Friday, April 02, 2010

This blog has moved


This blog is now located at
http://fartheralong.wordpress.com/

You will be automatically redirected in 30 seconds, or you may click here.

posted by Jamie Brandon @ 4/02/2010 12:18:00 AM 0 comments

Friday, June 05, 2009

Glazed America....

My friend Paul Mullins has hit it big with his new book Glazed America...an African Diaspora archaeologist goes pop culture historian...





NPR joins in:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=94095945

Science Daily:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/07/080721152000.htm

Check it out for yourself:
http://www.upf.com/book.asp?id=MULLIS07
or
http://www.amazon.com/Glazed-America-Doughnut-Paul-Mullins/dp/0813032385

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posted by Jamie Brandon @ 6/05/2009 05:15:00 PM 1 comments

Sunday, July 20, 2008

Weirdness in Netflix suggestions...

I've become a big fan of Netflix (more about my particular netflix uses later)

But...I'm trying to figure out how liking Henry & June (the NC-17 film based on the unexpurgated diary of Anaïs Nin), Hedwig and the Angry Inch (the musical about the East German rock idol and victim of a botched sex change operation) or the Wilco documentary I am Trying to Break Your Heart (where the band implodes following a conflict with their record label) leads to Netflix suggesting the film based on the cool children's book Where The Wild Things Are...any ideas?


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posted by Jamie Brandon @ 7/20/2008 03:14:00 PM 2 comments

Monday, September 10, 2007

Method & Theory...

A recent post from my colleague over at Middle Savagery reminds me that for some of us...it physically makes us happy to read theory...I agree...Like Levi Straussian myths, for me some theory is "good to think."

At the same time I am reminded by one of my current students who is taking a "Method and Theory in Archaeology" class that many of his colleagues in the program simply have not been exposed to, and are not comfortable talking about "theory."...many of these folks see theory as strange, alien, and "not useful."

I have encountered these two groups of people my whole academic career. At the University of Memphis and the University of Arkansas, I was the frustrated "theory guy" in heavily method-oriented programs...However, when I went to the University of Texas at Austin, although I was finally satisfied with the rich theoretical program there, I also began to realize the importance of the connections between methods and theory...and I felt that some of my colleagues at UT may be very theoretically sophisticated, but not very fluent in good archaeological methods.

I do not see these two entities as diametrically opposed opposites...I see them as inextricably connected...Obviously this should not be a radical idea (praxis anyone?), but time and again one meets "theory" people and "dirt archaeologists." Close friends and colleagues even mistakenly stereotyped my long-time collaborator James Davidson and myself--he was the method guy and I was the theorist...this woefully underestimates Davidson's theoretical savvy and (I think) my practical background.

I am a "dirt archaeologist"...I have years and years of contract archaeology underneath my belt (and over 20 "technical reports"), but I am also proud of my theoretical engagement...and I firmly believe that there is no such thing as "non-theoretical" archaeology...only archaeologists who do not acknowledge what theoretical interests they serve.

Part of the problem is a lack of great examples that connect archaeological methods and theories in a solid (and easily accessible) way...How many books have you read (especially in historical archaeology) that have an eloquent theoretical section weakly linked to the actual artifacts and excavated contexts...they read like two unrelated monographs. I long to see more work that is sound in both its methods and theories.

I'll close by pointing to one literary model I think we should look at...Check out Larry McMurtry's book Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen...If the rootsy, plain-spoken western writer can draw sophisticated connections between Bejamin, storytelling and the West Texas community hub known as the Dairy Queen...theory can be accessible to anyone.

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posted by Jamie Brandon @ 9/10/2007 07:28:00 PM 3 comments

Sunday, August 12, 2007

Henry Rollins for President...no...really.

That's probably the last thing I thought I'd say...and then I heard an interview with Henry yesterday on Air America's Ring of Fire.

Now...I'm a child of the 1970s and a teenager of the 1980s...So I've actually been a fan of Rollins for years...Of course, he was in one incarnation of the hardcore punk band Black Flag from 1981-1986, and I really got into The Rollins Band (thanks to friend and mentor Shawn Chapman) in college at Memphis State University ...I loved Rollins' all-or-nothing take on punk sensibility...Does anybody else remember the video to Liar off of the mid-1990s Weight album?

Then I lost track of Henry...I didn't really follow his books, spoken word stuff or even his film show on IFC (although I was aware that it existed)...hey, I was in graduate school...I was busy.

Then yesterday came...Mike Papantonio interviewed Rollins and he gave very smart answers with a post-punk attitude...he was angry, he was righteous....but he was also well reasoned, smart and not prone to the Ann Coulter/Rush Limbaugh/Sam Sedar/Randi Rhodes name-calling silliness (that's right...I'm calling out both righties and lefties)...he was swinging hard and swinging carefully. He was exactly the kind of person the left needs...I don't see Henry rolling over as the Democratic leadership has been doing in congress since they took the speakership...

Rollins is a patriot....not the status qou, conforming kind of patriot that politicians and media anchors have been talking about since 9/11...Rolllins is a patriot in the mold of Patrick Henry or Samuel Adams...passionate, smart, eloquent and thinking outside the box while breathing fire at the opposition.

Henry Rollins for President…Oi!

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posted by Jamie Brandon @ 8/12/2007 01:20:00 PM 2 comments

Wednesday, August 08, 2007

The Future of Our Discipline?
Hester Davis just sent me this pic to ID (I assume for publication in an upcoming Field Notes)...I LOVE THIS PIC...me & Arkansas Archeological Society members Brianne and Harrison Dover at 3HS195 screening in the mud after a evening thunderstorm...at this June's AAS dig near Malvern, AR.

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posted by Jamie Brandon @ 8/08/2007 04:19:00 PM 0 comments

Not Our Fault? or
Blame the Invisible Hand of the Market

The near-extinction of the buffalo (or bison as the sciencey-types call it) has long been laid at the feet of mass hunting (sometimes actually perpetrated by US soldiers) aimed at 1) reducing what had become a vital food resource for Plains Indian groups in order to force them off the plains an onto reservations and bording schools and 2) making the Great Plains safe for innocent railroad engines who might find themselves on a collision course with a menacing stamped of buffalo (or maybe just the occasional loan cow).


Piles of bison skulls on the Great Plains ca. 1870.


But a recent study by University of Calgary environmental economist M. Scott Taylor says that we can now blame Europe's technological innovation and market forces for the buffalo death toll. "The story of the buffalo slaughter is surprisingly not, at bottom, an American one," Taylor said. According to Taylor, the bison killings were a result of an expertise in tanning heavy hides into leather developed in Europe and not practiced in the United States at the time...This sustained Europe's high demand for bison hides (for use mostly as industrial leather)...the study cited about 30 million bison hides were exported from 1871 to 1883 (12 years).

"These market forces overwhelmed the ability of a young and still expanding nation, just out of a bloody civil war, to carefully steward its natural resources," Taylor said...and an the United States Government did not regulate the market in anyway...

On one hand, I find this much more plausible than some recent archeological studies which suggest that the Native Americans themselves were responsible for the die out (see Wade, 2006 in World Archeology)...on the other...I think shifting blame to the so-called "invisible hand" of the market seems like a scape-goat...or at least a cop-out...

I do like how complicated this analysis makes the issue, however...there are social factors (the desired removal of the bison and Native Americans and the desire to make money through international trade), technological factors (leather innovations, the need for industrial leather than drove...the literally belt-driven Industrial Revolution), economic factors (lack of regulation) resulting in dramatic environmental and social consequences for the Great Plains and the Plains Indians....gotta love social histories...even when they are economic.

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Check out:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20181774/from/ET/
http://www.innovations-report.de/html/berichte/wirtschaft_finanzen/bericht-88259.html

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posted by Jamie Brandon @ 8/08/2007 03:26:00 PM 1 comments