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October 23rd, 2005
07:06 pm - I live in the tropics and never go barefoot
These are our pumpkins from last night :)
Looks like we get the day off tomorrow :) Hurricane should make landfall about 7am. Hah. Am sat outside borrowing John's wireless and the wind just picked up. It's cooled off at last, has been stupid humid for days. I'm prepared to make a run for it if it starts to rain. That, or I finally give in to the mosquitoes munching on my feet.
I realised yesterday at the beach that I never, ever go barefoot. My feet are really sensitive even to walking on sand. It kind of makes me want a foot rub from someone nice. Speaking of nice, we watched 10 Things I Hate About You today and Heath Ledger is well fit with darker hair. Damn. But that's just my mood these days.
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.1) bethincairo and Ben Alfred went off to Stephanie's place in Fort Lauderdale for a party so I'm the only one home at the inn except for the ever autonomous Shodrigo (shannon and rodrigo), and John, whose internet I am stealing. Eh, whatever. I'm sitting outside and it's well nice. Have been wanting time to myself for ages :)
Current Mood:  relaxed
Current Music: The Chemical Brothers :: Marvo Ging
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April 17th, 2005
09:22 am - Working for a Living
It's been a long time since I updated this journal. I'm now living in Southern Florida, working on a phase III excavation of a prehistoric site in an urban setting. I guess I like it okay. The best part about the job is the paycheck though, it's been so long since I've made any amount of money. I am missing academics though, so school is on the list, I just need to get some decent advice about where to apply and what to study. Nothing else to report really, sorry this is so brief. xx :)
Current Mood:  okay
Current Music: Eric Prydz :: Call On Me (JJ Stockholm Club Mix)
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August 10th, 2004
02:26 pm - how important are three sherds of Roman pottery?
So I'm happily doing my data entry and I come across a report of three roman pot sherds found in a clay layer dated to late roman or early medieval. Do I make an entirely new record for these three stupid pot sherds (which requires writing in the NGR, the address, and that it is a site of archaeological interest) -- or do I leave it? How important are these pot sherds?
In a way it's the last voice the people who left them have, and I feel like I should treasure the evidence of life. Christians talk about how all life is precious...sort of like that, you know? Or is it useless, redundent data which entropy has had its wicked way with? I mean, who cares, it's just three sherds? Of pottery even, which is useful in some cases but just isolated in this clay layer don't really mean too much or tell us very much.
I think I'm going to leave them out. Am I being lazy?
Current Mood:  curious
Current Music: Natasha Beddingfield :: These Words
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August 5th, 2004
03:59 pm - Coming into archaeology post-BA
Just some random thoughts...
I expect to be inspired by and find engagement with my work.
I expect my work to be relevant.
Problem: culture of apathy in archaeological units fostered by strength of capitalist mechanisms in place as result of developer funded archaeology.
Current Mood:  thoughtful
Current Music: Kate Rusby :: Broken-Hearted I Will Wander
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August 2nd, 2004
01:06 pm - random thinking
This isn't about archaeology specifically, more like anthropolgy, but I thought it belonged in here rather than my other journal.
Last night I went to this folk concert in Regent's Park. The show was great, but it made me wonder about some stuff. Specifically, how has mass media changed how we listen. The performers wanted us to sing, to sort of join them in this totally un-selfconscious capacity that seemed very authentic and real. It was this time when people could take the opportunity to really come together and be part of something, and yet people just sat there blank faced. It made me wonder if TV has made us forget our obligation to interact with performers, to appreciate them actively. Does that make sense?
I also wondered about CDs. When you get to know a song so well from a single recording, it's not a true knowing of the living piece of music. I think people have forgotten that music is an art that's totally at the mercy of time. I'm not really sure where I'm going with this thought, but I just wondered if I had become a lazy listener, and had become irrevocably disconnected from any performer. Folk music in particular I think calls attention to the distance between performer and audience which has been artificially reinforced by mass media. I think, anyways.
Anyways...I really should do some work today, but what do you-all think about this?
Current Mood: curious
Current Music: Kate Rusby :: Cobblers Daughter
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July 27th, 2004
11:48 am - Last Essay
Thank f**k this is the last essay I will ever have to write for this course.
I'm writing about grey literature. That is, the reports produced by the major proportion (89%) of archaeological work in Britain, developer-driven archaeology. These reports hardly ever get published, unless there is something found that would be relevant in the context of popular archaeology.
Dont' get me wrong, I have read a lot of these reports over the last few weeks and they are dull as death, most of them. I really don't think they have to be, though. When I went to this seminar on documentary sources for archaeologists, the speaker talked about how most reports in the UK fail to contextualize their findings. This is partially intentional, but American and Austrailian reports tend to not do this. Even when you're writing a professional report, it would be nice if reading it wasn't like having teeth extracted, you know?
So I went to Foyles, the only bookstore on earth with a mini-archaeolgy bookstore inside it. They have moved the archaeology section away from the anthropology books, which is a little sad. Anyways, I was hoping I'd find something about professional archaeology somewhere on the shelf. There really wasn't anything though. It was all academic or popularaized. When this statistic says that only 11% of the work going on falls into those categories, I guess I'm a bit concerned. What is the result of all this other work? Why is there no money or even interest coming out of developer driven archaeological work? And why is the academic part of the discipline not providing a way in to the profession? It's like there is no connection at all at the moment! No wonder I couldn't get a job, it's an entirely separate sub-field. I think some of this angst is going to come out in my essay.
I have a meeting on Friday (my birthday!) with my tutor to talk about my last review, with which there have been a few problems. Major lack of communication, and that's all I'm going to say about that here. I think what I have mostly learned this year is that I would really like to be an academic and I have been too scared to admit this to myself or even consider if I were clever enough. Now I guess I will have to find out. Maybe I wasted the year...I'm not sure yet. (To say nothing of the money.)
Current Mood:  busy
Current Music: Britney Spears :: The Hook Up
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July 15th, 2004
02:22 pm - Anth/Arch/Museums/The Evil Monoculture/Can't Avoid the Politics
6a0209 and I went to the British Museum yesterday for a little while. We saw the Rosetta Stone and the Elgin Marbles (now cleverly advertised as the Parthenon Marbles). More to the point though, it was an anthropological field day!
I just read this book about Tibet and the author brings up Western selfishness. Not selfishness as you usually think of it, more like in the sense of extreme individualism and the ways this is manifest in Western culture. Follow me so far? The more I learn about other cultures the more I see how the West is based on individualism, and more to the point, the idea that individualistic behaviour somehow leaves one incomplete. I forget if it’s Segalen or Derrida who talks about exoticism. I think it’s Segalen, actually. Entrepreneurs, or opportunists as they really should be called, take advantage of this. Who said capitalism was a healthy system? It’s based on the idea that everyone is incomplete.
That’s not really where I was going with this whole discussion, though it does link in. So we’re in the British Museum (which some people insist on calling ‘the BM’ – which I can’t quite bring myself to do), and the Rosetta stone is completely obscured by the crowd of people around the case. They’re all trying to have an individual relationship with the object, they all seemed to be looking for this quiet space to be in. More to the point they were oblivious to the fact that it didn’t, or rather, could not possibly exist in that scenario. When people think of museums, or visiting one, it’s a really individualistic experience. It seems like the fact that it’s enforcing cultural mores, or that it’s embedded in a social structure itself…museum patrons seem to miss this.
Maybe I’m just too much of a cynic. The giant Syrian griffins really are cool, but with me they have an entirely new incarnation. So do the Elgin Marbles, and those especially are tied up in the origins of the industrialized West.
Well, here endeth this tirade. I just can’t help myself. It’s like walking into someone’s house for dinner and all you can see is clutter and dirt and mess to the point that you can’t appreciate the hospitality. Weird.
Current Mood:  weird
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June 21st, 2004
12:09 pm - girl in a fedora just walked in...
Reminds me of one of my students from last year who just tried way too hard to be Indiana Jones.
Anyways, here I am in Oxford for the week. Mark Bowden and Bernard Thomason look as though they will be fun to learn from. Caught up with a few other people from other short courses, etc. We are in the field for the next couple of days after today. I'm afraid I'm going to be quite cold and I want to nip off to the shops and get a giant sweater. I am badly prepared for fieldwork...as usual. Tomorrow morning I may go snag my boots from OA to use for the week in the interest of dry feet.
In other news, feeling the burnout. Really very much in need of a vacation or break of some kind. Luckily there is one very soon...if I can just make it through another week of hard work.
Current Mood: busy
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June 15th, 2004
03:18 pm - work & plans
So I’m working on this mini DBA. Going kind of pear shaped but nevermind. I looked at a bunch of maps of this town in Oxfordshire, Bampton. It was a pretty major medieval centre and then kinda went into decline until basically now. Now it is getting built up at a rapid rate. The medieval core of the town seems to still be there but the surrounding rural landscape of fields and farms is definitely at risk.
Now, from all these seminars and professional development courses I have taken, I know that expecting things to stay as they are with regards to development is an entirely useless exercise. However, at least I can take stock a little of what’s there and what work has been done so that hopefully it will be available in some form to people in the future. Even if the farms all get eaten up by Sprawl.
Also, I made the mistake of stopping by Oxbow Books on my way home. I have decided, on the basis of a book blurb, to investigate more fully the work of Brian M. Fagan from UC Santa Barbara. I don’t know if I could deal with California as such, but this dude seems to be all about the kind of stuff I want to do in my PhD. I fully realize I did not need in any way whatsoever, to purchase a book for £18.95. It’s just that…if all my ideas have been said already, it probably behoves me to read them in full.
Current Mood:  tired
Current Music: The Rough Guide to Arabesque
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June 4th, 2004
11:23 am - Fieldwork Sucks? And research rules?
Been here at Oxford Archaeology for a while now and I guess I'm just going to take a moment and have a think about what's been going on so far.
First, I did a Historic Buildings Analysis report with the lovely Jon Gil. It's still ongoing, but it's mostly done. First off, I had some issues with archetecture. I don't know anything about it and that fact kinda made me stall. Also I got stuck at a desk far away from anyone else and that completely killed my concentration. Just gone. Couldn't do anything. So it went slowly.
Then I was out in the field for two weeks. First week at a site near Abingdon Abbey, possibly in the abbey gardens. We were looking at civil war defenses. Yes, Americans, other countries have had civil wars too. Downsides of this site were a) asbestos contamination, and b) a supervisor who I didn't get along with too well, and thus pretty much killed the small amount of confidence I had in my digging abilities. Second week I was at a site called Latton in Gloucester. Was a significant improvement, although still not an entirely positive experience. Someone found a baby skeleton though, mid iron age. That was cool.
Now I'm working on a sort of DBA. Not a real DBA, sadly, but one that will probably ultimately be funded by English Heritage. I'm going to research the town of Bampton, which is in west Oxfordshire.
In other news, I am really hoping that the US lifts sanctions and travel bans against Syria. I need to go there for Christmas this year and see archaeology with Charlotte :)
Current Mood:  blah
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