/PatrowPhoto.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width:
0px" height="302" alt="PatrowPhoto"
Writer/PatrowPhoto_thumb.jpg" width="204" align="right"
border="0"></a> Finally, <a
arning-about.html">after so many idle promises</a>, Emerging Cypriot, the long
awaited documentary project of <a
href="http://www.xanga.com/jpatrow">PatrowVisual</a>, <a
href="http://www.chss.iup.edu/pkap/">Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological
Project</a>, <a href="http://www.iup.edu/">Indiana University of
Pennsylvania</a> and the <a href="http://www.und.edu">University of North
Dakota</a> is ready for release. Unlike Survey on Cyprus which
was a more formal "feature style" documentary, Emerging Cypriot is a
series of shorts intended to show the routine, human, mundane, and humorous
aspects of a regional survey project. These complement the image drawn by
Survey on Cyprus and, in some ways, expand it. The first installment
will be ready for download tomorrow, but to whet your appetite today, I'll
introduce you to our director, Joe Patrow, and let him introduce his work to
you. The interview is very candid and unedited. It shows his
frustrations and joys throughout the second phase of the project. If you
haven't watched <a
Cyprus, it's available in multiple formats here</a>. Check back tomorrow
for the internet premiere of Emerging Cypriot! How is
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Emerging Cypriot different from <a

Cyprus</a>? The shorts that are collectively titled "Emerging
Cypriot" are chapter extensions of "Survey on Cyprus;" one might call them
extensive bonus features. They highlight aspects of archaeology that were
unavailable to shoot in 2005, while simultaneously introducing new faces and
situations. Did anything surprise you? I was
surprised by my change in attitude toward the documentary project. In 2005, I
was a graduate student of history, eager to make a low budget documentary in
Cyprus. The hope was that it would help generate a serious budget for a more
affective, broadcast worthy documentary on survey archaeology. Two years later,
I was working in Hollywood under a variety of hats (cameraman, editor, data
capture engineer, etc), and had become more realistic about that goal and the
nature of film production. Although I remained positive about returning to
Cyprus and chose to ignore my production limitations, I worried that I might end
up shooting little new material; and, when that worry was justified, I had to
face some hard facts. I knew that there was still potential for creating a
unique documentary in post-production, but not without a substantial budget, or
very special resources (maybe these will materialize later). I also knew that
the archaeologists anticipated my creating a feature despite the limitations.
What surprised me was my unwillingness to knock myself out trying to make it
when I began running into a wall. Indeed, even though I knew that such a feature
could be made, I also knew I couldn't make it without compromising my creative
vision; without it coming across as sub-par, as little more than a longer remake
of 'Survey on Cyprus.' I was equally surprised when I opted to produce shorts of
the fresh material, ignoring the guilt I felt for not meeting the supposed
feature expectations of PKAP. Fin ally, I was surprised because the position I
took marked a real shift in my earlier "do it yourself for nothing" dogma. It
became evident that the film industry had left me with a more realistic approach
to filmmaking. Yes, you can do something for nothing, but remember "you always
get what you pay for." Can you describe your relationship to the
Project? I've seen myself as a friend and supporter of the project.
That is, someone who volunteers his time and resources for free to shoot
archival footage of the expedition, with the understanding that PKAP will help
defer some of the costs and give me special access to the footage. The post-
production end of the business has always been hazy. The archival footage is
made accessible to both parties who acknowledge their right to do with it as
they please, though it is assumed that some form of mutual cooperation will be
observed in creating a final product. In this way everyone can benefit. 
Do you feel that your presence and work on the project contributed to
the project's overall goals? Absolutely. I know that "Survey on
Cyprus" helped the archaeologists drum up interest and grant money, which fed
directly into their project goals. The footage also played a role in creating a
man-on-the-spot look at their work. This was important because the
archaeologists are particularly keen in recording their research methodology.
And, finally, "Survey on Cyprus" and "Emerging Cypriot" supported their
educational goals by making their site accessible to classrooms. 
What did you have to teach the archaeologists in order to make your
work their successful? Between "Survey on Cyprus" and the "Emerging
Cypriot" shorts, we've achieved a great deal of success; maybe not a feature
yet, but that is the nature of documentary filmmaking. Indeed, what I've needed
to explain to the archaeologists is that creating a documentary is not as easy
as it may seem, and that a truly successful piece -- that appeals to both
parties -- can only come if their is more cooperation and communication in post-
production. After all, one doesn't sit down and crank out a feature in a month;
1249
it can take years. For example, the chair of my Alma Mater's Cinema Department,
Dr. Dave Bussan, shot a documentary about Northern Cyprus at least a decade ago,
and he's still working on it. How much footage have you
accumulated over your two years of shooting? Over 40 hours. To an
editor faced with all that material, it's not unlike facing a massive jigsaw
puzzle with millions of possible combinations. <a
Writer/image_thumb_22.png" width="244" align="left" border="0"></a> 
How was the footage shot -- can you give us some technical
specifications without being too technical? Knowing that my first
priority was to gather archival footage and the second priority was to shoot a
documentary, I approached the project in the spirit of Dziga Vertov, an early
filmmaker of unstaged realities, the so-called Kino-Pravada. I let my camera
follow people, dancing onto a face here, tilting down to an artifact there;
always keeping my lens ready to be flooded with story. I wandered across the
open fields and through the streets of Larnaka like Preston Sturgis' comic
character John L. Sullivan, looking to capture real substance in the world
around me (...and returning to Hollywood having learned the same lesson he did).
I conducted some interviews and made an occasional inquiry of PKAP's plans, but
generally tried to play a fly on the wall. Over time, I would see little stories
develop, and then -- and only then -- would I begin looking to shoot things that
might help me connect them in post. From a technical aspect, the shoot was
bare-bones. I returned to Cyprus in 2007 with almost all of the same equipment I
had brought in 2005. including my same old standard definition camera (a Canon
XL1s). This technically barred me from creating anything new visually; in other
words, my footage of Vigla looked the same in 2007 as it did in 2005; now all I
had was more of it. All the footage was recorded on Sony Mini-DV tape. Indiana
University of Pennsylvania lent me Sony studio headphones and an Azden wireless
microphone system to help with interviews. I also brought a portable flag set
and some stands to cut down on harsh lighting. Naturally, as I was the only
member of the production crew, I was unable to carry a lot of gear into the
field, and only in rare instances would someone have seen me waddling
uncomfortably across the countryside with a camera in one hand and flags,
stands, and a tripod strapped haphazardly to my backpack. What
will happen to the footage? Does it have archival value? Academic
selections of the 40 hours of footage will likely be digitized and transferred
to a hard drive for PKAP -- a laborious project, but useful. In this way they'll
be able to edit it, share it, archive it, etc. The original Mini-DV tapes will
likely remain in my care and also remain accessible. Most of what was shot
has archival value. If anything, it offers a historic record of an
archaeological expedition and Cyprus in the first decade of the twenty-first
century. It might even be said to maintain a tradition set by earlier cameramen,
like those who shot the old silent reels of French archaeologists excavating
ruins in Northern Cyprus. What are your future goals with the
project? This has yet to be determined. At present, it seems wise to
backup the footage to hard drive, and discuss options. This might be the end of
the road, or it could be a new beginning. What other projects are
you working on now and how can we follow them? I am currently
working on Big Brother, Season 9. You'll be able to catch that show on CBS this
Feburary. Earlier this year, I was the 2nd AC on a Super Bowl spot for Reebok,
and rumor has it that there'll eventually be a behind-the-scenes movie on their
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website. Beyond trying to write more (both alone and with my writing partner),
I've been helping a lot of friends with their short film projects, primarily as
an editor. One series called 'Failing Upwards' can be seen here (along with
behind-the-scenes featurettes for two short films I DPed last year): <a
href="http://www.myspace.com/tomorrowtheworldonline.">http://www.myspace.com/tom
orrowtheworldonline.</a> I'll be editing a short comedy called "Booth Girls"
next month. I'm also helping design characters for an animated series. 
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Joe
EMAIL: jscarahe@gcsnc.com
IP: 216.79.193.56
URL:
DATE: 02/05/2008 10:47:39 AM
I thought the writers were on strike... how are some of these things even
possible?
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TITLE: More Springtime for Byzantium
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
ALLOW PINGS: 1
BASENAME: more-springtime
CATEGORY: Byzantium
DATE: 02/04/2008 01:13:36 AM

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A couple of weeks ago <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2008/01/sp
ringtime-for.html">I noted the recent flurry of books well-suited for teaching
Byzantine History</a>. It was quite a surprise when one of the first "<a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/31/education/31education.html?_r=1&oref
=slogin">podcast celebrities</a>" turned out to be a high school teaching
lecturing on Byzantium. Lars Brownworth's has produced a series of
podcasts focused on the Byzantine Emperors which he used to structure his
history of Byzantium (a la Psellos). Brownworth is now working on a book
for <a href="http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6468238.html">Crown
Publishing</a> that will cover the all of Byzantine History. <blockquote>
Freedman, Samuel G. ‚ÄúHistory Teacher Becomes Podcast Celebrity.‚Äù The New
York Times, January 31, 2007. <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/31/education/31education.html?_r=1&oref
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=slogin">http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/31/education/31education.html?_r=1&o
ref=slogin</a>. Brownworth, Lars. ‚Äú12 Byzantine Rulers: The History of The
Byzantine Empire - Anders.com.‚Äù <a
href="http://www.anders.com/lectures/lars_brownworth/12_byzantine_rulers/">http:
//www.anders.com/lectures/lars_brownworth/12_byzantine_rulers/</a>.
</blockquote> I've begun to collect syllabi on Byzantine Studies
available on the internet (using <a href="http://www.zotero.org/">Zotero</a>, of
course!). The list is pretty undisciplined (I included some Late Antiquity
syllabi, but did not explicitly search for them) and was created using <a
href="http://chnm.gmu.edu/tools/syllabi/">CHNM Syllabi Finder</a> and <a
href="http://www.google.com">Google</a>. Additional syllabi are likely
"hidden" behind webct passwords (<a
href="http://www.chss.iup.edu/rsmoore/classes.htm">like R. Scott
Moore's</a>). Some you'll note derive from archives and I can imagine that
any of these URLs are particularly stable. <blockquote> Abrahamse, Dorothy.
‚ÄúThe Byzantine Empire.‚Äù <a
href="http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/byzantium/syl318a1.pdf">http://www.fordham.
edu/halsall/byzantium/syl318a1.pdf</a>. Alexakis, Alexander. ‚ÄúBYZANTIUM:
Alexakis - ORTHODOX CHRISTIANITY [Syllabus, Spring 1995].‚Äù <a
href="http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/byzantium/texts/alexakis-
syl.html">http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/byzantium/texts/alexakis-syl.html</a>.
Angelov, Dimiter. ‚ÄúByzantine Civilization (History 442).‚Äù <a
href="http://homepages.wmich.edu/~dangelov/Syllabus442">http://homepages.wmich.e
du/~dangelov/Syllabus442</a>. Caraher, William. ‚ÄúByzantine
Civilization.‚Äù <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/Syllabi/Byzantine%20Civilizatio
n_Syllabus.htm">http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/Syllabi/Byzantine%20C
ivilization_Syllabus.htm</a>. Drake, Hal, and Michelle Salzman. ‚ÄúHistory
222 Syllabus: Late Antiquity.‚Äù <a
href="http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/lateantique/History%20222%20Syllabus.htm">http:
//www.humnet.ucla.edu/lateantique/History%20222%20Syllabus.htm</a>. Gregory,
Timothy. ‚ÄúHistory 505.01: Early Byzantine Empire, A.D. 330-843.‚Äù <a
href="http://isthmia.osu.edu/teg/50501/syl_50501.htm">http://isthmia.osu.edu/teg
/50501/syl_50501.htm</a>. Gregory, Timothy. ‚ÄúHistory 505.02: The Later
Byzantine Empire.‚Äù <a
href="http://history.osu.edu/courses/syllabi/hist50502_Gregory4_WI07.doc">http:/
/history.osu.edu/courses/syllabi/hist50502_Gregory4_WI07.doc</a>. Gregory,
Timothy. ‚ÄúHISTORY 603: The Later Roman Empire AD 180-476.‚Äù <a
href="http://isthmia.osu.edu/teg/hist50303/syl50303.htm">http://isthmia.osu.edu/
teg/hist50303/syl50303.htm</a>. Gregory, Timothy. ‚ÄúHistory 709: Methods in
Ancient History: Late Antiquity and Byzantium.‚Äù <a
href="http://isthmia.osu.edu/teg/hist709/syl709.htm">http://isthmia.osu.edu/teg/
hist709/syl709.htm</a>. Gregory, Timothy. ‚ÄúThe Later Byzantine Empire
(Timothy Gregory).‚Äù <a
href="http://www.aarweb.org/syllabus/syllabi/g/gregory/later_byzantine_empire.ht
m">http://www.aarweb.org/syllabus/syllabi/g/gregory/later_byzantine_empire.htm</
a>. (an older version of 505.02) Hall, Linda. ‚ÄúHistory 383.01: History of
the Byzantine Empire.‚Äù <a
href="http://faculty.smcm.edu/ljhall/HIST383SP07.htm">http://faculty.smcm.edu/lj
hall/HIST383SP07.htm</a>. Hall, Linda. ‚ÄúHistory 435.01: The World of Late
Antiqutity: From Constantine to Justinian.‚Äù <a
href="http://faculty.smcm.edu/ljhall/HIST435SP07.htm">http://faculty.smcm.edu/lj
hall/HIST435SP07.htm</a>. Harl , Kenneth. ‚ÄúHistory/Medieval Studies 303:
Early Medieval and Byzantine Civilization.‚Äù <a
href="http://www.tulane.edu/~august/H303/Byzantine.htm">http://www.tulane.edu/~a
1252
ugust/H303/Byzantine.htm</a>. Havice, Christine. ‚ÄúSpring 2001 eSyllabusA-H

322 Byzantine Art and Civilization.‚Äù <a href="http://www.uky.edu/Classes/A-
H/322/esyllsp01.htm">http://www.uky.edu/Classes/A-H/322/esyllsp01.htm</a>.
Ivanov, Serguey. ‚ÄúByzantine History.‚Äù <a
href="http://home.aubg.bg/faculty/Serguey/Links/Byzantium/Byzantine%20History%20
Syllabus%20Spring%202007.doc">http://home.aubg.bg/faculty/Serguey/Links/Byzantiu
m/Byzantine%20History%20Syllabus%20Spring%202007.doc</a>. Ramseyer, Valerie.
‚ÄúHist 305 - Valerie Ramseyer, Wellesley History Department.‚Äù <a
href="http://www.wellesley.edu/History/VRamseyer/hist_305.html">http://www.welle
sley.edu/History/VRamseyer/hist_305.html</a>. Rapp, Claudia. ‚ÄúVarious
Byzantine Syllabi.‚Äù <a
href="http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/classes/profbylid.php?lid=837">http://www.sscne
t.ucla.edu/classes/profbylid.php?lid=837</a>. Stephenson , Paul. ‚ÄúEarly
Medieval Europe, 300-1000: 2004 Syllabus.‚Äù <a
href="http://homepage.mac.com/paulstephenson/madison/medieval/eme_2004.html">htt
p://homepage.mac.com/paulstephenson/madison/medieval/eme_2004.html</a>.
Stephenson , Paul. ‚ÄúHistory 313 Syllabus 2005.‚Äù <a
href="http://homepage.mac.com/paulstephenson/madison/byzantium/syllabus2005.html
">http://homepage.mac.com/paulstephenson/madison/byzantium/syllabus2005.html</a>
. Stevenson, Walt. ‚ÄúHistory 223 Syllabus, Roman Imperial History 2004.‚Äù
<a
href="http://www.richmond.edu/~wstevens/romanhistory/his223syl_04.html">http://w
ww.richmond.edu/~wstevens/romanhistory/his223syl_04.html</a>. Zanemonets,
Alexander. ‚ÄúByzantine Literature.‚Äù <a
href="http://hcc.haifa.ac.il/Departments/greece/pdf/byzantine-literature-
syllabus.pdf">http://hcc.haifa.ac.il/Departments/greece/pdf/byzantine-
literature-syllabus.pdf</a>. --, ‚ÄúEarly Christian and Byzantine Art.‚Äù <a
href="http://www.kean.edu/~jtuerk/documents/4_Byzantine/Byzantine_Syl.htm">http:
//www.kean.edu/~jtuerk/documents/4_Byzantine/Byzantine_Syl.htm</a>.
</blockquote>
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Kathleen M. Quinn
EMAIL: quinnka@nku.edu
IP: 192.122.237.11
URL:
DATE: 03/27/2008 02:32:17 PM
Might I suggest a few additions to your most excellent Byzantine syllabi list?!
!
http://www3.ashland.edu/academics/arts_sci/history/moser.html (Scroll down to
his syllabi which are downloadable as PDFs.)!
!
http://www.indiana.edu/%7Edmdhist/c300syllabus.html
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Bill C
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IP: 194.219.34.195
DATE: 03/28/2008 04:55:21 AM
Thanks for the updates!
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TITLE: Varia, Quick Hits, and Friday Notes
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
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BASENAME: varia-quick-hit
DATE: 02/01/2008 02:07:34 AM

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Some fun quick hits today. <ul> <li>Kostis Kourelis at <a
href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/">Buildings, Objects, Situations</a> has a
blog entry posing some good questions on the potential relations between the
Archbishop of Corinth (and later famously of Athens) Damaskinos and American
archaeologists during the 1920s and 1930s. There is work to do in
understanding the relationship between the American School and the Greek
Church. <li>Kourelis work on the institutional and cultural history of the
American School finds a happy counterpart in David Gill's <a
href="http://bsahistory.blogspot.com/">History of the British School at
Athens</a>. Both of these blogs show, I think, the real intellectual
vitality possible in the genre of short academic notes. While this kind of
writing has seemed to die out in journals, the existence of good quality, small-
scale academic writing in blogs suggests that the potential in this kind of work
still exists. <li><a href="http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hwefaK5_31pd1J-
cH79NIIEA3d0wD8UGSPJO0">Some interesting photographs</a> of the Archibishop's
funeral from AP. <li><a href="http://montanaarchaeology.blogspot.com/">Montana
Archaeology</a> is an new blog by Lance Foster focusing on North American
archaeology in general and archaeology of Montana specifically. It
provides material for his Introduction to Archaeology class at the University of
Montana. I've added it and a few others to my <a
href="http://del.icio.us/WilliamCaraher">del.icio.us page</a>. <li>More North
Dakotiana: <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/31/us/politics/31dakota.html">An
interesting article in the New York Times on campaigning in North
Dakota</a>. The quotes from <a
href="http://business.und.edu/homepages/mjendrysik/">Mark Jendrysik</a>
(political theorist extraordinaire) on the second page really brings the piece
and the place into focus. <li>And finally, <a
ogging-archae.html">a metadata update</a>. The <a
href="http://www.archaeology.org/online/features/blogs/">Blogging Archaeology
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article</a> has led to a relatively substantial uptick in both my number of

visits and page views in the two weeks that the article has been online.
Interestingly, however, only about 137 visits (about 175 views) or 16.8 % of my
total visits for the two week period) came directly from the Archaeological.org
domain. The hits from Archaeological.org, however, tend to be a more
dedicated lot -- reading on average 2 pages for almost 3 minutes worth of total
time on site. Over the last two weeks, I've had about an 75% increase in
views per week than over the preceding two months. This is far in excess
of the number of visitors from the Archaeological.org domain suggesting that
some of the increase in volume to my blog is what I call "systemic" -- that is
to say people finding my blog due via other linked blogs or sites (ideally this
means that there is increased traffic in the system). Whatever the cause,
it is good to see that people are interested in what I am writing. </li></ul>
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TITLE: Material Culture and Greek Identity: Notes from Athens and Podcasts from
the AIA
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: material-cultur
DATE: 01/31/2008 12:56:41 AM

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The link between objects, culture, and identity is never straightforward or
simple. At certain moments, however, the relationship between certain
objects and a sense of identity and community is more clear. This is
especially visible right now in Athens as many of the residents of the city
focus their attention on the <a
2735">funeral for Metropolitan Archbishop Christodoulos</a> whose life, office,
and now death was punctuated with a wide range of symbolically significant
regalia. Immigration is another moment when the link between
identity and material culture can crystallize into a recognizable (albeit fluid)
assemblage of objects. A panel on this topic organized by Kostis Kourelis
(Clemson University) and Lita Tzortzopoulou-Gregory (La Trobe University) at the
2008 <a href="http://www.archaeological.org/">Archaeological Institute of
America</a> Annual Meeting is <a
href="http://www.squinch.und.edu/PodCasts.html">now available online as
podcasts</a>. The panel, "The Archaeology of Xenitia: Greek
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Immigration and Material Culture," represented the recent work

of friends and members of the <a href="http://www.squinch.und.edu/">Medieval and
Post-Medieval Archaeology of the Mediterranean Interest Group</a> of the AIA, <a
href="http://www.squinch.und.edu/">and the podcasts appear complements of their
SQUINCH web page</a> : <blockquote> Between 1900 and 1915, one quarter of
the working-age male Greek population immigrated to the United States, Canada
and Australia. This profound demographic phenomenon left an indelible mark on
Greek society but also created new diasporic communities in the host countries.
Greek immigration is a phenomenon of modern trans-nationalism that shares
features with other migration stories despite its unique ethnic manifestations.
Xenitia, as a historical narrative, has been studied by various
disciplines, entering the popular mainstream through movies, comedy, television,
academia, museums and culinary institutions. The historical enterprise of Greek
immigration in the twentieth century, however, has lacked a significant
archaeological voice... (<a
href="http://www.squinch.und.edu/AIAbstracts/The%20Archaeology%20of%20Xenitia.ht
m">more</a>)</blockquote> We suspect that this is the first AIA panel to
be podcast and hope that these podcasts serve to disseminate these fascinating
papers to a wider audience. These podcasts also resonate with a
recent post by <a href="http://prairiepolis.blogspot.com/2008/01/why-north-
dakota-by-michael-lopez.html">Michael Lopez</a> on the new <a
href="http://prairiepolis.blogspot.com/">Prairie Polis</a> blog of the <a
href="http://www.nd-humanities.org/default.aspx">North Dakota Humanities
Council</a> which focuses on the experiences of migration within the US.
They also echo one of the ongoing themes in this blog -- the material culture
and archaeology of abandonment (which I have commented on <a
dcasts-at-the.html">here</a>, <a
andoned-lands.html">here</a>, <a
ap-korinthiak.html">here</a>, and <a
andoned_lands.html">here</a>). 
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Chuck Jones
IP: 87.203.84.186
URL: http://blegen.blogspot.com
DATE: 01/31/2008 03:26:31 AM
Congratulations on the launch of Squinch! Do you think you can convince your
tech guy to deploy a feed?
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TITLE: Geographic Information Systems and Regional Survey at the American School
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
ALLOW PINGS: 1
BASENAME: geographic-info
CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 01/30/2008 12:27:48 AM

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Jack Davis and I will present an introduction to Regional Survey and GIS this
morning at the American School. I will talk about using GIS in the context
of survey. My seminar will be pretty basic and focus mainly on the
conceptual framework behind such software as ESRI ArcGIS. My feeling is
that grasping the principles of most GIS programs (as well as the basic ideas
behind such applications as databases) and understanding potential of GIS
application is more valuable for the average archaeologist than developing a
technical mastery of the applications. In the last decade the number of
GIS labs has proliferated on US university campuses (UND has two!), many of
which are familiar in general with archaeological uses of GIS.
Consequently people with technical expertise are available to develop GIS
platforms to a project's exact specifications. The issue then is knowing
exactly what GIS can do and communicating the needs of the project effectively
to the technical experts (a kind of modern-day, technological, "ritual
experts"). To this end, I am going to start with what most of us
know -- relational databases -- and then describe GIS software as basically a
spatial database. After a short introduction to what a database is (the
tendency among a certain kind of Classical Archaeologist is to conflate
databases and spreadsheets), I'll talk about how GIS creates and queries spatial
relationships between data sets. I hope by introducing some of the basic
technical vocabulary of GIS (shape file, vector/raster, DEM/DTM, georeferencing,
orthorectifying) and, indeed, cartography (geodetic markers, projections,
UTM/Coordinate systems) that I can demystify the process of producing GIS data
for a site or a region and reading reports that rely heavily on GIS data .
 To this end, I've given them a suggested reading list with some case
studies. The seminar is optional, so I couldn't be too rigorous (but these
are all good studies that use GIS data in a productive way). 
Four Case Studies M. Given, H. Corley and L. Sollars, ‚ÄúJoining
the Dots: Continuous Survey, Routine Practice and the Interpretation of a
Cypriot Landscape,‚Äù Internet Archaeology 20; URL: <a
href="http://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue20/4/1.htm">http://intarch.ac.uk/journal
/issue20/4/1.htm</a> A. Bevan and J. Conolly, ‚ÄòGIS, Archaeological Survey
and Landscape Archaeology on the Island of Kythera, Greece‚Äô, JFA 29
(2004), 123-138; Stable URL: <a href="http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0093-
4690%28200221%2F200422%2929%3A1%2F2%3C123%3AGASALA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-
D">http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0093-
4690%28200221%2F200422%2929%3A1%2F2%3C123%3AGASALA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-D</a> A.
Bevan. The Rural Landscape of Neopalatial Kythera: a GIS perspective,
JMA 15 (2002), 217-256. Y. Lolos, B. Gourly, and D.R. Steward, "The
Sikyon Survey Project: A Blueprint for Urban Survey," JMA 20 (2007), 267-
1257
296 I'll supplement the these case studies with one from the <a
Korinthia Archaeological Survey</a> and one from the <a
Project</a> which have the added advantage of having light-duty, java-based, GIS
interfaces available on line (<a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/EKASTimeMap/disk_EKAS.html">EKA
S GIS</a>, <a href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/disk_PKAP.html
">PKAP GIS</a>). One thing that struck me as I was going back through my
mass of GIS data from EKAS, PKAP, and various other projects is how easy it is
to forget the processes that produced the data. Fortunately, I've managed
to keep decent metadata over the years and I was able to reconstruct the
processes that created my current data sets. In the past, keeping good
metadata has helped me (and my collaborators) to "<a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/DocuScript/DSTheSite.html">fix
glitches</a> <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/DocuScript/DSTheSite.html">(alw
ays with a smile)</a> " and, perhaps more importantly from a conceptual
standpoint, to preserve a record of the intermediate analyses that created out
seemingly "stable" data sets. <a
href="http://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue20/4/1.htm">Given et al.</a> (see above)
talk about "verbing" the landscape; it is vital for the archaeologists to see
their work of creating the data sets as part of this verbing
process. Data doesn't simply exist, it's constantly being
created by the process of archaeological analysis itself whether it be in
the field or late at night with a laptop. Metadata is the narrative of data
creation in our increasingly digital age and has all the fragility and ephemeral
qualities of an ancient text. This sets up the conclusion of my presentation
which will deal with the issue of data preservation, archiving, and
presentation. Regional survey projects increasingly rely on GIS to produce
both stable images of the landscape and interactive interfaces for
analysis. It is crucial, then, that we as archaeologists communicate our
assumptions in creating these images effectively even if it remains explaining
such murky concepts as "corrected for visibility" or explaining how the values
are assigned to the color increments that show artifact densities (many projects
use Jenks/K-Means to show densities, but this, like any form of analysis ,
creates breaks in the artifactual landscape that are based on statistical
formulae). Finally, the issue of creating stable archives for GIS data --
both for the "final results" of analysis (shape files, raster images, GPS point
data), but also the intermediate steps that preserve a paper trail and form the
evidence for the interpretative narratives embedded in the digital and
archaeological metadata. <a href="http://horothesia.blogspot.com/2008/01/is-uk-
government-out-to-get-me.html">The potential loss of repositories like the Arts
and Humanities Data service in the UK</a> is a reminder of how far we still have
to go <a
oughts-on-ope.html">in creating the kind of long term storage facilities for our
digital data as our libraries and archives afford paper notebooks</a>.
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TITLE: Snow in Athens
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
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BASENAME: snow-in-athens
DATE: 01/29/2008 07:37:24 AM

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This is not today's "<a
re-pkap-news.html">official blog post</a>"; <a
re-pkap-news.html">to read that click here</a>. I'd be remiss not to show
my friends back home in North Dakota that we do get snow in Athens. Well,
at least on the mountains. <a
eWriter/SnowonHymmetos.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-
alt="SnowonHymmetos"
Writer/SnowonHymmetos_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> Snow on
Hymettos
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TITLE: More PKAP News
STATUS: Publish
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DATE: 01/29/2008 12:49:40 AM

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1259
Preparation for the <a href="http://www.chss.iup.edu/pkap/">Pyla-

Koutsopetria Archaeological Project</a>'s summer 2008 season is slowly
gaining momentum. This time of year we spend considerable energy moving
back and forth between the three elements of archaeological fieldwork:
logistics, academic publication, and publicity. Logistics <a
href="http://ancienthistory.typepad.com/ancient_history_ramblings/">Scott
Moore</a> handles most of the logistics. These responsibilities get fairly
serious as our team will exceed 20 this year (drawing support from more than a
half-dozen universities!) and our field season stretching out over almost 7
weeks. This is coupled with weak dollar and the uncertainty (for us)
surrounding the move of Cyprus to the Euro. We have already discovered
that our rental car rates will increase around 30% between price increases and
the exchange rate. We are also trying to find enough money to bring on
board a "camp manager" to help with some of the cooking and shopping duties for
the team. We have a good candidate in mind, but we can't commit to
anything until we hear on our grants. We are also beginning to think about
the kind of orientation material, both practical and academic, that will help a
diverse range of students (from Ph.D. candidates in the Ivy League to
undergraduates at State Universities!) feel comfortable on the project.
Academic Publications From an academic publication stand point,
we have submitted a contribution to a special issue of <a
href="http://www.asor.org/pubs/nea/">Near Eastern Archaeology</a> which
will focus on American fieldwork on Cyprus and the page proofs of our second
report to the Report of the Department of Antiquities of Cyprus for
2007. We are also putting the final touches on a paper that seeks to
understand the place of the Late Roman site of Pyla-Koutsopetria in the
settlement patterns of the island of Cyprus and the networks of exchange in the
Eastern Mediterranean. The PKAP team (myself, <a
href="http://www.chss.iup.edu/rsmoore/">Scott Moore</a>, and <a
href="http://home.messiah.edu/~dpettegrew/">David Pettegrew</a>) is co-authoring
the paper with Greg Fisher (Keble College, Oxford) who is contributing his
knowledge of the Near Eastern material. Greg has been with PKAP over the
last three years handling many of the odd jobs ranging from taking photos of
artifacts to serving as a spare fieldwalker. His research focuses on the
Late Roman Near East -- particularly borderlands of Roman Syria. The paper
is basically an outgrowth of a conference paper that Greg gave at the Post-
Graduated Conference on Cypriot Archaeology in 2006 and paper David, Scott, and
I gave at the ASOR meeting a two years ago. Here's the abstract:
<blockquote> "Beyond City and Country: Mid-Sized Coastal
Settlements in Late Roman Cyprus" Twenty-five years ago M.I. Finley
described the ancient world as one whose populations labored in the countryside
but inhabited urban centers. Archaeological surveys, however, have populated
territories with small rural settlements, calling into question dichotomies
between town and country, especially as some settlements have produced
monumental architecture and movable wealth, typical signatures of urban centers.
This paper discusses the Late Roman coastal site of Koutsopetria in the
hinterland of Kition, Cyprus, as it contributes to this debate. An intensive,
large-site type survey in conjunction with earlier excavations has revealed a
substantial (>40 ha) settlement at an important, regional crossroads of land
and maritime routes. The assemblage produced from excavation and survey compares
favorably with other assemblages at large Late Roman sites in Cyprus. Comparison
of these sites reveals rural space with many of the same features of traditional
urban centers, which garnered cultural independence from their positions in both
local and Mediterranean-wide networks of exchange.</blockquote> This
article picks up on the recent interest in exchange networks in the work of <a
1260
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/58998790">Chris Wickham</a>, <a

href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/42692026">Horden and Purcell</a>, and others
who seek to de-centralize both the structure of Late Roman trade and, perhaps
only by implication, the origins of (Late) ancient culture. By challenging
the town-country dichotomy (with autonomous consumer cities and exploited
producer countryside) , we open the possibility that mid-sized sites like Pyla-
Koutsopetria could function at least some of time in an autonomous way
within the networks of exchange that supported the prosperous material culture
of antiquity. Once the residents of a settlement begin to make their own
economic choices, the begin to produce the kinds of discrete material
assemblages that scholars have traditionally seen as definitive of culture.
Publicity We have completed our annual PKAP Newsletter which will
circulate this week to the various PKAP stakeholders. It's a way to keep
private donors, institutional support at the three sponsoring universities (UND,
IUP, and Messiah College), and PKAP alumni in the loop on our fall and winter
work as well as the summer fieldwork plans. It serves the important role
of translating our academic research from the world of our relatively narrow
academic community to the community at large. In this sense, it complements the
work on this blog, <a
href="http://www.chss.iup.edu/pkap/podcasts/podcasts.htm">our podcasts</a>, and
<a href="http://www.chss.iup.edu/pkap/video/video.htm">the video work</a> of <a
href="http://www.xanga.com/jpatrow">Joe Patrow</a> (more of which will debut
here on this blog soon!) in that it strives to make our research processes more
transparent to the interested public and invite them to find ways to participate
in the "<a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/45064746">theatrical</a>" aspects
of archaeological fieldwork. <a
eWriter/NewsLetter2.jpg"><a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/PKAPNewsletter2007.pdf"><img
border-right-width: 0px" height="302" alt="NewsLetter"
Writer/NewsLetter.jpg" width="234" border="0"></a><a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/PKAPNewsletter2007.pdf"><img
border-right-width: 0px" height="302" alt="NewsLetter2"
Writer/NewsLetter2_1.jpg" width="234" border="0"></a></a> As always PKAP would not be possible without the generosity of our
<a href="http://www.chss.iup.edu/pkap/funding.htm">institutional sponsors</a>
and private donors. This support gives a projects like ours the
opportunity to develop future plans and create both the practical and
intellectual infrastructure for efficient and effective research. Just
this year, we were able to secure a significant research grant because we could
match their grant with private donor money. If you'd like to contribute to
our ongoing research, contact either <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/ContactInfo.html">me</a> or
Mike Meyer at the University of North Dakota's <a
href="http://www.und.edu/dept/artsci/giving_opportunities.html">College of Arts
and Sciences</a>. With PKAP planning in full swing, check
back here regularly for PKAP updates.
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TITLE: The Kitchen at the American School
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: the-kitchen-at
DATE: 01/28/2008 12:39:56 AM

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Each morning sometime around 6:30, I wander down the back stairway of the <a
href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/">American School</a>'s <a
href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/about/facilities.htm">Loring Hall</a> to the
kitchen. The main floor of Loring Hall has a U-shaped "public space" with
a service area occupying the center part of the U. On the ground floor,
this includes the professional kitchen and staff offices and storage; on the
main floor, however, there is (what I think is) called a staging kitchen.
Each morning the staff of Loring Hall sit in the kitchen preparing breakfast for
the students and faculty who arrive at around 7 am. <a
eWriter/FromDinningRoom.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-
alt="FromDinningRoom"
Writer/FromDinningRoom_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> <a
side-looking.html">As I have noted before</a>, Loring Hall is lovely but not a
terribly homey place. Its scale is institutional, it serves too many
multiple functions, and its decor is too formal (if a bit threadbare).
Loring feels more like a lounge at an exclusive metropolitan club (just slightly
past its day) than a place where people live. One sleeps in Loring Hall,
eats there, has conversations (always with a touch of formality and
professionalism), meets people, but one does not live in Loring Hall in a proper
sense. The exception to this is the kitchen in the morning. <a
eWriter/KitchenLoring.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width:
alt="KitchenLoring"
Writer/KitchenLoring_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a><a
eWriter/FromDinningRoom.jpg"></a> Each day I have two cups of coffee, a
bowl of somewhat ordinary mueseli and conversation with the women who staff
Loring Hall for breakfast and lunch. The conversation is in Greek and,
properly speaking, I don't know Greek (despite my best efforts), but I do manage
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to speak it every morning for about 3/4 of an hour. I learn a few new
words a day and try to use them throughout the conversation. I did this
every day when I was an Associate Member at the School and do it every day
now. It's one of the few places in Loring Hall that feels like a place
where one could live. Over the years they have welcomed and made to feel at home
my friends, my wife, and my family. <a
eWriter/KitchenLife.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width:
Writer/KitchenLife_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> The
conversation is wide ranging. We talk about our home towns, the weather,
our families, our work, and very often the news of the day. This morning
the talk was about the death of the Metropolitan Bishop of Greece -- Archbishop
Christodoulos, who succumbed to liver cancer late last night. He was the
youngest person to ever hold his position and was quite active and outspoken and
popular. He famously engaged in talks with Pope John Paul II and sometimes
stirred controversy with his nationalist rhetoric. It's being picked up by
the international press now (<a
href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7212502.stm">BBC</a>, <a
href="http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/01/28/obit.christodoulos/index.ht
ml">CNN</a>, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Obit-
Christodoulos.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Greece+Christodoulos&st=nyt&ore
f=slogin">NYT/AP</a>), but I heard about it in the kitchen. In fact, I can
hear the muted, somber bells from our neighbor, Moni Petraki, as I write
this. 
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AUTHOR: Rangar
IP: 129.15.101.163
URL:
DATE: 01/30/2008 09:49:13 AM
Bill -- Great to see the Loring Hall kitchen at breakfast! Say kalimera to
Voula, Labrini, and Demetra for me.
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TITLE: Varia, Quick Hits, and a Friday Commercial
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: varia-quick-hit
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DATE: 01/25/2008 12:23:09 AM

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I went to be last night thinking that I didn't have anything to blog about
this morning and feeling a bit relieved. But there is always
something to blog about. So, some quick hits in the tradition of
blogs in days gone by when authors would just provide links with just a touch of
commentary. <ul> <li>The <a href="http://www.nd-
humanities.org/default.aspx">North Dakota Humanities Council</a> has a new e-
newsletter and blog called <a href="http://prairiepolis.blogspot.com/">Prairie
Polis: Mindful contributions to North Dakota's public dialogue on ideas, values,
and history</a>. I like the title because it confirms my long held belief
that there is some kind of link between life in North Dakota and the Ancient
Mediterranean World. (Polis is the Greek word for City, the basic form of
political, economic, and cultural organization of the Greek world which
encompassed so much of the Eastern Mediterranean). The title reminds me of
conversations that I've had with UND alumnus Aaron Barth who wrote an MA thesis
on the writings and experiences of the late-19th century trapper and later
newspaper editor <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/28410738">Joseph Henry
Taylor</a>. Barth and I had talked about Taylor's use of Roman imagery in
his experiences in North Dakota particular the image of the Rome's civilizing
effect on the frontier. The ancient world is alive and well in the North Dakota
imagination. The first post on the Prairie Polis blog "<a
href="http://prairiepolis.blogspot.com/2008/01/why-north-dakota-by-michael-
lopez.html">Why North Dakota?</a>" is a response to the <a
href="http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/2008-01/emptied-north-dakota/bowden-
text.html">National Geographic</a> article <a
andoned-lands.html">which I posted on a couple of weeks ago</a>. If you
haven't read the article it's haunting, perhaps in a good way. <li>I received
an email last night announcing the formation of the <a
href="http://gssar.wikispaces.com/">Graduate Society for the Study of Ancient
Religion</a>. It seems to be based at my graduate alma mater, <a
href="http://www.osu.edu/">Ohio State University</a>, and is presumably a kind
of graduate student outgrowth of the their interdisciplinary program on <a
href="http://greekandlatin.osu.edu/graduatestudies/gis/default.cfm">Religions of
the Ancient Mediterranean</a>. <li>The folks at the <a
href="http://www.und.edu/dept/our/">University of North Dakota's Office of
University Relations</a> put a link for my Archaeology Magazine Online Feature
article on the <a href="http://www.und.edu">University's front page</a>.
Thanks for the link! <li><a
href="http://ancienthistory.typepad.com/ancient_history_ramblings/2008/01/minor-
updates.html">Scott Moore reports</a> that we have purchased the domain name <a
href="http://www.pkap.org">www.pkap.org</a> for <a
href="http://www.chss.iup.edu/pkap/">PKAP</a>. We haven't done anything
with it yet, and old site will continue to work. </li></ul> One more thing,
if you're in South Florida this weekend, be sure to check out the <a
href="http://www.oceanroadspromotions.com/">Surf and Song Festival</a>, a rock
'n' roll festival featuring both great national and local bands in Ft.
Myers. The proceeds benefit <a
href="http://www.johnentwistle.org/NEW_HOME/index.html">The John Entwistle
Foundation</a> (he was the amazing bassist for the Who; if you don't know listen
to "My Generation"). By youngest brother is promoting it through his <a
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href="http://www.oceanroadspromotions.com/">Ocean Roads Promotions</a>.

Since it's for charity, I don't feel too guilty helping the cause here.
The weather is supposed to be beautiful on Sunday and what goes better with
sunshine than rock and roll. <a
href="http://www.oceanroadspromotions.com/"><img style="border-top-width: 0px;
Writer/image_26.png" width="276" border="0"></a>
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AUTHOR: Dimitri
IP: 128.186.86.241
URL:
DATE: 01/28/2008 10:11:31 AM
My favorite John Entwistle song is "My Wife" on "Who's Next" (1971)
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TITLE: Thoughts on Open Context, Omeka and the Digital Revolution in
Archaeological Publishing
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DATE: 01/24/2008 12:56:09 AM

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Over the last few days I've been exploring the capabilities of <a
href="http://www.opencontext.org/">Open Context</a>, an open access platform for
publishing archaeological data online. The goal of a platform like Open
Context is to enable archaeological projects to publish their data online, using
their own data structures, in an environment accessible to other scholars and
even subject to a kind of peer review process. The platform is not limited
to simple or highly structured (i.e. tabular) data, but can also accommodate
textual data from, say, a field note book and images, drawing, and maps.
So, for example, you can display the data from a particular trench and it will
automatically draw up the data from all the stratigraphic units (lots, baskets,
whatever) in the trench with the trench notebook, the finds, and any features in
the trench or the lot. You could also begin with a particular find and search
out all the archaeological contexts from a site or evaluate how frequently a
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particular class of object appears with a particular type of feature. The

data is queried through Open Context's "faceted" search capability that will not
only allow scholars to search any single set of data online, but also to search
multiple data sets online -- even if these data sets have significantly
different structures. While I won't pretend to understand the technical
details behind this (it seems to involve something called ArcheoML or
Archaeological Markup Language and other things like PHP and RDF which seem very
complex), the goal appears to be to allow users through the process of tagging
to create data sets that, in effect, mediate between different data organized
and articulated in different structures, and to make these tools available and
visible to other scholars who might be seeking to do the same thing. This
kind of functionality will make the process of comparing date from different
archaeological projects -- a task familiar to any archaeologist and central to
archaeological research -- even more transparent. Their <a
href="http://www.sha.org/publications/technical_briefs/volume02/article01.htm">r
elatively recent article in Society for Historical Archaeology‚Äôs Technical
Briefs in Historical Archaeology</a> online journal provides a great
introduction to this project. The potential for scholarly publications to
link directly to locations in Open Context data sets offers the prospect for
unparalleled transparency in archaeological research. Open Context and
other similar platforms (the <a href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/">American School
of Classical Studies</a> is seemingly working to develop its own platform to
accommodate and integrate the data from the Athenian Agora and the Corinth
Excavations) find complements in systems like <a
href="http://omeka.org/">Omeka</a>, the soon to be released online publishing
platform developed by the <a href="http://chnm.gmu.edu/">Center of History and
the New Media</a> at George Mason University and the <a
href="http://www.mnhs.org/">Minnesota Historical Society</a>. While
seemingly not as powerful as Open Context with its ability to integrate complex
data sets, Omeka is designed to allow projects to put together in an efficient
way online exhibits of images, documents, and other media. At <a
href="http://www.chss.iup.edu/pkap/">PKAP</a> we've talked a good bit about
making our data available online and considered what tools a scholar would need
to make sense of our data sets. Generally, we have gravitated toward
relatively simple (and admittedly low tech) solutions like saving our survey
data down to a series of ASCII Comma Separated Value text tables (including
descriptive concordances for the codes we've employed to standardize our
data). These tables could be read by almost any database or even
spreadsheet applications. This would allow the dissemination of our
archaeological "raw" data, but would not easily accommodate various other media
like images or narrative sources. Perhaps a platform like Open Context
integrated with an online museum software like Omeka will eventually produce the
kind of online data integration and management that would allow us to make our
data accessible to a wide range of end-users. The only slight
Luddite twinge that I feel when I read about all these amazing applications
being developed (and this is clearly the historian in me speaking) is a slight
nostalgia for the rhetorical grace of "early" archaeological publications.
Scholars like Carl Blegen (and for my period and material Demetrios Pallas), who
lacked all these sophisticated data management tools, nevertheless created
elaborate and descriptive pictures in words of the context for their sites, the
composition and location of deposits, and the relationships between
features. Their skill at description and argument (along with other
scholars of his generation) created a genre of archaeological description that
for all its weaknesses in technical precision and analytical consistency
nevertheless possessed an aesthetic lacking in even the most sophisticated
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computer applications with their elegant and elaborate data structures ("code is
poetry" aside). The most fluidly structured archaeological research
environments only ever approach the flexibility of language even as they seek to
integrate and allow for the ambiguity of narrative. 
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TITLE: Delphi Mosaics and the Late Roman Hybrid
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BASENAME: delphi-mosaics
DATE: 01/23/2008 12:57:11 AM

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Late Antiquity (300-700 AD, it is also called the Early Christian period or
the Late Roman period) is a perfect period for exploring the notion of hybridity
in material culture. Not only was it a time of unprecedented change in
culture and society, but there is also a vast and growing body of Late Roman
material that is relatively unencumbered by long generations of study. For
Greece this is particularly the case. At present I am working on an
article arguing that ecclesiastical architecture (particularly in Greece) is
quintessential hybrid space. The intersection of Early Christian
liturgical rites with architectural forms and decorative motifs with
longstanding currency in Greece allowed the newly empowered ecclesiastical elite
to express their social, economic and political authority in a way accessible to
the Greek society. This process was reciprocal, however, in that donors to
churches, for example, had some access to the authority articulated by
liturgical ritual and found ways to redeploy it in service of their own social
goals. Thus, Early Christian basilicas (churches) constructed by local
elites became platforms for self expression while at the same time the clergy's
control over the mediation between the divine and the mundane worlds ensured
that ecclesiastical elite gradually acquired increased privilege in an Greek
society (i.e. Bishops and the clergy in general became more powerful). A
6th century floor mosaics from a rather typical Early Christian basilica found
near the ancient site of Delphi is a great (and under-explored) example of this
process. I will spare you a comprehensive examination of the floor (with
comparanda and the like), but present you with a short(ish) teaser. The
western most panel in the main nave (the central room of the church through
which all liturgical processions would pass) has a central emblema showing
leopard pouncing on a deer. <a
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eWriter/DelphiMosaic.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width:

alt="DelphiMosaic"
Writer/DelphiMosaic_thumb.jpg" width="272" border="0"></a> This is
surrounded by scenes of peacocks and eagles. In the corners of the mosaic
panel are two figures rushing toward the south. We know from other mosaics
in Greece (and elsewhere) that these figures are the personifications of the
months. So we have one pouncing leopard, four majestic birds, and two
rushing months (no lords-aleaping, ladies dancing or rings of any kind!).
The months, it turns out are the key to understanding this mosaic. The
rushing months probably represent June (or July) and August. Again, we
know this from mosaics elsewhere on which the months are labeled. The
eastern month is labeled with the Greek letters KA and the western with letters
KAI. This means nothing, until we assume that there were two more months with
inscriptions reading LOI and ROI that have been destroyed (you can see in the
picture above that the southern half of the mosaic has been destroyed).
This would spell KALOI KAIROI or "<a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Times">Good Times</a>" or "Good
Seasons". Thus we can assume that the months of July and perhaps September
are missing. We have then the depictions of the summer months (June, July,
August, September) with an inscription that says "Good Times". This
unlocks a possible meaning for the leopard and deer motif in the middle, which
hardly seems appropriate for a mosaic in a church. This scene, I think, is
meant to evoke arena combats between animals. This was a favorite ancient
past time: release an exotic animal (like a leopard) and watch it attack another
animal. Moreover, animal combat scenes are sometimes associated with
calendar mosaics (C. Kondoleon, "Timing Spectacles: Roman Domestic Art and
Performance," in <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/43408700">The
Art of Ancient Spectacle</a>. (Washington 1999), 321-341.). The
reason for this is because arena contests were often parts of seasonal games or
festivals. So the the calendar mosaics served to evoke specific time of
year when games and arena combat took place. Moreover, this kind of
mosaic, when put up by a wealthy patron, often served to advertise the
generosity of that patron who presumably paid to provide the exotic animals for
a particular set of games. So, in some cases the link between the months
and a scene of violence referred to a specific contest. <a
eWriter/DelphiMosaicDetail.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-
alt="DelphiMosaicDetail"
Writer/DelphiMosaicDetail_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> One
last thing, during the Roman empire festivals to Apollo were very common in the
summer months. These festivals were good opportunities for games and arena
shows. Delphi was a shrine to Apollo and it's games -- the Pythian Games -
- were held in the summer (although there is no indication that they involved
arena contests). In fact, the association between Apollo and the
summertime was so close that he sometimes appeared as the personification of
summer in sculpture and mosaics (see: George Hanfmann, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1150963">The Season Sarcophagus in Dumbarton
Oaks</a>. Cambridge, MA, 1951, 156). A half century ago, a
scholar might have said "AH HA! Syncretism between Christianity and
paganism! An invocation of pagan festivals in a Christian church! I
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knew it! The pagan gods did not disappear they merely changed their
names." Now, we approach this differently. I might suggest, for
example, that the link between "Good Times", <a
href="http://www.stlyrics.com/songs/g/georgegershwin8836/summertime299720.html">
the summer</a>, and a scene from the arena is not designed to evoke Apollo --
after all the oracle of Apollo at Delphi had not uttered a word since the later
4th century AD -- but rather to evoke general images of wealth, prosperity, and
happiness. It is predictable that these images of wealth, prosperity, and
good times would be influenced by images deriving in part from paganism, but in
a Christian context the pagan aspects of these motifs (if they still existed in
the 6th century) would have been appropriated by the patron of the church (whom
we know nothing about except for a fragmentary inscription that suggests he or
she paid for the mosaic or the entire church) to show his or her own prosperity
and generosity. In fact, the floors seem to hint, that the building the
church was equivalent to providing games in the arena. Finally, in
the Greek liturgy of this time, the clergy would have walked across this floor
on the way to sacred eastern end of the church. These ritual processions
were important opportunities for the clergy to demonstrate their unique position
in Christian society as the links between God and the mundane world. Thus,
the ritual of the liturgy appropriated the space of the church for clerical
display which, in turn, reinforced the position of the ecclesiastical
hierarchy. The mosaic floor, with its references to prosperity and
generosity provided a suitable setting for ecclesiastical ritual which
transformed the social and economic meaning of the mosaic and translated it to
the religious realm. The liturgy made clear that prosperity and generosity
worked in the service of the church and the clergy. The patron of the
floors certainly recognized this, but also realized that their generosity in the
service of the liturgy would gain them greater access to the same divine
advantages of the clergy. After all, providing for a church was a noble
calling worthy of rich rewards in the afterlife! Thus, the hybridity of
Early Christian space in Greece. The ecclesiastical elite and the local
patron (assuming in this case that they were separate institutions) appealed to
images and rituals which had independent meanings but also informed one
another. In this simplified (and superficial) analysis, the space of the
church becomes an active place of reinterpretation where the juxtaposition of
ritual, decoration, and social and institutional structures produce new
combinations of meaning (hybrids!) which both benefited the varying parties
involved in creating the hybrid space, and produce a new iconography which could
be deployed later in its own hybrid combinations.
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TITLE: Podcasts at the State Historical Society of North Dakota
STATUS: Publish
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DATE: 01/22/2008 12:14:21 AM

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I am bit behind on this one, but the <a
href="http://www.nd.gov/hist/index.html">State Historical Society of North
Dakota</a> has been releasing <a
href="http://www.nd.gov/hist/podcasts/podcasts.html">a series of podcasts
focusing on aspects of the archaeology and history of North Dakota</a>.
The most recent two look focus on work at the "Scattered Village" site in
downtown Mandan and at recent geophysical work in the Heart Valley Region of
North Dakota. The later considers the massive geophysical programs being
carried out by the <a
href="http://www.uark.edu/depts/anthinfo/kvamme.html">Professor Kenneth
Kvamme</a> from the <a
href="http://www.cast.uark.edu/%7Ekkvamme/ArcheoImage/archeo-
image.htm">University of Arkansas's Archeo-Imagine Lab</a> at the sites of <a
href="http://www.cast.uark.edu/%7Ekkvamme/geop/menoken.htm">Menoken</a>, <a
href="http://www.cast.uark.edu/%7Ekkvamme/geop/huff.htm">Huff</a>, <a
href="http://www.cast.uark.edu/%7Ekkvamme/geop/double.htm">Double Ditch</a>, and
<a href="http://www.cast.uark.edu/%7Ekkvamme/geop/mittutta.htm">Fort Clark State
Historic Site</a>. The podcast, <a
href="http://www.nd.gov/hist/podcasts/GeophysicsPodcast.mp3">Geophysics and
Archaeology in the Heart River Region of ND</a>, is particularly nice
introduction to geophysical techniques in general and their application in North
Dakota. At <a href="http://www.chss.iup.edu/pkap/">PKAP</a> we have used
resistivity extensively and have not had access to magnetometry, Kvamme's
arguments form using multiple methods on a site, something that is still
relatively rare in the Eastern Mediterranean. The predecessor to
podcasts, radio broadcasts on historical topics, have a particularly interesting
history in North Dakota. In 1947, 1948, and 1949, <a
href="http://www.library.und.edu/Collections/Robinson/">Elwyn Robinson</a>, a
professor of <a href="http://www.und.edu/dept/histdept/">History at the
University of North Dakota</a> (<a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/DHChapter_3.html">for more on
Elwyn Robinson's career and the History Department at the University of North
Dakota</a>), broadcast a series of 15 minute radio sketches called "Heroes of
Dakota" which focused on the history of the state of North Dakota. These radio
broadcast were unexpectedly popular and requests poured into the University
radio station, KFJM, for copies of transcripts. Robinson quickly began to
distribute copies of his talks charging only the cost of printing and
binding. This reflected the tremendous interest among North Dakotans in
their state's history. The radio was a particularly suitable technique for
engaging this interest in that the low population density of the state made
traditional techniques for disseminating the history of the state and region --
such as museums or public lectures -- less viable. Ultimately the work
Robinson put into the radio broadcasts formed the basis for his <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/190890">History of North Dakota</a>, which
remains today the authoritative work on the history of the state. PKAP is
just beginning to experiment with the potential of podcasts for getting
information on our project out in an accessible form. We <a
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href="http://www.chss.iup.edu/pkap/podcasts/podcasts.htm">have some nice

interviews</a> (or better conversations) conducted in 2005 which lay out the
basic premises of both survey archaeology as a method and our research plan at
Pyla-Koutsopetria. Check out the SHSND and PKAP podcasts
for new perspectives on archaeological fieldwork and how much the archaeological
methods in North Dakota and Mediterranean share.
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TITLE: Blogging Archaeology: A MetaReport
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DATE: 01/21/2008 02:15:34 AM

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The response to my article on <a
Archaeology</a> has been great. It was my first tentative step in to the
vast gray area of academic publishing -- not quite reviewable for tenure, but
not entirely insubstantial either -- and I can report that the response to my
contribution has been gratifying in large part because the results of my labor
were almost instantaneously visible. While I have not queried the folks at
<a href="http://www.archaeology.org/">Archaeology</a> for their page view or hit
data on my piece, I have tracked the number of readers who were interested
enough to click through to my blog. This metric is perhaps, in some ways,
a more interesting one as it presumably samples those readers who were
sufficiently interested to at least click through to some of the content in the
article. (The data gleaned from over the last fours presents a nice small-
scale study in the kind of <a
href="http://digitalhistoryhacks.blogspot.com/2008/01/whats-opposite-of-big-
history.html">super-small, micro-history</a> possible and perhaps even necessary
in the fast moving and ephemeral space of the internet) In the four days since
my article has been live at Archaeology, I have had about 350 hits on my
personal blog. My average four day total is about 100 hits; so I am well
above average since the article has appeared. According to my Google
Analytics report 28% of my traffic comes from Archaeology.org, another 7% comes
from <a href="http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/46491.html">History New Network's blog
post on the article</a>, and another 5% comes from Chuck Jones kind announcement
of the article on the <a
Group</a> blog. The other hits come from either Google searches or direct
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links. The average number of page views is 1.84 and the average length of
time on the page is a little over 2 minutes (people who link from
Archaeology.org tend to only spend about 1.15 on the site). I have a
bounce rate of 67% which I think is pretty good for a blog with lots of
links. It would be valuable to know whether other bloggers have
experienced an increase in traffic and where their hits come from. In
other words, is it simply from people reading the Archaeology article or is a
knock-on effect of sorts from more people being in the network of blogs. I
suggest that blogs work in some ways like social networking sites: that once
people enter the system through a particular blog, they can pass on within the
blogging network and read other blogs through blogrolls and links. I have
no real idea if this works in practice. Coincidentally, several
interesting pieces related to academic blogging have recently appeared.
Over at the <a href="http://chnm.gmu.edu/">Center for History and the New
Media</a>, they have released their first episode of a new series of podcasts
called <a href="http://thatpodcast.org/episode/4">THAT (The Humanities and
Technology)</a>. The first episode was an interview with Matt Mullenweg
the founder of <a href="http://wordpress.org/">WordPress</a>. The
interview is a bit raw, but interesting nonetheless. One thing that is
particularly telling is that Mullenweg had no idea of how academics might use
his technology or how academic users might benefit such open source blogging
software like Wordpress. The other interesting post that appeared
just recently was over at <a
href="http://henryjenkins.org/2008/01/my_own_personal_writers_strike.html">Henry
Jenkins' Confessions of an Aca-fan in which he announced his return to
blogging after a month long hiatus</a>. Jenkins is one of the most
prolific academic bloggers around, and his populist style shows a real sense of
audience for his own work. In his recent post, he sets out some of the
pressures of blogging and gives some good advice for someone starting out.
None of it is beyond what a good academic might guess: set a writing goal,
anticipate an audience, et c. Jenkins also commented on some of the
benefits of academic blogging. In particular he described the effect of
his well-known blog on his academic program at MIT. He noted that it not
only attracted graduate students to the program, but helped students maintain an
attachment to the program after they left. These are both goals that would
seemingly warm the administrator's heart -- especially the latter as folks who
keep an attachment to a program are more likely to give to it later. One
would think that the popularizing aspects of some academic blogging might make
it attractive to administrators, and their interest in promoting it would
gradually trickle down to departments (as so much in academia these days) as
they make decisions on tenure and promotion. If you like Jenkins' style,
be sure to follow the link to one of his earlier posts which set out <a
href="http://henryjenkins.org/2006/07/how_to_break_out_of_the_academ.html">a
manifesto (of sorts) for his kind of academic blogging</a>.
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COMMENT:
1272
AUTHOR: William J. Turkel

EMAIL: william.j.turkel@gmail.com
IP: 24.141.41.217
URL: http://digitalhistoryhacks.blogspot.com
DATE: 01/22/2008 02:16:06 PM
We've found that the blogs created by our public history MA students are also a
real draw for our program. Almost all of the students each year tell us they
chose our program because of our website, and especially because they were able
to follow the ideas and progress of earlier student cohorts through their
blogging. Not being Henry Jenkins, I'm not sure if my own academic blogging is
a draw or a source of trepidation for incoming students ;)
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ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
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BASENAME: varia-and-quick
DATE: 01/18/2008 01:05:34 AM

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Some quick hits and varia for the weekend: <ul> <li>The blogging
archaeology article that I worked on in the fall and <a
ogging-arch-2.html">serialized here</a> and over at the <a
Group</a> page has appeared on <a href="http://www.archaeology.org/">Archaeology
Magazine</a>'s online features page (here's a link to the <a
href="http://www.archaeology.org/online/features/blogs/">article</a>).
Thanks to everyone who helped with the revisions and Mark Rose at the <a
who provided some nice editorial touches and his web-design who helped its slick
appearance. I hope to be able to provide an update to the article in 9 or
12 months time and continue to track some of the developments in the
blogosphere. <li>Brandon Olson, a <a
href="http://www.chss.iup.edu/pkap/">PKAP</a> and <a
href="http://www.und.edu/">UND</a> alumnus, has made a foray into the
blogosphere with his <a
al_archaeology_in/">Historical Archaeology in the Ancient Mediterranean</a>
blog. He not only discusses his own research but also his experiences and
classes as a Ph.D. student at the <a
al_archaeology_in/">Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies Program at Penn
State</a>. So far, it provides a nice perspective on advanced
graduate. With all this new blogging activity, I will have to expand my <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/BlogFeedPageGoogle.html">PKAP
blog aggregator</a>. <li>Erstwhile, PKAP co-director Scott Moore has begun to
blog on his Digital History course at Indiana University of Pennsylvania at his
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<a href="http://ancienthistory.typepad.com/ancient_history_ramblings/">Ancient
History Ramblings</a> blog (<a
href="http://ancienthistory.typepad.com/ancient_history_ramblings/2008/01/digita
l-history.html">part -2</a>, <a
l-histo-1.html">part -1</a>, <a
l-histo-2.html">part 0</a>, <a
l-histo-3.html">part 1</a>, <a
l-histo-4.html">part 2</a>). In an earlier post, I mentioned Sam Fee's
mini course on Web 2.0 at <a href="http://www.thefee.net/delirium/">Arranged
Delirium</a>. I am thinking about offering a Digital History course at <a
href="http://www.und.edu/">UND</a> next year and will have to consider the
experiences of these two colleagues (in addition to the <a
href="http://digitalhistory.uwo.ca/h513_0708/">iconic and sophisticated
course</a> offered by <a href="http://digitalhistoryhacks.blogspot.com/">William
J. Turkel</a> at the <a href="http://www.uwo.ca/">University of Western
Ontario</a>). <li>David Gill who already provides us with the excellent <a
href="http://lootingmatters.blogspot.com/">Looting Matters</a>, now adds another
"research blog", <a href="http://bsahistory.blogspot.com/">History of the
British School at Athens</a>.</li></ul> [It will be interesting to track the
way in which certain genres coalesce in the blogosphere over the next several
years. On the one hand, there are clearly certain relatively well-defined
and recognizable types of blogs: research blogs, teaching blogs, news blogs,
graduate student blogs et c.). On the other hand, there does seem to be a
willingness to experiment with hybrid blogs that bring together teaching and
research and present themselves in a conversational style.] <ul> <li>I meet
with <a href="http://www.chss.iup.edu/rsmoore/">Scott Moore</a> and <a
href="http://home.messiah.edu/~dpettegrew/">David Pettegrew</a> tonight in
Second Life. It will be the first time that <a
href="http://www.chss.iup.edu/pkap/">PKAP</a> attempts to use their presence in
Second Life as an actual productive tool -- albeit not in a very creative or
unique way (we are not using it as anything more complex than a conference
call!) <li>Finally... I have managed to settle back in from my holiday
travels. I then survived a week of unmitigated bustle with <a
walk-through.html">teaching responsibilities</a> and several thought provoking
talks that centered on a recognizable theme. Ben Millis gave a "Tea Talk" (an
informal lecture on a work in progress) on the ethnic and linguistic identity of
the refounders of Corinth entitled "‚ÄúThe Social and Ethnic Origins of the
Colonists of Early Roman Corinth". He argued that the population of
refounded colony of Corinth was a hybrid population who were comfortable in both
the eastern "Greek" world and the western Roman world, and therefore well suited
for a position astride a major east-west trade route in the Mediterranean.
Maria Georgopoulou, the director of the <a
href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/gennadius/g_index.htm">Gennadius Library</a>,
conducted a Gennadius Seminar entitled "Studying Mediterranean Cities at the
Gennadius Library" which examined the nature of Cretan/Venetian interaction at
the sites of Heraklion and Venice in 400 year period of Venetian control over
Crete. Much of the material derived from her excellent book, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/45059133">Venice's Mediterranean Colonies:
architecture and urbanism</a>, but she provided a very thoughtful theoretical
introduction which considered the influence of more recent theoretical
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developments on the models she employed to understand Venetian/Greek

interaction. Finally, Nanako Sawayanagi, a graduate student at NYU,
offered some of her research at a Gennadius Library "Work-in-Progress" seminar
with a paper entitled, "The Team of the Japanese and the Greek Politics in 1906
- 1908". Like Georgopoulou and Millis, Nawayanagi considered cultural
interaction (whether literally or figuratively) to be a suitable topic for
historical study. While she argued clearly that there was no evidence of
real Japanese involvement in Greek politics (the name Team of the Japanese
refers to a small but influential party in the Greek Parliament in the early
20th c.), the name itself reflects the influence of a growing global awareness
and a willingness to negotiate (a political) identity in transcultural
terms.</li></ul> <a
eWriter/ParthenoninBracesSM.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-
alt="ParthenoninBracesSM"
Writer/ParthenoninBracesSM_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a>
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Jimmy Cummins
EMAIL: oolatec@yahoo.com
IP: 74.192.121.53
URL:
DATE: 01/18/2008 04:14:23 AM
I started a blog long time ago under biological anthropology which attracted a
host of professors and students!
Made a few friends but mostly shared information with students writing topics!
I did however find a woman who helps me with internet research, a valuable
commodity and she invited me to join an invitation only group on msn spaces!
It involves just scriptures and Native American philosophy!
I'm a native American descendent and A Presbyterian!
Good luck with your blog and fieldwork!
My blog started out with tracking information on east coast hurricanes and I
used wandering but not lost which works well in my concentration of archaeology!
Happy digging!
Jimmy aka iceman
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Maddy Bray
IP: 76.170.0.106
DATE: 01/20/2008 02:56:12 PM
Nice feature in Archaeology! :)
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--------
TITLE: A Walk through Byzantine Athens
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
ALLOW PINGS: 1
BASENAME: a-walk-through
CATEGORY: Byzantium
DATE: 01/17/2008 06:30:52 AM

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This week has had a Byzantine theme. I lead the <a
href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/">American School</a> <a
href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/Membership/description.htm">Regular Members</a> to
some of the Byzantine churches in Athens today. It was a bit of a
challenge because the churches are spread out over a relatively wide area
(relative to say, a single ancient site), and I had three hours to do it.
In addition to the basic architectural tour, these three hours also included a
short talk on the basic history of Middle Byzantine Athens. So I had to
make some decisions. I decided to focus almost exclusively on Middle
Byzantine (10th-11th c.) Athens and limit the tour to five churches. I
began with Moni Petraki which is next door to the <a
href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/">American School</a>. It's also one of the
oldest standing churches in the city (probably the oldest) perhaps dating from
as early as the last quarter of the 10th century. It's rounded apses,
arcade type windows, rugged construction, and lateral vaults that protrude
beyond the outer wall of the north and south crossing recommend an early
date. <a
eWriter/MoniPetrakiSM.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width:
alt="MoniPetrakiSM"
Writer/MoniPetrakiSM_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> Moni
Petraki We then walked down to the Kapnikarea which sits in the
middle of a bustling shopping district. The church is contemporary with
another 11th century church in the city, Ay. Theodoroi which can be dated by an
inscription to the mid-11th century. The use of dentelated bands (or dog-
toothed friezes) and the grouping of the arcaded windows more closely together
reflect its later date as does the appearance of "Kufic" decorations and stone
crosses. <a
eWriter/KapnikareaSM2.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width:
alt="KapnikareaSM2"
Writer/KapnikareaSM2_thumb.jpg" width="404"
border="0"></a> Kapnikarea The group will then walk
over to the so-called Little Metropolis. The tour route defies chronology
and jumps to this Frankish period (the period after the Fourth Crusade's
sack of Constantinople in 1204) monument that most likely dates to the 13th
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century. <a

eWriter/LittleMetropolisSM.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-
alt="LittleMetropolisSM"
Writer/LittleMetropolisSM_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> The
"Little Metropolis" Famous for its use of spolia from ancient, Early
Christian, and Middle Byzantine buildings, this church is among the best studied
Byzantine monuments in the city. The extensive use of spolia in all
Byzantine buildings in Athens makes it challenging to use architectural
sculpture as a source of chronological information. Of particular interest
to me is the use of Early Christian and Early Byzantine (say 8th and 9th
century) fragments in these buildings. I've argued elsewhere that this
practice reflects an interest in continuity between the Early Christian and
later periods, but at the same time suggests an awareness of a some kind of
break or discontinuity. After all, the original building from which the
spolia derived was no longer in existence. An additional level of
complexity derives from the possibility that some of the properly "ancient"
spolia (particular column capitals) in Middle Byzantine buildings like the
Little Metropolis might in fact be in tertiary use, having at some point been
employed in an Early Christian context before being used again in a later
building. Thus, the use of spolia become very much like the use literary
or documentary evidence by the historian. On the one hand, the use of
primary source evidence reflects an awareness of separation between the
historian's time and a previous moment in the past (i.e. discontinuity).
On the other hand, the actual use of particular evidence in a contemporary
historical text reflects its continued validity and its potential for
translation from one context to another. Our ability to understand a piece
of "primary source" evidence and use (like ancient spolia) it reifies the
persistent sense of continuity between the past and the present. From
the little Metropolis we made a chronological jump backward to the Soteira
Lykodemou (also called the Russian church). This is the largest church in
the city and Ch. Bouras has recently proposed that it is, in fact, a 3/4 copy of
the Katholikon church at Os. Loukas. It's a crossed-domed octagon which
presents a significantly different kind of interior space than the cross-in-
square type churches common to Midddle Byzantine Athens. The church
probably dates to between the death of the found of the church in 1044 and the
completion of the Katholikon at Os. Loukas in the first decades of the 11th c.
 Finally, we walked from Soteria Lykodemou over to the 11th century
church of Ay. Aikaterini near the Lysikrates monument which is undergoing some
repairs and renovations so that the foundations of the apse are exposed.
The church has been extensively modified with a massive narthex and
ambulatory. The church highlights one of the key issues facing the study
of Middle Byzantine buildings in Athens (or any city for that matter). The
churches are living buildings, they remained in use for centuries undergoing
modifications to serve their varying congregations. <a
eWriter/AyKateriniSm_3.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-
alt="AyKateriniSm"
Writer/AyKateriniSm_thumb.jpg" width="304" border="0"></a> <a
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eWriter/AyKateriniSm_3.jpg"><a
eWriter/AgKateriniFoundationSM.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-
alt="AgKateriniFoundationSM"
Writer/AgKateriniFoundationSM_thumb.jpg" width="140"
border="0"></a> </a>Ay. Aikaterini with later ambulatory in foreground
and detail of its exposed foundations The Middle Byzantine churches
of Athens remain a relatively understudied group with only a handful of detailed
studies on specific churches. Few of the churches have received proper
archaeological investigation and our dating of them has continued to rely on the
stylistic chronology established by Peter Megaw in the 1930s (with some
modifications). The remarkable thing is that over 70 years of
archaeological and architectural study of the Byzantine buildings of Athens and
the rest of Greece has done very little to modify Megaw's overall chronology
(although single buildings have received revised dates). You can read my
hand out for the walk and some additional bibliography <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/Byzantine_Athens.pdf">Downlo
ad Byzantine_Athens.pdf">here</a>. 
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: cheap nike shox
EMAIL: kiper2012@gmail.com
IP: 68.68.108.118
URL: http://www.nikeshox.cc
DATE: 11/03/2010 10:52:18 PM
This was an age of innocence and happiness.God bless you all, and God bless
America !
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TITLE: Springtime for Byzantium
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
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BASENAME: springtime-for
CATEGORY: Byzantium
CATEGORY: Teaching
DATE: 01/16/2008 12:42:52 AM

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1278
I just finished a short review of Jonathan Harris' <a

href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/156891508">Constantinople:Capital of
Byzantium</a> (2007). Its a nice treatment of the history of
Constantinople. It takes as its point of departure the year 1200 and looks
back to the City's founding and ahead to the City's eventual sack by the
Crusaders and then the Turks. Harris' prose is accessible and lively, and
he uses selective footnotes to tie his narrative to the primary sources.
The work is rounded about by a good bibliography of largely English language
secondary sources and primary sources in translation. It made me
think that over the last decade, or even the last 5 years, there are a number of
books that make the teaching of Byzantine History as an upper level
undergraduate course far easier. When I sat in on a Byzantine History
course 10 years ago at Ohio State (with Tim Gregory), we were still using
Ostrogorsky's <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/73649">History of the
Byzantine State</a> as a textbook. It's a fine book to be
sure, but with its dense text and emphasis on political and institutional
history, it is hardly ideal for a well-balanced undergraduate course filled with
"reluctant readers". <a
eWriter/image_21.png"><a
Writer/image_thumb_17.png" width="101" border="0"><a
Writer/image_thumb_18.png" width="101" border="0"></a></a></a></a><img
style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px"
Writer/image_thumb_19.png" width="99" border="0"><img style="border-right: 0px;
border-top: 0px; border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="144" alt="image"
Writer/image_thumb_20.png" width="110" border="0"></a></a> <a
eWriter/image_21.png"></a></a></a> Since I took Byzantine History,
Gregory himself has produced <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/55535042">A History of
Byzantium</a> (2005) which while hardly flawless is accessible for
the average undergraduate and includes nice treatments of Byzantine culture and
society. Derek Krueger's edit volume, <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/63122856">Byzantine
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Christianity</a> (2006) while not exactly a textbook provides a

good overview of some of the major issues in Byzantine religion for students
with only limited background (especially if coupled with something like Robert
Taft's <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/26547561">Byzantine Rite: A
Short History</a> (1992)). 
These books complement the little flurry of good quality books on Byzantine
Art from the turn of the century, notable among them are Robin Cormack's <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/43729117">Byzantine Art</a>
(2000) and Thomas Mathew's <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/60169523">Byzantine Art: Between
Antiquity and the Renaissance</a> (1998). These books
provide a basic narrative and analysis of the historical development of
Byzantine art and architecture. Finally, the efforts by <a
href="http://www.doaks.org/">Dumbarton Oaks</a> to make some of their survey
works (like the <a href="http://www.doaks.org/EHB.html">Economic History of
Byzantium</a> (2002)) and recently translated primary sources
like the <a href="http://www.doaks.org/typ000.html">Byzantine Monastic
Foundation Documents</a> (2000) and the <a
href="http://www.doaks.org/ATHW.html">Holy Women of
Byzantium</a> (1996) available online provides an important
body of documents and analysis for no cost to the student. In any
event, there no longer seems an easy excuse (i.e. there is no good quality
textbooks or the sources are obscure, expensive, or untranslated) to not include
<a
n_Syllabus.htm">Byzantine History</a> in an undergraduate curriculum!
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: CamArchGrad
IP: 209.52.148.68
URL:
DATE: 01/16/2008 01:20:28 PM
Not to mention the popular histories of Julius John Norwich on Byzantium and
Warren Treadgolds "History of the Byzantine state and society"
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TITLE: Recent Work on Survey Northeast Peloponnesus
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
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BASENAME: recent-work-on
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DATE: 01/15/2008 12:26:56 AM

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Two new articles highlight the important work being done by survey
archaeologists in the Northeastern Peloponnesus. <a
href="http://home.messiah.edu/~dpettegrew/">David Pettegrew</a>'s hefty "<a
href="http://www.atypon-link.com/ASCS/doi/pdfplus/10.2972/hesp.76.4.743">The
Busy Countryside of Late Roman Corinth," Hesperia 76 (2007), 743-784</a> and <a
href="http://www.equinoxjournals.com/ojs/index.php/JMA/article/view/4105/2655">Y
. Lolos, B. Gourly, and D.R. Steward, "The Sikyon Survey Project: A Blueprint
for Urban Survey," JMA 20 (2007), 267-296</a>. <a
eWriter/TowardSikyonSM.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-
alt="TowardSikyonSM"
Writer/TowardSikyonSM_thumb.jpg" width="504" border="0"></a> Toward
Sikyon from the Corinthia Both articles focus primarily on
methodological issues. Pettegrew examines the relationship between Early
Roman/Roman ceramics (1st c. BC-3rd c. AD) and Late Roman ceramics documented by
the <a
Korinthia Archaeological Survey</a>. He argues that the traditional
picture of Early Roman/Roman economic and settlement contraction followed by a
Late Roman "boom" is partially a product of the different visibility of the
ceramic signatures of these two periods. To put a complex argument simply,
Late Roman ceramics are simply easier to identify than Roman ceramics in the
field and, consequently, archaeologists have tended to identify a far more
pronounced Late Roman signature in the landscape where as the Roman period is
typically underrepresented. This analysis of the EKAS pottery depended on
understanding of the advantages and disadvantages of the chronotype sampling
strategy employed by EKAS (and explored in some detail in by <a
href="http://www.equinoxjournals.com/ojs/index.php/JMA/article/view/2435/1656">C
araher, Nakassis, and Pettegrew in JMA 19 (2006), 7-43</a>) and also by PKAP (in
fact, Pettegrew discusses <a href="http://www.chss.iup.edu/pkap/">PKAP</a>
pottery on pp. 763-764). He also demonstrates convincingly, however, that
a bias toward Late Roman material occurs in other projects as well. The
result of this work could be to begin to read the history of the Roman Eastern
Mediterranean (and Greece in particular) as a period of slow, but consistent
recovery from tumultuous Late Hellenistic period, and another step in the
rehabilitation of the Roman presence in the East. Lolos et al.
propose a model for surveying known urban areas like the city of Sykion 20 km
west of EKAS survey area based on their work on the <a
href="http://extras.ha.uth.gr/sikyon/en/">Sikyon Survey Project</a> (which has a
spectacular web page!). Their interest in such "large sites" resonates
with our work surveying the large ex-urban site of Pyla-
Koutsopetria. That being said, the authors try to distinguish
between areas designated as "large sites" and "urban areas (p. 268) by noting
that urban areas are almost always conglomerations of "sites". I suspect,
however, that most large sites are, in fact, multiple sites as well and the
designation and definition of a site depends largely on the resolution one
employs in during the survey. In any event, the article makes an important
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contribution to the ongoing process of applying intensive pedestrian survey to

areas with particularly high artifact densities. Both projects
counted artifacts using clicker counters to produce an estimate of overall
ceramic density in a particular unit. Of special interest to me is how the
two projects (<a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/EKASPage/EKASHome.html">EKAS</a
> and the <a href="http://extras.ha.uth.gr/sikyon/en/">Sikyon Survey
Project</a>) sampled the artifact scatters for chronological data. EKAS
(and PKAP) used chronotype sampling to collect ceramic data from each
unit. The chronotype system called each field walker to collect one
example of each unique artifact he or she saw (and when in doubt about the
uniqueness of a particularly artifact, they should collect it). This
ensured that we had at least one example of each type of artifact present in the
unit. Lolos and his team collected only "feature sherds" (p. 279) from
each unit and collected all the artifacts from every 5th survey unit. It
would be particularly interesting to compare the ratio of collected sherd to
counted sherds from each unit for each project. Pettegrew (as well as
others) have argued that chronotype collection tends to produce fairly robust
samples of artifacts from each unit and, in practice, walkers tends to "over
collect" -- that is collect more than just one example of each artifact type
present in the unit. The jury is still out on how best to sample artifacts
from high density scatters (aka "sites") and while almost every method has its
advocates and critics, it would be particularly valuable to see comparative data
on sampling rates from various techniques. Another interesting aspect of
Lolos' article is the relatively little attention given to the issue of
visibility (pp. 279, 286). EKAS found that visibility had a particularly
significant effect on the quality of chronological sample from the unit.
That is to say, that the lower the visibility the less representative the sample
of collected artifacts was likely to be of a putative total assemblage of
material in the unit. If you can only see 10% of the surface of the unit,
no sampling strategy will produce more than a 10% sample of the artifacts in the
unit! I am sure that they will continue to develop these ideas as their
field work and study continues. Both articles represent important
contributions to the intensive survey method in the Eastern Mediterranean, and
it is exciting to see it come from two projects in the Northeast
Peloponnesus! 
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: maddy
IP: 71.128.125.1
URL: http://archaeobaking.blogspot.com
DATE: 01/16/2008 03:44:44 PM
And there was not much discussion of the geophysical work done at Sikyon and how
that complemented the pedestrian survey...I'm eager to see the results of the
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geophysics work once they're published, as the data we collected in 2006 and
2007 was really interesting.
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TITLE: Another Centre of Late Antique Studies
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
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BASENAME: another-centre
DATE: 01/14/2008 12:20:56 AM

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Another Centre to add to the growing list of centres focusing on Late
Antiquity: <a href="http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/clarc/index.html">Cardiff
University Centre For Late Antique Religion & Culture</a> (CLARC).
CLARC will publish <a href="http://www.cf.ac.uk/clarc/jlarc/jlarc-home.html">The
Journal of Late Antique Religion and Culture</a> which will be available
electronically on their web site. The first volume (2007) appears to be of
good quality and interesting material as one would expect from the faculty
involved with the Centre. I have no idea where the saturation
point for Late Antique "<a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2007/10/ox
ford-centre-f.html">centres</a>", "institutes", and <a href="
http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2007/11/conferen
ce-and.html">program(me)s</a> might be! What happens when a time period or
area of study becomes over-exposed (are their case studies here)? Do
academic interests follow predictable boom-bust cycles where overproduction of
scholar-types leads to a catastrophic market retrenchment? Will we hear of
Late Antiquitists (Antiqueologists?) panhandling on the streets of Berkeley with
signs reading "I invested my life in Late Antiquity. Please Help." 
More seriously, it is interesting to consider the origins of this recent
boom. Some of it must be attributed to the pioneering work done in the 1960s and
1970s by A.H.M. Jones, Peter Brown, and others whose work continues to influence
the questions, approaches, and sources for the field. Presumably the
rising economic, cultural, and political significance of the Middle East and
Eastern Europe in the West fueled the study of Late Antiquity as well.
Perhaps more practical considerations played a role. As the job market for
Classicists in the U.S. shrunk over the past several decades, it may be that
students with "Classical training" gravitated toward Late Antiquity as a way to
expand their opportunities on the job market by selling themselves as scholars
who could comfortably teach the Ancient world and the Middle Ages.
Finally, the study of "Late" Antiquity encapsulates one of the great scholarly
debates of the later half of the 20th century. By calling into question
the definitions of "Antiquity" and the decline and fall of civilizations, the
study of Late Antiquity encouraged scholars to critique long-standing
(Enlightenment?) historical narratives that not only essentialized cultures
(i.e. by defining a set group of characteristics typical of a unified
"antiquity"), and plotted (if not assumed) their decline in the inevitable march
toward a progressive present.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Chuck Jones
IP: 193.92.187.43
DATE: 01/14/2008 02:47:24 AM
The articles in volume 1 of The Journal of Late Antique Religion and Culture
are in fact already online.
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TITLE: Another Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project Update
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: another-pyla-ko
DATE: 01/12/2008 01:09:49 AM

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The <a href="http://www.chss.iup.edu/pkap/">Pyla-Koutsopetria
Archaeological Project</a> is pleased to announce that we received
permission from the <a
href="http://www.mcw.gov.cy/mcw/da/da.nsf/DMLindex_en/DMLindex_en?OpenDocument">
Cyprus Department of Antiquities</a> to conduct limited soundings at the site of
Pyla-Kokkinokremos and Pyla-Vigla in collaboration with Dr.
Maria Hadjicosti. While we still will need to work out the details with
the authorities at the British Bases, this is an important first step in making
plans for the 2008 PKAP season. Our proposed soundings will serve to
ground truth the results of <a
href="http://www.chss.iup.edu/pkap/reports/reports.htm">3 seasons of intensive
survey</a> and <a
la-koutsopetr.html">last years geophysical work</a>. At present, we
anticipate four small (2 x 2 m) trenches focused on specific research questions:
namely determining whether the apsidal building with an east-west orientation on
Pyla-Vigla is an Early Christian basilica and whether several linear
bed rock cuttings on Pyla-Kokkinokremos are man-made foundations for
monumental architecture. Such limited excavations continue PKAP's
commitment to low impact archaeology. Moreover, the location of the two
sites, within the <a
href="http://www.mod.uk/DefenceInternet/DefenceFor/ServiceCommunity/ACyprusPosti
ng/Dhekelia/DhekeliaGarrison.htm">British Dhekelia Cantonment</a>'s firing
ranges, restricts our access to the areas and the time we can spend each day
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working there. The small scale excavations will make for an
exciting conclusion to the "first phase" of archaeological fieldwork at Pyla-
Koutsopetria. At present we have received some of the required
financial support for the excavations at Pyla-Kokkinokremos, we have submitted
several other grant proposal for the work on Vigla and Kokkinokremos, and
anticipate submitting several more. As usual we hope to receive some
support from private donors. With this news, the next few months will be
flurry of preparations. We are planning to have our largest field team to
date in Cyprus with more than 10 senior (i.e. funded) staff and another dozen
undergraduate and graduate volunteers. The field school component of the
project -- which involves not only teaching basic archaeological method and
procedure, but also travel to sites across Cyprus -- will be the most robust to
date as well. Part of this blogs original goal was to provide a
window into all aspects of archaeological project -- from the preparation for
the season, to fieldwork, to the dissemination of our results. Keep tuned
here over the next 6 months to see how the 2008 PKAP field season unfolds.
eWriter/FiringRangeKokkinorkremosSM.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px;
height="600" alt="FiringRangeKokkinorkremosSM"
Writer/FiringRangeKokkinorkremosSM_thumb.jpg" width="404"
border="0"></a> Toward Kokkinokremos from the West
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AUTHOR: susie
EMAIL: susanphillips70@yahoo.com.au
IP: 134.129.168.15
URL:
DATE: 01/14/2008 04:24:31 PM
Congratulations on getting the go ahead everyone. That's great news.
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TITLE: Abandoned Landscapes in North Dakota Part 2
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
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BASENAME: abandoned-lands
DATE: 01/10/2008 11:57:12 PM

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<a
andoned_lands.html">One my first blog posts</a> talked about my drive across
North Dakota on the Hi-Line from North of Bismarck to Grand Forks. I noted
the abandoned landscape of the state -- the empty towns, abandoned farmsteads,
lonely churches -- and contrasted it with the rising prosperity of the states
inhabitants over the last century. The contrast suggested to me that our
understanding of abandonment and decline in the modern era is sometimes tempered
by the rise in prosperity particularly in the Western world. The result is
a fantastically complex landscape where new and old stand together with hopes
and past failures highlighting a whole range of abandonments.
 The <a href="http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/2008-01/emptied-
north-dakota/bowden-text.html">January 2008 issue of National Geographic</a>
features a story by Charles Bowden that captures some of the same
themes. It is accompanied by a fascinating <a
href="http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/2008-01/emptied-north-
dakota/richards-photography.html">photo essay</a> on abandonment in North
Dakota. The photos reflect the complexity of abandonment in North Dakota
(and as phenomenon) where towns slowly fade away while preserving hints of
episodic reuse. The photos also document the kinds of things that people
leave behind. The wedding dresses, books, furniture, toys, cars all form
the archaeological assemblage that will define this time and these places in the
future. <a
eWriter/AbandonedVillageGreeceSM.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-
alt="AbandonedVillageGreeceSM"
Writer/AbandonedVillageGreeceSM_thumb.jpg" width="404"
border="0"></a> Abandoned houses in Western Macedonia
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AUTHOR: petey
EMAIL: peter.hantzakos@viigo.com
IP: 208.124.197.118
URL:
DATE: 01/18/2008 01:01:41 PM
Haunting, moving to see the images on National Geographic. Everytime I visit my
father's village in the Southern Pelloponese, near Sparta, I feel this way. Only
a few people remain in the village where he was born. The vast majority of the
houses have been forgotten and the roofs are caving in. The population steadily
declined as most people moved away in search of a better (or different) life in
far away countries or large cities. The ones who remained got older, and most
have passed away. The footpaths are weed covered, the concrete near the church
steps is cracking... And so time goes on.
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TITLE: The Byzantine and Christian Museum
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
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BASENAME: the-byzantine-a
DATE: 01/10/2008 04:37:56 AM

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I led the <a
through the <a href="http://www.lrf.gr/demos/byz/homepage.html">Byzantine and
Christian Museum</a> with the help of <a
href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/Membership/associate.htm">Associate Member</a>
Christina Stancioiu who graciously talked about icons for us. I've posted
my notes here. George Lampakis: Thrace-Constantinople (1902) (see also <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2007/12/ge
orgios-lampak.html">here</a>) George Lampakis (1854-1914) was a key
figure in the formation of the Byzantine and Christian Museum collection. He was
educated in Athens in theology and in Germany in the developing field of
Christian Archaeology. Upon his return to Greece, he participated in the growing
willingness to understand Byzantium as a crucial part of Greek identity. He was
among the founders of the Christian Archaeological Society and circulated in
elevated circles becoming a close associate of Queen Olga (the Russian bride of
King George I who claimed descent from the Byzantine Anglos family). He traveled
extensively and his photographs, some of which are on display at the Byzantine
and Christian Museum, and form an important resource for the study of late 19th
and early 20th century Greece. He also worked to document and in some cases
collected artifacts important to both Byzantine and the more recent Christian
culture of Greece. As such he should be understood as part of a larger movement
toward embedding Greek history within the larger narrative of both the Orthodox
church and the Byzantine empire. This reinterpretation of the Greek past, of
course, contributed to the Great Idea and the irredentist movements that
it spawned, but perhaps should not be read as purely a nationalist movement. The
conflation of Greece‚Äôs Byzantine past and the modern life of the church gave
Lampakis‚Äô collection of Byzantine and Christian antiquities an ahistorical
quality evocative of liturgical time and distinct from the modern historicist
narratives characteristic of the emerging nationalist histories.
Byzantine and Christian Museum The Byzantine
and Christian Museum developed out the collection of the Christian
Archaeological Society which Lampakis curated. The Museum itself was founded in
1914 soon after the capture of Thessaloniki, a city of particular significance
to the Byzantine patrimony of the modern Greek state. The first director of a
distinct Byzantine and Christian Musem was Adamantios Adamantiou, and he and his
successor, George Soteriou, both expanded the collect and shifted its focus.
They drew upon the growing prestige of Byzantine material and Byzantine history
within Greece, which by the second half of the 19th century had emerged as a
counterbalance to Classical philhellenism and its association with Western
political and cultural interventionism. This use of Byzantium found parallels
elsewhere in Europe where scholars, particularly in Austria and German,
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increasingly asserted the cultural autonomy of Byzantine and Late Antique

material. The artistic, stylistic, and historical autonomy of Late Antique and
Byzantine culture (as opposed to reading simply as a decadent or debased form of
Classical art) made it particularly suitable for scholars seeking to understand
Byzantine Greece as the cultural predecessor of the independent nation-state. By
1930, Soteriou established the collection in its present location ‚Äì the Villa
Ilissia which had been built in the 1840s for the eccentric American Sophie de
Marbois who had married into the Napoleonic aristocracy. He arranged it to
demonstrate the uninterrupted development of Byzantine art from the Early
Christian period to the early 19th century. <a
eWriter/VillaIlissiaSM.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-
alt="VillaIlissiaSM"
Writer/VillaIlissiaSM_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> Villa Ilissia In keeping with the modernist and
scientific underpinnings of both museum and the nation-state, Soteriou organized
the religious artifacts collected by Lampakis as well as material from his own
excavations in two ways. One group of rooms organized icons, portable objects,
and church vestments chronologically and typologically transforming the kinds of
religious objects, which continued to be venerated and used in neighborhood
churches throughout Greece, into objects susceptible to systematic and
scientific investigation. More interestingly, however, Soteriou placed the best
examples of sculpture, furnishings, and architectural sculpture into
reconstructed examples of churches built in a series of rooms in the Museum.
These rooms, designed by Aristotle Zachos, who was also the architect
responsible for the reconstruction of St. Demetios in Thessaloniki after the
fire of 1912, served to create secular churches which abstracted the material
culture of everyday sacred experience in Greece and rendered it suitable for
integration within the historicist narrative of the modern nation. The
current museum underwent significant renovations since Soteriou‚Äôs time. The
shadows of Soteriou‚Äôs organization, however, persist in many of the displays.
For the Early Byzantine period, the influence of material collected from
Soteriou‚Äôs excavations at the Ilissos basilica and the churches at Nea
Anchialos is evident. The majority of the material in the collection derives
from Athens (particularly the Acropolis and various Byzantine and post-Byzantine
churches destroyed in during the transformation of the city during the 19th
century) and Attica (Mygdaleza, Stamata, Anavyssos, and Damalas (Troizene)). It
also includes a significant collection of Byzantine and Post-Byzantine icons of
the Cretan and Ionian schools from private collections. <a
eWriter/SecularChurch2SM.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-
alt="SecularChurch2SM"
Writer/SecularChurch2SM_thumb.jpg" width="204" border="0"></a> <a
eWriter/SecularChurchSM.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-
alt="SecularChurchSM"
Writer/SecularChurchSM_thumb.jpg" width="223" border="0"></a> Museum as Secular Church Bibliography J. Elsner,
‚ÄúThe Birth of Late Antiquity: Reigel and Strzygowski in 1901,‚Äù Art
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History 25 (2002), 258-279. K. Kourelis, ‚ÄúByzantium and the Avant-

Guard: Excavations at Corinth, 1920s-1930s‚Äù Hesperia 76 (2007), 391-
441. S. Marchand, ‚ÄúThe Rhetoric of Artifacts and the Decline of Classical
Humanism: The Case of Josef Strzygowski,‚Äù History and Theory 33 (1994),
106-130. M. Rautman, ‚ÄúArchaeology and Byzantine Studies,‚Äù ByzFor
15 (1990), 137-165. G. Soteriou, Guide du Muss√©e Byzantin
d‚ÄôAth√®nes (Athens 1932) P. Vokotopoulos, ‚ÄúMuseums and Collections of
Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Art in Greece,‚Äù BalkSt 37, 207-234.
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AUTHOR: Tim
EMAIL: gregory.4@osu.edu
IP: 79.131.70.31
URL:
DATE: 03/09/2008 01:35:21 PM
This is really good stuff. I can add some other information. Are you archiving
all this so it will be available? When I was teaching at the School 1979-81 I
typed all such stuff out, then ca. 1983 I saw I could do it on the computer.
Nobody was interested at the School. I'm slowly trying to digitize all that,
but it's too bad an effort wasn't made then.!
!
teg
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TITLE: Archaeology, Posters, and the New Media
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
ALLOW PINGS: 1
BASENAME: archaeology-pos
DATE: 01/08/2008 01:23:28 AM

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First, I want to congratulate <a
href="http://ancienthistory.typepad.com/ancient_history_ramblings/">Scott</a> <a
href="http://www.chss.iup.edu/rsmoore/">Moore</a> and <a
href="http://home.messiah.edu/~dpettegrew/">David Pettegrew</a> on <a
href="http://www.chss.iup.edu/pkap/publications/posters/2008AIAPoster.jpg">a
great poster</a> at the 2008 AIA Annual Meeting. Posters are a funny
medium for displaying archaeological information. On the one hand, they
are very effective for displaying the kind of visual information that is at the
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core of archaeological investigation. Moreover, the practice of the

author(s) of the poster hanging around the display during specific sessions
allows people to engage the authors in conversations about their research in a
way that is much more effective than a typical panel (the poster sessions at the
<a href="http://www.saa.org/meetings/index.html">SAA Annual Meetings</a> are in
most cases much more significant than the papers read in particular
sessions). On the other hand, as projects like PKAP move toward a deeper
engagement with dynamic and in some cases interactive media -- interactive web
pages, video, podcasts, blogs, et c. -- and view these components as part of a
project's core research objectives, posters appear all the more staid and
inflexible. While posters will always present the process of archaeology
in a static way, one can imagine a future where "posters" allow for an
interactive approach to data which complements their already commendable ability
to stimulate conversation between archaeologists and their academic peers.
Some quick hits: <ul> <li>Sam (World B) Fee's blog <a
href="http://www.thefee.net/delirium/">Arranged Delirium</a> is chronicling the
progress of his class on "Web 2.0 sites and technologies". It is
addressing some key issues for the entire Web 2.0 movement (phenomenon?)
including the <a
href="http://www.thefee.net/delirium/index.php/site/comments/the_web_20_controve
rsy/">controversy surrounding the definition of Web 2.0</a>. <li>Sebastian
Heath at the blog <a
href="http://mediterraneanceramics.blogspot.com/">Mediterranean Ceramics</a> has
posted links to his new work, <a
href="http://classics.uc.edu/troy/grbpottery/">Greek, Roman and Byzantine
Pottery at Ilion (Troia)</a>. In <a
href="http://mediterraneanceramics.blogspot.com/2007/12/dont-buy-this-
book.html">this post</a>, he discusses the different formats in which his
research will appear -- including PDF, HTML, and print -- outlining albeit
briefly some of the advantages of the different formats and stressing that there
traditional print formats still remain significant for both practical reasons
(it's easier sometimes to bring a book out into a field than a laptop!) and
archival reasons. <li>Heath <a
href="http://mediterraneanceramics.blogspot.com/2008/01/mediterranean-ceramics-
reference.html">has also commented on the "disappointing decisions"</a> by the
AIA to <a href="http://ajaonline.org/pdfs/112.1/AJA1121_Norman.pdf">discontinue
providing free copies of the AJA for download on their web site</a>. <li><a
href="http://www.unc.edu/~thomase/">Tom Elliot</a>, previously the <a
href="http://www.unc.edu/awmc/">Director of the Ancient World Mapping
Center</a>'s <a href="http://pleiades.stoa.org/">Pleiades Project</a> and now
Associate Director for Digital Programs in New York University's new <a
href="http://www.nyu.edu/isaw">Institute for the Study of the Ancient World</a>,
<a href="http://www.ncgia.ucsb.edu/projects/nga/ncgia.html">posted a link to a
recent conference on Digital Gazetteers</a> on his <a
href="http://horothesia.blogspot.com/">horothesia blog</a>. As David
Pettegrew and I are in the early stages of producing a gazetteer (albeit perhaps
in a more traditional medium) of the Eastern Corinthia (as part of the ongoing
work of the <a
Korinthia Archaeological Survey</a>, the papers and discussions at this
conference address many of the persistent problems that have slowed our
progress. <li>The <a
href="http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/46208.html">Cliopatria Awards for 2007</a>
were presented at the annual meeting of the <a
href="http://www.historians.org/">American Historical Association</a>. The
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winner for the best group blog is <a href="http://jjcohen.blogspot.com/">In the

Middle</a> which deals largely with Medieval topics. It's great to see the
study of the antiquity and the middle ages embrace (successfully!) the New
Media! <li>Finally, I am going to send off my <a
ogging-arch-2.html">Blogging Archaeology</a> article today. Thanks to
everyone who contributed to it!</li></ul>
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TITLE: Travels in the Hinterland
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
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BASENAME: travels-in-the
DATE: 01/04/2008 07:35:30 PM

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Susie and I drove from our base of Australian operations, Beerwah,
Queensland, into the hinterland, particularly the South Burnett region.
Our destination was the largest vineyard in Queensland, Clovely Estates.
The countryside was dotted with Southern Cross windmills and their accompanying
water tanks. The region has suffered from the decade long drought, but
during our visit there had been almost three weeks of intermittent rain.
Cattle grazed the muddy banks of filled dams and billabongs. <a
eWriter/WindmillsSM.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width:
alt="WindmillsSM"
Writer/WindmillsSM_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> We passed
through the numerous small agricultural communities of the South Burnett region
like Murgon, Wondai, Yarraman, and Blackbutt. While the small,
simple churches in these towns caught my eye, the large, elaborate pubs drew far
more of my attention. (Unlike in North Dakota where each small town has a
number of small storefront bars) Australian towns typically have a single large
pub often built around the turn of the century in Australian Colonial style.
eWriter/BlackbuttPubSM.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-
alt="BlackbuttPubSM"
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Writer/BlackbuttPubSM_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> Blackbutt
Pub <a
eWriter/WondaiPubSM.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width:
alt="WondaiPubSM"
Writer/WondaiPubSM_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> Wondai Pub
 <a
eWriter/YarramanPubSM.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width:
alt="YarramanPubSM"
Writer/YarramanPubSM_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> Yarraman
Pub Typical small town grocery stores evoke the small
markets in North Dakota as well as in any number of Greek villages filled with
non-perishable, dry foods and only a smattering of fresh produce. <a
eWriter/MurgenMarketSM.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-
alt="MurgenMarketSM"
Writer/MurgenMarketSM_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> Once at Clovely Estate -- outside of the town of Murgon -- we
stayed in restored "Queenslander" style house amidst vineyards heavy with grapes
which will be harvested within the week. Queenslanders are surrounded by
verandas and designed to capture the cooling winds and funnel them through the
house. <a
eWriter/QueenslanderSM.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-
alt=""
Writer/QueenslanderSM_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> <a
eWriter/ClovelyVineyardSM.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-
alt="ClovelyVineyardSM"
Writer/ClovelyVineyardSM_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> <a
eWriter/GrapesSM.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px;
border-bottom-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px" height="404" alt="GrapesSM"
Writer/GrapesSM_thumb.jpg" width="272" border="0"></a> The
daily rains curtailed our outside activities, but provided us with some great
sunsets. <a
eWriter/ClovelySunsetSM.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-
alt="ClovelySunsetSM"
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Writer/ClovelySunsetSM_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> This is the last of my self-indulgent meditations on Australian
landscapes. I return to Athens tomorrow and will return to more Mediterranean
themes next week. 
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TITLE: Filmmaking and Archaeology
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: learning-about
DATE: 01/01/2008 01:26:30 AM

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Over the last three weeks, I've been in lengthy correspondence with the <a
href="http://www.chss.iup.edu/pkap/">PKAP</a>'s filmmaker, <a
href="http://www.xanga.com/jpatrow">Joe Patrow</a>. Patrow has completed a
rough cut of the footage collected during the 2007 field season. He
prepared a series of shorts entitled Emerging Cypriot which show the
less formal elements of an archaeological project -- from simple and common
mistakes in the field (collecting a bit of ordinance and washing it) to
archaeological romances to the view of our student volunteers on the bustling
night life of Larnaka. There are several shorts with more "properly
archaeological themes" including a nice description of resistivity by John Hunt
and my riveting tour of our Late Roman wall. The last short on the disk is
an archaeological music video featuring the music of one of our graduate
students volunteers. At the start of the 2007 field season we hoped that
Joe could provide us with a "feature length" documentary of the project --
perhaps focusing on the perceptions of the student volunteers, the journey of an
artifact from the field to the catalogue, and with some discussion of
archaeological procedures, methods, and goals. This would essentially be a
full length (and more robust) sequel to the successful <a
Cyprus</a> documentary (which was originally intended to be a study for a
longer project). Early on, however, reality set in for Patrow and
PKAP. The first problem was that ourfieldwork was boring.
Resistivity, intensive field survey, topographic survey are systematic
approaches to documenting the landscape, but from the perspective of the camera
and the filmmaker with an eye toward a popular audience, our careful
archaeological method involved tedious, repetitive tasks. Repetitive
tasks, we've been told, make bad movies. I can buy this. 
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Next, our project lacked any kind of compelling narrative that lent itself
easily to depiction on film. As with most research projects, an
archaeological field season rarely produce a coherent narrative arc with a clear
beginning, middle, and end. As with most archaeological research, the
anticipated results of the season changed throughout the 5 week season as new
discoveries came to light (e.g. <a
la-koutsopetr.html">our Late Roman wall and possible Early Christian
basilica</a>) or expected discoveries failed to materialize (where are the
graves or tombs for the Bronze Age and Late Roman settlements?). While
most of our initial working hypotheses gained positive or negative results, we
concluded the season with a whole new set of crucial questions requiring clear
answers. Ambiguity and unanswered questions are part of any critical
approach to archaeological field work, but it hardly conforms to popular views
of archaeology which have tended to emphasize simple questions and direct
answers revealed at a moment of discovery. Finally, our entire team was
not entirely cooperative in the filmmaking venture. Senior staff was
particularly concerned with the questions of "what if my
administrators/colleagues/funding bodies see this." Will too much
"reality" cast the project in a bad light? Professional presentation of
archaeological fieldwork results tends to emphasize the direct and linear
relationship between research questions and field work results.
Discussions of the field work process tend to be limited to relatively abstract
discussions of the theoretical implications or particular methods. The
experiential element of fieldwork, with some clear exceptions, tends to be
marginalized and professional scholarly presentations of field projects tend to
reduce relationships between individual participants to the almost mechanical
interaction of scholars with discrete skill sets. Moreover, volunteers and
junior staff were not familiar with the camera and it's presence shaped their
responses which vacillated between "hamming it up" for the camera (err.. senior
staff might also be included here) and measured responses that sought to conform
to the expectations of the senior staff and the camera operator/director (which
were meaningful to be sure, but spoke less clearly to their individual
experiences on the project). (All of these issues came to light despite
our own awareness of recent trends toward <a
ndscape-archa.html">the reflexive or even the performative</a> and <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/45064746">theatrical elements</a> of
archaeological work. Our first documentary began with a quote from Ian Hodder
regarding reflexivity (and this was provided by our filmmaker without our
prompting): "Reflexivity occurs as project members are asked to explain their
work and assumptions before the camera" and my explanation that Patrow would be
part of the project rather than an outside observer. His privileged status and
insider (i.e. a funded member of the PKAP team) and outsider (free from most of
the responsibilities of fieldwork) allowed him to critique and understand our
work from a distinct perspective that was clearly "biased" but also functioned
according to a significantly different set of expectations and goals.) My
correspondence with Patrow and the discussions with other members of the PKAP
team has been revealing. On the one hand, some of us continue to press for
a traditional narrative approach to our archaeological project. This
approach would conform to the expectations of both "institutional" and popular
audiences, because it foregrounds a scientific process, flows from hypothesis to
the climactic moment of discovery or resolution, and marginalizes dissenting
voices (or alternative stories) to a subordinate positions outside the major
narrative stream. On the other hand, what we have now is a series
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of 5-7 minute shorts that do not cohere as a narrative but provide sketches of
archaeological work for various perspectives. Taken together the shorts
approach a kind of multivocality (albeit they are all produced by the same
filmmaker). Their abbreviated length encourages viewing multiple shorts in
a single sitting, and their irreverent (verging on ironic) tone presents a foil
to the more linear and formal documentary Survey on Cyprus. The
use of shorts, which do not have strong structuring tying them together,
encourages the understanding archaeological fieldwork as the interplay of
atomistic (but not unrelated) stories, perceptions, and interpretations which
can be collated into a coherent narrative only through the effort of the
archaeologist, the filmmaker, the historian, or the story teller. These
stories can both complement the authoritative narratives that appeared in
Survey on Cyprus and at various meetings and publications and subvert
them, bringing out the crucial tensions that exist in the kind of collaborative
research typical of archaeological projects . Patrow decided against any
unifying "voice over" drawing the viewer directly into the scene amidst the
bustle and conversations without the structuring voice. Finally, these
shorts do not fit together into a neat archaeological narrative. They do
not concern themselves with a clear archaeological goal, bu t draw the viewer
into the discrete problems and experiences that feature prominently in all
fieldwork. As a result, they have a universal quality to them; while set
in Cyprus, they show experiences common to fieldwork everywhere in the
Mediterranean. The conversations between PKAP's archaeologists and
Patrow, the filmmaker, will continue for the next months until the shorts
ultimate debut. In some ways, however, the goal of the exercise has
already been achieved. By being forced to think critically about the
archaeological process and exploring the tension between field procedure,
methods, and narratives in the performance and presentation of field work.
eWriter/PatrowFilmingSm.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-
alt="PatrowFilmingSm"
Writer/PatrowFilmingSm_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a>
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TITLE: Filmmaking and Archaeology
URL: http://www.blogbookmarker.com/tags/robust
IP: 67.228.47.154
BLOG NAME: robust
DATE: 01/01/2008 02:09:28 AM
Bookmarked your post over at Blog Bookmarker.com!
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TITLE: Modern Landscapes

STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
ALLOW PINGS: 1
BASENAME: modern-landscap
DATE: 12/29/2007 05:50:19 PM

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There is a fun exhibit at the <a href="http://www.qag.qld.gov.au/">Queensland
Art Gallery</a> for anyone interested in the construction of landscapes.
It's entitled <a
href="http://www.qag.qld.gov.au/exhibitions/coming_soon/kenneth_macqueen">Making
it Modern: The Watercolours of Kenneth Macqueen</a> and features his painting of
the Queensland countryside, coasts, and skies -- including the series of
watercolors depicting his farm near Millmerran in southern Queensland. The
exhibition positioned his art at the beginning of the modernist movement in
Australia as well as an important contribution to there emergence of Australia
as a modern nation. The artist's watercolors were often based on study
photographs taken of particular features in the landscape. His paintings
then translated and interpreted the photographic image into a different medium.
I am not an art critic, much less an art historian; I was impressed, however, by
how Macqueen's work traced the expanding mark of western agriculture and
transportation on the Australian landscape by emphasizing the interplay of light
on the topography and flora in a distinctive way. Scholars, like <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/176869458">Benedict Anderson</a>, have
regularly noted how the modern "realist" novel played a central role in the
emergence of the modern nationstate. The work of Macqueen, likewise,
transposed the "transparent" reality of a photograph into the more emotive (and
in some ways authentic) medium of the painted canvass. The difference
between the flat photographic studies of the countryside and Macqueen's
brilliant watercolors brought home both the key role of the individual in
understanding of reality in the modern era and the potential of traditional
"artistic" media to bring out essential and ephemeral characteristics of the
physical landscape. Our diligence in data collection in survey archaeology
produces a landscape with photographic precision. Mediterranean survey is
less successful in bringing the interpretive and analytic perspective embodied
in the artists deft touch. Nevertheless, the concept of the landscape
remains capable of bringing together and juxtaposing in productive ways
the photographic and the "artistic" (for lack of a better word). The
sensitivity of artists to the elusive character of light, sound, and memory as
central ingredients to human engagement in their physical surroundings remains
just outside the grasp of most archaeological projects (even those which purport
to embrace diachronic, emotional, multivocal, and phenomological
methods). <a
eWriter/DickyWreckSm.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width:
alt="DickyWreckSm"
Writer/DickyWreckSm_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> The wreck of the Dicky, Dicky Beach, Sunshine Coast,

Queensland
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TITLE: Of Toponyms, Irony, and the Sunshine Coast
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BASENAME: of-toponyms-iro
DATE: 12/27/2007 04:47:14 PM

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Reading place names, or toponyms, provides a valuable perspective on past and
present landscapes. Place names in Greece, for example, record patterns of
migration (e.g. Albanian and Slavic place names), topographical features like
springs (e.g. places ending with -vrysi), and the names of important local
families. The revival of ancient place names in the early 19th century
reflected the close tie between the Greece's national identity and its Classical
past. The Western part of the U.S. where I live, place names blend the history
of European and American settlement -- Cass county, for example, is named for a
railroad developer, local features (Grand Forks, North Dakota, for example,
marks the split of the Red and Red Lake Rivers), and in many instances preserves
traces of the Native American presence on the land. The same pattern of
toponyms is true for Australia, where I am currently visiting, as well.
Names like Brisbane, Landsborough, and The Gap sit alongside names derived from
Aborignal languages like Maroochydore and Eumundi. One other practice,
however, is worth singling out. Australia also appears to have ironic
place names. I've spent the last two weeks at Beerwah in the hinterland of
a region known as the Sunshine Coast. We've seen the sun twice so
far. From what I can understand, the Sunshine Coast is meant ironically as
in the place where there is no Sunshine. My wife and her family has
assured me that this was not really the case (that, in fact, the Queensland
coast is usually sunny this time of year), but I have my doubts... <a
eWriter/NoosaHeads.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width:
alt="NoosaHeads"
Writer/NoosaHeads_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0" /></a> Noosa Heads, Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia And, yes, I am whinging about being in Australia in

December...
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AUTHOR: Israel
EMAIL: cohen.izzy@gmail.com
IP: 212.150.128.10
URL: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/BPMaps/
DATE: 02/29/2008 02:20:18 AM
I learned about anthropomorphic maps from the linguist Dan Moonhawk Alford
(deceased) and the anthropologist Stan Knowlton. They described the maps of
Napi, the creator of the Blackfoot Indians (aka The Old Man) and his wife (The
Old Woman) in Alberta, Canada. I "found" similar maps of a male body (Hermes ?)
in the Middle East and a female body (Aphrodite) in north Africa. !
!
Anthropomorphic Maps!
!
Anthropomorphic maps were generated by configuring the body of a god or goddess
over the area to be mapped. The name of each part of that body became the name
of the area under that part. This produced a scale 1:1 map-without-paper on
which each placename automatically indicated its approximate location and
direction with respect to every other place on the same map whose name was
produced in this way.!
!
You are cordially invited to join the BPMaps discussion group on this topic, a
very quiet list that averages about 2 messages per month. The URL is:!
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/BPMaps/ !
!
The Challenge: To produce computer software that will find additional body-part
maps elsewhere in the world. Available inputs:!
(1) geographic databases with ancient place names (e.g., the Perseus project).!
(2) body-part names on Swadesh lists. Unfortunately, the navel is not included.!
!
Attributes of Anthropomorphic Maps!
!
(1) The navel is the center of the body, the center of the map, and usually the
center of the map's language community.!
!
(2) Place names (toponyms) may be reversed, metathesized, misspelled or
euphemized for various reasons:!
!
(a) The same part in the same language exists on another map of a different
body. Cranium > Mo[n]rocco because Ukraine existed? Aphrodite is looking
backwards over her right shoulder. She is bent at her waist (Misr/Mitzraim =
MoSNaiM).!
!
1298
(b) The left (sinister) part is altered in names for left-right pairs (arms,
legs, eyes, ears). DoFeN = side reversed to Nafud in north Arabia. SHvK = thigh
with a T-sound for the letter shin = TvK reversed to Kuwait. BeReKH = knee
metathesized to Bahrain.!
!
(c) Names that represent taboo body parts or funcitons are reversed or
euphemized:!
Semitic PoS (female pudenda) reverses to yam SooF = sea of reeds (Red Sea).!
Mare Rubrum (Latin for Red See) was her menstruation!
CaNa3an (3 = aiyin with a G-sound as in 3aZa = Gaza) is a reversal of Greek
gyneco-. !
Sinai = "snatch" is spelled SiNi in Hebrew. The aleph=CHS is intentionally
missing.!
ZaYiN = weapon (a euphemism for his male member) is in Sinai as the desert
of Zin.!
!
(3) Names may be loan-translated due to conquest or language-change.!
!
(a) Roxolania (Semitic Ro[chs]SH = head) => Rus *( Ro@SH) => Ukraine (Greek
kranion)!
* Caused by a change in the sound of the aleph from CHS to a glottal stop.!
!
(b) Libya (Semitic LeB = heart) => Cyrenaica (Latin cor = heart, compare
coronary) => Libya!
!
(4) Rivers and bodies of water may be named after bodily excretions:!
!
(a) Milk River in Alberta.!
(b) Red Sea (Latin Mare Rubrum) is Aphrodite's menstruation.!
(c) Gulf of Aqaba (Semitic QaVaH = digestion/defecation)!
!
(5) Internal body parts may represent subdivisions of external parts.!
!
(a) Arabic Misr / Hebrew Mitzraim ( Latin Gossypium (English gossamer = cotton-
like)!
!
(b) Atlas mountains Sicily (< VL *sicila < Latin secula = sickle to harvest
wheat; compare Semitic SaKiN = knife). The trident was in Neptune/Poseidon's
right hand (Italy, like Anatolia < N'TiLas yad = arm being washed by the seas).!
!
(b) Greece = reversal of Semitic S'RoG = (weighted) net, held in his left hand.!
!
(c) Crete = reversal of targe = small shield (compare English target) also in
his left hand.!
!
Aphrodite!
!
The map of Aphrodite is in north Africa. Her face [PaNim] was lost during the
3rd Punic war. The rest of her is still there. She is looking backwards over her
right shoulder, so her CRaniuM is reversed at Morocco. It still has a Fez. Her
chin [SaNTir] is reversed at Tunisia. The Atlas (anatomy: first cervical
vertebra) mountains support her head. Her hair [Sa3aRa] is the Sahara desert.
Her backbone [amood SHiDRa] is the Gulf of Sidra. Her heart [LeB] is Libya. Her
breast [SHaD] is Chad. Her narrow [TZaR] waist is Misr / Mitzraim. Her liver
(Greek hepato-) is Egypt. Cotton (Arabic QuTN, Latin Gossypium) was exported
1299
from Goshen, her [QiTNit = bean]-shaped kidney. Her side [TZaD] is Sudan. Her
other side [DoFeN] is Dafur. Her left [SMoL] leg is Somalia.!
!
[NeGeV] is a reversal of vagina and may be related to [NeKeV] = aperture.
[CaNa3aN] was her Latin cunnus (and a reversal of Greek gyneco-). Its name
changed to [YiSRa@eL] at the time when [Ya3aKoV] / Jacob "fought with god and
men" [Gen 32:29]. This represented a change in sovereignty from Africa to Asia
minor. [ YiSRa@eL] is that body part that gives [@oSHeR] = delight to [@eL] =
god when it is [YaSHaR] = straight, upright. Changing Jacob's name from
[Ya3aKoV] = "ankle; curved, bent" to [YiSRa@eL] = "straight, upright + god" is a
well-known Hebrew pun.!
!
Hermes!
!
The body-part map of Hermes is in Asia minor. kHermes [kHoR = hole + MoSnaim =
waist] lived at Mt. kHermon before he moved Mt. Olympus (Greek omphalos =
navel). Later his name was reversed to become Latin Mercury. Compare Amerigo
Vespucci and America.!
!
His head [Ro@SH] was at Roxolania/Rus, south of Belarus. Its name changed to the
Ukraine (Gk kranion = cranium, *not *Slavic u kraina = to/at the border). His
throat [GaRGeret] is Georgia. His left shoulder [KaSaF] is the Caspian sea. His
right shoulder [@aTZiL] was Euxinus, now the Black Sea. His right arm/hand is
being washed [NaTiLat] at Anatolia. His upper arm (Sanskrit irma) at Armenia,
biceps (Greek pontiki = muscle) at Pontus, elbow [KiFooF yaD] at Cappadocia,
wrist [m'FaReK] at Phrygia, and thumb [BoHeN] at Bithynia were in Anatolia. His
heart (Greek cardia) became Kurdistan. His narrow [TZaR] waist is Syria and his
navel (Sanskrit nabhila) reverses to LeBaNon.!
!
South of Lebanon is the male member (Greek phallus) named Philistina. See
[CaNa3aN / YiSRa@eL] above. His buttocks [YeReKH] is Iraq. His thigh [shin-vav-
kuf] sounded like TvK and reversed to Kuwait. His knee [BeReKH] is partially
reversed in Bahrain. His right [Y'MiN] foot is at Yemen.!
!
These two bodies are connected, literally, at Sinai (with an aleph that is not
written in Hebrew, compare "snatch", a reversal of [K'NiSah] = entrance), a part
of her body that contains the desert of Zin, his "zaiyin". Needless to say, I am
not personally responsible for this connection that occurred over 3000 years
ago.!
!
Aphrodite as an Anthropomorphic Map!
!
The goddess we call Aphrodite!
Is not just an old Grecian deity.!
The Phoenicians did make!
Her a map. It's not fake.!
Her body is cartograffiti.!
!
The Punic war destroyed her face,!
The Romans left nary a trace.!
But her hair is still there,!
In Sahara, that's where.!
And her chin's a Tunisian place.!
!
Mt. Atlas is her first verTebra.!
1300
Her backbone is now Gulf of Sidra.!

Her heart is in Libya,!
Her left leg, Somalia.!
Her breast is in Chad wearing no bra.!
!
The Greeks called her liver Egypt, an'!
Her kidney was Biblical Goshen.!
She's bent at her waist,!
Now Misr-ably placed.!
The Red Sea was her menstruation.!
!
As a kid I did think the Red Sea!
Was an English map typo: lost E,!
From Reed Sea in Hebrew.!
But that could not be true,!
Mare Rubrum 'twas Latin, B.C.!
!
Aphrodite with Hermes did sin,!
We know this is true 'cause within!
Her "snatch" we call Sinai!
His "zaiyin" does still lie.!
It's known as the desert of Zin.!
!
Best regards,!
Israel "izzy" Cohen
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TITLE: Landscape Archaeology in a Reflexive Mode
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
ALLOW PINGS: 1
BASENAME: landscape-archa
DATE: 12/23/2007 12:27:41 AM

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Here's a preview of part of our AIA poster. It seems to be somewhere
between <a
href="http://ancienthistory.typepad.com/ancient_history_ramblings/2007/12/3rd-
time-is-the.html">almost and done</a>. The ideas are all there, but the
text is a work in progress. The <a
Project</a> developed its objectives and methods within a landscape approach to
archaeological research. This approach is consistent with recent work on Cyprus
and elsewhere in the Mediterranean (e.g. <a
href="http://www.worldcatlibraries.org/oclc/51460580">Given, Knapp, Coleman
2003</a>). While ‚Äúlandscape archaeology‚Äù is open multiple definitions, our
interpretation of a landscape approach views archaeology as a particular
discourse located at the intersection of the cultural (i.e. textual sources,
ceramic artifacts, architectural features, et c.), physical (i.e. geological,
topographical, et c.), and methodological (i.e. procedural, technological, et
c.) space. Applying this paradigm to the coastal zone of Pyla Village in Cyprus
1301
enabled PKAP to produce familiar types of archaeological data such as artifact

densities and typologies, maps of architectural remains, and detailed
topographies. At the same time, PKAP sought to document the team‚Äôs ongoing
engagement with the tools, methods, and experience of the archaeological
enterprise. While the traditional data of archaeological exploration has well-
established venues for distribution such as journal articles, conference papers,
and the summarizing monograph, documenting the experience of archaeology
requires a variety of different media ranging from interactive internet based
datasets to digital video recording, undergraduate and graduate level student
research, and regularly updated online journals. The development of these
alternative media for archaeological research complemented the reflexive
atmosphere on the project where each member of the PKAP team provided a distinct
perspective on archaeological knowledge. To do this, PKAP has employed a diverse
array of media (each with its own character) to record and to incorporate
reflexive knowledge within a synthetic archaeological landscape. The preliminary
results of this ongoing research is a robust multivocal and diverse assemblage
of archaeological data which, in turn, produces an archaeological landscape
informed by the relationship between the archeological objects of study, the
archaeologist, and the media employed for its expression. This totalizing view
of the archaeological project combines craft perspectives on fieldwork and
research (<a href="http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-
7316%28199601%2961%3A1%3C75%3ATCOA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-9">Skanks and McGuire 1996</a>)
and recent discussions of reflexivity (Hodder <a
href="http://www.worldcatlibraries.org/oclc/45233712">2000</a>, <a
href="http://www.worldcatlibraries.org/oclc/52622634">Hodder and Berggren
2003</a>) under the integrative paradigm of landscape archaeology.
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TITLE: Travel Notes
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
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BASENAME: travel-notes
CATEGORY: Travel
DATE: 12/19/2007 05:11:26 AM

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I spent time in four airports yesterday(s): Rome (2 hours), Frankfurt (1
hour), Singapore (1 hour), Sydney (2 hours). I kept a journal of my
travels (30+ hours), but I will spare you the details of the trip except that
every flight was delayed and one was cancelled. The most striking
thing about my trip was the airports. It struck me that airports, in
1302
general, are incredibly homogeneous and yet substantially different from any
other space in our society. Is their homogeneity an effort to create
recognizable experiences in an airport -- with the promenades of shops with
familiar designs and fast food eateries? They nevertheless come across (to
me) as profoundly foreign perhaps because we anticipate some kind of differences
between geographically locations as different as Singapore and Rome. <a
href="http://www.worldcatlibraries.org/oclc/33863376">Edward Soja developed the
idea of Third Space</a> as the distinct experiential space of the post-modern
city (particularly places like Los Angeles). It seems that airports is
another form of this kind of space. The homogeneity of "airport
space" largely deprives them of the distinctiveness that allows us to
orient ourselves within a society and negotiate meaning. This is
compounded by the reality that travel is disorientating physically for the
body. The indistinct space of airports compounds the feeling of
disorientation derived from changes in time zone, long hours in the air, and the
anxiety so typical of travelling. [As I think about it more, it
may well be that "airport space" is not necessarily indistinct, but
that they are abstractly western in prototype and design irrespective of their
geographical location, and therefore indistinct to my well-conditioned western
perspective. And there are of course efforts to make airports unique and
culturally specific -- like the small museum installations at places like the
Amsterdam airport or the showers and beds found in Asian hubs like Tokyo or Hong
Kong.] I found that the disorientation was particularly intense in the
Singapore airport (after about three flights a total of about 20 hours).
Christmas carols played on the P.A. system as I walked by retailers that I have
only ever seen in airports (stores like Hugo Boss) interspersed between
decoration festooned the palm trees in planters. The arrivals boards were
the only place where I could find something distinctive -- they listed
airlines and flights to places that I simply could not place (apparently Port
Moresby is in Papua New Guinea) -- in some cases, I could not even place the
destinations on the proper continent much less the country!). 
Finally, the disorientation is further aggravated by the diversity of
individuals present in these spaces. Travellers at major international
airports tend to appear in a such wide variety of dress that it is virtually
impossible to discern the social codes instrumental in establishing social class
or status rank in a particular society. The airport community like
"airport space" lacks cues to orient us socially and to establish the
basis for behaviour. They might be seen as producing the sense of
"communitas" <a
href="http://www.worldcatlibraries.org/oclc/6582166">Victor Turner associated
with the experience of pilgrimage</a> -- that is a temporary suspension of class
and status boundaries typical of member of a pilgrimage community. While
individuals are distinct in appearance, dress, and behaviour, the social context
for these differences is suspended making the distinctions meaningless.
Enough ramblings (I was tempted to post my journal entries, but that was too
much even for me). I'll likely post only occasionally over the next few
weeks, but I will be back regularly after the first of the year. Happy
holidays! <a
eWriter/GlassHouseSM.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width:
alt="GlassHouseSM"
Writer/GlassHouseSM_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0" /></a> Glasshouse Mountains, Queensland, Australia
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TITLE: Travel Books
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: travel-books
DATE: 12/16/2007 12:00:29 AM

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With my travel time today (and tomorrow) approaching 35 hours (including a
flight listed on the ticket as 21 hrs), I am traveling with books, but nothing
too heavy. <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/14967197">V.S. Naipaul,
The Enigma of Arrival</a>. <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/19351754">C. Bukowski,
Hollywood</a>. <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/4504751">C.
Bukowski, Women</a>. Over the holidays, two books for my work on
a <a
igraphy-litur.html">Postcolonial approach to Early Christian Architecture in
Greece</a>: <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/43076852">D.
Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: PostColonial Thought and Historical
Difference</a>. <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/59408740">G.C.
Spivak, A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing
Present</a>. And two books for my <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/Syllabi/History%20502_Syllabus_
AU2006.htm">Graduate Historiography course</a> next fall (in which I am adding a
week on Freud. The absence of Freud in the original version of the class
rendered our discussions of 20th century historiographic developments somewhat
unstable): <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/12051187">P. Gay, Freud
for Historians</a>. <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/23941109">J. Neu,
ed., The Cambridge Companion to Freud</a>. Thanks to all the people who
have read and commented on my work on Blogging Archaeology/Archaeology of
Blogging (<a
ogging-archae.html">part1</a>, <a
ogging-arch-1.html">part 2</a>, <a
ogging-arch-2.html">part 3</a>). My plan is to send off a version before
the end of the holidays, so if you haven't commented yet and want to, you have
plenty of time.
1304
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Ralph Luker
EMAIL: ralphluker@mindspring.com
IP: 76.20.249.200
URL: http://hnn.us/blogs/2.html
DATE: 12/16/2007 09:39:23 AM
Somewhere in your three-part piece on the archaeology of blogging, you might
want to mention Cliopatria's History Blogroll,
http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/9665.html .
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Ralph Luker
EMAIL: ralphluker@mindspring.com
IP: 76.20.249.200
URL: http://hnn.us/blogs/2.html
DATE: 12/16/2007 09:39:51 AM
Somewhere in your three-part piece on the archaeology of blogging, you might
want to mention Cliopatria's History Blogroll,
http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/9665.html .
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TITLE: Blogging Archaeology or the Archaeology of Blogging: Metablogging the
Ancient World Part 3
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
ALLOW PINGS: 1
BASENAME: blogging-arch-2
DATE: 12/15/2007 01:26:10 AM

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BODY:
This is the final installment of my three part treatment of Blogging
Archaeology/Archaeology of Blogging. I've updated Part 2 both here and on
the <a href="http://ancientworldbloggers.blogspot.com/2007/12/blogging-
archaeology.html">Ancient World Bloggers Group</a> page. Thanks to
everyone who made comments! <a
ogging-archae.html">Part 1 is a short history of blogging and academic blogging
in particular.</a> <a
href="http://ancientworldbloggers.blogspot.com/2007/12/blogging-
archaeology.html">Part 2 is a more focused examination blogs on
archaeology.</a> Part 3 is a first attempt at an archaeology of
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blogging. The Archaeology of Blogging The final section of

my article will consider one of the most commonly asked questions regarding a
blog. How do we know it is reliable? How do we know what blogs to trust as
sources of information or informed opinions? How do we negotiate and navigate
this new medium to find the kind of information that we want? And finally, how
do blogs fit into the larger world of the New Media? I am going to address these
questions through an archaeological approach to the blog as a medium. This
‚Äúarchaeology‚Äù of blogging will, hopefully, complement the typological and
historical approach that this article has already employed and form a kind of
theoretical and practical conclusion to this treatment of academic blogging. In
using the word ‚Äúarchaeology‚Äù I am not referring the academic discipline of
digging in the ground or even the historical study of material culture, but the
much larger intellectual project of understanding the context for particular,
discrete facts, groups of related ideas, and methods of inquiry. Thus, an
archaeology of blogging involves contextualizing blogs as a medium of
communication, as unified narratives (even if they do not fit our traditional
interpretation of narrative style), and as the location of a community of
individuals committed to a similar project. Since most people approach a blog by
reading an individual post, my archaeology of blogging will begin by thinking
about how we can put an individual post in its broader context. To do this, I
will suggest that the basic context for any post derives from three basic
structures: (1) the blog itself, (2) the network of hyperlinks in the post, and
(3) the identity of the blogger. The primary context for most posts is
shared by its place within the specific blog. A blog that focuses on automobile
maintenance or pet care, for example, might not be a great source of
archaeological information. A blog that shows regular interest in archaeology
(like the ones linked above) is more likely to be reliable. Serious and academic
bloggers will often cite specific sources for the information in their blog
using either parenthetical references within the post (like in this post from <a
href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/2007/12/1930s-facebook-archaeological-
fieldwork.html">Kostis Kourelis‚Äôs blog</a>) or in a short bibliography at the
end of the post (like in this post from <a
href="http://electricarchaeologist.wordpress.com/2007/12/12/establishing-
virtual-learning-worlds-for-archaeology-too/">Shawn Graham‚Äôs blog</a>). These
kinds of academic practices show that blogging is sometimes thought of as an
extension of a scholar‚Äôs academic production and therefore needs to conform to
certain basic academic standards. While proper citations in blogs is not
uncommon among academic bloggers, it is perhaps more common for bloggers simply
to link their posts to supporting or relevant information elsewhere on the
internet through hypertext links (like I have done in this article). These
hypertext links might lead off to other blogs, to the websites of particular
archaeological projects, or even to scholarly articles or books on various
topics (it is now easy to link books mentioned in a blog to their entries in <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/">WorldCat</a>, a massive online library
database). By providing these links, a blogger assembles a range of information
from across the web, and provides it with structure and context much like an
archaeologist creates meaning from the various discarded objects from antiquity.
The links in a post creates a virtual web that positions the blog within a
larger body of information on the internet. If a blogger makes a link to a page
on the web, it usually means that he or she finds that page relevant for the
discussion in the post. Another way to contextualize a blog and determine
whether it is a useful source of information derives from considering the
identity of the blogger. Even anonymous bloggers, generally, conceive of
themselves as part of a larger community. The most visible indication of a
blogger‚Äôs community is in his or her blogrolls. Blogrolls are lists of links
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to other blogs that most bloggers place on the side of their main page. These
links bring together individuals with similar interests and perspectives. If you
like a blog, it is often safe to assume that you will like the blogs listed in
its blogroll. An easier, if less consistent way, to determine the identity of
the blogger is through his or her ‚Äúabout me‚Äù or ‚Äúprofile‚Äù page. Among
academic and serious bloggers these pages regularly include descriptions of a
bloggers qualifications, links to their personal web pages, and statements of
interests (two examples: here is my ‚Äú<a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/about.html">about me</a>‚Äù and here
is David Gill‚Äôs ‚Äú<a
href="http://www.blogger.com/profile/13164794689385933318">profile</a>‚Äù). As
you can see from these examples, academic bloggers and professional
archaeologists typically provide some information on our professional
credentials and University affiliations. By following the links in a blog,
looking at its blogrolls, and reading about the blogger, a savvy internet
explorer can determine the reliability of a blog as a source of information. In
fact, the process of reading a blog in context is very similar to the process of
making sense of archaeological material; reading a blog in context is one way to
excavate a blog. If you have the time to explore the ‚Äúblogosphere‚Äù you will
soon discover that the best blogs provide links to a whole constellation of
different sources, ideas, and perspectives. In many cases, the links and
references between blogs show how bloggers engage their fellow authors in
conversations. Sometimes this is organized into a blog ‚Äúcarnival‚Äù which
pulls together different perspectives on a single topic offered by multiple
blogs (a good list of a blog carnivals is provided <a
href="http://www.earlymodernweb.org.uk/carnivalesque/">at the Carnivaleque
page</a> which is run by Sharon Howard of the long-running <a
href="http://www.earlymodernweb.org.uk/emn/">Early Modern Notes</a> blog).
Another way that bloggers interact is through ‚Äúmetablogs‚Äù. These are blogs
about blogs! The metablog that I joined is called the <a
Group</a>. There are about a dozen contributors to the blog at present and each
has his or her own blog. The <a
href="http://wiki.henryfarrell.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page">Academic Blog
Portal</a> provides a similar list of blogs organized in a series of wikis (that
is a set of easily updated, communally created webpages). Finally, many bloggers
maintain pages of links to their favorite reads in either <a
href="http://technorati.com/">Technorati </a>or <a
href="http://del.icio.us/">del.icio.us</a>. You can read my favorite blogs at <a
href="http://del.icio.us/WilliamCaraher">my del.icio.us page</a>. The
communal aspect of blogging is central to its development as a medium, and has
made it an important contributor to the New Media movement. While rarely
regarded in the same way as electronic journals or archives of archaeological
data (blogs were not mentioned specifically, for example, in the <a
href="http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~pinax/taskforce/TaskForceFinalReport.pdf">Am
erican Institute of Archaeology/American Philological Associations Report on
Electronic Publications</a>), blogs nevertheless represent a vibrant medium for
bringing together data from across a wide range of digital media (for example,
my blog has included digital <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2007/06/ae
rial_archaeol.html">aerial photographs</a>, <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2007/05/of
_maps_and_mat.html">GIS data</a>, <a
la-koutsopetr.html">resistivity data</a>, and even <a
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ogging-archae.html">digital publications</a>). The proliferation of blogs over
the last half-decade has demonstrated the existence of substantial cyber
infrastructure available to support the fast developing social network created
by the blogging community itself. Blogs like <a
href="http://www.thevalve.org/">The Valve </a>which promotes itself as a
‚ÄúLiterary Organ‚Äù have already demonstrated how a blog can become a platform
for substantial intellectual exchange. By enabling comments on the blog, readers
can engage the post and create a space of exchange of ideas. In fact, some of
these exchanges on The Valve had appeared <a
href="http://www.thevalve.org/go/valve/article/framing_theorys_empire_event_and_
text/">as both digital and print publications</a>. The comments <a
href="https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=5130549244386310434&postID=19
16799923098533673&pli=1">on early drafts of this article</a> (particularly
part 2) have shaped its contents. Despsite the potential for creating
interactive communities of intellectual and scholarly exchange, blogging has
many of the same limitations as other forms of digital media. Blogs, in
particular, can be ephemeral. Since most academic institutions do not regard
blogging as a genuine academic exercise (that is something that counts toward
tenure, promotion, or seniority), it is nearly always squeezed into the slim
margins of an individual‚Äôs free time. Some of the best-known and most widely
read bloggers <a
href="http://www.michaelberube.com/index.php/weblog/til_we_meet_again/">have
commented on the time and energy required </a>to maintain a blog and after a run
of a few years stop writing. Many blogs will remain on the web long after they
have stopped being updated as an archive of writings and comments. Others vanish
without a trace (like Adrian Mudock‚Äôs Bread and Circuses, which
fortunately can be <a
href="http://web.archive.org/web/*/http:/adrianmurdoch.typepad.com/bread_and_cir
cuses/">excavated</a> in repositories like the <a
href="http://www.archive.org/">Internet Archive</a>). Individual authors might
archive their writing, but the public record including the context or
archaeology of the blog is no longer available. The end result is that blogs
remain, at present, an ephemeral, but dynamic medium for the disseminating of
archaeological knowledge. Conclusions When I began my
blog, I had little idea of the history, potential, or diversity of the weblog as
a medium. I am not sure that I have necessarily found the proper voice for <a
petria_archaeological_project/index.html">my blog yet</a>. It tends to vacillate
between news on my own research and archaeology projects and more general
observations on matters that catch my fancy. I‚Äôve tried to speak at least some
of the time to an audience in North Daktoa where I now live and teach, and I
also try to speak to my academic peers. The result, in hindsight, is a sometime
bizarre blend of academic and popular. This uneven character of blogs is what
distinguishes them for more formal academic writing, but is also what makes them
such a compelling medium. Most academics, after all, drift between the mundane
world of daily life and the obscure concerns of their research and writing. The
idiosyncratic and uneven cadence of academic blogging perhaps brings this
juxtaposed reality out better than anywhere else. In this regard, those of us
involved in blogging archaeology and the archaeology of blogging, bring just a
bit more of our life‚Äôs work to light.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: judith weingarten
EMAIL: judith@judithweingarten.com
IP: 62.11.86.4
URL: http://judithweingarten.blogspot.com
DATE: 12/17/2007 03:46:41 AM
That 'bizarre blend of academic and popular' is also the mark of a good
lecturer, who is unafraid to mix the two to spark interest and lighten up (in
both senses).!
!
That and instant topicality, imo, are key blog characteristics.!
!
Much to think about here. Thank you.
-----
--------
Ancient World Part 2
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
ALLOW PINGS: 1
BASENAME: blogging-arch-1
DATE: 12/14/2007 12:32:47 AM

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This is the second part of my Blogging Archaeology or the Archaeology of
Blogging article. I posted it yesterday on the <a
href="http://ancientworldbloggers.blogspot.com/">Ancient World Bloggers Group
Blog</a> and received some good comments and corrections. I've made those
corrections and offer it here in version 3. <a
ogging-archae.html">Part 1 is a short history of blogging and academic blogging
in particular.</a> <a href="http://ancientworldbloggers.blogspot.com/">Part 2
is a more focused examination blogs on archaeology.</a> <a
ogging-arch-2.html">Part 3 is a first attempt at an archaeology of
blogging</a>. Blogging Archaeology [Part 2 v.3] As I began
to blog, I was on the lookout for models to understand the medium of blogging
more clearly. I gravitated primarily toward blogs which focused on the
archaeology of Mediterranean world, Classics, and Ancient History to see how my
disciplinary peers were engaging the New Media. I tried to understand the
(relatively recently) history of blogging the ancient world to determine whether
the trends and patterns that I observed in blogging behavior in general carried
over into academic blogging. From what I can gather, there were archaeology
blogs in the first wave of intensive blogging. In the late 1990s several
projects by both professional and avocational archaeologists were underway to
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expand classics and archaeology into the digital realm. Ross Scaife at the
University of Kentucky established The <a href="http://www.stoa.org/">Stoa
Consortium</a> in 1997, and by 2003 Scaife and others were running a blog that
today it is the main portal into the remarkable collection of material collected
by that project. David Meadows efforts at the <a href="http://www.atrium-
media.com/rogueclassicism/">Rogueclassicism</a> began in the late 1990s with a
news group. By the early 2000s, it had become transformed into a blog and
continues to this day to provide a compendium of links, news stories, and witty
remarks on the classical world and archaeology. Dorothy King‚Äôs <a
href="http://phdiva.blogspot.com/">Ph.Diva blog</a>, which is now accessible by
invitation only, debuted in 2001, and for over 5 years and provided astute
commentary on archaeological and cultural maters from her base in London.
Avocational archaeologists and enthusiasts likewise brought their passion for
archaeological news to the web. <a
href="http://www.archaeologica.org/NewsPage.htm">Archaeologica News</a> began in
the early years of the century, and still offers links to archaeological news
from around the world. With the success of these ‚Äúearly adopters‚Äù, the
great expansion of archaeological blogs began in 2002. A convenient barometer of
the visibility of weblogs is <a
href="http://www.archaeology.org/index/multimedia.html#web">Archaeology
Magazine‚Äôs review of websites</a> of interest to both professional
archaeologists and the general public. They posted a two part review of
archaeology websites in 1997 (<a
href="http://www.archaeology.org/9701/etc/multimedia.html">here</a> and <a
href="http://www.archaeology.org/9703/etc/multimedia.html">here</a>) and blogs
are not mentioned (as might be expected at such an early date). By <a
href="http://www.archaeology.org/0009/etc/multimedia.html">2000</a>, they
mention the<a href="http://anthropology.tamu.edu/news.htm"> anthropology new
page at Texas A&M </a>which is essentially in the form of an early blog and
<a href="http://archaeology.about.com/">About.com‚Äôs archaeology page</a> which
featured a blog by archaeologist <a href="http://archaeology.about.com/b/">Kris
Hirst</a> from the late 1990s. In <a
href="http://www.archaeology.org/0209/reviews/blog.html">2002</a>, however, they
dedicated an entire web review to the blog <a
href="http://www.archaeology.blogspot.com/">ArchaeologyOnline</a> which lists
newsworthy items for archaeologists with short commentaries. By this time, the
number and diversity of archaeological blogs had expanded greatly. Today the
variety is almost limitless. Popular and newsy blogs like<a
href="http://romanarch.blogspot.com/"> Roman Times</a>, <a
href="http://www.archaeoblog.blogspot.com/">Archaeoblog</a>, <a
href="http://remotecentral.blogspot.com/">remote central</a>, or <a
href="http://www.archaeology.eu.com/weblog/">Archaeology in Europe</a> continue
the tradition of avocational archaeologists posting news, notes, and links for
anyone interested; archaeologist, Ioannis Georganas, provides news and notes
from a wide range of sources on his blog <a
href="http://medarch.blogspot.com/">Mediterranean Archaeology</a>. Blogs like <a
href="http://www.telecomtally.com/blog/">Abnormal Interest</a> and <a
href="http://neonostalgia.com/weblog/">Thoughts on Antiquity</a> have a more
varied approach than traditional news blogs, interspersing news links with
useful and sometimes amusing commentary on archaeological and ancient topics. <a
href="http://scienceblogs.com/aardvarchaeology/">Aardvaraeology</a>, Martin
Rundkvist‚Äôs quirky and popular Swedish blog, provides an opinionated
perspective on scientific archaeology with a particular focus on Scandinavia.
Judith Weingarten‚Äôs blog <a
href="http://judithweingarten.blogspot.com/">Zenobia</a> uses her smooth style
1310
to expand on the topic of her recent popular book <a

href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/159514144&referer=brief_results">The
World As it Was </a>which is part of a projected three part work of
historical fictional called <a href="http://www.zenobia.tv/site/">Chronicle
of Zenobia The Rebel Queen</a>; her blog provides general information on the
ancient Near East and Palmyra. Several blogs like Louise Hitchcock‚Äôs <a
href="http://lahconfidential.blogspot.com/">LA(H) Confidential</a> and <a
href="http://adventureswithyandm.blogspot.com/">Adventures with Yo and Mo
</a>provide insights into life as a working archaeologist both during the season
and during the rest of the year. Mary Beard‚Äôs <a
href="http://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_life/">A Don‚Äôs Life</a>, hosted by
the <a
href="http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/
">Times Literary Supplement</a>, is perhaps in a league of its own, making
insightful and amusing comment on both ancient and contemporary topics. Most of
these blogs are geared toward the educated public although even the most jaded
academic will often find useful links and insights on their pages. At the
same time, there is a growing collection of genuinely academic blogs, many of
which continue discussions from books or articles into the blogosphere and adopt
a less formal, but no less serious tone. The best example of this genre is David
Gill‚Äôs <a href="http://lootingmatters.blogspot.com/">Looting Matters</a> which
is an extension of his serious research interest into archaeological ethics and
cultural property (joining the <a href="http://illicit-cultural-
property.blogspot.com/">Illicit Cultural Property Blog</a> and <a
href="http://safecorner.savingantiquities.org/">SafeCorner</a> to track affairs
involving archaeological looting and the trafficking of illegal antiquities).
Troels Myrup Kristensen‚Äôs blog <a href="http://www.iconoclasm.dk/">Iconoclasm
</a>details his archaeological travels in the Mediterranean with special
attention to incidents of the destruction of pagan statues by Christians in the
Late Antique period. Kostis Kourelis‚Äôs new blog <a
href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/">Buildings, Objects, Situations</a> is set
to revolve loosely around his interest in the intellectual and cultural history
of archaeology and the study of material culture. Alun Salt‚Äôs <a
href="http://clioaudio.com/">Clioaudio</a> ranges freely across the discipline,
but often returns to his interest in archaeology and archaeoastronomy. The same
breadth and academic feel comes through in <a
href="http://archaeolog.org/">Archaeolog</a> which is a group blog hosted by
Stanford‚Äôs MetaMedia Lab. Even more specialized blogs give the public a
view into rarified or highly specialized fields. <a
href="http://www.currentepigraphy.org/">Current Epigraphy</a> or <a
href="http://papyrology.blogspot.com/">What‚Äôs New in Papyrology</a>
disseminate information on inscriptions and papyrology for experts in these
disciplines. In addition, Current Epigraphy has become a platform for
collaborative readings of inscriptions by bringing together scholars from all
over the world to help solve epigraphic conundrums. Archaeologist can also keep
track of the acquisitions of the Blegen Library at the American School of
Classical Studies at Athens in their <a
href="http://blegen.blogspot.com/">Blegen Library Blog</a>. New online resources
for scholars often appear at <a href="http://joliheroics.blogspot.com/">Joint
Library of the Hellenic & Roman Societies / Institute of Classical Studies
Library Blog</a> as well. Users of the massive Project Dyabola database can
follow their progress through their <a
href="http://www.dyabola.de/blog/">Project Dyabola Blog</a>. <a
href="http://persepolistablets.blogspot.com/">The Persepolis Fortification
Archive Project</a> also disseminates updates and new through a blog. These
1311
specialized blogs will not be of interest to everyone, but they have tapped into
the rich potential of digital media to communicate, inspire, and promote
collaborative scholarship. Shawn Graham‚Äôs innovative <a
href="http://electricarchaeologist.wordpress.com/">Electric Archaeologist
</a>shows how a whole range of digital media can assist an archaeologist in
research and teaching. Sebastian Heath‚Äôs blog <a
href="http://mediterraneanceramics.blogspot.com/">Mediterranean Ceramics</a>
explores the intersection of the study of Mediterranean ceramics and the
resources available on the internet. Tom Elliot, the director of the <a
href="http://www.unc.edu/awmc/pleiades.html">Pleiades Project</a> which brings
together geographic and historical information for ancient places across the
Mediterranean, makes occasional posts at his <a
href="http://horothesia.blogspot.com/">horothesia</a> blog. His main interest is
developing innovative and open methods to disseminate archaeological and
historical data. Scott Moore‚Äôs <a
History Ramblings</a> has developed a serious focus on archaeology in the
virtual world of Second Life. <a href="http://www.charleswatkinson.com/">Charles
Watkinson</a>, the director of publications at the American School of Classical
Studies maintains an occasional blog on ‚Äúcommunication in the humanities and
social sciences.‚Äù <a href="http://www.alexandriaarchive.org/blog/">Digging
Digitially</a> provides some great info on digital archaeology as the ‚ÄúSemi-
offical‚Äù news source for the SAA‚Äôs Digital Data Interest Group. The <a
href="http://okapi.wordpress.com/blog/">Okapi Project‚Äôs blog </a>from the
University of California at Berkeley includes regular reports on their
innovative efforts to disseminate academic research through digital media ‚Äì
including their work with the √áatalh√∂y√ºk excavations. The ease of
updating a weblog makes it a useful tool for archaeological field projects to
use when they are in the field. Daily or weekly updates can convey the immediate
excitement of a new discovery. My project, the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological
Project, maintained two weblogs during the 2007 season: <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/pylakoutsopetria_graduate/">one for
our graduate students</a> and <a
petria_archaeological_project/index.html">one for the senior staff</a> (which it
continues to maintain through the off season). Mia Ridge and Jason Quinlan<a
href="http://www.catalhoyuk.com/blog/"> blogged their experiences from
√áatalh√∂y√ºk</a>. Penn State students, Amanda Iacobelli, Jeff Rop, and Ben
Bradshaw, described their work Cilician Plain Survey Project in a blog called <a
href="http://realtimearchaeology.blogspot.com/">Real Time Archaeology</a>. <a
href="http://gath.wordpress.com/">The Tell es-Safi/Gath Excavations Official
(and Unofficial) Weblog </a>keeps their team members informed about events both
during and after the field seasons. <a
href="http://events.wessexarch.co.uk/">Wessex Archaeology</a> is among the most
sophisticated examples of this providing not only text blogs but also regular
podcasts. <a href="http://porttobacco.blogspot.com/">The Port Tobacco
Archaeological Project</a> also maintains a great blog that tracks their
progress on an 18th century site in Maryland. For the past several years <a
href="http://www.archaeology.org/interactive/digs.html">Archaeology Magazine has
hosted ‚ÄúInteractive Digs‚Äù</a> which, although not exactly a blog, similarly
let you follow the weekly or daily events of several ongoing archaeological
projects. Finally, an increasing number of institutions are maintaining
blogs to keep you informed on events or programs. <a
href="http://www.thewalters.org/blog/">Gary Vikan, </a>the curator of the
Walters Art Museum, whose blog deals widely with matters involving the world of
1312
art, museums, and ancient culture. The University of Missouri at Columbia

maintains a blog called <a href="http://maa.missouri.edu/blog/">Musings</a> that
keeps folks up to date on the goings on at the Museum of Art and Archaeology.
George Washington University‚Äôs <a href="http://csllgwu.edublogs.org/">Classics
and Semitic Studies</a> program blog touches upon events in their program but
also provides some helpful information for prospective graduate students in
Classics, Archaeology, or Ancient History (like describing what a Post-Bacc
program actually is!). <a href="http://tulaneclassics.blogspot.com/">Tulane
University‚Äôs Classics Department</a> began a blog in the immediate aftermath
of Hurricane Katrina and it continues to provide helpful information on that
program‚Äôs affairs. The <a href="http://www.lateantiquity.dk/">Art and Social
Identities Program</a> at Aarhus University in Denmark also updates a blog
making available the events sponsored by that program as does the <a
href="http://zypern-hamburg.blogspot.com/">Archaeological Institute at the
University of Hamburg</a> (in German). While archaeologists have not yet
explored completely the usefulness of blogs for the instantaneous publishing of
archaeological data, figures, photos, or even videos, it is clear that the ease
in creating and maintaining weblogs will make them increasingly appealing
options for archaeologists seeking to create a more transparent approach to
fieldwork and research. For members of the public, avocational archaeologists,
and professional archaeologists and academics, blogging archaeology is a good
and expanding way of both participating in and keeping abreast of new research
in the discipline.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Chuck Jones
IP: 193.92.187.43
DATE: 12/14/2007 05:41:40 AM
Really good stuff Bill, and I see you're getting excellent reactions. I might
also mention my What's New in Abzu (http://www.bloglines.com/blog/AbzuNew) which
is a clip blog constructed from entries I make in Abzu
(http:///www.etana.org/abzu), which is not a blog, but has an RSS feed. What's
new delivers a lot of information about emerging online publication in Ancient
Studies.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: david meadows
EMAIL: rogueclassicist@gmail.com
IP: 209.161.214.76
URL: http://www.atrium-media.com/rogueclassicism
DATE: 01/08/2008 06:42:47 PM
Hi Bill,!
!
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Thanks for the mention and sorry I took so long to see it (i'm still working
through a backlog of stuff); it's probably too late, but rogueclassicism
actually began in 2003 as a sort of Classics-specific outgrowth of my Explorator
newsletter (which is now in its tenth year). Explorator was a sort of 'parallel'
offshoot of my Ancient World on Television listings (which I think are in their
15th or 16th year now) ...
-----
COMMENT:
AUTHOR: david meadows
EMAIL: rogueclassicist@gmail.com
IP: 209.161.214.76
URL: http://www.atrium-media.com/rogueclassicism
DATE: 01/08/2008 06:43:26 PM
Hi Bill,!
!
Thanks for the mention and sorry I took so long to see it (i'm still working
through a backlog of stuff); it's probably too late, but rogueclassicism
actually began in 2003 as a sort of Classics-specific outgrowth of my Explorator
newsletter (which is now in its tenth year). Explorator was a sort of 'parallel'
offshoot of my Ancient World on Television listings (which I think are in their
15th or 16th year now) ...
-----
COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Mia
EMAIL: openobjects@miaridge.com
IP: 77.99.182.110
URL: http://openobjects.blogspot.com/
DATE: 03/06/2008 01:48:35 PM
Hi,!
!
thanks for the link! Unfortunately, we haven't updated the Catalhoyuk blog in a
while, but you can check out http://www.catalhoyuk.com/ for links to on-going
projects.!
!
I've also got more recent posts about Catalhoyuk at
http://openobjects.blogspot.com/search/label/archaeology!
!
cheers, Mia
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When I first began this blog, I began to collect articles on
blogging in the academic world with the idea of putting together, at some point
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a short article for some popular venue on blogging the ancient world. I
have a first draft of my thoughts on blogging ready now and I will serialize it
here over the next few days. Part 1 is a short history of
blogging and academic blogging in particular. Part 2 is a more focused
examination blogs on archaeology. Part 3 is a first attempt at an
archaeology of blogging. You are, as always, invited to
leave comments and make suggestions! Blogging
Archaeology or the Archaeology of Blogging: Metablogging the Ancient
World Introduction When I decided that our
archaeological project in Cyprus needed a blog, I am not sure that I had ever
read weblog on a regular basis. Like most Americans, I was familiar with the
idea of a weblog and had a rather an idea of how they actually function.
Moreover, I had heard the famous success stories about how intrepid bloggers had
laid low the mighty taking on the likes of Trent Lott and 60 Minutes, and
creating the ‚Äúbuzz‚Äù that propelled candidates like Howard Dean to the
national spotlight. While I was pretty sure that my blog wouldn‚Äôt challenge
the powerful or change the landscape of American politics, the stories about the
success of blogs suggested that the medium had potential for reaching a large
audience of people who might be interested in a small, but energetic
archaeological project on the south coast of Cyprus. As an academic who
studies the past for a living, I find it difficult to begin any project without
a theoretic, historical, and practical foundation. This meant that I had to
understand what a weblog was in the abstract, how they came to be, and how they
functioned. As I did this, the real potential of the medium became apparent.
Weblogs could bridge the gap between working archeologists and the interested
public. In this way, weblogs are part of a larger movement by archaeologists
toward engaging the New Media and recognizing its potential for changing how
archaeologists talk to one another, scholars in allied fields (like Classics,
history, art history, and anthropology), and, perhaps most importantly, the
general public. The opportunity to engage the general public might be all the
more important as sudden re-emergence of untrained archaeological enthusiasts,
bent on discovering everything from Atlantis to Noah‚Äôs Arc, has absorbed
public money and attention at the expense of rigorous, systematic archaeological
research (see Eric Cline‚Äôs recent discussion in the Boston Globe and reprinted
<a href="http://www.archaeology.org/online/features/fauxark/">here</a>).
Engaging our colleagues and the public in new ways will not spell the end of
venerable print venues like <a href="http://www.ajaonline.org/">American
Journal or Archaeology</a>, Hesperia, or the Journal of
Mediterranean Archaeology, but the parallel emergence of a more dynamic and
flexible electronic media could improve access to serious and rigorous
archaeological information and discussions. The risk involved in engaging such
New Media opportunities like the weblogs is minimal. They are easy to update and
maintain, increasingly capable of accommodate a wide range of media from
photographs, to line drawings, to video and audio clips, and, most importantly,
cheap!. The Weblog. History and Taxonomy. Like many aspects of
the New Media movement, weblog or blog defies easy definition. Some scholars,
particularly New Media and literary critics like danah boyd (whose long running
weblog is called <a href="http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/">apophenia</a>) have
suggested argued that a weblog is, in fact, a technology or a medium of
communications that is so highly malleable that it is distinctly capable of
supporting a wide range of communicative strategies (<a
href="http://reconstruction.eserver.org/064/boyd.shtml">Reconstruction 6
(2006)</a>) . Other scholar bloggers, like Jill Walker Rettberg at the well-
known blog <a href="http://jilltxt.net/">Jill/txt</a>, see in weblogs sufficient
structural regularity to enable the technique of presentation to frame her
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definition of the medium (<a

href="http://jilltxt.net/archives/blog_theorising/final_version_of_weblog_defini
tion.html">her definition is here</a>). From the perspective of a newcomer to
blogging, I find the formal definition can better accommodate my impressions of
the medium. Consequently, my working definition owes much to Welker Rettberg‚Äôs
efforts and summarizes the most common or canonical type of weblog which owes
its form increasingly to the standard setups provided by various weblog
applications and services available on the web (<a
href="http://www.blogger.com/">Blogger</a>, <a
href="http://www.typepad.com/">TypePad</a>, <a
href="http://wordpress.org/">Wordpress</a>, et c.). Weblogs are regularly
updated webpage. The updates are organized as individual posts. A typical post
is short (>1500 words) and largely textual ‚Äì although with more powerful
computers and software and more robust internet connections, weblogs have come
more frequently to include photographs and even video. Posts are organized in
several ways. Most commonly posts appear in reverse chronological order with the
most recent post appearing at the top of the weblogs main page. In addition (and
somewhat at odds with) the chronological element, weblogs typically have
ancillary organizational strategies; the most typical are list of categories or,
in more sophisticated blogs, ‚Äútags‚Äù which enables to reader to read together
all the posts on a particular topic. The primary organization, then, of a weblog
is chronological, but the secondary cataloguing scheme allows a reader to engage
a topic or a narrative through a topical arrangement. The primacy of
chronological organization distinguishes a weblog from, say, a wiki which is
another form of easily updated webpage. While most wikis record changes to the
page, they are not usually set up to allow a reader to follow a narrative or
theme in the modifications. In most cases the text of a weblog, like most
web pages, uses hyperlinks (using HTML or hypertext markup langauge) to link the
text of the blog to other pages either in other posts within the weblog or to
elsewhere on the web. The hyperlinks internal to the individual posts are
typically complemented by lists of links to other weblogs and webpages in a
sidebar. The links within the post form a kind of citation style establishing
the basis for claims within the weblog and making explicit at least some part of
the post‚Äôs larger intellectual context. The peripheral ‚Äúblogrolls‚Äù
establish a particular weblog within a community of bloggers. The blogroll,
along with similarities in structure and format among weblogs, forms a basic
structuring element for weblogs creating what some have termed ‚Äúthe
blogosphere‚Äù. Many of the characteristics of a weblog today are, as one
might expect, historical or archaeological in that they preserve older
practices among weblog authors. The earliest weblogs appeared on the internet in
the mid 1990s (a brief history is <a
href="http://www.rebeccablood.net/essays/weblog_history.html">here</a>).
Traditionally the honor of being the first ‚Äúblogger‚Äù goes to <a
href="http://www.links.net/">Justin Hall</a> whose page Justin‚Äôs Home Page and
later Links from the Underground began in 1994. By the late 1990s a few dozen
serious webloggers had appeared on the internet. The term weblog is most
commonly traced to Jorn Barger who referred to his iconic site <a
href="http://www.robotwisdom.com/#top">Robot Wisdom</a> as a weblog in 1997.
Barger‚Äôs and Halls‚Äô weblogs, and many of their early counterparts, shared
only few features with the weblogs today. They consisted primarily of links to
other sites on the internet interspersed with short commentary. Robot Wisdom
still preserves the feel of an early weblog. The limitation of bandwidth, server
space, and necessity of coding each webpage in HTML (rather through a wysiwyg
(what-you-see-is-what-you-get) interface like many web pages today) encouraged
concise and pithy posts and copious links. As the interface between the
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author and the HTML code of the website became easier, webblogs began to include
more commentary and, in general, fewer links, but the practice of linking is
still more common in weblogs than on the web in general. The gradual expansion
of the number of weblogs corresponded to an increasingly diverse interpretation
of the medium. As the medium of the weblog developed, webloggers developed more
personalized styles and their weblogs increasingly reflected the personality of
their author. By the later 1990s, the growing number and diversity of weblogs
supported a small but dedicated weblogging community. Authors frequently linked
to each other‚Äôs weblogs and this formed the predecessors to the
‚Äúblogrolls‚Äù that run along the margins of most blogs today. Thus from the
start, weblogging was seen as a communal and collective enterprise. The
revolution in the medium came when a company called Pyra Labs created the <a
href="http://www.blogger.com/">Blogger</a> interface in August of 1999. This
easy to use interface inspired a massive expansion of the medium. (At around the
same time, <a href="http://www.peterme.com/">Peter Merholz </a>shortened term
weblog to blog giving rise to many of its dervatives including blogger and
blogosphere). The resulting blogs ranged widely from the intensely personal to
the political and commercial. Subsequently numerous other blogging interfaces
became available allowing greater customization with more robust and enhance
capabilities. Most blogs now have enabled a comments area which transforms them
from a passive list of links and commentary to active area for exchange between
the reader and the author. As blogs can increasingly accommodate documents,
photographs, music clips and even video, they allow for particularly dynamic
interfaces between author and reader. As one would expect the total number of
blogs expanded rapidly and today number in the tens of millions! The
technology provided by blogging software and dedicated often free hosting
enabled a whole range of blogging genres to emerge ranging from personal
internet journals to short, but formed academic notes, to restaurant, movie,
book, and software reviews. At the top of the blogging food chain, of course,
are the political blogs, like the famous <a
href="http://www.dailykos.com/">Daily Kos</a>, which have shown their ability to
keep issues in the public eye, raise money, and even cut the mighty down to
size. The diversity of types of blogs has reinforced a view of the weblog as a
medium rather than a distinct genre and made exploring the blogosphere both more
challenging and more enriching as result. Blogging and Academia
In some ways the academic world has been slow to take note of the burgeoning
popularity of the blog as a medium of communication. On the one hand, blogging
by academics provided them another method for reaching out to a public beyond
the University. It may even allow for the kind of engagement characteristic of
early in the previous century when academics appeared regularly in newspapers,
on the radio, or even in the cabinets of public officials using their academic
training and distinct methods to influence debates in the public sphere. In this
regard, the medium of blogging could well offer a distinct tonic to the waning
prestige and cultural power of the academic community. Blogging provided a way
for academics to return to the public sphere outside the increasingly
commodified confines of the national media. At the same time, the fragmented
landscape of the New Media has compelled academics to re-imagine their audience
in complex new ways. When an academic writes an article for a professional or an
academic monograph, for example, he or she can assume a certain kind of reader.
With a blog, it is difficult to anticipate the audience and therefore, to
determine the appropriate tone and even content for postings. This has been the
biggest challenge for me and my blog: imagining who, exactly, would be
interested in what I have to say, and how do I communicate it effectively.
The first tentative first steps of the academic community into blogging have
gradually quickened over the course of the decade. Initially the best known
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blogs in the academic world were those seen as subversive. Anonymous blogs like
the <a href="http://www.invisibleadjunct.com/">Invisible Adjunct</a> or <a
href="http://bitchphd.blogspot.com/">Bitch Ph.D.</a> provided insights into some
of the less idyllic and idealistic aspects of academic life. Even as late as
2005, <a href="http://chronicle.com/jobs/2005/07/2005070801c.htm">an article in
the Chronicle of Higher Education</a> by the pseudonymous Ivan Tribble wrote
about the danger of blogs to young faculty who were on the job market. There
also continues to be an intellectual debate regarding the significance of
academic blogging (some salient points are voiced by Adam Kotsko in two articles
<a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2007/11/01/kotsko">here</a> and <a
href="http://www.adamkotsko.com/weblog/2006/05/on-academic-blogging-
diagnosis.html">here</a> with a response from Scott Eric Kaufman <a
href="http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2007/11/01/kaufman">here</a>), but I
suspect that the medium is still too new and experimental to be dismissed out of
hand. In fact, the proliferation of blogs over the last 5 years has led to
remarkably diverse interpretations of the media. In general, with the expansion
of the blogosphere it has become more tame and less subversive. The growing
acceptance of blogging as another facet of academic discourse is perhaps best
seen in its appearance as a topic discussion at academic conferences. Both the
<a href="http://www.historians.org/">AHA</a> and the <a
href="http://www.mla.org/">MLA </a>have featured panels on blogging that
attracted considerable attention in the ‚Äúblogosphere,‚Äù in academic circles,
and in the traditional media as well. <a
href="http://www.historians.org/annual/2006/06program/SessionDisplay.cfm?Session
ID=82">AHA panel </a>shined light on the intellectual significance of blogs by
historians like the blog called <a
href="http://hnn.us/blogs/2.html">Cliopatria</a> at the <a
href="http://hnn.us/blogs/2.html">History News Network</a> hosted by George
Mason University (for a brief overview and history of historians blogging see <a
href="http://www.historians.org/Perspectives/Issues/2005/0505/0505tec1.cfm?pv=y"
>Ralph Luker, ‚ÄúWere there blog enough and time‚Äù Perspectives 43.4
(2005)</a>). For the last three years, the Cliopatria group has made awards to
blogs of particular substance, such as historian Mark Grimsley‚Äôs <a
href="http://warhistorian.org/wordpress/">Blog Them out of the Stone Age</a>,
which chronicles, among other things, Grimsley‚Äôs efforts to bring traditional
Military History into dialogue with more theoretically inclined types of
historical inquiry. <a
href="http://www.thevalve.org/go/valve/article/ano/">Bloggers from the MLA
</a>have shown an even wider range of uses for the blogosphere. Michael B√©rub√©
whose now defunct, <a href="http://www.michaelberube.com/index.php/weblog">Le
Blog B√©rub√©</a>, engaged in a wide ranging commentary on everything from
politics to academic life to literary theory. <a
href="http://jilltxt.net/">Jill/txt</a>, cited earlier, explores the interaction
between literary, aesthetics, and New Media studies. Several blogging journals
like <a href="http://www.thevalve.org/">The Valve</a> or those hosted by the
online trade journal, <a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/views/blogs">Inside
Higher Ed</a>, similarly bridge the gap between academic research, social
commentary, and public life. The dominant characteristic of many of these
academic blogs is that they feature intellectually substantial posts often with
full academic citations, careful argumentation, and, in some cases, vigorous
conversations in their comments.
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TITLE: Corinthians at the AIA
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Just a quick hit today (posted retroactively). Jamie Donati has
complained about not appearing in my blog. Well, here he is. I saw
him and Theo Kopestonsky give practice runs through their AIA papers. Both
will give papers in the <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2007/11/ai
a-annual-meet.html">cleverly</a> <a
href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/59019454">named</a>: <a
p;sid=5C">Corinthian Horizons: Space, Society and the Sacred in Ancient
Corinth</a> organized by Amelia Brown and Jamie Donati. Jamie's paper
collated and reassessed the evidence for the long standing problem of the
Classical-Archaic agora at Corinth. Theo's paper put the Kokkinovrysi
Figurine Deposit found at a small stele shrine west of the ancient city center
into archaeological and religious context. The papers were good, careful,
and added to our knowledge of Ancient Corinth. Be sure the check them out
at the AIA.
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TITLE: Epigraphy, Liturgy, and Imperial Policy on the Justinianic Isthmus
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DATE: 12/11/2007 03:26:15 AM

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I have just completed an article entitled, "Epigraphy, Liturgy, and Imperial
Policy on the Justinianic Isthmus" and sent it off for possible inclusion in a
published conference proceedings. The article looked at this Late Antique
inscription from Isthmia: <a
Writer/image_thumb_12.png" width="404" border="0"></a> I
originally delivered the paper at the <a
href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/conferences/isthmia.htm">Half Century on the
Isthmus Conference</a> this past summer. <a
href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/conferences/isthmia.htm"><img style="border-right:
0px; border-top: 0px; margin: 0px 10px 0px 0px; border-left: 0px; border-bottom:
0px" height="198" alt="image"
Writer/image_16.png" width="154" align="left" border="0"></a> I've been working on this paper for about 5 years now. I originally
gave a version of it as a Tea Talk here at the <a
href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/">American School of Classical Studies</a> in the
Spring of 2003. I then converted it into an article which looked like <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/files/Reje
ctedEpigraphyArticle_Caraher.pdf">this</a> and was rejected everywhere. I
then modified its focus and delivered it at the Isthmus Conference this summer
looking like <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/files/Isth
miaPaper-Truncated_20minFINAL.pdf">this</a>. After considerably more work,
I've managed to turn it into <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/files/Cara
her_HalfCenturyontheIsthmus_December2007.pdf">this</a>. The
final product is probably better than my first effort on this topic (after 4
years of additional though!). Moreover, it should set up nicely my
research in the spring, which will seek to introduce the concept of hybridity
(as articulated by post-colonial theorists like Homi Bhabha) to the study of
Early Christian architecture and liturgy in Greece. The goal of
"Epigraphy, Liturgy, and Imperial Policy" was to establish that Justinian sought
to project imperial authority on the Isthmus through the use of the
Constantinopolitan version of the liturgy. The imperially funded Lechaion
basilica alludes to the Constantinopolitan rite through the presence of a solea
linking the ambo to the chancel. The text shown above (IG IV, 204 for
those of you with a scorecard) likewise shows some indication of the
Constantinopolitan right. This would have been particularly controversial
in Greece which in the 6th century ecclesiastically part of the west. If we accept that the liturgy can be used to project authority
(either imperial or, presumably, ecclesiastical), we can begin to consider how
these efforts to construct authority were understood by the community.
Bhabha's idea of the hybrid, from what I understand, suggests that individual
actors when confronted with external (colonial) sources of authority found ways
to interpret, negotiate and in some cases (re)deploy it for their own
benefit. This process, which creates the empowered, colonial hybrid,
promotes a qualitatively new, but undiminished voice for the colonial
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subject. For Greece, this process creates the voice which will become, by
the Early and Middle Byzantine period, the dominant component of Christian Greek
culture. 
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TITLE: Georgios Lampakis, Thrace-Constantinople (1902) at the Byzantine and
Christian Museum
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<a
border-bottom-width: 0px; margin: 0px 10px; border-right-width: 0px"
Writer/image_thumb_11.png" width="186" align="right" border="0"></a>I take the
<a href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/Membership/description.htm">Regular Members</a>
to Athens' Byzantine and Christian Museum in January when we all return from our
holiday travels. To make the week that I return better, I have begun
thinking about how I will present the museum over the past week. This
winter the museum is hosting an exhibit of Georgios Lampakis early 20th century
photographs from Thrace. Lampakis was among the founders of the <a
href="http://www.chae.gr/en/index.html">Christian Archaeological Society</a> and
dedicated photographer who used his photos to document Byzantine and Post-
Byzantine monuments and objects throughout Greece (his journals and photographs
were published in first series of <a href="http://www.chae.gr/en/400.html">the
Deltion of the Christian Archaeological Society</a> which ran from 1892-
1911). He was also instrumental in the establishment of the collection of
Early Christian and Byzantine antiquities that would later form the core of the
Byzantine and Christian Museum of Athens. Trained as theologian in Athens
and an archaeologist in Germany, Lampakis blended ideas of European romanticism
with Byzantine Orthodox theology to envision a Greek state that was historically
and spiritually coterminus with the Church. In 1902, he traveled through
Thrace, which was part of the Ottoman Empire, to Constantinople documenting the
Byzantine monuments there and in the capital. His photos from the towns of
Ainos, Didymoteicho, Adrianople, and Constantinople capture not only the
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significant monuments in those place, some of which are now lost, but also the
feeling of these early 20th century Ottoman Balkan towns with their narrow
streets and low slung neighborhoods clustered around the tall domes of churches
and the minarets mosques. (His photos of the Eastern Corinthia --
particularly the harbor at Kenchreai -- some of which were displayed at the
relatively recent retrospective on the Byzantine and Christian Museums capture
moments of a lost landscape.) What was interesting to me was that
Lampakis trip was sponsored in part by the Greek government and in part by the
Christian Archaeological Society. His goal of documenting the Byzantine
monuments was very similar to work of the Early Travelers in Greece who sought
to document the remains of antiquity. The efforts of these travelers to
inventory the antiquities (and in some cases the modern remains) of Greece were
an aspect of the imperialist impulses that ultimately led to the appearance of
the Greek state as an outpost of the West on the border of the Orient.
With the establishment of the Greek State, Classical antiquities acquired
tremendous importance as the physical validation of Greece's place among the
Western nations and symbols of national identity. By the second half of
the 19th and early 20th century, the Byzantine past of Greece was given a seat
at the able. Fueled perhaps in part by the growing cynicism toward the
Western European interpretation of Greek history and the growing confidence of
Greek intellectuals (particularly Konstantinos Paparregopoulos), Greece's
Byzantine past came to the fore. Their interpretation of the Byzantine
heritage of Greece, however, set its eyes not only on Byzantine monuments within
the border of the Greek state, but those among the Greek communities of the
Ottoman empire and especially in Constantinople. Lampakis efforts to
photograph the monuments of Thrace and Constantinople was, like the early
Western travelers to Greece, an effort to secure the place of these monuments in
the revised narrative of Greek national history. This same impulse
influenced the development of the Byzantine and Christian Museum, which even
today intersperses Byzantine antiquities with images of the churches of
Constantinople. Ultimately the aspirations of some Greek intellectuals
and politicians to unite the Greek communities of the Mediterranean in a single
state ended in tragic results in 1922. The place of Byzantium in the Greek
state's national identity has by then been secured and was developed brilliantly
in the Byzantine Museum's first independent iteration under George A.
Soteriou. While the recent changes at the Museum offers a somewhat
different perspective on the Byzantine history of Greece, the photographs of
Lampakis should serve as a good introduction to of the complex history of
Byzantium in the formation of the Greek state. 
Bibliography I. Katsaridou and K. Biliouri, "Representing Byzantium:
the Narratives of the Byzantine Past in Greek National Museums," <a
title="http://www.ep.liu.se/ecp/022/016/index.html"
href="http://www.ep.liu.se/ecp/022/016/index.html">http://www.ep.liu.se/ecp/022/
016/index.html</a> D. Ricks and P. Magdalino, eds., Byzantium and the
Modern Greek Identity. Aldershot: 1998. Œü ŒöœåœÉŒºŒøœÇ Œ§ŒøœÖ
ŒíœÖŒ∂Œ±ŒΩœÑŒπŒΩŒøœç ŒúŒøœÖœÉŒµŒØŒøœÖ. ŒëŒ∏ŒÆŒΩŒ± 2004.
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TITLE: One more PKAP note...
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DATE: 12/09/2007 08:56:13 AM

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I forget to mention a bonus part of the <a
href="http://www.chss.iup.edu/pkap/multimedia.htm">PKAP Multimedia
Extravaganza</a>. The project has inspired two "rock 'n' roll" singles --
This is Cyprus and Fieldwork Song -- complements of <a
href="http://www.chss.iup.edu/pkap/">PKAP</a> Alumnus Brice Pearce and his band
Drake's Folly. Listen to them on their <a
href="http://myspace.com/drakesfolly">MySpace page</a>. (<a
href="http://www.catalhoyuk.com/">√áatalh√∂y√ºk</a> has <a
href="http://okapi.dreamhosters.com/remixing/mainpage.html">remixing</a>; <a
href="http://www.chss.iup.edu/pkap/">PKAP</a> has rock 'n' roll). We like
to think that the open and experimental atmosphere at PKAP promotes a kind of
creativity that goes far beyond the discipline of archaeology. Hopefully
we can convince Brice to let us post them for download on the PKAP page
soon. 
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TITLE: Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project Mid-Winter Update
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It's now nearly 6 months (!!) since the end of the PKAP field season in
June. The entire <a href="http://www.chss.iup.edu/pkap/">PKAP</a> team has
been particularly focused this "off season" preparing for a major season of
field work next summer that will not only complete the first phase of fieldwork
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in coastal hinterland of Pyla village, but also establish a sound foundation for
a larger regional study. To summarize our off season work: 1. Grant
Applications. We've completed 3 major external grant applications for
funding in the 2008 field season and have received one already. We'll hear
from the other two in late winter or early spring. 2. Conference
Papers. We presented at the Byzantine Studies Conference in October at a
panel that I organized dedicated to the archaeology of Medieval and Byzantine
Cyprus. The paper is <a
href="http://www.chss.iup.edu/pkap/publications/papers/2007%20BSC%20Paper%20fina
l.pdf">here</a> and it is a fair good representation of where our research is
right now. We are presently planning our poster for the <a
href="http://www.archaeological.org/webinfo.php?page=10300">AIA in
Chicago</a>. We're scheduled for <a
p;sid=1J">Friday, January 4, 10:00 AM - 2:00 PM.</a> 3.
Publications. We just completed editing the page proofs for our article in
the 2007 Report of the Department of Antiquities of Cyprus. This
article provides a nice summary of our survey at Pyla-
Koutsopetria. We have completed the "red line" proofs for a more
popular offering to appear in <a
href="http://www.asor.org/pubs/nea/index.html">Near Eastern Archaeology</a>
(in a two-issue volume on American Archaeology in Cyprus). Finally
and perhaps most importantly, we have a <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/files/pyla
koutsopetria_an_ancient_harbor_town_in_southeast_cyprus.pdf">tentative title and
table of contents</a> for the monograph and have about 150 pages of text.
It's all subject to change, of course, but we've at least put words on
paper. This spring we plan to complete the first draft of the catalogue of
survey pottery. 4. PKAP in cyberspace. We've revamped the <a
href="http://www.chss.iup.edu/pkap/">PKAP</a> website and updated it with our
most <a href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/disk_PKAP.html">recent
GIS data</a> and <a
href="http://www.chss.iup.edu/pkap/publications/papers.htm">papers</a>.
Scott has added some new multimedia aspects including a growing list of <a
href="http://www.chss.iup.edu/pkap/podcasts/podcasts.htm">podcasts</a>. He
has also developed a PKAP presence in <a href="http://secondlife.com/">Second
Life</a> which by next spring will include a mock up of the site and allow us to
conduct a virtual orientation for our students. Scott is chronicling his
ongoing work on archaeology and pedagogy in SL at his weblog <a
History Ramblings</a>. Katie Pettegrew has kindly organized a <a
href="http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=8860215294">PKAP Facebook page</a>
that allows us to communicate quickly with the PKAP community. 5. Data
analysis. Michael Brown has been working on the resistivity data that he,
John Hunt and Mat Dalton collected from Vigla last year. Soon we will be
able to integrate our low altitude aerial photography (courtesy of the RAF) (1),
our geophysical data (2), and our GIS map of the Late Roman fortification walls
(3) with our intensive survey data to provide a comprehensive, non-destructive
analysis of the site. If we get permission to excavate this summer, we
will be able to ground truth this remote data and minimize the exposure and
damage to the site. <a
eWriter/ViglaSM.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px;
border-bottom-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px" height="284" alt="ViglaSM"
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Writer/ViglaSM_thumb.jpg" width="424" border="0"></a> [1] <a
Writer/image_thumb_9.png" width="173" border="0"></a> <a
Writer/image_thumb_10.png" width="254" border="0"></a> [2] <a
eWriter/ViglaWalls.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width:
alt="ViglaWalls"
Writer/ViglaWalls_thumb.jpg" width="424" border="0"></a> [3] 6. Graduate research. Brandon Olson (M.A. UND 2007), a two
year PKAP veteran, is using the published lead sling pellets from Vigla in his
dissertation research on literacy in the Greek and Roman military at Penn
State. He has presented some of the early stages of his research on this
topic at several graduate conferences and will present more of his work at the
2008 <a href="http://www.camws.org/">CAMWS</a> meeting in Tucson, Arizona.
<a href="http://www.und.edu/spotlights/davidterry.html">David Terry</a> (B.A.
UND 2006), a 2007 PKAP Alumnus and a current M.A. student in the <a
href="http://www.und.edu/dept/histdept/">Department of History</a> at UND, used
his time in Cyprus to develop his M.A. Thesis topic. He is working on
Frankish-Greek/Catholic-Orthodox relations in the Crusader Kingdom of Cyprus
(1191-1489). His research has featured on the main <a
href="http://www.und.edu/">UND</a> webpage. 7. <a
href="http://www.xanga.com/jpatrow">Joe Patrow</a> has produced a remarkable
group of documentary shorts which should be made available soon! 8. Fundraising. A <a
href="http://www.chss.iup.edu/pkap/funding.htm">whole range of institutional and
private sponsors</a> have supported the hardworking PKAP staff over the last
five years. Particular thanks goes to the <a
href="http://www.und.edu/">University of North Dakota</a> and <a
href="http://www.iup.edu/">Indiana University of Pennsylvania</a> who have
funded parts of the project continuously since its inception. <a
href="http://www.messiah.edu/">Messiah College</a> and the <a
href="http://isthmia.osu.edu/site.html">Ohio State Excavations at Isthmia</a>
have also been valued collaborators. We've also been lucky enough to have a
small and loyal group of private donors. Institutional support and private
donors give projects like ours the opportunity to develop future plans and
create both the practical and intellectual infrastructure for efficient and
effective research. Just this year, we were able to secure a significant
research grant because we could match their grant with private donor
money. If you'd like to contribute to our ongoing research, contact either
<a href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/ContactInfo.html">me</a> or
Mike Meyer at the University of North Dakota's <a
href="http://www.und.edu/dept/artsci/giving_opportunities.html">College of Arts
and Sciences</a>.
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TITLE: A New Metablog
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DATE: 12/06/2007 12:36:11 AM

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The <a href="http://ancientworldbloggers.blogspot.com/">Ancient World
Bloggers Group</a> has a new Metablog (that is a blog about blogging).
This is a good case study for the interaction of social networking and digital
publishing. The blog, started by Sebastian Heath of <a
href="http://mediterraneanceramics.blogspot.com/">Mediterranean Ceramics</a> and
the <a href="http://www.numismatics.org/">ANS</a>, and Chuck Jones of the <a
href="http://blegen.blogspot.com/">Blegen Library</a> derived in part from a <a
href="http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2428998475">Facebook</a> group by
the same name. Most of us will concede that even the most academic blog
need not conform to publication standards common to print or even formal online
journals. It is nevertheless clear to most of us that there are "good" and
"not so good" and "crazy" blogs out there. Participating in a particular
social network, through sites like the AWBG, Facebook, and, appearing on the
blogroll of other like-minded bloggers provides a kind of evaluative element for
blogging as a medium and academic blogging as a genre (inasmuch as academic
bloggers tend to share certain characteristics). As a particularly well-
conceived case study, one can check out Mark Grimsley's <a
href="http://warhistorian.org/wordpress/index.php">Blog them out of the Stone
Age</a> where he has set up a blogroll entitled "A Few Good Blogs".
He <a href="http://warhistorian.org/wordpress/?p=675">adds and sometimes takes
blogs off</a> this list as they meet certain standards. I can't guarantee
that the blogs on my blog roll won't print something crazy, but, then again, few
of us would promise such august standards for even our favorite, most
scrupulously peer-reviewed journals.
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On Saturday, I visited <a
href="http://www.fineart.utoronto.ca/kommos/index.html">Kommos on
Crete</a>. A Bronze Age habor town with interesting Greek levels as
well. Kommos is regarded as the likely major Minoan port for the Mesara
(<a href="http://www.fineart.utoronto.ca/kommos/kommosMaps.html">the fertile
plain situated on the south central coast of Crete</a>) serving the important
Minoan sites of Phaistos and Ay. Triada. The excavations by Joseph and
Maria Shaw of the University of Toronto revealed <a
href="http://www.fineart.utoronto.ca/kommos/kommosMinoanPalaces.html">monumental
architecture of Minoan date</a> at the site (which Bob Bridges patiently pointed
out to me) as well as possible storage sheds for Bronze age ships. <a
eWriter/KommosWallSM.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width:
alt="KommosWallSM"
Writer/KommosWallSM_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> From my
perspective, one of the most interesting things about the site was the array of
imported material from as far afield as Egypt, the Levant, and Cyprus. As
we are beginning to argue for Pyla-Kokkinokremos, Kommos appears to
have been a point of contact between the Mesara and the major trade routes of
the Eastern Mediterranean. This brought site considerable prosperity and
may have allowed it to exert some autonomy despite the proximity of Phaistos and
Ay. Triada. The presence of monumental architecture at least suggests that
the folks at Kommos invested in some form of large scale building and this may
suggest an effort to cultivate a distinct identity. Like Pyla-
Kokkinokremos with its nearby and powerful neighbors of Kition and Hala
Sultan Teke (and the looming regional superpower of Enkomi), the settlement
structure, economic organization, and political character of Bronze Age Crete
may have been far more "multipolar" than some of better-known schematics would
allow. <a
eWriter/KommosSiteSM.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width:
alt="KommosSiteSM"
Writer/KommosSiteSM_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> As an added
bonus, Shaw has written <a
href="http://www.oxbowbooks.com/bookinfo.cfm/ID/44409//Location/DBBC">a
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brilliant guide to Kommos</a> which talks not only about the architecture and
finds, but also bring alive the back story of running a major excavation.
From expropriating lands to raising money to the relations with local community,
the guide places the site not only in archaeological context, but also in the
context of the excavation process. Even if you don't ever visit the site
(which is generally kept locked), the guide is an entertaining and informative
read.
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TITLE: More Corinthiaka and American Schooliana
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Kostis Kourelis has brought back his blog: <a
href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/">Buildings, Objects, and Situations</a>:
Thoughts on art, architecture, society and culture with special focus on
Mediterranean archaeology. So far, he's provided some remarkable <a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosopography">prospopography</a> on the
history of the <a href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/">American School of Classical
Studies</a> and <a href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/corinth/index.html">Corinth
Excavations</a> and offered a valuable glosses to his recent important study:
"Byzantium and the Avant-Garde: Excavations at Corinth, 1920s‚Äì1930s," Hesperia
76 (2007), 391-442. By taking a prosopographical approach to
institutional history, he has demonstrated that many of the important figures in
the early 20th century history of the American School were personally engaged in
the cultural movements of their day. Their involvement in the
multifaceted avant-guard movements in early decades of the 20th century informed
their fascination with the post-Classical periods -- especially the seemingly
organic, mystical, and variegated experiences of the Byzantine -- which held
forth promise as a possible alternative to failures of the modern. The
edginess of the post-war avant-guard movement comes through in the subversive
tone to Kourelis' writing. <a
re-department.html">The conspiratorial feel</a> of his blog (and article)
provides a refreshing counterpoint to palpable conservatism that one can still
sometimes experience at the American School. It is a place where
one can still <a
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side-looking.html">sip afternoon tea in Loring Hall</a> and discuss whether "the
theory" has anything to add to classical studies. And, when it's very
still and quiet, one can still hear in response to an overzealous interest in
the post-Classical world the infamous line "This is the American School of
Classical Studies" (although to be fair, this outlook
is quickly fading away...) Kourelis' blog is also a model academic blog:
the short notes, with careful citation, provide useful insights into his
research as well as relevant glosses on his published work.
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TITLE: Site Report from Crete
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DATE: 12/03/2007 12:01:51 AM

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<a
eWriter/Flower4Suzie.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width:
0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; margin: 0px 3px 0px 0px; border-right-width: 0px"
height="154" alt="Flower4Suzie"
Writer/Flower4Suzie_thumb.jpg" width="60" align="left" border="0"></a>Crete was
beautiful. Since I've talked about <a
te-reports.html">site reports</a> in this blog <a
side-looking.html">in the past</a> and sought to place them in the immediate
cultural context of the <a href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/">American School</a>,
I thought it only fair to include one of my site reports. This is
basically the handout that I give the <a
with my oral report. I don't go into as much detail as my handout contains
(that's what the handout is for) and since I delivered mine at the church of Ag.
Titos at Gortyn, I spent some time looking at the architecture of the
building. But I do think that the report captures the essential character
of the genre: Early Christian, Late Roman, and
Byzantine Crete Crete is referred to in Acts of the Apostles (Acts 2:1-
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41) and in Epistle of Titus where Paul tell Titus (Titus 1:1-14): <blockquote>
‚ÄúI left you in Crete so that you might set right what remains to be done
and appoint presbyters in every town, as I directed you, on condition that a man
be blameless, married only once, with believing children who are not accused of
licentiousness or rebellious. For a bishop as God's steward must be blameless,
not arrogant, not irritable, not a drunkard, not aggressive, not greedy for
sordid gain, but hospitable, a lover of goodness, temperate, just, holy, and
self-controlled, holding fast to the true message as taught so that he will be
able both to exhort with sound doctrine and to refute opponents. For there are
also many rebels, idle talkers and deceivers, especially the Jewish Christians.
It is imperative to silence them, as they are upsetting whole families by
teaching for sordid gain what they should not. One of them, a prophet of their
own, once said, "Cretans have always been liars, vicious beasts, and lazy
gluttons." That testimony is true. Therefore, admonish them sharply, so that
they may be sound in the faith, instead of paying attention to Jewish myths and
regulations of people who have repudiated the truth. To the clean all things are
clean, but to those who are defiled and unbelieving nothing is clean; in fact,
both their minds and their consciences are tainted.‚Äù </blockquote> This
text and Acts seems to suggest that Crete had a sizable Jewish community. Little
more is known about the church in Crete prior to the 5th century. The local name
of Aghioi Deka seems to refer to a group of martyr during the Decian
persecutions. According the story, the 10 martyrs represented every region of
the island (i.e. every town of the Paul‚Äôs letter to Titus; by the 8th century,
however, 5 had come from Gortyn and 5 from elsewhere). Along with the Aghioi
Deka, St. Titus continues to be venerated throughout the island. The rhetorical
position that the Christians on Crete were among the first Christian community
in Europe (e.g. Spyridakis 1990) finds parallels with similar arguments for the
European character of Minoan settlements. The foundation of the church in
Crete by Paul qualified it as an Apostolic See. By the 4th century,
the ecclesiastical administration of the island was at the provincial capital of
Gortyn. The remains of a massive, probably Early Christian basilica at the site
reflects the wealth of the Early Christian community there. Moreover, it seems
likely that this church has a relatively late date. The church is a cross-domed
basilica. The crossing of the transept and the main nave appear to have been
barrel vaulted. The polygonal exterior wall of the apse and the pastophories
situated to the north and south of the sanctuary with apsidal east ends likewise
recommend a late 6th to mid 7th century date, and show close parallels with
churches in Laconia (e.g. the Acropolis church from Sparta and Tigani in the
Mani which may have similar dates). This date seems to find confirmation in the
architectural sculpture, most notably the column capitals which appear to date
to the later 6th/early 7th; fragments of a double-stair type ambo were also
discovered. Arguments for a 10th century construction using earlier spolia are
conceptually appealing, but probably incorrect. Theodore Fyfe, Arthur Evans
first architect at Knossos, published the church in 1907 in the Architectural
Review of 1907. Orlandos restudied the church in the 1920s (EEBS 3
(1926), 301ff.). <a
eWriter/AyTitosSM.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width:
alt="AyTitosSM"
Writer/AyTitosSM_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> The late date
of the church reflects the late prosperity of the island and Gortyn. The 6th and
7th century are well-represented in the epigraphy. An inscription (Bandy no. 31)
of probably Justinianic date credits an archbishop Theodoros and Proconsul
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(anthypatos) Helios for restoring a wall (toixos). It is interesting to consider

that this might refer to the wall of the city and compare it to inscriptions
from a similar context in the Korinthia which make no mention of local
dignitaries. Seventh century works includes the modification of the Nymphaeum
and the inscribing of four acclamatory texts on the columns naming the family of
Heraklius (Bandy no. 23). There is epigraphic evidence attesting the presence of
the circus factions on the island (the Greens) hinting that chariot racing took
place there with at least notional ties to the Constantinople (Bandy no. 20).
The epigraphy from Gortyn includes numerous acclamations reflecting the
continued vitality of civic life. <a
eWriter/NymphaionSM.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width:
alt="NymphaionSM"
Writer/NymphaionSM_thumb.jpg" width="140" border="0"></a> <a
eWriter/HerakleiosInscrptSM.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-
alt="HerakleiosInscrptSM"
Writer/HerakleiosInscrptSM_thumb.jpg" width="304" border="0"></a> The
Metropolitan bishop of the island functioned throughout Late Antiquity and as
Balkan bishops succumbed to invasions, economic dislocations, and various
natural disasters, the bishops of Gortyn rose in prestige. As with all bishops
from ecclesiastical province of Illyricum Orientalis the 7th century Ecumenical
Councils, the bishops of Crete signed with the bishops from the West. In the
Late 6th century the Bishop of Gortyn appears in correspondence with Pope
Gregory the Great who intervenes in a contested election. At the Sixth
Ecumenical Council (680) the Bishops from Gortyn signed under the papal
delegation with the bishops from Thessaloniki and the bishop from Corinth. By
the Council in Trullo (691-2) the bishop served as the representative of Rome.
It is interesting to note that despite the close ties to the pope, monophysitism
(suggesting close ties with Eastern Sees) had appeared on Crete; Maximos
Confessor when he visited the island in 647/9 met with Severan bishops there. By
the mid 8th century, things had changed, according to his Vita, St.
Andrew of Crete arrived on the island from Constantinople who seems to have
appointed him bishop (rather than local bishops with the approval of Rome).
Andrew of Crete becomes the most prominent Early Byzantine saint on the island.
He is traditionally credited with the creation of the Byzantine musical genre of
the kanon. His life provides important information on the conditions on
the island during the 8th century. He also wrote several preserved encomia
including one the Ayioi Deka. Early Byzantine Crete experienced the
disruption of Arab incursions in the Mediterranean basin as early as the later
7th century. Not only is their evidence that the Arabs wintered in Crete as
early as 674, but the economy in Crete suffered as Roman rule collapsed among
their neighbors in Africa and the Peloponnesus. Crete was incorporated into the
Theme of Hellas and received considerable attention from the Byzantine army and
navy. Consequently, the island maintained Byzantine rule through most of the 8th
century (there was a massive Cretan delegation at II Nicaea in 787). The
political turmoil of the first part of the 9th century in Byzantium led to a
group of Arabs, originally driven from Spain and then Alexandria, to establish a
foothold on Crete near modern day Herakleion (Medieval Chandax) some time during
the reign of Theophilos (829-840). Over the next 15 years they managed to
conquer the island and during the later 9th and early 10th century the Arab
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rulers defied Byzantine efforts at retaking the island. The Cretan Muslims were
active throughout the Aegean during this time, hiding out in the waters off
Kythera (according to the Vita of Theodore of Kythera) and taking
hostages for ransom as far north as the Argolid (from the Vita of Peter
of Argos). The reconquest was finally achieved by Nicephoras Phocas in 961
(Theophanes Continuatus Book 6). There is no reason necessarily to think
that there were mass conversions to Islam during the years of the Arab conquest,
but it is likely the Christian infrastructure suffered some during that time.
The 10th Vita of Ay. Nikonos (O Metanoeite) tells of visiting Crete,
rebuilding churches, and preaching. A more interesting source is the
autobiographical Vita of John the Xenos (11th c.) who travels
around Crete rebuilding churches and founding new ones. It provides valuable
information regarding the re-imagining of the Cretan landscape in the 11th
century and suggests a period of social change following the disruptions of the
Arab conquest. The decline of centralized Byzantine rule in the late 12th
century led to the growing autonomy of the island and ultimately the revolt of
Karykes in 1191-2 (as elsewhere at the periphery of the Byzantine state). This
was quickly put down, perhaps by the Cretans themselves or perhaps by the threat
imperial intervention. Bibliography Bandy, A., The Greek Christian
Inscriptions of Crete. Athens 1972. ŒíŒ±œÅŒ±ŒªŒÆœÇ, Œô.Œî.,
‚ÄúŒ†Œ±œÅŒ±œÑŒ∑œÅŒÆœÅŒµŒπœÇ œÉœÑŒ∑ŒΩ œÄŒ±ŒªŒ±ŒπŒøœáœÅŒπœÉœÑŒπŒ±ŒΩŒπŒ∫ŒÆ
ŒΩŒ±ŒøŒ¥ŒøŒºŒØŒ± œÑŒ∑œÇ ŒöœÅŒÆœÑŒ∑,‚Äù Creta Romana
e Protobyzantina 3.1. Padova 2004. 813-838. Bowden,
W., ‚ÄúEpirus and Crete: architectural interaction in late antiquity,‚Äù
Creta Romana e Protobyzantina 3.1. Padova 2004. 787-800 Fyfe, T. ‚ÄúThe
Church at St. Titus at Gortyna in Crete,‚Äù Architectural Review 22
(1907), 5-60. Orlandos, A. ‚ÄúŒùŒµœéœÑŒµœÅŒøŒπ ·ºîœÅŒµœÖŒΩŒ±Œπ ·ºêŒΩ ·ºâŒ≥.
Œ§ŒπœÑ·ø∑ œÑ·øÜœÇ ŒìŒøœÅœÑœçŒΩŒ±,‚Äù EEBS 3 (1926), 297-328.
ŒîŒµœÑŒøœÅŒ¨Œ∫Œ∑œÇ, Œò., ŒüŒπ ŒÜŒ≥ŒπŒøŒπ Œ§Œ∑œÇ Œ†œÅœéœÑŒ∑œÇ
ŒíœÖŒ∂Œ±ŒΩœÑŒπŒΩŒÆœÇ Œ†ŒµœÅŒπœåŒ¥ŒøœÖ Œ§Œ∑œÇ ŒöœÅŒÆœÑŒ∑œÇ ŒöŒ±Œπ Œó
Œ£œáŒµœÑŒπŒ∫ŒÆ Œ†œÅŒøœÇ ŒëœÖœÑŒøœçœÇ Œ¶ŒπŒªŒøŒªŒøŒ≥ŒØŒ±. Athens 1970.
Sanders, I. F. Roman Crete: An Archaeological Survey and Gazetteer of Late
Hellenistic, Roman, and Early Byzantine Crete. Warminster 1982.
Tsougarakis, D. Byzantine Crete: From the 5th Century to the Venetian
Conquest. Athens 1988. TœâŒºŒ±Œ¥Œ¨Œ∫ŒπœÇ, Œù.Œí., ‚Äú·Ωâ ·ºåŒ≥ŒπŒøœÇ
·º∏œâŒ¨ŒΩŒΩŒ∑œÇ ·ΩÅ ŒûŒ≠ŒΩŒøœÇ Œ∫Œ±·Ω∂ ·º° Œ¥ŒπŒ±Œ∏ŒÆŒ∫Œ∑ Œ±·ΩêœÑŒø·ø¶,‚Äù
KrChron 2 (1948), 47-72. Xanthopoulou, M., ‚ÄúLe mobilier
eccl√©siastique m√©tallique de la basilique de Saint-Tite a Gortyne (Cr√®te
centrale),‚Äù CArch 46 (1998), 103-119.
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TITLE: More Late Antiquity
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The University of Michigan and the DAI (German Archaeological Institute) are
co-hosting an <a href="http://sitemaker.umich.edu/late-
antiquity/home">international symposium on Archaeology and the Cities of Asia
Minor in Late Antiquity </a>in January. The papers look quite interesting
-- although perhaps a bit fewer papers on the countryside, "town and country",
or the role of non-urban places in the development of the urban world that I
would have thought. While urban life in Late Antique Asia Minor certainly
represented the physical continuation of the "ancient world", it is becoming
increasingly difficult to imagine the transformation of cities in Late Antiquity
without considering the city's relationship in a complex network of non-urban
places (villages, towns, villas, monasteries, pilgrimage sites, et c.)
as well. The website included a handy list of the represented <a
href="http://sitemaker.umich.edu/late-antiquity/archaeological_sites">Late
Antique sites in Asia Minor</a> with short discussions of the sites during Late
Antiquity, bibliography, and links the to their official webpages. I hope
that they plan to publish their proceedings!
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TITLE: To Crete with John Xenos
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DATE: 11/30/2007 07:42:03 AM

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I am off to Crete later today to talk with the <a
about Late Antique and Middle Byzantine Crete. I will talk with them at
Gortyn which was the Late Roman capital of the island. The best
thing about preparing these site reports is that you come across little bits of
information, texts, ideas that you would never have encountered otherwise.
While reading on Middle Byzantine Crete, I came across the autobiographical
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early 11th-century Vita of John Xenos (John "the hermit" or "the
stranger") (TœâŒºŒ±Œ¥Œ¨Œ∫ŒπœÇ KrChron 2 (1948), 47-72). <a
eWriter/JohnXenos.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width:
alt="JohnXenos"
Writer/JohnXenos_thumb.jpg" width="204" border="0"></a> John spent his
life going across the mountains of Crete finding churches that had been
neglected and rehabilitating them. He was often led by visions. In
one case God tells him to build a church at the site of a mnemeia (a
monument -- presumably the tombs?) to Sts. Eutuchios and Eutuxianos. He
rebuilt a church of St. George and provided it with a cistern so that they could
grow food there. His most famous foundation was at a place called
Myriokephala where he established a monastery on the site of a large "Greek
building" (ellenikon ktisma); he later founded a
metoichi (smaller dependent monastery) of St. Patapios and provides it with a
garden and fruitbearing trees. A Byzantine typika (a document describing
the rules and often the foundation of a monastery) exists for the monastery at
Myriokephala and <a href="http://www.doaks.org/typikaPDF/typ014.pdf">has been
translated</a>. He eventually retires near Kisamos in Western Crete.
The Life of John Xenos is a good example of how Byzantine saints lives
present a transformed landscape in the Early Middle Byzantine period. The
rebuilding and refounding of churches by not only John but also by his older
contemporary, St. Nikon O Metanoeite, in Crete produced a religious landscape of
the island that was significantly reshaped in the generation after the
Nicephoras Phokas returned the island to Byzantine rule after over a century of
Arab occupation. There are other examples of this process for mainland
Greece (I have studied Theodore of Kythera who settles in an abandoned church on
Kythera). On Crete and elsewhere these saints lives follow a similar
pattern: the saint happens upon a pre-existing sacred site that has been
neglected, and the saint, sometimes after a vision, restores, rebuilds, or
somehow resanctifies the site. This process creates an interesting interplay
between continuity (i.e. the pre-existence of a site) and change (the restored
building and institutions) which allows continuity and change to persist
simultaneous in the Byzantine landscape.
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TITLE: "The Social Network", Facebook, Archaeology
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: the-social-netw
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DATE: 11/29/2007 12:45:58 AM

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I am by nature a "late adopter". I think that I got my first email
account in 1997 -- hardly the cutting edge -- I don't (yet) have an iPod and
don't really understand iTunes (and have been too nervous to buy any music from
it!!) even though <a href="http://www.und.edu/">UND</a> is an iTunes
University. Despite my Luddite tendencies, I have begun to wade
tentatively into the world of the "New Media" (my awkwardness is manifest in my
use of quotes and the definite article). I am struggling to get my footing
amidst all the technologies available, and this compounded with my natural
tentativeness has led to me to adopt certain technologies and services and
neglect others almost randomly. I rely a good bit on Sam Fee's practical
<a href="http://www.thefee.net/delirium/">Arranged Delirium blog</a>. For
example, I just recently discovered <a
href="http://www.facebook.com/">Facebook</a>, prompted largely by Katie
Pettegrew's (the infamous <a href="http://home.messiah.edu/~dpettegrew/">David
Pettegrew</a>'s lovely wife) suggestion that <a
href="http://www.chss.iup.edu/pkap/">PKAP</a> get a <a
href="http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=8860215294">PKAP Facebook Group</a>
to communicate more effectively with the extended PKAP team (and our small, but
growing group of alumni). We are certainly not the <a
href="http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=6024392061">first archaeological
project</a> to get a Facebook account. So, I created <a
href="http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=724949227">my own Facebook
account</a> and, in the process, discovered that I have a <a
href="http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=7389195165">fan club</a> (what the
???) and joined a group (the Ancient World Bloggers Group). So we are now
"Social Networking" or "Socially Networked" or something. To go along
with my new found spirit of adventure and participation in "the" social network
(I might even be "on the grid" now, but I am not sure), I have also uploaded <a
href="http://del.icio.us/WilliamCaraher">my blog list</a> to del.icio.us.
I had previously kept my master bloglist in an Access Database and thought
myself pretty clever. As I have promised in the past, I am working on some
kind of article on a newcomer's view of blogging, the New Media, and
archaeology, so I've begun to look more critically and carefully at various
blogs. My blog list should help make some of my research more
transparent. 
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TITLE: Two New Byzantine Churches in the Corinthia?
STATUS: Publish
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DATE: 11/28/2007 12:39:19 AM

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The southeastern Corinthia is a not a particularly well known area to most
visitors to Greece. It's rugged country, with few amenities of interest to
the casual tourist (although the small harbor town of Korphos is lovely).
To put it in perspective, it is so far out of the way that the <a
href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/Membership/description.htm">Regular Program</a> of
the <a href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/">American School of Classical Studies</a>
doesn't even go there -- although there is a fine ashlar tower at a place called
Are Mbartze. Unlike the much visited Corinthian plain, however, the
southeastern Corinthia has Byzantine churches. In the immediate vicinity
of the town of Sophiko there are at least 5 of them. <a
Writer/image_thumb_8.png" width="404" border="0"></a> The
southeastern Corinthia To my mind the Koimesis at Steiri is
the most scenic and perhaps the most important. <a
eWriter/PanayiaSteiri.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width:
alt="PanayiaSteiri"
Writer/PanayiaSteiri_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> The Panayia at Steiri Byzantinists are attracted by
churches like moths to a lamp. The churches of the southeastern Corinthia
attracted among others A. Orlandos and Tim Gregory. The former provided a
basic chronology of the churches there and the latter conducting an intensive
survey there in the mid 1980s treating among other things a curious system of
fortification at Mt. Tsalika which towers above the village of Sophiko and
overlooks the main road south from the Corinthia in the Epidauria. (Orlandos,
ABME 1 (1935), 1ff., Gregory, "The Medieval Site of Mt. Tsalika near
Sophiko," in P. Lock and G.D.R. Sanders, The Archaeology of Medieval Greece
(Oxford 1996), 61ff. For this route in antiquity see: M. Dixon, Disputed
Territories: Interstate Arbitration in the Northeast Peloponnese, ca. 250-150
B.C., Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, Ohio State 2000; The area was
investigated intensively by <a
href="http://www.usi.edu/libarts/history/MDixon/">Michael Dixon</a> in the late
1990s, by the <a
Korinthia Archaeological Survey</a> in the early 2000s, and now by the <a
href="http://mailer.fsu.edu/~dpullen/SHARP/">Saronic Harbors Exploration
Project</a>). In any event, in an article in the 2006 Deltion of the
Christian Archaeological Society (M. Kappas and Y. Fousteris, "The Reassessment
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of Two Byzantine Churches at Sophiko, Corinthia," DChAE 28 (2006), 61-

72), M Kappas and Y. Fousteris make the argument that two of the churches in
this area that Orlandos dated to the 17th or 18th century should be considered
late-13th century in date. They are of unusual design: Ay. Antonios at
Tourla and Hypapanti are both single-aisled cross-in-square church with cross
arms of unequal length. The eastern and western arms of the cross are
longer than the north and south arms. They argue that the Hypapanti
has traces of 13th century wall painting in the tympana of one cross arm.
St. Antonios has a number of architectural features that have parallels with
other 13th century churches in the vicinity. Of particular interest are
circular recesses cut in limestone for the insertion of decorative plates around
the west door which is further defined by a single-arched, dog-tooth
frieze. The cuttings in stone for the insertion of plates appears
also at the known Byzantine church of Taxiarchs and the Koimesis nearby.
(A better-known example of this technique can be found at the much-discussed
13th century church at Merbaka in the Argolid). The most
interesting thing about the possibility of two "new" Byzantine churches in the
area is that they would date to the same period as much of the pottery
discovered by Gregory's survey of Mt. Tsalikas. Gregory argued that the
fortifications there might be of Frankish foundation. It would be
intriguing to consider the two small 13th century churches (the Hypapanti is on
its slopes) as contemporary and perhaps even Frankish in foundation (as some
would argue for the church at Merbaka). This is as good an excuse
to visit the southeastern Corinthia as any that I have heard (although probably
not enough to put it on the tourist itinerary!).
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TITLE: Eastern Korinthia Archaeological Survey on the Web
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: eastern-korinth
DATE: 11/26/2007 12:59:22 AM

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<a
eWriter/EKAS_LeaderPhoto.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-
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alt="EKAS_LeaderPhoto"
Writer/EKAS_LeaderPhoto_thumb.jpg" width="504" border="0"></a> After a
bit of a sabbatical, the <a
Korinthia Archaeological Survey</a> (EKAS) has returned to the web (albeit
only in beta... for now). <a
href="http://home.messiah.edu/~dpettegrew/">David Pettegrew</a> and I have put
up a very basic <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/EKASPage/EKASHome.html">EKAS
page</a> that includes a very basic <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/EKASTimeMap/disk_EKAS.html">int
eractive map</a>. Survey projects on the web are tricky things.
 <a href="http://classics.uc.edu/nvap/">Nemea Valley Archaeological
Project</a> <a href="http://classics.uc.edu/prap/">Pylos Regional
Archaeological Project</a> <a href="http://www.scsp.arts.gla.ac.uk/">Sydney
Cyprus Survey Project</a> <a href="http://www.taesp.arts.gla.ac.uk/">Troodos
Archaeological and Environmental Survey Project</a> <a
href="http://cobweb.ecn.purdue.edu/~rauhn/">Rough Cilicia Archaeological Survey
Project</a> <a href="http://www.ucl.ac.uk/kip/">Kythera Island
Project</a> <a href="http://www.chss.iup.edu/pkap/">Pyla-Koutsopetria
Archaeological Project </a> <a href="http://kythera.osu.edu/">Australia
Paliochora Kythera Archaeological Survey</a> <a
href="http://mailer.fsu.edu/~dpullen/SHARP/">Saronic Harbors Exploration
Project</a> <a href="http://extras.ha.uth.gr/sikyon/en/">Sikyon Survey
Project</a> <a href="http://www.millsaps.edu/svp/">The Shala Valley
Project</a> As these links suggest, survey project websites are a mixed
bag. (In fact I could not find any presence on the web for some projects
like the Nikopolis Survey and the massive, long running, and complex <a
href="http://traumwerk.stanford.edu:3455/multiplefields/Home">Argolid
Exploration Project</a> (aka Southern Argolid Survey)). It seems to me
that since many survey projects tend to be less stable institutional entities
with life spans between a few years and a decade and make little investment in
semipermanent, physical infrastructure (e.g. dig houses, site guards, fences, et
c.), this often translates to instability on the web. <a
href="http://www.agathe.gr/">Big</a> <a
href="http://www.catalhoyuk.com/">digs</a>, in contrast, with their well-
developed infrastructures, long term (and sometimes permanent) staff, and
persistent financial commitments from home institutions seem to have better
chances for producing a stable presence on the Internet. The preceding
links to survey projects show how most (but not all!) have broken links,
pictures that fail to appear, or offer little more than static data (nice
photos, some maps... in fact, much of this doesn't count as data at all; of
course, some surveys, like the the Sydney Cyprus Survey Project, have archived
their data officially in places like the <a
href="http://ahds.ac.uk/catalogue/collection.htm?uri=arch-323-1">Arts and
Humanities Data Service</a> ). None of these observations are
profound, and this is not to suggest that EKAS is better. In fact, EKAS
totally vanished from the web for a time (and because it's previous home <a
title="http://web.stcloudstate.edu/eleftheria/"
href="http://web.stcloudstate.edu/eleftheria/">http://web.stcloudstate.edu/eleft
heria/</a> blocked robots like the <a
href="http://www.archive.org/index.php">Internet Archive</a> the site is gone
from public view in a profound way! One cannot even "excavate" an early version
of the site). This is all to say that EKAS has reemerged, and the only
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reason that it has come back is because for David Pettegrew's class in <a
href="http://home.messiah.edu/~dpettegrew/Syllabus_Archaeology%20&%20History
.htm">Classical Archaeology</a>. So, enjoy it while you can!
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AUTHOR: maddy
IP: 71.128.125.1
URL:
DATE: 11/26/2007 07:48:10 PM
A site about EKAS would have been really useful about a year ago, when I was
writing my master's...not as a resource in a traditional sense, but still handy.
It seems to me that even without publishing data online, project websites at the
very least serve two basic purposes: 1) to give the general public an idea of
what the project is and why it is important, and 2) to give those interested in
learning more the resources to do so (bibliographies, contacts, etc). In this
sense the website can function as a portal and is a good way of communicating
with the public (if you're into that kind of thing). I'm still shocked by how
many projects don't have websites.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Shawn
IP: 207.253.59.6
DATE: 11/27/2007 09:42:01 AM
Have you seen the Omeka site? http://omeka.org/ It might be a useful suite of
tools for putting up survey data in the dynamic way you mention, and would also
serve the purposes suggested in the comment by Maddy.
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TITLE: 100 Posts
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: 100-posts
DATE: 11/25/2007 04:41:47 AM

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1339
Just some quick metadata after 100 posts. The average length of a blog
is just under 400 words (I've written about 39,000 words since the blog's
inception). Unique Page Views: 4575 Average per Day: 20.58 <a
Writer/image_thumb_7.png" width="404" border="0"></a> I've been monitoring the site using <a
href="http://www.google.com/analytics/">Google Analytics</a> since the beginning
of November. It allows me to talk some about where my views come
from. I have had hits from over 30 countries (with particular volume from
the US, Denmark (thanks to <a href="http://www.iconoclasm.dk/">Iconoclasm</a>),
the UK, and Canada). One hit from South America (Argentina) and none so
far from Africa. I get regular visitors from India, China, Singapore, and,
of course, Australia. Over 30 states are represented with most hits from
Minnesota (apparently <a href="http://www.und.edu/">UND</a>'s IP Addresses run
through East Grand Forks), Pennsylvania, California, Ohio and New
York. Strangely no hits from Delaware yet (that's where I grew up!).
eWriter/HitMap.png"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; border-left:
0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="254" alt="HitMap"
Writer/HitMap_thumb.png" width="404" border="0"></a> The
upward trend is largely the product of links or references on several high
volume blogs (especially <a href="http://grandforkslife.blogspot.com/">Grand
Forks Life</a>, <a href="http://electricarchaeologist.wordpress.com/">Electric
Archaeologist</a>, the <a href="http://blegen.blogspot.com/">Blegen library</a>,
and <a href="http://www.iconoclasm.dk/">Iconoclasm</a>) which went up in Early
October. Moreover, as my blog grows it picks up more <a
href="http://www.google.com">Google</a> hits. Browsers are
more or less evenly split between Internet Explorer and Firefox with just a few
hits from Safari. I think I am responsible for all the hits from Opera (I
experimented with it for a few weeks last month). Thanks for
reading! I had planned a long(ish) article tentatively entitled:
"MetaBlogging Archaeology: Blogging Archaeology and the Archaeology of Blogging"
to celebrate my 100th post, but it's not done yet. I think I'll put it up
to celebrate my 5,000th unique view.
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AUTHOR: Mike
EMAIL: mmahaffie@comcast.net
IP: 71.200.188.152
URL: http://mahaffie.blogspot.com
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DATE: 11/25/2007 07:31:33 AM

Let this be your first hit from Delaware. Cheers!
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TITLE: Conference and Research Programme at Aarhus
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BASENAME: conference-and
DATE: 11/24/2007 12:15:42 AM

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<a href="http://www.au.dk/da">University of Aarhus</a> in Denmark has joined
the growing number of universities to have a specific program(me) in the study
of Late Antiquity. Their <a href="http://www.lateantiquity.dk">Art and
Social Identities in Late Antiquity</a> program has a solid list of participants
and a <a href="http://www.lateantiquity.dk/working-papers/">working papers</a>
page. Aarhaus will also host a graduate student seminar on the "<a
href="http://www.iconoclasm.dk/?p=225">Art of Destruction</a>" and have posted
the <a href="http://www.iconoclasm.dk/?p=240#more-240">program online</a>.
It looks very interesting and shows the real potential of diachronic and cross-
disciplinary study of an archaeological phenomenon.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Troels
IP: 192.38.32.3
DATE: 11/24/2007 06:20:56 AM
Thanks for the plug, Bill. It's Aarhus, by the way, not Aarhaus ;-) The Danish
spelling is √Örhus.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Bill C
IP: 193.92.187.43
URL:
DATE: 11/24/2007 06:38:47 AM
Ooops... can't blame spell check for that one, can I. Fixed now, though.
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TITLE: Inside Looking In: A Wondering about the American School of Classical
Studies
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: inside-looking
DATE: 11/23/2007 12:37:16 AM

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One of the most interesting things so far about my year in Athens is becoming
re-acquainted with the <a href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/">American School of
Classical Studies</a>. The American School is different things to
different people; it's a research library, a social club, a lecture venue, and
the liaison between the Greek government and the American archaeologists in
Greece. At its heart, however, is the <a
href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/Membership/description.htm">Regular
Program</a>. I've been lucky enough to contribute to the Regular Program
this year, and this has given me the opportunity to observe its distinct culture
first hand. <a
are good graduate students from strong programs who spend the academic year
traveling around Greece to sites. The students travel in a big bus
together, live together in <a
href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/about/facilities.htm">Loring Hall</a>, eat
together, study in the <a href="http://blegen.blogspot.com/">Blegen library</a>
together, and relax together. The Regular Members have just returned from
their final major trip (they have one more short trip to Crete). The trips
run about 10 days each and involve visiting numerous major and minor
archaeological sites. The members visit these sites in all weather and
give short site reports -- this past weekend we heard a site report on the
Archaic temple at Isthmia in a steady rain. In some cases, just visiting
the site invokes a palpable machismo especially the combination of brisk, yet
dignified, hikes up steep hills and relatively obscure sites (Askra is not
technically obscure, but, say, Zarax in the Peloponnesus would perhaps
qualify). At the end of the trips, the students are a tired but, indeed,
tightly bonded group. A kind of archaeological boot camp! From what
I understand, this has been the deal, more or less, for the past 50+
years. This relatively intense experience forges a bond of unity among the
students and many identify their time at the American School as a unique episode
in their academic development (many, for example, include their year or years
here as a separate line in the education category of their <a
href="http://home.messiah.edu/~dpettegrew/cv.htm">CVs</a> placing it parallel,
as it were, with their undergraduate and graduate education). I recently
discovered that there is an <a
href="http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~srotroff/ASCSAalum/">American School Alumni
Organization</a> (although I might have known this before), and apparently
regular members from various years get together at organized event at the <a
href="http://www.archaeological.org/webinfo.php?page=10096">APA/AIA Annual
Meeting</a>. As I have noted elsewhere, part of the American School
experience involves creating a scholarly and professional identity through
formal academic exercises like site reports or "Tea Talks" (relatively formal
1342
presentation on ongoing research) as well as less formal behaviors like

lunchtime conversations. Even individual research becomes a communal
event: regular members are each assigned space at tables in the main reading
room of the Blegen library, for example, which allows them to observe each
others' study and research habits. The line between personal and
professional identity, which is razor thin among most academics, is blurred
entirely at the school. Until the recent opening of the impressive
auditorium in <a href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/cotsen/">Cotsen Hall</a>,
visiting lecturers and Regular members delivered talks in the dinning room and
saloni of the Loring Hall, where the students live, dine, and relax.
Depending on one's view of an academic career and the place of our discipline
within the American academia, the conflation of the private and professional at
the American School is either a pious invocation of traditional collegiate (or
even older monastic) forms of academic culture or the kind of environment that
promotes a kind of disciplinary, intellectual, and social cohesion (as a polite
term) that can bewilder to our colleagues in other fields. Moreover, the
tendency of "American School people", most of whom have a genuine professional
and intellectual interest in the archaeology and history of Greece, to return to
the school to contribute their time and knowledge ensures that the identity and
traditions of the school as an institution are continuously reinforced (although
this is not to imply that they are stable or unchanging). Having
spent considerable time at "the School" over the last 10 years has made it
difficult for me to assess its real impact on my academic and intellectual
development (I did develop an interest in epigraphy here...) or to understand
fully how the environment here shapes the discipline (in both intended and
unintended ways). It would be interesting, indeed, to consider how the
environment of the American School -- both through its expressed academic goals
and its social and professional culture -- has influenced the discipline of
Classics and Mediterranean Archaeology in the U.S. Do, for example,
cohorts of regular members (and many scholars, even years after their time in
Athens, remember the names of their colleagues in the Regular Program and have
shared experiences) possess distinct intellectual or academic identities?
Do these cohorts exert power or influence outside the realm of the American
School like fraternities at the big state Universities in the Old
South? Presumably it one could compare American School cohorts to
those present at particular moments in places like the <a
href="http://www.ias.edu/">Institute for Advanced Study</a> or <a
href="http://www.doaks.org/">Dumbarton Oaks</a>. It seems hard to imagine
that the social experiences of each cohort here at the school, which in their
intensity can approach a kind of hazing (hearing a talk about an Archaic temple
in a steady rain!!), would have no impact on how the various interrelated
disciplines (archaeology, philology, history, art history) developed.
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TITLE: A few quick hits
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BASENAME: a-few-quick-hit
DATE: 11/21/2007 01:37:44 AM

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Just a few interesting links today: <ul> <li>David Gill at <a
href="http://lootingmatters.blogspot.com/">Looting Matters</a> has <a href="
http://lootingmatters.blogspot.com/search/label/Cyprus">laid out the basic
arguments </a>surrounding the current wrangle over the State Department's stand
on the importation of Cypriot Coins. <li>I've just discovered Sebastian Heath's
remarkable online <a href="http://classics.uc.edu/troy/grbpottery/">work-in-
progress monograph</a>. His <a
href="http://mediterraneanceramics.blogspot.com/">blog</a> is great as well.
<li><a href="http://www.xanga.com/jpatrow">Joe Patrow's</a> new documentary
project is arriving in peoples' hands even as we speak. He prepared a
series of shorts from his footage from last field season and hopefully we can
get them up on UND's iTunes Store by the end of the year. <li>I've
gathered all the <a href="http://www.chss.iup.edu/pkap/">PKAP</a> related blog
material in <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/BlogFeedPageGoogle.html">one
place</a>, and there are some notable new additions: </li> <ul> <li>Scott
Moore's <a
href="http://ancienthistory.typepad.com/ancient_history_ramblings/">blog</a> is
becoming well-established by the standards of the blogosphere. <li>His
success seems to have prompted <a
href="http://home.messiah.edu/~dpettegrew/">Dave Pettegrew</a> to set up another
<a href="http://ancienthistory.typepad.com/history_in_the_dirt/">rival blog</a>
(surely in the dark of night!). Not much there yet, but if it is half as
entertaining as his <a href="http://www.dramatherapy.blogspot.com/">wife's
blog</a>, it will be a welcome addition to my daily reading.
</li></ul></ul>
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TITLE: The Corinthia and Survey Archaeology
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: the-corinthia-a
DATE: 11/20/2007 04:36:13 AM

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My talk on the Fourth Trip, in the Corinthia, was on survey archaeology,
particularly the work of the Eastern Korinthia Archaeological Survey
(EKAS). No one in this group of <a
has any experience doing survey. This is particularly striking because
many of the folks at the school right now, from <a
href="http://classics.uc.edu/faculty_staff/davis_informal.html">Jack Davis</a>
and <a href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/corinth/main_st_director1.html">Guy
Sanders</a> to <a href="http://isthmia.osu.edu/teg/">Tim Gregory</a> and myself,
have spent time doing survey and have some investment in the method. In
any event, I introduced, in a very general, way the survey of the Corinthian
landscape. I focused my brief presentation on four things.
None of them are new, but this is the gist: 1) Survey and
Colonialism. I began with the idea that survey had as long and august a
history in Mediterranean archaeology as excavation, and, moreover, it had roots
in the same colonialist impulse as the first large scale excavations. In
fact, I suggest that in some ways survey is more colonialist in that mapping the
landscape and producing inventories of archaeological "resources" represents one
of the most basic tasks that colonizers undertook in their efforts to
domesticate "the other" by translating terra incognita into scientific
(i.e. basically Western) notation and assigning it significance and meaning (in
a recent email discussion with <a
href="http://home.messiah.edu/~dpettegrew/">Dave Pettegrew</a>, he offered the
phase "appropriating knowledge" to which I objected (ironically)). I
suggested that the difficulties EKAS experienced in getting permits might be
tied (in a very big picture kind of way) to the colonial legacy of Survey,
particularly, the difficulties in "controlling the activities" of large scale
regional surveys which sent teams out in the countryside in a way that was
difficult (or manpower intensive) for local officials to supervise. One
can almost see the survey archaeologists as guerilla archaeologists out beyond
the settlement and village both appropriating the countryside for scientific
archaeology and (in some ways) using this intimate local knowledge for their own
advantage. This can be contrasted to large scale, contemporary
excavations, which take place (in some instances) in the village surrounded by
fences, under the watchful eye of the community. It is theatrical and a
spectacle and therefore somehow constrained by the spectators gaze. <a
eWriter/EKAS_Map.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; border-
left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="284" alt="EKAS_Map"
Writer/EKAS_Map_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> 2) Surveying the
Suburbs. Permit restriction, expense, and the incredible logistical
demands all have influenced the decline in large scale, regional survey in the
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Greece. In its place, more localized and focused survey has emerged (it is
much easier to monitor a small scale survey centered on a known site).
Focused, smaller scale survey have had a long tradition in Greece with surveys
in the suburbs of known sites being a component of the <a
href="http://river.blg.uc.edu/nvap/">Nemea Valley Archaeological Project</a>,
the Cambridge Boeotia Project, and the <a
orion_archaeological_project/index.html">Ohio Boeotia Expedition</a> (and it
appears to be the focus of a new project called the <a
href="http://web.uvic.ca/~bburke/EBAP.htm">Eastern Boeotia Archaeological
Project</a>). While almost all survey has sought to study the hinterland
(i.e. not the center), the real variation has occurred only in how far the
"hinter" the land really is. Because permit limitation prevented it from
being a genuine regional survey, EKAS reflected the tradition of suburban survey
by focusing primarily on the eastern suburbs of a known urban center. Two
issues are associated with the "suburban" focus of this survey: (a) How do we
define and understand the limits to our survey area and the concentration of
pottery within it. This is the old "what is a site problem" that most
survey archaeologist know only too well. (b) How do we cope with incredibly high
artifact densities in an efficient and responsible way. Traditional
sampling strategies (site based collections, the collection of all "diagnostic
sherds" et c.) break down when confronted with the continuous high density
carpet of unit after unit with densities of over 2000 artifacts/hectare.
3) Thresholds of Intensity. The problem encountered working in an
environment with astronomical artifact densities is where does one set the
threshold of intensity. The threshold of intensity refers, in the case of
EKAS, to not only our desire to collect or document artifacts on the surface in
a very intensive way, but also consequently document their environmental
context. EKAS, for example, was "bogged down" by a combination of high
artifact densities and a very thorough set of forms that sought to document
almost every conceivable variable an archaeologist might encounter in a field
(visibility, vegetation type, surface clast type, surface clast size, soil type,
et c.). In theory this was an excellent idea, but in practice it prevented
us from surveying a particularly large section of the Korinthian
landscape. Moreover, when analyzing the data we discovered that some of
the variables that we recorded did not correlate with archaeological features in
any demonstrable way. This, then, marked the threshold of intensity -- the
exact place where data collection inhibited the overall goals of the survey,
which in the case of EKAS was to produce a meaningful sample of the suburbs of
Korinth. In our defense, we didn't realize that we had reached the
thresholds of intensity until we actually analyzed the data. 4) A
Survey Discourse. The overall impulse behind increasing intensity of data
collection in survey is to produce a landscape that will hold up to scientific
scrutiny. A "scientific landscape" would approach a kind of objective
reality that can then be held up against excavation (the seemingly more
scientific older brother of survey) in a positive light. The overarching
assumption is: "if we can somehow control for all the variables then survey data
will have irrefutable meaning and have secured its place in the archaeological
discourse." The hope that survey archaeology can produce the same kind of
meaning and support the same kinds of arguments as excavation, however, is
problematic from the start. First and foremost, survey data, with few
exceptions, must rely upon excavated contexts for all ceramic
chronologies. Secondly, survey archaeology only ever produces a sample of
the known material on the survey (and the level of intensity dictates how large
a sample this is). Consequently survey is not a highly precise
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instrument and it is rarely suitable to answer the same kinds of questions that
excavation can answer. In particular, it is much better suited to
inquiries framed by the Braudelian longue dur√©e whereas excavations are better
suited to shedding light on the historical eventement. This shouldn't be
particularly surprising as intensive survey in Greece was developed primarily by
prehistorians who were interested in long term processes (Landscape
Archaeology as Long Term History as it were). For those of us interested in
the historical period, however, this means that we have to be willing to
construct arguments that function of multiple scales that may or may not (as is
the case with Braudel) intersect in a precise way. This involves the
development of a Survey Discourse for the historical period, a project that is
currently underway, but far from being complete. <a
eWriter/AcroSm_1.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px;
border-bottom-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px" height="272" alt="AcroSm"
Writer/AcroSm_thumb_1.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a>
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TITLE: Trip Four and the Corinthian Countryside
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
ALLOW PINGS: 1
BASENAME: trip-four-and-t
DATE: 11/19/2007 12:32:28 AM

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I visited the <a
href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/Membership/description.htm">Regular Members</a> on
trip four as they visited Panhellenic sanctuary at Isthmia and the immediate
vicinity of Corinth. It is always fun to visit Isthmia where I first
experienced archaeological fieldwork over 10 years ago. <a
href="http://isthmia.osu.edu/teg/">Tim Gregory</a>, the Director the <a
href="http://isthmia.osu.edu/">OSU Isthmia Excavations</a>, showed off the
magnificent monochrome mosaic in the Roman bath there (another brilliant Roman
contribution to a Greek sanctuary): <a
eWriter/IsthmiaSM.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width:
alt="IsthmiaSM"
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Writer/IsthmiaSM_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> One of the

downsides of the late fall component of the <a
href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/Membership/description.htm">Regular Program</a> is
that the weather begins to turn. On our day in Corinth it rained
intermittently, and we were covered by low clouds. In these conditions,
the countryside displays a whole range of different colors. <a
eWriter/VineyardSM.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width:
alt="VineyardSM"
Writer/VineyardSM_thumb.jpg" width="272" border="0"></a> Olive trees and orange trees hung heavy with fruit. <a
eWriter/OlivesSM.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px;
border-bottom-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px" height="273" alt="OlivesSM"
Writer/OlivesSM_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> And the Temple of Apollo at Corinth took on an even more
dramatic appearance: <a
eWriter/ApolloTempleSM.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-
alt="ApolloTempleSM"
Writer/ApolloTempleSM_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> The dramatic landscape provided a great backdrop to talk about
survey archaeology in the Korinthian Countryside. 
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Susie
IP: 208.107.230.21
URL:
DATE: 11/19/2007 11:24:02 AM
Your photos are spectacular. I especially like the photo of the Temple with the
sunlight hitting the tops of the columns and the omnious clouds in the
background. Well done, love.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: maddy
IP: 71.128.125.1
URL:
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DATE: 11/19/2007 04:04:26 PM

Nice photos!
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TITLE: Latin and Greek in the American University
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
ALLOW PINGS: 1
BASENAME: latin-and-greek
DATE: 11/16/2007 12:58:00 AM

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About a month ago Marilyn Hagerty and I had a <a
cient-languag.html">brief and pleasant correspondence</a> after one of her <a
href="http://www.grandforksherald.com/articles/index.cfm?id=54403&section=co
lumnists&columnist=Marilyn%20Hagerty">charming columns</a> (which can be
yours for $2.95!) promoting the study of Latin at the University and High School
level. On Wednesday the <a href="http://www.mla.org/">Modern
Language Association</a> published a report on foreign language enrollments in
US universities. The publicity around the report focused on the growing
enrollments in Arabic, Chinese, et c. in US universities and the continued
expansion of the study of languages at American universities in general.
This report also showed that enrolments in Latin and Ancient Greek courses
have grown apace. In fact, the study of Ancient Greek has grown faster
than the general increase in the study of language since 1998, showing a 24%
increase in enrolments compared to 17% growth in the study of languages in
general. Latin slipped only a bit off the pace with enrolments growing 14% since
1998. In fact, the the growing enrolments in Ancient Greek have kept pace
with increasingly popular languages like Chinese (20% since 1998) and Japanese
(21%). Moreover, enrolments in Latin and Ancient Greek have managed to
hold on to their share of the foreign language market despite the rapid growth
of languages like American Sign Language and, predictably, Arabic. Since
1960, Latin and Greek have held steady even as traditional stalwarts like French
and German steadily lost market share to new languages and the growing
popularity of Spanish. More interestingly still, students who
enroll in Ancient Greek at the introductory level are as likely to stick around
for upper level course (the ratio of introductory to upper level courses are
4:1) as students enrolled in French and German and more likely to stick it out
than students enrolled in Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, or Arabic. (Latin doesn't
fair as well with a 6:1 introductory to upper level ratio, so Marilyn Hagerty
still has work to do!). The full report is <a
href="http://www.mla.org/enroll_survey06_fin">here</a>. <a
href="http://www.und.edu/">UND</a> struggles to offer consistently Latin and
Greek. Dan Erickson, in our one man <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/dept/lang/classics.html">Classics Department</a>,
does the best he can to offer lower and upper level courses in Latin every
semester. This study would seem to suggest that, if we offer it, they will
come. So, perhaps it's time, on the University's <a
href="http://www2.und.edu/our/125th/">125-iversary</a>, to celebrate the kind of
scholars who founded the University by hiring another Classicist, perhaps a
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Hellenist, and contribute to the continued success of the study of the Ancient
Greek (and Roman) world!
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TITLE: Corinth in Late Antiquity
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
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BASENAME: corinth-in-late
DATE: 11/15/2007 12:46:43 AM

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Last night I heard Michael Walbank present a talk, <a href="http://www.cig-
icg.gr/en/news_events/lectures.html">"The Christian community in Late Roman
& Early Byzantine Corinth"</a>, at the <a href="http://www.cig-
icg.gr/en/index_en.html">Canadian Institute</a> on the Late Roman/Early
Byzantine inscriptions from Corinth. Walbank revised the reading and
interpretation of many of the texts published by Kent in Corinth 8:3. (He
and his wife published an article on the epitaph of Maria wife of Euplous in <a
href="http://www.atypon-link.com/ASCS/doi/pdf/10.2972/hesp.75.2.267">Hesperia
75</a>). His talk introduced me to many interesting new denizens of Late Antique
Corinth: Muleteers names Theodoros, a Singoularios called Polychronois, and
perhaps even an exiled Bishop of Tyre named Irenaios. The paper was first
present at the University of Texas, perhaps last winter, at a conference that
brought together "Christian types" and "Archaeology types" to discuss the
context for Early Christian Corinth. My impression is that this conference
will be published (like the first such meeting in the book <a
href="http://www.amazon.com/Urban-Religion-Roman-Corinth-
Interdisciplinary/dp/0674016602">Urban Religion in Roman Corinth</a>.)
eWriter/AcroSm.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; border-left:
0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="304" alt="AcroSm"
Writer/AcroSm_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> As I sat waiting
for his talk to begin (and chatted awkwardly with folks afterwards) I began to
make a list of all the scholarship produced in the last 5-10 years on Late Roman
Corinthia. Much of the credit for this goes to Charles William, longtime
director of the Corinth Excavations, and his successor <a
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href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/corinth/main_st_director1.html">Guy Sanders</a>
(who along with Kathleen Slane has worked to revise the chronology of Late Roman
ceramics: See Hesperia 74; as well as the publication of a Late Roman bath in <a
href="http://www.jstor.org/view/0018098x/ap010268/01a00020/0">Panayia
Field</a>), and, of course, <a href="http://isthmia.osu.edu/teg/">Tim
Gregory</a> with among other things Isthmia V. In the
last 10 years you have (and I am sure this is a partial list...): <a
href="http://www.amazon.com/Corinth-First-City-Greece-Graeco-
Roman/dp/9004109226/ref=sr_1_1/105-1195296-
6640464?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1194770396&sr=8-1">Richard Rothaus</a>'s
book Corinth: The First City of Greece: An Urban History of Late Antique
Cult & Religion. (Leiden: Brill, 2000), which was his 1993 OSU
dissertation. <a
href="http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~classics/people/robinson-b.html">Betsy
Robinson's</a> 2001 Dissertation at Penn: Fountains and the Culture of Water
at Roman Corinth, takes a long look at the Late Antique phases of the city
center and its water supply. <a
href="http://home.messiah.edu/~dpettegrew/">David Pettegrew</a>, of course, has
been working on converting his 2006 dissertation, Corinth on the Isthmus:
studies of the end of an ancient landscape, into a book, and has written
several papers and articles on the topic. My 2003
dissertation looks some at the Corinthian basilicas and I have presented on a
paper on the Justinianic epigraphy from Isthmia and Corinth this summer at the
"<a href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/conferences/isthmia.htm">Half a Century on the
Isthmus</a>" Conference which I am currently revising for publication. <a
href="http://www.fci.msu.edu/facultyandstaff/frey.php">Jon Frey</a> has recently
completed a dissertation that looks, at least in part, at the use of spolia in
the Late Antique Hexamilion Wall. <a
href="http://www.wooster.edu/archaeology/faculty.html">P. Nick Kardulias</a> has
just published his 1988 dissertation as the book: <a
href="http://www.amazon.ca/Classical-Byzantine-Evolution-Antiquity-
Fortress/dp/1841718556/ref=sr_1_6/701-9709190-
0451548?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195108051&sr=1-6">From Classical to
Byzantine: Social Evolution in Late Antiquity and the Fortress at Isthmia,
Greece</a>. <a href="http://www.macalester.edu/~rife/">Joe
Rife</a>'s <a href="http://www.macalester.edu/classics/kenchreai/">Kenchreai
Cemetery Project</a>, now Kenchreai Exacavations, will continue to have a
serious interest in Late Antiquity as will his forthcoming Isthmia
volume. There are at least two dissertation in progress, Amelia
Brown's at Cal and Jeremy Ott's at NYU, that will look in some way at Late Roman
material from the Corinthia. I am sure that I have forgotten people, but
the impression remains striking nevertheless. There are dozens of
publications, research projects, and dissertations in the last decade alone on
Late Roman Corinth. It seems fair to suggest that in the next decade the
Corinthia will take its place among the best studied provincial region of the
Later Roman Empire.
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TITLE: Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project and the New Media
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
ALLOW PINGS: 1
DATE: 11/14/2007 08:44:52 AM

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PKAP has been active in employing "the New Media"; we have a growing list of
<a href="http://www.chss.iup.edu/pkap/podcasts/podcasts.htm">podcasts</a>, <a
href="http://www.chss.iup.edu/pkap/blogs.htm">blogs</a>, <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/Multimedia.html">video</a>, and
<a href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/disk_PKAP.html">interactive
maps</a> and even a presence in <a
href="http://slurl.com/secondlife/Crimson%20Island/55.5898/146.573">Second
Life</a> that makes the project and the site accessible to audiences around the
world. As we have developed our "New Media presence" I've begun to
explore (just a bit) what the various interfaces, genres, applications, and
techniques have to offer. As part of that, I've trying to navigate the
expanding body of analytical and interpretive material on the <a
href="http://www.acls.org/ex-cyber_report.htm">role the New Media</a> has played
and will play in the humanities. It is striking, however, that it so much
of the (best) discussion of the New Media takes place in the New Media
itself. Indeed, the medium appears to be at least part of the
message. This is good in that many of the very accomplished practitioners
in any of the various media associated with the New Media movement demonstrate
by their arguments alone how effective sophisticated, interactive, integrated,
interfaces can be. Some of this preaching, however, must be
to the choir. For example, the best analysis, <a
href="http://www.thevalve.org/go/valve/article/academic_blogging_revisited/">com
mentary,</a> and justification for academic or intellectual blogging occurs on
blogs. As access to blogs requires only the most basic level of Internet
savvy, the discussions in the blogosphere were perhaps the first to transcend
their genre (or medium) and impact the world <a
href="http://insidehighered.com/views/2007/01/03/mclemee">outside</a> of their
traditional (gasp) audience. Other aspects of the expansive New
Media universe, however, will require a far greater degree of sophistication and
knowledge to fulfil their potential. Moreover, unlike blogs, which can be
interactive, but are not necessarily so, Media like Second Life, require
interaction not simply to justify their presence on the Web but actually to
fulfil their potential. Part of me say, we'll have to wait and see.
But that's not very fun or adventurous. 
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Aaron Barth
IP: 216.235.161.56
URL:
DATE: 11/14/2007 02:18:00 PM
Over Armistice/Veterans' Day, the Discovery or History Channel aired a show
entitled, "Band of Bloggers." A soldier who blogged from Mesopotamia said that
he was no revolutionary in being a blogger, but rather doing something timeless
-- writing about war. !
!
Whether Tacitus, George Orwell, or the recent Band of Bloggers, the important
information from varying perspectives gets recorded, and thus the only real
change is through the new technology/medium.!
!
I was merely reminded of this after reading your latest 11/14 post here, Bill.
!
!
Just a thought on the passing scene -- you should still consider making Second
Life a first-person shooter.
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TITLE: Follow up on Athens -- Broken Pieces and AIA Annual Meeting Overview
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
ALLOW PINGS: 1
BASENAME: follow-up-on-at
DATE: 11/13/2007 12:12:08 AM

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BODY:
First, Susie's post "<a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2007/11/at
hens---broken.html">Athens -- Broken Pieces</a>" has received rave
reviews! In fact, <a
href="http://www.clemson.edu/caah/art/faculty/kourelis/index.html">Kostis
Kourelis</a> forwarded to me a link to this very recent <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/09/world/europe/09athens.html?_r=2&oref
=slogin&oref=slogin">New York Times article</a>, which echoes the spirit of
Susie's post, if in a somewhat less gracious way: <blockquote> "In Athens
alone, swarms of scooters race down crowded sidewalks. Pedestrians struggle to
circumnavigate construction debris, torn-up pavement and mounds of refuse. The
greatest impediment, however, is the fleet of vehicles that each day mount the
city‚Äôs approximately 1,200 miles of tree-lined sidewalks or other walkways to
park."</blockquote> I'll be on the lookout for the efforts of the <a
href="http://www.streetpanthers.gr/">Street Panthers</a> to keep the sidewalks
accessible for pedestrians! Second, as a
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follow up to my post on the <a

href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2007/11/ai
a-annual-meet.html">AIA Annual Meeting</a>, <a
href="http://home.messiah.edu/~dpettegrew/">Dave Pettegrew</a>, the chair of the
<a href="http://www.squinch.und.edu/">Medieval and Post Medieval Archaeology of
Greece Interest Group of the AIA</a> sent along word that the IG will have its
annual meeting at Sunday, January 6th at 7AM in the Columbian room of the Hyatt
Regency Chicago. We'll have a agenda for the meeting together soon, but we
will certainly discuss plans for a panel at next years AIA meeting. I've
already floated ideas for a panel considering the influence of the Early
Travelers on the archaeology of the Medieval and Post-Medieval Mediterranean
(inspired by recent work by <a
href="http://www.fci.msu.edu/facultyandstaff/frey.php">Jon Frey</a> and Kostis
Kourelis) or perhaps a panel that looks at the place of the Medieval and Post-
Medieval world in our teaching narratives. We hope to have more and
(better) suggestions at the meeting in Chicago!
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Troels
IP: 90.185.37.168
DATE: 11/13/2007 01:33:40 AM
Hi Bill - I may try to stop in at the Chicago IG meeting, if that's ok? Troels
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Bill C
IP: 193.92.187.43
URL:
DATE: 11/13/2007 06:25:44 AM
Troels,!
!
Of course. By all means! If you are an AIA member, you should join the
Interest Group (it's free). Email David Pettegrew:
dpettegrew(at)messiah(dot)edu!
!
Bill
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Sebastian Heath
EMAIL: sebastian.heath@gmail.com
IP: 24.90.129.144
URL: http://mediterraneanceramics.blogspot.com/2007/10/ceramics-at-2008-aiaapa-
meetings-in.html
DATE: 11/14/2007 06:53:26 PM
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I hope this doesn't count as blogspam. If it does, please ignore.!

!
I've put together a list of AIA '08 talks related to ceramics. It's at
http://mediterraneanceramics.blogspot.com/2007/10/ceramics-at-2008-aiaapa-
meetings-in.html .
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Bill C
IP: 193.92.187.43
URL:
DATE: 11/15/2007 12:50:33 AM
Sebastian,!
!
This is not spam at all. Your blog:!
http://mediterraneanceramics.blogspot.com/!
needs to appear in my blog role. It's a very nice scholarly contribution.!
!
Bill
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TITLE: Greek Light
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
ALLOW PINGS: 1
BASENAME: greek-light
DATE: 11/12/2007 09:35:57 AM

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I am not a good photographer (especially by the standards of the
blogosphere... Troels at <a href="http://www.iconoclasm.dk/">Iconoclasm</a> has
great photos). Greek light helps, though. From the roof
outside my office: <a
eWriter/GreekLight2SM.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width:
alt="GreekLight2SM"
Writer/GreekLight2SM_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> <a
eWriter/GreekLight1SM.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width:
alt="GreekLight1SM"
Writer/GreekLight1SM_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> There's no point...
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TITLE: AIA Annual Meeting Overview
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
ALLOW PINGS: 1
BASENAME: aia-annual-meet
DATE: 11/11/2007 03:18:53 AM

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I perused the <a
href="http://www.archaeological.org/webinfo.php?page=10300">Program for the
AIA's 109th Annual Meeting</a> yesterday and have a little bevy of observations
(as one might expect). The first is a blatant <a
href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Advertisements-Myself-N-
Mailer/dp/0674005902/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1194767935&sr=8-
1">Advertisement For Myself</a> (and a tribute to <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/11/books/11mailer.html?hp">Norman Mailer's
memory</a>): 1) In the <a
p;sid=1J">Sunday Poster Session</a>, PKAP will present a poster that focuses on
the evolution of a project with a strong commitment to both teaching and
research by bringing in voices of students who have participated on the project,
namely Greg Fisher, Brandon Olson (now at Penn State), Brice Pierce, David
Terry, and Jessica Freas: <blockquote> <a
href="http://www.chss.iup.edu/pkap/">Pyla-Koutsopetria</a>: The
Evolution of a Survey Project <a
href="http://www.chss.iup.edu/rsmoore/">R. Scott Moore, Indiana
University of Pennsylvania</a>, <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/">William Caraher,
University of North Dakota</a>, <a
href="http://home.messiah.edu/~dpettegrew/">David Pettegrew, Messiah
College</a>, Greg Fisher, Oxford University, Brandon Olson,
University of North Dakota, Brice Pierce, University of New Hampshire,
<a href="http://www.und.edu/spotlights/davidterry.html">David
Terry, University of North Dakota</a>, and Jessica Freas,
Indiana University of Pennsylvania </blockquote> 2) <a
href="http://www.squinch.und.edu/">The Medieval and Post-Medieval Archaeology in
Greece Interest Group of the AIA</a> will have its colloquium in Sunday:
<a
1356
p;sid=6F">The Archaeology of Xenitia: Greek Immigration and Material

Culture</a>. 3) There is a panel called: <a
p;sid=2A">The Post Roman World</a>. It includes a paper by Guy Sanders and
Michael Boyd entitled: "Moving Homes: A Resistivity Survey of the Late Antique
City Wall East of the Forum at Corinth". 4) We would be remiss not to
mention the Corinth Panel highlighting the ongoing work of graduate students at
the <a href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/corinth/index.html">Corinth
Excavations</a>: <a
p;sid=5C">Corinthian Horizons: Space, Society and the Sacred in Ancient
Corinth</a>. The panel is chaired by Amelia Brown, who presented a paper
on Late Antique Corinth in our (soon to be published) <a
tm">AIA Colloquium last year</a>. This years Corinth panel reflects, in
part, the ever expanding group of folks working on Late Antiquity in Corinth (a
topic for a later, longer post...). In light of this in is interesting
that the title of the panel (invoking again Mailer's spirit) resonates gently
(and I am sure intentionally) with a <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/Dissertation.html">certain
work</a> on Late Antique Greece (tongue in cheek). Jeremy J. Ott's paper
on Late Roman burials in the forum should be particularly valuable contribution
to our understanding the the Late Antique City. Moreover, I've heard that
<a href="http://www.macalester.edu/~rife/">Joe Rife</a> will be the respondent
at this panel, and his nearby <a
href="http://www.macalester.edu/classics/kenchreai/">Kenchreai Cemetery
Project</a> (now, perhaps, Kenchreai Excavations), has a serious interest in
Late Antique levels. 5) Finally, one of the key members of
the PKAP team, Sarah Lepinski, will participate in this <a
p;sid=3H">supercool workshop</a> (I assume Sarah's contribution will center on
her work at Corinth): <blockquote> Session: 3H: Order and
Conflict: The Agency Role of Empires in the Levant and
Mediterranean Type: Workshop Timeslot: Saturday,
January 5, 9:00 AM - 12:00 PM Organizer(s): Gloria A. London, AIA
Seattle Society and √òystein LaBianca, Andrews University Panelists:
Gloria London, AIA Seattle Society, √òystein LaBianca, Andrews University,
Randall Younker, Andrews University, Derek Counts, University of Wisconsin,
Andrew Smith, Dowling College, Denise Demetriou, Michigan State University,
Andrew Goldman, Gonzaga University, Sarah Lepinski, Bryn Mawr College, Bethany
Walker, Grand Valley State University. </blockquote>
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Maddy Bray
IP: 76.170.0.106
1357
DATE: 11/13/2007 09:45:46 PM
Hey dude, will you be there? I didn't get to talk to you much last time.
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TITLE: Athens - Broken pieces
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
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BASENAME: athens---broken
CATEGORY: Susan Caraher's View
DATE: 11/09/2007 03:10:04 AM

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My wife Susie departs Athens early tomorrow morning. To celebrate
her visit, she has contributed some of her reflections to the blog
today... The most striking recollection I have each time I visit
Greece is the particular smell as soon as the airport doors part. It is not so
much a putrid stench, but a pungent pollution-filled reminder of being in an
enormous city. The smell of exhaust fumes, sea air, cigarettes and grilled meats
gives Athens a particularly identifiable aroma that is a world away from Grand
Forks' cleanliness. <a
eWriter/Traffic.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px;
border-bottom-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px" height="304" alt="Traffic"
Writer/Traffic_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> Athens Traffic in
the Rain On our journeys around Athens in the past 10 days or so, a
recurrent theme has come to mind. I have seen Athens in a new light since my
first trip here 10 years ago. Today, I can see past the Past to the realities of
the city trying to live with it's history. Athens is spectacular. On one
of our walks around the area of the Plaka, Acropolis, Agora and Kerimaikos I was
struck by the decay...decay of buildings, and of footpaths (one really needs to
pay attention when walking the narrow streets with broken concrete and pieces of
random rebar jutting out of the side of falling buildings), the homeless and the
helpless. Archaeological sites are everywhere. The reclamation of inner city
buildings has allowed for the gradual exposure of the ancient agora in the heart
of the city giving the impression of deeper levels of decay. Juxtaposed against
this view is the constant rebuilding. The beauty of a shiny new museum building
seems at odds with the surrounding buildings that have been victims of fire or
neglect. The sound of construction is everywhere - exposing the old and building
the new...new Metro stops, new restaurants, new hotels. <a
eWriter/DSCN3710.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; border-
left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="304" alt="DSCN3710"
Writer/DSCN3710_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> The New
Acropolis Museum Broken isn't all bad. After a day's hike around the
city, our well earned afternoon nap was interrupted by the chanting of the
Orthodox monk in the nearby Moni Petraki calling people to celebrate the feast
1358
of the Archangels Gabriel and Michael. The silence in our room was broken by an
emotive and soothing song that, had I not been so enchanted would certainly have
lulled me back into my slumber. <a
eWriter/DSCN3729.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px;
border-bottom-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px" height="304" alt="DSCN3729"
Writer/DSCN3729_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> Moni Petraki from
the Blegen Library Silence is rare here. The sounds of car horns,
papakis revving their little engines, sirens, Greeks yelling at each other to be
heard above the noise of everything else. But Athens is very comfortable with
its chaos. It is hard to imagine it any other way - for better or for worse.
I love this city, and the way it contrasts with the villages. I like the fact
that one of the highest points of the city is not an office building but an
ancient temple and that there are a thousand restaurants that each serve pretty
much the same menu, and it's always good. I like that the smallest crevice in a
building is claimed for a specialty food store and that every second shop sells
expensive and inappropriate shoes for these streets. Athens is wonderful and I
can't wait to return. <a
eWriter/Picture%20037.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px;
border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="304" alt="Picture 037"
Writer/Picture%20037_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a>
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TITLE: Benaki Islamic Museum
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
ALLOW PINGS: 1
BASENAME: benaki-islamic-
DATE: 11/08/2007 06:55:45 AM

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Susie and I visited the <a
href="http://www.benaki.gr/collections/islamic/en/">Islamic collection at the
Benaki Museum</a>. Located in an impressive, restored building near the
Keramikos, this collection is really remarkable if for nothing other than its
aesthetic qualities. <a
eWriter/BenakiIslamic.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px;
1359

Writer/BenakiIslamic_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> Having visited many museums in Greece over the last couple of
months, the Benaki manages to capture some of the curio cabinet feeling of some
of the smaller and older museums, while at the same time being quite clean and
modern (in a colloquial sense) in its overall presentation of material.
The cases in each of the galleries were packed with spectacular examples of
pottery, metal working, and wood according to some chronological and to a
certain extent regional organization. In many instances, however, it
seemed that this order would break down with earlier artifacts included
alongside later ones and contrasting styles and places of origin superimposed in
the same cases. This may have been intentional (at least, I suspect that
it was), but it was left unexplained enticing the viewer to attempt to
understand the tacit relationships between objects on aesthetic grounds
alone. This seemed to coincide with the lack of attention to communicating
what made Islamic culture particularly Islamic and how particular motifs spoke
to anything bigger in the history or society of the time (although they did
provide substantial descriptions of the political context for the period
presented in each gallery). This isn't meant to be a criticism,
necessarily, but more an observation offered by someone who knows embarrassingly
little about a culture that exerted a profound influence on the history of the
Mediterranean world. In fact, when I taught a M.A. level seminar on the <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/Syllabi/Mediterranean_World.htm
">Mediterranean world</a>, it is contained almost nothing on the Islamic world,
which is almost inexcusable. In some ways this museum
stands in contrast to the newer sections of the <a
href="http://www.lrf.gr/demos/byz/homepage.html">Byzantine and Christian Museum
in Athens</a> which have explicitly moved away from their more cluttered and
chaotic style of presentation and arranged artifacts, sculpture and art in
chronologically and thematic galleries. These galleries, which in some
ways more austere, promote a more historical and probably "cultural" reading of
the material. Although, it may be that my knowledge of the material ensure
that the displays and organization resonate more clearly with my internalized
narrative of events and cultural developments. 
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TITLE: Grand Forks from afar...
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
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BASENAME: grand-forks-fro
1360
DATE: 11/07/2007 01:12:58 AM

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Grand Forks Historic Preservation Commission Web
Site The <a
href="http://grandforkslife.blogspot.com/2007/11/new-gfhpc-website.html">Grand
Fork's Life</a> Guy has pointed out that the <a
href="http://gfpreservation.com/">Grand Forks Historic Preservation
Commission</a> has a new web site. It's just a start, but any place that
puts draws attention to the significant buildings in the Grand Forks community
works to ensure their preservation. The more people know about and
appreciate these buildings, the more they will feel an attachment to them.
 Our humble abode is in the <a
href="http://www.nationalregisterofhistoricplaces.com/ND/Grand+Forks/districts.h
tml">Near Southside Historic District</a>, and we have several important
buildings within walking distance including the spectacular <a
href="http://www.library.und.edu/Collections/og744.html">Joseph Bell DeRemer</a>
(and son)'s <a href="http://gfpreservation.com/images/unitedlutheran.jpg">United
Lutheran Church</a>. 
More on Institutional History Since its been
raining in Athens, my wife and I have begun work on the History of <a
href="http://www.und.edu/dept/grad/">The Graduate School</a> at <a
href="http://www.und.edu/">UND</a>. Our plan is to make our history
encompass graduate education more broadly at the University. Our tentative
outline looks like this: 1. The Early Years: Graduate Education from
1894-1927 2. The Graduate Division and Joseph V. Breitwieser: 1927-1950 3.
The Graduate School and Dean Hamre: 1950-1970 4. Growth and Development in
the 1970s and 1980s 5. Current Directions: The Graduate School at the New
Century
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Clayton
EMAIL: clayton@verveearth.com
IP: 59.93.3.104
URL: http://www.verveearth.com
DATE: 11/07/2007 12:16:03 PM
I enjoyed checking out your blog. I'm a recent grad in Silicon Valley, and I've
just started a company that is mapping the blogosphere to our world. Here is an
example of a blogger in Georgia who's plugged in:
http://www.verveearth.com/landing/#type=user&id=772. It can be fun to explore
different localities.!
!
1361
It's an easy process to get on board, and I can be reached at

clayton@verveearth.com for questions or feedback. If you resonate with the
vision of painting a global canvas of voices, please give VerveEarth a mention.!
!
Cheers! ‚ÄìClayton!
!
!
!
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TITLE: Thorikos and the Spirit of Institutional History
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
ALLOW PINGS: 1
BASENAME: thorikos-and-th
DATE: 11/05/2007 04:52:56 AM

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BODY:
On a lovely Saturday, Susie and I set out for a drive across Attica. We
stopped at Sounion and at Brauron. These sites were nice... <a
eWriter/SounionSM.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; border-
left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="138" alt="SounionSM"
Writer/SounionSM_thumb.jpg" width="204" border="0"> <img style="border-right:
alt="BrauronSM"
Writer/BrauronSM_thumb.jpg" width="204" border="0"></a> but the spirit
of <a
ip-three.html">institutional</a> <a
re-department.html">history</a> drove us to our real destination, Thorikos.
Between Sounion and Brauron on the coast of Attica sits ancient
Thorikos. My colleagues who study ancient Attica have assured me that
Thorikos is, indeed, a significant site in history and development of the
region. Today it sits, neglected, beneath the towers smokestacks of a
power station. Despite the locale, Thorikos presents a relatively well-preserved
theater constructed of blue-grey local stone. <a
eWriter/Theater2Sm.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; border-
left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="272" alt="Theater2Sm"
Writer/Theater2Sm_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> What
makes it interesting to us, however, is that it was the first site excavated by
the <a href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/">American School</a> in 1886 nominally
under the guidance of the Director of the School, Prof. Frederic De Forest
1362
Allen. The task of excavating fell to Walter Miller who led a group of 25-
30 workmen in search of the stage of the theater there. The matter of the
stage in the Greek theater was of pressing interest at the time and several
early American excavations in Greece focused on theaters. Miller published
the results of his excavations in volume four of the Papers of the American
School. (L. E. Lord, A History of the American School of Classical Studies
at Athens 1882-1942. Cambridge, Mass. 1947, 42-43). <a
eWriter/Theater1Sm.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; border-
left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="272" alt="Theater1Sm"
Writer/Theater1Sm_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> The
budget for the first season of excavation was around $300, quite a generous fund
considering that the workmen were paid about a drachma a day (in fact, I have no
idea what a drachma a day is in US dollars, but it seems like a small
amount...)! This is a nice thing to consider as we prepare yet another
grant application for <a href="http://www.chss.iup.edu/pkap/">PKAP</a> this
summer...
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Chuck Jones
IP: 193.92.187.43
DATE: 11/05/2007 06:37:39 AM
As luck would have it, Miller and Cushing's publication of the theater at
Thorikos is available online, courtesy of the University of Michigan:!
!
http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=moa;idno=ACD4670.0004.001!
!
Pages 1-34
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Bill C
IP: 193.92.187.43
URL:
DATE: 11/05/2007 10:26:02 AM
Awesome as usual, Chuck!!
!
Thanks!
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TITLE: Harvest Time
1363
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
ALLOW PINGS: 1
BASENAME: harvest-time
DATE: 11/04/2007 01:53:35 AM

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BODY:
Susie and I drove up to Delphi to meet up with the Regular Members.
From Delphi we headed south through Distomo and Stiri (with a stop at Hosios
Loukas) and then on to the mountain village of Ayia Anna before descending onto
the Western Boeotia plains at Thivi. It's harvest time in Greece.
Living in North Dakota has made me far more attentive to season agricultural
practices. The beet trucks rumbling through Grand Forks are as clear a
sign of fall as the football, the changing colors of the trees, and the first
Christmas decorations. Around Thebes, the signs of the cotton harvest
were everywhere. <a
eWriter/CottonTractorSM.jpg"><a
eWriter/CottonFieldsSM.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px;
Writer/CottonFieldsSM_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a></a> <img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; border-left: 0px;
border-bottom: 0px" height="336" alt=""
Writer/CottonTractorSM_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"> As we curled through the mountains south of Stiri,
the olive harvest had begun. <a
eWriter/OliveHarvestSM.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px;
border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="272" alt="OliveHarvestSM"
Writer/OliveHarvestSM_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> The most
unusual harvest, however, evoked North Dakota as clearly as any other.
Wind farms gleaned their harvest from the windy peaks of the mountains south
Ayia Anna. The low hanging clouds created particularly dramatic conditions
to view these odd complements to the deserted hillsides. <a
eWriter/WindFarmSM.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width:
alt="WindFarmSM"
Writer/WindFarmSM_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> <a
eWriter/WindFarmSM2.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; border-
left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="164" alt="WindFarmSM2"
Writer/WindFarmSM2_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a>
1364
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Brian Baier
IP: 134.129.193.249
URL:
DATE: 11/05/2007 08:30:52 AM
Man, I love that you're posting everyday photos and commenting on them with some
lucidity. Keep sharing the "mundane" details of life around you. They are more
rare to foreign eyes than all the unique, but well-known, attractions.
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TITLE: Delphi and Late Antiquity
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
ALLOW PINGS: 1
BASENAME: delphi-and-late
DATE: 11/02/2007 11:20:29 AM

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As most folks know, Delphi was a major center during Late Antiquity.
eWriter/ApolloDelphiSM.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-
alt="ApolloDelphiSM"
Writer/ApolloDelphiSM_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> The town of
Delphi had a vibrant economy, lavish villas, several Early Christian basilicas,
a couple with mosaic decorations. One mosaic is particular
spectacular. The mosaic below was excavated from a church in the village
of Kastri. It has an inscription that suggests the church was a funerary
basilica. The mosaic itself is striking and its most striking feature is
the central emblema of the west panel of the nave: <a
eWriter/DelphiMosaicEmblema.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-
alt="DelphiMosaicEmblema"
Writer/DelphiMosaicEmblema_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> The
tiger cat attacking the deer is not what one would except to see in an Early
1365
Christian funerary basilica! But it might have significance in

context. The mosaic is surrounded by elite motifs including two summer
months bringing in abundant harvests, hunting dogs, eagles (common in both a
religious and secular context throughout antiquity), and exotic animals.
The scene of tiger cat attacking a deer has elite associations, particularly
with exotic animal hunts in the amphitheater. Finally, since tigers
attacking deer do not fit into the known exegetical inventory of Late Antiquity,
it might well be that this mosaic represented images that resonated with the
expression of elite values -- which would not be particular uncommon in a
funerary context at any time during Antiquity. The prominent display of
this mosaic in the courtyard outside the museum stands in contrast to dearth of
well-displayed Late Antique material in the museum or on the site more generally
(compared to, say, <a
ip-2-part-2-o.html">Olympia</a>). There is, however, a handful of assorted
marble disjecta membra on display around the site, but some of it suggests that
the folks responsible for the displays were not entirely familiar with Late
Antiquity... <a
eWriter/upsidedowncrossDelphiSm.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-
alt="upsidedowncrossDelphiSm"
Writer/upsidedowncrossDelphiSm_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a>
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TITLE: Trip Three
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
ALLOW PINGS: 1
BASENAME: trip-three
DATE: 10/31/2007 04:06:57 AM

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I leave tomorrow first thing in the morning for trip three. It's a
short one for me: one day at Delphi and a morning visiting Distomo and Hosios
Loukas. My wife, Susie, who has blogged <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/susan_cara
hers_view_of_pkap/index.html">in this very space</a> will be joining me for 10
days. To see what the first American School trips were like, check out
Priscilla M. Murray and Curtis N. Runnels, "Harold North Fowler and the
1366
Beginnings of American Study Tours in Greece," <a href="http://www.atypon-

link.com/ASCS/loi/hesp">Hesperia</a> 76.3 (2007), 597-626. It
continues in Hesperia's reflexive mood, although article lacked the <a
re-department.html">slightly-subversive, analytical edge</a> of the previous
offerings. Most notably the article includes as a lengthy appendix a
transcribed version of Fowler's diary on his tour of the Peloponnesus in
1883.
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TITLE: Oxford Centre for Late Antiquity
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
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BASENAME: oxford-centre-f
DATE: 10/30/2007 01:14:15 AM

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Peter Brown gave the opening address at the new <a
href="http://www.ocla.ox.ac.uk/index.shtml">Oxford Centre for Late Antiquity</a>
earlier this fall, and the address is <a
href="http://www.ocla.ox.ac.uk/pdf/brown_what_in_name.pdf">available</a> (It
continues in the reflexive tone that has become common in his works since the
turn of the century celebrations of the 25th anniversary of the "Holy Man" and
The World of Late Antiquity, which is not to say that he doesn't make
some interesting observations). The OCLA also has listed its <a
href="http://www.ocla.ox.ac.uk/home_eve.shtml">seminars and events</a> and <a
href="http://www.ocla.ox.ac.uk/home_pro.shtml">project</a>s both which provide a
nice overview of some of the important discussions in the field today. The
<a href="http://www.ocla.ox.ac.uk/home_res.shtml">shear number of folks</a> who
have an interest in Late Antiquity at Oxford is staggering. This must
surely mean that Late Antiquity has arrived as a serious and central sub-field
in study of the ancient world. It's interesting that this year there are
three senior folks here at the American School who work on Late Antiquity (<a
href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/corinth/main_st_director1.html">Guy Sanders</a>
(Director of the Corinth Excavations), <a href="http://isthmia.osu.edu/teg/">Tim
Gregory</a> (who was my advisor at Ohio State), and <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/">me</a>), but by my reckoning
only one student, Amelia Brown, an <a
href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/Membership/associate.htm">Associate Member</a>
working on Late Antiquity at Corinth and Thessaloniki. While one year is
1367
not necessarily a representative sample of any academic cohort, it is a bit odd

that there are not more students who are working on Late Antiquity at the
American School, particularly among the <a
href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/membership/regular.htm">Regular Members</a>.
The reasons for this are a bit hazy to me. It could be that students of
Late Antiquity tend to eschew narrow regional focuses, so are not attracted to
the regular program at the American School which is unapologetically regional in
scope. It might also be that the study of Late Antique Greece is
relatively underdeveloped in the U.S. and does not appear to be a priority at
the Schools traditionally represented at the American School. Or it could
just be an one year aberration. Six of the 24 jobs listed on <a
href="http://www.h-
net.org/jobs/search_results.php?restrict=1&status=Open&cat=79">H-Net in
Ancient History</a> specifically encourage folks with an interest in Late
Antiquity to apply. 
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Chuck Jones
IP: 193.92.187.43
URL:
DATE: 10/30/2007 09:58:37 AM
There are some others interested in late antiquity here: Matthew Baumann,
Krysztof Domzalski, Bogdan Maleon, for instance.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Bill C
IP: 193.92.187.43
URL:
DATE: 10/31/2007 01:33:24 AM
Chuck,!
!
Thanks! I had a feeling when I wrote that that I was forgetting some folks. It
is still interesting, however, that only one of that number is a regular member
(and moreover, my impression is that Matt is not going to work on Late Antiquity
for his dissertation). In any event, thanks for the correction.
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TITLE: Oxi Day in Athens
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Today is Oxi Day in Athens. It's a national holiday in Greece that
celebrates the Greek Dictator Ioannis Metaxas' refusal to allow Axis troops to
enter the country and occupy strategic points in the country in 1940. The
story goes, that when asked by the Italian ambassador to open the borders to
Axis troops, Metaxas responded by telegram "Oxi" or "No". It marks the
beginning of Greek involvement in World War II. <a
eWriter/OxiDay2007.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width:
alt="OxiDay2007"
Writer/OxiDay2007_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> Flags from the roof of the American School of Classical Studies
Library. Loring Hall, where I live, is the background
October 26th is The Feast of St. Demetrios which has strong, patriotic
connections as well. The Greek army entered the city of <a
essaloniki.html">Thessaloniki</a> on on the Feast of St. Dimitrios in 1912
(during the First Balkan War). <a
eWriter/AyDemetriosSm.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width:
alt="AyDemetriosSm"
Writer/AyDemetriosSm_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> The Church of St. Demetrios in Thessaloniki
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TITLE: PKAP and Cyprus Notes
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Three quick hits on PKAP and Cyprus. There is a nice <a
href="http://www.johnbohannon.org/journalism/articles.html">feature on Albert
Ammerman</a> in the August issue of Science. The article talks
about Ammerman's controversial work on the early prehistory of Cyprus and
mentions <a
href="http://cropandsoil.oregonstate.edu/people/faculty.php?ID=38">Jay
Noller</a>, a geologist at Oregon State University, who has worked with PKAP
since 2004 and will publish the geology and core samples from
Koutsopetria. Ammerman gave us a hard time a few years back at the CAARI
symposium, but we've both seem to have recovered from the episode!! 
Scott Moore has posted something on <a
in-sl.html">PKAP's ongoing Second Life</a> project on his <a
History Ramblings Blog</a>. <a
Writer/image_thumb_6.png" width="404" border="0"></a> The PKAP Research
Complex and Visitor's Center is now open to the public. You can look at
photos, browse our reports (in the second floor library), and even read my blog
via an RSS Feed. While it's great to have a presence a virtual world, we
are still trying to get some functional value from it. It's going to take
time to work out what this interface can do. Finally, PKAP had a paper
accepted at the <a href="http://www.aiac.org/ing/congresso_2008/home.htm">17th
International Congress of Classical Archaeology</a>, which will meet in Rome
next semester. The paper, "Trade and Exchange in the Eastern
Mediterranean: A Model from Cyprus", will appear in a panel titled: Exchange --
The Eastern Mediterranean, and will allow us to bring together many strands of
evidence for inter- and intra-regional exchange on our site.
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There is a kind of simple functionality to this nice <a
href="http://individual.utoronto.ca/safran/Constantinople/Map.html">interactive
map to the city of Constantinople</a> prepared by Emmanuel Nicolescu and Linda
Safran. I don't know how long it has been available, but I stumbled across
it only recently. This kind of interactive city map seems to be
increasingly popular. The finest examples include an interactive version
of the <a href="http://nolli.uoregon.edu/">Giambattista Nolli's 18th century map
of Rome</a>. Better still is this <a
href="http://www.berlin.ucla.edu/">fancy interactive digital map of Berlin</a>
which includes vast quantities of hypermedia. The <a
href="http://www.agathe.gr/cgi-bin/qtvr?site=agora;node=1">interactive site
tour</a> of the Athenian Agora is a somewhat different thing, but also adds a
multi (but not exactly hyper-) media element. Many of the articles
in <a href="http://intarch.ac.uk/index.html">Internet Archaeology</a>
(particularly <a href="http://www.taesp.arts.gla.ac.uk/">TAESP</a>'s recent <a
href="http://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue20/taesp_index.html">contribution</a>,
which is worth the price of admission) bring together the potential of
multimedia interfaces for studying not only urban but also rural
landscapes. Aaron Barth provided me with a nice link to a virtual version
of <a href="http://onaslant.ndsu.edu/x3d.html">On-A-Slant village</a>, <a
la-koutsopetr.html">another effort</a> to bridge the gap between the two
dimensional regularity of plans and the dynamism of human experience 
Given et al. offer this: <blockquote> In the last 30 years, intensive
survey in the Mediterranean and elsewhere has made a major contribution to
archaeological knowledge. It has established an appropriate range of
methodologies, a series of very substantial data sets, and widespread agreement
about survey's suitability for addressing numerous highly topical research
questions. What it has not achieved is a convincing demonstration of how surface
artefact scatters can be interpreted to reveal past human activities and
relationships. One major problem is the increasing gap between GIS-driven
statistical analysis of large data sets and phenomenological or interpretative
approaches. The first sometimes verges on the processual, while the second tends
to use a small sample of conspicuous monuments. Is it possible to combine the
wealth of representative survey data with the interpretative sophistication of
contemporary landscape theory? A further problem is the difficulty of
communicating these complex data sets to the reader, and integrating them with a
theory-driven interpretation. Traditional print publication demands a linear
format and static images. These can only ever provide a pale shadow of the
richness of modern archaeological data sets and the even richer human experience
of landscape. Online publications, in contrast, offer unlimited colour, full
databases and interactive maps that can be queried and searched. These have the
potential of providing a much fuller range of choices for authors to present
their interpretations, and for readers to pursue their own interests.
</blockquote> Michael Given, Hugh Corley and Luke Sollars, "Joining the
Dots: Continuous Survey, Routine Practice and the Interpretation of a Cypriot
Landscape," Internet Archaeology 20. 4.1 Introduction
<a
href="http://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue20/4/1.htm">http://intarch.ac.uk/journal
/issue20/4/1.htm</a>. 
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TITLE: Ancient Languages in North Dakota
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DATE: 10/23/2007 12:41:07 AM

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<a
eWriter/image_7.png"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; margin: 0px
15px 0px 0px; border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="104" alt="image"
Writer/image_thumb_4.png" width="68" align="left" border="0"></a> Marilyn
Hagerty had a <a
lumnists&columnist=Marilyn%20Hagerty">nice article</a> on Latin in the Grand
Forks public schools. The lead to the article gave it a subversive,
underground feeling: <blockquote> "This past week, I set out to find out
about Latin, and I discovered it is alive and well in basement classrooms in
Grand Forks Central and Red River high schools."</blockquote> One can
almost envision the equipment filled underbelly of a modern school crammed to
the gills with smoking, plotting, brooding Latin students huddled around a
charismatic young teacher under a single light bulb. It would seem,
however, that the reality is far more rosy... <blockquote> At Central,
[the teacher, Laurie Hollifield] has 46 students in her four classes with three
in their fourth year. At Red River, she has 60 with eight in the fourth year.
She is happy to have 20 first-year students at Central and 30 freshmen at Red
River. And the second-year enrollments of 19 at each school show that more
students are sticking with Latin and the classics. <a
href="http://www.grandforksherald.com/reporters/index.cfm?page=articles&repo
rter_id=31"></a>Magistra Hollifield is pleased to see Latin growing
statewide. She knows there are four teachers in Fargo public schools and a part-
time Latin teacher at Shanley High School there. Bismarck has three teaching
Latin, and there is one in Mandan. Hollifield, who once taught Latin in
Bismarck, insists Latin is the foundation of learning. (<a
lumnists&columnist=Marilyn%20Hagerty">Continues...</a>)</blockquote>
I like the idea that Latin is the foundation of learning, although it has a
bit of an overstated feeling to it. In any event, it is good to see that
Latin is a thriving. Moreover, it is always heartening to see a member of
the media take an interest in Latin and rate Latin in the schools as one of her
"causes". I hope that Ms. Hagerty can someday make Ancient Greek one of her
causes as well. We struggle to offer Ancient Greek regularly even at the
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<a href="http://www.und.edu/">premier liberal arts university in the state</a>,

and most good Latinists know that learning Latin is only half the
equation. A solid rooting in Latin requires a good foundation in
the Greek language as well. After all, most of the great Latin stylists --
Caesar, Cicero, Tacitus, -- knew and read Greek. Cicero studied in Athens,
and Caesar's famous utterance "Alea iacta est" is a quote from Greek comic
playwright Menander; Plutarch (Pomp. 60) actually reports that Caesar
said it in Greek: ŒëŒΩŒµœÅœÅŒØœÜŒ∏œâ
Œ∫œçŒ≤ŒøœÇ! (And if you can't trust Plutarch on such
matters...). Elsewhere, Suetonius reports that Caesar's last words were
not the famous Et tu, Brute, but the far more scandalous: "Œ∫Œ±ŒØ œÉœç œÑŒ≠Œ∫ŒΩŒøŒΩ?" In fact, to my mind the only
great stylist who was not comfortable in Greek was probably Augustine in the 4th
century A.D., and even in this period, he was probably the exception among the
educated elite.<a
Writer/image_thumb_5.png" width="140" align="right" border="0"></a> It wasn't
that long ago (<a href="http://www.und.edu/history/">100 years!</a>) that
Professor of Greek and Latin was the academic post held by the greatest
President of the University, <a
href="http://www.library.und.edu/Collections/og146.html">Webster
Merrifield</a>, who not only oversaw the University's most fundamental
period of expansion, but also developed the basic liberal arts curriculum that
would influence the direction of the University even to this day. So, while
we appreciate the positive attention on the study of Latin, remember Ancient
Greek as well!! To support the study of the Ancient World at the University and
continue a tradition that dates to its earliest days, contact <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/dept/artsci/giving_opportunities.html">Michael
Meyer at the College of Arts and Sciences</a> and consider making a small gift
to the "Cyprus Research Fund" at the <a
href="http://www.undalumni.org/NetCommunity/Page.aspx?&pid=183&srcid=183
">UND Alumni Association</a> which supports the study of the ancient world by
faculty and students in the Department of History.
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TITLE: "Transitional Spaces" in the landscapes of the Mediterranean
and North Dakota
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Over the last week the discovery of a body near the President's house at the
University of North Dakota has caused a stir in the North Dakota media.
The body, from what we know now, is of an older woman, "older than 30 to 40
(emphatically not a college aged student!) and the body appears to have been in
place for several decades. Of the more interesting things
surrounding the discovery of this unfortunate soul is the discussion of the
history of the area around what is now the president's house at the university
(very fitting for a university exploring it's <a
href="http://www2.und.edu/our/125th/">125-iversary</a>). A recent <a
href="http://www.grandforksherald.com/articles/index.cfm?id=54367">Grand Forks
Herald</a> article provided these insights: <blockquote> "Former UND
President Tom Clifford was a student at the university in the late 1930s.
Although he didn't want to speculate too much on the origin of the remains,
he recalled that there was a "hobo jungle" in the same vicinity during the '30s.
"People would migrate here for harvest," he said. "They would camp in that
area, near the railroad." The Rev. William Sherman, retired pastor at St.
Michael's Catholic Church in Grand Forks, also recalled the camps. "There
were tens of thousands of working men" riding the rails, he recalled. They
weren't violent, he said, and they slept on cardboard in camps, eating, working
and passing through. Others recalled the area as an open, grassy space, a
"nice place to go out and lay in the sun," said P.V. Thorson, a retired UND
history professor." </blockquote> We could call this transition space
based on it's proximity to transportation, work, and it's undefined character
("open", "jungle", "camps"). (This space doesn't seem to appear on this
postcard from the <a
href="http://bp2.blogger.com/_9rvux6f1kYo/RxgrDKzQUII/AAAAAAAAAJw/IsazBkSdQis/s1
600-h/UND+1922.jpg">1920s postcard</a> posted over the the <a
href="http://grandforkslife.blogspot.com/">Grand Forks Life Blog</a>!)
We've tried to apply this interpretative paradigm to our analysis of <a
href="http://www.chss.iup.edu/pkap/">Pyla-Koustsopetria</a>. We got the
idea from M. Rautman's use of the term to describe areas at the fringes of the
Late Roman settlement of Kopetra. We applied the term to our famous Zone 2
-- a region to the northeast of our densest concentration of pottery (for our
discussion of this area see <a
href="http://www.chss.iup.edu/pkap/publications/ASOR%202006.htm">here</a>).&nbsp
; To summarize, we termed as "transitional" for three reasons: 1. There
is a substantial concentration of Late Roman pottery, but many more locally
produced LR1 amphoras and Cypriot Red Slip pottery. 2. The Zone lacks
rooftiles or other evidence for substantial architecture. 3. The area
would have sat near what we think was the main route to the east toward the
major settlements of Salamis-Constantina. It would have also sat on the
shore of the embayment which served as a small Late Roman harbor. <a
eWriter/Zone2Sm.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; border-
left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="272" alt="Zone2Sm"
Writer/Zone2Sm_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> This all being
said, one really likes our term "transitional area". Most other scholars
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ask (rightly) transition from "what to what"? So, perhaps we need a better
term. But I like the parallel between the area near the President's House
at UND and our Zone 2. The finding of a body there is a good
reminder that the scatter of pottery that we document on Cyprus actually
represents human activity and lives. It helps us imagine a temporary
settlement of people who had come to the area to harvest crops, help load ships,
or find other day-labor. It's also another good example of just
how good the North Dakota landscape is to think with. For other examples
see <a
e-quartzite-b.html">here</a> and <a
andoned_lands.html">here</a>...
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DATE: 10/19/2007 12:34:58 AM

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Here are a couple conferences that might be of interest to members of the <a
href="http://www.squinch.und.edu/">Mediterranean and Post Mediterranean
Archaeology Interest Group</a>. <ul> <li>"The Insular System of Early
Byzantine Mediterranean: Archaeology and History" <a
href="http://www.ucy.ac.cy/ema/index.html">Archaeological Research Unit of the
University of Cyprus</a>, October 24-26. I know nothing about this workshop
or seminar, but the topic is appealing. Here's the <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/files/Cypr
usConference.pdf">program.</a>
 </li>
<li>"The Afterlife of Inscriptions" <a

href="http://www.csad.ox.ac.uk/BES/">British Epigraphy Society</a> 11th Annual
General Meeting and Autumn Colloquium. Warwick University November 17, 2007. <a href="http://www.currentepigraphy.org/wp-
content/uploads/2007/10/agm07_prog1.pdf">Full programme in PDF</a></li>
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<li>‚ÄúWays of Seeing in Late Antique Material Religion‚Äù University of

Kentucky , Lexington , Kentucky March 28-29, 2008 This conference is
organized by the <a href="http://www.uky.edu/FineArts/Art/VS/">Ways of Religious
Seeing in Late Antiquity Working Group</a> and it's organized by Alice Christ at
Kentucky and Janet Tulloch at Carleton University,
Ontario:</li></ul> And as a reminder: 
<a href="http://ina.tamu.edu/yasymposium/index.htm">Tradition and

Transition: Maritime Studies in the Wake of the Byzantine Shipwreck at
Yassƒ±ada, Turkey</a>. A symposium honoring Drs. George F. Bass and
Frederick van Doorninck. College Station, Texas. Nov. 2-3-4, 2007. 
 
I won't be able to attend any of these events, but would be very interested
in hearing about them and seeing programs. 
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AUTHOR: R Kennedy
EMAIL: rkennedy@gwu.edu
IP: 128.164.243.224
URL:
DATE: 10/19/2007 09:31:42 AM
Bill,!
!
Just stumbled upon your blog. You have some good stuff on here that our Classics
and Archaeology students might be interested in. Let me know if you are ever in
the DC region. We'd love to have you talk at GWU about some of your dig
experiences. !
!
Rebecca (Futo) Kennedy
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TITLE: Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project in Second Life
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I am a novice in <a href="http://secondlife.com/">Second Life</a>, but I've
read enough about its potential on blogs like <a
href="http://electricarchaeologist.wordpress.com/">Electric Archaeology</a>
(Shawn Graham, the electric archaeologist himself has some interesting remarks
on its potential <a
href="http://www.coronationhall.com/of%20past%20lives%20and%20second%20lives.wav
">here</a>) and seen some impressive installations like <a
href="http://www.vassar.edu/headlines/2007/sistine-chapel.html">Vassar College's
Sistine Chapel</a> to at least be intrigued. Recently, Scott Moore, PKAP's
erstwhile co-director and ceramicist at Indiana University of Pennsylvania has
become involved in a project with colleagues <a
href="http://www.chss.iup.edu/anthropology/people/chiarulla.html">Bev
Chiarulli</a> in Anthropology, <a
href="http://www.coe.iup.edu/cm/partridge.htm">Allen Partridge</a> in
Communications Media, and students from the very impressive <a
href="http://www.iup.edu/HONORS/">Robert E. Cook Honors College</a> at IUP part
of which will explore the application of Second Life to archaeology. In
our discussions, Scott has suggested that the emphasis on spatial relationships
in archaeology makes it a natural match for a 3d interface like Second Life. It
would certainly be able to reproduce the radical changes in elevation present at
our site better than our flat, interactive maps. Moreover, it would seem
to coincide, in a much simplified way, with the current interest in 3D scanning
and imaging in Mediterranean Archaeology (like at the <a
day-in-boeoti.html">Thivi-Kastorion Archaeological Project</a> or among <a
href="http://www.digitalclassicist.org/wip/wip2007.html">Digital
Classicists</a>). Both technologies seek to present ancient architecture
in a way that captures the experience of the space. So far, their
efforts have received some nice attention from the local media, a short article
in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review: <blockquote> ...Indiana University of
Pennsylvania history professor R. Scott Moore and anthropology professor Beverly
Chiarulli recently received an IUP new Academic Excellence and Innovation Grant
for "The Creation of an IUP Second Life Island for Technology Advancement in the
Classroom." Chiarulli said her students will visit underwater sites and take
tours on a Second Life island. "A more 3-D atmosphere, while sometimes
cartoonish, gives a much larger sense of what, for instance, Mayan sites would
be like than through books or online," she said... (<a
href="http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/s_531669.html">more
here...</a>)</blockquote> There hasn't been too much done on archaeology
in Second Life yet -- there was only one paper, for example, at the recent <a
href="http://www.brocku.ca/iasc/immersiveworlds/sessions.php">Immersive Worlds
Conference</a>. The scholarly discussion, somehow appropriately, seems to
function just below the radar and appear mainly in blog posts <a
href="http://traumwerk.stanford.edu/LifeSquared/2006/06/archaeology_as_theatre_i
n_seco.html">like</a> this or <a
href="http://www.stoa.org/?p=462">this</a>. The media has been available
now for a few years (there are even hints of an <a
href="http://secondlife.reuters.com/stories/2007/09/28/second-life-sketches-
drive-my-car/">archaeology of second life</a> in some places), but it's
educational potential is still being openly debated. Scott Moore plans to
talk about some about this over at his occasional blog, <a
History Ramblings</a>, possibly tomorrow. In any event, PKAP already has
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a Second Life presence on Indiana University of Pennsylvania's Crimson

Island. Scott has built us a PKAP headquarters: <a
eWriter/PKAPHQ_2.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px;
border-bottom-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px" height="237" alt="PKAPHQ_2"
Writer/PKAPHQ_2_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> And a conference room for meetings (you can't properly have a
headquarters without a conference room, right?): <a
eWriter/PKAPHQ_1.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px;
border-bottom-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px" height="236" alt="PKAPHQ_1"
Writer/PKAPHQ_1_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> More interesting,
however, is the emerging Second Life Pyla-Koutsopetria. The plan,
if I understand it, is to build a model of the site so that we can orient
students, meet, and have discussions with the student-volunteers prior to
actually arriving in Cyprus. So far, I can see a vague resemblance, but
they've only just begun: <a
eWriter/ViglaSL.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px;
border-bottom-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px" height="236" alt="ViglaSL"
Writer/ViglaSL_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> 
While, PKAP headquarters and Second Life Pyla-Koutsopetria are still
in the development phases (some parts of it should be ready for inspection
soon!), Indiana University of Pennsylvania's Crimson Island is up and running
with a small PKAP installation. If you have a Second Life account (they
are free!) you can visit it at: <a title="
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Crimson%20Island/55.5898/146.573"
href="http://slurl.com/secondlife/Crimson%20Island/55.5898/146.573">http://slurl
.com/secondlife/Crimson%20Island/55.5898/146.573</a>. 
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AUTHOR: Aaron Barth
IP: 66.231.126.7
URL:
DATE: 10/17/2007 02:21:27 PM
Halo 3 is out now so who has time for Second Life?!? !
!
Could you maybe turn the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project in Second Life
into a first-person shooter?
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TITLE: Jack Davis on "The Rising Love of Loot"

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Jack Davis, my boss here at the <a href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/">American
School</a>, has given a <a
href="http://www.athensnews.gr/athweb/nathens.print_unique?e=C&f=13255&m
=A02&aa=1&eidos=S">good interview on the display, ownership, and
ultimately meaning of antiquities</a>. Of particular note to some readers
of this blog is his criticism of the private ownership of archaeological sites
and material in the U.S. In Davis's words: <blockquote> <a
Writer/image_thumb_3.png" width="110" align="left" border="0"></a> "The
antiquities laws in America are, in my view, ridiculous. They permit the private
ownership of archaeological sites and the exploitation of those sites. If I am a
farmer and I own an American Indian cemetery, something Late Mississippian, 13th
or 14th century after Christ with beautiful artefacts, I can dig it. They're my
property. I can sell them just as private property. There are no restrictions
whatsoever. So we do what we can do. We have a couple of organisations in
the States that exist to raise money to buy private property on which
archaeological sites are located - the Archaeological Conservancy. We buy sites
and set them aside just to protect them for the future. "</blockquote>
This is something that NDAA (<a href="http://www.und.edu/org/ndaa/">North
Dakota Archaeological Association</a> -- this is not the most updated web site!)
might want to begin to address. Private ownership of archaeological sites
in North Dakota is, of course, very common. The NDAA is made up of many
well-informed and well-meaning avocational archaeologists (as well as
professionals) who have antiquities on their lands. The conversations I
had with these folks at their 2007 Annual Meeting was, I think, mutually
enlightening in that they seemed surprised by the protectionism of the Cypriot
and Greek governments over antiquities, and generally interested in
understanding the particulars of these arrangements (for which I could only
provide a rather superficial perspective -- not being an expert on Greek
antiquities law). Despite my position as an outsider, many of the
individuals with whom I talked that night were open to engaging the complex
issues surrounding archaeological property. It would be very useful for this
discussion to continue! In the wide-open spaces of North Dakota it is very
difficult to imagine a day when all archaeological materials are protected, but
by continuing to educate especially those who are already predisposed to being
interest in these issues, we can ensure that the archaeological record remains
meaningful for future generations. For a much more sophisticated,
ongoing, discussion of these matters, check out the David Gill's <a
href="http://lootingmatters.blogspot.com/">Looting Matters</a> blog. 
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Aaron Barth
IP: 66.231.111.196
URL:
DATE: 10/16/2007 08:20:31 PM
Real quickly, it comes down to the disparity between what's considered Sacred in
the Old and New Worlds. Our Jeffersonian notion of Private property (or the
illusion of it) continues to take precedent so that landowners have considerable
-- if not total -- control of what happens to what is on their land. That
forces scholarly institutions to either snub the private landholder, thereby
adding to the already lingering Ivory White Tower myth about Ph.Ds already. Or,
scholarly institutions can continue reaching out to landowners and, in this
latter case, be allowed on to their land to open test units, conduct pedestrian
surveys, and explain the methods of scholars so as to continue to engage in open
dialog with the public that ultimately funds our state institutions.!
!
Isolationism doesn't seem to be the answer, at least when it comes to
archaeology in the American West, and in Dakota.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Aaron Barth
IP: 66.231.126.7
URL:
DATE: 10/17/2007 02:16:55 PM
Also: a "printable view" on these blogs would be real handy for those who only
have time to print an article or two before leaving town. It's the only way to
catch up: reading in the hotel rooms or at the campsites in the evening during
field season.
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TITLE: PKAP Notes
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: pkap-notes
DATE: 10/13/2007 01:04:52 AM

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Some quick hits from the <a href="http://www.chss.iup.edu/pkap/">Pyla-
Koutsopetria Archaeological Project</a>: <ul> <li>For those of you
unable to make it to Toronto and the <a
href="http://www.byzconf.org/current/2007/index.html">Byzantine Studies
Conference</a>, you can read the PKAP BSC paper <a
href="http://www.chss.iup.edu/pkap/publications/papers/2007%20BSC%20Paper%20fina
l.pdf">here</a>. It's a decent, short, synthetic overview of the project
with particular attention to the 2007 season. I think that we are really
coming to terms with how late our site runs -- well into the 7th century.
(We have most of our conference papers <a
href="http://www.chss.iup.edu/pkap/publications/papers.htm">here</a>). <li>An
updated PKAP interactive map is available <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/disk_PKAP.html">here</a>.
It will take some time to load up (especially if you don't have a quick graphics
card or a slow connection), but it includes the units surveyed in 2007 (and
their density -- note in particular the very high density units on the south
slope of Vigla) and the fortifications walls on Vigla. The other big
improvement is that we have digitized two more 1:5000 maps sheets allowing us to
display more the local topography. UND's <a
href="http://www.und.edu/dept/oid/">Office of Instructional Development</a>
provided the small grant necessary to do this, and the work was done by the <a
href="http://www.und.edu/dept/Geog/index.html">Department of Geography</a>.
</li></ul> <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/disk_PKAP.html"><img
border-right-width: 0px" height="254" alt="image"
Writer/image_5.png" width="404" border="0"></a> <ul> <li>The President of
<a href="http://www.und.edu/">UND</a>, <a
href="http://www.und.edu/president/html/bio.html">Charles Kupchella</a> gave
PKAP some local attention when he mentioned our project in a talk to the local
<a href="http://www.gfchamber.com/">Grand Forks Chamber of Commerce</a>.
You can watch the short video excerpt from his talk on your iPod (or just in
your browser!) from <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/PKAPinChamberTalk.m4v">here</a> (UND
is, after all, an <a href="http://www2.und.edu/our/itunes/index.php">iTunes
University</a>) or the entire talk <a
href="http://www.und.edu/video/CEKchamber.m4v">here</a>. <li>It's great
that the President of UND would identify PKAP as one of the avenues that
connects UND and the Grand Forks community to the wider world. Our hope is
that individuals in the community see the value in projects like this and give
to the Cyprus Research Fund at the <a
href="http://www.undalumni.org/NetCommunity/Page.aspx?&pid=183&srcid=-
2">UND Alumni Association</a>. This fund not only supports the work of
PKAP, but also supports UND's other archaeological projects in the Eastern
Mediterranean, including ongoing research in the <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/EKAS.html">Eastern
Korinthia</a>, work in the <a
orion_archaeological_project/index.html">Thisvi Basin</a>, Boeotia (Greece), and
the strengthening of ties with the <a href="http://isthmia.osu.edu/">Ohio State
Excavations at Isthmia</a>. These projects aren't just digging up old
stuff!! They include computer based data management projects (OSU-
Isthmia), "excavating and reclaiming" data from old projects (Thisvi Basin), <a
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href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/Multimedia.html">multimedia
productions</a> intended for classroom and the general pubic, as well as
fieldwork opportunities for UND students. To help support all these
projects, contact <a
href="http://www.und.edu/dept/artsci/giving_opportunities.html">Michael
Meyer</a> in the <a href="http://www.und.edu/dept/artsci/">College of Arts and
Sciences</a> and tell him that you want to support Mediterranean Archaeology at
UND!! In particular, this year we hope to raise enough money for UND to
become a <a href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/us/Managing/CoopInst.htm">Cooperating
Institution</a> of the <a href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/">American School of
Classical Studies at Athens</a> (as many of our peer institutions already
are). This will provide UND with a foothold in the Eastern Mediterranean
and expand the opportunities for UND faculty and students to experience the
Mediterranean World first hand.</li></ul>
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Maddy Bray
IP: 76.168.68.244
DATE: 10/13/2007 04:11:44 PM
Hey Bill, !
Thanks for the information- I like the interactive map. It's great that you're
sharing the data from your projects so quickly and making it accessible to the
public- more archaeologists should be doing this.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Bill C
IP: 193.92.187.43
URL:
DATE: 10/15/2007 01:19:05 AM
Maddy,!
!
Glad to hear that you like the blog -- and that someone is reading it. We hope
to make our complete data set from the survey available sometime in the next
year or so. !
!
Bill
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TITLE: Trip 2, Part 2: Olympia
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
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BASENAME: trip-2-part-2-o
DATE: 10/11/2007 01:07:04 AM

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The site of Olympia is massive and impressive. The buildings are
immense and the efforts needed to excavate the site -- digging through 4 meters
of river sediments -- are almost beyond belief. <a
eWriter/ZeusTempleSm.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width:
alt="ZeusTempleSm"
Writer/ZeusTempleSm_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> The enormous, tumbled-down columns of the temple of Zeus are far
more impressive than the solitary re-erected column which not only seemed out of
place, but strangely irrelevant in this expansive monument to ancient athletic
and modern archaeological ambition. <a
eWriter/ZeusColumnSM.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width:
alt="ZeusColumnSM"
Writer/ZeusColumnSM_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> Most people, of course, go to Olympia to see the elegant little
church in the workshop of Phidias with its well-preserved chancel screen and
interesting Early Christian inscriptions. <a
eWriter/PhidiasChurchSM.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-
alt="PhidiasChurchSM"
Writer/PhidiasChurchSM_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> Or perhaps the tourist in search of the sensational turns sharply
to the right when entering the museum to see the largest displayed collection of
Slavic pots in all of Greece. Breathtaking to be sure -- concise monuments
to culture change. <a
eWriter/SlavicPotsSm.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width:
alt="SlavicPotsSm"
Writer/SlavicPotsSm_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> In a tragic way, this year, the fires stole the spotlight from
finds even as impressive as these. The Kronos hill bare of trees: <a
eWriter/KronosBurntSm.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width:
alt="KronosBurntSm"
1383
Writer/KronosBurntSm_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> The entire neighborhood of the village surrounded by the haunting
silhouettes of the incinerated countryside: <a
eWriter/FireDamage1Sm.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width:
alt="FireDamage1Sm"
Writer/FireDamage1Sm_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> Olympia was amazing. Nancy Bookidis, Assistant Director
Emerita at the <a
href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/corinth/index.html">Corinth Excavations</a>
provided an excellent and detailed tour of the site supplemented ably by the
Regular Member's well-considered site reports on major monuments. <a
href="http://www.shc.ed.ac.uk/Profiles/Judith_Barringer.htm">Judy Barringer</a>
provided excellent insights into the sculpture of from the pediment of the
Temple of Zeus (if one could get over the impression made by the Slavic
pots). Jack Davis fleshed out the prehistoric period at the site. Finally,
the students were politely attentive during my presentation of the Late Roman
phase of the site including a completely gratuitous discussion of the
epigraphical evidence for Late Roman land tenure from the church at Olympia
(this was all the more impressive considering it was raining!). 
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COMMENT:
IP: 155.68.29.254
DATE: 09/09/2009 08:23:56 AM
I didn't notice back in 2007 that you had posted photos of the famous Slavic
pottery. Very nice. I don't think any better images exist.
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TITLE: Trip 2: Aegeira, Patras, Chlemoutsi
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
ALLOW PINGS: 1
BASENAME: trip-2-aegeira-
DATE: 10/10/2007 01:04:43 AM

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The north coast of the Peloponnesus is filled with remarkable sites. I

visited just three of them over the last week. First, we stopped at the
largely Hellenistic site of Aegeira, an important city in the Achaean
League. I has an impressive acropolis with amazing views of the coast as
well as a well preserved theater. <a
eWriter/AegeiraSm.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; border-
left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="272" alt="AegeiraSm"
Writer/AegeiraSm_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> Further west, we explored some of the Roman remains from
Patras. Patras is the third largest city in Greece and filled with a array
of Roman period ruins, including a well preserved Roman bridge <a
eWriter/RomanBridgeSM.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px;
border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="272" alt="RomanBridgeSM"
Writer/RomanBridgeSM_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> The final stop of the day was the 13th century Frankish site of the
Chlemoutsi. This imposing castle guarded the Elian plain and despite its
centuries of Post-Frankish use, it retains many of the basic features of
Frankish period. Note that the wall lack battering characteristic of the
gun powder age (and Venetian and Ottoman period fortifications). <a
eWriter/ChlemoutsiKeepSm.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px;
border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="272" alt="ChlemoutsiKeepSm"
Writer/ChlemoutsiKeepSm_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> We then headed on to Olympia and the fire ravaged hills of eastern
Elis...
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TITLE: Site Reports
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: site-reports
DATE: 10/05/2007 12:26:55 AM

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The second trip of the regular program begins on Sunday, and I will give a
site report on the Late Antique phase(s) at Ancient Olympia. Site reports
are the bread-and-butter of the <a
href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/membership/regular.htm">Regular Program</a> at the
<a href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/">American School</a>. Typically, they
involve a short (ca. 20 minutes, although some run much, much, (much) longer),
usually critical description of a building, site, archaeological or historical
issue or topic. Most material presented in site reports derives
from archaeological reports or secondary sources. They typically do not
feature "original research" but rather involve collating material into a
concise, comprehensive presentation. For some places this is relatively
easy... for others, like Late Antique Olympia, this is incredibly difficult as
one must find a way to synthesize such diverse matters as excavation history,
ceramic chronology, settlement phases, epigraphy, architecture, even
geology. While a good site report can resolve a difficult problem or
complex site with clarity, the core pedagogical impetus behind these reports
seems (to me) to be a demonstration of competence (this is to say, in some cases
leaving complexity as complexity demonstrates a heightened degree of expertise
and reinforces the authority of the speaker before one's peers, but one always
has to stop short of the dreaded "gobbly-gook/kooky talk" which suggests an
inability to clarify or essentialize difficult issues.). With site
reports, in particular, the performative aspect of regular membership comes to
the fore. The key in almost all aspects of American School academic life
is the perform in a professional way before your future colleagues and
peers. And, unlike in a graduate program in the U.S., the nature of
American School life -- i.e. living together in <a
href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/about/facilities.htm#Residence">Loring Hall</a>,
working in close quarters in the main reading room of the <a
href="http://blegen.blogspot.com/">Blegen library</a>, travelling together,
eating together -- ensures that the performance of professionalism extends far
beyond simply putting together a competent site report. With some
allowances for differences in work patterns and study methods, one is expected
not only to present the end result of one's research in a way that demonstrates
professional awareness, but also to conduct research in a way that is clearly
professional as well (and even talk informally about doing research in a
professionally sophisticated way!). Thus the performative aspect of the
American School program encompasses almost every moment of one's day (listen for
the murmurs: "I haven't seen him/her in the library much lately..." or "how did
he/she get THAT fellowship...") and offers a rich venue for academic and
intellectual gamesmanship. In some cases the stakes can be high, which
adds to the thrill, but mostly it's just harmless posturing. <a
eWriter/Site_Report_sm.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px;
border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="272" alt="Site_Report_sm"
Writer/Site_Report_sm_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> For my
part, I have always really enjoyed playing a largely insincere and transparent
disciplinary shell game. When thinking or talking about archaeology, I
profess to be a historian. When talking about history, I can always shrug
my shoulders and admit to being "mainly an archaeologist". Others play
their parts a well; common forms of professional or disciplinary identification
start with such phrases: "As a philologist..." (i.e. don't blame me if I don't
understand the stratigraphy here") or "As a visual person..." (i.e. don't ask me
to explore the grammatical niceties of a textual passage..."). In any
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event, an awareness of all this doesn't stop me from getting all agi-ma-tated
about my site report. Olympia in Late Antiquity is really complex!
How will I even sort all the various discussions into a 20 minute report to give
on site? Wish me luck!
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Aaron Barth
IP: 24.220.188.60
URL:
DATE: 10/08/2007 11:52:24 AM
Just checking in here. I read some of your crazy and highly interesting blog.
!
!
In response to categorizing people who categorize the past: What becomes
problematic about Identifying one's profession also stems from the other, who is
understandably more interested in telling you what they think, or what they've
read -- every man his own Universe. !
!
For example: someone says they study history, or were trained to study history,
and the immediate reply is, "Oh, have you read the Da Vinci Code!?"!
!
...perhaps that's why your method works so well: side-step that incoming crazy
with a different Title, or Identity, whether feigned or real. !
!
Back to it...
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Maddy Bray
IP: 76.170.0.106
DATE: 11/03/2007 02:01:57 AM
How funny. I think I know some of the people in that picture.
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TITLE: Triumph over Time
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: triumph-over-ti
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DATE: 10/03/2007 12:39:10 AM

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<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Triumph-over-Time-American-
Classical/dp/0876619634/ref=sr_1_1/104-1360046-
6191912?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1191387004&sr=8-1"><img style="border-
top-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; margin: 0px
5px 0px 0px; border-right-width: 0px" height="154" alt="image"
Writer/image_2.png" width="101" align="left" border="0"></a>As someone who has
dabbled in <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/DocuScript/DSHomePage.html">doc
umentary production</a>, I was thrilled to be able finally to see the restored
1947 documentary <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Triumph-over-Time-American-
Classical/dp/0876619634/ref=sr_1_1/104-1360046-
6191912?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1191387004&sr=8-1">"Triumph over
Time"</a> last night with an excellent lecture by the <a
href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/archives/blegen/A_index.htm">American School's
archivist</a> Natalia Vogeikoff-Brogan. The film,
directed by well-known archaeologist Oscar Broneer, was conceived as a fund
raising tool (imagine, using a movie to generate donations!) for the American
School. It featured the School's projects in Athens and Corinth, plenty of
interesting footage, and some clever use of light-duty ethnography to highlight
the "enduring character of Greek civilization". In the end, the film
played for over a decade and a half both as an American School P.R. tool and,
later, in the arsenal of the U.S. State Department. Some basic observations on the film and its history resonated with
our efforts to use a documentary: 1) Distribution. One
observation made during the introductory comments about the film is the
difficulty in getting the movie to its intended audience -- the wealthy Greek-
American community. In fact, "Triumph over Time" did not appear to raise
any money, and its first tour in the U.S. actually produced a deficit.
While my effort at using a documentary to generate publicity avoided a deficit
(and had much more modest ambitions), we have found that our documentary did
very little to raise money for the project. The biggest part of our
audiences were students and my academic colleagues. They have been
supportive and have watched our film with interest and enthusiasm, but they are
hardly the folks we expect to make donations to the project! 2) Narrative structure. As Dr. Vogeikoff-Brogan pointed out,
the film followed lines largely established by travel writers like Henry Miller
and Laurence Durrell in that it made explicit comparisons between the ancient
Greece studied by archaeologists and the world of post-war Greece. The
comparison of modern to ancient is such a common trope in archaeological
documentaries that it is difficult to imagine a narrative structure that does
not, in some way, appeal to it. While "Triumph over Time" emphasized the
rustic character of Greek life, "<a
vey on Cyprus</a>" stressed parallels between the bustling, "busy" world of
modern and ancient Cyprus. The hangover of romanticism has thoroughly
saturated the popular presentation of archaeology to such a remarkable degree
that perhaps we need to refer to the "timeless" character of documentary
narrative structure! 3) Archival value. Perhaps the
greatest value of any of these films is that they capture the landscape in a way
that even the most detailed archaeological description or still photography
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cannot. (Although it is worth mentioning that <a

href="http://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue20/taesp_index.html">Michael Given et
al. recent contribution to Internet Archaeology</a> which uses panoramic
photography does provide an effective complement to maps and still
photos). The film captures quite vividly the mid-20th century cityscape of
Athens and as well as the landscape around Ancient Korinth. 
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TITLE: Thessaloniki
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: thessaloniki
DATE: 10/01/2007 12:10:06 AM

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On Friday, I returned from my first trip as a member of the American School
staff. I met up with the <a
href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/membership/regular.htm">Regular Members</a> in
Edessa and then stayed with them through <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2007/09/we
stern-macedon.html">Florina, Mikri Prespa, Kastoria, Dispilio</a> (check out the
Dispilio excavation's classy <a href="http://web.auth.gr/dispilio/">web site</a>
and be sure to click on the "Diary of an Archaeologist" feature on the left),
Aiani, and Thessaloniki. Since I have already talked about the first
places in that list, I thought I might reflect a bit on Thessaloniki. In
some ways, Thessaloniki forces an observer to acknowledge the post-antique
history of Greece as much as (if not more than) the Ancient past. Perhaps
it is the standing monuments that are still more or less embedded in the urban
landscape (as opposed to the sanitized presentation of the Acropolis in Athens
or the fenced off preserves of the Agora and Keramikos). Or perhaps it is
because I am less familiar with the city so have to pay more attention to
landmarks; after all, Athens does have its share of post-antique monuments --
architecturally interesting mosques, Byzantine churches, and <a
href="http://www.iconoclasm.dk/?p=233">art deco apartment blocks</a> (or <a
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2007/09/13/AR2007091301854.html">here</a>). In any
event, Thessaloniki was quite vivid this past trip. The Regular Members
were particularly engaged in the post-ancient cityscape making the trip quite
rewarding. <a
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eWriter/Thessmarket_sm.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-

alt="Thessmarket_sm"
Writer/Thessmarket_sm_thumb.jpg" width="272" border="0"></a> <a
eWriter/LoutroParadisio_Thess_sm.jpg"><a
eWriter/JewishTombstoneCropped_sm.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px;
height="438" alt="JewishTombstoneCropped_sm"
Writer/JewishTombstoneCropped_sm_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a></a>
<img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px;
alt="LoutroParadisio_Thess_sm"
Writer/LoutroParadisio_Thess_sm_thumb.jpg" width="272" border="0"> <a
eWriter/Panagia_Chalk_Thess_sm.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-
alt="Panagia_Chalk_Thess_sm"
Writer/Panagia_Chalk_Thess_sm_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a>
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TITLE: The Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project's New Website
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: the-pyla-koutso
DATE: 09/29/2007 01:15:44 AM

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PKAP has unveiled its <a href="http://www.chss.iup.edu/pkap/">new website</a>
(it's still in beta). It should be easier to navigate and includes out
2007 final report. It will also include soon an updated interactive survey
map and the text of our most recent conference papers (AIA 2007, CAARI Workshop
2007, and BSC 2007). There is some new news and notes -- particularly <a
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href="http://www.emediawire.com/releases/2007/9/emw555120.htm">a nice
article</a> on PKAP's work with the <a href="http://www.iup.edu/honors/">Robert
E. Cook Honor's College</a> at <a href="http://www.iup.edu">IUP</a>. The
article includes a <a
href="http://prwebpodcast.com/releases/pod555120.htm">podcast</a> from our very
own R. Scott Moore!Not to be outdone, we've also put up some podcasts (they are
not linked to the main site yet!) <a
href="http://www.chss.iup.edu/pkap/podcasts/podcasts.htm">here</a>. We are
clearly still playing with how to integrate <a
href="http://www.chss.iup.edu/pkap/multimedia.htm">multimedia</a> into our site,
but it's getting there. <a
href="http://www.chss.iup.edu/pkap/"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-
alt="image"
Writer/image_1.png" width="404" border="0"></a> In other PKAP news, fall
is grant writing time. We are particularly concerned with finding money to
fund our proposed, small scale excavation campaign in 2008. We will ask
permission to put in several small soundings to confirm the results of our 2007
geophysical survey particular on Vigla and the Kokkinokremos. Since the
two areas represent two different periods of occupation (Late Antiquity and the
Late Bronze Age) we will request money from funding bodies with two very
different periods of emphasis. Fortunately, the more fieldwork we do at
the more that our research goals for the two areas converge. The fact that
both areas now appear to be fortified further encourages parallel readings of
the landscape. In the meantime we are completing a contribution to
the Near Eastern Archaeology in a volume exploring American archaeology on
Cyprus and dedicated to the late Danielle Parks. We will also present a
paper entitled "Across Larnaka Bay: Recent Investigations of a Late Antique
Harbor Town in Southeast Cyprus" at the <a
href="http://www.byzconf.org/">Byzantine Studies Conference</a> in October.
We'll keep all of our interested "stake holders" appraised of these
developments as they, er, develop.
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TITLE: Yassiada Conference
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<img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-bottom-
alt="image"
Writer/image_thumb_1.png" width="163" align="left" border="0">Justin Leidwanger
reminded me of this conference that he helped organize: <a
href="http://ina.tamu.edu/yasymposium/index.htm">Tradition and Transition:
Maritime Studies in the Wake of the Byzantine Shipwreck at Yassƒ±ada,
Turkey</a>. A symposium honoring Drs. George F. Bass and Frederick van
Doorninck. Nov. 2-3-4, 2007 in College Station, Texas. This intriguing
conference coordinated by MPMMG member Justin Leidwanger as well as Deborah
Carlson and Sarah Kampbell will feature many of the mainstays of research on
Byzantine amphoras and maritime archaeology. Scott Moore is contributing
a paper that I am sure will include PKAP data:<a
href="http://ina.tamu.edu/yasymposium/PDFs/Moore.pdf">Trade in the Eastern
Mediterranean in the Early Middle Ages</a> The 7th century A.D. <a
href="http://ina.tamu.edu/yassiada7.htm">Yassiada shipwreck</a> produced a
spectacular group of 900 amphoras aboard a relatively well-preserved ship.
The ships cargo has helped establish the ceramic chronology for amphoras as well
as remind us of the Late Roman Empire's continued ability to marshal economic
resources even during the early years of the 7th century. In fact, it is
likely that the material found aboard the ship was destined to provision Roman
forced fighting the Persians. Moreover, inscriptions on the amphoras
provide some indication that the church was responsible for collecting the
material in the amphoras, low quality wine produced most likely on the west
coast of Asia Minor. Thus, it reinforces the evidence from elsewhere that
the church contributed in a very significant way to the economy and commerce of
the period. The Yassiada evidence might shed some light on the presence
of an olive press crusher stone and press weight at Pyla-Koutsopetria,
perhaps indicating that the church there had invested the capital for
agricultural processing installations which would serve the local producers of
olives. I will be away visiting the students on the American Schools
Regular Program for the rest of the week, but will certainly report back once I
have returned. 
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TITLE: The Blegen Library
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: the-blegen-libr
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DATE: 09/21/2007 11:45:05 PM

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One of the great advantages of being in Athens at the American School are the
two libraries -- the <a
href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/gennadius/g_index.htm">Gennadius Library</a> and
the <a href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/blegen/b_index.htm">Blegen</a>. Both
offer one of a kind collections and as closed stacks libraries almost total
access to their material. As an added advantage of my position, I have an
office in the Blegen library allowing me access to the stacks 24 hours a day. (I
have found, however, that attempting to be in the library 24 hours, or even much
over 12 hours a day, does little for my productivity!). What this
post is really about is this: <a title="http://blegen.blogspot.com/"
href="http://blegen.blogspot.com/">http://blegen.blogspot.com/</a>. The
Blegen librarian Charles Jones has a blog that tracks the new books arriving at
the Blegen. The new book shelf here is a great way to keep informed on
what is going on the field and now you can browse it from the comfort of your
own computer.
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TITLE: More Departmental History...
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DATE: 09/19/2007 01:02:33 AM

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I've mention in the <a
-experiment-i.html">past</a> that I worked a good bit on our department's
Departmental History over the last twelve months and ramped up my efforts to a
considerable degree this summer. When I came to Athens, I figured that my
enthusiasm for the history of my department would fade a bit (and it has), but
to my surprise the American School has found itself in a reflective mood of late
producing a number of articles on its institutional and intellectual history
(see in particular Tracy Cullen's piece on 75 years of <a
href="http://www.atypon-link.com/ASCS/loi/hesp">Hesperia</a> (that is the
journal of the American School)in volume 76.1, Jack Davis's article in the same
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volume on the "Birth of Hesperia" and Kostis Kourelis article in 76.2 on

"Byzantium and the Avant Guard" at the Corinth excavations of the 1920s and
1930s.) The American School is the kind of place that feels like it has an
<a href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/history.htm">official history</a> (in fact,
there are two volumes dedicated to the history of the School), and both Kourelis
and Davis say that their use of the archives has allowed them to uncover "the
real story" so to speak (As Davis says on page 22 of his article that one of his
goals "is to contrast published and archival accounts"). It lends both
articles a subversive tone (which one probably feels more acutely if one has has
spent time at the American School), but, in the end, archival research is at the
core of the historical method. <a
eWriter/Libby.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px;
border-bottom-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px" height="233" alt="Libby"
Writer/Libby_thumb.jpg" width="209" border="0"></a> Prof. Orin G.
Libby, Historian University of North Dakota 1902-1945 In any
event, it's kept my interest in the departmental history simmering. I have
now posted my working text for the <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/DHChapter_Intro.html">introduct
ion and chapters 1-3</a>. These chapters cover the history of the
department up to about 1970. The goal of the university, of course, was to
compile the history for each department over the last 25 years which was to
complement existing departmental histories of the first 100 years written in
conjunction with UND's 100 anniversary in 1883. Our department did not
write a departmental history at that time, so I was left to write the entire
history of the department from the 1880s to present. I made to the late
1960s, but after 1970 the sources become a bit more scarce, I am increasingly
uncomfortable with the methods (especially oral history), and I can't shake the
nagging feeling that if it's not 1000 years old it's not really historical (my
colleagues will rightly disagree with this!).
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Chuck Jones
IP: 193.92.187.43
URL:
DATE: 09/19/2007 09:30:16 AM
Hello Bill,!
!
Now that you're on board here can I mention yours in the Blegen blog:!
http://blegen.blogspot.com/!
!
Thanks,!
!
-Chuck-!
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TITLE: Traffic Report
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DATE: 09/15/2007 06:13:58 AM

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I am pleased to announce that my blog received its 2,500th hit last
night. Since its inception in Mid-May, I have posted 63 posts (well over
halfway to my goal of 100 for the year) and received about 16 hits a day.
The blog received the most traffic when <a
href="http://ancienthistory.typepad.com/ancient_history_ramblings/">Scott
Moore</a>, and <a href="http://www.susancaraher.typepad.com/">Susie Caraher</a>
contributed regularly and the <a href="http://www.chss.iup.edu/pkap/">Pyla-
Koutsopetria Archaeological Project</a> was in the field in Cyprus (having a
link from the <a href="http://www.und.edu">University's main webpage</a>
probably didn't hurt either). Over recent weeks this has become
consistent traffic, and I am optimistic enough to note a slight upward
swing. <a
eWriter/Chart9-15_1.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; border-
left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="209" alt="Chart9-15"
Writer/Chart9-15_thumb_1.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> There does seem to be a loose
correlation between how often I post and the number of hits the page gets.
This is good positive reinforcement! For those of you who read this blog
regularly, if you keep reading, I will certainly keep posting. 
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Maddy Bray
IP: 76.168.68.244
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DATE: 09/19/2007 11:40:58 AM

Hey Bill,!
Keep up the good work- It's great to know what you're up to these days, and you
write about such interesting things (in a very accessible way, too)!
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TITLE: iTunes, UND, and Survey On Cyprus
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BASENAME: itunes-und-and-
DATE: 09/14/2007 07:00:25 AM

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Yesterday the University of North Dakota (finally) announced that it was an
official <a href="http://www2.und.edu/our/news/story.php?id=2154">iTunes
University</a>. One of the first pieces of media that went up on their
iTunes server was our documentary, <a
Cyprus</a>. The material on the server is free and available to the
public. If you have iTunes installed on your computer, click this link to
get access: <a
title="https://deimos.apple.com/WebObjects/Core.woa/LoginDone/und.edu"
href="https://deimos.apple.com/WebObjects/Core.woa/LoginDone/und.edu">https://de
imos.apple.com/WebObjects/Core.woa/LoginDone/und.edu</a>. Otherwise go and
get iTunes <a href="http://www.apple.com/itunes/">here</a> and then click on the
link! Special thanks go to the folks at <a
href="http://www.und.edu/dept/our/">University Relations</a> who have worked
hard on my project's behalf. As a related PKAP note, <a
href="http://www.xanga.com/jpatrow">Joe Patrow</a> has just now started editing
the material that he collected for his new film: Emerging Cypriot.
We look forward to seeing a trailer for it before the end of the year!
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TITLE: Kozani
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DATE: 09/12/2007 04:32:29 AM

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The last stop on my northern trip was the site of Aiani, which has an
impressive set of Classical-Hellenistic tombs and a series of excavated houses
on an striking acropolis. Unfortunately, we are not allowed to take
pictures of it... But, on the way there I stopped off the impressive
Early Christian basilica at Ay. Paraskevi (near Aiani outside of Kozani).
When there a local villager told me the story of how the basilica was
found. He said that a man in the village had had a dream and in that dream
Ay. Paraskevi appeared to him and told him to go and dig at a particular spot
(near the town's Byzantine church). After his first attempt, he found
nothing and gave up. Ay. Paraskevi promptly appear to him in another dream
and urged him to dig again. When he did so, he uncovered the Early
Christian basilica shown below (of course, the Archaeological Service helped
once he discovered architecture). The design with apsidal ends on the
transept is more common in the central Balkans than in Southern Greece. <a
eWriter/KozaniBasilicaSM.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px;
border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="272" alt="KozaniBasilicaSM"
Writer/KozaniBasilicaSM_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> <a
eWriter/KozaniMosaicSM.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px;
border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="272" alt="KozaniMosaicSM"
Writer/KozaniMosaicSM_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> 
The remarkable thing about this story is that the same story (more or less)
has appeared in a Christian context for close to 1500 years! Saints
regularly remind people of their churches and seem to take a very serious
interest in their state. This may well account for the persistence of
certain sacred places in the Mediterranean landscape. From Kozani I made
the long drive back to Athens and my air conditioned office and apartment...
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TITLE: Western Macedonia
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DATE: 09/11/2007 06:28:17 AM

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The goal of my adventures to the north was to scout the route for the
American School's Regular Program tour. To do that I drove from Kastoria
to Florina, on to Edessa, and then back to Kastoria via lake Mikri Prespa.
Florina provide a nice little museum and Hellenistic site with some fine
examples of domestic architecture. <a
eWriter/FlorinaHellenisticSM.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-
alt="FlorinaHellenisticSM"
Writer/FlorinaHellenisticSM_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> 
Edessa would have been a more interesting place, but it was pouring
rain. My interest for even the finest Hellenistic ashlar masonry in the
pouring rain is limited. They seem to have excavated some houses there
and, recently, several cemeteries. Modern Edessa is known for its
waterfalls. So, since it was too rainy to take good archaeological
pictures (and perhaps too boring!), I'll include a photo of a waterfall: <a
eWriter/EdessaWaterfallSM.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-
alt="EdessaWaterfallSM"
Writer/EdessaWaterfallSM_thumb.jpg" width="272" border="0"></a> 
 The work at both Edessa and Florina sheds valuable light on the
geographic extent of what we might call typical Greek cities during the
Hellenistic period (and this has obvious implications for the promotion of Greek
Nationalism in an area like Western Macedonia which even a century ago had
substantial non-Greek speaking populations). A small snow shower
made the trip over the mountains west of Florina more exciting. Who would
have thought that it would snow in Greece before North Dakota? <a
eWriter/FlorinaSnowSM.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width:
alt="FlorinaSnowSM"
Writer/FlorinaSnowSM_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> And the low
hanging clouds made my visit to the island of Ay. Achilleos in lake Mikri Prespa
more dramatic. It's reached by a pontoon bridge. <a
eWriter/AyAchilleosSM.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-width:
alt="AyAchilleosSM"
Writer/AyAchilleosSM_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> My goal
visiting the island was to see the massive late 10th century basilica, likely
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built under Tsar Samuel of Bulgaria. This building shows a conscious

adoption of a monumental, Early Christian style (note the foundation of the
centrally placed ambo in the foreground), perhaps designed to lend
legitimacy to his newly expanded state. Ultimately Bulgarian control over
this area was terminated rather abruptly by Basil II's victory at Kleidion in
1014. According to our sources, the Bulgarian army was defeated, and Basil
took 10,000 men captive, blinding all but 1 per thousand to lead the defeated
men home. Charming guy, Basil II... <a
eWriter/AyAchilleosChurchSM.jpg"><img style="border-top-width: 0px; border-left-
alt="AyAchilleosChurchSM"
Writer/AyAchilleosChurchSM_thumb.jpg" width="272" border="0"></a>
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Aleksandar
EMAIL: djshema@yahoo.com
IP: 205.172.241.12
URL:
DATE: 09/12/2007 07:50:58 AM
Samuil was a Macedonian king, the battle was at belasica.!
!
And good that you are aware that there were (and still are) many non greek
speaking Macedonians in Greece. Especially the Northern greece and the border to
Macedonia.
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TITLE: Underwater Archaeology in Eastern Cyprus
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BASENAME: underwater-arch
DATE: 09/10/2007 02:13:34 AM

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Scott Moore brought this little Reuter's story to my attention. The
story is a bit odd especially the strange juxtaposition of trade, 1st century
Roman ships, and Hellenistic naval battles, but the project seems interesting
nonetheless. <blockquote> Cyprus to seek ancient
shipwrecks By Michele Kambas NICOSIA (Reuters) - Cyprus is to launch
sea surveys in an area where dozens of vessels led by warring successors to
Alexander the Great are believed to have sunk in battle for control over the
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island in 306 BC. Encouraged by the discovery of one wreck from a later Roman
era, the survey slated for the summer of 2008 will extend into deep waters from
the south-east tip of the island, known as Cape Greco, the island's Antiquities
Department said. "Cyprus is a crossroads and is very rich in ancient
shipwrecks," said Pavlos Flourentzos, director of Cyprus's Department of
Antiquities. Historical accounts suggest that the Cape Greco region -- a
rocky outcrop between the now popular tourist resorts of Agia Napa and Protaras,
saw one of the biggest naval battles of the ancient world. According to the
ancient Greek historian, Diodorus of Sicily, in 306 BC Demetrios the Poliorketes
(Besieger) triumphed over Ptolemy I of Egypt in a naval engagement off Cyprus,
with dozens of vessels sunk as the result of combat. "It is well known that
there was a naval engagement in the region in 306 BC, so there is a potential of
finding wrecks, or parts of wrecks, in deeper waters," Flourentzos told Reuters
on Thursday. Ptolemy I, one of the generals of Alexander the Great, lost
control of Cyprus for a period of 10 years after his defeat at the hands of
Demetrios Poliorketes. Demetrios was son of Antigonus, a Macedonian nobleman who
later ruled Asia Minor. The Cypriot Antiquities Department announced on
Thursday that an ancient Roman shipwreck, dated the 1st century AD, had been
found in the same area. <a
href="http://uk.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUKPAR65915620070906?pageNumber
=2">Continued...</a></blockquote>
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TITLE: Kastoria and Western Macedonia
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: kastoria-and-we
DATE: 09/10/2007 12:50:06 AM

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On Wednesday morning I left western Boeotia for Western Macedonia. This
is a mountainous drive and I did it in the rain... but the reward of Kastoria
was brilliant indeed. Kastoria as many of you know is located on a
peninsula that juts out into a lake of the same name. The town itself
retains its Ottoman (and likely earlier) street plan presenting a rabbits-warren
of confusing streets -- none of which are straight and none of which are
flat. Navigating these streets presents a reward, however, in over 60
churches with a handful of particularly important ones of Byzantine date.
The Byzantine churches built from the early 10th century through the early 12th,
are almost all of a basilican plan and characterized by exceptionally tall
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central naves (attenuated as the architectural historians would say). Some

have argued that this is to simulate the effect of a dome employing a far less
demanding architectural form. <a
eWriter/Ay_Anayiri_KastoriaSM.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top:
alt="Ay_Anayiri_KastoriaSM"
Writer/Ay_Anayiri_KastoriaSM_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"> </a> <a
eWriter/Ay_Stephanos_KastoriaSM.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top:
alt="Ay_Stephanos_KastoriaSM"
Writer/Ay_Stephanos_KastoriaSM_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> 
There is one domed church the Panayia Koumbelidiki which shares the same
attenuated proportions. Lively and playful, if somewhat flat, decorations
in brick enliven the exterior walls of these buildings further contributing to
their distinct appearance. <a
eWriter/Pana_Koumbelidiki_Kastoria.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-
alt="Pana_Koumbelidiki_Kastoria"
Writer/Pana_Koumbelidiki_Kastoria_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> 
The town also preserves a good bit of Ottoman domestic architecture.
From the 16th century on the town was know as a center of the fur trade
(initially, it would seem from the kastoras (beavers) that lived in the lake)
and wealthy merchants built fancy houses over looking the lake. Most of
which are in a state of neglect. <a
eWriter/OttHouse_Kastoria.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px;
border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="272" alt="OttHouse_Kastoria"
Writer/OttHouse_Kastoria_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> (There
are a goodly number of smaller houses as well): <a
eWriter/SmOttHouse_Kastoria.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px;
border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="272" alt="SmOttHouse_Kastoria"
Writer/SmOttHouse_Kastoria_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> As an aside, while in Kastoria I paid a visit to its supposed
predecessor, the town of Diocletianopolis, which according to Procopius was
abandoned when Justinian founded the city a Kastoria. While only bits of
the city have been properly explored, a good stretch of its walls remain.
I have no idea of the date of these walls, but presumably they are 4th or 5th
century. The town has repointed them and was in the process of surrounding
them with a little park: <a
eWriter/Diocletianopolis_Wall_SM.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top:
alt="Diocletianopolis_Wall_SM"
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Writer/Diocletianopolis_Wall_SM_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> 
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TITLE: A Day in Boeotian Thisvi
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DATE: 09/09/2007 04:22:12 AM

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I am sure that my gentle readers are literally waiting on the edge of their
seats to hear of my week of travels through Boeotia and Western Macedonia.
The week started with a visit to Archie Dunn‚Äôs <a href="http://www.arch-
ant.bham.ac.uk/research/individuals/dunn/archie3.htm">Thisvi-Kastorion
Project</a> (the project does not have an official name or at least a
consistently applied one, so this is what I will call it). It is a collaboration
between Dunn and the 23rd Ephorate of Byzantine Antiquities. I gave this
project a modest sketch in a <a
w-research-in.html">previous post</a>, but I can tell you more now! The goal
of the project is to rectify a bias in traditional survey projects by studying
settlements of the Early and Middle Byzantine period that do not conform to the
standard model of Classical period settlement (i.e. a nucleated polis surrounded
by an agricultural hinterland). Dunn reckons that Early and Middle Byzantine
period saw the proliferation of settlements that were larger and more complex
than villages yet small and less well-developed than urban centers. (He details
this argument here: "Continuity and change in the Macedonian countryside, from
Gallienus and Justinian", in: W.Bowden & L.Lavan (edd.), Late Antique
Archaeology 2. Recent research on the Late Antique countryside
(Leiden/Boston, 2004), pp 535-586.). Thisvi, or Byzantine Kastorion, conforms to
some of the characteristics of the ‚Äúmid sized‚Äù settlements and this provided
the foundations for its establishment as an episcopal center during Middle
Byzantine and Frankish times. His project is conducting a rather intensive
urban survey of surviving monuments in Thisvi village (many of which are
preserved on account of the stunted development of Thisvi in modern times). For
this project he is using some very new-fangled techniques including <a
href="http://www.iaa.bham.ac.uk/Computing/HP_VISTA/research/scanning.htm">3D
Laser Scanning of architecture</a>. While I am not at liberty to divulge
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any details, his finds are significant and important and will cast new light on
both the Western part of Boeotia but also the settlement landscape of the
southern Balkans in general. (He provides a sketch of what he‚Äôs found here:
"Byzantine Thisbe: Kastorian, episcopal kastron and centre of silk manufacture",
Byzantine Style, Religion and Civilisation. In honour of sir Steven
Runcimen. E. Jeffreys (ed), Cambridge University Press 2006). <a
eWriter/ThisviChurchSm.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px;
border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="272" alt="ThisviChurchSm"
Writer/ThisviChurchSm_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> My part of the
project is to integrate data from a survey of the Thisvi basin in the late 1970s
and early 1980s by Tim Gregory and Ohio State. This material is preserved in
notebook form and I am in the process of bringing it into GIS whence it can be
combined with Archie‚Äôs material from the urban survey. While it is
commonplace for excavation data to be revisited to shed light on new issues, it
is far less common for survey data to be re-examined in the service of a new
research questions. I am optimistic that this work will not only improve our
understanding of settlement in the area, but (and perhaps in some ways more
importantly) demonstrate the "archival" character of survey material -- that is
to say prove that survey data, like excavation data, can be revisited in the
service of different research questions many years later. This will be
especially important for a site like Thisvi where a humongous pipe factory and a
whole set of new roads has obliterated much of the landscape that Gregory
investigated years earlier. <a
eWriter/ThisviWallSm.jpg"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px;
border-left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="272" alt="ThisviWallSm"
Writer/ThisviWallSm_thumb.jpg" width="404" border="0"></a> The pipe
factory is visible at the top left The goals of this
project obvious resonate with our work in Cyprus and its another project
affiliated with Mediterranean Archaeology at the University of North
Dakota...!
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TITLE: New Research in Late Roman Boeotia
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DATE: 09/01/2007 12:33:45 AM

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<a href="http://www.iaa.bham.ac.uk/staff/dunn.htm">Archie
Dunn</a>, of the <a href="http://www.iaa.bham.ac.uk/index.htm">Institute of
Archaeology and Antiquity at the University of Birmingham</a>, in now in the
third year of <a
href="http://www.iaa.bham.ac.uk/research/individuals/dunn/archie3.htm">a
multiyear project exploring the City of Thisvi in southwestern
Boeotia</a>. <a
eWriter/image.png" atomicselection="true"><img style="border-top-width: 0px;
Writer/image_thumb.png" width="400" border="0"></a> Google Earth Map of
the Thisvi Basin and Bay Thisvi is best know as one of the myriad of
Classical and Hellenistic Boeotian cities, and there exist to this day the
extensive remains well-made ashlar masonry walls on both the upper and lower
acropolises. <a
eWriter/towersm.jpg" atomicselection="true"><img style="border-top-width: 0px;
height="265" alt=""
Writer/towersm_thumb.jpg" width="400" border="0"></a> Walls on the
Lower Acropolis His project aims particularly at documenting the
Late Roman/Byzantine remains in the area which he argues was an area with
economic significance including a harbor and a center from the production
purple-dyed silk. Moreover, there is reason to suspect that this is where
Os. Loukas first began his monastic life. Os.
Loukas is famous for his substantial <a
href="http://www.doaks.org/saints2/TEXTS/64.html">vita (life)</a> and his
impressive <a href="http://www.ou.edu/class/ahi4263/byzhtml/p06-
01.html">monastic complex at Steiri</a> to the east of the ancient
site of Delphi. I am involved in this project
through my graduate school advisor, Timothy Gregory, who conducted an intensive
archaeological survey in the area of Thisvi in the late 1970s and early
1980s. <a
eWriter/ThisveScancropped.jpg" atomicselection="true"><img height="396"
alt="ThisveScancropped"
Writer/ThisveScancropped_thumb.jpg" width="400"></a> The
Ohio Boeotia Expedition (OBE) was a very early systematic intensive survey in
Greece and produced some indication of the economic engagement of this area
through time (but with special attention to Late Antiquity). Dunn's
project seeks to expand Gregory's data with information collected through an
intensive survey of the urban area including standing walls on both the upper
and lower acropolis and other fragments in the modern village which stretches
between the two hills. What I am going to try to do
is to integrate the two data sets. Most of this will be done in GIS, but
it will require some ground truthing and interpretation. The notebooks
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from the OBE are good and provide lots of relatively precise information on
methods and procedures used by the survey and the location of sites, some of
which have not yet been fully published. The hope is that by going through
the information in the notebooks again, revisiting the ceramics collected by the
project (Gregory has agreed to review the collected by the OBE and currently
stored in the Thebes Museum), integrating Dunn's analysis of the urban area, and
reviewing work done in Boeotia over the last 30 years, we'll be able to create
much fuller picture of this interesting corner of the ancient world. I will visit Dunn's team in the field on Monday and Tuesday and
will report back! 
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TITLE: Exciting News from the University of Pennsylvania Museum
STATUS: Publish
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DATE: 08/28/2007 11:51:56 PM

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Kostis Kourelis forwarded an email to me last night announcing that Richard
Hodges was named the Williams Director of the University of Pennsylvania Museum
of Archaeology and Anthropology. Here's the story from Penn's website:
<blockquote> A world-leading classical and early medieval archaeologist
specializing in western Europe, Hodges has been director of both The Prince of
Wales‚Äô Institute of Architecture in London and The British School in Rome. For
the past nine years, he has worked extensively on archaeological and cultural
heritage projects in Albania including the creation of a large cultural heritage
institute in Tirana and a new archaeological museum in Butrint. <a
href="http://www.museum.upenn.edu/new/news/fullrelease.php?which=294">Continued.
..</a></blockquote> This is big news for anyone interested in the post-
antique world. But it does pose the question: What will happen if
(or once?) the academic community decides that the study of the Late Antique,
Early Medieval, Early Byzantine, Late Roman world has finally come of age?
How will our responsibilities to our field change? Will it be a good
thing?
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TITLE: Fires in Athens
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DATE: 08/27/2007 01:43:02 AM

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Over the last four days or so the afternoon sky over Athens has turned burnt
orange with the smoke of fires, both local on the slopes of Hymmetos and more
distant on the island of Evia. People have probably seen the amazing
satellite photo: <a
eWriter/GreekFires.jpg" atomicselection="true"><img style="border-top-width:
height="263" alt="APTOPIX GREECE FIRES"
Writer/GreekFires_thumb.jpg" width="400" border="0"></a> The loss of life in the Northwestern Peloponnesus has been
tragic. It's hard to understand these kinds of fires. Are these
fires a natural means of regenerating the Mediterranean landscape? Or are
they the product of over development, mismanagement, and environmental
degradation? It is interesting that this summer in the U.S. fires have
been allowed to burn longer in Idaho and Wyoming to help manage forest and
prevent larger fires in the future. Let's hope that the fires of 2007
don't happen again any time soon... UPDATE (1 September
2007) If you want to know the real story of the fires, you
need to listen to a <a
href="http://www.yleradio1.fi/radiosoitin/mp3.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.yleradio1
.fi%2Fmp3%2Faudio%2F1188554645-28432.mp3">news-podcast in Classical Latin</a>
(from YLE Radio 1 in Finland)...
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DATE: 08/23/2007 11:26:56 AM

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After a couple false starts I have managed to make it to Athens and my
accommodations for the 2007/8 academic year at the <a
href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/">American School of Classical Studies at
Athens</a>. At first blush, one would not expect that American School to
have much in common with the University of North Dakota, and that impression
would, by-and-large, be true. But there are points of confluence.
Both are institutions that emerged in the important decades before the turn of
the century: 1883 for UND <a href="http://www2.und.edu/our/125th/">as we should
all now know</a> and 1881 for the American School. Both had their roots,
in many important ways, in the intellectual culture of New England. The
influence of Yale men like Homer Sprague and Webster Merrifield at UND finds a
parallel with cadre of Ivy League scholars (and others) who worked to
establish the American School. In both cases, the men were aware of
developments in Europe, sought to transform the educational structures in the
United States by combining American and European models (and, it is important to
note, met resistance), and deeply committed to Classical Studies (for all
its good and bad). So, for the next eight months or so, I will
correspond from Athens at what I will think of as UND's long-lost Athenian
cousin, the American School. <a
eWriter/Gennadius_Library.jpg" atomicselection="true"><img style="border-right:
alt="Gennadius_Library"
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If you haven't be sure to check out 48th Annual Midwestern Exhibition at the
Rourke Gallery in Fargo/Moorhead. It features a wide range of
interpretations of Alexander the Great by artists from throughout the
Midwest. I tried to find some reviews of it in the area newspapers,
but to no avail. Perhaps a reader will have seen it? In other news,
I depart for Athens, Greece on Sunday. I will be the Rhys Carpenter Fellow
at the <a href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/">American School of Classical Studies
at Athens</a>. So, like the views of the Earth from the surface of the
Moon, I will be viewing North Dakota from a distant venue.
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One of the fringe benefits of running this blog is that you occasionally hear
from an alumnus/a who studied the ancient world under one my predecessors here
at the University of North Dakota. While it was always interesting to hear
from a member of the larger university community, I must admit that prior to
working on the <a
-experiment-i.html">history of my department</a>, these names were usually
fairly meaningless to me. Some of this is perhaps exacerbated by the fact
that that our department as a group have only a fairly modest collective memory,
owing largely to the fairly brisk turnover in faculty over the last 20
years. As the study of the ancient world in North Dakota allows
for some unusual relationships, correspondences, and juxtapositions, it seems
worth including a brief biography of one of my predecessor here (drawn in
large part from the department's Centennial Newsletter of 1983):
Charles Carter, a native of Kentucky, (greater Cincinnati) earned his
Bachelor of Divinity from Emory University (Atlanta), a B.A. from the University
of Kentucky and the Ph.D., ancient Near East languages, from the University of
Chicago. He taught at Central Methodist College at Fayette, Missouri 1965-1966.
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At the University since 1966, he taught ancient and early European courses. His
Ph.D thesis was entitled Hittite Cult Inventories, and his subsequent
publications include "Some Notes on Political and Religious Institutions in Two
Ancient Cultures," Social Science XLIV (1969) as well as Vokabulare,
mythen und kultinventare (1978, with H.G. Gutterbock) and numerous more
specialized journal articles dealing with the Hittite language as well as
reviews. In 2000, after some delays, a volume in his honor was edited by
Yo√´l L.Arbeitman and titled <a
href="http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=gqn7OaEzxIMC&oi=fnd
&pg=PP11&dq=The+Asia+Minor+Connexion:+Studies+in+Pre-
Greek+Languages+in+Honor+of+Charles+Carter+&ots=gMgt5J2D7w&sig=rt96HAflT
2JGSZ7KPRPnFZWFnyE#PPP1,M1">The Asia Minor Connexion: Studies in Pre-Greek
Languages in Honor of Charles Carter</a> (Peeters, Leuven 2000). He
was the first individual to come to the history department to teach exclusively
(more or less) the ancient world and he brought with him to North Dakota, of all
people, the Hittites . He was active in national organizations like the <a
href="http://www.umich.edu/~aos/">American Oriental Society</a> as well as more
local organizations like <a
href="http://www.umanitoba.ca/outreach/linguistic_circle/index.html">The
Linguistic Circle of Manitoba and North Dakota</a>. He began and led the
Grand Forks chapter of the <a
which has subsequently disappeared. Perhaps noting Carter's
contribution in as ephemeral a medium as the a weblog is not doing him any great
service, but, then again, some of the most compelling journeys come from
following footprints in the sand.
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TITLE: An Experiment in Institutional History
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DATE: 08/09/2007 07:58:46 AM

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One of the great challenges of my past year has been to write the history of
the Department of History at the University of North Dakota. In a fit of
naive exuberance, I agreed to write the history of the department over the last
25 years as the University will celebrate its <a
href="http://www2.und.edu/our/125th/">125th-iversary this winter</a>. But
as I began to gather information on the broader history of the department, I
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discovered (ironically) that there hadn't been a proper history compiled for the
University's 100th anniversary in 1983. <a
eWriter/campusscenes1107789852_large.jpg" atomicselection="true"><img
height="255" alt="campusscenes1107789852_large"
Writer/campusscenes1107789852_large_thumb.jpg" width="400" border="0"></a> 
This led me, even more foolishly, to embark on writing a complete history of
the department from its inception (in around 1902 when Horace B. Woodworth was
named the first Professor of History at the University, but with roots in the
early 19th century) until today. So, over the last six months, I
have been spending quality time in the <a
href="http://www.library.und.edu/Collections/UA/home.html">University
archives</a> (and with their most excellent staff) attempting to sort
out the history of the department, the history of the university (guided in
particular by Louis Geiger's University of the Northern Plains (Grand
Forks 1958), and, in many cases, the history of the state (guided, of course, by
<a href="http://www.library.und.edu/Collections/Robinson/home.html">Elwyn
Robinson's</a> <a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_North_Dakota_%28book%29">History
of North Dakota</a> (Lincoln 1966)). I will point out, for those of
you who have not gathered this from my blog, I am not a historian of American
academic institutions (or even America, for that matter) so there was more
background reading than I initially anticipated. Moreover, the
kind of "primary source" research that I encountered was also a bit of a
challenge. I had never really done archival research so coming up with
strategies to deal with the uneven record of the department -- sometimes too
much information and sometimes hardly any at all -- in the 20th century was
another difficulty. I decided to try to complement the material from
(what I quaintly call) the textual sources with oral accounts and material
gained from personal correspondence. Finally, I violated every rule of
good sense and academic scholarship when I put pen to paper without a clear idea
of where I was going. As one would guess, the project quickly
spiraled out of control. I have now written three chapters covering the
history of the department from the late 19th century to around 1970 (note that I
haven't actually reached the last 25 years!). The experience of writing
this has brought to the fore many questions, but one in particular that
resonates with some of the ongoing discussions in surrounding academic
scholarship: I've written all this up, but now what? I have come up with
three solutions: 1) Chapter 1 I will convert into an article and send it
along the <a href="http://www.nd.gov/hist/ndh.htm">North Dakota
History</a> -- the quarterly journal of history published by the state
historical society. 2) Some parts of my research, I will attempt to
serialize here in this blog paying particular attention to scholars of antiquity
who have taught in North Dakota. 3) Much of the other chapters, I will
make available on my website in some form or another. In the next week or
so, I will try to post a version of chapter 2 as an experiment. Working
on the history of the department at a mid-sized institution has, of course,
raised all sorts of interesting questions regarding institutional memory, the
development of the discipline, and even the relationship between the
administrative and academic on university campuses. Hopefully I can
explore some of these ideas over the next few months here in this blog.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Aaron Barth
IP: 216.235.161.56
URL:
DATE: 08/16/2007 09:21:38 AM
I look forward to reading it Bill, both here and in North Dakota History.
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TITLE: More PKAP in the Press...
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DATE: 08/02/2007 11:50:38 AM

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The Cypriot newspaper Phileleftheros carried our press release <a
href="http://www.phileleftheros.com/main/main.asp?gid=506&id=499042&issu
enum=17160">today</a>. The consistent interest in archaeology expressed by
ordinary Cypriots is one of the most gratifying elements about working
there. 
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DATE: 08/02/2007 08:06:37 AM

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In conjunction with the exhibition <a
href="http://www.theromansarecoming.com/home">Roman Art from the Louvre at the
Indianapolis Museum of Art</a>, the IMA has produced a series of short (2-3
minute) video "<a
href="http://www.theromansarecoming.com/node/24">webisodes</a>" which they will
(presumably) release in the build up to the exhibitions opening at the end of
September. This format and presentation of these video is certainly
interesting and might provide a model for PKAPs current video release.
 And, Indianapolis is a scant 900 miles from Grand Forks...
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TITLE: Some More PKAP News
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DATE: 07/30/2007 08:58:34 AM

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Just a quick post today. Brandon Olson, a two year PKAP alumnus, got
some good ink in the <a href="http://www.fosston.com/">Fosston, Minnesota</a>
area. On July 17, their local newspaper, 13 Towns ran <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/files/Foss
tonOlsonArt.pdf">a short peice</a>
on the travel grant that he earned from UND to come and work with us on
Cyprus. He is working on <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/pylakoutsopetria_graduate/2007/06/sl
ingbullet_res.html">an important synthetic treatment of Hellenistic inscribed
sling pellets</a> which will feature prominently an understudied corpus of
material from our site.
Brandon will graduate with his M.A. in History this Summer from the
University of North Dakota and in the fall, enter the<a
href="http://www3.la.psu.edu/cams/"> </a><a
href="http://www3.la.psu.edu/cams/">Ph.D. Program in Classics and Ancient
Mediterranean Studies at Penn State</a>.
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AUTHOR: rebel57
EMAIL: asy_in57@hotmail.com
IP: 88.229.57.9
URL:
DATE: 09/07/2007 02:19:26 PM
a
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TITLE: The Quartzite Border
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BASENAME: the-quartzite-b
DATE: 07/27/2007 07:55:22 AM

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Just this week my colleague Gordon Iseminger provided me with a copy of his
newly reprinted book <a href="http://www.augie.edu/cws/quartzite.html">The
Quartzite Border: Surveying and Marking the North Dakota-South Dakota Boundary
1891-1892</a>. <a
eWriter/Quartzite.jpg" atomicselection="true"><img style="border-right: 0px;
alt="Quartzite"
Writer/Quartzite_thumb.jpg" width="400" border="0"></a> 
The book itself is handsomely produced with numerous photographs and
illustrations. The thing that drew me to the book, however, was
Iseminger's methodology: <blockquote> "For the past eight years, I have
spent a part of each summer walking along the state line, studying and
photographing the monuments. Except for about fifty miles in the area of
the Badlands along the Little Missouri River, I have walked the entire length of
the boundary, much of it twice, and some of it three or four
times.</blockquote> <blockquote> Because I prefer to work alone, I began
my day's walk shortly after dawn and continued until by my calculations, I was
half tired, whereupon I retraced my steps to my car. Like the man in the
legend who wanted to see what was beyond the next valley or behind the next
hill, however, I was often drawn onward by the monuments and sometimes
miscalculated both the amount of strength and the hours of daylight remaining to
me. Sometimes, at the end of the day, I searched for my vehicle in the
dark and collapsed into it -- tired, but wonderfully calmed, as one who had been
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in communion with a close friend..."</blockquote> Certainly anyone who

studies the landscape -- whether it be of the Mediterranean or the Dakotas --
can relate to this experience. I have many times outwalked my companions
and my common sense just to see what was on top of the next hill in the
Korinthia. Iseminger goes on to tell the story of the marking of the
border with regular quartzite markers at half mile intervals. What is most
interesting to me is how the markers do more than simply mark the border between
two sparsely-populated states on the Northern Plains, but serve to attach
stories, memories, and the history of various places to specific points in the
landscape. Iseminger's method -- walking the border, experiencing the
landscape, talking to the folks along the way, collecting stories of the
monuments, and documenting their continued place and function in the
landscape -- ensured that these monuments represent more than a
simply useful contribution to the mapping of the American west (which one could
research and read about in the comfort of one's office!), and bring to life the
far more complex process of making the landscape (which to an outsider like
myself can appear basically homogenous verging on featureless!) meaningful.
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AUTHOR: Aaron Barth
IP: 24.220.188.60
URL:
DATE: 07/28/2007 01:35:47 PM
Interesting. I do a fair bit of crossing the geopolitical border, from northern
to southern Dakota, and back again, while on cultural resource management
assignments. While doing this type of archaeological survey on the upper
Plains, in the evenings I often retire to my hotel/motel rooms and read primary
source accounts from the late 19th-century American West. The Hibernian and
Chicago Tribune correspondant John Finerty published "War Path and Bivouac; or,
The Conquest of the Sioux," (likely in the Aandahl library) a collection of
essays from the time he was imbedded with General Crook's outfit in 1876.
Finerty remarks on the violent depredations vested on the Sioux in eastern
Montana, and also comments on how the Sioux reciprocated. !
!
In another example, one tends to look at the Tongue River in eastern Montana in
a much different light after reading about all the blood that was spilled in and
around it during the Indian Wars that followed the Civil War. Archaeologically,
the area around Tongue River is significant (at least to your American
colleagues) as that is an area where Tongue River Silicified Sediment (aka,
TRSS) was quarried for hundreds and thousands of years. Projectile points and
bifaces crafted from this material can be found all throughout Dakota. Talk
about a deep map. And it gives even more relevance to the idea that All
History, and All Archaeology, in the end, is local. I digress.!
!
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Last fall I asked Dr. Iseminger if he had any spare Quartzite copies floating
around. It was impossible to acquire one even on the on-line Used and Out-of-
Print area of Amazon.com. I'm putting in my order. Pronto.
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TITLE: Another Real Time Archaeology Blog
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: another-real-ti
DATE: 07/25/2007 01:07:20 PM

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I just stumbled upon another <a
href="http://realtimearchaeology.blogspot.com/">Real-Time Archaeology Blog</a>,
very similar in content and style to our twin PKAP blogs. This <a
href="http://realtimearchaeology.blogspot.com/2007/02/inaugural-
post_25.html">blog chronicles the work of Prof. Ann E. Killebrew's team in
Cilicia</a> and is authored by graduate students from Penn State. Reading
blogs like these is another way to get your Mediterranean fix from the Northern
Plains.
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TITLE: The Pythia in Grand Forks
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DATE: 07/25/2007 08:43:08 AM

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This post have very little to do with the Archaeology of the Mediterranean
World, but something to do with the Ancient World in North Dakota and my other
main scholarly interest -- sacred space. This past spring, the
University of North Dakota opened their new <a
href="http://www.facilities.und.edu/Spiritualcenter/scfacts.htm">Spiritual
Center</a>. This is, indeed, timely as several recent studies, the most
prominent being <a href="http://www.spirituality.ucla.edu/index.html">UCLA's
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Spirituality in Higher Education</a> have indicated that undergraduates are

increasingly interested in religious and spiritual matters. At the same
time the exact boundaries of spiritual expression at both <a
href="http://www.wm.edu/news/?id=7456">state</a> and <a
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2006/08/26/AR2006082600629.html">private</a> universities,
at least, is under review. <a
eWriter/DSC_0047sm.jpg" atomicselection="true"><img style="border-right: 0px;
alt="DSC_0047sm"
Writer/DSC_0047sm_thumb.jpg" width="400" border="0"></a> The Spiritual Center at UND's campus is situated on the banks of
the English Coulee and as this picture indicates evokes the shape of the most
common spiritual places in the U.S. -- a church. The building itself is,
to be frank, fairly bland -- perhaps designed to blend in and not to offend as
much as to provide a true locus for contemplation or inspiration. Its
location, however, is one of the most serene spots on campus, overlooked by
the comforting authority of the administration building, and flanked by
a memorial to the students and alumni who have passed (officially a
remembrance wall -- which is oddly abstract with a cube of flowing water and a
wall inscribed with the word Celebrated). This is welcome addition to
campus and despite its somewhat liminal location (situated between the main
campus buildings and the fine arts building!), it will hopefully work to bring
spiritual and religious concerns more the forefront of the intellectual
discourse at the University here in North Dakota. The tie in
to the ancient world comes from the refurbished <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/dept/our/factbook/html/adelphifountain.htm">Adelp
hi Fountain</a>. <a
eWriter/DSC_0043sm.jpg" atomicselection="true"><img style="border-right: 0px;
alt="DSC_0043sm"
Writer/DSC_0043sm_thumb.jpg" width="266" border="0"></a> The fountain depicts the Pythia, the Delphic Oracle herself,
holding aloft a font of inspiration (for lack of a better term) and supported by
the three Muses -- one of whom must be Clio -- the muse of History
and heroic poetry and the like -- as she holds a scroll. The fountain,
which was donated to the University in 1907 by the <a
href="http://www.und.edu/org/adelphi/">Adelphi Literary Society</a>, has moved
around campus a bit and is now situated adjacent to the new Spiritual
Center. So, the Pythia lives on here in Grand
Forks...
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Aaron Barth
IP: 24.220.188.60
URL:
DATE: 07/29/2007 08:34:41 PM
The link to the Ancient world ‚Äî¬†via fountain ‚Äî¬†receives applause. On the
other hand, I have to side with the late Hunter Thompson (at least on this
issue). That is, I recall Thompson lambasting his good friend Steadman in one
volume of the Gonzo Journals. !
!
Hunter told Ralph that the words he injected into his art infected and detracted
from its abstract beauty. The word "Celebrated" seems an imposition, even
insulting (as though those before us wouldn't be celebrated?). !
!
But that's just an opine from one alumni... Overall, the fountain looks
beautiful. Nice work in restoring that continuity with the New World and the
Old, Adelphi. Nice work indeed.
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BASENAME: cyprus-lion-cov
DATE: 07/20/2007 08:16:00 AM

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The Cyprus Lion, the Bristish Military paper on Cyprus ran a <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/files/Lion
News.pdf">short article </a>on our project (you will note, PKAP watchers that
the author is none other than our resident Brit Michael Brown!) with a couple of
good photographs of Costas Kouloumis and Mick Delieu of Dhekelia and our very
own Sarah Lepinski and <a href="http://home.messiah.edu/~dpettegrew/">David
Pettegrew</a> measuring a fine of example of the bedrock cuts forming the dry
moat of the Late Roman fortification on Vigla (the dry moat is called taphros,
as <a href="http://isthmia.osu.edu/teg/">Timothy Gregory </a>informed us).
The Dhekelia folks have taken a great interest in our project, helping us, as
the article reports, take aerial photographs, but also providing us with a venue
to present our findings to the local ex-pat community in 2005 and providing us
with various small helps throughout the past few years (including an emergency
soddering job on a fussy resistivity meter!). 
So, once again thanks to the Dhekelian Cantoment folks for the help and the
new coverage.
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TITLE: Baptisteries and Nashville
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: baptisteries-an
DATE: 07/17/2007 08:07:27 AM

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Last week I took a quick trip to Nashville to discuss a new project that
seeks to produce a comprehensive (but not exhaustive) catalogue of baptisteries
for the Early Christian World. I am part of an editorial team (with <a
href="http://www.vanderbilt.edu/gradschool/religion/faculty/facultypages/jensen.
html">Robin Jensen</a> of Vanderbilt and <a
href="http://college.up.edu/theology/default.aspx?cid=1089&pid=196">Richard
Rutherford</a> of the University of Portland) who will assemble and manage a
team of scholars to bring together their specialized regional knownledge of the
Early Christian architectural remains. The project will not be an
ordinary catalogue (a version of which already exists in S. Ristow's
Fr√ºhchristliche Baptisterien (M√ºnster 1998)), but serve as the basis
for a regionally and chronologically informed discussion of "site and
rite". That is to say, our catalogue of baptisteries will be informed by
an interest in the interaction between Early Christian baptismal liturgy and
architecture. The hope is that this will not only bring the importance of
liturgy to the attention of archaeologists and art historians working on these
buildings in a new way, but also provide a resource for modern church leaders
and liturgical planners as they seek to find points of dialogue between the
contemporary rite and antiquity. To serve more fully the latter goal, we
plan to complement our written catalogue with an online database with
interactive maps, searchable texts, and images. It's a big project, but we
have a substantial and competent team assembled. And, it allowed me to
visit Nashville including the famed Parthenon. It was as bizarrely
wonderful as one might suggest of any ancient Greek monument translated onto
American soil. <a
eWriter/BaptisteriesandNashville_70A5/IMG_2119sm%5B2%5D.jpg"
atomicselection="true"><img style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; border-
left: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="266"
Writer/BaptisteriesandNashville_70A5/IMG_2119sm_thumb.jpg" width="400"
border="0"></a> <a
eWriter/BaptisteriesandNashville_70A5/IMG_2134sm%5B2%5D.jpg"
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Writer/BaptisteriesandNashville_70A5/IMG_2134sm_thumb.jpg" width="266"
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TITLE: Korinthian Artifacts
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: korinthian-arti
DATE: 07/10/2007 07:21:41 AM

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Linda Jones Hall alerted me to <a
5218">this short piece</a> in <a
href="http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/news_190371FL&xml/&aspKath/news"
>Kathimerini</a>, a Greek newspaper, on the recovery of a collection ancient
artifacts from a home near Korinth. It is always worth wondering if any or
all of these artifacts were looted from sites in the Korinthia. Looting
remains a problem in the Korinthia, even at known archaeological site. In
fact, some projects like Joe Rife's <a
href="http://www.macalester.edu/classics/kenchreai/index.html">Kenchreai
Cemetery Project</a> (now Kenchreai Excavations) has made the <a
href="http://www.macalester.edu/classics/kenchreai/res_cul.html">documenting of
"clandestine excavations" an explicit part of their research goals</a>.
The discovery of this collection of ancient artifacts at Korinth comes on the
same day that Culture Minister Giorgos Voulgarakis announced a new initiative to
combat the trade in antiquities, the primary economic motivating for looting and
destination for illegally excavated materials.
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TITLE: PKAP Alumnus Featured on UND Main website
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DATE: 07/09/2007 08:11:41 AM

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<a href="http://www.und.edu/spotlights/davidterry.html">David Terry, a 2007
PKAP Alumnus, is featured with his research on the UND website</a>. David
is a graduate student in <a href="http://www.und.edu/dept/histdept/">History at
UND</a> who works on the Crusades, focusing at present on models of cultural
interaction in Crusader period Cyprus. During the 2007 fieldseason, he
contributed to our <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/pylakoutsopetria_graduate/">PKAP
Graduate Student Blog</a>, worked both in the Museum and in the field, and
visited a number of significant Medieval sites on Cyprus. He is also a
member of the <a href="http://www.squinch.und.edu">AIA Medieval and Post-
Medieval Mediterranean Interest Group</a>!
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TITLE: The Archaeology of Medieval Cyprus at the BSC
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: the-archaeology
DATE: 07/05/2007 07:46:27 AM

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The <a href="http://www.squinch.und.edu/">AIA Interest Group for Medieval and
Post Medieval</a> is pleased to announce an organized panel at the <a
href="http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/medieval/BSC/program.html">33rd Byzantine
Studies Conference at the University of Toronto</a> focusing on the archaeology
and architecture of Cyprus. Saturday, October
13 8:30‚Äì10:00 9. Cyprus: Archaeology, Architecture and History ‚Äì
VIC 112 Justin Leidwanger (University of Pennsylvania), Structure and
Scale in the Maritime Economy of Early Byzantine Cyprus William R. Caraher
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(University of North Dakota), R. Scott Moore (Indiana University of

Pennsylvania) and David K. Pettegrew (Messiah College), Across Larnaka
Bay: Recent Investigations of a Late Antique Harbor Town in Southeast Cyprus
Jens T. Wollesen (University of Toronto), The Frescoes of the Royal Chapel
at Pyrga on Cyprus: New Evidence and Problems In addition to these
papers there will be two other papers related to the archaeology of Cyprus:
Friday, October 12 2:00‚Äì3:30 Amy Papalexandrou (University of Texas
at Austin), Contextualizing the Tomb: ‚ÄòBowl Burials‚Äô from Polis, Cyprus
Sunday, October 14 10:45-12:45 Tassos Papacostas (King‚Äôs College
London), A Re-appraisal Of Architecture on Late Medieval Cyprus
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TITLE: PKAP, Korinthiaka, and Abandonment
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: pkap-korinthiak
DATE: 06/28/2007 07:32:32 AM

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Hi folks! Sorry for the sabbatical, but in the Korinthia I only had a
dial up connection, so there was no way to blog. I have now returned to
the comfortable confines of Grand Forks to get my research and life together to
return to Athens in August. I hope to have a chance to update the PKAP
interactive map and develop an interactive map for the Korinthia Survey
(EKAS). David Pettegrew and I have begun to put together an Eastern
Korinthia website that will feature the methods and results of the EKAS as well
as information on its related projects. We hope that it will not only
serve as a place for the public to familiarize themselves with the project, but
it will also make material available for teachers who might find some of the
data, analysis, and methods useful in the classroom. David, will likely use some
of the Korinthia material in his Classical Archaeology class at Messiah College.
I will post a link to it here once we get it up in beta. As a
follow up on a <a
andoned_lands.html">post I made some months ago</a> on abandonment in the North
Dakota countryside, there was an interesting article in the July issue of Harper
<a href="http://harpers.org/archive/2007/07/0081594">on abandoned spaces in
downtown Detroit</a>. In particular, it discusses how lots made vacant
through urban decay, depopulation, and arson are sometimes converted to
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community gardens and "green spaces". This trend, of course, is will known
both in other modern cities, but perhaps more interestingly (for me) in
antiquity. The accounts of Medieval Constantinople, for example, where
large stretches of the city within the Theodosian walls has reverted to orchards
and gardens are well known. This perspective reinforces the idea that
abandonment is simply an part of the historic narrative that topographers,
archaeologists and historians construct to understand landscapes rather than the
rigidly ahistorical end points that punctuate older narratives drawing upon more
traditional paradigms.
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TITLE: Farewell to Cyprus and the real beginning
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: final_farewell
DATE: 06/13/2007 01:57:39 PM

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I leave Cyprus and PKAP tomorrow for Athens and Corinth. For those of
you who have been reading about our adventures in Cyprus, thanks!! We hope
that you have enjoyed our correspondence and check back regularly both here and
at our <a href="http://www.chss.iup.edu/pkap/">PKAP website</a> for
updates. We now begin the real work of analysis and interpretation that
will make all our data mean something. <a
eWriter/FinalFarewell_134AE/DSC_0297%5B2%5D_1.jpg" atomicselection="true"><img
height="226"
Writer/FinalFarewell_134AE/DSC_0297_thumb_1.jpg" width="400" border="0"></a>
 I will keep blogging over the next year to keep everyone informed on the
great things happening with UND Mediterranean Archaeology and continue to plumb
the links between the Mediterranean world and my backyard in North Dakota, so
keep reading!
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Maddy Bray
IP: 128.97.6.69
URL:
DATE: 06/13/2007 02:16:28 PM
Hey guys,!
Awesome site- it's really interesting to see the inner workings of a project in
progress. I leave for Greece myself in a few weeks...good luck with the "real
work", now that the fun stuff is over!!
!
Maddy
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TITLE: Last day in the field
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
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BASENAME: last_day_in_the
DATE: 06/11/2007 11:40:28 PM

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Well, today, June 12, is the last day in the field. I'm sad that our
season has ended as quickly as it began! Yesterday we finished surveying
the slopes below the height of Vigla where our investigations this year revealed
a Late Roman fortification wall and possibly an early Christian basilica.
A problem with these features is that they seem inconsistent with the pottery
that we had found on the height: mostly Archaic-Hellenistic material with little
Roman or Late Roman material. The slope survey yesterday documented
thousands of pottery sherds and a consistent low to moderate density scatter of
Late Roman amphora fragments and even some tiles. Needless to say, this
demonstrates that we DO have some Late Roman material on the height, although in
much lower amounts than the plain below. Fortified Vigla perhaps was not a
place that was regularly inhabited in the Late Roman era.
Today we'll be doing odds and ends: at the museum, finishing our catalogue
and illustration of the survey pottery, and, in the field, wrapping up the
survey of the ridges, pulling our orange flags from fields (archaeologists must
be environmentally sensitive), and revisiting a few features. Tomorrow
afternoon we have our final meeting where we will make plans for the off season
and next summer. 
All in all, it's been a very good season. We've accomplished all of our
goals and brought to light a variety of interesting finds that illustrate the
significance of this site in the coastline of southeast Cyprus.
David
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TITLE: Aerial Archaeology and the RAF
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BASENAME: aerial_archaeol
DATE: 06/11/2007 11:46:14 AM

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We have another group to add to our long list of folks to thanks for their
help with our archaeological project today! The Royal Air Force provided
us with low altitude aerial photographs of our site. They did it for free
and with an added bonus of drama as the British Army had to shut down their
firing ranges for a half an hour while the RAF helicopter flew low over the
sight. Then because of landing site complications, the RAF helicopter
landed on the firing ranges and returned our fancy digital camera to the waiting
arms of Michael Brown.<a
eWriter/AerialArchaeologyandtheRAF_11529/ChopperSm%5B2%5D.jpg"
Writer/AerialArchaeologyandtheRAF_11529/ChopperSm_thumb.jpg" width="400"
border="0"></a> The low altitude flight yielded absolutely amazing
photographs of the two major sites in our archaeological area. A number of
the photographs of Vigla clearly show the fortification walls that we have been
documenting over the last few weeks. <a
eWriter/AerialArchaeologyandtheRAF_11529/Picture%20058sm%5B3%5D.jpg"
Writer/AerialArchaeologyandtheRAF_11529/Picture%20058sm_thumb%5B1%5D.jpg"
width="400" border="0"></a> Vigla from the air
<a
eWriter/AerialArchaeologyandtheRAF_11529/Picture%20082cropped%5B3%5D.jpg"
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Writer/AerialArchaeologyandtheRAF_11529/Picture%20082cropped_thumb%5B1%5D.jpg"
width="400" border="0"></a> Vigla again. Note the
fortification line along the left side of the photo And the views of
Kokkinokremos will add a nice dramatic element to Michael Brown's dissertation
and our final publication: <a
eWriter/AerialArchaeologyandtheRAF_11529/Picture%20031sm%5B2%5D.jpg"
Writer/AerialArchaeologyandtheRAF_11529/Picture%20031sm_thumb.jpg" width="400"
border="0"></a> Kokkinokremos from the air (the area
excavated in the early 1980s is in the center of the ridge) It is rare that an American archaeologist has the chance to work
with the RAF, but they deserve our thanks today!
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: susancaraher
IP: 134.129.168.236
URL:
DATE: 06/11/2007 05:26:59 PM
Hi everyone,!
!
The aerial photos are spectacular. And the Vigla wall is so prominent. Cheers to
the RAF! And well done to Michael for successfully negotiating with them. I
look forward to seeing more pictures. And what a shame the film maker (and I)
had departed. The chopper would have made for great footage. I suppose you won't
be needing me to hang-glide over the site next year?
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: susancaraher
IP: 134.129.168.236
URL:
DATE: 06/11/2007 05:27:58 PM
Hi everyone,!
!
The aerial photos are spectacular. And the Vigla wall is so prominent. Cheers to
the RAF! And well done to Michael for successfully negotiating with them. I
look forward to seeing more pictures. And what a shame the film maker (and I)
had departed. The chopper would have made for great footage. I suppose you won't
be needing me to hang-glide over the site next year?
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COMMENT:
1425

EMAIL:
IP: 24.218.58.59
URL: http://profile.typekey.com/miraclewimp/
DATE: 06/12/2007 07:24:19 PM
Awesome, totally awesome...is there any cooler than photos of helicopters
landing? Nice view of the Vigla wall, the pilot must rock. Good luck finishing
up!
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TITLE: The Archaeological Life
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
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BASENAME: the_archaeologi
DATE: 06/09/2007 09:48:53 AM

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Just a quick post today! We spent four hours in the field this morning
(after thinking that we would only spend two), but we have found that our Late
Roman fortifications on Vigla might have a dry moat. Two parallel bedrock
cuts about 15 meters apart run to the north of the traces of our proposed Late
Roman fortification. Such seemingly minor discoveries are a nice break
from the monotony of processing artifacts. For other fun late season
distractions check out the <a
Graduate Student Blog</a>. Thanks to all the readers of the blog and the
cooperation of the <a href="http://www.und.edu/">University of
North Dakota's</a> Office of University Relations who gave our project <a
href="http://www.und.edu/dept/our/cyprus.html">a most excellent profile and a
link</a>. We've had over 900 hits since we've started blogging from Cyprus
and received news coverage from as far afield as <a
href="http://www.bismarcktribune.com/articles/2007/05/29/news/state/134031.txt">
Bismarck, N.D.</a> and Fargo, N.D.!
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TITLE: Reading and Writing
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: reading_and_wri
DATE: 06/07/2007 11:39:50 PM

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As the fieldwork phase of the project begins to wrap up over the next week,
we also begin the analytical phase of the project. This involves some
primary research -- a trip to the <a href="http://www.caari.org/">Cyprus
American Archaeological Research Institute</a> (CAARI) Library -- and
some writing -- namely a final report to submit to the Department of
Antiquities and a paper that we deliver annually at the CAARI Archaeological
Workshop. The advantage of writing before we leave the island is
that we can make sure that we have the little details that often slip through
the cracks between archaeological fieldwork and archaeological
publication. For example, we can re-check a measurement of a feature in
the field or the identification of an artifact stored in the museum.
Moreover, the CAARI library presents a very good collection of material for
research on Cyprus in one place. Finally, the community of scholars who
work on Cyprus is, by and large, close knit and supportive. Beginning the
analytical process while concluding fieldwork makes it easier to share our
research with our colleagues here. Perhaps the greatest advantage of
beginning the analytical process while in the field is that it allows the team
to debate various interpretations with the material close at hand. Even
the most sophisticated forms of electronic communications cannot replicate the
ability to walk into the field and look at a disputed feature and bat about
various interpretations. Over the past week, for example, we have noted
some rock cuttings that may well be post-prehistoric tombs. These are the
first rock cut tombs that the project has found despite the long stretches of
exposed coastal ridges. Elsewhere on the island (and throughout the
Mediterranean) these coastal ridges were common sites for tombs in almost every
period. While we may never be able to definitively state that these rock
cuttings are tombs, the ability to scrutinize the cuttings and examine their
place in the larger environment (e.g. would they be visible from the sea? Would
they lie along an ancient road? Would they have faced an area of known
settlement?) will allow us to make a more compelling identification.
 The last days in the field and at the museum, then, become in some ways
the most exciting and profitable. More on our final discoveries and
reports over the next few days...
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AUTHOR: RSM
TITLE: Big Day at the Museum
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: big_day_at_the_
DATE: 06/06/2007 10:12:03 AM

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Today was a big day at the museum for PKAP. Dr. Maria Hadjicosti, from the
Cyprus Department of Antiquities, stopped by for a visit to see how things are
progressing for us this season. Dr. Hadjicosti has been very instrumental in
helping us set up our project. We began conversing with her about our project
back in the fall of 2001 - which now seems like a lifetime ago. Her family is
from the area and this makes her a valuable source of information about our
survey area and its recent past. In addition, she has conducted two small
excavations below Vigla on the coastal plain that uncovered a Late Roman
basilica.
Since she is very busy with her work at the Department of Antiquities, her
time with us each year is very limited and this puts pressure on us to prepare
for the meeting carefully. So, two nights ago the senior staff held a planning
session to prepare for the meeting. The first thing we did was make a list of
topics we wanted to discuss with her and then prioritized it. After a brief
discussion, we decided that our number one priority was to share our geophysical
data with her and explain our interpretations of the results with her - such as
the possible basilica on Vigla. Our next priority would be to have the
specialists talk to her about their progress in preparing artifacts for the
final publication (wall paintings, sling bullets, ceramics, etc.). Finally, we
wanted to talk about the final publication and what else be needed to prepare it
for publication.
I have to admit that I always worry about her visits and try to micromanage
everything so that nothing can go wrong. (For more information on why I do this,
see earlier post on panic attacks). As usual, though, her visit went smoothly
and actually went well. She even brought us some more information about her
excavations that will help us in our analysis of our survey material. I don't
know about the rest of the team, but I am feeling very good about the season and
what we have accomplished and about our chances of finishing most of our other
tasks.
The other big change affecting the project is that the IUP students have
started leaving - three left yesterday and the last will leave tomorrow. As
other members began to leave over the next week and a half, logistically things
become more complicated. We have to arrange car rides to the airport (the last
one last night was after midnight), planning for meals becomes harder, and we
have less manpower to accomplish museum work.
What I have really noticed this season is how old I feel. Perhaps it is just
a form of midlife crisis, but it bothers me to be the oldest person on the
project - at 41 years old, wait that should be 41 years young, right? I must be
old saying things like that. I realized that my one of my students on the
project has been alive one year less than I have been married. I like to tell
myself that this merely shows how young and vibrant our project is, but then a
couple of days like the last two comes along. Yesterday, I woke up at 6:40 AM,
then I worked at the museum in the morning, went grocery shopping for the
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project, helped prep lunch, took 2 students to the airport, went into the field
to help with the ridge survey, came back to the hotel and prepared dinner, had a
senior staff meeting, took a student to the airport after midnight and finally
went to bed at 1:30 AM. As a result, I have been dragging all day today and
can't stop yawning. Ah well, maybe next year I should take my New Year's
resolutions more seriously.
RSM 
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TITLE: Home again, home again...
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BASENAME: home_again_home
DATE: 06/05/2007 06:00:12 PM

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It is true. I did bid a tearful farewell to Cyprus and returned home to
resume work at The Graduate School this week. It meant leaving the project half
way through the season. This also meant handing over systems and debriefing
various project folk on these procedures we've set up in the lab for processing
& cataloguing artefacts, as well as trying to impress the need to consider
end of season storage! Scott Moore and I had worked out a pretty efficient
method for moving artefacts through cataloguing and illustration, with
consideration for rephotographing some artefacts and dealing with new finds. We
had also created a system for dealing with rogue artefacts. Good luck guys! I
have complete confidence in you. (Oh, and please do a really good end-of-season
inventory!) I'll look forward to hearing about the final weeks. 
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EMAIL: brice.pearce@unh.edu
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IP: 213.149.168.199
URL:
DATE: 06/05/2007 10:38:05 PM
We'll miss you Suze! Try not to work _too_ hard back in ND! Hope the Mac
advice was helpful!
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TITLE: Pots, pots, pots
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: pots_pots_pots
DATE: 06/04/2007 08:33:36 AM

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BODY:
The undergraduates will begin to sneak away this week leaving the senior
staff, some specialists, and <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/pylakoutsopetria_graduate/">an
assortment of graduate students</a> to wade through a mass of pottery that the
students diligently collected under our watchful eye. <a
eWriter/Potspotspots_E7D8/Pottery-in-Field%5B2%5D.jpg"
Writer/Potspotspots_E7D8/Pottery-in-Field_thumb.jpg" width="400" border="0"></a>
 Bags of pottery waiting to be collected from the field
Over the last few days the undergraduates have been washing the pottery some
of which will be analyzed over the next few weeks and some of which will be put
into storage to be read by specialists next season. On the one hand
pottery washing is tedious, but on the other, it does give the students a chance
to see almost all the material collected in the field and actually handle
it. Touching the artifacts and developing a feel for different fabric
types, shapes, and surface treatments (glazes, slips, and incisions) is crucial
to understanding the differences between classes of artifacts and the process
whereby the artifacts were produced. Nothing is better than hands on
education! <a
eWriter/Potspotspots_E7D8/WashingPots%5B2%5D.jpg" atomicselection="true"><img
height="399"
Writer/Potspotspots_E7D8/WashingPots_thumb.jpg" width="266" border="0"></a> 
Pottery washing fun Scott Moore has busied himself
cataloguing finds -- that is writing short technical descriptions of
particularly important artifacts. This catalogue will be a central aspect
of our final publication and a place where other scholars can compare the
material from their site to ours. <a
eWriter/Potspotspots_E7D8/ScottnPotts%5B2%5D.jpg" atomicselection="true"><img
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height="266"
Writer/Potspotspots_E7D8/ScottnPotts_thumb.jpg" width="400" border="0"></a> 
Scott in cataloguing mode We will also begin to look at
material excavated from the site over the past two decades. Sarah Lepinski
arrived (sans baggage) on Saturday and will examine wall painting and molded
gypsum. The final excitement from the weekend is that the
British have agreed (in theory) to fly over the site and take low altitude
aerial photos as long as we get security clearance and as long as they do not
require any considerable deviation from a scheduled flight plan. These
photos will give us another view of the topography and features at the site and
should give our presentations and publications a nice boost. So even
after the students leave, we will keep busy with various projects both in the
field and at the museum. 
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TITLE: Susan's Departure and Sarah's Arrival
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DATE: 06/02/2007 09:31:15 AM

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Susan Caraher, our registrar of finds and my wife, bid tearful farewell to
the island this morning. She provided a sense of order in the museum and,
at least for me, a refuge from the hectic archaeological world. I will
miss her in Cyprus and will be counting the days until I see her again in Grand
Forks. After a hectic week of field and museum work, David and Scott
toured the students around Nicosia, taking them to the <a
href="http://www.mcw.gov.cy/mcw/DA/DA.nsf/All/67084F17382CF201C2257199001FE4AD?O
penDocument">Cyprus Museum</a> which houses many important artifacts from all
period of antiquity. They also checked out some of the local sites --
including the wall that continues to divide the city. It is great
experience for students to visit major collections of artifacts with the senior
staff of the project. It gives them a chance to connect the fragments that
we collect in the field and study in the Larnaka museum to completed
vessels. I stayed back in Larnaka and helped get Sarah Lepinski.
She has arrived with her entourage (that is her twins and baby sitter) to study
wall paintings and molded gypsum (a soft rock that forms the basis for a rugged
plaster) architectural decoration. She will spend the next few weeks
working with this material in the museum and traveling to sites throughout the
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island where similar material was excavated. Her work will form an
important chapter in our final publication. As David Pettegrew has
mentioned, our great excitement for this past week was our preliminary analysis
of our geophysical work on Vigla. As we noted over a week ago, we knew
that it had revealed monumental architecture (or "something big"). Further
study of the image now suggests that this architecture might well be a Late
Roman basilica church. This would fit well with our discovery of Late
Roman fortification walls on this prominent coastal ridge. The only real
problem is that we have not found any significant amount of Late Roman pottery
on the ridge. While there are some other examples for this, it is
nevertheless disconcerting. The final news of the weekend (at least so
far) is that my parents have come to visit. They have a lively interest in
the archaeology and history of the Mediterranean and look forward to watching
the team work over the next few days and seeing some of the sites on the island.

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TITLE: Archaeology as Field School, or why Bill Caraher is certainly wrong
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David Pettegrew here (the arch nemesis of Caraher in respect to the question
of student involvement).... 
This is actually an issue that Bill and I argue about most every
summer. Bill aims for specialization and efficiency, I aim for the well-
rounded experience (admittedly at the expense of some of our field time). 
I certainly disagree with Bill's view that students feel a "sense of
satisfaction" with specializing in an archaeological task over a period of
three weeks! On the contrary, students appreciate getting the big
picture that comes from being educated in the numerous components of our work
here in Cyprus: gridding and mapping, reconaissance survey, intensive field
walking, planning, drawing walls and features, filling out forms, data entry,
GIS, and computer-based analysis, etc.... Without seeing the entire
picture, participants fail to understand how their individual contributions
matter. This week, in fact, one student who joined us in mapping out
survey units told us afterward that she now had a much better sense of why we
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were surveying where we were surveying. Ultimately Bill and I will

continue to debate the merits of the type of training that students should
receive in archaeological method each summer, but, as I look back over the last
three seasons, I do see the well-rounded "field school" approach
gaining the upper hand! I hope that we continue to develop the field
school since it is one of the most exciting aspects of the archaeogical
process! 
Some brief news from fieldwork this week....Today we finished our survey of
the Bronze Age site of Kokkinokremos. Exciting finds include ubiquitous
pottery, numerous stone basins, several "loom weights" and anchors,
many stone artifacts, and what appears to be a minor later Hellenistic-Roman
phase at the same site--much to the chagrin of the prehistorians on our
project! Michael Brown and Dimitri Nakassis can fill you in.
The other thrilling discovery from the height of Vigla comes from John Hunt's
analysis of the geophysical (electrical resistivity) data: it appears we have
another early Christian basilica on the ridge! Only excavation will
determine for sure, but it looks promising and we're all excited.
David
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TITLE: The less than glamorous aspects
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The season is going fine, lots of new discoveries, new plans for the future,
etc. One aspect, however, that we haven't covered much in these blogs is the
logistical side of things. We are currnetly at 16 people and attention has to be
paid to shopping for food, preparing meals, buying supplies, and arranging
trips. This is the part of the project that can really tire you out or wear you
down. For example, we go to the grocery store everyday to buy food for lunch and
supper. This involves a car ride to Carrefour, the cheapest of the mega markets
that are close to the museum. This trip involves buying staples (cereal, milk,
coffee, etc.) and trying to find good deals on meat and vegetables in order to
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save the project money. This means that we are usually deciding about dinner
while we are shopping. Once the items are purchased and crammed into our super
small Proton Savvy, we have to get the supplies put away into three small mini
refridgerators - which is one reason we cannot buy too much at one visit.
Another hard part is arranging group trips - both to the museum amd field, as
well as to other sites on the island. One problem is that we have 16 people and
three cars that each seat 5, so transporting everybody everywhere is a bit of a
challenge and sometimes involves shuttling people. Now that we have finally
gotten into a routine, things are going to change again. We have some people
starting to leave this weekend while a few others others are arriving. This
means we have to arrange a group photo (where? when?) and find a place for a
final group dinner.
Now is this a royal pain? Yes. But, it is what makes discovering the Late
Roman walls on Vigla possible and so it is neccessary. Fortunately, if sixteen
years of college taught me anything, it is how you sometimes have to do the
boring stuff (standing in line, filling out forms, waiting on hold) to get to
the end result.
RSM
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DATE: 05/29/2007 11:32:01 AM

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One of the unique features of PKAP is that we are a hybrid project. We
involve students in almost all aspects of fieldwork, much like an
archaeological field school (i.e. a project this is primarily designed to
teach students archaeological method and practice), but we also maintain a
strong focus on research and pursue fieldwork directed by very specific
questions regarding the nature of Mediterranean exchange networks, settlement
patterns, et c. This inevitable causes conflict among senior staff
as to the nature and extent of student involvement. This season (as in the
past) our debates regarding student involvement revolve around differing
philosophies of archaeological education. I argue that students learn
archaeological practice largely from practicing archaeology. The
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experiences of a regular fieldwork routine focused on accomplishing a specific

task -- whether it be field walking, pottery washing, pottery sorting, or even
data entry -- give the students not only experience in the meticulous and
detailed nature of archaeological research, but also provide them with a sense
of accomplishment when they see how their specific responsibility fits into the
larger goals of the project. In the best cases, students who are given a
specific task to accomplish over the course of a field season develops a degree
of expertise in the specific task and can actually help us to refine the methods
or procedures that we employ. <a
eWriter/Fieldschoolorfieldproject_10D9A/DSC_0034sm%5B3%5D.jpg"
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border="0"></a> Students enjoying the routine pleasure of
fieldwalking In practice, my philosophy involves assigning specific
jobs to specific students. For example, one student might be in charge of
data entry for the season, another regularly assigned to a field team, another
assigned to assist a more senior person in mapping survey units. These
tasks do not vary over the season ensuring that the student develops a degree of
experience and "expertise" over the three or four weeks of work. David
Pettegrew, my arch nemesis in this matter, is a proponent of the "rotation
school" of archaeological education. The so-called "rotation school"
cruelly deprives students of the wide-ranging pleasures of archaeological
routine as they are "rotated" through various different tasks on a daily
basis. This practice is neither an ideal experience for the project -- as
it deprives us of students who have even limited experience at any task -- but
it is bad for the students as well as they never develop the sense of
accomplishment that comes from performing an important function of the project
consistently and well. David, of course, sees this differently...
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DATE: 05/27/2007 02:35:14 AM

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This past week was the first week that the project functioned to optimal
capacity. From late Sunday afternoon when we walked our first survey units
of the season through to Saturday site-seeing trips the students and staff were
fully immersed in the archaeology and culture of Cyprus. So, to
review:
On Sunday we conducted a couple of hours of field training and walked our
first survey unit. 
<a
eWriter/TheWeekinReview_8809/DSC_0005sm[4].jpg" atomicselection="true"><img
height="266"
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style="BORDER-RIGHT: 0px; BORDER-TOP: 0px; BORDER-LEFT: 0px; BORDER-BOTTOM: 0px"
/></a>
Field Training on the First Day
On Monday we had a "meet and greet" with the U.N. in the Buffer
zone and learned exactly where our survey boundary ended. We were in the
field from Tuesday to Friday working to the north of our highest density coastal
units. We had hoped to determine the northern border of our site, but it
now seems clear that the site, disregarding all international conventions,
extends into the U.N. Buffer Zone around Pyla Village.
The Pettegrews, David, an Assistant Professor at Messiah College who is the

field director of the project, and his wife, Katie who will help with pottery
processing in the museum, arrived, as did Dimitri Nakassis. David and
Dimitri have been working with Michael Brown to set up the survey of the
prehistoric (Late Bronze Age -- ca. 1300-1200 BC) site of Kokkinokremos.
This will start next week -- perhaps as early as Monday. There is a
significant scatter of material on hill ranging from stone tools to large
ceramic storage vessels. The quantity of pottery may overwhelm our ability
to wash, sort, and store the material in the short run, but in the long run it
could give us important new insights into the date, the function, and the
connections between this site and the rest of the Late Bronze Age world.

<a
height="399"
/></a> 
Michael Brown and David Pettegrew
Saturday we went site-seeing taking the students to three site on the Western
part of the island: Paphos, which has spectacular Roman period mosaics, the
monastery of St. Neophytos, an important Medieval site with an impressive
painted, rock cut, church, and the site of St. George - Peyeia. The last
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site is a coastal site much like ours with several 5th-6th century A.D.
basilicas and a small bath. The most interesting aspect of the site, to a
certain extent, is that it does not appear in any textual sources -- despite
having substantial architecture and covering a significant stretch of
coastline. While the site it not well-published yet, it might be a nice
parallel for our site which also does not appear in textual sources despite its
size and monumental appearance.<a
height="266"
/></a> 
The Baptistery at Ay. Georgios - Peyeia
To cap off the week, this weekend (through Monday, or Tuesday, or
Wednesday...) is the Kataklysmos. This is the local religious festival
celebrating both the Biblical flood and Pentecost (50 days after Orthodox Easter
which fell this year at the same time as Western Easter). Entertainers,
rides, fireworks, are joined by hundreds of vendors selling every kind of
possible junk you could imagine from boom-boxes guaranteed to break almost
immediately to fake fish in fake water in a fake fish bowl. The festival
in Larnaka is the largest on the island and attracts visitors and tourists
alike. From 7 pm to late into the night, a flood of people wander up and
down the boardwalk taking in the music, eating food, playing carnival games, and
buying junk. These festival may have roots in Medieval fairs and give the
students an opportunity to experience Cypriot (or more broadly Eastern
Mediterranean) culture at its most overwhelming!
One last thing, be sure to check in on the <a

Graduate Student Perspectives </a>blog! The Graduate students continue to
provide their unique and insightful view of our fieldwork!
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DATE: 05/23/2007 10:26:48 PM

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After our abortive first day of fieldwork, we had to retrench. We laid
out a series of units on a series of coastal ridges extending north from
coast. We had planned on surveying these ridges from the start, but had
figured to work on them in the afternoon as they fall within the British ranges
and have only limited access during the morning. Despite this limitation,
we got units mapped in on Monday afternoon and had a full field team (5
fieldwalkers and a team leader) in the field on Tuesday. You can see them
lined up in the traditional survey archaeologist pose -- head down -- in the
photo below. The big excitement was that one of the graduate students,
Brice Pierce, found two fragments of figurines in the last unit of the
day! We have found a few other examples of figurines from the site, and
they support our idea that there was an ancient sanctuary on part of the
site during the pre-Roman period. We'll have photos of them up here
soon. <a
eWriter/FieldworkTakeTwo_11B00/DSC_0102sm%5B2%5D.jpg"
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 On Wednesday the British were not firing so we were able to work in the
morning. This coincided with Dimitri Nakassis arrival. He is a
scholar of the Aegean Bronze Age who had worked with us in the past. He
led the field team on Wednesday morning. Dimitri will work with Michael
Brown on unraveling Kokkinokremos. We also spent some time trying to
figure out monumental architecture on Vigla by beginning to prepare a sketch
map. My theory (and I am trying to convince the other member's of the
project of this) is that part of what we have there is the remains of
a Late Roman fortification wall (6th-7th century AD). From the mid 6th to
mid 7th century there was a concerted effort to construct fortifications across
the Eastern Mediterranean and a substantial wall situated on a rise above what
appears to be a wealthy settlement would fit this narrative As far as we
can tell, the walls on Vigla have never been recorded and it is entirely
possible that no one has ever noticed them before (even though they seem clearly
visible to us!). We traced their circuit around the top of the ridge of
Vigla. Here's Mat Dalton beginning to plan the walls: <a
eWriter/FieldworkTakeTwo_11B00/DSC_0115sm4.jpg" atomicselection="true"><img
border-right-width: 0px" height="598"
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 We'll spend tomorrow morning in the Museum cleaning up our finds and
working on cataloguing finds from 2005 and 2006. Hopefully I will have
nice artifact photos by the end of the week!
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COMMENT:
EMAIL: brice.pearce@unh.edu
IP: 213.149.168.199
URL:
DATE: 05/31/2007 03:35:25 PM
Just a slightly irked reminder that my last name is English, not French
(although I live near Franklin Pierce's birthplace). That's PEARce, my man.
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AUTHOR: RSM
TITLE: Museum Work
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DATE: 05/22/2007 01:37:10 PM

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We continued ironing out the kinks in our artifact processing system. After a
few false starts, Bill and I had a chatty-chat and came up with a system that we
feel will allow us to process our artifacts in the most efficient manner. Now it
is just a matter of implementation. Fortunately, we might have plenty of extra
help in the museum each morning. After the meeting with the UN (see Bill's last
post) we had to switch our fieldwork to a different area and will have to work
in the afternoon, thus freeing up the students for museum work. Another positive
sign is that our illustrator, Matt, is very good and we should have some great
drawings for our final publication.
RSM
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TITLE: U.N. Buffer Zone
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DATE: 05/21/2007 07:41:55 AM

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We discovered the border between the area in which we are allowed to do field
work according to our agreements with the British Sovereign Base Authority and
the Cypriot Department of Antiquities. While working away in the field we
were stopped by a U.N. Patrol. They took us to Pyla Village and the
U.N. Police Station. They explained that we had strayed into the buffer
zone where we did not have permission to work. It was a bit nerve
wracking, but we now understand a bit more clearly the boundaries of the various
authorities in our little corner of the island!
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Aaron
IP: 24.220.188.60
URL:
DATE: 05/24/2007 05:35:12 PM
At least did you get to ride in their air-conditioned Mercedes and drink bottled
water?
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TITLE: Our first day of field work...
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DATE: 05/21/2007 07:41:06 AM

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After days of shuttling folks from the airport, orienting students, and
getting our gear organized, we finally went into the field on Sunday
afternoon. Sunday was to be primarily a training day. We introduced
the students to our method, talked about the need to record field data in an
accurate and consistent way, and walked a practice unit. For the first
time this year we left a good bit of the management of the field team to Brandon
Olson, a graduate student in History at UND. Scott Moore and I floated
around making sure that things started well and then left the field walkers to
Brandon's supervision. Scott wandered the ridge of Vigla. As I
mentioned earlier, our geophysical team revealed a good bit of architecture on
this prominent coastal rise and we tried to correlate their preliminary findings
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with some walls that we had observed eroding out of the south face in 2005 and
2006. While we were unable to correlate the two (at least in an kind of
conclusive way), we discovered something far more exciting! It
would appear that Vigla was almost entirely surrounded by a fortification
wall. In 2005 and 2006 we had traced a short fragment of wall along the
southern slope of the hill. Further erosion had made this wall more
visible and exposed a front and back face. We were also able to find
traces of the wall which was faced with relatively regularly cut blocks and a
mortar and rubble core on the eastern and northern sides. This is
an exciting discovering, indeed!! The only confounding thing about it is
that the pottery on the top of the hill seems to date primarily to the Classical
and Hellenistic periods (roughly 500-300 BC) and the wall appears to date (in an
informal sort of way) to the Late Roman or Early Byzantine period (probably 6th-
7th century). From the excitement of monumental fortification walls
yesterday to the mundane scatters of pottery today. We'll leave for the
field at 7:30 am and be working away by 8. More on this and some
photos soon!
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The Pettegrews (David and Kate) of south-central PA will be among the last to
arrive in Larnaka this year. Graduation day here at Messiah College is
tomorrow, a few final meetings remain, I have to turn in grades, and then we fly
out on Tuesday. We are really excited to get to Cyprus, meet the new
project members, and get to work--especially after reading Bill's recent posts
about the rewarding results of the geophysical survey! More monumental
architecture?? Well,...that is the reason for conducting geophysical
prospection, isn't it? Geophysical work introduces an entirely new kind of
data and allows for a more comprehensive assessment of the site. While the
rest of the team begins preliminary work in Larnaka, we Pettegrews are entering
last-minute panic mode, getting everything in order before our 7 week stay in
the Mediterranean. My main goal before departure Tuesday is to finish a
conference paper that I'm to present in Athens, Greece, in mid-June. One
thing I have discovered (or,...err...learned) about working on archaeological
projects in the Mediterranean: there is very little time during a field season
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for writing papers!! The long days and the hot sun sap your every bit of
strength and the last thing you want to do at the end of a day is intellectual
work! And have you ever thought about how incredibly expensive archaeology
in the Mediterranean is? Simply getting to Cyprus costs at least $1000
(usually more), and living there for 3 weeks costs well over $1000. Point
is that since we pay so much to be there, we absolutely have to maximize our
time in doing fieldwork. So when Kate and I arrive next week, we plan to
hit the ground running, after a good night's sleep, of course, and a cup of
Nescafe. And in the meantime, I'd better finish that conference paper.
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DATE: 05/18/2007 10:29:43 AM

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My name is Susan Caraher and I am the Marketing and External Relations
Specialist in <a href="http://www.graduateschool.und.edu/">The Graduate
School</a> at the University of North Dakota. I am also an archaeologist
and welcome opportunities such as this project to get my hands dirty. Bill
and I met doing a similar survey project in Greece, and this is my second season
with PKAP. In 2005, I joined the team to do fieldwork and artifact
processing which kept me entertained, busy, and constantly learning for about 5
weeks. Now that I am back with a year's work in between my visits, I am
trying to bring myself up to speed quickly. Scott Moore and I did a pre-
lab season reconnaissance to the Larnaka District Museum's lab where we store
our artifacts and conduct our processing of all materials collected from the
field. This year's goals will be towork through the cataloguing of
artifacts -- photographing, illustrating, describing and recording every
possible detail. It also means having to know where all artifacts (over
10,000!) are at any given time, to ensure that those that reach the final report
have been through the entire registration process as well as assisting students
with lab work -- most of whom are new to archaeology. I hope to spend a
good deal of time in the field once our daily work at the museum is done.
This year's season is really shaping up to be an interesting one with many
opportunities for learning and discovery. Beside the archaeology, Cyprus
is such a fascinating place...
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TITLE: Rain!
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DATE: 05/17/2007 10:50:48 AM

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We awoke this morning to this view from our hotel window: <a
eWriter/Rain_6B38/DSC_01699_2.jpg" atomicselection="true"><img style="border-
top-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-right-
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Larnaka in the rain is not a happy thing. Cyprus, like most of the Eastern
Mediterranean is known for wet winters and warm, relentlessly sunny, dry
summers. We were worried that our geophysical team would not work in the
rain, but, fortunately, it let up in time for them to get in a relatively
complete field day. This is important for the overall success of the
season since they can only give us a week or so of work before John Hunt, the
retired English chap who owns and skilfully operates the resistivity meter has
to go to work in Italy. After a soggy start, however, things got
better... First, the farmer who leases the majority of our site from the
British Ministry of Defense offered to harvest two sections of his field
(approximately 4,000 sq. m) for us by Monday so that we can do our geophysical
work there. As I mentioned in an earlier blog, this was a concern because
in order to do our work correctly, we would end up damaging the crops.
 As we were meeting with the farmer John Hunt excitedly showed us the
results from the first two days of geophysical work on the height of
Vigla. While the data was still raw (that is unfiltered -- the images
produced by resistivity need to be filtered in various ways to separate
potential manmade features like walls, trenches, pits, et c. from interference
or geological features), his results were so good that I am actually nervous to
mention them here! It looks, however, that we have monumental architecture
on Vigla! This is exciting and from my perspective a bit of a
surprise. The students continue to arrive slowly but surely (well,
perhaps not surely -- Brandon Olson still doesn't have his luggage and Scott
went to the airport at 2 am last night to pick up a student due today at 2
am). We now have three IUP undergraduates and 2 UND graduate
students. Joe Patrow, our filmmaker and an UND alumnus (M.A. 2005) will
arrive tonight at 8. One more IUP student will arrive at 2 am. We'll
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probably spend tomorrow taking the students to some important sites (Amathous
and Kourion). Fieldwork will begin Monday! Thanks for
reading...
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Chad Bushy
EMAIL: chadbushy@mail.und.edu
IP: 208.107.229.103
URL:
DATE: 05/18/2007 07:40:10 PM
Hi Professor Caraher,!
Glad to see that you got to your destination safe. Looks like you had to put up
with some rain. I like the layout of your blog. I will be checking it throughout
the summer and reading all the good posts you and your colleagues will write. I
hope things go well for you and your team this summer and look forward to the
fall when you come back.!
!
Have a great time.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Aaron
IP: 24.220.188.60
URL:
DATE: 05/26/2007 10:53:07 AM
I remember W. Raymond Wood showing us the updates to Double Ditch each morning
not but a couple years back over the hum of the water pump at the water-
screening station. Another section would be recorded and interpreted each day,
and the two outer fortifications would eventually be pieced together. I can
only guess your field team is feeling about just as giddy. !
!
Exciting stuff.
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DATE: 05/15/2007 10:21:49 AM

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My wife Susie and I arrived on the island late last night and began work
early this morning. The first thing that we did was visit the museum to
have a working coffee with the local technical director of the Larnaka District
Archaeological Museum, Marinos Avraam. His team of archaeologists provide
us with space to work on our material and, more importantly, a collegial and
supportive atmosphere in Larnaka. They have seen nearly ever inch of the
Larnaka District and know the archaeology better than anyone. We made
arrangements to collect some equipment that we stored in the museum (including
our plates and pans and little electric grill!) tomorrow once some more of our
team had arrived. We then made contact with the team from the University
of Edinburgh who had been working on our site for the <a
ap_picks_up_t.html">past two weeks</a>. But first, we had to sign in (and
avoid another coffee) with the Dhekelia Cantonment Range Officer, Kostas, who
makes sure that we are not accidentally blown up while working around the
British Army's live firing ranges. Michael Brown and Matt Dalton had just
completed doing geophysical work on Kokkinokremos and had moved on to
Vigla. They were impressed by the quality and quantity of Classical
material (BC 500 - BC 330) on this impressive coastal height. <a
eWriter/Day1inCyprus_90E1/vigla5.jpg" atomicselection="true"><img style="border-
Writer/Day1inCyprus_90E1/vigla_thumb3.jpg" width="450" border="0"></a> .
We chatted with them and planned some fieldwork for the next week. The
main issue so far has been the weather. it rained buckets over the past
weekend and this made it difficult for them to stay on their schedule.
Moreover, it means that the farmer who cultivates the fields below Vigla where
we hope to do more geophysical work was unable to harvest his barley.
Doing geophysical work there will damage his crop as we will walk all over
it. We are already making arrangements to buy several 100 x 20 m areas of
barley so that we can try to continue our work on schedule without effecting the
farmers profits! (Grant agencies love things like receipts for "I hectare
of barley"). Scott Moore and two of his students showed up late this
afternoon. (As I write this at about 6 pm, I am dragging!). They are
getting settled in their rooms giving me a chance to slip out to the local
Starbucks, buy some wireless internet time, and compose this blog. The
rest of the week looks every bit as hectic as today, but there will be time for
updates!
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EMAIL: daniel.sauerwein@und.nodak.edu
IP: 208.107.230.169
URL:
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DATE: 05/16/2007 02:13:03 AM

Bill,!
!
Have a safe time over in Cyprus. I know you'll have lots of fun and have plenty
to tell us all later this summer. Nice blog by the way. Good hunting.!
!
Daniel
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AUTHOR: RSM
TITLE: RSM and T-1
STATUS: Publish
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DATE: 05/13/2007 10:16:25 PM

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Well, Bill is on his way. I called him 3 more times while he was waiting at
the airport to try and solve a few more glitches that arose during the day. It
is now 11:15 PM and I have managed to write 3 letters of recommendation, mow the
yard, pack, and organize my data for use in Cyprus. I still have a grant to work
on, but should be done in an hour. It has been a hectic week, but the l can see
the light at the end of the tunnel, I just hope it is not a train.
RSM
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AUTHOR: Marie-Laure Reese
EMAIL: marie_laure22@hotmail.com
IP: 134.129.231.226
URL:
DATE: 05/15/2007 10:04:36 AM
Hello Susan & Bill,!
!
I hope you had a great trip. I am sure you are happy to be in Cyprus and can't
wait to read your comments.!
!
Talk to you later. Marie-Laure
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TITLE: Departure Day!
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BASENAME: departure_day
DATE: 05/13/2007 12:46:48 PM

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First, I want to welcome any new readers to this blog. The University
of North Dakota's Office of University Relations has done me the great
courtesy of linking my blog to a profile on the university's <a
href="http://www.und.edu">main web page</a>. If you want to learn what the
the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project (PKAP) strand of this blog
is about, check out my <a
diterranean_a.html">welcome note</a> and <a
href="http://www.chss.iup.edu/pkap/">PKAP's web page.</a> Also check out
our <a
graduate student blog</a> (and thanks to Dean Joey Benoit for providing a link
from <a href="http://www.und.edu/dept/grad/">The Graduate School</a>'s web
page!). Today we leave for Cyprus. It's Departure
Day, or the day that we have to confront: The Good, the Bad,
and Ugly The Good: One thing that makes this PKAP season
particularly exciting for me is that Susan Caraher, my wife, will be joining us
for the first three weeks. She was trained as a Classical Archaeologist at
the University of Queensland in Australia, and we met on an archaeological
project in the Mediterranean (on the Greek island of Kythera). Since we've
been together life has interrupted her ability to pursue her passion for Greek
archaeology and deprived us of her considerable expertise. In 2005, she
worked with PKAP as our registrar of finds, but in 2006 she had to wait
out the PKAP season having just arrived to live in North Dakota (Katie
Pettegrew, our field director, David Pettegrew's wife who is also a trained
archaeologist ably filled in). In 2007 Susie's back and excited to get her
hands dirty both in the field and in the lab managing the flow of artifacts from
one station to the next as they undergo cataloguing, illustration,
photographing, and study. She'll report more fully on her job on the
project in this very space soon! The Bad: I received two phone calls
before 9 am today, both from my co-director Scott Moore (to understand this see:
<a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2007/05/sc
otts_contribu.html">Scott's Contribution</a>). Scott is the master of
finding equipment to borrow. As I have mentioned we are a small,
relatively poor project, and consequently we beg and borrow equipment from a
wide variety of <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/the_archaeology_of_the_me/2007/04/fu
nding_a_medit.html">sources</a>.) The only problem with borrowed equipment
is that it is, well, borrowed equipment. As Classical Archaeologists we
are oddly incapable of looking a gift horse in the mouth, and graciously accept
equipment from friends. Eighty percent of the time, this equipment is
great; twenty percent of the time there are problems. This morning, we had
a problem. Evidently one our fancy-pants borrowed GPS units did not have
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the necessary software. Scott departs tomorrow. Fortunately quick

thinking (and persistence) on Scott's part and a burst of amazing generosity
on the part of the lender, averted the catastrophe. We are back on
track, until the next crisis at least... The Ugly: Some
realities, however, cannot be averted. I have to mow the lawn before we go
(the fertile prairie soils are seemly able to support astronomical rates of lawn
growth!). And I have to finish packing. Each and every restriction on
luggage forces us to be more and more clever with how we distribute the weight
of the <a
ap_season_pre.html">various supplies</a> that we need to transport to
Cyprus. This challenge of transporting equipment, supplies, and my own
clothing compounds my incredibly limited ability to pack in general. 
Next blog from me is from Cyprus... Thanks for reading!
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AUTHOR: Don
EMAIL: donkojich@mail.und.edu
IP: 134.129.168.152
URL:
DATE: 05/15/2007 08:08:56 AM
Good luck to you and your team. How was the trip over? Looking forward to
following your team's progress.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Bill C.
IP: 194.30.131.74
URL:
DATE: 05/15/2007 10:24:35 AM
Don (and everyone),!
!
We made it Cyprus safely and are getting our bearings. More soon!
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TITLE: Archaeology, Immigration, and Post Medieval Greece
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: archaeology_imm
DATE: 05/13/2007 10:33:14 AM
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As a quick announcement, we are pleased to report that the <a
href="http://www.squinch.und.edu/">Medieval and Postmedieval Archaeology in
Greece Interest Group</a> (MPMGAG for short) of the Archaeological Institute of
America (AIA) had its second colloquium session accepted for the 2008 Annual
Meeting. Kostis Kourelis took the lead in organizing the panel and David
K. Pettegrew is the Chair of the Interest Group. The official AIA -
Interest Group was founded by Kostis Kourelis and myself in 2006 to give voice
to the research, concerns, and interest of scholars who study Byzantine,
Frankish, Ottoman, Venetian, and Early Modern antiquities in Greece or in the
Eastern Mediterranean in general. The panel, entitled the
Archaeology of Xenitia will focus on the archaeology of Greek immigrants to the
United States. While very few of these individuals made their way to North
Dakota (although North Dakota did get their share of Eastern Mediterranean
immigrants, notably <a
href="http://www.ext.nodak.edu/extnews/newsrelease/2003/100203/04plains.htm">Leb
anese-Syrians</a> and Winnipeg has a <a
href="http://www.greekwinnipeg.com/">Greek community</a>) the panel will give
voice to an underexplored aspect of the study of immigration in general.
In my experience, North Dakotans are particularly aware of their immigrant past
and hold strong sentimental ties to <a
href="http://www.library.und.edu/Collections/Famhist/bygdebok.html">their places
of origin</a>. The archaeology of immigration (both in the U.S. and in
those countries of origin) is yet another way that brings together
archaeological research abroad and our local community. The Archaeology of Xenitia: Greek Immigration and Material
Culture. Archaeological Institute of America 208th Annual
Meeting, Chicago, Ill., January 3-6, 2008 Between 1900 and 1915, one
quarter of the working-age male Greek population immigrated to the United
States, Canada and Australia. This profound demographic phenomenon left an
indelible mark on Greek society but also created new diasporic communities in
the host countries. Greek immigration is a phenomenon of modern trans-
nationalism that shares features with other migration stories despite its unique
ethnic manifestations. Xenitia, as a historical narrative, has been studied by
various disciplines, entering the popular mainstream through movies, comedy,
television, academia, museums and culinary institutions. The historical
enterprise of Greek immigration in the twentieth century, however, has lacked a
significant archaeological voice. Nevertheless, a series of recent projects in
Greece, the U.S. and Australia testify to the emergence of an archaeological
discipline tackling material culture as critical evidence rather than mere
illustration. As a major Greek-American metropolis, Chicago offers a great
opportunity to reflect upon archaeology's contribution to the relationship
between home and host societies. This colloquium collaborates with Chicago's
Consulate General of Greece, the Hellenic Museum and Cultural Center, the Jane
Adams Hull-House Museum, the American School of Classical Studies at Athens and
the AIA interest group in Medieval and Post-Medieval Archaeology in Greece. New
archaeological data from Epeiros, Kythera, Keos, the Southern Argolid and the
Nemea Valley will highlight the effects of emigration, while data from Colorado,
Philadelphia and Sydney will illustrate the effects of immigration. Abandoned
households were coupled with new foundations, while a fluid transmission of
moneys and resources created networks of goods and meanings far more complex
than the traditional model of assimilation, economic prosperity, or the melting-
pot. Greek archaeology played a double role in constructing native and foreign
ideologies, ranging from church foundations in the 1920s (Greek community in
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Philadelphia) to film productions for the war relief effort in the 1940s
(documentary produced and newly restored by the American School). Finally, we
will see how excavated ruins inform current narratives of discovery and
homecoming in a recent travel memoir that layers personal and textual lives.
Such meta-narratives (factual and idealized) reveal deep entanglements between
archaeologist and immigrant. Papers: Eleni N. Gage, Columbia
University "Home Again: The Recreation of a House, and a History, in
Epeiros." Susan Buck Sutton, Indiana University ‚Äì Purdue University
Indianapolis "The Ruins of Engagement: Rural Landscapes and Greek-American
Immigration" Timothy E. Gregory, Ohio State University and Lita
Tzortzopoulou-Gregory, La Trobe University "Household Archaeology in
Australia and Kythera: Examples of Two-Way Exchange." Philip Duke, Fort
Lewis College "The Ludlow, Colorado Coal Miners' Massacre of 1914: The
Greek Connection." Kostis Kourelis, Clemson University "From Greek
Revival to Greek America: Archaeology and Transformation in Philadelphia's
Orthodox Cathedral." Natalia Vogeikoff-Brogan, American School of Classical
Studies at Athens "'Knowing Your Feelings for Hellas and the Knowledge that
You Always Carry with You the Hellenic Culture. . .' Exploring the
Relationship of the American School of Classical Studies with the Greek
Omogeneia in the 1940's." Discussant: Jack L. Davis, University of
Cincinnati and American School of Classical Studies at Athens
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TITLE: T-3 Days...
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BASENAME: t3_days
DATE: 05/11/2007 09:40:04 AM

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The tests are almost graded and the piles of clothes, equipment, and supplies
are becoming neatly arranged for packing. This week we have also
begun packing up our data. Over the last three decades Mediterranean
archaeological has gone increasingly high tech. Our project will collect data
using a range of digital devices: at least three digital cameras (all over 6
mega pixels), 5 laptops, 2 Trimble XT GPS units, and a flatbed
scanner. While these devices will ensure that our data collection is more
precise and easily accessible than ever before, it also creates new
challenges. We now need to make sure that we have media to store and
transport safely all this data both to and from Cyprus. A flock of digital
storage devices -- from portable hard drives , to click drives, to DVDs -- will
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accompany the project bringing data keyed over the past year with us to use in
Cyprus as well as providing storage for the data that we will collect this
year. So, packing for fieldwork no only involves simply lots of
old t-shirts, boots, and my trusty field whip (like Indiana Jones), but a bevy
of hard drives, laps tops, and portable devices to enable us to keep our
archaeological world at our finger tips both in Cyprus and back in North Dakota,
Central Pennsylvania or wherever else PKAP data is being analyzed.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Erin Bounds
EMAIL: ebounds1@umbc.edu
IP: 68.33.146.252
URL: http://www.facebook.com/p/Erin_Bounds/15212854
DATE: 05/11/2007 02:15:33 PM
Have a great trip and a fruitful dig season! !
!
Will you continue posting information here while you are in Cyprus? I will
continue to check back. I am eager to see what's in store for you this season!!
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Erin Bounds
EMAIL: ebounds1@umbc.edu
IP: 68.33.146.252
URL: http://www.facebook.com/p/Erin_Bounds/15212854
DATE: 05/11/2007 02:51:23 PM
I also meant to ask if your team is actually planning on digging in the future.
I believe that you are still collecting surface (Phase I) finds and cataloging
them. It would be very interesting to see what is below the surface, especially
because the surface finds are so concentrated! Although, I suppose that would
be a lot more expensive.
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TITLE: T-4 Days and Counting
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DATE: 05/10/2007 07:59:42 AM

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Final preparations for this year's PKAP season are now underway. We got
word this past Friday that we received a grant from the Vice President of
Research at the University of North Dakota. This grant will assure that
we run in the black this year (or at least not in the red!). More
importantly, it will allow us to fund Sarah Lepinski. Sarah is a wall
painting specialist finishing her disseration at Bryn Mawr College. In
2005 she began to analyze the painted plaster and molded gypsum from Maria
Hadjicosti's excavation. To meet Sarah check out this clip from the
documentary <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/DocuScript/DSAnalysis.html">"Su
rvey on Cyprus".</a> She will show up at the end of May and stay for two
weeks. Since we got word on the grant only at the last minute the
logistics of her visit have been a bit frantic. The other adventure
this time of year is grading (and in the case of the <a
href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/pylakoutsopetria_graduate/2007/05/en
d_of_the_seme.html">graduate students</a>, the taking) of final
exams. I give my <a
n_Syllabus.htm">Byzantine Civilization</a> final today, and it will need to be
graded and recorded by Saturday. We fly to Cyprus on Sunday
morning!
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AUTHOR: RSM
TITLE: Scott's Contribution - Panic Attacks
STATUS: Publish
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DATE: 05/07/2007 10:36:47 PM

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Since Bill has been doing all the work so far, I thought I would talk a bit
about my current contribution to the project - daily panic attacks. As Bill
mentioned in an earlier post, we are running our field season early in the
summer for various reasons (heat, financial savings, etc.). The problem is that
it comes right on the heels of exams and graduation ceremonies, so everything
feels quite rushed. For example, I leave for Cyprus in 6 days and still have
about 77 papers to grade, 2 committee meetings, 2 graduation ceremonies, and a
training session to attend as I attempt to gather all our required supplies and
ensure that my undergraduate volunteers are actually clear on how to travel to
Cyprus (I always worry that one of them will wind up on Crete or in Greece
instead of Cyprus). Anyway, whenever I get the chance I update the budget and
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check on our logistical situation. In doing so, I always find something that at
the moment seems to be going horribly wrong and I have a minor panic attack that
makes me call Bill on the phone. Bill and I work well together because we never
panic at the same time, and he usually points out to me that the problem doesn't
exist or is actually easy to fix. For me, the week before the trip is the most
stressful since it is the last opportunity to buy any last minute equipment for
the season, and double-check our logistical arrangements. As the project has
grown over the years, this gets a little harder. In 2003 there were only 4 of us
working together - this year there will be 18 of us. But that's a good thing,
right? RSM
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TITLE: PKAP picks up the pace
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DATE: 05/06/2007 09:05:16 AM

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This time of you almost everything begins to happen at once for PKAP.
We have received word on almost all of our grants. We have our flights
arranged and are making only last minute tweaks to all our logistical
arrangements. We have boxes of supplies ordered for transport.
Almost everything is ready for the U.S.-based contingent to make their way to
Cyprus. This year, however, part of the PKAP Team has begun fieldwork
already. Over the past year, we have forged a collaboration Michael Brown
at the University of Edinburgh. He is conducting geophysical
investigations at the site of Pyla-Kokkinokremos. Geophysical
investigation is a broad terms for techniques that archaeologists use to map
subsurface features without excavating. Brown and his team are employing a
technique called electrical resistivity which measures the resistance in the
soil map subsurface features. The plans produced by resistivity can be
pretty good and indicate the presence of features ranging from walls and to pits
and ditches where walls might have once stood. Pyla-Kokkinokremos
is a major Late Bronze Age site part of which V. Karageorghis and M. Demas
excavated by in the 1980s (you can see the little group of excavated
buildings on the plan below). It is located on the plateau immediately to
the north of Pyla-Koutsopetria overlooking our proposed infilled
embayment. In May, a PKAP team will conduct a gridded collection on the
plateau which will complement the data collected by Brown's geophysical work to
give us a better understanding of the extent and nature of Bronze Age settlement
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at the nearest neighbor to our site. <a

eWriter/PKAPpicksupthepace_7DB5/KokkinokremosPlan%5B7%5D_1.jpg"
Writer/PKAPpicksupthepace_7DB5/KokkinokremosPlan_thumb%5B7%5D_1.jpg" width="450"
border="0"></a> Plan after Karageorghis and Demas (1984)
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TITLE: Of Maps and Material
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DATE: 05/03/2007 09:04:56 AM

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One of the hidden costs in any archaeological project is the time spent
preparing maps. We use common GIS (Geographic Information Systems)
software, ESRI ArcGIS 9, to both analyze data and to produce maps for
publication. In fact, much of our basic interpretation of the site begins
with comparing our impressions of the distribution of artifacts on the ground
with how the distribution of artifacts appears in our GIS map. By changing
the way that our data appears in the GIS we are able to consider a wide range of
questions ranging from the overall size of our site, to the function of
different areas, to the chronological distribution of
material. So we can produce a colorful map of over all
artifact density that looks like this: <a
eWriter/OfMapsandMen_7E55/NEAFigure6Color9.jpg" atomicselection="true"><img
Writer/OfMapsandMen_7E55/NEAFigure6Color_thumb7.jpg" width="450"
border="0"></a> And compare it to a map of only ceramic roof tiles from
the site that looks like this: <a
eWriter/OfMapsandMen_7E55/NEAFigure7Color2.jpg" atomicselection="true"><img
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Writer/OfMapsandMen_7E55/NEAFigure7Color_thumb_1.jpg" width="450"
border="0"></a> The concentration of tiles (labeled here as Zone 1) near
the excavated area suggests that there was additional monumental building
immediately to the east of the excavated Early Christian basilica. On the
other hand, the relative dearth of roof tiles in Zone 2, despite
several areas of relatively high artifact densities suggest that there were
fewer buildings in Zone 2, but still some kind of activity. These maps
all derive from this:<a
eWriter/OfMapsandMen_7E55/NEAFigure23.jpg" atomicselection="true"><img
Writer/OfMapsandMen_7E55/NEAFigure2_thumb1.jpg" width="450" border="0"></a> 
If you want to play around with site maps, check out our <a
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/disk_PKAP.html">interactive
map</a>. We received funding from the <a
href="http://www.und.edu/dept/oid/">Office of Instructional Development</a> here
at UND to expand the data available in this map. The Geography <a
href="http://www.und.edu/dept/Geog/index.html">Department</a> here has helped us
digitize additional topolines from the maps produced by the Cypriot Government,
so a viewer will have a more expansive landscape to explore. So, as with
all things PKAP, check back again soon!
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DATE: 05/01/2007 08:15:58 AM

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Hi everyone! Today we have the great pleasure of introducing (with
exaggerated diction) the <a
Graduate Student Blog</a>. It will provide a venue for the perspectives of
our graduate students on the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project.
These students run the gamut of experience and interests and should provide
a useful counterpoint to the ramblings of David Pettegrew, Scott Moore, and
myself here. The goal of this foray into the blogosphere is to provide
both insights into our project for friends, supporters, and colleagues who are
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not on Cyprus and to provide us with a place to reflect on the day-to-day

activities of an archaeological project. (The multiple authors of both
this blog and the PKAP Graduate student blog will ensure that we will still have
time to do archaeology despite regular updates from the field!). Check
back here over the next week for David Pettegrew's and Scott Moore's first
posts! And, thanks for reading!
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TITLE: Funding a Mediterranean Archaeological Project
STATUS: Publish
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DATE: 04/29/2007 09:37:59 AM

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One of the most challenging aspects of starting a new archaeological project
as a young scholar is finding funding. From a budgetary standpoint
PKAP is a smallish project: at our largest we will host around 20 people, we
rarely run our season for more than 5 weeks, and we economize by cooking our own
meals, conducting field work before "high season" rates come into effect, and
maintaining an absolute minimum of year-around infrastructure (e.g. storage, a
car, a residence, et c.). Despite our precautions, each year is an
adventure in uncertainty. As a project we apply for 3-4 grants a
year. Moreover, each of the directors applies for individual research
grants from their respective institutions. In my case at University of
North Dakota, I will apply for 3 or 4 internal grants of various kinds. So
on an average year we apply for 10-12 different grants, each of us
contributing to around 6. This is a time consuming process, but, fun in
some ways as it provides a chance to compete head-to-head with other research
projects in Cyprus, the Mediterranean, and even across the university.
 The biggest challenge with this annual competition is that in many cases
you need to make plans prior to receiving word on the grant (in fact, our season
is to begin May 15th, and we still have not heard on three or four major sources
of money). To accomodate this, we are forced every year to handicap our
odds with each grant as we begin to make plans. This is not as fun as,
say, picking the teams to make the Final Four in an office NCAA
basketball pool. If we miss estimate our grant dollars, the difference
comes out of our pockets. One way that we have tried to "manage the
risk" of the yearly grant lottery is by securing private donor funding.
Archaeological projects have long been attractive for private donors in the same
way that funding museums or the arts more broadly holds an eduring appeal.
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We can use private donor money in a more flexible way, generally speaking,
than grants (which usually have to be used for a rather limited array of project
needs), and each year our small pot of private donor funds have helped us fill
in the gaps between what we have planned and what we have resources to
fund. The real challenge with private donor money, however, is that, if
grants are difficult to handicap, private donor gifts are almost totally
unpredictable. This makes it exciting for us when we get one, but
impossible to plan around. We also fund our project through a modest
project fee that we charge our volunteers. This project fee, which is
embedded in their room and board costs, helps fund the kind of infrastructure
that all members of the project (senior staff to volunteers) benefit from
ranging from rental cars to pots and pans for cooking to power converters.
 At the end of the day, over the past three years, we've be very
lucky and always been able to pay our bills at the end of the season. For
this we can thank the following funding agencies, grant competitions, and
private donors. 2007 <ul> <li> American Schools of Oriental
Research Harris Grant <li> College of Humanities and Social Sciences IUP
 <li> Department of History, IUP <li> Office of Instructional
Development, University of North Dakota <li> University of North Dakota
Department of History <li> The Graduate School at the University of North
Dakota <li> Senate Scholarly Activities Committee, University of North
Dakota <li> Fred & Nancy Caraher <li> Robert & Joyce
Moore</li></ul> 2006 <ul> <li> Kress Foundation <li>
College of Humanities and Social Sciences IUP <li> Senate Scholarly
Activities Committee, University of North Dakota <li> University of North
Dakota Department of History <li> Department of History, IUP <li>
Fred & Nancy Caraher <li> Robert & Joyce Moore <li>
Elizabeth Reynolds</li></ul> 2005 <ul> <li> Institute of
Aegean Prehistory <li> American Schools of Oriental Research Harris
Grant <li> Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs, IUP <li>
College of Humanities and Social Sciences Special Project Fund, IUP <li>
Office of Instructional Development, University of North Dakota Office of
Research and Compliance, University of North Dakota Department of History,
University of North Dakota <li> Department of History, IUP <li>
Fred & Nancy Caraher <li> Robert & Joyce Moore <li>
Elizabeth Reynolds</li></ul> 2004 <ul> <li> Provost and
Vice President for Academic Affairs, IUP <li> Indiana University of
Pennsylvania Senate Fellowship Grant <li> College of Humanities and
Social Sciences Special Project Fund, IUP <li> Department of History,
IUP <li> Fred & Nancy Caraher <li> Robert & Joyce
Moore</li></ul> 2003 <ul> <li> Faculty Professional
Development Council Grant <li> Indiana University of Pennsylvania Senate
Fellowship Grant <li> Department of History, Indiana University of
Pennsylvania</li></ul> As a final note, we should mention that
our project would not be possible without the logistical and institutional
support of a whole range of organizations. These groups provided
us with infrastructure, equipment, or services beyond what could be
expected, saving us money, time, and energy and allowing us to focus on our
research. <ul> <li> Cyprus American Archaeological Research
Institute <li> Cyprus Department of Antiquities <li> Larnaka
District Archaeological Museum <li> Ohio State Excavations at Isthmia
<li> Department of Anthropology, IUP <li> Department of Geography,
IUP <li> Department of Geography, UND</li></ul> So,
thanks to everyone who has helped us make the past four PKAP seasons a
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success!! Keep your eyes here for updates on the project and additional
words of thanks as we hear word on our final grants.
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TITLE: What is PKAP?
STATUS: Publish
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DATE: 04/26/2007 07:34:08 AM

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One of the great challenges of writing a blog is including enough of the back
story at various times to keep new readers informed on what this blog is really
all about. This blog, as you will be able to quickly recognize, focuses
on Mediterranean archaeology with a North Dakota twist. The PKAP category
of posts specifically seeks to chronicle the work of a small team of scholars
and students at the site of Pyla-Koutsopetria in Cyprus. This
project was started by R. Scott Moore and quickly expanded to include David K.
Pettegrew and myself. The site lies some 10 km east of the center of
Larnaka on the south coast of the Cyprus. It is the coastal zone of the
village of Pyla which is perhaps most because of its location in the U.N. Buffer
Zone on the island (or as the home town of Anna Vissi). Our site is in the
Republic of Cyprus some 2 km south of the village. <a
eWriter/WhatisPKAP_6777/vigla7.jpg" atomicselection="true"><img style="border-
Writer/WhatisPKAP_6777/vigla_thumb5.jpg" width="300" border="0"></a> Our
primary research goal is the document the dense scatter of artifacts present at
the site which stretches from the coast to the imposing height of Vigla pictured
above. We are a collaborative project with the Cyprus Department of
Antiquities, and we work closely with the Curator of the Nicosia Museum - Dr.
Maria Hadjicosti - who conducted several small salvage excavations at the site
in the 1990s. These salvage excavations uncovered the remains of the well-
appointed Early Christian (or Late Roman) basilica apparently dating to the 6th
century A.D. We have been analyzing the nearly 10,000 artifacts
sampled from the surface of the site since 2004 and attempting to place this
"assemblage" of material in a broader context. In collecting these
artifacts, we employed a technique called intensive pedestrian survey which is
really just a fancy word for the systematic walking of the landscape. This
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allowed us to document the distribution of artifacts across the site in a

relatively precise way . We are particularly interested in the
place of Pyla-Koutsopetria in larger trade networks spanning both the
island, but perhaps more importantly the entire Mediterranean. As most of
the artifacts are Late Roman in date (4th-7th century A.D.) we can focus on the
place of the site in the Late Roman world. What is most interesting to us
at present is that our site is much larger than we expected. It is clearly
larger than a agricultural village (<20 ha), but smaller than a formal Late
Roman city (<80 ha). So we have cleverly classified Pyla-
Koutsopetria to be a "mid-sized site". Over the next
month, I'll introduce various aspects and people from the project and they will
share their research and perspectives in this space. It should give you,
the reader, unprecedented access to inner workings of an archaeological project
as it moves from fieldwork to its goal of publication. Thanks for
reading!
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TITLE: Abandoned Landscapes in North Dakota
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: abandoned_lands
DATE: 04/24/2007 08:58:40 AM

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Jared Diamond's recent best seller Collapse placed a spot light
on the relationship between environmental resources and the persistence of
complex societies. Much of the evidence from his analysis comes from the
archaeological remains of "collapsed" societies. Evidence for abandonment
-- whether on the level of an entire settlement or a single building or site --
plays a central role in construction of archeological narratives. In
particular, it has become an enduring trope in the study of Late
Antiquity. When Kostis Kourelis and I organized a panel at the
Archaeological Institute of America's annual meeting on the concept of
abandonment in Mediterranean Archaeology, fully half of the papers dealt with
the period from A.D. 400-800. My wife and I drove from Bismarck,
ND to Grand Forks, ND along Highway 2, which is the North Dakota stretch of the
Hi-Line followed by the Burlington Northern - Santa Fe Railroad (formerly, if I
understand correctly, the route followed by the Great Northern Railway), the
abandoned landscape was on full display. From rural towns to
isolated farmsteads the abandoned places of North Dakota dotted the countryside
and presented an enticing tableaux of archaeological formation processes.
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At the same time, however, there was evidence for persistent

prosperity: there were numerous well-kept farms with new metal sheds
standing alongside decaying wooden barns. While this is unsurprising,
North Dakota has, generally speaking, enjoyed the rise in prosperity common to
the industrialized world over the past half century. It was for me, however, a
useful mental check on the complex nature of the landscape throughout time and
how uneven and unpredictable the phenomenon of abandonment can be. The
local media commonly refer to the depopulated and increasingly abandoned rural
landscape of North Dakota and our drive across the state reinforced this in a
general way. An unsystematic and probably superficial scrutiny of
landscape, however, suggests that rural North Dakota was not entirely abandoned
but interspersed with evidence for the kind of continuous investment which may
be far more difficult to identify in the future archaeological record.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Bret
EMAIL: Bret.Weber@und.nodak.edu
IP: 134.129.180.150
URL:
DATE: 05/08/2007 02:58:33 PM
True intelligence is best illustrated by the ability to bring disparate ideas
into a simple, clear dialogue that helps us to understand both the obvious and
the apparently disengaged within a larger locus of connected meaning. Rome in
the 4th century, North Dakota in the 21st, and Diamond‚Äôs global romp through
environmental history, whew! The only thing more remarkable is that no one else
has yet to post a comment. Best of luck this summer.
-----
COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Aaron Barth
IP: 24.230.124.122
URL:
DATE: 05/20/2007 09:52:29 PM
...and so now a Burleigh County Dakotan will attempt to remark and maybe nullify
Bret's remarkable -- though astute -- observation.!
!
Natural resources are important, as is the environment. Diamond, if I recall,
might be a bit guilty in over-emphasizing the environment. Ascribing
significance to the material or ecological world is still an idea, or so thought
Hume (or the dynamic Chris Hitchens nowadays). !
!
Didn't that late Geertz fellow say something about the importance of placing
singularities within proximity of the broader whole? Nevermind.!
!
Note that the rise in monetary prosperity (how one might define that...) is
relegated to the "larger" NoDak cities of Fargo, Grand Forks, Minot, Williston,
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Bismarck, Dickinson, and Jamestown (certainly I'm leaving out many, but the idea
is there). Equally important is how Dakota decides to use its natural
resources, specifically the oil boom in the southwestern and western part of the
state. A couple authors (Clay Jenkinson and Kathleen Norris) have remarked on
how it's necessary to live in a particular place for a period of time before
being able to appreciate and respect that place. I'll bet this idea transcends
geopolitical borders --namely, how Cypriotes deal with the Tourist, and how they
interpret (strengths and weaknesses) how their land is used. I digress. Back
to it.
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TITLE: NDAA Visit
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: ndaa_visit
DATE: 04/23/2007 08:40:55 AM

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This past weekend, I have the pleasure of attending the North Dakota
Archaeological Association's annual meeting in Bismarck, ND. We not only
heard presentations by Mike Metcalf of Metcalf Archaeological and Fern
Swenson of the State Historical Society's Historic Preservation Division, but
also received tours of two important archaeological sites in the Bismarck area -
- Menoken Village and Double Ditch. Double Ditch was particular
impressive not only on account of its size (close to 20 ha), but also the
quality and quantity of archaeological research performed there. Rather
than a series of massive, expensive, and destructive excavations, the entire
site has been documented through various geophysical methods. Some of the
early results are available <a
href="http://cast.uark.edu/~kkvamme/geop/double.htm">here</a>; more complete
results will be available this summer through series of interpretive signs.
Seeing the work at Double Ditch, in particular, was a great inspiration for
PKAP, as we plan to do geophysical work this summer. Michael Brown and a
team from the University of Edinburgh will conduct a electical resistivity
survey on Kokkinokremos and parts of Koutsopetria allowing us "to see"
below the surface of the ground. While his interest is in the structure of
the Late Bronze Age site of Kokkinokremos, we hope to use geophysical to tell us
more about the spatial organization of Koutsopetria. In particular we
hope to understand whether the site was organized on a grid. This would
suggest a more formal level of organization than would be expected of a simple
agricultural village and indicate that our site possessed features similar to
urban areas on the island. While our efforts will not be as comprehensive as
those conducted at Double Ditch (which was among the most comprehensive
geophysical investigations ever conducted), we share the same interests in
gather information on subsurface features without the destruction and expense of
excavation. We can only hope that our work will be as successful
as that conducted at Double Ditch, which reveal important information regarding
the organization of its imposing system of fortifications (in particular, it
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reveal two more outer ditches (quadrupal ditch!) suggest that the village
contracted at some point).
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Aaron Barth
IP: 24.230.124.122
URL:
DATE: 05/20/2007 10:00:13 PM
Double Ditch is a premier site (so W. Raymond Wood said a couple years back --
he's right). The archaeological record in NoDak has been fortunate in that the
urban development, well, hasn't. Thank goodness the site is on the Historic
Registry, especially while witnessing the mega-houses spill northward of
Bismarck toward the site. Great to have you and Suzy out. Hope it's going as
well as it can in Cyprus thus far. !
!
One more note: Ken Kvamme and his wife did the geophysical work for Double
Ditch.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Aaron Barth
IP: 24.230.124.122
URL:
DATE: 05/20/2007 10:01:49 PM
Whoops... just clicked on the Kvamme link only after I posted.
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TITLE: PKAP Season Preparations Continue
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: pkap_season_pre
DATE: 04/19/2007 08:03:27 AM

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 Each spring at around this time, the PKAP senior staff begins to
frantically order supplies for the up-coming season. While some, if not
all of these supplies could be acquired in Cyprus, most of them cannot be had
without a loss of productive time or a trip outside the friendly and convenient
confines of Larnaka. Larnaka is our base of operations. As the third
largest city on Cyprus it has much of what you would expect a Mediterranean city
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to have, but like most mid-sized cities the world over it will not have
everything that a well supplied archaeological project needs. So, every
year we bring basic supplies to the island... Just for fun, here is our
supply list: For the lab: Pens to label pottery: ILL
Gel Streak Pen Qty : 2 Sennelier India Ink Qty :
2 (30ml) Speedball Dip Nibs Qty : 3 Speedball Dip
Nibs Qty : 5 Speedball Dip Nibs Qty : 5 Speedball
Pen Holder Qty : 3 To keep the label on the artifacts:
Paraloid B-72 Lacquer: Clear Qty: 4 (1.25 oz) (Paraloid to label
artifacts.) Paraloid B-72 Lacquer: Opaque (white) Qty : 4 (1.25 oz)
For artifact collection and storage: (At some point I will tell the famous
"Dave Pettegrew Tiny Bag Story") 6 "x 9", 4 Mil White Block Reclosable Bags
Qty : 300 4" x 6", 4 Mil White Block Reclosable Bags Qty : 200
 9" x 12", 4 Mil White Block Reclosable Bags Qty : 1000 Each year we
begin with enough adaptors, by the end of the season severl have stopped working
and several are lost: Grounded US to UK adapter plug Qty : 10 
For the field: These are for the fieldwalkers: (It
helps them keep their bearings!!) Compass - Silva Starter Type 1-2-
3 Qty : 12 We use these "clickers" to count
pottery in the field. We almost always have enough at the start of the
season, but by the end of the season we are always two or three short short:
Hand Tally Counters Qty : 20 Some borrowed surveying gear: Laser
Range Finder Qty: 2 Topcon Theodolite Qty : 1 Trimble GeoXT Qty
: 1 For the documentary: Video Tapes
Qty : 30 Azden Dual Channel Camera Mount Wireless Microphone System Qty
: 1 One back-up Azden EX 503 wireless microphone Qty : 1 Gitzo
fishpole for shogun mic Qty : 1 Gitzo shutgun mount for mic Qty
: 1 (2) 50' XLR audio cables Qty : 2 Batteries AAA Qty
: 10 Batteries AA Qty : 10 9v battery Qty : 30 Canon
XLS1 View Finder Qty : 1 Wireless microphone accessory kit Qty
: 1 Headphones Qty : 1 -----------------------------------------
------------------------------- I'm off the Bismarck tomorrow to speak at the
North Dakota Archaeological Association meeting. More introductions next
week as well as a discussion of how we pay for all the gear and how it actually
makes it way to Cyprus!
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TITLE: Scott Moore, Dave Pettegrew, and Joe Patrow
STATUS: Publish
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DATE: 04/18/2007 08:29:23 AM

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Over the course of the next few weeks, I will introduce the members of the
PKAP team. The project is a collaborative venture with the American
contingent centered around Scott Moore, David Pettegrew, and myself. <a
title="R. Scott Moore's Homepage" href="http://www.chss.iup.edu/rsmoore/"
target="_blank">Scott</a> is an Assistant Professor at Indiana University of
Pennsylvania and is the co-director and ceramicist for the project.
He studies, in particular, Late Roman pottery, and will work primarily in
the lab (this is what we call our workspace at the Larnaka District
Archaeological Museum; for other terms used in this blog see our <a title="PKAP
Lexicon" href="http://www.chss.iup.edu/pkap/manual/PKAP%20Lexicon.htm"
target="_blank">PKAP Lexicon</a>). He worked as a ceramicist for the
Sydney Cyprus Survey Project (SCSP) and published their Roman pottery.
Over the course of his work with SCSP, he became attached to the island of
Cyprus. When that project had concluded he began working to find a project
of his own. He was in contact with the Department of Antiquities and John
Leonard, another American archaeologist on the island, and they suggested that
he explore the area of Pyla-Koutsopetria. In 2003, David and
myself joined Scott for an informal reconaissance survey of the area and
discovered that it contained the remains of an impressive Late Roman site.
We returned in 2004 to begin our systematic survey of the region. Along
with the pottery, Scott is also in charge of the accounting for the project,
cooks for us almost every night, and has brought students into
the field with us for the last three years. Scott is a patient and
dedicated teacher and works hard to ensure that the students get the most out of
their time on the island. <a title="David Pettegrew's Home Page"
href="http://home.messiah.edu/~dpettegrew/" target="_blank">David</a> is an
Assistant Professor at Messiah College. He is our Method Man. Dave
cut his teeth with me on the Eastern Korinthia Archaeological Survey (probably a
better way to put this is that I learned survey archaeology in large part from
him in the Eastern Korinthia!). EKAS formed the methdological basis for
our work in Cyprus, and David, myself and serveral other (including Dimitri
Nakassis and Tim Gregory) have worked on a series of studies exploring
how the methods employed by survey archaeology influence the conclusions survey
archaeologists draw from the data. He also works on the Late Roman
period. Dave is the archaeological compass for the project and makes sure
that Scott and I don't do anything that is methodologically unsound. He is
also an excellent teacher of proper field procedure and the sometime slippery
notions of archaeological theory. He joins us with his wife Katie who will
work in the lab with Scott (more on her later!). Over the next few
days, <a title="Joe Patrow's Webpage" href="http://www.xanga.com/jpatrow"
target="_blank">Joe Patrow</a>, the director of a documentary being shot this
year which is tentatively entitled Emerging Cypriot, will be filming
footage in both Indiana, PA and Grantham, PA (at Messiah College),
and interviewing students as well as David and Scott. Joe
worked with us in 2004 and produced a 28 minute broadcast quality documentary,
Survey on Cyprus. You can find a link to the documentary in
Realplayer format on the bar to the left. This year he will follow
undergraduate students from IUP, graduate students from the University of North
Dakota, and the various senior staff in their work and experiences on the island
of Cyprus. The documentary will be shot in "brillant HD" and be designed
for broadcast and classroom use. From our perspective, Patrow's work
enhances the reflexive component of our fieldwork by forcing all members of the
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PKAP team to reflect on why we do what we do in front of the

camera. While Joe keeps a low profile in his own videos, he will
discuss his project both formally and informally with us and has become a
valued member of the entire PKAP team. More from me over the next week as
we introduce and assemble the PKAP team...
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TITLE: PKAP and North Dakota
STATUS: Publish
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BASENAME: pkap_and_north_
DATE: 04/17/2007 08:35:32 PM

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I was honored and excited to be invited to give the keynote speech at the
North Dakota Archaeological Association annual meeting and banquet. My
talk, entitled "Surveying Cyprus from North Dakota" represents our ongoing
efforts to communicate our methods, results, and interpretations to both the
archaeological community and general public in North Dakota. We look
forward to visiting some of the important historic sites of central North Dakota
including Menoken Indian Village and Double Ditch Indian Village. We also
look forward to seeing the North Dakota Heritage Center and learning all we can
about the archaeology of the Northern Plains. Our project has been
greatly influenced by methods developed in North America so it is particularly
gratifying to be able to present the results of this research to a group of
archaeologists who use these methods daily to construct the North Dakota's
archaeological landscape. The talk features a basic introductions to the
challenges and opportunities of working in Cyprus, some examples of our finds,
analyses based on our <a title="Interactive PKAP Map"
href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/disk_PKAP.html">GIS</a>, and
some preliminary conclusions. It concludes with a discussion of our future
goals and points of ongoing contact between archaeology in the old and new
worlds. To explore at the ongoing work of our project check out our web
site: <a title="http://www.chss.iup.edu/pkap/"
href="http://www.chss.iup.edu/pkap/">http://www.chss.iup.edu/pkap/</a>
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TITLE: Mediterranean Archaeology, PKAP, and North Dakota
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
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BASENAME: mediterranean_a
DATE: 04/17/2007 08:22:36 PM

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BODY:
Hello! This is the first post on the official Mediterranean Archaeology
in North Dakota Blog. It features my archaeological project in Cyprus, the
Pyla-Kousopetria Archaeological Project or PKAP for short. PKAP
is a collaborative project with R. Scott Moore (Indiana University of
Pennsylvania) and David K. Pettegrew (Messiah College). One of the
main goals of this blog is to keep our friends, families, donors, and colleagues
up to date on our work both in the field and back in the office. We are at
present getting ready for the season and are developing a easy and sophisticated
multimedia platform to communicate the daily activities, methods, and most
important results of our project with our wider communities in North Dakota,
Central Pennsylvania, South East Queensland (Australia), Ohio, Delaware, and
anywhere else that interested parties talk about archaeology. We
encourage you to engage us in our discussion and share your ideas, thoughts, and
questions with us over the course of our adventures. Our field season
begins this year on May 16th. Check back at this site for regular updates
from Cyprus, Greece, North Dakota, and even more exotic locales!
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Rick Aaser
EMAIL: rlaaser@westriv.com
IP: 69.26.8.143
URL:
DATE: 04/23/2007 12:34:50 AM
I had the pleasure of being at the NDAA meeting where William was the keynote
speaker. The information he presented was very impressive and well put together.
Keep up the great work.
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Archaeology of the Mediterranean World Archive: Volume 1 by

AUTHOR: William Caraher

DATE: 12/17/2010 06:22:26 AM

DATE: 12/16/2010 07:20:27 AM

ading-detroit-and-student-resistence.html">here</a>. These forms of resistance

DATE: 12/15/2010 06:58:23 AM

<p>I&#39;ve begun work on revising <a

<p>Making this all the more conspicuous is Justinian&#39;s used inscriptions

DATE: 12/14/2010 06:35:15 AM

DATE: 12/13/2010 07:35:29 AM

history-of-the-greco-roman-world/oclc/144219734">Cambridge Economic History of

DATE: 12/10/2010 09:11:34 AM

DATE: 12/09/2010 06:18:03 AM

DATE: 12/08/2010 07:11:35 AM

of the Bishop Anthemius played a role in a prominent narrative of the island's

DATE: 12/07/2010 06:12:04 AM

DATE: 12/06/2010 06:47:47 AM

This was a great post, Bill!

DATE: 12/03/2010 06:32:44 AM

<li>What I am reading: G. Hall, <em><a

DATE: 12/02/2010 07:07:24 AM

<p>8.<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Theory is not a single thing: it is

DATE: 12/01/2010 07:09:59 AM

DATE: 11/30/2010 06:56:51 AM

DATE: 11/29/2010 06:51:13 AM

between institutions with universalizing aspirations (the emperor or, better

DATE: 11/26/2010 07:09:25 AM

DATE: 11/24/2010 06:56:09 AM

<p>Here is <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/university-of-the-northern-

DATE: 11/23/2010 07:48:07 AM

and centered, apparently, on discussion. They also established a control group

superficial way). ¬†In short, students struggled to understand the advantages to

DATE: 11/22/2010 07:18:35 AM

many of Byzantine archaeologist colleagues), scientific approaches (e.g.

CATEGORY: Grand Forks Notes

DATE: 11/21/2010 11:58:19 AM

DATE: 11/19/2010 09:24:04 AM

DATE: 11/18/2010 07:10:05 AM

DATE: 11/17/2010 07:33:26 AM

careful, reasoned, thought. ¬†(<a

/>July 23, 2008:¬†<a

DATE: 11/16/2010 07:20:06 AM

existence to a new place. ¬†To be sure, Herodotus or even the Byzantine

DATE: 11/15/2010 07:22:31 AM

landscape. ¬†By resisting the urge to offer definitive or rigid relationships

DATE: 11/12/2010 09:20:42 AM

<li><a href="http://jobs.uiowa.edu/faculty/view/58610">Classics, Religion, and

DATE: 11/11/2010 07:42:32 AM

Are Sema codes the betacord of our day?

DATE: 11/10/2010 07:33:20 AM

DATE: 11/09/2010 07:31:08 AM

pottery. ¬†The appearance of an article like this in <em>Hesperia </em>should

DATE: 11/08/2010 07:40:58 AM

<p style="text-align: center;"><img style="display: block; margin-left: auto;

DATE: 11/05/2010 09:24:02 AM

<li>This is <a href="http://chronicle.com/article/Advising-the-

DATE: 11/04/2010 07:29:11 AM

<p><em>This blog post is an effort to understand the fairly lackadaisical

monumental task unsuited to the limited medium of blogging or somehow impossible

DATE: 11/03/2010 06:31:10 AM

DATE: 11/02/2010 07:14:04 AM

a standing posture. These two tendencies combined to produce an average survey

DATE: 11/01/2010 07:32:07 AM

<p>I've begun work on revising <a

<p>Making this all the more conspicuous is Justinian's used inscriptions

isn't the case of academics becoming bloggers, it is sometimes the case of

and functional landscapes that we create from survey data. In examining

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