Best of 2005 (according to me, anyway)...
Not that anybody cares about my opinions about music, books or film. . . . but blogging is, by its nature, a self-obsessed activity, so I thought I'd indulge by listing the best of two things which occupy most of my time. . . anthropology and music (mostly alt.country music these days).
Note: that these are, of course, only my opinions. . . I make no claims to have read and/or listened to all available material released/published in 2005. . . I have read and/or listened to the stuff on my lists. . . & I think they work. Check them out if you have the chance.
JCB's Best Anthropology/Archaeology/History of 2005 (in no particular order):- Industrial Archaeology: Future Directions edited by Eleanor Conlin Casella and James Symonds
- Archaeological Theory: Who Sets the Agenda? edited by Norman Yoffee, Andrew Sherratt, Wendy Ashmore, Francoise Audouze, Cyprian Broodbank, Colin Renfrew, Nathan Schlanger, Timothy Taylor, Tim Murray
- Reforging the White Republic: Race, Religion, and American Nationalism, 1865-1898 by Edward J Blum
- Appalachians and Race: The Mountain South from Slavery to Segregation edited by John C Inscoe
- Odd Tribes: Toward a Cultural Anaylsis of White People by John Hartigan, Jr.
- The Archaeology of Plural and Changing Identities: Beyond Identification edited by Eleanor C Casella, Chris Fowler
My Favorite Music Releases of 2005 (in no particular order):
- The Outsider by Rodney Crowell (August 16, 2005)
- Back to Me by Kathleen Edwards (March 1, 2005)
- Come on Back by Jimmie Dale Gilmore (August 16, 2005)
- Get Myself Together by Danny Barnes (August 2, 2005)
- Mercy Now by Mary Gauthier (February 15, 2005)
- Year of Meteors by Laura Veirs (August 23, 2005)
- Okemah And The Melody Of Riot by Son Volt (July 12, 2005)
- The Real Deal by Billy Joe Shaver (September 20, 2005)
- Get Behind Me Satan The White Stripes (June 7, 2005)
- Suit Yourself by Shelby Lynne (May 24, 2005)
Bush Pardons Two Tennessee Moonshiners
The Knoxville News Sentinel (and the
Facing South blog) reported earlier this month that President Bush has pardoned two Tennesseans convicted decades ago of moonshine charges. The pardons, of course, will restore full U.S. citizenship to the men, including the rights to vote and buy a gun.
My favorite line from this piece comes from Charles E. McKinley, 75, of Pall Mall, Tennessee (one of two pardoned moonshiners):
"I'd almost be a Republican after that."
No word, however, on granting voting rights to the thirteen percent of African-American men--1.4 million--who are disenfranchised due to felony convictions....the majority of these convictions are, of course, for the possession of (and intent to sell) controlled substances..Apparently not all controlled substances are equal in the eyes of the administration.
Read more about the pardons at:
http://www.southernstandard.net/news.php?viewStory=26654
In Arkansas:
No Bullet Holes in Flyers of ElvisI don't know if people outside of the state are aware that we in Arkansas have recently rediscovered the ivory-billed woodpecker (Nancy McCartney, curator of Zoology at the
UofA Museum informs me that it is properly
Campephilus principalis)--a bird that was thought to have been extinct since the 1940s. I, of course, found it amusing that the code-name that researchers used for the bird prior to a confirmed sighting was "Elvis." (No, really we're looking for Elvis....I heard there was an Elvis sighting around here).
Deborah Zabarenko of Reuters did a piece that appeared Dec. 11th on the woodpecker entitled "
'Elvis' woodpecker draws searchers to Arkansas"..funny enough, but it is a quote in the last portion of the piece that caught my attention....
What happens if they find one?
The first priority is protecting the bird, and treating it if it is injured, Andrew said. That could include closing off the area, he said, though wildlife officials plan to work closely with local communities to avoid cramping their style. So far, he said, local residents had been supportive. Signs describing the ivory-bill have weathered well in Arkansas, Andrew said. "We have signs that were put up in April that have not one bullet hole in them -- which is a reflection, I think, of the community's reaction to the bird."
Merry Schiltz-mas!Ted Swedenburg snapped this great pic at Maxine's Taproom....a favorite Fayetteville hang out of mine. I, in fact, saw this schiltzmas tree the same week as Ted, but I'm not smart enough to document it....or maybe I was too drunk to document it.....I can't honestly remember.
At any rate, check out pictures I really DID remember to take of
Maxine's Tap Room here.
The Shovel Bum's LotI've been remiss in pointing this out....my old friend from the University of Texas
Troy Lovata (now a prof. at the University of New Mexico) has teamed up with Trent and Betsy de Boer to make a short animated version of the 'zine
Shovelbum for the
Archaeology Channel called
"A Shovel Bum's Lot."For those of you who aren't (or haven't been) shovelbums, in the late 1990s the de Boers started to make an underground mag. about the life of itinerant archaeological field technicians....this was eventually
published by AltaMira Press in 2004...It's near to my heart as much of the "plot" takes place while Trent & Betsy were working for an Arkansas CRM firm just down the road in West Fork, AR...
At any rate, Lavata has always been interested in 1) animation and 2) getting information about archaeology out to the public.....he gets to teach cool courses like "
Documentary Archaeology" (a field course) and "
In the Digital Now".....check it out.
Shovel Bum, the 'zineShovel Bum the BookThe Shovelbum's Lot
A Woman's Work.....
The Open Collections Program of Harvard University Library recently announced the completion of its first on-line collection: "
Women Working, 1800-1930," & it is promising, indeed.
Featuring approximately 500,000 pages and images documenting women's roles in theU.S. economy between 1800 and the Great Depression, including working conditions, conditions in the home, costs of living, recreation, health and hygiene, conduct of life, policies and regulations governing the work place, and social issues: digitized pages and images of selected rare and historical books, institutional papers, personal papers, diaries, and photographs from Harvard's network of libraries, archives, and museums.
The collection is completely free and available to anyone with access to the Internet. The second Open Collection, entitled "Emigration and Immigration, 1789-1930" will become available in Spring 2006, and a third Open Collection on contagion and infectious disease between ca.1700 and 1930 is also forthcoming.
Projects such as this & the
Library of Congress' American Memory Project make me happy to be a historical researcher in the 21st century....
Fear & Loathing on the Alberta Plains....
My friend and fellow
Project Past member
Christopher Goodmaster has provided us with a photogallery of the 3 day roadtrip that followed the
2005 Plains Anthropological Conference held in Edmonton, Alberta. The trip organizers dubbed it "Fear & Loathing on the Alberta Plains" in honor of the late
Hunter S. Thompson...
http://www.pbase.com/speleo42/fear_and_loathing 
"We were somewhere around Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, on the edge of the plains, when the archaeology began to take hold....
We had two GPS units, seventy-five projectile points, five sheets of graph paper, fortification ditches, circular depressions, cairns, and a whole galaxy of glyph panels: shield bearing warriors, human figures, elk, geometric shapes of all kinds and chronologies... Also, a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, and more than a case of beer. Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get into a serious archaeology addiction, the tendency is to push it as far as you can. "
Got a Quarter?
I have made my contributions to the Pay Phone Project....have you?
http://www.payphone-project.com/Check out my favorite features:
Photos of Pay PhonesPay Phone Numbers (with clickable maps)
Eddie Guerrero
1967-2005
Today the Associated Press published an article reporting that the medical examiner's report states that Eddie died of natural causes relating to heart disease (exacerbated by his past anabolic steroid use)...RIP & Viva La Raza!
A Day That Will Live in Infamy....Happy B-Day, A. J.
Section 106 In Trouble?.....
On Thursday, December 8th, 2005 the Twelfth Circuit Court of Appeals will hear a case that
may have a great impact on archaeology as we know it........and I haven't heard much buzz about it on the archaeology listservs (not even a peep on ACRA-L, the listerv of the
American Cultural Resource Association).
What is this great specter?, you ask.
Some of you may be familiar with the FCC's Nationwide Programmatic Agreement (NPA) governing historic preservation review of FCC-authorized telecommunications projects (mostly cell phone towers). This nifty little piece of legislation, lobbied for heavy by the wireless industry, effectively cut down the amount of work needed for a new cell tower site to comply with Section 106. Section 106 is, for those non-archaeo types, the part of the
National Historic Preservation Act that insures that undertakings done on Federal land, with Federal money, or requiring Federal permitting will have archaeological work conducted so we can triage, save or excavate sites that may be important to understanding our past.
The new FCC NPA allows the wireless companies to avoid most archaeological surveys that are designed to discover new archaeological sites. The wireless company simply has to do a search to find out if there are any properties on the cell tower site that have ALREADY been determined eligible for inclusion on the
National Register of Historic Places....if no such properties exists, they do not further 106-related work. The problem with this is very few archaeological sites have actually been determined eligible for the NRHP, so many sites that are known to be in project areas, but have not been determined eligible, require no work in most cases. This process insures that we will not get a chance to discover new sites on these properties.
The wireless industry is still not happy with this NPA, however, and they are in the Twelfth Circuit Court of Appeals with two arguments:
- Cell towers are NOT a federal undertaking an therefore not subject to Section 106 at all and
- The wording in the legislation and regulations relating to Section 106 has been misinterpreted. The phrase "eligible for inclusion in the NRHP," they say, should be interpreted as "listed on the NRHP."
The wireless industry may have us with their first argument as the FCC not longer "permits" cell towers in the technical sense....what scares me more is the second argument which would apply to ALL 106 projects....In effect if the court agrees with the wireless industry we would no longer look for new archaeological sites as section 106 would only be triggered if undertakings impacted sites LISTED on the NRHP.
I'd guestimate that here in Arkansas less than 1% of sites eligible for inclusion have actually been listed....and as 80% of archaeologists work in 106-related sectors, I think we should all hold our collective breaths.
Not that anybody cares about my opinions about music, books or film. . . . but blogging is, by its nature, a self-obsessed activity, so I thought I'd indulge by listing the best of two things which occupy most of my time. . . anthropology and music (mostly alt.country music these days).
