tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29710817176876129082024-03-18T05:08:30.324-07:00Publishing ArchaeologyMichael E. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03942595266312225661noreply@blogger.comBlogger356125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2971081717687612908.post-47462774888234113182018-12-15T17:48:00.000-07:002018-12-15T17:48:26.845-07:00When big data are bad data<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">As archaeologists turn increasingly to
the analysis of large, systematic databases, we need to confront an epistemological
problem: How do we identify bad data, and what can we do about it? Economic
historians and others are becoming consumers of archaeological data, and they
are quick to jump on new databases. They seldom ask about the quality of the
data, and this can result in sophisticated analyses of bad data. But, as we all
know, “Garbage in, garbage out.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">I blogged about this a couple of years
ago in reference to Tertius Chandler’s list of <b>city sizes through history</b>, from both archaeological and historical
sources (<a href="https://publishingarchaeology.blogspot.com/2016/06/why-would-journal-called-scientific.html" target="_blank">Link is here</a>). Those data (Chandler 1987)
are considered shockingly bad and worthless by most historical demographers and
historians. In technical terms, they may be "bullshit" (<a href="https://publishingarchaeology.blogspot.com/2018/11/ian-hodder-says-archaeology-is-bullshit.html" target="_blank">see my post on bullshi</a>t).</span></div>
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Yet some urban scholars merrily use the data for studies today. I
consider this a real problem, and said so in my review of a manuscript for a
journal titled “Scientific Data” (my blog post was an elaboration on that
review). But data quality issues were evidently not as important to the authors
and journal editors; the paper was published with only a few weak caveats about
the data (Reba et al. 2016).<o:p></o:p><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Another recent case focuses on the <b>identification of the plague</b> and other
diseases in historical sources. This one focuses on a database compiled in 1975
by Jean-Noël Biraben of historical occurrences of the plague in France and the
Mediterranean area. Specialists recognize numerous biases and problems with the
basic data. But once the data were digitized, non-historians readily used them
without question, leading to problematic results. The basic problem was pointed
out by Jones and Nevell (2016), and
elaborated on by Roosen and Curtis (2018).<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgv0E68W6QaPkAGepZUpknw2Smao53_CYa8tKvXW3RciDtyv3gFPLE0Pra9lUX0HkvuQANpphT0wdwIjYjdPYuI9PC9ZGxLDHwHDLceYm5bC_LrXyHt-Xx95fLxMq6rhyphenhyphen9C_xfAO2MTORud/s1600/PlagueOrNot-1365-Jones-.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1159" data-original-width="760" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgv0E68W6QaPkAGepZUpknw2Smao53_CYa8tKvXW3RciDtyv3gFPLE0Pra9lUX0HkvuQANpphT0wdwIjYjdPYuI9PC9ZGxLDHwHDLceYm5bC_LrXyHt-Xx95fLxMq6rhyphenhyphen9C_xfAO2MTORud/s320/PlagueOrNot-1365-Jones-.jpg" width="209" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Plague or not plague? From Jones/Nevell)</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">I highly recommend Roosen and Curtis
(and thanks to my excellent colleague Monica Green for sending this my way). Their
remarks parallel my views of the Chandler city-size data, but they do a better
job of articulating the historiographical issues involved when subsequent
scholars used these data (badly):<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">“When scholars fail to apply source
criticism or do not reflect on the content of the data they use, the
reliability of their results becomes highly questionable.” (p. 103).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Jones and Nevell deplore “the loosening
of the rigorous standards of evidence and interpretation scientific researcher
typically demand within their own disciplines.” (103)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Roosen and Curtis list three problems
with recent analyses of the Biraben data (including a paper in PNAS): “<b><i>First,</i></b>
reflection on the data collection process has been improper; <b><i>second,
</i></b>what the data represent has not been recognized; and <b><i>third,</i></b>
critique of the original sources has been inadequate. We argue that a critical
consideration of any of these three elements would have led to the conclusion
that the data set should not have been used at face value.” (105)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">“However, through digitization and
subsequent publication in a top-ranked journal, the 4-decade-old data set was
imbued with a false aura of trustworthiness and the impression of being new
historical research.” (104)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Joosen and Curtis make some
recommendations for improving the systematic analysis of historical disease
data. First, scholars need to employ basic historiographical techniques when
they use data. That is, scholars need to subject data to source criticism,
comparison of sources, contextual analysis. Second, hypothesis testing should
be done on limited regions, rather than Europe as a whole (because of regional
biases in Biraben’s material). And third, scholars should compile new, better
databases. According to Monica Green, this is now in process with <a href="http://globalmiddleages.org/project/black-death-digital-archive-project" target="_blank">a new international collaborative project</a>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">I think I’ve run out of steam; I’ll
have to discuss Binford’s hunter-gatherer database in a separate post. This is
a complicated and very troubling case, and I’ve been delaying writing about it
for some time now, so I guess I’ll wait a bit longer.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">So, <b>what about big-data archaeology</b>. Do we have any bad data? “Not me!”
we all exclaim. Nevertheless, we all know that some of our colleagues are
sloppier than others, and that some data are more reliable than others. Here
are two suggestions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">First, take a historiographic approach
to data, both your own and those of others. Historiography refers to the basic
methods that historians use to evaluate their sources. Compare sources. Analyze
possible biases in the sources. Analyze the context, purpose, and situation of
the process of generating or gathering the data. Good metadata standards is a
start, but I think we need to go further. Check out some of the methodological
literature in history: (Henige 2005), (Hansen and Hansen 2016), (Kipping et al. 2014), and an old favorite of
mine: (Fischer 1970); I still kick myself
for not taking a class with Fischer when I was at Brandeis!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Second, archaeologists should work out methods
of categorizing the reliability of our data and findings, and these should
become part of the metadata of any database. There are basic methods of
assessing the reliability of data and findings (6
and Bellamy 2012; Gerring 2012; Hruschka et al. 2004). The
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has worked out a useful system for
coding the reliability of findings by different authors. They suggest
evaluating independently the strength of the evidence, and the agreement among
authorities (Adler and Hirsch Hadorn 2014).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">These suggestions will have to be
adapted to use with archaeological data. But they can help us avoid some of the
problems that have arisen with the use of the faulty databases on city size and
plague occurrence described above. As archaeologist rush ahead into the brave
new world of big data, we should try to fix data problems sooner rather than
later. We should try to ensure that big data are not bad data.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="EndNoteBibliography" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: -.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif;">6, Perri and Christine Bellamy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="EndNoteBibliography" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: -.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif;">2012 <i>Principles of Methodology: Research Design
in Social Science</i>. Sage, New York.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="EndNoteBibliography">
<br /></div>
<div class="EndNoteBibliography" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: -.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif;">Adler, Carolina E. and Gertrude Hirsch
Hadorn<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="EndNoteBibliography" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: -.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif;">2014 The
IPCC and Treatment of Uncertainties: Topics and Sources of Dissensus. <i>Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate
Change</i> 5 (5): 663-676.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif;">Chandler, Tertius<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif;">1987 <i>Four Thousand Years of Urban Growth: An
Historical Census</i>. St. David's University Press, Lewiston, NY.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif;">Fischer, David Hackett<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif;">1970 <i>Historians' Fallacies: Toward a Logic of
Historical Thought</i>. Harper, New York.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif;">Gerring, John<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif;">2012 <i>Social Science Methodology: A Unified
Framework</i>. 2nd ed. Cambridge University Press, New York.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif;">Hansen, Bradley A. and Mary Eschelbach
Hansen<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif;">2016 The
historian's craft and economics. <i>Journal
of Institutional Economics</i> 12 (2): 349-370.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif;">Henige, David P.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif;">2005 <i>Historical Evidence and Argument</i>.
University of Wisconsin Press, Madison.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif;">Hruschka, Daniel J., Deborah Schwartz,
Daphne Cobb St. John, Erin Picone-Decaro, Richard A. Jenkins, and James W.
Carey<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif;">2004 Reliability
in coding open-ended data: Lessons learned from HIV behavioral research. <i>Field Methods</i> 16 (3): 307-331.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif;">Jones, Lori and Richard Nevell<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif;">2016 Plagued
by doubt and viral misinformation: the need for evidence-based use of
historical disease images. <i>The Lancet
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif;">2014 Analyzing
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History, Theory, Methods</i>, edited by Marcelo Bucheli and R. Daniel Wadhwani,
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif;">Reba, Meredith, Femke Reitsma, and
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif;">2016 Data
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif;">Roosen, Joris and Daniel R. Curtis<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif;">2018 Dangers
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<br />Michael E. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03942595266312225661noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2971081717687612908.post-37324840903014478012018-12-04T09:51:00.000-07:002018-12-04T09:51:13.859-07:00George Cowgill's database and my introduction to scientific archaeologyHere is a very short video that describes how I first got into the science of archaeology:<br />
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George had a database!Michael E. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03942595266312225661noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2971081717687612908.post-17533632658606225702018-11-20T21:25:00.001-07:002018-11-20T21:25:43.558-07:00Ian Hodder says archaeology is bullshit. My reply: “Bullshit!”<span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">In a remarkably bad short paper in the
current </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">SAA Archaeological Record</i><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">,
Ian Hodder makes a number of statements that equate to the claim that
archaeology is bullshit </span><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">(Hodder 2018)</span><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">. “Bullshit”
is a term that refers to speech intended to persuade without regard for truth. Liars
care about the truth and try to hide it; bullshitters don’t care whether their
speech is true or false. Harry Frankfurt </span><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">(1986,
2005)</span><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"> published the major works on bullshit, although antecedents can be
found back to Plato and Orwell </span><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">(1946 (1968))</span><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">;
see also Cohen </span><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">(2002)</span><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEino0_nAP_vRipssN6VzJkprE25pSqhcq6UzwBNHLbVxgH5459McKIwa2H1H-cMeLEWikzyioj8TyGHAxG1X8KFlt_IaaHzsiIpdaAvmScOIhks07xCV52L_6FE0oqK-Q5r6l1XZCi-O-gv/s1600/Bullshit.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="157" data-original-width="321" height="156" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEino0_nAP_vRipssN6VzJkprE25pSqhcq6UzwBNHLbVxgH5459McKIwa2H1H-cMeLEWikzyioj8TyGHAxG1X8KFlt_IaaHzsiIpdaAvmScOIhks07xCV52L_6FE0oqK-Q5r6l1XZCi-O-gv/s320/Bullshit.png" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Hodder’s first dubious claim is that “the
most important public value and function of archaeology is its role in place-
and history-making” (p. 43). That is, archaeology is primarily about heritage,
identity, and cultural achievement. It is about the present, not the past. Most
archaeologists disagree with this. Archaeology <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">is</i></b> about the past. That
is why we carry out excavations, surveys, artifact analyses and dating—to reconstruct
and learn about human society in the past. Hodder’s first claim may be wrong
and regressive, but it does not qualify as bullshit.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Hodder then gets to his main point: “much
of archaeology uses the past to play out the contemporary preoccupations of
dominant groups and to regurgitate the present in their interests … I have
become tired of archaeologists just mirroring present concerns and theories”
(p.43). The bad guys here are people like me, who study inequality, sustainability,
or some of the other “grand challenges” we have identified for the discipline <span style="mso-no-proof: yes;">(Kintigh et al. 2014a; Kintigh et al. 2014b)</span>. Archaeologists
go for headlines and not for local context, we are told; “This is what I mean
by a post-truth archaeology or fake history.” (p. 44).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">The concepts post-truth and fake news
are typically applied to current affairs to refer to the kind of disregard for
the truth captured in Frankfurt’s concept of bullshit. As Kathleen Higgins <span style="mso-no-proof: yes;">(2016)</span> noted in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Nature,</i> “post-truth refers to blatant lies being routine across
society, and it means that politicians can lie without condemnation …
scientists and philosophers should be shocked by the idea of post-truth” (p. 9).
So, Hodder is suggesting that people like me and my co-authors <span style="mso-no-proof: yes;">(Kohler et al. 2017)</span>, or the grand challenges
crowd <span style="mso-no-proof: yes;">(Kintigh et al. 2014a; Kintigh et al.
2014b)</span> are blatantly lying about the past. We are (knowingly, I guess)
just projecting the concerns of the present—the “preoccupations of dominant
groups”—back to the distant past.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">I am not surprised that someone like
Ian Hodder would characterize research by someone like me as post-truth and
fake news. To make such an accusation, however, one must have workable concepts
of science and truth in order to know that they have been violated. But, Hodder
shows in this article (and elsewhere) that he has a faulty understanding of
science. Like other post-processual archaeologists, Hodder thinks that science
consists of discovering “universals that are singular in their unique law-like
characteristics” (p. 43). In a recent paper in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Antiquity</i> <span style="mso-no-proof: yes;">(Smith 2017)</span>, I note
how Hodder's post-processualist colleagues like Matthew Johnson <span style="mso-no-proof: yes;">(2010)</span>
criticize the concept of science in archaeology by employing a 50-year-old
(outdated) definition of science and explanation. Science is not necessarily
about universals and it is not necessarily about laws. It is about a rigorous
search for evidence and explanation by constantly testing claims and
hypotheses.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Contrary to Hodder’s assertion, those
of us who use archaeological data to study phenomena such as sustainability,
inequality, or political systems in the past do not adhere to the post-processualist
caricature of science. Instead, we employ current concepts and epistemologies.
These are aptly summarized by philosopher of science Daniel Little’s list of
three epistemic features of science:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">1. empirical testability<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">2. logical coherence<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">3. an institutional commitment to intersubjective
processes of belief evaluation and criticism <span style="mso-no-proof: yes;">(Little
1995)</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">For additional statements of the nature
of science in relation to archaeology and the other social sciences, see <span style="mso-no-proof: yes;">(Smith 2017)</span>, <span style="mso-no-proof: yes;">(Wylie
2000)</span>, <span style="mso-no-proof: yes;">(Gerring 2012:11)</span>, <span style="mso-no-proof: yes;">(Bunge 2011)</span>, <span style="mso-no-proof: yes;">(Little
2009)</span>. Or see some of my prior posts on this topic, including: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><a href="https://publishingarchaeology.blogspot.com/2016/02/science-social-science-and-archaeology.html" target="_blank">Science, social science, andarchaeology: Where do we stand?</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><a href="https://publishingarchaeology.blogspot.com/2016/02/why-is-it-important-to-strive-for-more.html" target="_blank">Why is it important to strive for a morescientific archaeology?</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><a href="https://publishingarchaeology.blogspot.com/2016/02/why-is-scientific-archaeology-so-hard.html" target="_blank">Why is a scientific archaeology so hardto achieve?</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Because Hodder has a faulty
understanding of science, he has little basis for criticizing the scientific
claims of other archaeologists. A look at the journals that my colleagues and I
publish in (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Science</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Nature</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">PLOS-One</i>, etc.) shows that the “big
question, big data approach” that Hodder dislikes (p.44) does indeed conform to
contemporary scientific standards. So, just what standards are we violating
that would warrant the labels post-truth and fake news? Hodder has none to
offer.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">I turn the tables here and characterize
Hodder’s article as bullshit. He evidently does not know the nature of science,
and thus his critique shows a disregard for the truthfulness or rigor of our
work. His paper is post-truth, fake news, bullshit.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Bunge, Mario<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">2011<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Knowledge:
Genuine and Bogus. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Science and Education</i>
20: 411-438.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Cohen, G. A.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">2002<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Deeper
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Frankfurt, Harry<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Gerring, John<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">2012<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Social Science Methodology: A Unified
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Higgins, Kathleen<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">2016<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Post-truth:
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Hodder, Ian<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">2018<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Big
History and a Post-Truth Archaeology? <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Johnson, Matthew<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">2010<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Archaeological Theory: An Introduction</i>.
2nd ed. Blackwell, Oxford.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Kintigh, Keith W., Jeffrey Altschul,
Mary Beaudry, Robert Drennan, Ann Kinzig, Timothy Kohler, W. Frederick Limp,
Herbert Maschner, William Michener, Timothy Pauketat, Peter Peregrine, Jeremy
Sabloff, Tony Wilkinson, Henry Wright, and Melinda Zeder<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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W. Frederick Limp, Herbert D. G. Maschner, William K. Michener, Timothy R.
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">2014b<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Grand
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Matthew C. Pailes, Elizabeth C. Stone, Anna Marie Prentiss, Timothy Dennehy,
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">2017<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Greater
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Little, Daniel<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br />Michael E. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03942595266312225661noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2971081717687612908.post-3470778221345289442018-07-31T20:24:00.003-07:002018-07-31T20:24:49.805-07:00George Cowgill, 1929-2018, a personal view<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCJbaVY0X7Mu8lAPJIvygR5uE3J5UMCGl-wHV84UxLFeg6IiPHZvdIhfWH1vZgumW6oaphBvdtvscFOMO5qukp-mdgYshSm2zKlhnOufXEIB_4S69tdkIHYaZq-kG7_wjSX_Y-yt-vubS6/s1600/CowgillTeoMontage.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="270" data-original-width="360" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCJbaVY0X7Mu8lAPJIvygR5uE3J5UMCGl-wHV84UxLFeg6IiPHZvdIhfWH1vZgumW6oaphBvdtvscFOMO5qukp-mdgYshSm2zKlhnOufXEIB_4S69tdkIHYaZq-kG7_wjSX_Y-yt-vubS6/s320/CowgillTeoMontage.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
Some of the most vivid memories from my undergraduate days at Brandeis University are of my Friday afternoon meetings with George Cowgill. I took classes with George, he supervised my senior honors thesis on Teotihuacan, and I had a part-time job doing computer work for him. This was my first real encounter with research. I fell in love with archaeology, and I was discovering that I might be able to contribute some new knowledge to the field. At those meetings, I would go over what I had been working on with George. He was always positive and encouraging, but also critical. He would acknowledge what I had accomplished, but then show what more needed to be done. He had high expectations, and I wanted to live up to them.<br />
<br />
I would leave his office full of excitement and drive. I can still picture the experience of running down the hill, toward my dorm, full of ideas. I was euphoric. Research was fun; not just fun, but captivating, intoxicating, wonderful. I was on to something, and I had some ideas of how to proceed. One of my goals as an undergraduate teacher is to try to kindle this kind of excitement in my students. When I see this kind of light in the eyes of a talented anthropology major, it makes me think of those Friday afternoons at Brandeis. It was George who got me excited about research, about Mesoamerica, about comparative early states, and about Teotihuacan.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbFRBXBetbU-sYvrCEkOSqNcne6t6EgQ6kGZZ4B3BZXKcINBtbxCZPzw8FW9fGnemt_leuutIZjFmjwjEiAt4ZptjMvRr2XQ-2YWr9JUby-cbM05AKHGy6964l2rVIqlOK_8CbVRahmEI3/s1600/Teo-AirBW.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="646" height="247" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbFRBXBetbU-sYvrCEkOSqNcne6t6EgQ6kGZZ4B3BZXKcINBtbxCZPzw8FW9fGnemt_leuutIZjFmjwjEiAt4ZptjMvRr2XQ-2YWr9JUby-cbM05AKHGy6964l2rVIqlOK_8CbVRahmEI3/s320/Teo-AirBW.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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I was heavily into math and science in high school. A summer NSF program in physics for high school students made me realize, however, that doing science was merely a puzzle for me, not something I was passionate about. I turned away from science, got involved in protests against the Vietnam war, and looked for a liberal arts college. When I discovered archaeology I started taking courses with George and other faculty. When it was time to think about a topic for my senior thesis, I was into mythology, symbolism, and human sacrifice (some of you are probably surprised here). I told George I wanted to work on a topic relating to religion at Teotihuacan, thinking I could study something gory like human sacrifice. He suggested I compare the artifact assemblages of temples and residences, using the Teotihuacan database. I was crestfallen - this didn't sound sexy or exciting. But it was exactly what I needed at the time. It was just the kind of project to turn me in the direction of rigorous, scientific, quantitative research. And I haven't looked back since.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Millon / Cowgill map of Teotihuacan</td></tr>
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George arranged for my first fieldwork project in Mexico. He made some phone calls, and arranged for a fellow student and I to work with <a href="http://publishingarchaeology.blogspot.com/2008/07/william-t-sanders.html" target="_blank">William Sanders</a> on the last season of the Basin of Mexico archaeological survey project. I also spent some time in the lab of the Teotihuacan Mapping Project to learn something about the ceramics and artifacts. That summer, I fell in love with Mexico: with the archaeology, the people, the food, the music.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">From my senior honors thesis</td></tr>
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After I graduated in 1975, I saw George on and off over the years. We crossed paths at meetings, and I usually took my field crews up to Teotihuacan. We'd see George in <a href="https://shesc.asu.edu/centers/teotihuacan-research-laboratory" target="_blank">the nice new lab</a> he had built (with NSF funds). I followed George's work, of course. When he retired from Arizona State University, I applied for the central Mexicanist position at ASU. I had not kept up a high level of statistical and quantitative methods, and I was worried that I would disappoint George (and perhaps the search committee as well). But I got the job. So, I was hired to replace my old undergrad professor! How cool is that? It is one of the really satisfying events of my career.<br />
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From my hire at ASU in 2005, George and I were colleagues. Although retired, George came in to campus regularly. We exchanged papers and ideas. When some of us formed a transdisciplinary research group on urban neighborhoods, George was a regular participant. We all benefited from his expertise, judgment, and humor. George would always attend parties. He'd usually just stay in one chair the whole time, but students and others would circulate and talk with him. He became very active on Facebook. As George started to slow down, the ASU administration appointed me Director of the lab. George was helpful in getting me oriented, always available for questions and advice. He also established an endowment to help fund the lab's operations.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZEQ8dXLbp0yiS1Jvxj0v9QcMZ1sYHujRjK7px3VliEQQoKmoBObKNJLBGNxmK0SHpf1USrhyphenhyphengqqLBiUnzUY0ee4yF0zeRao5tkdTbpiwio_zozzjY2YANy0fIhwvc8XOOi-tG31oBZkGW/s1600/TeoLab-1-LR.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="675" data-original-width="900" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZEQ8dXLbp0yiS1Jvxj0v9QcMZ1sYHujRjK7px3VliEQQoKmoBObKNJLBGNxmK0SHpf1USrhyphenhyphengqqLBiUnzUY0ee4yF0zeRao5tkdTbpiwio_zozzjY2YANy0fIhwvc8XOOi-tG31oBZkGW/s320/TeoLab-1-LR.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The ASU Teotihuacan lab today</td></tr>
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Two years ago, Cindy and I helped George's niece Karen Cowgill by supervising the organization and clearing of things at George's house in Tempe. He was in an assisted living facility, where he would remain. I wanted to make sure we kept track of any research materials he had at home and in his office. Karen hired 3 anthropology majors to help. They discovered George had saved his old Brandeis gradebooks in a box in the garage. Oh, let's see how well Dr. Smith did as a student! Luckily, my honor was upheld - I got grades of "A" in the two classes included in the grade book.<br />
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George Cowgill's scientific and professional contributions are many, and I'm sure they will be reviewed in some academic obituaries. I just want to close with some of the ways my own thinking and intellectual development were shaped by my undergraduate experiences working with George.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Artifact boxes in George's lab</td></tr>
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I thank George for encouraging in me a rigorous, scientific approach to archaeology. George pioneered quantitative and computer approaches in archaeology. He got me using cluster analysis and discriminant function analysis. At the time, these were exotic methods, not available on the Brandeis mainframe. George let me use his account on the Harvard mainframe for my thesis research. At some point I'll write up some of my humorous stories of doing random sampling in odd situations, and the Harvard computer center was the setting for one of them. I DID manage to get a random sample that time; I persevered largely because I didn't want to disappoint George. Discriminant analysis became one of my favorite multivariate methods, used in the several quantitative ceramic seriations I've worked on (George also contributed to the development of seriation methods).<br />
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I also took from George a love of comparative study of early states. I was always fascinated with a long, vertical chart on the wall of his Brandeis office. It showed the population sizes of prominent cities, ancient and modern, plotted on green log paper. I was thrilled to come across that very chart, faded and scuffed, when clearing out George's office. I haven't yet found a place for it on my wall.<br />
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And, of course, there is Teotihuacan. It was clearly my first love in Mesoamerican archaeology. I went on to devote my career to Aztec sites. Returning to Teotihuacan when I took over the lab in 2015, I felt some of that old excitement from my Brandeis days. My experiences with Aztec sites and comparative urbanism <a href="https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/opar.2017.3.issue-1/opar-2017-0010/opar-2017-0010.xml" target="_blank">allowed me to view Teotihuacan from a new perspective</a>, and I think George appreciated this. In more ways than one, I would not be where I am as a scholar and a person, if not for George Cowgill. I will miss him deeply, as will many others.<br />
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<br />Michael E. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03942595266312225661noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2971081717687612908.post-39569256658963951722018-03-06T12:42:00.000-07:002018-03-06T12:42:41.941-07:00How archaeology is distorted by Science magazine and the National Geographic Society<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The public has a lot of interest in archaeology, and new finds and discoveries are often in the news. Sometimes the press reports outlandish, nonsense claims, and sometimes it reports rigorous and important claims. Many archaeologists ignore such press coverage (good and bad), and many of us engage with it. If there are elements of the press that distort archaeology, we may or may not want to deal with this. I often ask myself if it is worth the time and effort to try to correct some misleading claim going around social media and the internet. In a very real sense, this kind of thing can be viewed as separate and apart from the actual process of scientific research. I can do my archaeology just fine without worrying about whether the latest "news" about an ancient monkey god is a pile of baloney or not.<br />
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But there are other distortions of archaeology that are more insidious and more troubling. These come from well-established, serious institutions whose missions include furthering research and knowledge in many fields, including archaeology. I am thinking here of Science magazine and the National Geographic Society.<b><i> Science</i></b> publishes archaeology, and thus promotes the scholarly work of archaeologists while showcasing our work to a wider audience beyond archaeology. This is good. But the kinds of archaeology article they publish is a biased and distorted sample of current scientifically-inclined archaeological research. Thus, Science distorts archaeology. <b><i>The National Geographic Society</i></b> funds archaeology, and also publicizes archaeology in its website, TV shows, and magazine. Again, this is good. But, again, the archaeology promoted by NGS is often a distorted view of the past, emphasizing spectacular and mysterious finds, often to the point of severe distortion. This is done for commercial gain.<br />
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<h2>
Science Magazine</h2>
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The review process for Science is a clear example of scholars and individuals who are not archaeologists making decisions about what archaeology is worthy of publication in Science, and those decisions distort our field. The single most popular post in the 11-year history of this blog -- by far -- is one from 2012 called <a href="http://publishingarchaeology.blogspot.com/2012/01/rejected-by-science_27.html" target="_blank">"Rejected by Science"</a> (over 100,000 hits, when most of the posts get well under 5,000 hits). So, let me quote from that post:<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;"> If you pay attention to the journal, you will know that they tend to favor high-tech methods, archaeometry, fancy quantitative methods, and reports about "the earliest" this or that. While I can only recall one or two papers in </span><i style="background-color: #f3f3f3; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;">Science</i><span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;"> that I thought were incompetent (a much better record than most archaeology journals, some of which are full of incompetent articles), their selection of archaeology papers is definitely biased in a certain direction. I think one way of expressing this might be that </span><i style="background-color: #f3f3f3; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;">Science </i><span style="background-color: #f3f3f3; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;">publishes archaeology articles that will appeal on methodological grounds to non-archaeological scientists. My guess is that papers that are more synthetic or less methods-heavy don't make it through the initial review (which is done by non-archaeological scientists).</span></blockquote>
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I have been rejected by Science at least four times (and about 3 times by Nature, and a couple of times by PNAS). I've been rejected by some of the finest journals in the world! So, maybe my complaint is just sour grapes. But I have had many colleagues over the years express agreement with my sentiments as quoted above. Papers are first skimmed by a high-level reviewer, none of whom is an archaeologist. If they think it might be interesting, the manuscript is sent out for review. Most papers are dropped at this stage. I must say, Nature does the same thing, but quicker. I think one of my rejections from Nature took only a couple of hours!<br />
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The fact that papers are initially screened by someone who is NOT an expert in the subject matter of the paper is a common critique of the Science review process. Indeed, one of the ways that <a href="http://journals.plos.org/plosone/" target="_blank">PLOS-One</a> touts their rigor is their claim that all papers will be reviewed by subject-matter experts.<br />
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This review process, and its outcomes, clearly distorts the archaeological content published in the journal Science. Paper are not judged by archaeologists, and only a narrow range of types of archaeological papers get published. Check out my older on issues with Science and Nature:<br />
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<a href="http://publishingarchaeology.blogspot.com/2012/01/rejected-by-science_27.html" target="_blank">"Rejected by Science!</a>" (2012), initial post<br />
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"<a href="http://publishingarchaeology.blogspot.com/2012/11/rejected-by-science-yet-again.html" target="_blank">Rejected by Science, Yet Again</a>!" (2012)<br />
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"<a href="http://publishingarchaeology.blogspot.com/2013/12/problems-with-big-journals-science-and.html" target="_blank">Problems with Science and Nature</a>" (2013)<br />
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<h2>
National Geographic Society</h2>
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The publicity put out by the National Geographic Society provides another case where the nature of the archaeology that is funded and reported is often distorted. But instead of a bias within science, as in the case above, this is a commercial bias that favors sensationalism, mystery, and click-baiting themes. The NGS website may make sensationalist claims, and these get taken up by the mainstream media. The Guardian often seems to swallow them, hook, line, and sinker. The latest example is the claim that archaeologist Chris Fisher has discovered<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/feb/15/laser-scanning-reveals-lost-ancient-mexican-city-had-as-many-buildings-as-manhattan" target="_blank"> an ancient city in Mexico, using LiDAR, that "had as many buildings as Manhattan," to quote the Guardian</a>. Some Mexican and French archaeologists objected in the Mexican paper, <a href="https://elpais.com/internacional/2018/02/27/la_serpiente_emplumada/1519704250_753079.html" target="_blank">El Pais</a>. They claimed that a city that big could not possibly have existed, because it was not mentioned in the historical sources! Give me a break, that is just silly. The city (Angamuco) IS large, but much of the LiDAR has not been ground-truthed yet, so this is a speculative claim.<br />
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Another recent case was the announcement that a new huge city was found below the jungle in Guatemala by LiDAR! It was accompanied in the press by image of Tikal. <a href="http://publishingarchaeology.blogspot.com/2018/02/why-i-am-skeptical-about-new-maya-lidar.html" target="_blank">See my prior post on this. </a>The National Geographic Society press release is mostly hype and speculation, which then got worse as other media outlets picked up the story. My purpose here is not to question hype or expose silly claims. Rather, I want to emphasize that the nature of the archaeological finds that get promoted are in the hands of an institution outside of archaeology, one that does a lot of good through funding and publicizing. Maybe we should give NGS a break, since they do a lot of good for archaeology. But I am more inclined to question their methods and goals. They are commercializing archaeology, and using our hard work to make a buck. That might be ok, if they were more objective in their reporting. I did get some funds from NGS back around 1990, but I'm not sure I would accept their funding now. Who knows what nonsense they could create from my research.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimsNYCB6GYnGS1dVguEPNYM0FnUhR1W0aRXD0JDrR4P2EDU028Kvb0Xsr44N5ACwah4wGs3uOmbgTcITm98n3-IxZpszBpVAhY5RHmAucBUPjU8GMFuk7t7P66qnQDBnhynHIpWtFG37T1/s1600/BookCover-MonkeyGod.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="327" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimsNYCB6GYnGS1dVguEPNYM0FnUhR1W0aRXD0JDrR4P2EDU028Kvb0Xsr44N5ACwah4wGs3uOmbgTcITm98n3-IxZpszBpVAhY5RHmAucBUPjU8GMFuk7t7P66qnQDBnhynHIpWtFG37T1/s200/BookCover-MonkeyGod.jpg" width="130" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">More hype than archaeology</td></tr>
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If you want an extended example of NGS nonsense and hype, check out the story of the "Lost city of the Monkey God." NGS-funded "explorers" tramped around the Honduran jungle and came out with outrageous claims about finding a lost city. Never mind that the site in question was well known to archaeologists and had been studied earlier. A whole story of intrepid explorers and fantastic discoveries was generated. The resulting book has become a best-seller. Please check out these sources for some objective, archaeologically-appropriate writing about this episode:<br />
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<a href="http://blogs.berkeley.edu/2012/06/07/good-science-big-hype-bad-archaeology/" target="_blank">blog post by Rosemary Joyce from 2012</a><br />
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<a href="http://blogs.berkeley.edu/2015/03/03/theres-a-real-archaeological-surprise-in-honduras/" target="_blank">another post by Joyce, 201</a>5<br />
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<a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/did-recent-expedition-really-discover-lost-city-honduras-180954559/" target="_blank">article in Smithsonian magazine about the episode (2015)</a><br />
<br />
<a href="https://realhonduranarchaeology.wordpress.com/letter-from-international-scholars-archaeological-finds-in-honduras-2/" target="_blank">An open letter to NGS signed by a bunch of archaeologists that lists all the problems with the activities and their reporting.</a><br />
<br />
These archaeologists are so discouraged that they feel that any additional harping will only increase sales of the book by Preston. I hope I am not contributing to the hype here.<br />
<br />
Apart from the scientific and scholarly nonsense of the Monkey God episode, I find it discouraging for the same reason as the reviewing procedures used by Science: archaeology is being distorted by non-archaeological institutions that purportedly exist, in part, to promote and improve archaeology.<br />
<br />Michael E. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03942595266312225661noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2971081717687612908.post-83390795250164381252018-02-04T11:48:00.000-07:002018-02-04T11:48:56.439-07:00Why I am skeptical about the new Maya LiDAR results from NGS<div class="MsoNormal">
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVp9hl3GSOUQNWIupzaxh2FqwjVnwYjZb-Xo3YM9gnibwIMxBetHUrf9VGSLFmSW0HhIETo0rzlTb0oJTVikehJ_4TjwGUu5yOPDKv_tYplGhekZ2_YbRtJ4szrKEclxe85nJ8qzIcDt89/s1600/Tikal-Lidar-NGS.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="179" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVp9hl3GSOUQNWIupzaxh2FqwjVnwYjZb-Xo3YM9gnibwIMxBetHUrf9VGSLFmSW0HhIETo0rzlTb0oJTVikehJ_4TjwGUu5yOPDKv_tYplGhekZ2_YbRtJ4szrKEclxe85nJ8qzIcDt89/s320/Tikal-Lidar-NGS.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">New Tikal LiDAR map</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">I am skeptical about the hype
surrounding the recent <a href="https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/02/maya-laser-lidar-guatemala-pacunam/" target="_blank">press release from the National Geographic Society</a> about
the new findings of LiDAR survey in the Maya region of northern Guatemala. I
have no reason to question the quality of the LiDAR survey, or its <b><i>potential</i></b>
usefulness for understanding aspects of ancient Maya society in this region.
Rather, I question two aspects of the way these new findings have been
portrayed, both in the NGS press release and in the journalism that has
resulted from the find. (1) This is portrayed as revealing brand-new ideas, when in fact earlier LiDAR work had very similar results; and (2) The work is portrayed as a major scientific discovery, when in fact it is only the first step of a process, the end result of which will be (one hopes) some major scientific discoveries.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcvuLE51ezmG-9IpezcEA15iPoD3lzmI7K1l6hSvVdWiMhtkUtmNzS4PAXR1DmS5pkuec3tVuPXOWaig5Xo0sXk6iXO2KZ1pdYQs-sbcXcYTTfvB_9Aammp4oCbqThw8lhlcYyswft180O/s1600/LidarMethods-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="193" data-original-width="260" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcvuLE51ezmG-9IpezcEA15iPoD3lzmI7K1l6hSvVdWiMhtkUtmNzS4PAXR1DmS5pkuec3tVuPXOWaig5Xo0sXk6iXO2KZ1pdYQs-sbcXcYTTfvB_9Aammp4oCbqThw8lhlcYyswft180O/s1600/LidarMethods-1.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">LiDAR is a relatively new airborne
remote sensing technology that permits detailed mapping of the surface of the
earth at a detailed scale. It is far superior to earlier forms of satellite or
airplane mapping in that LiDAR can penetrate dense vegetation. It is ideal for
the Maya lowlands, where the jungle vegetation hinders traditional mapping.
Wherever it has been applied, in the Maya area, the result is the
identification of many new houses and features of the built environment. <b>(1) This
is <i>my
first misgiving</i></b>: the lack of acknowledgement that Mayanists have been
working with LiDAR for more than seven years (Chase
et al. 2012; Chase et al. 2011).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">The<a href="https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/02/maya-laser-lidar-guatemala-pacunam/" target="_blank"> NGS story</a> has breathless quotes
about how suddenly we know about many new features and structures on the Maya
landscape. Well, that is what LiDAR does in the Maya lowlands. It finds many more
features than archeologists knew about previously. If archaeologists are
surprised about this, they just haven’t looked at the prior work, both in the
Maya area (Brown et al. 2016; Chase et al.
2014b; Chase et al. 2014a; Chase et al. 2012; Chase et al. 2011; Chase et al.
2016; Chase 2016; Chase and Weishampel 2016; Ebert et al. 2016; Prufer et al.
2015; Von Schwerin et al. 2016; Yaeger et al. 2016), in other parts of
Mesoamerica (Fisher and Leisz 2013; Rosenswig et
al. 2015; Rosenswig et al. 2013), and particularly at Angkor in Cambodia
(Evans et al. 2013; Hanus and Evans 2016).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTXCRVmfzMCrowQRA_wpjqHjGBMoSIdbKaMGGBP3f5e2OBhHSPVKcXw66d2Q3-LFwDwr9nJQtDuOl1CZoAetsMjDmDmMa0DYhhzFl3wXcxAzbAOvlPc4zGmCgYvgfTaQSQrGCU4OkjaiYm/s1600/Caracol-Rerservoirs-Chase2016-p9.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1071" data-original-width="1302" height="263" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTXCRVmfzMCrowQRA_wpjqHjGBMoSIdbKaMGGBP3f5e2OBhHSPVKcXw66d2Q3-LFwDwr9nJQtDuOl1CZoAetsMjDmDmMa0DYhhzFl3wXcxAzbAOvlPc4zGmCgYvgfTaQSQrGCU4OkjaiYm/s320/Caracol-Rerservoirs-Chase2016-p9.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lidar-identified small reservoirs at Cacacol. Chase 2016.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">One difficulty with LiDAR data is that
while it is easy to see large structures like pyramids in the output data,
small features such as houses or agricultural fields are more difficult to pick
out. They often require a combination of intensive, time-consuming searching by
eye, and sophisticated custom computer algorithms that can pinpoint such
features automatically. For example, my student, Adrian Chase, analyzed LiDAR
data to identify small residential-level reservoirs at the Maya city of Caracol
(Chase 2016). In areas that had been
mapped previously by traditional methods, Adrian’s algorithm identified 25
times the number of small reservoirs at the site! These did not stand out on the
LiDAR landscape like dropped pins in Google-Maps. They had to be painstakingly identified.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">As far as I can tell, the intensive
phase of analysis has not yet been carried out (or is not reported in this
press release). It is easy to use LiDAR to find a bunch of new features and
make a pretty map. But the next two steps are more difficult. <b>For the first step,</b> the archaeologist
has to analyze the data—staring at maps and applying algorithms—so that one can
be confident that most of the relevant small features have been identified. The
pretty color maps one sees in all the press accounts are not the only way to
portray spatial data in LiDAR; often other visualization methods are more
useful. Adrian was able to identify all those small reservoirs only because he
did two things: he spent countless hours staring at the output, and he applied
custom computer algorithms to the data to identify the features. There is no
indication that archaeologists have carried out this intensive level of
analysis of the new Guatemalan data.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhA0X8sRI0_VotBalyn5lhdcyn7p2iMqVE9xBT5L_g0NwLkO6TZqISOab9oXHREsE_1uL6RnWIn9m4G-ME7NWqZktw6O9HE1YGxYBamDq_LvsLVMlS23-_0JMo5ciTYPsmbkeM_9H15r-Bz/s1600/Lidar-VisualizationMethods-Chase2016-p7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1008" data-original-width="622" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhA0X8sRI0_VotBalyn5lhdcyn7p2iMqVE9xBT5L_g0NwLkO6TZqISOab9oXHREsE_1uL6RnWIn9m4G-ME7NWqZktw6O9HE1YGxYBamDq_LvsLVMlS23-_0JMo5ciTYPsmbkeM_9H15r-Bz/s320/Lidar-VisualizationMethods-Chase2016-p7.jpg" width="197" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">3 LiDAR visualizations. Chase 2016</td></tr>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">A second crucial step</span></b><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">
is to analyze the results quantitatively and spatially to construct population
estimates and study the on-the-ground patterning in settlement data. The NGS
article subtitle says there were “millions more people than previously thought.”
The report has this quote:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><i>“Most people had been comfortable with
population estimates of around 5 million,” said [Francisco] Estrada-Belli, who
directs a multi-disciplinary archaeological project at Holmul, Guatemala. “With
this new data it’s no longer unreasonable to think that there were 10 to 15
million people there—including many living in low-lying, swampy areas that many
of us had thought uninhabitable.”</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">It will take quite a bit of analysis to
turn this quick preliminary suggestion into rigorous population estimates for
settlements and regions. These additional steps—technical application of
algorithms, lots of staring at screens, and then quantification and calculation—are
only beginning for the Maya lowlands (Chase
2016; Chase and Weishampel 2016; Ebert et al. 2016), and there is no
sign that they have been accomplished for the new Guatemalan LiDAR results.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicOlFtLpL98thHYvTBEkVV9C2vrzDa-dEGLUNGsWbT4dQz28N9dezYsSRQz-pAOl7B3c01emeBaHHmF0D1YbRe6Jfib_qWEkA4gikUnfQysMcr32duOtzCVbNuBTpkI5RoFuTq2BZ_9VQT/s1600/Caracol-Lidar-ChaseEtAl2011-p94.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="654" data-original-width="1246" height="167" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicOlFtLpL98thHYvTBEkVV9C2vrzDa-dEGLUNGsWbT4dQz28N9dezYsSRQz-pAOl7B3c01emeBaHHmF0D1YbRe6Jfib_qWEkA4gikUnfQysMcr32duOtzCVbNuBTpkI5RoFuTq2BZ_9VQT/s320/Caracol-Lidar-ChaseEtAl2011-p94.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">LiDAR of central Caracol. Chase et al 2011.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">So, what is my beef? The new results
are just in, and the analysis is probably only starting. This is the normal process
of science.<b> (2) My <i>second misgiving</i></b> is the idea—promoted by NGS, by the people
interviewed in the article, and by secondary articles in the media—that
archaeological advances consist of discoveries in the field. Yes, the fieldwork
is essential. But without an often lengthy period of analysis, one typically
cannot know the meaning or importance of the finds.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">There is a kind of archaeology where
the main discovery is made in the field. If one is looking for the tomb of a
king or noble, and one finds it, that may be the essential defining moment of
discovery. But I pursue another kind of archaeology. I have spent my career on
the archaeology of Aztec provincial households. When I dig up another house or
trash midden, it seems pretty much the same as countless I and others have
excavated. They are pretty boring, I have to admit. But once I have spent months
or years studying the artifacts, quantifying them, sending off samples of technical
analyses, only then do I make my discoveries. When I argue that this household
was well-off and that one was poor, or when I argue that conquest by the Aztec
empire had little effect on local people, these are my discoveries. They rely
on extensive analyses of artifacts. I had no idea about these things at the
time of excavation. I discuss this issue—what is the real moment of
discovery?—in more detail in my recent book (Smith
2016).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWnCrHu_z4poDFiFBkqfoUJvBCcftr4B5o04FrwV0ZZNaQNYSNWOdZA0hRiJyJS_Gd6yMEpYsyS6pr3hPCjqjjpcoLy7vA8qTo-inbLX2uMNydVcodq7XFrRXL3n0k1RDAtd-y-dt_pf4u/s1600/Y-Lab-Sherds1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="304" data-original-width="456" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWnCrHu_z4poDFiFBkqfoUJvBCcftr4B5o04FrwV0ZZNaQNYSNWOdZA0hRiJyJS_Gd6yMEpYsyS6pr3hPCjqjjpcoLy7vA8qTo-inbLX2uMNydVcodq7XFrRXL3n0k1RDAtd-y-dt_pf4u/s320/Y-Lab-Sherds1.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Social interpretations at Yautepec were based on study of 1 million potsherds</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">When one focuses almost exclusively on
the actual uncovering of a find during fieldwork (for an excavation), or on the
initial pretty maps of a LiDAR survey</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">—</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">before the hard work of analysis is
done</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">—o</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">ne is distorting the scientific significance of our work. Will NGS have
a big feature when the archaeologists involved actually publish a revised
population estimate for northern Guatemala, or when they can quantify the
amount of construction in rural vs urban areas?<br />We'll see.</span></div>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGpVSWt0-e-SPQakj-w9piPsQqwcv67qKk12wNRTwDzSByBtSujQAa4eI8T5bqD-Q2CGYWMhMohhN7oUQXFdvWX9uq_KIDbnc_07vNj9seZZVrH0w8FYFxWDpZxYtxLRxGvSgFZhh1MtTX/s1600/AHA-CoverModel-300.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1068" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGpVSWt0-e-SPQakj-w9piPsQqwcv67qKk12wNRTwDzSByBtSujQAa4eI8T5bqD-Q2CGYWMhMohhN7oUQXFdvWX9uq_KIDbnc_07vNj9seZZVrH0w8FYFxWDpZxYtxLRxGvSgFZhh1MtTX/s320/AHA-CoverModel-300.jpg" width="213" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A kind of archaeology based on extensive analysis</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">How can one spot a finding that seems
spectacular but is actually a preliminary find, not yet analyzed, from a
finding based on proper analysis and interpretation? Peer-review publication is
the primary way to do this. The NGS piece was based entirely on interviews, not
on a paper that has been peer-reviewed and accepted by a scientific journal.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Claims that LiDAR will revolutionize
the study of Maya settlement and demography may very well be correct, but it is
too soon to tell. The Guatemalan LiDAR has reached the stage of preliminary
findings and pretty maps, but not the stage of solid architectural,
demographic, and social findings. I look forward to the scientific results. I
don’t care if they are an internet sensation; I’d rather see them published in
a journal.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">References<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<div class="EndNoteBibliography" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: -.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Brown, M. Kathryn,
Jason Yaeger, and Bernadette Cap<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="EndNoteBibliography" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: -.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">2016 A Tale of Two Cities; LiDAR Survey and New
Discoveries at Xunantunich. <i>Research
Reports in Belizean Archaeology</i> 13: 51-60.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="EndNoteBibliography">
<br /></div>
<div class="EndNoteBibliography" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: -.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Chase,
Adrian S. Z.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="EndNoteBibliography" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: -.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">2016 Beyond Elite Control: Residential Reservoirs at
Caracol, Belize. <i>WIREsWater</i> 3 (6):
763-797.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="EndNoteBibliography">
<br /></div>
<div class="EndNoteBibliography" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: -.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Chase,
Adrian S. Z. and John F. Weishampel<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="EndNoteBibliography" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: -.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">2016 Water Capture and Agricultural Terracing at
Caracol, Belize as Revealed through Lidar and GIS. <i>Advances in Archaeological Practice</i> 4 (3): 357-370.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="EndNoteBibliography">
<br /></div>
<div class="EndNoteBibliography" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: -.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Chase, Arlen
F., Diane Z. Chase, Jaime J Awe, John F. Weishampel, Gyles Iannone, Holley
Moyes, Jason Yaeger, and M. Kathryn Brown<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="EndNoteBibliography" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: -.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">2014a The Use of LiDAR in Understanding the
Ancient Maya Landscape. <i>Advances in
Archaeological Practice</i> 2 (3): 208-221.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Michael E. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03942595266312225661noreply@blogger.com28tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2971081717687612908.post-41646515133770698162017-12-29T21:59:00.000-07:002017-12-29T21:59:01.881-07:00Teotihuacan fracas: Pasztory claims she was ripped off and ignored by Millon & Cowgill<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjssB71_T-dHvOuuD4IDU4YfvAEyKaCxshJ9rWN1i7p8KCedPqm-K4rehxbI7HRMeKR7CG0jbQ6JAkK9ZqFmt3b8xwV4RsqbCAjkzvY3oIGgBl31abNQh_JCrkmwCCDNJzBH6vmGVKZ0aPL/s1600/Pasztory.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="450" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjssB71_T-dHvOuuD4IDU4YfvAEyKaCxshJ9rWN1i7p8KCedPqm-K4rehxbI7HRMeKR7CG0jbQ6JAkK9ZqFmt3b8xwV4RsqbCAjkzvY3oIGgBl31abNQh_JCrkmwCCDNJzBH6vmGVKZ0aPL/s200/Pasztory.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Esther Pasztory</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I just read a strange and inflammatory
paper by Esther Pasztory in the Mexican journal, </span><i style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.revistas.unam.mx/index.php/antropologia" target="_blank">Anales de Antropología</a> </i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">(Pasztory 2017).</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Pasztory, a senior art historian and
Teotihuacan scholar, raises questions about the scholarship and perhaps the
ethics of two other top Teotihuacan scholars, René Millon (deceased) and George
Cowgill. I have three main questions about this paper:</span></div>
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<b><i><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">1. Did Millon really steal her ideas? (the answer is, no).<o:p></o:p></span></i></b></div>
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<b><i><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">2. Did Cowgill refuse to give her
sufficient credit for her insights? (the
answer is, no).<o:p></o:p></span></i></b></div>
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<b><i><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">3. Why would a reputable journal
publish this paper? (the answer is, I have no idea).<o:p></o:p></span></i></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_egcR1AphH8pWGJDZnBRAVStzhJXcD2Zt3IYMoWbHG-z_DSfCcK27rzdM0jw2d2r9xXR24HwG9toTtKeKThE_6GnHjwacopope3G_gE7kZIuFiMF2wKHLJgqUHUQR8t7Wf8eBZrYBxO2S/s1600/millon1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="412" data-original-width="320" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_egcR1AphH8pWGJDZnBRAVStzhJXcD2Zt3IYMoWbHG-z_DSfCcK27rzdM0jw2d2r9xXR24HwG9toTtKeKThE_6GnHjwacopope3G_gE7kZIuFiMF2wKHLJgqUHUQR8t7Wf8eBZrYBxO2S/s320/millon1.jpg" width="248" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rene Millon</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">This paper focuses on the notion that
the government and society of ancient Teotihuacan were more collective or
corporate than most ancient societies. This view has been gaining in popularity
recently. Pasztory claims to have invented the idea although the published
record casts doubt on her claim. Pasztory’s 1987 book was a major early
statement of this position. Cowgill (but not Millon) also contributed to the growing
consensus that Teotihuacan may have had a more collective form of rule, using
the term “oligarchy” and comparing Teotihuacan to Rennaissance Venice in
several works. In recent years, Linda Manzanilla has been the major proponent
of the collective rule position (Froese et al.
2014; Manzanilla 2002, 2006, 2015), and David Carballo has at least one paper
in press arguing for collective rule at the site (see also Carballo 2016). This is not by any means a
unanimous viewpoint; Saburo Sugiyama is the most vocal proponent of the
single-king autocratic model for Teotihuacan (Sugiyama
2005, 2013; Sugiyama and Cabrera Castro 2007). Personally, I am on the
fence. I think the collective model is probably valid, but I do not feel that
the arguments in its favor have been particularly strong in empirical terms.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Pasztory has a variety of complaints
about Millon and Cowgill. I will limit myself to the most egregious.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><i><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Complaint #1: Cowgill ignores her ideas
and work.<o:p></o:p></span></i></b></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhphibMbZx5OQEBU5T8uyegxlGDT8nKUhHb_ab5dH7X947cAwxywfhsQHpmMMqiUdl7Dsw9gSoYHgj7_UVqbUwCKMsWLKkD4D6wmT1P9rpfE2IDZ1_aov-_qVm31MVdI4OuVtO2Ny2aF7FV/s1600/george_cowgill.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="309" data-original-width="232" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhphibMbZx5OQEBU5T8uyegxlGDT8nKUhHb_ab5dH7X947cAwxywfhsQHpmMMqiUdl7Dsw9gSoYHgj7_UVqbUwCKMsWLKkD4D6wmT1P9rpfE2IDZ1_aov-_qVm31MVdI4OuVtO2Ny2aF7FV/s1600/george_cowgill.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">George Cowgill</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">The impetus for this article was the
publication of Cowgill’s recent synthesis of research on Teotihuacan (Cowgill 2015), which—she claims—ignores her and
does not cite her enough times. She claims that the notion of collective rule
was her idea in the first place: “<i>esta
idea fuse de mi autoría</i>” (p. 219), or, “<i>Soy
la responsible del origen de algunas de las ideas centrales sobre la naturaleza
de Teotihuacan</i>” (p. 217). Cowgill discusses the collective rule idea, but
does not cite Pasztory as its originator.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">If one just reads Pasztory’s paper and
looks at Cowgill’s book, one could come to divergent conclusions. First, only
two of her works are cited in the bibliography, so perhaps she is correct about
being ignored or slighted. But her six entries in the index are only exceeded
by a greater number of entries for René Millon and Saburo Sugiyama. That is,
Cowgill mentions her by name more than any other scholar except for these two.
He clearly does take her seriously.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Let’s look at the history of George
Cowgill’s ideas about collective rule at Teotihuacan. I will be brief here; however,
it would be useful to write a more scholarly account in the future. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-no-proof: yes;">(Cowgill 1983)</span></b><b><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span></b><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">– In this discussion of government at Teotihuacan, focusing
on the architectural compound known as the Ciudadela, Cowgill does not
specifically use the terms collective or corporate rule. But he was clearly
exploring the concept of non-autocratic rule, talking about how there may have
been powerful individuals ruling the state instead of a single ruler. Instead
of saying the Sun Pyramid was built by a single ruler, he says it was initiated
by “persons.” He talks about the possibility of priest-rulers and uses the
concept theocracy. He talks about rule by a variety of officials. To me, it looks
like he was exploring the notion of collective rule, but without the benefit of
an appropriate label or concept. I must admit that I never liked this paper; I
thought the writing was wishy-washy, and at the time was convinced that
rulership must have been despotic. But then we all thought like that back in
the early 1980s.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQ3NYwndBK9-dEsNObYGts9Z1digKrxpHMdvOuamEdVhFzFisaPg_zjWH9jOXNIZHJYB6vRexjzmsu7BzvX-yjHP7fRNBCnwXTeFaRsIEou_fm5S295OIjPKlXh6hWjuu6Ob-cV7EsP-x7/s1600/BookCover-Pasztory.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="725" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQ3NYwndBK9-dEsNObYGts9Z1digKrxpHMdvOuamEdVhFzFisaPg_zjWH9jOXNIZHJYB6vRexjzmsu7BzvX-yjHP7fRNBCnwXTeFaRsIEou_fm5S295OIjPKlXh6hWjuu6Ob-cV7EsP-x7/s320/BookCover-Pasztory.jpg" width="232" /></a></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">1983-1991:</span></b><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">
Cowgill was publishing methodological papers and some quantitative studies of
Teotihuacan during these years. He did not give much attention to Teotihuacan
government.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-no-proof: yes;">(Cabrera Castro et al. 1991)</span></b><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> – Cowgill and his coauthors talk about “a shift to more
emphasis on a collective, group-oriented ethos” (p. 89) for Teotihuacan society
and government.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-no-proof: yes;">(Cowgill 1992)</span></b><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> – He cites Pasztory as suggesting a more corporate
orientation for Teotihuacan rule. He quotes Millon (Millon 1981) as acknowledging that Teotihuacan rule might have
been either “individual or collective” (Cowgill 1992:98).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-no-proof: yes;">(Cowgill 1997)</span></b><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> – This is a major scholarly review article on “society and
state” at Teotihuacan. He includes significant discussion of possibilities for
collective rule, citing seven works by Pasztory. This is the place where
Cowgill gives Pasztory’s views their most detailed consideration. He cites her
newly-published book, which contains the fullest exposition of her views (Pasztory 1997). Although Pasztory does not
cite this paper in her recent article, she might not consider the level of
coverage of her ideas sufficient because—as in his book—Cowgill does not state
explicitly that collective rule was her idea in the first place (Pasztory 2017:219). But, if my interpretation
of Cowgill’s 1983 paper is correct, then he was exploring these concepts himself
before she put her ideas into print.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">So, why did Cowgill give Pasztory’s
work such short shrift in his 2015 book? At least half of his mentions are
critiques of her ideas about various notions, including the Great Goddess
concept. I would suggest that he had explored her ideas previously and found them
inadequate for his understanding of Teotihuacan society. I have a similar view,
which I will describe below.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><i><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Complaint #2: Millon stole her ideas<o:p></o:p></span></i></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">According to Pasztory (p. 218), Millon
read the draft of a chapter, subsequently published as (Pasztory 1988). She does not provide a date, but 1986 or 1987
would sound appropriate. The chapter described her ideas about collective rule,
but Millon is said to have expressed vehement opposition to this concept (“<i>se opuso vehementemente a la idea</i>”, p.
218). Then, at the Dumbarton Oaks conference on Teotihuacan in 1988, she was
surprised to hear Millon talk about collective rule at Teotihacan, while
failing to give her any credit for the idea! (“<i>sin darme ningún crédito por la idea</i>”). Now these events are
difficult to reconstruct today without a lot of interviews and piecing together
the story. But I don’t think stories like this have much importance. What is
important is the published record. What did Millon say in the published version
of his paper and in other publications?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtPbjXDZzIpXcWpDf8Qvu-ATtV2w5sM8gYE3QmhxNIHKVgtijassfK-_39acdP33jJ5sOpi_O3kiuEKyR3AiixZ6aTEqMyrdzA3dAvznvFSuS6fyYUOXtYDWcgVWlwmuV4bWGpc-zE7YUf/s1600/BookCover-Cowgill.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="808" data-original-width="542" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtPbjXDZzIpXcWpDf8Qvu-ATtV2w5sM8gYE3QmhxNIHKVgtijassfK-_39acdP33jJ5sOpi_O3kiuEKyR3AiixZ6aTEqMyrdzA3dAvznvFSuS6fyYUOXtYDWcgVWlwmuV4bWGpc-zE7YUf/s320/BookCover-Cowgill.jpg" width="214" /></a></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-no-proof: yes;">(Millon 1981)</span></b><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> – I first go back in time to an earlier paper, not cited by
Pasztory. In this review article, Millon states in passing that rulership at
Teotihuacan could have been either “individual or collective” (p. 212). Millon
was clearly thinking about this issue long before reading Pasztory’s
unpublished chapter. But he does not develop the idea in this paper. As
mentioned above, Cowgill (1992) later cited Millon (1981) as mentioning
collective rule.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-no-proof: yes;">(Millon 1992)</span></b><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> – This paper from the Dumbarton Oaks volume is a lengthy
and detailed analysis of several decades of research at Teotihuacan. It is the
published version of the conference talk in which Millon reportedly discussed Pasztory’s
ideas without citation or credit. Millon devotes five pages (pp. 371-375) to
the ideas of Pasztory about Teotihuacan society and rule! He cites six of her
publications! This is hardly ignoring her, and far from stealing her ideas. He
organizes her ideas into four main claims, analyzes them, and concludes that
one claim survives the evidence, two are contradicted by evidence, and one
survives, but is better explained in a different way. My interpretation of
Millon’s complaints about Pasztory’s work (which I report from my 1990’s
annotations in the margin of the article) is that it is insufficiently
anthropological and too subjective. (One other relevant factor: As I know from recent experience, speakers are not given a great amount of time at Dumbarton Oaks conferences, and the schedule is followed tightly. One simply does not have time for a lot of scholarly citations in these oral presentations.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">So, did Millon steal the ideas of
Pasztory? Hardly. In the 1992 chapter, he discussed the collective rule idea,
engaging closely with her publications. But he is not convinced. Sadly, this
was René Millon’s final major paper on Teotihuacan.</span><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">He
never articulated an integrated vision of government at Teotihuacan. </span><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><i><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">What are the main issues here?<o:p></o:p></span></i></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">(1) Humanities vs. social scientific scholarship.</span></b><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> Pasztory seems to think that if she came up with an idea
first, anyone who later engages with that idea must cite her as having
originated it. Apart from the idea of whether she was indeed the first to
propose a collective model for Teotihuacan, her expectations are out of step
with the standard model of research and citation in the social sciences. When I
write about the Aztec empire as being an indirectly control empire, I don’t
feel the need to go back and cite the first person who may have proposed that
idea (Ross Hassig, although he used the term “hegemonic empire.”) If I am
writing a history of scholarship on the topic, of course I’ll credit Hassig.
But if I am just going about my scholarly business today, I don’t need to
invoke his name every time I talk about the organization of the empire. Perhaps
in the humanities, the person who first articulates a concept needs to be
acknowledged all the time. But, in the social sciences, the crucial issue is
empirical: What do the data show? Both Millon and Cowgill examined Pasztory’s
ideas and evidence carefully, and concluded that they were not needed in order
to make their arguments. We lack later papers by Millon, but Cowgill’s
trajectory is clear: he talks about her ideas in a 1997 review article, and
then later references them only where he feels the need.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">(2) Professional pride.</span></b><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">
Pasztory clearly feels that Millon and Cowgill insulted her professional pride
by not giving her ideas enough consideration or citation. But, I think my
chronological discussion above show that neither scholar was remiss in
discussing her ideas and works. Should Cowgill have cited her more extensively
in his book? He doesn’t really deal much with the history of interpretations of
Teotihuacan, so I don’t fault him there.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">(3) Collective rule at Teotihuacan.</span></b><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> I am an agnostic when it comes to the collective rule
interpretation of Teotihuacan. It has become something of a bandwagon. As a
curmudgeon, I have a strong dislike for bandwagons. I prefer to sit back,
consider the evidence, and write critiques of poorly supported popular notions.
When I first moved back to Teotihuacan scholarship a couple of years ago, I
eagerly went through Pastory’s main book (Pasztory
1997). Given my documented<a href="http://publishingarchaeology.blogspot.com/2014/03/why-havent-you-read-blanton-fargher-2008.html" target="_blank"> infatuation with Blanton and Fargher’s model</a> (Blanton and Fargher 2008), I wanted to review
and synthesize the evidence for collective rule at Teotihuacan. But I was
disappointed. The book has some insights, but to me, most of her evidence is subjective
and open to multiple interpretations. I didn’t find much that I consider
rigorous empirical evidence to support a collective model for Teotihuacan
government. I do cite her work, though, because her book remains an important work. I feel that archaeologists have yet to develop sufficiently rigorous
methods to identify collective vs. autocratic rule with confidence, using
archaeological evidence. I have read works by Manzanilla, Carballo, Blanton,
Fargher, Feinman, and others on this issue, but I remain unconvinced. My gut
feeling is that the collective model fits Teotihuacan better than the
autocratic model. But I have not seen a sufficiently rigorous study, with
enough evidence to convince me. (Yes, I know these people are probably frustrated at my curmudgeonly approach here. My mantra is, "Show me the data!").<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">(4) Why did <i>Anales de
Antropología</i> publish this piece?</span></b><span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">
It looks like no one checked Pasztory’s accusations against the published
record. It would be useful if someone were to write a history of ideas about
Teotihuacan government and society. But unfortunately, much of this paper sounds
petty and unprofessional. It is published in a peer-reviewed journal, but was
this paper subject to outside review? I have no idea.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><b>REFERENCES:</b></span></div>
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<div class="EndNoteBibliography" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: -.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif;">Blanton, Richard E. and Lane F.
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif;">2008 <i>Collective Action in the Formation of
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif;">Cabrera Castro, Rubén, Saburo
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<br /></div>
<div class="EndNoteBibliography" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: -.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif;">2013 Creation
and Transformation of Monuments in the Ancient Citiy of Teotihuacan<i>.</i> In <i>Constructing,
Deconstructing, and Reconstructing Social Identity: 2,000 Years of
Monumentality in Teotihuacan and Cholula, Mexico</i>, edited by Saburo
Sugiyama, Shigeru Kabata, Tomoko Taniguchi, and Etsuko Niwa, pp. 1-10. Aichi
Prefectural University, Cultural Symbiosis Research Institute, Aichi.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="EndNoteBibliography">
<br /></div>
<div class="EndNoteBibliography" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: -.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif;">Sugiyama, Saburo and Rubén Cabrera
Castro<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="EndNoteBibliography" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: -.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif;">2007 The
Moon Pyramid Project and the Teotihuacan State Polity. <i>Ancient Mesoamerica</i> 18: 109-125.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Michael E. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03942595266312225661noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2971081717687612908.post-87198291333152643772017-12-27T22:15:00.000-07:002017-12-27T22:15:32.391-07:00Does archaeology have value outside of archaeology?What is the value of archaeology for individuals, institutions, and disciplines beyond archaeology itself? This is the topic of a recent article in <i>The SAA Archaeological Record</i> (Minnis et al. 2017), based on a workshop held at the <a href="http://www.amerind.org/" target="_blank">Amerind Foundation </a>in May 2017. If you have followed this blog at all, you will know this is a topic I am very concerned with. The blog has 43 entries for the keyword "Archaeology and other disciplines", and 17 entries for "Archaeology and the public." I've published a number of papers on this topic, including one I had forgotten about until tonight (see bibliography below). So I was pleased to see this paper and eager to read it. But then I was surprised, or perhaps shocked is a better term, to see that the paper has almost NO consideration of the aspect of the topic that is most important to me: The use of archaeology by scholars in other disciplines to address a variety of historical and social issues.<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhehRGCIWjwqQbQ-g3aQ0SogI1TRCWxLySxg6CKvnI0Yl7pSoQmTtl6-0iZRLEv8i1hiVslPg2r29gv5rz2AfHaHi0FT8nsUmQUeByhVpWxo6M9r1AXi6kwBUWgS7zKeslyhJAdgOqmTup2/s1600/Amerind.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="321" data-original-width="990" height="103" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhehRGCIWjwqQbQ-g3aQ0SogI1TRCWxLySxg6CKvnI0Yl7pSoQmTtl6-0iZRLEv8i1hiVslPg2r29gv5rz2AfHaHi0FT8nsUmQUeByhVpWxo6M9r1AXi6kwBUWgS7zKeslyhJAdgOqmTup2/s320/Amerind.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">the Amerind Foundation, one of my favorite places</td></tr>
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This paper, authored by a distinguished group of archaeologists, consists largely of two lists (with discussion of the entries).<br />
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First: <b>Archaeology can</b> (pp. 28-29):<o:p></o:p></div>
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<ol>
<li>Help communities better
understand their shared heritage</li>
<li>Feed local or
nationalistic pride</li>
<li>Provide corrections,
reveal complexities, and yield material evidence unavailable in the written
historical record.</li>
<li>Provide methods,
techniques and approaches used in a wide variety of non-archaeologal endeavors</li>
<li>Engage K-12 students</li>
<li>Offer a multidisciplinary
problem-based approach at the intersection of science and the humanities</li>
<li>Promote heritage tourism</li>
<li>Give decision-makers,
planners, and the public a significant deep-time perspective on key issues.</li>
</ol>
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Second, the <b>Constituencies/Audiences/Stakeholders of archaeology </b>are (pp. 292-31):<o:p></o:p></div>
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<ul>
<li>Policy Makers and
Implementers</li>
<li>Business</li>
<li>Educators/Students</li>
<li>Practitioners</li>
<li>Communities</li>
<li>Funders</li>
<li>Military</li>
<li>Media</li>
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I don't want to denigrate any of these areas of relevance or constituencies; these are all important things. But, just where is the <b><i>SCIENTIFIC VALUE OF ARCHAEOLOGY?</i></b> That is, where is the discussion of the value of archaeological data and concepts for understanding issues in other disciplines within the natural and social sciences (or the humanities, for that matter)? Not in this paper.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHeMiXOsop-hoHahJRxKNgshZ2ptX4i-jRIHW8ibUYFAMjjQNXVR2NBcRGTLcBV0hcdbjJ0NTdOSHwwvFsMwR1wq5KfK2Wi00eyB2-mkU-88kjyzauyES3tYWWxGMWdesnRnxPWKr0I1ia/s1600/MedievalLordAndPeasant.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="382" data-original-width="442" height="172" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHeMiXOsop-hoHahJRxKNgshZ2ptX4i-jRIHW8ibUYFAMjjQNXVR2NBcRGTLcBV0hcdbjJ0NTdOSHwwvFsMwR1wq5KfK2Wi00eyB2-mkU-88kjyzauyES3tYWWxGMWdesnRnxPWKr0I1ia/s200/MedievalLordAndPeasant.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCCUNjD_VIb_R4X5Oi2Bq9tG8q1eb5qfkOuImkhWmNngoe6HH6NPh0sSDL67Doxd-Lfp6CSyYVJB2X4ZP3f35pGaiVMg_EjHvWl4BFG31jrBISxCmKthL5jH1L3bP8BKquqxsh7H2KUcAm/s1600/Toffs-And-Toughs-001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="276" data-original-width="460" height="192" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCCUNjD_VIb_R4X5Oi2Bq9tG8q1eb5qfkOuImkhWmNngoe6HH6NPh0sSDL67Doxd-Lfp6CSyYVJB2X4ZP3f35pGaiVMg_EjHvWl4BFG31jrBISxCmKthL5jH1L3bP8BKquqxsh7H2KUcAm/s320/Toffs-And-Toughs-001.jpg" width="320" /></a><br />
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Now, there <i>is</i> a short section that suggests archaeologist should "link natural and human ecosystems through a landscape perspective in order to facilitate outreach to and interaction with other disciplines" ((p.30). This is a worthwhile goal, but it does not describe how I strive to relate my archaeology of ancient states and empires to the historical and social scientific communities and disciplines.<br />
<br />
I would like to think that research by me and my colleagues on ancient cities, putting them into a framework that connects to research on contemporary urbanism, might be a way that archaeology has value beyond archaeology. Urban planners, sociologists, geographers, political scientists, and complexity scientists have used archaeological data in their work, largely because some of us have promoted the value of archaeology in these and other disciplines through publishing in their journals and interacting with colleagues (Smith 2011).<br />
<br />
Tim Kohler and I recently organized a group of colleagues to publish a paper on ancient wealth inequality in the journal Nature (Kohler et al. 2017). This paper has generated considerable interest beyond archaeology. We have given many interviews and participated in radio and internet programs (I see this as my 15 minutes of fame). Tim was interviewed on All Things Considered! But I have also had contact with a variety of scholars in other disciplines who are interested in our work, and anxious to see the edited volume now in press (Kohler and Smith 2018). This particular set of archaeological findings is valuable, relevant, and of great interest to scholars in other disciplines. It forms a major contribution (IMHO) to the field of study of comparative and historical patterns of inequality. Yet, for Minnis et al. (2017), this kind of work is not an example of archaeology being of value beyond archaeology!<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhQBbReh-tqoiTIzHLOPB0Y5ZWJvzgkx2RD2XXwL_2w3SboaArRCDUNctCqRAVS0txlYn59pikZzBeEwDhwUsqpvp27llq93KygNHJ8tqEdJpI2kRoj5IAIxI73gz8hpA5IPWdeG5-4KZh/s1600/Inequal-Nature-Fig3-LR.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="870" data-original-width="1158" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhQBbReh-tqoiTIzHLOPB0Y5ZWJvzgkx2RD2XXwL_2w3SboaArRCDUNctCqRAVS0txlYn59pikZzBeEwDhwUsqpvp27llq93KygNHJ8tqEdJpI2kRoj5IAIxI73gz8hpA5IPWdeG5-4KZh/s400/Inequal-Nature-Fig3-LR.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Graph from Nature</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtI29uMKDyI7-CnX1vU7Ymw_mUocxxi3rAO1e62boKn78wuv48GM9OdUyoy7Bd74K96DScEIFhyphenhyphenypZ9cicu3nTxETSsflmcgEZQZabSsms30MzD7wApqRGGXXw4p9zLEXcXWa7ecH4cjDy/s1600/KohlerSmithCover-LR.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1110" data-original-width="750" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtI29uMKDyI7-CnX1vU7Ymw_mUocxxi3rAO1e62boKn78wuv48GM9OdUyoy7Bd74K96DScEIFhyphenhyphenypZ9cicu3nTxETSsflmcgEZQZabSsms30MzD7wApqRGGXXw4p9zLEXcXWa7ecH4cjDy/s320/KohlerSmithCover-LR.jpg" width="216" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Coming soon to a bookstore near you</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
If you are interested in MY approach to the value of archaeology beyond archaeology, check out my other blog, <a href="https://wideurbanworld.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Wide Urban World.</a> The basic premise is that urbanism and settlements form a domain of analysis, a "wide urban world," that encompasses the distant past, the recent past, the present, and the future. My assumption is that the archaeology of settlements is indeed of interest beyond archaeology. I'm not the only one working and publishing in this area (relating archaeological findings to those of other disciplines), but our work is left out of the recent paper by Minnis et al. I guess we need to not only convince economists or sociologists or ecologists of the value of our work, but we also need to convince some of our archaeological colleagues.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAc8XQht6hCwnzaiRyXI8WChZ9AQ11xN0GB-3y5dLiCdS-dBcEYnCrdvtG1N6gCaaKWApjsDtYM8LsNt3hvhABYlfKKj4Li0dVTN1PFu1VBDcwFEBTywd2WcMhp4ln5kdRWskTpuS4Vm5s/s1600/Skyline-Logo1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; display: inline !important; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="195" data-original-width="800" height="77" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAc8XQht6hCwnzaiRyXI8WChZ9AQ11xN0GB-3y5dLiCdS-dBcEYnCrdvtG1N6gCaaKWApjsDtYM8LsNt3hvhABYlfKKj4Li0dVTN1PFu1VBDcwFEBTywd2WcMhp4ln5kdRWskTpuS4Vm5s/s320/Skyline-Logo1.jpg" width="320" /></a><br />
<br />
<b>References</b><br />
<br />
Kohler, Timothy A. and Michael E. Smith (editors)<br />
2018<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span><b><i>Ten Thousand Years of Inequality: The Archaeology of Wealth Differences</i></b>. University of Arizona Press (in press), Tucson.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nature24646" target="_blank">Kohler, Timothy A., Michael E. Smith, Amy Bogaard, Gary M. Feinman, Christina E. Peterson, Aleen Betzenhauser, Matthew C. Pailes, Elizabeth C. Stone, Anna Marie Prentiss, Timothy Dennehy, Laura Ellyson, Linda M. Nicholas, Ronald K. Faulseit, Amy Styring, Jade Whitlam, Mattia Fochesato, Thomas A. Foor, and Samuel Bowles</a><br />
<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nature24646" target="_blank">2017<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Greater Post-Neolithic Wealth Disparities in Eurasia than in North and Mesoamerica. <b>Nature</b> 551: 619-622.</a><br />
<br />
Minnis, Paul E., Jeremy Sabloff, Susan M. Chandler, Deborah Gangloff, J.W. Joseph, Barbara Little, Patricia A. McAnanyh, Duane Peter, Lynne Sebastian, Christopher P. Thornton, Joe Watkins, and John E. Yellen<br />
2017<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Valuing Archaeology Beyond Archaeology. <i><b>The SAA Archaeological Record</b></i> 18 (6): 28-32.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0ahUKEwj-w9PG66vYAhUP72MKHQKaCZgQFggnMAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.public.asu.edu%2F~mesmith9%2F1-CompleteSet%2F0-MES-09-SAA-IntroPaper.pdf&usg=AOvVaw1HXuCfQPAQ5uhXtMsJwX1V" target="_blank">Smith, Michael E.</a><br />
<a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0ahUKEwj-w9PG66vYAhUP72MKHQKaCZgQFggnMAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.public.asu.edu%2F~mesmith9%2F1-CompleteSet%2F0-MES-09-SAA-IntroPaper.pdf&usg=AOvVaw1HXuCfQPAQ5uhXtMsJwX1V" target="_blank">2010<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Just How Useful is Archaeology for Scientists and Scholars in Other Disciplines? <b><i>SAA Archaeological Record</i></b> 10 (4): 15-20.</a><br />
<br />
2010<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Sprawl, Squatters, and Sustainable Cities: Can Archaeological Data Shed Light on Modern Urban Issues? <b><i>Cambridge Archaeological Journal </i></b>20: 229-253.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.anthropologiesproject.org/2011/05/why-anthropology-is-too-narrow.html" target="_blank">Smith, Michael E.</a><br />
<a href="http://www.anthropologiesproject.org/2011/05/why-anthropology-is-too-narrow.html" target="_blank">2011<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Why Anthropology is too Narrow an Intellectual Context for Archaeology. <b><i>Anthropologies</i></b> 3: (online).</a><br />
<br />
2012<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The Role of Ancient Cities in Research on Contemporary Urbanization. <b><i>UGEC Viewpoints (Urbanization and Global Environmental Change)</i></b> 8: 15-19.<br />
<br />
Smith, Michael E., Gary M. Feinman, Robert D. Drennan, Timothy Earle, and Ian Morris<br />
2012<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Archaeology as a Social Science. <b><i>Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences</i></b> 109: 7617-7621.<br />
<br />Michael E. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03942595266312225661noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2971081717687612908.post-90945681775615572982017-11-19T11:22:00.001-07:002017-11-19T14:39:01.655-07:00Why I dislike TAG, and why I dislike social media<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIX_qkkJq_t8ZE94jfO9JpILkOWtnzsVrGvecFXPGU9UF4drUNIN2DOGINASxW8e4aP4kDHYaLrOh5rH0eBcZ_sDgXwVNK6E565HAQa4qlax2AyZB47q9LCTyFP0D0KPRMCP__zjBF-mcT/s1600/ArchTheory-SocSciTheory-LR.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="573" data-original-width="1070" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIX_qkkJq_t8ZE94jfO9JpILkOWtnzsVrGvecFXPGU9UF4drUNIN2DOGINASxW8e4aP4kDHYaLrOh5rH0eBcZ_sDgXwVNK6E565HAQa4qlax2AyZB47q9LCTyFP0D0KPRMCP__zjBF-mcT/s400/ArchTheory-SocSciTheory-LR.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I saw a tweet a week or two ago about the upcoming TAG ("Theoretical Archaeology Group") conference. I made an offhand negative comment, which set off a series of negative tweets about me. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #14171a; font-family: "segoe ui" , "arial" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.27px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">"Wow, not a single session I'd want to attend! Am I just out of it, or is "theoretical archaeology" out of it???</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I tried to engage with my critics, but it just led to accusations that I am a troll and a bully. Finally I tweeted "I give up." So, I thought I would put down some of the reasons I dislike TAG, and some comments on social media.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b><i>Social media first.</i></b> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Here are a few things I dislike. Please note that my reference here is social media in relation to professional and scholarly issues.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">(1) Ad hominem attacks. </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">As soon as I made a negative remark about TAG, I was attacked personally. I must be a bad person. I should shut up. This attitude is antithetical to science and scholarship.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #f5f8fa; color: #14171a; font-family: "segoe ui" , "arial" , sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">It's really unfortunate when senior scholars would rather bully and troll than actually have conversations.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I guess my initial tweet shows that I am a bully and a troll. Huh??</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">(2) Sensibility is more important than facts. My tone of voice had negative overtones (which shows I am a bad person). Maybe I should be more careful in my phrasing so as not to suggest anything negative about anyone or anything. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #f5f8fa; color: #14171a; font-family: "segoe ui" , "arial" , sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">came across snooty, elitist and arrogant. Like othet people's ideas arent good enough for you</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">This is TWITTER, with short cryptic statements. I don't agonize over proper phrasing. I tend to be a direct person, and I try to express myself clearly. Again, the dominance of sensibility over content is antithetical to science and scholarship.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">(3) There are "Like" buttons, but no "Dislike" buttons. This is built into social media today. You can like something, but there is no way to express dislike other than some kind of comment or textual response. Criticism and questioning are of less importance than joining a band-wagon. Again, this attitude is antithetical to science and scholarship.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b><i>TAG</i></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">To start with, if you care about how I think about theory, science, scholarship, and archaeology, please read my publications. I am a scholar, and what I say in Tweets (and in this blog) is ephemeral. I do discuss real issues here, but what matters is the published record. So, please look at the three papers cited below for my views on theory. These should make it clear why I dislike TAG. But here is a quick version.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">First, for me, theory is a tool, something archaeologists use to learn about the past. The domain of "archaeological theory" is pretty small (ideas about formation of the archaeological record, recovery methods, etc.), but the domain of productive theory for archaeologists is huge. It encompasses many disciplines, from political science to ecology, from urban planning to geomorphology, from cultural anthropology to complex systems theory. For many or most people into TAG, archaeology theory is something important on its own, not just a tool to use to explain our findings. Instead of using theory to explain data (the norm in the social sciences), many archaeologists want to use data to "theorize" an issue. My goal is not to create more theory, but to use LESS THEORY (</span><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Besbris, Max and Shamus Khan, 2017, Less Theory. More Description. <i>Sociological Theory</i> 35(2):147-153), or Healy, Kieran, 2017, F**k Nuance. <i>Sociological Theory</i> 35(2):118-127.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Second, most theory considered at TAG is interpretivist, humanities-based high-level social theory. What is wrong with that? Read my publications. If you want to speculate about the human condition, such theory is great stuff, but if you want to provide rigorous explanations of human behavior and society, it is all but worthless. Please check the citations in my articles about this. My claims may seem outrageous to TAG types, but I am just repeating standard social-science epistemology. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Here are some comments from my Twitter detractors.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">(1) I should engage with TAG, go to a meeting. Here is my reply:</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #14171a; font-family: "segoe ui" , "arial" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.27px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Because most TAG sessions are epistemologically incompatible with my own perspective. Not worth my time to sit through such sessions. If others care about my views, they should read my publications, e.g., ((I provide links to my 2015 and 2017 papers in the tweet)).</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">(2) I should open myself up to different perspectives and points of view</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #14171a; font-family: "segoe ui" , "arial" , sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">what's wrong with exposing yourself to new ideas? If you only ever listen to people lile yourself its kinda dull</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I have spent a career listening to the postprocessualists, actor-network theory, materiality, and such, and I have rarely found much of use or of interest in this material. Yet given the trandisciplinary turn of my own research trajectory since moving to ASU in 2005, I would guess that I have exposed myself to more new ideas in that period than most archaeologists. Read my publications.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">(3) I am arguing for a single narrow view of archaeology that excludes many, "including a lot of marginalized voices." My response to this has two components: (A) for the kind of empirical social-science research that I favor, I believe strongly that the kind of epistemology and theory I promote is the most productive approach. (B) for other kinds of approaches to archaeology, with other goals, other approaches are fine.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #14171a; font-family: "segoe ui" , "arial" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.27px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: large;">I appreciate a lot of your work, but you draw these boundaries and say that it's the only real or valuable archaeology and it leaves a lot of the discipline out, including a lot of marginalized voices. I think you can dislike something without being dismissive of i</span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #14171a; font-family: "segoe ui" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 27px; letter-spacing: 0.27px; white-space: pre-wrap;">t.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">So, here we are back to sensibilities. If you care at all about these issues, please read my publications, and forget about Twitter (or this blog). You can look at my series of three posts about my view of a scientific archaeology:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://publishingarchaeology.blogspot.com/2016/02/science-social-science-and-archaeology.html" target="_blank">Post 1</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://publishingarchaeology.blogspot.com/2016/02/why-is-it-important-to-strive-for-more.html" target="_blank">Post 2</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://publishingarchaeology.blogspot.com/2016/02/why-is-scientific-archaeology-so-hard.html" target="_blank">Post 3</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The 2017 publication covers these issues in a more compact form (although the blog posts do have much more complete bibliogrphies, given the limitations on the Antiquity paper). and the earlier papers have more on the structure of arguments (2015) and the nature of non-asbtract theory (2011).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Smith, Michael E.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.academia.edu/1573422/Empirical_Urban_Theory_for_Archaeologists_2011_" target="_blank">2011<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Empirical Urban Theory for Archaeologists. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 18: 167-192.</a></span></div>
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<a href="https://www.academia.edu/7315578/_How_Can_Archaeologists_Identify_Early_Cities_Definitions_Types_and_Attributes_2016_" target="_blank">2015<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>How Can Archaeologists Make Better Arguments? The SAA Archaeological Record 15 (4): 18-23.</a></div>
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OR TRY: <a href="http://www.saa.org/Portals/0/Record_Sept2015.pdf#page=20" target="_blank">Get it directly from the SAA</a></div>
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<a href="https://www.academia.edu/31393457/_Social_Science_and_Archaeological_Inquiry_2017_NOW_PUBLISHED_" target="_blank">2017<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Social Science and Archaeological Inquiry. Antiquity 91 (356): 520-528.</a></div>
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OR TRY: <a href="http://www.saa.org/Portals/0/Record_Sept2015.pdf#page=20" target="_blank">The Antiquity website</a><br />
OR TRY: <a href="https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/8xwsk/" target="_blank">Prepreint on Socarxiv</a><br />
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Michael E. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03942595266312225661noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2971081717687612908.post-39800409395327870402017-07-04T15:12:00.002-07:002017-07-05T02:26:46.256-07:00Science, publishing, and James E. HeathI started this blog ten years ago with a quote from my father-in-law, James E. Heath: <a href="http://publishingarchaeology.blogspot.de/2007/07/if-its-not-published-its-not-science.html" target="_blank">"If it's not published, it's not science."</a> That seemed a good entry into issues of publishing in archaeology, a way to promote my own scientific perspective on archaeology. Dad Heath died this week, so I want to look at aspects of his career and life that have been influential in my own development as a scholar and scientist.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">James E. Heath</td></tr>
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My wife Cindy can be very traditional about things. When I asked her to marry me, her answer was a tentative yes. I had to ask her father for his blessing. I was nervous of course, Not only was he an imposing figure and her father, but he was also Head of the Physiology Department at the University of Illinois and I was a mere graduate student. I honestly don't recall the details of our little chat, but I guess it worked out well, since Cindy and I are still married after more than 30 years. But I do remember that shortly after our talk, he said to me, "It would have been simpler if I had just asked to see your CV."<br />
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One of the lessons I learned from Jim Heath was the importance of rigor and quality of research and publication. He edited a journal for many years (Journal of Thermobiology, I think it was), he got million-dollar grants, and he was a serious and productive scientist (temperature regulation was his field, if you haven't guessed). One of the reasons I get so fed up with much archaeology today is that his values of rigor and quality are too often lacking among my colleagues. Why do journals publish such crap? How do people get grants to do such poorly conceived research? How can an article win a prize when it has NO DATA? I get exercised about these things in part because of Jim Heath's influence on my attitude toward research and science.<br />
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He was my academic mentor. I would ask him about issues and quandaries, and I valued his advice. I was once asked to evaluate a colleague (at another university) for promotion to Full Professor. I did not have much respect for this person's work; in fact I had used one of his/her articles in a seminar as a negative example--how NOT to write an article. I was a newly-promoted Professor, so I asked some of my senior colleagues at SUNY-Albany what to do. They all said to duck the task - say I was too busy and avoid writing a critical letter. I asked Dad about this, and he said that I should accept the invitation. They wanted my professional opinion, and I should give them what they asked for. It was my professional responsibility. But what was I going to say? This person has few grants, few publications, and their work is of low quality? Tact is not a quality I am known for (some of you are probably laughing here, thinking, "That's an understatement!"). I worried about writing a strongly negative letter. He gave me some help with ways of phrasing my remarks that didn't sound so harsh, but made the point clearly. I have recalled his advice usefully at various points in my career.<br />
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It was also fun to have a father-in-law who had carried out a famous experiment, known as the "beer-can experiment." Evidently claims had been made that reptiles actually do regulate their temperature (contrary to accepted knowledge) based on some experimental results of measuring their temperature throughout the day in the sun. Dad's paper (Heath 1964) describes an experiment in which he measured the temperature of a beer can in the sun, that found the same results as the reptile studies. So if those results mean that reptiles can thermoregulate, then so can beer cans! What a great experiment. And who says that beer does not contribute to science.<br />
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Jim Heath studied temperature regulation in all kinds of animals, from insects to polar bears. I remember stories about taking the rectal temperature of hibernating bears. Evidently there were some bears in the Midwest who hibernated in known locations in barns, and the farmers let crazy physiologists come study them. I think hibernation is a big deal for research on temperature regulation. So how do you take the rectal temperature of a hibernating bear? The obvious answer is that you have a graduate student do the task! I recall a story about a graduate student being lowered into the depths of a barn on a rope, armed with a thermometer for the bear.<br />
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Moving from bears to insects, my in-laws spent a lot of time studying cicadas in the U.S. Southwest. My mother-in-law, Maxine Heath, is an entomologist whose specialty is the systematics of North American cicacas (Sanborm and Heath 2012). So the two of them would do a cicada run each year, studying and collecting in a series of locations across the southwest. One question they have worked on is the temperature at which cicadas became active. I've been out with them once or twice, and Cindy has helped out numerous times. And they managed to take all the grandchildren out on a research trip. Here is how the fieldwork goes. They drive around the desert, listening for singing cicadas. When they find some, they note the conditions (species of tree, ambient temperature, sun or shade, etc.) and then collect one or two specimens. These are put in the ice chest, with the beer and sandwiches, to cool them off. The cicadas get cold and inactive (I think torpor is the technical term). At the end of the day, back in a motel room, you take the cold and sluggish bugs out of the cooler and start throwing them up in the air above the bed. At first they just fall back onto the bed. But when they have warmed up enough, they start to fly instead of just falling down. You grab them and take their temperature, which tells you at what temperature they become active. Whenever anyone suggests that archaeological fieldwork is strange, I think of this biological fieldwork. I just hope they keep the curtains closed while the bug-throwing is going on.<br />
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While I appreciate these and other stories from my father-in-laws's research career, what I most value is the professional advice he gave me, and the lessons I learned just from talking with him and hearing him talk about science, about publishing, and professional life. I would like to think that some of the ranting and raving I have done in this blog--in the name of quality and rigor in archaeology--derive from what I learned at family gatherings. I still think Jim Heath's statement to me years ago -- "If it't not published, it's not science" -- is valid and relevant to what we do as archaeologists. RIP.<br />
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Heath, James E.<br />
<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>1964<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Reptile Thermoregulation: Evaluation of Field Studies. <b><i>Science </i></b>145: 748-785.<br />
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Sanborn, Alan F., and Maxine S. Heath<br />
<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>2012<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span><b><i>The Cicadas (Hemiptera: Cicadoidea: Cicadae) of North America North of </i></b><br />
<b><i> Mexico. </i></b> Entomological Society of America, Lanham, MD.<br />
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<br />Michael E. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03942595266312225661noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2971081717687612908.post-6833820261263993642017-04-22T19:49:00.000-07:002017-04-22T19:49:21.862-07:00Qualitative-quantitative bus joke<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 6.0pt;">
A quantitative evaluator, a qualitative evaluator, and a
normal person are waiting for a bus. The normal person suddenly shouts, “Watch
out, the bus is out of control and heading right for us! We will surely be
killed!” Without looking up from his newspaper, the quantitative evaluator
calmly responds, “That is an awfully strong causal claim you are making. There
is anecdotal evidence to suggest that buses can kill people, but the research
does not bear this out. People ride buses all the time and they are rarely
killed by them. The correlation between riding buses and being killed by them
is very nearly zero. I defy you to produce any credible evidence that buses
pose a significant danger. It would really be an extraordinary thing if we were
killed by a bus. I wouldn’t worry.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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Dismayed, the normal person starts gesticulating and
shouting, “But there is a bus! A particular bus! That bus! And it is heading
directly toward some particular people! Us! And I am quite certain that it will
hit us, and if it hits us it will undoubtedly kill us!”<o:p></o:p></div>
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At this point the qualitative evaluator, who was
observing this exchange from a safe distance, interjects, “What exactly do you
mean by bus? After all, we all construct our own understanding of that very
fluid concept. For some, the bus is a mere machine, for others it is what connects
them to their work, their school, the ones they love. I mean, have you ever sat
down and really considered the bus-ness of it all? It is quite immense, I
assure you. I hope I am not being too forward, but may I be a critical friend
for just a moment? I don’t think you’ve really thought this whole bus thing
out. It would be a pity to go about pushing the sort of simple linear logic
that connects something as conceptually complex as a bus to an outcome as one
dimensional as death.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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Very dismayed, the normal person runs away screaming,
the bus collides with the quantitative and qualitative evaluators, and it kills
both instantly.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Very, very dismayed, the normal person begins pleading
with a bystander, “I told them the bus would kill them. The bus did kill them.
I feel awful.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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To which the bystander replies, “Tut tut, my good man. I
am a statistician and I can tell you for a fact that with a sample size of 2
and no proper control group, how could we possibly conclude that it was the bus
that did them in?”<o:p></o:p></div>
Michael E. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03942595266312225661noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2971081717687612908.post-5581304224531254562017-04-04T16:08:00.000-07:002017-04-04T16:08:53.709-07:00Social media attack to blog post to journal article<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQlmYw1GTo_rN_cBHT0mYgbiIkvPRNH_rJArCRPb2i4tqI_bcwQXlB6v08qxhMEm5vfyG4w_YdCcplANA9kLPAH24bMqha5m1stPz0uRq1dGL9xGgNDz4oAwgub5FZ415VGVl_3UyA3upJ/s1600/ArchTheory-SocSciTheory-LR.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="340" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQlmYw1GTo_rN_cBHT0mYgbiIkvPRNH_rJArCRPb2i4tqI_bcwQXlB6v08qxhMEm5vfyG4w_YdCcplANA9kLPAH24bMqha5m1stPz0uRq1dGL9xGgNDz4oAwgub5FZ415VGVl_3UyA3upJ/s640/ArchTheory-SocSciTheory-LR.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">figure from my paper</td></tr>
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My paper, "Social Science and Archaeological Enquiry", was just released, online, by the journal Antiquity (last week, I think). It is volume 91 (356), pp. 520 - 528. <a href="https://www.academia.edu/31393457/_Social_Science_and_Archaeological_Inquiry_2017_NOW_PUBLISHED_" target="_blank">You can find a copy here</a>. This is without a doubt the strangest journey to publication of any of my papers, so maybe it is worth telling. I have the Grateful Dead on in the background, which helps. The story begins with my attendance at a talk on the "new materiality" by Rosemary Joyce at the University of Colorado Department of Anthropology in late January or early February, 2016. I did not like the lecture, and I made some snide remarks about it in this blog, here. <br />
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<a href="http://publishingarchaeology.blogspot.com/2016/02/new-materiality-theory-vacuous-or-just.html" target="_blank">The new materiality: Vacuous or just incomprehensible</a>?<br />
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Looking back, I was perhaps a bit harsh in my tone, bordering on rudeness. Some students from UCB posted some critical remarks about my post on their departmental Facebook page.<br />
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<a href="https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q=university%20of%20colorado%20boulder%20anthropology%20rosemary%20joyce" target="_blank">You can see some of the posts from the Boulder group here</a>. <br />
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I fired back and posted some more remarks on my blog. I was taken to task by the department chairman, in a rather rude ad hominen post, for shooting my mouth off without restraint, rather like a small child. You can find all this pretty easily if you are interested (note: it is not very interesting...). Nearly all of the criticisms from Boulder suggested that my speech was not valued. I was insulting; I was trying to spoil their special lecture; I should not say such nasty things about their distinguished visitor. Many people came along and liked their critical posts. I became a pariah to UCB Anthropology-Facebook. But not a word about the intellectual content of the lecture or my reaction to it.<br />
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I was dismayed, insulted, and demoralized by my first social-media hazing event. The comments to some of my blog posts discuss some of these issues. But to me, the key issues were--and are--scientific and intellectual. I found the whole approach of Rosemary Joyce's talk to be anti-scientific and thus detrimental to the advance of the kind of archaeology I advocate in this blog. I was particularly incensed at her argument that fields like archaeology had to choose between the humanities and the natural sciences. She claimed that, given the inadequacies of natural science, we should choose to follow the humanities. This is so wrong-headed, it drove me nuts.<br />
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My reactions led to me create a series of posts that clarified my views of science, social science, and the place of archaeology. Writing these helped me clarify my own views of the topic, and try to put them into a framework that would be clear to other archaeologists (ever wonder why i blog? This is a primary reason - it helps me clarify my thoughts).<br />
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<a href="http://publishingarchaeology.blogspot.com/2016/02/science-social-science-and-archaeology.html" target="_blank">Science, Social science, and archaeology: Where do we stand?</a><br />
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Pascal Boyer's view of science, social science, and the humanities<br />
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Why is it important to strive for a more scientific archaeology?<br />
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Why is a scientific archaeology so hard to achieve?<br />
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((you can get to the later posts from the first one))<br />
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After this whole event had died down, it occurred to me that I should present these ideas in a larger venue, in a streamlined and more efficient context. Why had no one called the postprocessualists to task for their outdated and inaccurate views of positivism and science? Why haven't scientifically-minded archaeologists shot back at the epistemological hogwash? So I sent off a short piece to Antiquity, and they accepted it. I was a bit nervous, wondering if it was entirely proper to put ideas from a blog post into a journal article. But this was not at all a literal re-doing of the blog. The basic message was the same, though. I came across the paper on archaeological theory by Julian Thomas, and found that none of the work I do - theoretical or empirical - would fit under his definition of "archaeological theory." So I contrasted it with the list of different approaches to archaeological theory given by Jarvie and Zamora-Bomilla. I also continued some of the themes from my paper on archaeological arguments.<br />
<br />
So the path of this article was:<br />
<br />
- attended a talk I did not like<br />
- wrote a snarky blog post about it<br />
- was attacked on social media<br />
- sharpened my thinking in a series of blog posts<br />
- condensed and sharpened the ideas further for a journal paper<br />
<br />
So, I figured that it was time for another blog post (this one). Perhaps I should give a bad lecture on the whole affair and complete the circle. Or maybe I should shut up and concentrate my efforts on publications, not blogs.<br />
<br />
To quote my favorite rock band, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAKdcJWqt9g" target="_blank">"What a long strange trip its been....."</a><br />
<br />
<b>References:</b><br />
<br />
Jarvie, Ian and Jesús Zamora-Bomilla (editors)<br />
2011<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><b><i>Sage Handbook of the Philosophy of the Social Sciences</i></b>. Sage, New York.<br />
<br />
Smith, Michael E.<br />
2015<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>How Can Archaeologists Make Better Arguments? <b><i>The SAA Archaeological Record</i></b> 15 (4): 18-23.<br />
<br />
2017<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Social Science and Archaeological Inquiry. <b><i>Antiquity</i></b> 91: 520-528.<br />
<br />
Thomas, Julian<br />
2015<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The Future of Archaeological Theory. <b><i>Antiquity</i></b> 89: 1287-1296.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Michael E. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03942595266312225661noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2971081717687612908.post-10843953547485136392017-01-26T19:09:00.002-07:002017-01-30T20:34:12.366-07:00The speculation scale (the inverse of empirical adequacy)<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYI8W11_-4gfDXBKIN37Bjism9mFTGdPXTUuYG5aIfLw-fDncwHls38D3SPeRIRP_pOyHAXZKHPUGOZAIEj7wskHey01v4ixK-NwhTBbmX7TizqA8j7_U73lVKZ5joRl3TN7LQIH26uEnE/s1600/Lisa-WithBoxes.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="178" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYI8W11_-4gfDXBKIN37Bjism9mFTGdPXTUuYG5aIfLw-fDncwHls38D3SPeRIRP_pOyHAXZKHPUGOZAIEj7wskHey01v4ixK-NwhTBbmX7TizqA8j7_U73lVKZ5joRl3TN7LQIH26uEnE/s200/Lisa-WithBoxes.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">ASU student Lisa Gallagher in our lab</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I am
posting this from the ASU lab at Teotihuacan in Mexico. I will be attending a conference on Teo sponsored by UNAM and Penn State over the next few days. On the trip down I read one of the worst articles I've
read in a long time. I was surprised that the paper was accepted by a journal.
It was published in a new journal, <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)2330-4847" target="_blank">Economic Anthropology</a>, whose standards have perhaps not
risen to a level the editors would like. Did anyone review this paper?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">This
bad article got me thinking about the ratio between the scope or breadth of the
claims made in a study, and the amount of data used. Works with a low ratio are
often called "descriptive" studies. Works with a
high ratio, on the other hand, contain little data, but make sweeping claims
that go far beyond the data at hand. These are speculative studies, work that
is poorly grounded. The paper I just read had a very high ratio, which is why I
disliked it so much. Satisfying research in archaeology (and the social and
historical sciences generally) usually falls in the mid-range of this scale.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNMAGRvs7ULiujroA7UmQXWGnFABcS4eXfGE1or1YpT2yj10AwbJXOKaEmljQp5O4VkOiqtf7IYnCJMOG8979ikxpGtAQ61HSteL5_ILRwPFQPA6pkxKAhyphenhyphenbw84dSlTGHhAcysOIjiX-ko/s1600/SpeculatioScaleGraphic-LR.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNMAGRvs7ULiujroA7UmQXWGnFABcS4eXfGE1or1YpT2yj10AwbJXOKaEmljQp5O4VkOiqtf7IYnCJMOG8979ikxpGtAQ61HSteL5_ILRwPFQPA6pkxKAhyphenhyphenbw84dSlTGHhAcysOIjiX-ko/s400/SpeculatioScaleGraphic-LR.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">I
decided to create a graphic to illustrate this speculation scale. First I
created nine data-to-interpretation schemes. These are combinations of three
categories: low medium, and high amounts of data (blue circles), and low, medium and high
levels of interpretation (red squares). I label these schemes from one to nine, and arrange them on the speculation
scale (see graphic).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Scheme
1 occupies the low, or descriptive, end of the scale. Those enamored of theory
often dismiss such studies as "merely descriptive." But those of us
who like to analyze data often find these studies useful as a source of data
(that is, IF the data are adequately described and derive from rigorous methods, etc.).
Schemes 2 and 3 are also descriptive in nature: the amount of data exceeds the amount of interpretation. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">At
the top of the scale, scheme 9 pertains to what I consider to be useless works.
Who needs a bunch of speculation with little or no data? Unless the work is an editorial or opinion essay, or a work of pure theory, papers illustrating scheme 9 that purport to be empirical advances in fact contribute little to scholarship. How do these things
get past reviewers and editors? But they do. Schemes 7 and 8 are also
speculative in nature, although less flagrant than scheme 9. Quite a few studies in archaeology fit here. Most work
in postprocessual and "social" archaeology probably correspond to schemes 7 and 8.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">The
schemes that fall in the middle of the speculation scale--schemes 4, 5, and 6--are those that seem
most satisfying to most archaeologists. They are empirical studies based on
real data that employ concepts and theories for explanation or interpretation. The amount of data is balanced by the amount of interpretation; the level of interpretation matches the amount of data.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">*** ADDITION, Jan 30: This graphic is probably a simpler way of showing the relationship:</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVzo99htg2_cAwe-_WnS3qgvuK08aZv398xyY1aKqwu6DKdmnMH9VUJ2bM5wYIZ80Ltk0q0KNi1SbirFnqeAqMwbU4QrZJxhhiq_ehPuTK4foRRZwWEQTn3hGrasuT1ncDMWpRDzQHfyLu/s1600/SpeculatioScaleGraphic-No2-LR.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="190" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVzo99htg2_cAwe-_WnS3qgvuK08aZv398xyY1aKqwu6DKdmnMH9VUJ2bM5wYIZ80Ltk0q0KNi1SbirFnqeAqMwbU4QrZJxhhiq_ehPuTK4foRRZwWEQTn3hGrasuT1ncDMWpRDzQHfyLu/s320/SpeculatioScaleGraphic-No2-LR.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Obviously, this is a simplistic device for looking at the quality of publications. It says little about the quality of the data, or about the fit between interpretation and data. If you apply inappropriate models, your results will be suspect, even if the data and models are both of good quality on their own. But schemes like this can help us think about the adequacy of our models, interpretations, and explanations. If you have only a limited amount of data, then you should probably bypass big elaborate explanations and try to find something on a smaller scale. I know the postprocessualists and postmodernists will think I am being regressive here, but if archaeology is to be a science and generate reliable knowledge about the past, then we need to be able to match up our data with our interpretations/explanations. For more along these lines, see my series on archaeology as a science, <a href="http://publishingarchaeology.blogspot.mx/2016/02/science-social-science-and-archaeology.html" target="_blank">starting with this post</a>, or see my forthcoming paper:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Smith, Michael E.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">2017? Social Science and Archaeological Inquiry. <i>Antiquity</i> (in press).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The field of economic anthropology has generally been relatively empirical in orientation, with good epistemology. I would think that a journal with that title would know better than to publish a paper whose score on the speculation scale (scheme 9) is so high. Ugh.</span></div>
Michael E. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03942595266312225661noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2971081717687612908.post-37780149335129984622017-01-24T08:27:00.002-07:002017-01-24T08:32:49.740-07:00Is Academia.edu really such a bad thing?Academia.edu has been getting a lot of negative press in the scholarly community. I see some of this on Twitter, and I've been sent some articles and links. I just read Sarah Bond's article in Forbes, "<a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/drsarahbond/2017/01/23/dear-scholars-delete-your-account-at-academia-edu/#68668f492ee0" target="_blank">Dear Scholars, Delete your Account at Academia.edu</a>.:" She has three objections to Academia. I don't find any of them compelling, although one of them is troubling. First, "It is not a 'real' .edu" The domain is an old one and a commercial operation seems to be disguising itself as an educational institution. Wow, I was really fooled by that. Stupid and unsophisticated users might get confused. Give me a break, this is trivial.<br />
<br />
Second, Academia is trying to get money for enhanced features. I guess I'm not sure how that is a bad thing. Perhaps if the basic fact that they are commercializing scholarship (my point 3) is abhorrent to you, then the enhanced features might be especially abhorrent. Again, this seems trivial to me.<br />
<br />
Third, Academia is commercializing scholarship. They are trying to make money on the backs of scholars who do the work pretty much for free. This I see as troubling, but not a killer problem. Compare this to Elsevier and other commercial publishers. They commercialize scholarship, making money off my hard work, while inhibiting access to it. They harm my career by making money restricting access to my works. I find that practice morally abhorrent. By contrast, Academia.edu is commercializing scholarship while promoting and improving my career and professional goals. They are making my papers more widely available. I am not at all outraged by this fact, but I am somewhat disturbed by it.<br />
<br />
What are the alternatives? I also have a <a href="https://works.bepress.com/michael_e_smith/" target="_blank">page on Selected Works</a>. I started that on a trial basis (as I did with Academia), but Academia.edu quickly turned out to be an easier process for uploading and gave my papers more readers. Selected Works does have a few features lacking at Academia (e.g., you can file a paper under more than one category). I initially posted papers on <a href="http://www.public.asu.edu/~mesmith9/Publications.html" target="_blank">my own funky html websit</a>e (now seriously out of date). Elsevier threatened my university and we got an order from an administrator to remove published papers without explicit permission to post (which I ignored). Now, the university is going to eliminate funky faculty sites and promote a more standardized (properly branded) faculty website, which I may or may not use to post my papers. My university does have an online archive, but it is not set up properly as a paper repository, and this would bury my papers even deeper than they are in my own site. I have considered posting papers there, and using links (not papers) on Academia edu. I am sure not going to start using an NEH website for important professional works, given uncertainties of the Trump presidency.<br />
<br />
The professional society in my discipline, the Society for American Archaeology, is hopeless for help with archiving papers. I have considered using the new sociology version of ArXiv, and perhaps replacing papers on Academia.edu with links. <a href="https://socopen.org/2016/07/13/why-you-should-post-your-papers-to-socarxiv/" target="_blank">It is called SocArXiv</a>. It is mainly inertia that keeps me from making any changes right now.<br />
<br />
For me, the advancement of scholarship and promotion of wide access to my work are among my strongest professional values. Sometimes this requires me to do unpleasant things--talk to uninformed reporters, collaborate with individuals I'd rather avoid, deal with clueless journal editors, write grant proposals, go to faculty meetings. Putting up with Academia.edu trying to make money on my scholarship is just another of those unpleasant things I have to do. Yes, I would be more comfortable with a good archive, widely used and convenient, that was not a commercial enterprise. But until I find that (and have the time for a massive conversion), I will continue to put up with Academia.edu.Michael E. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03942595266312225661noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2971081717687612908.post-31514253999547404302017-01-23T13:30:00.000-07:002017-01-23T13:30:36.276-07:00Have we gotten out of the crisis in Latin American book reviews?I have always been a big fan of book reviews. When I get a new journal, I may scan the article titles first, but I almost always read the book reviews before the articles. Book reviews are an important part of quality control in scholarly disciplines where books are prominent (as in archaeology). In the past I have blogged about the book review crisis in Latin American archaeology: See my posts in:<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<a href="http://publishingarchaeology.blogspot.com/2008/07/is-there-book-review-crisis-in-new.html" target="_blank">2008</a>, <a href="http://publishingarchaeology.blogspot.com/2009/08/book-review-crisis-in-latin-american.html" target="_blank">2009</a>, <a href="http://publishingarchaeology.blogspot.com/2011/09/book-review-crisis.html" target="_blank">2011</a></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
For a decade, very few books were being reviewed in the main journal, Latin American Antiquity. The major Mesoamerican journal, Ancient Mesoamerica, doesn't published book reviews at all! But now, book reviews are trending up in quantity. I thought there were more reviews in LAA over the past year, so I counted them up. Here are the data, starting in 1997.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirSu9U6705XybCbNyOTlsvjE0hyphenhyphenVjcZq_zXwPJbWLG630teT2v7kwKZn1_IYWN9gW4WGPqrvHpp0Husoe8B4IUPcs-KqRnU2mRC59v3710abOOCggBY9C1CbGlR3f9xq4J3sYMSoV_ia2W/s1600/LAA-BookReviewData.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="206" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirSu9U6705XybCbNyOTlsvjE0hyphenhyphenVjcZq_zXwPJbWLG630teT2v7kwKZn1_IYWN9gW4WGPqrvHpp0Husoe8B4IUPcs-KqRnU2mRC59v3710abOOCggBY9C1CbGlR3f9xq4J3sYMSoV_ia2W/s400/LAA-BookReviewData.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
These figures paint a bleak picture of the decline of quality control in Latin American archaeology starting around 2004. But after six years of almost no reviews (average of one--count, 'em--1 per issue!), things are trending up in 2016.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<div>
Book reviews are important for many reasons. First, they get out the news about new publications. Second, a good book review is a gem of a short essay on the topic of the book. Because I try to keep up with urban research at some level in many different disciplines, I use book reviews to help guide my reading. And third, book reviews give an indication of the quality of the book. Bad books are called out, and good books are praised. I recently had to give a quick judgment on the quality and influence of a book in a field far from my own (NOT Latin American archaeology!). I was able to find four book reviews easily, and they gave me the information I needed.</div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Let's hope this trend at Latin American Antiquity continues! Perhaps Ancient Mesoamerican might be persuaded to begin reviewing books. When I have suggested this at the board meetings, the response has been, "Fine, if you want to organize it, go ahead," hardly an enthusiastic promise of support.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
If you are asked to review a book, please do it. If you would like to see more book reviews, contact the relevant journal editors and let them know. Our field has need of all the quality control we can get, and book reviews should be a major part of our collective strategy of disciplinary improvement.</div>
Michael E. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03942595266312225661noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2971081717687612908.post-76297828248628524642017-01-13T21:10:00.000-07:002017-01-13T21:10:19.673-07:00Carl Sagan's Toolkit for Skeptical Thinking (or call it Smith's epistemology)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGQnYhgS8tR8t_VXEC_cLf70ADm53AnAB17A3gk82hnFWjuQSjX8brWnInllpHh8gGuOcc0lgXp8vR7_o2cLlawzvS1nCzT_sMr3w950F5kijWhB8BNP3gBwd0QfCn0QtdZJpmo2aPm8BU/s1600/CarlSagan.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGQnYhgS8tR8t_VXEC_cLf70ADm53AnAB17A3gk82hnFWjuQSjX8brWnInllpHh8gGuOcc0lgXp8vR7_o2cLlawzvS1nCzT_sMr3w950F5kijWhB8BNP3gBwd0QfCn0QtdZJpmo2aPm8BU/s320/CarlSagan.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
I just read a <a href="https://blogs.wellesley.edu/vanarsdale/2017/01/13/anthropology/size-science-and-scientific-truth/" target="_blank">nice blog post by A.P. Van Arsdale, "Size, Science, and Scientific Truth </a>on bias in scientific thinking. I differ from Van Arsdale somewhat in my view that science is not about "Truth," but about reducing error. As Professor Indiana Jones once said, <span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> "</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Archeology is the search for fact, not truth. If it's truth you're interested in, Dr. Tyree's Philosophy class is right down the hall.'</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> </span> Archaeology, like all science, is about facts and patterns and explanations, not about truth. But I do understand that many people use the word "truth" informally to refer to facts, patterns, and explanations.<br />
<br />
In his post Van Arsdale lists nine principles from Carl Sagan that comprise a "Toolkit for sceptical thinking." These are from Sagan's book, "<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Demon-Haunted-World-Science-Candle-Dark/dp/0345409469/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1484366047&sr=1-1&keywords=sagan+demon" target="_blank">The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark</a>." These are great precepts, and they neatly describe my own epistemology.<br />
<br />
<ol start="1" style="margin-top: 0in;" type="1">
<li class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; color: #444444; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; color: black; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;">Wherever possible there must be<b> independent
confirmation of the “facts.” </b></span><o:p></o:p></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; color: #444444; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;"><b><span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; color: black; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;">Encourage substantive debate </span></b><span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; color: black; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;">on the evidence by knowledgeable proponents of all points of
view.</span><o:p></o:p></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; color: #444444; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;"><b><span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; color: black; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;">Arguments from authority carry little weight </span></b><span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; color: black; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;">– “authorities” have made mistakes in the past. They will do
so again in the future. Perhaps a better way to say it is that in science
there are no authorities; at most, there are experts.<b> </b></span><o:p></o:p></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; color: #444444; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;"><b><span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; color: black; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;">Spin more than one hypothesis. </span></b><span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; color: black; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;">If there’s something to be explained, think of all the
different ways in which it <i>could</i> be explained. Then think
of tests by which you might systematically disprove each of the
alternatives. What survives, the hypothesis that resists disproof in this
Darwinian selection among “multiple working hypotheses,” has a much better
chance of being the right answer than if you had simply run with the first
idea that caught your fancy.”</span><o:p></o:p></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; color: #444444; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;"><b><span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; color: black; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;">Try not to get overly attached to a hypothesis</span></b><span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; color: black; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;"> just because it’s yours. It’s only a way station in the
pursuit of knowledge. Ask yourself why you like the idea. Compare it
fairly with the alternatives. See if you can find reasons for rejecting
it. If you don’t, others will.</span><o:p></o:p></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; color: #444444; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;"><b><span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; color: black; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;">Quantify</span></b><span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; color: black; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;">. If whatever it is
you’re explaining has some measure, some numerical quantity attached to
it, you’ll be much better able to discriminate among competing hypotheses.
What is vague and qualitative is open to many explanations. Of course
there are truths to be sought in the many qualitative issues we are
obliged to confront, but finding <i>them</i> is more
challenging.</span><o:p></o:p></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; color: #444444; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; color: black; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;">If there is a chain of argument, <b><i>every </i>link
in the chain must work</b>–not just most of them.</span><o:p></o:p></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; color: #444444; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;"><b><span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; color: black; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;">Occam’s Razor</span></b><span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; color: black; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;">. This convenient
rule-of-thumb urges us when faced with two hypotheses that explain the
data <i>equally well</i> to choose the simpler.</span><o:p></o:p></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; color: #444444; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; color: black; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;">Always ask whether the hypothesis proposed can be, at least
in principle,<b> falsified. </b>Propositions that are
untestable, unfalsifiable are not worth much. Consider the grand idea that
our Universe and everything in it is just an elementary particle – an
electron, say – in a much bigger Cosmos. But if we can never acquire
information from outside our Universe, is not the idea incapable of
disproof?<b> </b></span><o:p></o:p></li>
</ol>
If you have read any of my ranting and raving in this blog about science, scholarship, and the deleterious effects that postmodernism, postprocessualism, and social archaeology have had on the advancement of archaeology, these points are no surprise. For more formal statements of some of my epistemology, see Smith (2015; n.d.). Or see many of my prior posts, especially my series on science in archaeology, starting with "<a href="http://publishingarchaeology.blogspot.com/2016/02/science-social-science-and-archaeology.html" target="_blank">Science, Social Science, and Archaeology: Where do we Stand?</a>"<br />
<br />
Smith, Michael E.<br />
2015<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>How can Archaeologists Make Better Arguments? <b><i>The SAA Archaeological Record</i></b> 15 (4): 18-23.<br />
<br />
n.d.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Social Science and Archaeological Inquiry. <b><i>Antiquity</i></b> (in press).<br />
<br />
And if you want to see Carl Sagan in some wild and wonderful videos, check out the mash-ups by Melody Sheep. I <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSgiXGELjbc" target="_blank">especially like this one</a>. Whoop Whoop......<br />
<br />
<br />Michael E. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03942595266312225661noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2971081717687612908.post-29877948287713749292016-12-16T10:31:00.000-07:002016-12-16T10:31:31.057-07:00Why I Find Foucault Useless<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">People
periodically try to convince me that I should pay attention to the work of
French philosopher Michel Foucault, because it will enrich archaeological interpretations
of the past. Maybe. But here is why I remain dubious, after reading various
books and articles by and about Foucault.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Highly
abstract theories and concepts—such as Foucault’s governmentality, power and
discipline (things archaeologists have mentioned)—describe the operation of the
world on a very general level. This kind of approach, termed “grand theory” by
C. Wright Mills, is </span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">“so general that its practitioners cannot logically get
down to observation. They never, as grand theorists, get down from the higher
generalities to problems in their historical and structural contexts” <span style="mso-no-proof: yes;">(Mills 1959:33)</span>. This is pretty basic stuff in social
science epistemology: grand theory is so abstract that it cannot explain
individual cases or variation among cases <span style="mso-no-proof: yes;">(Abbott
2004:218; Ellen 2010; Mjøset 2001; Smith 2011)</span>. My post. "<a href="http://publishingarchaeology.blogspot.com/2015/08/what-is-wrong-with-abstract-social.html" target="_blank">What is wrong with abstract social theory</a>" has links to other posts and resources. Foucaultian power and
governmentality simply exist—presumably for all societies—so how can they
explain change and variation?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">In Abend’s <span style="mso-no-proof: yes;">(2008)</span>
classification of types of theory in sociology, Foucault’s concepts are examples
of theory type 3 (a statement about the meaning of social phenomena, an
interpretation, a reading, or a way of making sense) or type 5 (a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">weltanschauung</i>, an overall perspective
from which one sees and interprets the world). What this means is that
Foucault’s concepts are of limited utility in explaining specific social
phenomena, and their empirical adequacy cannot be tested. In the words of Kevin
Fisher <span style="mso-no-proof: yes;">(2009:440)</span>, for archaeoloigsts,
abstract theory like this “does not offer the tools needed to analyze the
material remains on the ground.” I discuss this notion further in Smith <span style="mso-no-proof: yes;">(2015, n.d.)</span>. See my previous post on <a href="http://publishingarchaeology.blogspot.com/2011/04/theory-theory-theory-what-do-we-mean-by.html" target="_blank">Abend's scheme of theory</a>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Pierre Bourdieu recognized this problem
with Foucault’s work. As reported by Callewaert <span style="mso-no-proof: yes;">(2006:92)</span>,
Bourdieu complained that “the philosophical method was used [by Foucault] for
answering questions that are basically empirical sociological questions.” Foucault’s
methods were faulty from the perspectives of both historiography and social
science methodology <span style="mso-no-proof: yes;">(Garland 1987)</span>. In
fact, his method of social analysis has been called “politically engaged
journalism” <span style="mso-no-proof: yes;">(Vallois 2015)</span>. If one is
interested in abstract, philosophical notions about the human condition, then
the work of Foucault may be full of insights. But if one is interested in a
social-scientific explanation of the dynamics of past cities and human
societies, one has to look elsewhere for concepts and models.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">In the social sciences, theory that is more
grounded and testable is termed “middle-range theory” <span style="mso-no-proof: yes;">(Hedström and Udéhn 2009; Merton 1968:39-72; Sampson 2010)</span>. In
Abend’s <span style="mso-no-proof: yes;">(2008)</span> scheme, this corresponds
to theory type 1 (a general proposition about the relationship between two
variables) and type 2 (an explanation of a particular social phenomenon). In
this approach explanation consists of identifying the causal mechanisms
responsible for observed changes: “to explain a fact is to exhibit the
mechanism that makes the system tick” <span style="mso-no-proof: yes;">(Bunge
2004:182)</span>. This is part of a basic scientific approach to archaeological knowledge. See my post, "<a href="http://publishingarchaeology.blogspot.com/2016/02/why-is-it-important-to-strive-for-more.html" target="_blank">Why is it important to strive for a more scientific archaeology</a>?"</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">So, if you don’t care about explanation and
causality, or about being able to tell when your interpretation is wrong, then
the work of Michel Foucault may be fine for you. But for me, I cannot find
anything interesting or useful in his work. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">(And, of course, I am really bugged by Foucault using the term "archaeology" to refer to the past history of any old thing. It is insulting that Google searches for archaeology plus something else turn up Foucault instead of turning up archaeology!)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-no-proof: yes;">Abbott, Andrew</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bookmark: _ENREF_1;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-no-proof: yes;">2004<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Methods of Discovery: Heuristics for the
Social Sciences</i>. Norton, New York.</span></span></div>
<span style="mso-bookmark: _ENREF_1;"></span>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-no-proof: yes;">Abend, Gabriel</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -.5in;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _ENREF_2;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-no-proof: yes;">2008<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The Meaning of
"Theory". <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sociological Theory</i>
26: 173-199.</span></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-no-proof: yes;">Bunge, Mario</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -.5in;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _ENREF_3;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-no-proof: yes;">2004<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>How Does It Work?:
The Search for Explanatory Mechanisms. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Philosophy
of the Social Sciences</i> 34 (2): 182-210.</span></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-no-proof: yes;">Callewaert, Staf</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -.5in;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _ENREF_4;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-no-proof: yes;">2006<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Bourdieu, Critic of
Foucault: The Case of Empirical Social Science Against Double-Game-Philosophy. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Theory, Culture and Society</i> 23 (6):
73-98.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-no-proof: yes;">Ellen, Roy</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -.5in;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _ENREF_5;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-no-proof: yes;">2010<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Theories in
Anthropology and "Anthropological Theory". <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute</i> 16: 387-404.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-no-proof: yes;">Fisher, Kevin D.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -.5in;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _ENREF_6;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-no-proof: yes;">2009<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Placing Social
Interaction: An Integrative Approach to Analyzing Past Built Environments. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Journal of Anthropological Archaeology</i>
28: 439-457.</span></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-no-proof: yes;">Garland, David</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -.5in;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _ENREF_7;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-no-proof: yes;">1987<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Foucault's <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Discipline and Punish</i>: An Explosition
and Critique. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Law and Social Inquiry</i>
11 (4): 847-880.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-no-proof: yes;">Hedström, Peter and Lars Udéhn</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bookmark: _ENREF_8;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-no-proof: yes;">2009<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Analytical
Sociology and Theories of the Middle Range<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">.</i>
In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Oxford Handbook of Analytical
Sociology</i>, edited by Peter Hedström and Peter Bearman, pp. 25-49. Oxford
University Press, New York.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-no-proof: yes;">Merton, Robert K.</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bookmark: _ENREF_9;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-no-proof: yes;">1968<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Social Theory and Social Structure</i>. 3rd
ed. Free Press, New York.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-no-proof: yes;">Mills, C. Wright</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bookmark: _ENREF_10;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-no-proof: yes;">1959<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Sociological Imagination</i>. Oxford
University Press, New York.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-no-proof: yes;">Mjøset, Lars</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -.5in;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _ENREF_11;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-no-proof: yes;">2001<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Theory: Conceptions
in the Social Sciences<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">.</i> In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">International Encyclopedia of the Social and
Behavioral Sciences</i>, edited by Neil J. Smelser and Paul B. Baltes, pp.
15641-15647. Elsevier, New York.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-no-proof: yes;">Sampson, Robert J.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -.5in;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _ENREF_12;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-no-proof: yes;">2010<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Eliding the
Theory/Research and Basic/Applied Divides: Implications of Merton's 'Middle
Range'<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">.</i> In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Robert K. Merton: Sociology of Science and Sociology as Science</i>,
edited by Craig Calhoun, pp. 63-78. Columbia University Press, New York.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-no-proof: yes;">Smith, Michael E.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -.5in;">
<span style="mso-bookmark: _ENREF_13;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-no-proof: yes;">2011<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Empirical Urban
Theory for Archaeologists. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Journal of
Archaeological Method and Theory</i> 18: 167-192.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-no-proof: yes;">2015<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>How
can Archaeologists Make Better Arguments? <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
SAA Archaeological Record</i> 15 (4): 18-23.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-no-proof: yes;">n.d.<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Archaeology and
Social Science Inquiry. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Antiquity</i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(accepted for publication).</span></div>
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the History of Economic Thought. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Œconomia:
History, Methodology, Philosophy</i> 5 (4): 461-490.</span></span></div>
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Michael E. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03942595266312225661noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2971081717687612908.post-6143813089685009952016-11-20T20:14:00.000-07:002016-11-20T20:14:08.806-07:00Am I the most literary archaeologist of all time?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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How many archaeologists can say that they have participated in a joint project with the likes of Gore Vidal, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Barbara Kingsolver, and Charles Frazier? The list also includes Annie Dillard, Larrie McMurtry, and Jane Smiley. Well, I have published an essay in a volume together with these and other literary (and historical) luminaries. I guess that makes me a very literary archaeologist! What was I doing together with all these famous novelists? Unfortunately, it was <b>not</b> hobnobbing with them at a literary cocktail party in Manhattan (nor at a Gatsby party on Long Island, for that matter).<br />
<br />
I was invited to contribute an essay to a book edited by historian Mark C. Carnes called<i><b> Novel History: Historians and Novelists Confront Amerca's Past (and Each Other)</b></i>. Carnes had a bunch of historians write essays about specific historical novels, and then had the novelists write replies. The idea was to stimulate thought and discussion about history, fiction, and the past, but without slipping into nit-picky historical details. My contribution was the exotic case in the volume: Gary Jennings sprawling novel of Aztec adventure, sex, and violence, titled simply <i><b>Aztec</b></i>.<br />
<br />
When Carnes first asked me to do this, I told him I needed to read the book first! I had started the novel as a graduate student, but had to put it down to avoid confusion. Jennings had immersed himself in the primary sources on Aztec society and history, and he really knew the details. Then, as a novelist, he elaborated where necessary. I found myself getting confused. Where did I read about people avoiding priests because they were worried they might be picked to be sacrificed? Was that in Sahagun, or was it an invention of Gary Jennings? So I dropped the novel, until Mark Carnes's request led me to pick it up again.<br />
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<br />
I loved the book. It was mostly accurate and full of adventure. The main character was a merchant who could travel in both elite and commoner social contexts. Jennings created practices that were contrary to fact only in key situations necessary for the novel. Thus he portrayed the Aztec writing system as more complete than it actually was, so that he could have people writing messages to one another, a practice that advanced the story in key places. Of course Jennings got a number of picky minor things wrong. But on the other hand, he actually predicted a finding that archaeologists had not yet dared to formulate until well after the novel was published!<br />
<br />
Jennings has a merchant carrying obsidian and other goods back and forth across the fortified boundary that separated the Aztec and Tarascan empires. The written sources on the Aztecs, however, claim that this was an impenetrable border that nothing crossed. Aztec archaeologists, being traditionally under the spell of the written record (don't get me started....), had not even considered the possibility of Aztec-Tarascan trade. But if you think about it for more than a couple of seconds, it it clear that one trait EVERY fortified and defended border has in common, is that people and goods move back and forth illegally (I could make a crack here about a proposed wall along the US-Mexican border...). So it was not hard for Jennings to have his characters involved in contraband and smuggling. But only after the novel was published did we get incontrovertible evidence of an active trade across the Aztec-Tarascan border. Obsidian sourcing studies now show a two-way exchange of obsidian across the border, and lead isotope studies of bronze artifacts I excavated, by Dorothy Hosler, show a west-to-east trade).<br />
<br />
It was fun writing my essay, and I was looking forward to seeing Gary Jennings's reply. My main beef with him was that he did not include the typical section where he lists his main sources and perhaps thanks some experts. But this is a minor point. Unfortunately, Jennings died before he could reply to my essay. I was really bummed out! So Carnes published, instead, the reply he got to his initial invitation to Jennings to participate in the volume. It is sort of cranky, railing against academics in general who get picky about historical novels. "It may sound to you, Mark, as if I'm already compiling my indignant response to whatever historian may eventually do the critical review of <i>Aztec</i>." He counseled the editor to find "non-ivory-tower historians" for the books in the volume.<br />
<br />
I would like to think I would be considered a non-ivory-tower historian (or archaeologist). This was one of my most enjoyable essays. And by keeping company (of sorts) with Gore Vidal, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and the rest, I think I can be considered one of the most literary archaeologists of all time!<br />
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<br />
Carnes, Mark C. (editor)<br />2001 <a href="http://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Novel-History/Mark-C-Carnes/9780684857664" target="_blank"> Novel History: Historians and Novelists Confront America'sPast (and Each Other). Simon and Schuster, New York.</a><br /><br />Jennings, Gary<br />1980 Aztec. Avon Books, New York.<br />
<br />
Smith, Michael E.<br />2001 <a href="https://www.academia.edu/2976001/The_Aztec_World_of_Gary_Jennings_2001_" target="_blank">The Aztec World of Gary Jennings. In Novel History: Historians and Novelists Confront America's Past (and Each Other), edited by Mark C. Carnes, pp. 95-105. Simon and Schuster, New York.</a><br /><br />
<br />Michael E. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03942595266312225661noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2971081717687612908.post-23220865324363914002016-11-08T12:51:00.000-07:002016-11-08T12:51:45.497-07:00Problems with authors who publish books but not articlesDo you ever get annoyed when reading book-length studies and the author feels justified in ignoring the scholarly literature on the topic? I have found this to be the case with a number of authors. If they would publish in journals, they would be forced to cite other studies on the topic and contextualize their work within the scholarly literature. But because they are publishing a book (and the editors/press don't seem to care), they feel free to write what they like, and other studies of the topic be damned. I think this practice is harmful to scholarship.<br />
<br />
Here is a portion of a book review I published a number of years ago. I've anonymized it, since my goal here is not to dump on Dr. X. But it does express my frustrations with this particular book, something I have seen in other book-authors who do not publish journal articles:<br />
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_GoBack"></a><i><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">I am in agreement with X’s overall
goals and approach. This type of revisionist history, in which political
explanations are applied to phenomena previously interpreted in particularistic
and ideological terms, is welcome. Nevertheless, I am uncomfortable with many of
X’ specific arguments, largely because I am unable to assess their strengths and
weaknesses. In part this is owing to his style of scholarship. X identifies an important
and unresolved issue, summarizes what the primary historical sources say, discusses
the pros and cons of alternative interpretations of the data, and then states his
preference. His exposition sounds logical and convincing but because he does
not cite the relevant secondary literature, one would never know that a given
topic is the subject of considerable published scholarship and debate among
specialists, many of whom draw on data and methods not presented by X. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Scholars Y and Z, for example, have made
fundamental contributions to the topics covered by X, but he does not cite the
relevant publications<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This failure does
not make X’s arguments wrong, but the reader is prevented from evaluating them
within the context of contemporary scholarship.</span></i></div>
<i><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
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<i><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am also
disappointed by X’s treatment of archaeological data. He presents incorrect
dates (which support his interpretations) for several key buildings, including the
New Fire temple on Mount Huixachtecatl and the twin-temple pyramids of Tenayuca
and Teopanzolco. Contrary to X’s assertions, these latter temples are dated
quite firmly to the Early Aztec period (several centuries before the Aztec
empire) and thus cannot possibly have had the imperial significance attributed
to them by his model. X’s book is an intriguing study with a fresh theoretical
approach and many promising interpretations of Aztec history, time and
calendars. However, to be assessed properly, X’s interpretations must be debated
within the community of scholars working on these issues so that the strength of
his arguments can be evaluated.</span></i> </div>
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Give me a series of journal articles any day. Or, if you write a book, please be scholarly and complete about it, even if it is not subject to peer review.</div>
Michael E. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03942595266312225661noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2971081717687612908.post-69334708586632379222016-10-29T10:16:00.002-07:002016-10-29T10:16:54.400-07:00Anonymity ain't what it used to be(NOTE: I just found that this post was sitting around, not submitted. So here it is)<br />
<br />
Sometimes scholarly anonymity is not upheld by journals, even if they promise this. A while ago I reviewed a manuscript for Journal A (I am being anonymous here to protect the guilty). The paper in question had a lot of problems and I did not recommend publication. Recently I saw that the paper (presumably a heavily revised version) had been published in Journal B. Then a colleague emailed me with some remarks on the paper, and made an offhand remark that I must have seen the paper and provided help or comments to the authors. But I don't know the authors and had never communicated with them! I checked the paper, and I was indeed thanked in the acknowledgements for my comments. I went back to my original review and confirmed that I had indeed submitted it anonymously (sometimes I sign my reviews, and sometimes not; when I DO sign a review, I make it very clear that I do not want to remain anonymous).<br />
<br />
I contacted the editors of Journal A, who did not know what had happened. I contacted the lead author, who sent along a copy of my review. It was the review I had submitted to the journal, but an extra line had been added at the top: "Reviewer: Michael Smith." This was supposed to be a single-blind review system (that is, the names of the authors are known to the reviewers, but the names of the reviewers are not supposed to be revealed to the authors). Hmmmmmmmm. I was pretty angry at the journal, and slightly miffed at the authors. I think the authors should have contacted me, acknowledged that they saw my review, and ask if they minded if they cited me in the acknowledgements. That might have led to a more lengthy correspondence, and perhaps a more beneficial use of my advice to them. But this is a minor point. Another consideration is that the authors (presumably) used my review to improve the paper, so I am happy to have contributed in that sense.<br />
<br />
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<img border="0" height="310" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiD82Ty56IzjxOfzaRlyK7sdqI1wcTjPRr7xjj6rSoZUbxpZHtwx7YrARwJdouxiG4CKPlSN8g7r4UKUMkbfFJ8AT7QCF2Spe_xIV21P9tdiijp-PlxiEb2vPTBm-VZSEIul4KfhYxF7POL/s400/peer_review_overload_small.jpg" width="400" /></div>
<br />
<br />
I started off my career, back in pre-email days, writing reviews on university letterhead, a BIG mistake! One time a publisher asked me to review a couple of chapters from a new textbook (by a colleague I knew pretty well) and promised me anonymity. I thought the chapters left a lot to be desired and said so. The next time I talked to the author, they thanked me for my "frank" review. "How did you know it was me?" I asked. Well, it seems the publisher had covered up my signature but not the university letterhead! I was teaching at Loyola University of Chicago, and I was the only archaeologist on the faculty. It was pretty clear to the author that I must have written the review. That was when I switched to writing reviews on a separate sheet with no identifying marks. That seemed to work, until now.<br />
<br />
So, what is the lesson here? Although <a href="http://publishingarchaeology.blogspot.com/2010/12/peer-review-and-anonymity.html" target="_blank">I often feel that anonymity should be avoided in the interests of collegiality and collaboration</a>, it does have its uses. If a journal claims to use blind peer reviewing, then they should adhere to their standards and not compromise them. And if you are writing a review and really want to remain anonymous, consider the reputation of the journal and its editor. You can always contact the editor to mention your concern about anonymity; that might reduce the chances of slippage as in my case today.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://publishingarchaeology.blogspot.com/2008/04/double-blind-peer-review.html" target="_blank">For more information about anonymity in peer review (in relation to double-blind reviewing), see my older post on this</a>. Both of those older posts have some bibliographic citations on types of peer review and their implications.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8CE64mmQCT7ev_uL_R3TTQwwKfPCT74NYautmuLAyRWMwI8wtSA5smTV6SVdudbI-Uv08P6_AL8d1_v92hIaG0LWnaWZvDG2hFdT5rP5whygGTXb0I-d5VZ2wZmX09W9Rh3jRs_zyepoH/s1600/phd050305s.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="171" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8CE64mmQCT7ev_uL_R3TTQwwKfPCT74NYautmuLAyRWMwI8wtSA5smTV6SVdudbI-Uv08P6_AL8d1_v92hIaG0LWnaWZvDG2hFdT5rP5whygGTXb0I-d5VZ2wZmX09W9Rh3jRs_zyepoH/s400/phd050305s.gif" width="400" /></a></div>
<a href="http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php" target="_blank">From: PhD Comics</a>Michael E. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03942595266312225661noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2971081717687612908.post-48054017420248813002016-10-20T12:29:00.002-07:002016-10-20T12:29:40.316-07:00Should you consider a 3-article dissertation?The three-article format for dissertations is becoming more common in archaeology. In my proposal-writing class we cover some professional issues, and students were interested in discussing the 3-article dissertation. I am not an expert here, but I did supervise creation of a policy and guidelines for the three-article thesis in my unit, and I am sitting on committees where students have chosen this option. I found a nice blog post (from 2014) on The Thesis Whisperer, <a href="https://thesiswhisperer.com/2014/02/12/thesis-by-publications-youre-joking-right/" target="_blank">"Thesis by publications? You're joking, right?"</a> (guest post by earth scientist David Alexander). The (many) comments on that post contain many good insights and ideas, and I'll quote a bunch of them below.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjO9rhCwymP8sN67CITLqUpBAAp0BGqMeVMGmoCEto9zDTjWR40LaUxKXNu3SJ6nn6U4V-PtPdggkwREAXclAn-yD-B6xnzP72bIhh9G_lK8nahyCA7-5n9xAnTOTG2jaFuny5JhChSQPSf/s1600/Cham-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="177" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjO9rhCwymP8sN67CITLqUpBAAp0BGqMeVMGmoCEto9zDTjWR40LaUxKXNu3SJ6nn6U4V-PtPdggkwREAXclAn-yD-B6xnzP72bIhh9G_lK8nahyCA7-5n9xAnTOTG2jaFuny5JhChSQPSf/s400/Cham-1.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
First, here is a brief summary of our requirements (in SHESC) for a three-article dissertation:<br />
<ul>
<li>The dissertation will consists of an introductory chapter, three article-chapters, a conclusion, and a single bibliography. </li>
<li>The paper must be considered publishable by the committee. This includes evaluation of the appropriateness of the target journal.</li>
<li>If the student has gathered a significant amount of data that will not go into an article, then the data should be presented in an appendix to the dissertation </li>
<li> </li>
</ul>
<h2>
Advantages</h2>
<ul>
<li>Divides the thesis into manageable sections</li>
<li><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"></span></span></span>Less of a big push at the end to get the thesis
done</li>
<li><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"></span></span></span>Professional critique and feedback at an early
stage</li>
<li><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"></span></span></span>Articles improve one’s CV, and gives you a head
start on publishing from the thesis.</li>
</ul>
<br />
Here are some positive quotes from the comments on the Thesis Whisperer blog post"<br />
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<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">F</span></span>or mine, the greatest advantage is that I now
don’t have to sit down and write publications associated with my thesis.</div>
<div align="left" class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-align: left; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"></span></span></span>It would be fairly hard for examiners to say
that your research is crap when it has already been peer reviewed.<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"> </span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-align: left; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">What this discussion raises for me, or reminds me of,
is that too often PhD students spend so much time on this one research project
that they end up having narrowed their vision of the field that they are in. In
addition, their actual amount and breadth of experience with research
methodology is quite brief, because the research methods utilised and analysis
of data/results is limited in scope. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
would argue that a PhD by publication can not only be rigorous, due to the peer
review process, whether internal or external, but it also likely demands that
the student demonstrate a variety of research skills across a number of
research studies. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The PhD by
publication is much closer to the real life work of a career academic, where
quantity of publications is a ‘fact of life.'</span></div>
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Disadvantages:</h2>
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<li><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"></span></span></span>The format may not fit all dissertation topics</li>
<li><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"></span></span></span>Can be looked down on by humanities-oriented
scholars or disciplines</li>
<li>Can be looked down on by older, more traditional
scholars</li>
<li><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"></span></span></span>Can be a big delay if all of the articles must
be PUBLISHED before the Ph.D. is granted.</li>
<li><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"></span></span></span>The dissertation is less useful as a doorstop.</li>
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<br />
Here are some negative quotes from comments on the Thesis Whisperer post:"<br />
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_GoBack"></a>I could imagine that a paper could
possibly be produced from the lit review or maybe the discussion chapter from
the end, but I can’t imagine how a chapter about theory, methodology or
findings could function as a stand-alone paper??</div>
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
I was strongly advised against it as the monograph plus 1 or
2 article is still the expected norm within English departments. I asked the
same question, PhD by publication or PhD as monograph, at a conference a few
months later where three scholars in my field (from UK, Australia and USA) gave
a seminar for post grads on the job market, and was virtually scoffed at for
even suggesting that a PhD by publication was a possibility in English. </blockquote>
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I was incredibly surprised at the
range of (often strongly voiced) opinions that academics and university
administrators, as well as PhD students, have on the issue of PhD by
publication. I’ve seen people having angry, loud arguments (particularly in the
social sciences) about whether a PhD publication is a positive development for
the academy. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I think the reason for the divergent opinions
is that this issue goes to the very heart of what we think scholarship should
be about. The monograph model suggests that good scholarship should be based on
an ability to produce an in-depth, book length analysis of a given issue,
whereas the publication model tends to correlate more closely to existing
research evaluation frameworks, which value large numbers of papers more highly
than other forms of research output (such as books).</div>
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<br /></div>
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So, here are some things to consider in making a decision about whether the three-article dissertation is right for you:</div>
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<br /></div>
<ul>
<li>Check your university regulations. Some British institutions (based on the comments on the Thesis Whisperer post) require the three articles to be completely published before the thesis is accepted (obviously a potentially dangerous source of delay). Some institutions promote this form of dissertation, others try to restrict it. Check your options.</li>
<li>Is your archaeology more science- or humanities-oriented. The 3-article dissertation is definitely a development in the sciences, and it is more widely accepted in scientific disciplines. Humanities-oriented archaeologists, perhaps Classicists, who have spent their whole career on one type of building in one time period may be less likely to approve of the 3-article format. If you have such people on your committee, or if you intend to apply for jobs in programs consisting of such scholars, you may want to go with the traditional dissertation format.</li>
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<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGUUXH3Hp6SxXzfPZNU1kKJGfJ1QaX2_EAej4kFG1UJADVD0dcMU4NNQMUv_B70HLzyneyTNTGtMnERrkGML6LAYRGbT6blna7hsM_xWp1CEaNzBc3yyq5ggOOzQ_XQ2iWCjMJrGpX0Opb/s1600/ThesesNailedToTheWall.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGUUXH3Hp6SxXzfPZNU1kKJGfJ1QaX2_EAej4kFG1UJADVD0dcMU4NNQMUv_B70HLzyneyTNTGtMnERrkGML6LAYRGbT6blna7hsM_xWp1CEaNzBc3yyq5ggOOzQ_XQ2iWCjMJrGpX0Opb/s320/ThesesNailedToTheWall.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Theses nailed to the wall in Uppsala</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I wonder what they think about 3-article dissertations in Sweden, where they still nail their theses to the wall.<br />
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Michael E. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03942595266312225661noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2971081717687612908.post-10462544487919245822016-10-03T15:37:00.000-07:002016-10-03T15:37:08.465-07:00What books influenced my latest book?<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">When my book At Home with the Aztecs was published last spring, I had an invitation from an organization called "Connect-A-Book" to contribute to their website. The idea was for authors to list several books that were influential in the writing of their book. It sounded interesting, so I prepared some text. Then the company evidently bombed, and the website is gone (but the Twitter account still exists...). It was fun to identify the influences in my thinking, so I decided to put them here. Most of these show the development of my ideas on households and communities, with less attention to the Mesoamerican archaeological context that of course influences most of what I write about in the book.</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><b>First, the book blurb:</b></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">The lives of the Aztec people lay buried for five centuries
until my excavations in Mexico brought them to light. My wife and I uncovered a
remarkable series of prosperous communities composed of families with a high
quality of life.<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> At Home with the Aztecs</i></b> tells three stories: (1) How
archaeological fieldwork is conducted in Mexico; (2) What it was like raising
our daughters on our digs; and, (3) How I pieced together the information from
artifact fragments in ancient trash heaps to create a picture of successful
ancient communities that have lessons for us today. In the process, I redefine
success, prosperity and resilience in ancient societies, making this book
suitable not only for those interested in the Aztecs but in the examination of
resilient households and communities across space and time.</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><b>My influences:</b></span></div>
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<i><b>
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<i><b><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Berdan, Frances F. and Patricia R. Anawalt (editors)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(1992)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The Codex Mendoza. 4 vols. University of California Press,
Berkeley.</span></b></i></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">My
quest to uncover the lives of Aztec commoners began with dissatisfaction with
the written sources on the Aztecs. The <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Codex
Mendoza</i>, painted by an Aztec scribe shortly after the Spanish conquest, is
one of the very few sources that actually shows commoners. The wedding scene on
the cover of my book is from this source. While I got lots of ideas from the
Codex Mendoza over the years, it also shows the limitations of the historical
record of the Aztecs.</span></div>
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<i><b><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Flannery, Kent V. (editor)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>(1976)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Early Mesoamerican
Village. Academic Press, New York.</span></b></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">As
one of the founding texts of the “household archaeology” approach, this book
first showed me the methods and concepts for using archaeology to uncover the
lives and conditions of the common people of the distant past. I got excited
when I read this as a new graduate student. But then I had to wait until I
finished a boring Ph.D. dissertation before I could put the new ideas into
practice. This classic work is a stand-in here for the many other articles and
books on household archaeology that soon followed.</span></div>
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<i><b><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Netting, Robert McC.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>(1993)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Smallholders,
Householders: Farm Families and the Ecology of Intensive, Sustainable
Agriculture. Stanford University Press, Stanford.</span></b></i></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Understanding
past households and communities requires more than excavations, houses, and
artifacts. Ecological anthropologist Netting supplies the main conceptual
foundation for interpreting Aztec households. These were not serfs or slaves,
toiling away on the plantations of nobles. Instead, the residents of the houses
I excavated were smallholder farmers who engaged in intensive agricultural
practices. Netting’s model of smallholders fit my Aztec villages exactly, and I
got lots of insights from this book, especially for my chapter 4 on the quality
of life of Aztec households.</span></div>
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<i><b><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Ostrom, Elinor<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>(1990)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Governing the Commons:
The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. Cambridge University
Press, New York.</span></b></i></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Nobel
economics laureate (and former ASU colleague) Lin Ostrom showed how local
villages can manage resources and survive as successful, resilient communities.
This generalizes Netting’s household model to the community level, and it
helped me see the connections between ancient Aztec communities and those of
the modern world. Papers by Sam Bowles and Herbert Gintis also helped me make
this connection. These ideas helped me write chapter 7, on resilient Aztec
communities.</span></div>
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<i><b><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Sampson, Robert J.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>(2012)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Great American City:
Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect. University of Chicago Press,
Chicago.</span></b></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Sampson’s
study of Chicago neighborhoods reinforced the insights of Netting and Ostrom.
Whether or not inner-city neighborhoods were communities in a social sense,
Sampson’s approach to analyzing neighborhoods as important social units
cemented my views that past and present societies <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">can</i> be compared. Rigorous methods and concepts can move
social-science research forward, whether in today’s cities or yesterday’s
cities and villages. This book helped convince me that human settlements share
key processes across history and the globe. Thus my archaeological study of
Aztec communities ties in with research on neighborhoods, communities, and
cities today.</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Check out the book's website: <a href="http://smithaztecbook.wikispaces.asu.edu/" target="_blank">smithaztecbook.wikispaces.asu.edu/ </a> </span></div>
Michael E. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03942595266312225661noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2971081717687612908.post-4677828909026531742016-09-19T09:06:00.000-07:002016-09-19T09:06:37.000-07:00Why I voted NO on SAA ethics principle 9The Society for American Archaeology has an election right now on whether or not to add a ninth principle to the society's list of principles of ethics. I just voted no. Here's why.<br />
<br />
This is the text, from the ballot site:<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZCdkJK0cx4iz9z44FjiMHe87T2jQKKcj8HuIglVzXcQ4J380kEJGTxmrCtFtGr9UxWotLXkR__DchRec6PJ3BReb3p5nWTWDuAus_gOcKcpfmWT8iBtJ9lw5dkQ7Zlk5CEUoDqfyM4HSQ/s1600/Untitled-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="329" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZCdkJK0cx4iz9z44FjiMHe87T2jQKKcj8HuIglVzXcQ4J380kEJGTxmrCtFtGr9UxWotLXkR__DchRec6PJ3BReb3p5nWTWDuAus_gOcKcpfmWT8iBtJ9lw5dkQ7Zlk5CEUoDqfyM4HSQ/s640/Untitled-1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
First, these are not archaeological principles. They do not concern sites or artifacts or fieldwork or the archaeological record.<br />
<br />
Second, these are broader principles that affect far more than archaeology, yet they are written only for archaeology and archaeologists. In fact, their application to my lab would be discriminatory. Suppose I am nasty and I exploit students in an unsafe university lab, and I also discriminate and harass students inappropriately. If this were an official ethical principle of the SAA, it looks like my actions would be condemned for archaeology students working on one of my archaeology projects, but NOT for other students working on other projects (I also work on various projects on urbanism that are not archaeological). Or maybe I will obey the SAA and be fair and nice to my archaeology students, but I will be nasty and harassing to my non-archaeology students. Would I be violating this principle? Does the SAA want to regulate non-archaeological activities?<br />
<br />
Third, the SAA has no enforcement procedure for its ethics principles. If I am bad and violate all these precepts, what is the SAA going to do about it? Sanction me? Sue me? Berate me in public?<br />
<br />
Fourth, many of these actions violate my university policies and rules. If I discriminate against some students or harass others, or if my lab is truly unsafe, I can be investigated and disciplined by my university. The employer has the legal teeth to enforce these things, but the SAA does not.<br />
<br />
The SAA should stick to archaeology. Just because these are positive principles that most of us probably agree with does not mean they should be part of the SAA's official policy.<br />
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Michael E. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03942595266312225661noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2971081717687612908.post-30144366603035303342016-09-04T19:08:00.000-07:002016-09-04T19:08:28.311-07:00Activist ethnoarchaeology? <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidVtLOX7OWnMB6Q06hwVcAaBDCHroYY1GzvJwxsT4jOU8wOrj0aSyAbZzm32D3gCqIYRSU_tynERctTQiypKxVgsaVXcCl8jN2vTB6pFQ3xgPmkTQ-nocHbguN3J6-8xtvxVJdWAuo4u17/s1600/Occupy-WallSt-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidVtLOX7OWnMB6Q06hwVcAaBDCHroYY1GzvJwxsT4jOU8wOrj0aSyAbZzm32D3gCqIYRSU_tynERctTQiypKxVgsaVXcCl8jN2vTB6pFQ3xgPmkTQ-nocHbguN3J6-8xtvxVJdWAuo4u17/s320/Occupy-WallSt-1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
I just read a bizarre paper, "Occupy Archaeology! Towards an Activist Ethnoarchaeology of Occupy Denver" by Crystal Simms and Julien Riel-Slavatore in the SAA Archaeological Record (May 2016, pp. 33-39). I am interested in the campsites of the occupy movement because I think they have lessons to teach us about human settlement dynamics. I've published an article that includes discussion of the Occupy Portland campsite (Smith et al 2015), based on ethnographic fieldwork by <a href="https://thinkurban.org/" target="_blank">Katrina Johnston-Zimmerman</a> (You can see <a href="http://wideurbanworld.blogspot.com/2016/07/how-do-neighborhoods-form.html" target="_blank">a summary of our project here</a>). So, I was interested to see what these authors had to say about Occupy Denver.<br />
<br />
But I found, much to my surprise, that they have very little to say about the campsite. They do describe aspects of the campsite. But their goal was to use archaeological or ethnoarchaeological methods to answer a very specific question. When the Denver authorities claimed that the campsite was dirty, were they telling the truth? The authors make an argument about why this is an important question. The authorities seemed to be making ideological and biased claims to justify their possible destruction of the camp. One such claim was that the camp was dirty and a danger to public health. If the archaeologists could show that this was not actually the case, they would be exposing lies or biases in the words of the authorities.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhV5vpz5ZAs-wdS1nwDMOnkSnhzpor-FoDq7L9SJhPUJ4iWe8cQrSu0dP2WS6i4PSr4N-SG79Wuv26mGlFWLH1RwJr4rynQGa_4dB-x4-zKlB0WGh4upl_4OVzxnj1D0m00rxQ7gRPn5mFz/s1600/OccupyToronto-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhV5vpz5ZAs-wdS1nwDMOnkSnhzpor-FoDq7L9SJhPUJ4iWe8cQrSu0dP2WS6i4PSr4N-SG79Wuv26mGlFWLH1RwJr4rynQGa_4dB-x4-zKlB0WGh4upl_4OVzxnj1D0m00rxQ7gRPn5mFz/s1600/OccupyToronto-2.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
To me, this does not seem like an interesting research question. Of course the mayor and authorities didn't like the camp. Of course they used biased rhetoric to make it sound worse than it is. Even if researchers could catch the mayor in a lie here, would that change his mind? Would those who oppose the camp change their minds? Would this finding substantially help or promote the cause of Occupy Denver (which seems to be the goal of this activist research)? But let me set my skepticism aside for a minute. Let's assume that this was indeed a useful and valid research question. What did the research show?<br />
<br />
Well, it turns out that this research needed to be done in fall, 2011, when the camp was in full swing. But the researchers didn't get a project together until summer, 2012. By then, not only had the population of the camp had declined markedly, but the composition was radically different. Instead of studying committed political activists who camped out in solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street movement, they could only study homeless people and drug users whose relationship to the political movement was unclear. So they decided they could not do the research they planned, and the project was scrapped.<br />
<br />
If this was just the story of a failed research project, then I would have no objections. We all have failed projects in our history. Ideally such failure has not wasted a lot of time and funds. I can think of a bunch of failed research projects I have been involved in. Thankfully, none of them has involved external grants or months of effort. But here, the authors decide to forge ahead and claim victory for activist archaeology:<br />
<br />
"we believe that this study demonstrates that archaeological research can serve as a potential tool for social resistance" (p. 38)<br />
<br />
Say, what? Just what is a "potential tool"? What does it mean to "demonstrate" that something is a "potential tool"? I could claim, following their logic, that this research can serve as a potential tool to bring about the closure of public parks in Denver, or to marginalize the homeless, or to show the futility of archaeology. These are all equally meaningless claims.<br />
<br />
This was a failed research project, so just how does it promote activist archaeology? The pursuit of activist archaeology does not mean that we have to throw our empirical standards out the window. See some of the good studies in Saitta (2007) or McGuire (2008).<br />
<br />
There is nothing wrong with having a project turn south and produce no results. This happens all the time. But why would one write about it as if it contributed to the cause?<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Occupy Portland campsite. Photo by Katrina Johnston</td></tr>
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<br />
McGuire, Randall H.<br />2008 Archaeology as Political Action. University of California Press, Berkeley.<br /><br />Saitta, Dean J.<br />2007 The Archaeology of Collective Action. University Press of Florida, Gainesville.<br /><br /><a href="https://www.academia.edu/6566115/_Neighborhood_Formation_in_Semi-Urban_Settlements_2015_" target="_blank">Smith, Michael E., Ashley Engquist, Cinthia Carvajal, Katrina Johnston, Amanda Young, Monica Algara, Yui Kuznetsov, and Bridgette Gilliland2015 Neighborhood Formation in Semi-Urban Settlements. Journal of Urbanism 8 (2): 173-198</a>.<br />Michael E. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03942595266312225661noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2971081717687612908.post-56179735405080590042016-08-15T22:21:00.000-07:002016-08-15T22:21:16.793-07:00In praise of reductionismSuppose I have a business making clothing. I want to know how many items of what size to manufacture. If I can know the distribution of men's and women's adult heights in the U.S., I can plan how many shirts or pants to make of each size. Assume that the height data are not readily available. So I draw a sample of people, measure their heights, and calculate means, standard deviations, quartiles, and probably other measures of the distribution. I think that an anthropologist down at the U might be interested in my height data, so I head downtown. <br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqXt4t0aAGtaxSZu33OK7dQgeyJpeDF6YblOruop5atZ5kdNwi-yQjH5WeGw0jxf_bIdkBpuG-vQdtGfCeyQHiq__ZAkvY4GVXcIUAu82-ynxoFpMRovGr7QaVopVfUZHoEUnuUB3MHbWu/s1600/Reductionist.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="112" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqXt4t0aAGtaxSZu33OK7dQgeyJpeDF6YblOruop5atZ5kdNwi-yQjH5WeGw0jxf_bIdkBpuG-vQdtGfCeyQHiq__ZAkvY4GVXcIUAu82-ynxoFpMRovGr7QaVopVfUZHoEUnuUB3MHbWu/s200/Reductionist.jpg" width="200" /></a>The first anthropologist I run into is a cultural anthropologist. When I show him my data, he chides me for being simplistic. How can I possibly think I have described my population of people when I have only looked at their height? We want to know so much more about people, she says. My little study is ridiculously limited and it can't help him understand people at all. It is reductionist, It is useless. Why did I bother.<br />
<br />
Then I run into an evolutionary anthropologist. She likes the data I gathered. She can compare these results with her own measurements of height in Lower Slobovia, and learn something about human height variation. To her, these are interesting and important data.<br />
<br />
For my own purposes, and for the evolutionary anthropologist, my little study of height provides important data. It helps each of us answer a question of importance about height. Is this study rigorous and useful? Yes.It is reductionist? Yes, again. Is that bad? Only for the cultural anthropologists who wants more information and more nuance.<br />
<br />
You can probably see where I am going here. Over the past couple of years, I have encountered considerable opposition to our work in settlement scaling from archaeologists, historians, and others.<br />
<br />
(On the scaling work, see <a href="http://publishingarchaeology.blogspot.com/2014/02/urban-scaling-arrives-in-archaeology.html" target="_blank">this post from 2014</a>, or a bunch of posts in Wide Urban World; <a href="http://wideurbanworld.blogspot.com/2016/08/my-journey-in-settlement-scaling.html" target="_blank">this is the latest post there</a>.)<br />
<br />
These people complain that this research is reductionist. How can we possibly understand ancient settlements by just comparing the population to one other variable using a graph and an equation? Cities and settlements are far too complex to be explained by two variables. But we have never claimed to explain ancient cities or settlements on the basis of a scaling regression. Instead, we claim to produce a better understanding of a particular limited domain of ancient settlements. If you want a comprehensive analysis of individual ancient cities, then be my guest. I have done that kind of thing (Smith 2008), and it is a useful approach. But now, when I am addressing a limited domain using a few variables, please don't accuse me of reductionism, as if that charge invalidates the research.<br />
<br />
This is not just me feeling oppressed by clueless reviewers, colleagues, audience members, and such. The roster of the reductionism naysayers I have encountered includes some good, smart scholars. In fact, even very well-known and respected scholars fall victim to this malady of poo-pooing single indices or variables for not explaining everything one might want to know about a phenomenon. For example, here is what Thomas Piketty, in <i>Capital in the Twenty-First Century,</i> says about the Gini index: "Indeed, it is impossible to summarize a multidimensional reality with a unidimensional index without unduly simplifying matters and mixing up things that should not be treated together" (Piketty 2014:266). As pointed out by Branko Milanovic (2014), Piketty dismisses the Gini index as an "aseptic" measure of inequality. But who has claimed that the Gini index will tell us everything we want to know about inequality? It tells us one kind of thing, and it allows us to compare separate contexts.<br />
<br />
The Gini index, and my hypothetical measure of height, are intentionally reductionist. Their goal is NOT to document or explain everything about some domain. Rather, their goal is to abstract a key dimension from a complex reality, to reduce the messy details to a single measure so that comparisons can be made among domains. Comparative analysis is impossible without simplification, without ignoring a lot of details. If you want to say, "I'd rather do a detailed comprehensive analysis of one case," that is fine. If you want to say "I don't like statistical studies or regression analysis," that is fine (well, maybe its not really fine, but it is not too uncommon). But please do not say "Because I happen to like details, then your reductionist measure is worthless."<br />
<br />
I gave a talk in Europe recently promoting comparative approaches to past urbanism. I made the point that in order to compare cities, one had to abstract some key aspects and ignore many details. This allows one to generate useful and interesting conclusions. When I was done, the first question (from an urban historian) was,"Isn't all this quite reductionistic?" My answer was "Yes! And that is precisely why I do it!"<br />
<br />
Take a look at <a href="http://publishingarchaeology.blogspot.com/2015/09/against-nuance.html" target="_blank">my post from last year , "Against nuance,"</a> for some related ideas.<br />
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Milanovic, Branko<br />2014 The Return of 'Patrimonial Capitalism': A Review of Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Journal of Economic Literature 52 (2): 519-534.<br /><br />Piketty, Thomas<br />2014 Capital in the Twenti-first Century. Belknap Press, Cambridge, MA.<br /><br />Smith, Michael E.<br />2008 Aztec City-State Capitals. University Press of Florida, Gainesville.<br /><br />
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<br />Michael E. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03942595266312225661noreply@blogger.com1