Odd Mascots and the GSC Conference

Tonight I watched the Southern Arkansas vs. Arkansas Tech game (after "mulegating" by the Welcome Center)....My first SAU football game. It was a close game, with the momentum swinging back and forth several times during the game...But, alas, SAU lost 36-29 in the last minutes of the final quarter.

As I watched the "Muleriders" take on the Arkansas Tech "Wonder Boys," It occurred to me that the Gulf South Conference (GSC) is full of interesting mascots...

Of the original 1909 Arkansas schools we have the Southern Arkansas Muleriders, Arkansas Tech Wonder Boys, the University of Arkansas at Monticello Boll Weevils and Arkansas State Indians...O.K. Indians may be a liability politically, but it is not really an unusual mascot...maybe that's why they have moved on to the Sunbelt Conference.

But back here in the GSC we also have the Henderson State "Reddies" (roughly "meaning those who wear red")...I doubt that this mascot name is a reference to communist sympathies...but I wonder if anybody would get it if I started calling them the "HSU Pinkos."

Why Cemeteries?

Some folks who follow my Flickr stream have commented on the fact that I seem to have become obsessed with cemeteries in southwestern Arkansas..."Why so many cemetery visits?" someone asked (I think my Station Assistant shares this confusion, but he has not directly asked me yet).

There are several reasons for my newly acquired cemetery preoccupation. First, historic cemeteries are a great way to learn the cultural and historical landscape of an area. I learned from my colleague James Davidson that the history of a place can often be told by looking at the geography and chronology of it's cemeteries. For southwestern Arkansas, I can pick up a USGS quadrangle map, or a county road map and I can drive to every marked cemetery--especially the ones at the end of dead end gravel or dirt roads. When I do this I 1) begin to understand the general geography of the area because I am driving around with my maps and 2) begin to understand the historic landscape because these older cemeteries tell me where communities where in the 1800s and 1900s. They tell me where communities have died and where they have survived.

Another aspect of local cemetery studies is that I begin to recognize family names and connections--many of which will probably play some role in my future archeological research. And, finally, these cemeteries can be a conduit to getting to know current local communities.

I serve as the humanities scholar for several folks who have received grants from the Arkansas Humanities Council to help preserve rural African-American cemeteries. My role in these grants are to map and photograph the cemetery as a part of its larger documentation and repair (most grants provide for filling in collapsed graves, erecting or repairing fences, resetting stones, etc.). Although my colleagues may not understand why I'm so gung-ho to map these cemeteries, I maintain that this kind of service is a great way to meet and get to know communities that are interested in their history....Communities that I might partner with in the near future when I excavate local sites...

Besides...It's a good thing to give a little to the communities that we at the AAS are here to serve....even if it doesn't result in a peer-review research article.

Kadohadacho Reborn

Thirty-six years ago (Nov. 10, 1970) folks interested in archeology formed a chapter of the Arkansas Archeological Society in Magnolia, Arkansas. The members met and voted to call themselves the "Kadohadacho Chapter." Almost 30 people showed up to that first meeting including folks from Magnolia, Texarkana, Camden, Junction City, El Dorado, Hope, Smackover and, believe it or not, Arkadelphia and Kasciusko, Mississippi.

Two of the members who were at that first meeting--Leon Hardin (who was elected President back then) and Vernon Perry--are still active volunteers at the AAS-SAU Station...Vernon turns in more site files a month than all the AAS Research Station archeologists combined.

The last meeting of the Kadohadacho Chapter was in March of 2004, but after a period of inactivity we are attempting a rebirth...you can read the first of a new series of newsletters of the chapter in PDF form here.

Why are we called "Kadohadacho"? The Kadohadacho (Kä'dohadä'cho, meaning real Caddo or "Caddo proper") were a tribe of the Caddo confederacy. The Caddo, of course, were one of the major groups of Native Americans living in southwestern Arkansas during late prehistoric and early historic times...Incidentally, the "Johnny Ford Chapter", after an important site in Lafayette County that they had just excavated, came in a close second.

I have mixed feelings about the name....I mean, I'm not Kadohadacho, nor are any of our members that I'm aware of....It's kinda like my feelings about the old African-American Archeology Network (see my post of Tuesday, January 24, 2006 entitled "An Archaeology of the African Diaspora Beyond North America" on Farther Along).

In another way, however, it is appropriate that our name mean "the real Caddo" or "Caddo proper" as Frank Schambach, the previous SAU Research Station Archeologist, spent the latter part of his career arguing just that--that the folks living in southwestern Arkansas in the late preshistoric periods were the "real Caddo"....those folks in the Arkansas River Valley and the Ozarks were Caddo posers at best.

The Mute Marine & MST3K?

On October 3rd, SAU was host to An Evening with Col. Oliver North--an event sponsored by Farmers Bank and Trust and the Southern Arkansas University Foundation ($100 to attend). A professional photographer was on hand at a private reception (another $100 to attend) held at Farmers Bank and Trust prior to the dinner to take pictures of attendants with Ol' Ollie.

In a weird turn of events the next speaker on campus (October 31st) will be Michael J. Nelson who has been selected as the 2006 Emerson-Thomas-Crone lecturer. You might know Mike as Joel's replacement on Mystery Science Theatre 3000 (MST3K). Actually, Mike was head writer for the show since its early years and was then asked to also host halfway through the fifth season.

Nelson, along with his side-kick robots Tom Servo and Crow, were forced to endure some of cinema's most painfully bad "B" movies at the hands of mad scientists. His silhouetted head, and those of the robots, has become one of the most recognizable icons of cult filmdom.

The Mute Marine followed by MST3K?

I can't help but think it would have been more entertaining if SAU had asked them to come together....Mike sitting in the front row making sarcastic jokes about the speech that Col. North was giving.