Catching Up, continued

From Meaghan Trowbridge (2010 Volunteer and 2011 Field Supervisor): “Since last August, I have worked for Statistical Research, Inc,. doing cultural resource management (CRM) work in various contexts. I have excavated kivas for a highway-widening project in northwestern New Mexico, supervised excavation of a multi-component Archaic settlement for the installation of a solar array on an Air Force base in Phoenix, surveyed and re-evaluated prehistoric sites in the Huachuca Mountains near Sierra Vista, Arizona, and conducted ceramic analyses for projects in Arizona and Texas. Although I will not be able to work as a Mule Creek staff member again this summer, I hope to visit at least once or twice—and perhaps host a second annual Karaoke night!”

Jane Carmack (2009 Field School and 2010 volunteer, Hendrix College) has just finished her senior thesis at Hendrix College. She provided this summary of her work:  “My senior thesis project looked at how community changed in the American Southwest from about 1200–1500. This period was characterized by migrations of people and declining overall population. I examined different theories of community, focusing on Benedict Anderson’s theory of the “imagined community” and George Murdock’s theory of small-scale communities.”I began the project assuming that communities would change from small scale communities to larger ones that would feature some hallmarks of Anderson’s imagined community. After looking at the data, this turned out to be true in some cases. I analyzed site clustering during fifty-year intervals starting with 1200–1250 and ending with 1450–1500. I used the physical closeness of communities to infer community type. A really large cluster of communities would be an imagined community, whereas an isolated cluster of maybe two or three communities would be a small scale community.

“I found that the communities changed in different ways in different regions of the Southwest. I interpreted the large, widespread communities of the early northern Southwest and slightly later Hohokam region as more similar to Anderson’s imagined community, and the shift to small, less connected communities to be more like Murdock’s closely interacting communities, which perhaps lacked the large networks of shared ideas.

“I haven’t finalized my post-graduation plans. I may be going to Koobi Fora in Kenya to do a paleoanthropological field school for about a month this summer.”

From Henry Foote (2011 Field School, James Madison University):  “I’m working as a field technician for the University (JMU) now, primarily on Civil War historic sites. We’re conducting Phase I and II projects for a local mining company, Carmeuse Lime & Stone, on the area where the Battle of Cedar Creek was fought. Though I’m still much more enamored of prehistoric archaeology, it’s proving to be a fun experience so far! I’m hoping to move down South for grad school in applied anthropology, but I’m most likely going to continue doing CRM work for at least a couple of years.”