July 2003
NEWS FROM THE CHAIR - Jim Petersen
Welcome to the 2003 edition of our annual Anthropology Newsletter! The Department of Anthropology has undergone some significant transformations over the past year, especially in the area of all-so-important personnel. In brief summary of personnel, we had a new faculty member join us, we conducted a successful search for another new faculty member, we hosted a Henderson Fellow who joined us for the year while completing dissertation work, we witnessed the retirement of a long-serving professor and sadly, we have sustained the recent death of a venerated emeritus faculty member. I will briefly report all of these personnel events in turn so that all of you can share at least some of the impact of these changes with us.
The first personnel change was a very positive one. As I reported last year, in 2002 it was our good fortune to have hired Jennifer Dickinson, or "J" as she is called, to replace Peter Woolfson in the Department. "J" is a linguistic anthropologist who received her Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Michigan in 1999 for her research in the Ukraine. Over the past year "J" has proven to be a wonderful addition to the Department in different ways, including her diligent work teaching linguistic anthropology courses, her diplomacy and willingness to jump into departmental business whenever and wherever necessary, and her (much appreciated) culinary skills. "J" also hosted an end-of-semester barbecue in May at a time when we all needed to relax and unwind a little.
Secondly, we conducted a successful search for a new faculty member over much of the past year. Although some of you may know what it takes to hire a new faculty member, this was a long, deliberative process that stretched from July 2002 to April 2003. In 2002, the process first included composition of a position description that addressed our interest in someone who could cross several anthropological sub-disciplines, then advertisement of the position last fall, followed by prescreening of the 160 (+) applications we received, and preliminary interviews at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association in New Orleans, where Rob Gordon, Deborah Blom, and Luis Vivanco met with about 10 candidates. After the dawning of 2003, additional steps in the search process included further application screening and preparation of a "short list" of the most suitable candidates, after which we ultimately interviewed seven outstanding candidates in February and March. Fortunately, in the end we were very lucky to hire Michael Sheridan, one of our adjunct faculty members who taught extensively for us in the past and who had been teaching most recently in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Middlebury College. Michael will join us for the autumn 2003 semester and we look forward to his collegiality and positive energy!
The third significant personnel matter relevant to the past year was our good fortune to host a Henderson Fellow in the Department, Guha Shankar, while he has been working on completion of his Ph.D. dissertation through the Department of Anthropology at the University of Texas in Austin. The Henderson Minority Fellowship was formerly supported by the New England Board of Higher Education (NEBHE), but this year was solely supported by UVM and its name is derived from the first African-American graduate of UVM, George Washington Henderson (B.A., 1877; M.A. 1880). In any case, Guha has an interesting background for various reasons, including a long stint of work with the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., before beginning his graduate studies. After moving from the mild climate of the sunny south, Guha and his partner Kathleen arrived in Vermont during September and survived one of the most notably cold winters in recent memory and they will be here at least through this August. Guha spent the year at UVM working on the synthesis and write-up of his fascinating research on migration and transnational identity issues in the context of East Indians in Jamaica. Reports suggest that the dissertation is nearly done and we all wish him (and Kathleen) well in all future endeavors.
Fourthly, all of our alumni will certainly remember Steve Pastner, an influential member of the Department faculty for a long time until his recent retirement. Steve has been a member of the UVM anthropology faculty since 1970, and thus he has had 33 years of service. Besides being an unforgettable teacher, Steve also served as Acting Chair of the Department in 1984 and from 1988 to 1989. He also served as advisor to the Anthropology Club at several different points and he edited the departmental newsletter for a long time. Steve served on various UVM committees beyond the Department as well, including directing the Asian Studies Program for four-five years and service on the Faculty Senate, among others. Steve also published over 35 scholarly publications during his UVM career and he has been working as an anthropologically-informed artist for more than 15 years now, as many of you may know. Steve retired this May and he has joined his wife, Judy Irvine, at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. We wish him well in his retirement.
There is one more significant, but sad personnel-related transition for the Department to report here. As for Steve, many of our alumni will surely remember Marjory W. Power who died very recently, on June 26, 2003, after a long and difficult struggle with polychondritis and emphysema. Marj served as Department Chair and served the Department, the University and Vermont archaeology in many other ways too (see the longer memorial to her included elsewhere in this Newsletter). Perhaps more importantly, Marj was a friend and even a "mother figure" to many, many anthropology students from the time she came to the Department in 1974 through her forced retirement in 1996 due to her increasing ill health. She had an open-door policy and was always willing to talk with and even counsel students whenever they needed, often foregoing her own work to help others. Marj's love of archaeology and things more broadly anthropological was very contagious and there are many more professional archaeologists and anthropologists because of her than would have been the case otherwise. Departmental faculty, her family, and her friends are obviously still grieving, but when the dust settles a bit more, we will begin discussion of different ways to preserve her memory, perhaps through a departmental award or scholarship.
Life goes on and on a positive note, I am happy to report that we graduated 37 majors this spring. This represents a nearly 25% increase in graduates over last year. We currently have 132 anthropology majors, an increase of 75% since 1995, and we have 55 minors at present, representing a 44% increase since 1995. Thus, it appears that anthropology is becoming ever more successful, although this increased interest certainly keeps us all quite busy!
Before closing, I want to thank each and every one of you who made a contribution to the Department and/or UVM in the past year. As noted previously, no matter how modest, each contribution to the Department, whether made directly to us or to UVM but earmarked for us, makes a big difference and we very much appreciate your continued generosity. Please remember, we continue to welcome your communications and your visits—please continue to keep us posted of your activities and your whereabouts—BEST WISHES!
NEWS FROM THE FACULTY
Deborah Blom:
This year was a very rewarding year of teaching. I taught Biological Anthropology (Anth 26, formerly Physical Anthropology) and Non-Human Primate Social Behavior, as well as two new courses. Human Osteology focused on the study of human bone in archaeological and forensics contexts in the lab. The class was small, and the students were advanced anthropology majors for the most part. The students learned more than I ever hoped they would, especially since learning this material is largely something one has to learn on ones own with several hours spent in the lab each week. They worked hard for that knowledge, and I cannot say enough how proud I am of them. This was especially rewarding because Debbie Stevens-Tuttle (UVM Anthropology, 2001) was a teaching intern for the class.
The second class I taught was a seminar for first-year students entitled "Life, Death and the Human Body," which dealt with various topics on the body from a largely sociocultural perspective (e.g., fashion, athletics, mortuary customs, eating disorders). The class was a "TAP" course designed to aid first-year students in developing research, critical thinking, writing and oral presentation skills necessary for success in college, as well as intensive advising from a professor with whom they work closely. This class turned out to be so much fun that it sometimes didn't feel like work at all. Next year I plan to teach two large sections of Biological Anthropology, the TAP seminar and primatology.
In terms of my research, I went to Bolivia last year to continue my projects (see entry "Archaeological Research in the Andes"), as well as taking some time to visit friends in Moquegua, Peru, where I did half of my dissertation research in the 1990s. Taking Nate Clough (UVM Anthropology, 2001) with me the year before had gone so well for both of us, so I took Elle Shoreman, a student from Vanderbilt, where I had taught in 2001. I very much look forward to doing the same with UVM students in the future. I won't be going to the field this year, because I need to stay close to my family. However, the co-directors of the projects will be running things just the same.
One of the most important parts of doing research is dissemination all the information to colleagues and the public. This year I presented papers at the annual meetings of the American Anthropological Association, Society for American Archaeology, and the Northeastern Anthropological Association. I also co-authored presentations at the annual meetings of the Midwest Conference on Andean and Amazonian Archaeology and Ethnohistory, the Institute of Andean Studies, and the Association of American Physical Anthropology. I also will present a paper to the International Congress of Americanists in July. In addition, I have had two chapters accepted for publication by the Smithsonian Institution Press and the University of California Archaeological Research Facility and have co-authored others. I am currently finishing minor revisions to articles accepted provisionally to the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology and the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.
It has been five years since I started teaching at UVM, and the department has changed a lot in that time. It was sad to see some of the faculty retire and equally nice to welcome newcomers. I look forward to the coming year and all the new challenges and changes we will face.
Rob Gordon:
Wow, another year has gone! It's quite amazing how the students keep on getting younger while we stay the same! It has been an interesting year, although the winter was slightly too long -- maybe because I got injured and couldn't engage in as much cross-country skiing as I would have liked. Perhaps the highlight was the fact that the newly unionized faculty finally got their first contract and it seems fair. With changes and challenges in the offing, it is nice to know that the Union gives us access to a vast body of information on how common problems are resolved in other universities.
My year had its usual ups and downs, although they were mostly ups I'm pleased to say. I spent a large part of the summer doing a National for the Endowment of the Humanities seminar at Amherst on "Punishment" led by Austin Sarat, a world-renowned legal scholar. My punishment as the token anthropologist was to listen to a large number of legal philosophers, but I did get some very useful ideas which I hope to incorporate in my legal anthropology course. I also managed to spend the summer writing a chapter for a book on "vigilantes" a.k.a. judicial "self-help." Unfortunately, I got roped into evaluating a lot of research proposals for a variety of organizations, but I suppose that is simply payback time. At least it gave me a useful feel for what people are thinking about.
Publications-wise it's been a good year. For some crazy reason people like having me as a co-editor and so I managed to publish two collected volumes. The first was on the "Challenge of Anthropology in the African Renaissance" which I co-edited with Dr. Debie Lebeau and is the first volume ever published by the University of Namibia Press. The second volume was done with Cori Kratz on the persistence of popular images of pastoralists in Africa. Cori is the wife of Ivan Karp, whose photograph some of you might recall hangs in our departmental office. A distinguished UVM alumnus, Ivan is currently the NEH Professor of Liberal Studies at Emory. In addition, I managed to write chapters in three major books, one called "Images and Empires" was published by the University of California Press, another is "Ethnography is in Unstable Places," published by Duke University Press, and a third is "Worldly Provincials," published by the University of Michigan Press. I suppose it's a sign of academic middle-age when instead of submitting papers to journals one gets invited to write chapters for prestigious presses!
Travel-wise it's been hectic as well. I was a sponsored speaker at a workshop on the African Human Genome Diversity Project in Stellenbosch in September. The workshop took place at a five-star hotel estate called The Lanzerac and in many ways it was a strange homecoming because, as some of you might recall, I did my undergraduate degree at Stellenbosch and indeed my first job ever was at The Lanzerac Hotel as a night porter thirty years ago. I pointed this out to one of the porters and said that I had taken the job for the food, not the pay, which was lousy. "Yes, Boss" he said, "it's still the same." Other trips included one to the AAA in New Orleans where we were interviewing job candidates and where Luis and I had organized a wonderful session entitled "Tarzan was an Eco-Tourist and Other Tales in the Anthropology of Adventure." It was immensely successful as I am sure Luis will tell you. I also attended the African Studies Association meeting in D.C. where I bumped into several old friends including former colleagues and students.
Finally, along with alumnus David Houston, we organized the Northeastern Anthropological Association meetings in Burlington. It was a great occasion, attracting about 200 registrants and providing a great forum for some of our students to present papers and interact with other students. The high point of the meetings were the keynote talk by Harald Prins and the world premiere of a film which Harald had made called "Oh What a Blow the Phantom Gave Me!"
Teaching-wise it was also a good year. I developed a new course on "Genocide" and (un)fortunately George Bush appears to have written my materials. It was a course which restored my faith in UVM's students being able to critically work through difficult material. As a sequel to that course, I will be doing a new course in the fall on Human Rights. So do we change to face the challenges of new issues.
I also realize that now with Steve Pastner's retirement I am the Old Fogey in the department. Perhaps my colleagues will treat me with the respect African Elders deserve!! Anyway, it's always nice to hear from you. Please drop us a line or, even better, pop in for a visit!
Jeanne Shea:
This academic year has culminated with some wonderful landmarks in my life. Four years ago, I taught my first TAP class (freshman seminar) at UVM. This past Sunday, students from that TAP class graduated, including one student, Lars Fossum, who went on to be an anthropology major and graduated with honors. It was amazing to think as I was lining up all the anthropology graduates, has four years gone by already? It seemed like yesterday that we were sitting across the freshman seminar table in Williams 511. Five years ago, my youngest sister, Patty, who is thirteen years younger than me and also a native Vermonter, matriculated into the undergraduate program at UVM at the same time that I began my tenure-track teaching position in anthropology at UVM. This past Sunday, May 18th, Patty graduated from UVM with a bachelor's degree in history.
There's a very neat thing about coming back home to teach -- you have all those different roles and worlds and times coming together all in one place. As I was lining up graduating students in anthropology this past Sunday, for example, having already found my sister Patty in the history line and snapped her picture, my mother and my other sister, Louise, came over to the anthropology line to take a picture of me with the anthropology students: "Let us get a picture of you with your students, Jeanne!" I'm thinking, "I wonder how often this happens at a graduation!" There's also this incredible historical depth when you come back home to teach. For example, my old gym teacher from high school delivers express mail to our department. One year one of my elementary school teachers took a continuing education seminar on Chinese in Montreal that I was teaching. Another year one of my high school teachers came to a talk on Sociocultural Diversity in China that I gave for the Asian Studies Outreach Program. After the talk, that teacher came up to me and said, "That was great! The whole time all I could think of is, what a trip! That's my student up there!" And I'm thinking, do I still call my old teachers Mrs. and Mr. even though I'm a teacher now too and they're telling me to call them by their first name?
Anyway, on the teaching front, this past academic year I taught Anthropology 290: Ethnographic Methods and Anthropology 195: Cultures of East Asia in the fall semester (2002) and Anthropology 21: Human Cultures and Anthropology 296: Medical Anthropology in the spring semester (2003). In addition, this spring Abby Casabona and Ewing Fox did a teaching internship with me, Abby in Anth 296 and Ewing in Anth 21. On the research and writing front, in April the international anthropology journal Anthropos accepted an article I wrote critiquing representations of causality in classic anthropological texts. Another article I wrote on sexual liberation and the older Chinese woman is under review by the journal Modern China, and an article on cross-cultural comparison of women's midlife symptom-reporting in China, Japan, and North America is under review by the journal Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry.
This summer I am revising my book manuscript Romance, Sex, and Marriage Under the Red Setting Sun: Debates on Later Life Romance in China for submission to Stanford University Press, analyzing interviews from my project on the experiences of Chinese immigrants living in Montreal, and attending an academic conference on current issues in Canadian Society held in Ottawa.
The coming fall a new faculty member, Michael Sheridan will join us. Also, this fall my colleague Deborah Blom and I will come up for tenure review. It is hard to believe that five years have already gone by for Deborah and I. Time has flown so quickly.
Luis Vivanco:
The research papers are commented on, the disputes over unhappy grades are over, the mud is finally becoming solid dirt, and the seniors left skidmarks on their way out of town. It's once again late spring in Burlington, which is a good time to take stock of the year that has passed, and to let you all know of my plans for the immediate future. I just finished my fourth year and passed my second and final major review before tenure, and I'm feeling the weight of the future more than ever as I hit the home stretch toward a tenure decision. I feel it's not just a decision that the University has to make about me, but one I have to make about my life at the University. Of course, these are decisions not made lightly, with Peggy gainfully employed as a part-time high school Spanish teacher, Isabel rapidly growing (she's 18 months old), and all of us quite happy about our most recent addition to our lives: a 100-year old house in the heart of Burlington.
To gain some perspective on all of this, Peggy, Isabel, and I will be heading to Hawai'i for five weeks this summer as I participate in a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute at the East-West Center at the University of Hawai'i. The theme is "(Re)Imagining Indigenous Cultures: The Pacific Islands." While Peggy and Isabel enjoy the sands of Oahu, I will be participating in seminars that examine colonial histories, literatures, film, development, and tourism in the Pacific. The goal of the NEH institute is to help faculty develop curriculum, and I will be developing a course on indigenous cultural and political activism, which I plan to teach sometime in the near future at UVM.
After we return to Burlington for the fall semester at UVM, we're then off to Costa Rica, where I will be teaching for six months at the University of Costa Rica as a Fulbright scholar. The award includes the opportunity to teach a course called "Culture and Globalization in Central America" to a Central America-wide graduate program in Social Anthropology, as well as plenty of time to carry out my own research, which will focus on the socio-cultural dynamics surrounding ecotourism certification programs in Costa Rica. The idea behind developing "green labels" for ecotourism is to generate market-based standards for good practices. These tend to be highly technical discussions, and often left out are questions about whose voices get heard and whose knowledge counts in the elaboration of these schemes, and so I intend to do ethnographic research on these questions. It is also an interesting arena to study how, in the context of neoliberalism, the state is reorganizing itself in new and powerful ways by seeking to mediate these essentially free-market schemes.
But that's all still coming up…what about this past year? I had a number of publications come out, including an essay in American Anthropologist and a couple of chapters in books on political and social dynamics of nature conservation. I also published various articles in more popular venues on indigenous responses to ecotourism, a theme that I'm intimately involved in as an advisor to an indigenous tourism organization called Indigenous Tourism Rights International. Rob Gordon and I had a smashingly successful panel at the annual anthropology meetings on a new book project we're editing called Tarzan was an Ecotourist…And Other Reflections on the Anthropology of Adventure. We are fascinated by the ubiquity of adventure in contemporary popular culture, and our book invites a number of prominent individuals in the discipline to explore questions like: what distinguishes an adventure from everyday life? What are the politics of adventuring? How is the activity of adventuring gendered? Etc. etc. Although we are still collecting essays, our project has gotten a lot of positive attention from the media and, even more importantly, publishers. If you have any adventure tales, or critical insights on adventure, that you'd like to share with us, we'd love to hear from you.
FACULTY RESEARCH
Archaeological Research in the Andes by Deborah Blom
Much of my research focuses on the ancient Andean society of Tiwanaku. Tiwanaku society flourished from the 6th to 12th century AD as the most dominant force in the southern Andes, first dominating the area around its capital and later expanding out from its center to influence and establish colonies in areas of modern-day Bolivia, Peru, Argentina, and Chile. The demographic core of Tiwanaku consisted of the area encompassing three adjacent river valleys on the southeastern edge of Lake Titicaca: the Desaguadero, Tiwanaku, and Katari valleys. This area where Tiwanaku flourished is located in the highland plains (altiplano) of modern-day Bolivia in the southern Lake Titicaca Basin. The altiplano is situated between two large mountain chains to the east and west and in my study region is about 3850 meters above sea level. To put this in perspective, Vermont's Mt. Mansfield is only 1165 meters above sea level or 3825 feet.
The altiplano environment is harsh. During the dry season (our summer) when we do the majority of excavations, the climate is arid and cold, and the landscape is covered almost entirely by dry, tough bunch grass and largely devoid of trees. During the wet season, the area is inundated by hail and rainstorms, which make roads and footpaths nearly impassable. Archaeologists seem to be experts at falling face first into the mud at this time of year. The crops of the Aymara Indians who inhabit the area are threatened by droughts and damaging hail most during this season.
The Aymara people support themselves by cultivating grains and tubers uniquely suited to the highland environment, herding livestock, especially native llamas and alpacas, and by raising small, domesticated animals such as guinea pigs. Lake Titicaca provides numerous other resources for subsistence and supports the most diverse range of wild rodents and birds in the altiplano. In addition to this environment, Andean peoples also access, directly or through commerce, the Amazonian lowlands to the east (where Jim Petersen works) and the arid pacific coast to the west. The western Pacific coastal area consists of a narrow strip of the driest deserts in the world running from north to south and crossed by several small rivers acting as oases to support life along the valleys. These diverse areas provide Andean people with a wealth of resources, since they cover over 50% of the world's ecological life zones. Tourism also provides a source of income. Tiwanaku, for example, is a typical field trip for school children and families, and foreigners visit the site. Many of the people living in rural altiplano areas also have homes in the modern capital, La Paz, and trips are routinely taken there to transport these items to the city for sale and to bring items from elsewhere back to their rural communities. In some of the more remote areas, travel to La Paz is less frequent and reliance on herding is more important.
Archaeology in Bolivia is a very collaborative process and while complicated, I think that is what makes it more enjoyable. Before undertaking any work there one must first negotiate permission from the federal government through the National Institute of Archaeology and the Viceministry of Culture. However, a permit from the federal government, while necessary, is largely worthless on a local level. Bolivia is run under a model of popular participation and is somewhat decentralized politically. Local communities and grassroots movements hold considerable power, so local permission is essential to research. Although many of these communities use the complex Aymara language, project work is largely in Spanish, a language in which most of us are proficient. This is essential because our excavation crews consist of North Americans, other foreigners, archaeologists from La Paz (who often only speak Spanish), and a large number of people from the communities where the sites are located.
As archaeologists anywhere, in order to work in these areas we have several duties and responsibilities as residents in these communities. Because of these responsibilities, we select students who accompany us carefully. Simply being able to speak Spanish is not sufficient. On a basic level, it is very much like living in rural Vermont in terms of simply being neighborly and courteous – attending baptisms, birthday parties, school plays, weddings, funerals and the like. Because excavation disturbs the earth and Pachamama (the earth mother) in many of the same ways cultivation does, it is important to sponsor and help carry out necessary rituals before and after excavating, at particularly vulnerable times of year, or when the excavations and group dynamics are going poorly or particularly well. This is especially true when burials are encountered. We also host a party at the end of each excavation season, which usually includes feasting, speech making, dancing, and making plans for next year.
An especially important event that we take part in is the town festival to honor the patron saint, and dancing in one of the organized troops is strongly encouraged. This means obtaining the clothing that your group has chosen for you (such as matching skirts and shawls of the women known as "cholas" or a devil-bear costume), practicing, and then taking part in a grueling schedule of dancing and drinking for the three days of the fiesta. These fiestas are very fun, but many aspects are difficult, such as lack of sleep, dancing in heavy costumes or with complicated steps, hangovers, and the occasional disagreements that come up between people needing to blow off steam. Even though I find my stamina is a bit lower as I get older, I wouldn't give them up for anything. Bolivia is not a place where the clock and work are the main priorities. Human relationships are a very important part of life.
Other challenges for students working in the altiplano are those involving food, bathroom and sleeping conditions, and simply living in the cold and high altitude. Because we interact so much with other people in the community, it is a lot easier because we have excellent role models about how to live in these conditions, happily and with a flexible attitude. This has been especially important when we haven't been able to get to La Paz for food and luxury items (like toilet paper and rice). During month-long political roadblocks in 2001, we were entirely dependent on the people we worked with for food, which they generously sold or gave as gifts, not just simply providing the calories that we needed but allowing us to experience an amazing variety of new and unusual foods.
These large projects could not be pulled off without a lot of collaboration from other archaeologists as well. We collaborate with John Janusek of Vanderbilt University and Nicole Couture of the University of Chicago, specialists in various aspects of archaeology, and many Bolivian archaeologists; for example, in Tiwanaku I worked with Velia Mendoza, Danilo Villamor, Maribel Perez Arias and Jahel Amaru, Carlos Lémuz, and Osvaldo Caderes. Because a regional perspective is necessary (and mostly because it is fun and stimulating), we also spend a lot of time collaborating with others doing research in the Andes, especially in southern coastal Peru, northern Chile, and the eastern valleys of Bolivia. Through these studies we have a much better idea about interactions between neighboring groups and through time.
While past researchers have discussed Tiwanaku as a homogeneous entity, one of the major research objectives is to highlight the diversity present within this prehistoric state, by undertaking more intense studies of domestic and household archaeology as a way to explore these questions. Theoretically, I have also been focusing more on the human body and its place, symbolically and physically, in Tiwanaku society. More specifically the Tiwanaku project is designed to study urban diversity in the capital city of Tiwanaku through complementary studies of mortuary and residential areas. For those interested in Tiwanaku, the June 2002 National Geographic highlights all archaeological projects that have been undertaken to-date.
Archaeological Research in Amazonia by Jim Petersen
Another year has flown by and we have made substantial progress in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Vermont (UVM) with me as Chair, as I have described elsewhere in this newsletter. Last year, I reported that the duties of the Chair are more diverse than I ever imagined and when things go well, it is easy to be happy and that's what I clearly strive for. The biggest surprise of my service as Chair has been how much time it takes and how little time that leaves me for my own research. Nonetheless, I will try to summarize some positive accomplishments in terms of my Amazon research over the past year, concluding with some mention of other archaeological research as well.
First of all, I managed to get back to the Brazilian Amazon for almost six weeks last summer (2002) and will get back for a few weeks this summer as well. Last summer the time in the Amazon was split between two rather different areas and two different archaeological research projects: 1) the Central Amazon Project (CAP), being conducted in the area of the lower Negro River near where it joins the Solimoes River, thereby forming the Amazon River proper; and 2) the Upper Xingu Project, located on a series of tributaries of the Xingu, which is, in turn, a major north flowing tributary of the Amazon.
The CAP lies in the geographic center of the Amazon and South America generally and it is almost precisely situated on the equator within Amazonas state, Brazil. Thus, it is always hot, wet, and very humid in the CAP area. It's an often uncomfortable place to work, but it is producing outstanding archaeology. In contrast, the Upper Xingu is located in the southeastern portion of the Amazon on the edge of the tropical forest and surrounding grassland savannahs in Mato Grosso state, Brazil. This setting is rather different than that of the CAP, since it is seasonally very dry in the Upper Xingu and while the Upper Xingu is hot on a daily basis, it is not as humid as elsewhere in the Amazon and the nights are pleasant and cool.
The CAP has been working on over 40 prehistoric Amerindian sites situated within the study area since 1995. It is being directed jointly by Eduardo Neves of the University of Sao Paulo (USP) and me through UVM, although we began the CAP while based at USP, the Carnegie Museum of Natural History and the University of Maine at Farmington (UMF), with Michael Heckenberger (an alumnus of UVM anthropology) as the third director originally. Robert Bartone (another UVM alumnus) is planning to write his dissertation on CAP research through the Department of Anthropology at Binghamton University. In the case of the Upper Xingu Project, in 2002 I was a visitor to research being directed by Michael Heckenberger and a team of graduate students from the University of Florida (including still another UVM alumnus, Joshua Toney), working with contemporary indigenous people, the Kuikuru. The Kuikuru and other Amerindians live in a large reserve roughly the size of Vermont and thus, the Upper Xingu area is rather remote.
Last summer, I spent about a month working on the CAP with Bob Bartone and many others and I also visited the Upper Xingu Project for about two weeks after that with Bob, counting all the necessary travel, etc. The CAP stint began with a week-long conference on terra preta do Indio (or "black earth of the Indian") in Manaus, with field trips up the Negro and Tapajos rivers to see different terra preta sites first hand. This conference included soil scientists, agronomists, geographers, socio-cultural anthropologists, archaeologists, and others, all of whom were trying to better understand the dynamics of terra preta formation as an archaeological phenomenon, along with its extreme fertility and even potential replication so that modern farmers can overcome the limitations of the infertile soils characteristic of the Amazon and other tropical settings.
The salient results of the terra preta conference were published shortly after its conclusion in an article written for the journal, Science, and published in August 2002, highlighting the prospects of learning how to enhance tropical soils from studying the archaeological examples of terra preta. This conference also contributed directly to a film on Amazonian archaeology that was made over the spring and summer of 2002 by a team from the BBC. The film, entitled "The Secrets of El Dorado," was shown by the BBC throughout the United Kingdom in December 2002 and efforts are underway to sell it for broadcast in the U.S. as well. Scenes of the CAP were used in several sections of the film, including several segments with me and Eduardo Neves, and other footage also included Mike Heckenberger and the Upper Xingu Project, as well as his Amerindian hosts, the Kuikuru.
After the conference and filming was done, the CAP field work per se was directed at several significant archaeological sites, including an exceedingly rare and enigmatic small preceramic site, Dona Stella, guess dated back around 8000 years ago (ca. 6000 B.C.), and a large ceramic age site of much more recent vintage, Hatahara. The Dona Stella site was accidentally discovered through a sand quarrying operation and we had an opportunity to sample it briefly after we discovered a series of locally rare flaked stone tools, including a diagnostic stemmed projectile point. Formed stone tools don't occur in later Amerindian sites of the Ceramic Age and so, we knew that Dona Stella was among just a handful of such sites currently known anywhere in the entire Amazon. We hope to get back to this intriguing site in the near future, perhaps even in 2003.
In contrast to the Dona Stella site, much more work was invested at Hatahara in 2002. Our work at Hatahara, involving over a dozen USP graduate students, Eduardo Neves and several of us Americans, matched past excavations at various other large terra preta sites in the CAP area, as we reported in a British Museum exhibition and publication in 2001. Incredibly dense deposits are characteristic at the CAP terra preta sites and Hatahara is no exception, literally producing 10s of thousands of pottery sherds from each 1 X 1 m excavation unit that we used to cross-section habitation mounds. We also recovered dense subsistence remains and all in all, the artifacts and ecofacts mark the local presence of large, sedentary populations during late prehistory in the CAP area. These populations probably mark chiefdom-like stratified societies that occurred locally in the CAP area from just before the time of Christ (ca. 200 B.C.) until the time that the Amerindians were demolished and locally made extinct in the century or two after the Europeans (and others) arrived, by ca. A.D. 1600-1650 or so.
Fortunately, European intruders did not get access to all of the Amazon until relatively recently and thus Amerindian groups managed to survive in some upland, headwater areas right up to the present day, as in the case of the Upper Xingu, for example. Mike Heckenberger's project is investigating the nature of the late prehistoric Amerindian societies in the Upper Xingu and how they connect to the contemporary indigenous groups such as the Kuikuru and another dozen cultures or so. Rather remarkably, the contemporary Amerindian groups apparently reflect small (but fully vital and dynamic) remnants of much larger societies who lived in large fortified villages on the order of 10 to 20 times larger than modern indigenous villages. Along with the huge fortified villages, Heckenberger and his team have identified roads (with high curbs flanking them) that run through the forest between the ancient settlements. These too must be the remains of stratified, chiefdom societies, or so Heckenberger has reasoned. All of this is initially surprising if one follows past ideas that claimed that the tropical forests of Amazonia were inimical to the fluorescence of human cultures and the region was a "counterfeit paradise." In any case, stayed tuned—you will hear more about all of this in the future.
Besides the Amazonian work, I have tried to continue to work on other research in the Caribbean (with John Crock and others) and here in New England. My recent Caribbean research will see publication in 2003 or 2004 of a first-authored introduction for a new book on the "Late Ceramic Age in the Eastern Caribbean" that resulted from a conference held last year in Leiden, Netherlands, and Paris, France. John Crock and I will also have a joint paper in the same volume on our ongoing Anguilla research. In terms of New England research, I presented a lecture for the Center for Research on Vermont during Vermont Archaeology Week in September 2002 at UVM on the history of past investigations and new discoveries concerning the St. Lawrence Iroquoians in Vermont and northern New England. With John Crock, Joshua Toney, Geoff Mandel and other collaborators from Maine and New Hampshire, I have prepared a chapter on this topic for a forthcoming publication in honor of the late Jim Pendergast. This commemorative volume will be issued by the Canadian Museum of Civilization in 2003 or 2004. I also recently worked on two papers related to the early Contact period (ca. A.D. 1580-1600) on coast of Maine, stemming from research I did nearly 10 years ago when I still lived in Maine. One of these will be published by the New York State Museum in a volume on indigenous textile artifacts from the Northeast, while the other will be submitted to a regional journal at some point when time allows. Time, time, time—the most precious commodity, or so it seems on many days when other things need to take precedence over research and writing—such is the story of the academic!
ANTHROPOLOGY FIELD SCHOOL
Oaxaca Study Course - Luis Vivanco
Once again, I co-organized a two-week study trip to the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca over the winter session. While there, we examined how indigenous peoples (mainly Zapotec) have responded to economic globalization. In Oaxaca, globalization has weakened the ability of the state to continue centralized socioeconomic programs, creating opportunities for indigenous communities and civil society institutions to respond in innovative ways, and themselves become new sites of public authority and local governance. Emerging from deliberate histories of resistance and localism, indigenous communities are engaging in cultural politics that is challenging commonly-accepted ideas about modernity, citizenship, participation, education, identity, and nature. This course is a field-based examination of these complex processes of socio-cultural change, with a special focus on how they play out in the domains of education, migration, and political ecology.
OTHER ANTHROPOLOGY INTERESTS
Anthropology and Latin American Studies - Luis Vivanco
Of all departments on campus, Anthropology has the highest representation in the Latin American Studies Program, including myself, Jim, Deborah, and Charlie Knight of CAP. As director of the program, my job is to organize events, work with faculty to develop curriculum, and advise our majors (of which there are currently seven). Our big event this past year, which featured several anthropological participants, was the Hispanic Forum, an interdisciplinary conference here at UVM every October. The theme was "Narratives of Transformation in the Hispanic World," and we explored how big social and political changes have been thought about and represented throughout Latin American history.
NEWS FROM THE CONSULTING ARCHAEOLOGY PROGRAM - John Crock, Director
The past year was once again a busy one for the Consulting Archaeology Program. We worked all over the state, surveying in a variety of different environments and testing and excavating sites ranging from a Paleoindian camp in Colchester, ca. 8500-7000 B.C., to a historic farmstead in Ludlow, occupied from the late 1700s through to the 1970s. Perhaps most notable was the length of last field season—a new record for CAP—we were in the field from April 15 to December 15, with only a couple of rain days (or snow days!). Needless to say, field work in Vermont in mid-December was not the highlight of the season for the CAP crew. We needed industrial ground-heating blankets and wedding tents to do a project in Manchester after the ground had frozen!
Charles Knight continues as CAP's Assistant Director, while Geoff Mandel continues to lead CAP's work in the field, assisted by Francis "Jess" Robinson. Kate Kenny continues to serve, among other roles, as our Program Historian. Kate and others have recently completed a volume on CAP's work at the historic Old Burial Ground in St. Johnsbury, Vermont—a major project for which the field work was conducted between 1994-2000.
This year, CAP also produced a public education handbook on Vermont archaeology entitled, An Introduction to Vermont Archaeology: Native American Archaeological Sites and the Chittenden County Circumferential Highway. One of the first of its kind, the book is designed to help educate middle schoolers and their teachers about the science of archaeology and local prehistory. The data used to illustrate the text were drawn from CAP's long-term work for the VT Agency of Transportation in advance of the Circ Highway around Burlington, some of which is still ongoing.
As part of some of the other work we're doing for the State of Vermont, we have been helping digitize all the Vermont's handwritten and typewritten archaeological site inventory forms. This effort is designed to make this information more accessible and to make the data compatible with Geographic Information System (GIS) software. UVM anthropology alums Emma Coldwell and Cullen Black spent last winter data-entering site forms—a mammoth task that will carry over until next year. In addition to Emma and Cullen, UVM anthropology grads that have worked for CAP over the past year include, Mike Desilets (he and his wife Karen are freshly back from working in Hawaii with anthropology alumna Jennifer Robins), Andrew Fletcher, Jeremy Kaplan, Charlie Paquin, Kate Pattison, Jeremy Ripin, and CAP's Office Manager Rebecca Tarling. Former CAP employee Joshua Toney left CAP last year to pursue his Ph.D. at the University of Florida under another UVM anthropology alum, Michael Heckenberger.
The closest project we had this year was an archaeological review of the University Heights portion of campus where the CAP office is located. I was shocked to see a development plan with a road going through our building!! Our office and the artifact collections managed by CAP were immediately determined to be far and away the most archaeologically significant deposits in this portion of campus. Soon after our review of the plans, we were officially informed that we will need to move to another location on campus to make room for UVM's new residence hall project. I don't know where we'll be a year from now, but stay tuned! All we're absolutely sure of is that it will be no small task to move our lab and the artifact collections!
In addition to directing CAP and doing archaeology in Vermont, I have had the good fortune to be able to teach a section of Anth 024 (Introduction to Prehistoric Archaeology) and continue with my other research interests, including work on submerged sites identified by scallopers off the Maine coast and issues related to interisland trade and exchange in the Caribbean. A product of this research included an invitation to present a paper on a 7,000-8,000-year-old submerged site located near Acadia National Park at the 36th Annual Conference on Historical and Underwater Archaeology held in Providence, Rhode Island, and an invitation, along with Jim Petersen, to participate in a seminar on the Late Ceramic Age in the Caribbean held in Leiden, Netherlands, and Paris, France.
NEWS FROM PROFESSORS EMERITUS
Bill Haviland:
Having missed deadlines for the last few newsletters following my retirement, I thought I'd try for this one, just to let folks know I haven't dropped off the face of the earth! Some of you are aware I have not, as I have seen some of you from time to time. Laurie Labar I see periodically over here (she's co-directing a field school on Deer Isle this June). I last ran across Mike Heckenberger at AAA meetings in New Orleans, and saw Charlie Paquin at this spring's NEAA meetings. I also see Jim Petersen and John Crock from time to time, as well as other colleagues in the department. And I often run into David Pearson at Borders Bookstore on my occasional trips to Burlington.
I may be retired, but I'm still busy. Since last spring, I've reviewed two books for professional journals, written an article on Tikal Social Organization for another journal, completed a manuscript for a small book on Deer Isle Indians, and I'm currently working on the revision for the 11th edition of my anthropology textbooks. Working with me on this are Harald Prins, Bunny McBride and Dana Walrath, the idea being that they will take over and keep the books going through future editions as I fade off into the sunset (see, it takes three people to do what Anita and I did by ourselves!).
Nor have I ceased lecturing altogether. Last summer I gave a lecture on Western Abenakis at the annual meeting of the Abbe Museum in Bar Harbor, and this spring I gave a talk at the University of Pennsylvania Museum's annual Maya weekend on archaeologists at work and play at Tikal. And in April I did a series of four two-hour sessions on Indians of Midcoastal Maine for the Colloquy Downeast, a local organization engaged in formal, spoken exchange of serious thoughts and ideas.
And speaking of talks, I also revised the address I delivered at the 1999 Abenaki conference, for publication in the proceedings of that event being edited by Jim Petersen et al.
Now that we are moved into our new house (built for me by the nephew of an old drinking buddy of mine), I have a work area consisting of the entire third floor, and look forward to getting back to my Tikal monographs. Anita has a huge area in which to work on her quilts, and we have a wonderful attic hideaway for our marvelous grandchildren (Zachary and Marie) when they come to visit.
Carroll Lewin:
Having moved closer to Lake Champlain a year ago, I have rediscovered gardening, home decoration, and other seemingly non-feminist activities. Retirement means travel: trips this year have included Paris, the Bahamas, Miami, and that mother lode of anthropological observation, Las Vegas. My UVM connection is maintained by advisory board membership at the Fleming Museum and the Center for Holocaust Studies. I would love to hear from former students! My new address is: 16 Southwind Drive, Burlington, Vermont 05401.
Peter Woolfson:
The good thing about being retired is having all that free time, the bad thing is having all that free time. I am, however, managing to keep my hand in academia, if not in the department. I presented a paper at the NEAA on the pitfalls of doing local field work. I'm also doing a special project for the Vermont Ombudsman Project where I have been conducting field work in nursing homes with an emphasis on care plan conferences. I will be presenting a paper at the ICAES meeting in Florence, Italy, this July.
NORTHEASTERN ANTHROPOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION ANNUAL MEETING - David Houston
The 43rd Annual Meeting of the NEAA was held in Burlington, Vermont, at the campus of the University of Vermont from March 20th through the 23rd, 2003. The theme for the conference, "Independent Thinking and the Anthropological Can(n)on" provoked a great deal of interest and energy. The scope of submitted papers was amazing. We had folks from all over the place in attendance, some as far away as California! Perhaps a renaming committee should be formed?
Following a day of sessions on Friday, March 21st, which ranged from qualitative research to underwater archaeology to sexuality and gender, everyone enjoyed a reception hosted by Middlebury College way up in the UVM Anthropology Department. This proved to be a great chance to catch up with those not seen for awhile and generally enjoy the company of a lot of very engaging minds.
That same evening, attendees scooped up all tickets we had for the banquet held in the Waterman Manor, and were treated to a wonderful keynote address by Harald Prins. Against a backdrop of war with Iraq, he delivered a remarkable talk, one that was vibrant, very current, and thought provoking. Anthropology does have much to offer today. The room was filled to capacity!
Saturday the 22nd brought reasonably clear skies (despite this being the middle of Vermont's "mud season") and more wonderful sessions. There were topics on adventure, on New York archaeology, undergraduate field study, refugee resettlement, power, study abroad and art, just to name a few. It really was an impressive selection of choices. Too many choices at times – as I had to make hard decisions about where I wanted to be!
That evening, we were treated to a world premiere showing of the new film by John Bishop and Harald Prins, "Oh What a Blow That Phantom Gave Me!" following a dessert reception. The vibrancy of film and media in anthropology is apparent here. The film festival, running concurrently with the sessions throughout the conference, offered conference-goers a great selection of ethnographic film. It would have been easy to spend the entire conference watching movies!
Sunday, the final day of the conference, brought us a real treat: a performance of Native American storytelling and song from Marge Bruchac and Justin Kennick. Held in the Billings Center, they outdid themselves in their piece "Zahkiwi Lintowôganal - Voices in the Woods." The audience loved it! The closing session explored the myriad of issues and challenges that run through Native American Indian Scholarship in northern New England, providing a thoughtful and provocative ending to a wonderful conference.
There is a lot of work to organizing a conference. It would never have happened without the help of so many great people. Special thanks go to, Jim Petersen (Chair, Anthropology at UVM), Rob Gordon (UVM), John Cole (U. Mass, Amherst), Grace Fraser (Plymouth State College), Michael Sheridan (Middlebury College), Liz Bright (UVM, hotel info), Josh MacLeod (UVM, registration and volunteer organizing), Linda Kasper (UVM, registration and film festival), Jessie Alberts (UVM, registration), Nathan Clough (UVM, registration), Ellen Rose Hollidge (UVM, registration). Many others offered time and energy. Thanks to all of you. You made this conference a memorable success for everyone!
See you all at next year's conference!
NEWS FROM OUR ADJUNCT FACULTY
Charles Knight:
This past year has been an incredibly active one for me archaeologically, as I've been lucky enough to continue my work at the UVM Consulting Archaeology Program, focusing on 10,000 years of Native American occupation in Vermont, as well as take part in several international archaeological projects, and teach several courses at UVM.
I spent parts of October and November 2002, in Baeza, Ecuador, analyzing excavated obsidian tools, from an extensive survey of the Quijos valley, as part of the dissertation field work of Andrea Cuellos of the University of Pittsburgh. The artifacts were recovered both through an extensive subsurface survey and larger, more intensive site excavations, and represent the first systematically collected material from the Quijos valley. This project was one of the largest systematic surveys in highland Ecuador. Unfortunately, the end of the field season was interrupted by the eruption of the volcano El Reventador, which covered the area with considerable ash and changed the weather patterns, making our remaining time there difficult. The obsidian data analysis of this project is on-going.
With obsidian re-ingrained on the brain, I then spent May of 2003 at the epi-Olmec site of Tres Zapotes, in Veracruz, Mexico, working for the Proyecto Arqueológico de Tres Zapotes [P.A.T.Z] project, under the direction of Dr. Christopher A. Pool, of the University of Kentucky, analyzing the excavated obsidian assemblage from the 2003 field season. Although I arrived in the middle of the field season, a substantial amount of obsidian artifacts had already been recovered. The results of the preliminary analysis of those artifacts are very exciting and will add to our understanding of the Early Formative to Early Classic period (ca. 1500 B.C. – A.D. 300) political economy at Tres Zapotes. A summary volume on the 1995 and 1996 surface survey of Tres Zapotes, edited by Christopher A. Pool, was recently published by the Costen Institute of Archaeology (June 2003) and I am particularly interested to see what correlations exist between the excavated obsidian material and the patterns of surface obsidian tool production, distribution, and consumption that I identified and discussed in the chapter on obsidian from that volume.
Finally, I was very happy to continue teaching courses on archaeology at UVM. In the spring semester I taught Anthropology 24: Prehistoric Archaeology, and Anthropology 196: Ancient Mesoamerica: Olmecs to Aztecs, as evening classes through the Department of Continuing Education. I will teach Anthropology 24 in the fall of 2003, and Anthropology 196 in the spring 2004.
Glenn McRae:
I taught a course on the Anthropology of Trash during spring semester pursuing my long-term research of differing perceptions of "waste" and "risk." During the summer term, I took a group of students to two Cree communities in northern Quebec as part of a field course in the James Bay region, entitled, "Cree Culture in Transition." I am a co-editor (along with Harvey Feit and Mario Blaser) of a forthcoming volume tentatively titled, "In the Way of Development: Indigenous Peoples and Globalizing Struggles," to be published by Zed Books next winter.
I am setting up a Public Policy Internship program through The Snelling Center for Government to place graduates, graduate students and post-graduates in research positions with public and nonprofit institutions to work on public policy issues in Vermont. For more information, please contact me at 859-3090, extension 308; <gmcrae1@uvm.edu>.
Amy Trubek:
I am presently a Food and Society policy fellow, a national fellowship program designed to educate consumers, opinion-leaders and policymakers on the challenges associated with sustaining family farms and food systems in the United States that are environmentally sound, health promoting and locally-owned and controlled. This fellowship program is administered by the Thomas Jefferson Agricultural Institute (Columbia, MO) in partnership with the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (Minneapolis, MN), with funding from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation.
I have recently had articles published in the Boston Globe and the Burlington Free Press. I am the Guest Editor for a special Food and Culture issue of Expedition Magazine to be published in August 2003.
NEWS FROM ALUMNUS/VISITING PROFESSOR - Peter Mills
Phoebe and I are happy and healthy, and continue to spend much of our time around our solar-powered homestead in Laupahoehoe, on the Big Island. Nevertheless, over the last year, we left Hawaii for a trip to Spain and Scotland (last July), and I greatly enjoyed catching up with Jim Petersen, John Crock, and others at the Society for Historical Archaeology meetings in Providence, RI, in January.
This June, I ran an archaeological field school at a 19th-century site on Hawai'i Island high on the slopes of Mauna Kea. My students and I discovered the site in 2001, and we believe it was the home of a man named Ned Gurney, who hunted cattle for their hides and tallow (ca. 1830-1840). Ned was a former British convict who had been sent to Botany Bay, Australia. He became infamous in 1834 when he was the last person to see the famous Scottish botanist David Douglas alive (eponymous with the Douglas Fir tree), before Douglas was found dead at the bottom of one of Gurney's cattle traps. Many continue to believe that Gurney murdered Douglas, so there is a bit of a murder mystery involved in our investigation.
Over the last year, I published two articles: "Neo in Oceania: Foreign Vessels Owned by Hawaiian Chiefs Before 1830," Journal of Pacific History 38(1):53-67 and "Social Integration and the Ala Loa: Reconsidering the Significance of Trails in Hawaiian Exchange," Asian Perspectives 41(1):148-166.
Good reviews of my dissertation-turned-book "Hawaii's Russian Adventure: A New Look at Old History" (UH Press 2002), have come out in Historical Archaeology and Choice. Others are expected soon in The Contemporary Pacific and the Hawaiian Journal of History. In the winter of 2004, I will be returning to do more underwater work on the subject site (a fort by Waimea Bay, Kaua'i) with members of "Hawaii Underwater Research Labs" (the same folks who recently found a Japanese minisub that went down off of Pearl Harbor in 1941) and NOAA. We will be looking for two cannons from the fort that fell into the Bay in 1864, and conducting a side-scan sonar and magnetometer survey of the entire Bay.
I also received a National Science Foundation grant for $143,977 to purchase an Energy Dispersive X-ray Fluorescence (EDXRF) spectrometer to conduct non-destructive geochemical analyses of archaeological lithics from Hawaii. The data can then be used to help identify quarry sources for the stone artifacts and prehistoric exchange patterns. The machine will come equipped with a sample chamber that is large enough to accept stone artifacts up to 12" in diameter, and the only other machine with similar capability is in Athens, Greece.
I should be spotted in New England over the fall 2003 semester, as I will be on a six-month sabbatical. Starting in July, Phoebe and I will be driving in a sewing-machine-stitch pattern across the country for most of July and August with our dog, Ozzie, and we'll end up in Maine for the semester. From there, I will be making forays down to Massachusetts to raid archives and libraries for holdings on 19th-century Hawaii.
IN MEMORY OF MARJORY W. POWER, 1930-2003
As noted previously in this Newsletter, we regret to inform our readers of the death of our esteemed colleague and friend, Marjory W. Power. Marjory, or "Marj," died on June 26, 2003, after a long battle with polychondritis and emphysema. She was born February 3, 1930, in Cincinnati, Ohio, the daughter of Ross and Edith Williams. Marj leaves behind her husband of 28 years, Nathan Power, and three children, Nicholas Honerkamp, Mary Allyn (Dande) Levi, and Lisa Pittman, and six grandchildren, as well as a broad spectrum of friends in all walks of life.
Marj was an inspiration to many UVM students and others interested in archaeology and anthropology over many, many years, and we feel that we should share with you some of the salient details of her life. Marj received her B.S. undergraduate degree from Indiana University (IU) in 1965, after which she enrolled in the graduate anthropology program at IU where she was a student from 1965-1969. She then taught at Illinois State University (1969-1972), California State University (summer 1972) and the University of Kentucky (1972-1973), while she was working on her Ph.D. research related to the famous Angel Mound site, a late prehistoric Mississippian-period settlement in Indiana.
Marj first came to Vermont thirty years ago when she accepted a temporary, one-year position at Middlebury College in 1973, after which she was hired in a tenure-track position as an Instructor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Vermont (UVM) in 1974. In 1975, Marj was promoted to Assistant Professor at UVM after receiving her Ph.D. that year. With granting of her tenure at UVM, she was promoted to Associate Professor in 1981. During these years, Marj taught a wide range of prehistoric and historic archaeology, museum studies, ethnomusicology, and folklore courses at UVM. Along with many other forms of service at UVM, Marj served as Chair of the Department of Anthropology from 1987 to 1990. She retired from UVM in 1996 as a result of her failing health. Typical of her generous spirit and sense of public service, Marj also served as a Trustee of the Vermont Archaeological Society from 1977 to 1980 and as a member of the Executive Committee for the Center for Research on Vermont from 1987-1994. She also served as the archaeologist member of the Vermont Advisory Council for Historic Preservation from 1979-1990, as appointed by the Governor of the State of Vermont.
Besides these forms of professional and volunteer service over more than 20 years, Marj also made substantial contributions to Vermont archaeology through her research and publications. Her most notable post-graduate research project involved the large-scale salvage excavation of the prehistoric Winooski site in 1978. She completed a lengthy technical report on this work in 1983 and she published a popular summary of this research in 1984, both with Jim Petersen. However, Marj's most widely known scholarly contribution to Vermont archaeology is the book, The Original Vermonters: Native Americans Past and Present, which was co-authored with William Haviland. This influential book was first published in 1981 and a second, revised edition came out in 1994, in both cases published by the University Press of New England. Marj helped impart a distinctive humanistic perspective to this book and she has been long an advocate for Native Americans in general and Vermont's Western Abenaki in particular.
Finally, Marj's legacy may be best represented by her many, many students over the years at UVM and elsewhere. Multiple generations of UVM undergraduate students and reportedly undergraduate and graduate students at other schools all profited from the kindness, moral support, and academic guidance that Marj extended to them. She was uniformly generous in other words, much as if they all were members of her large, extended family. Each and every student merited such attention. We will not see the likes of Marj again any time soon and we extend our condolences to her family.
ALUMNI NEWS
Andrea Arena reports that she is a family physician in Boston. She has hopes of doing work in developing countries once her 10-month old son is older.
Alec Bolus spent part of the last year working on a vegetable farm in Finland. Since then, he has split his time between Vermont and traveling.
During a recent outing to buy stones for a rock wall, Luis Vivanco learned that Jean Bregant is the CEO of Cleary Stone Co., and according to her husband, "This business would fall apart without her." They recently made a trip to Italy for a stone exposition, and used the opportunity to visit art museums.
Craig Broe got married on June 7th. The week of graduation he was commissioned as a 2nd LT in the Army. He's off to Washington state for six weeks to be a safety officer at National Advanced Leadership Camp. Upon his return he will then drive down to Maryland where he will begin the Ordinance Officer Basic Course which will teach him what he needs to know to perform his duties. After that he will go to Ft. Drum, New York, for three years.
Julie (Burtscher) Brown and husband Greg Brown live on a farm in Perkinsville. They have two boys, Riley Peter (3) and Luke Ronald (1). After teaching history for two years at the high school, Julie has decided to become a full-time mother. She writes that they have stone foundations on their land that are reportedly from a revolutionary war encampment.
Maya Ellis Brown was married last September and is currently traveling across the country with her husband Andrew Huff. Maya and Andrew will spend the next year in Osaka, Japan, teaching English.
Rebecca Burstein lives in Boston and has worked as the assistant director of an urban youth program, in collaboration with the National Park Service and the Thoreau Institute.
Jarrett Cassaniti is currently serving in the Peace Corps in Zambia, as a rural health worker. He writes, "I have to study by candlelight which is taking some getting used to. The language [Bemba] is coming along, but it's frustrating. All the other volunteers are very nice and I get along with them, although I only see them all once or twice a week. Peace Corps has given us all really phat bikes (sometimes the kids drool over these bikes) to get us to our language lessons."
Lisa Centola moved from Connecticut to Washington state last autumn to begin her graduate studies in archaeology at Washington State University. She is reportedly working in the anthropology museum at WSU.
Matthew Clark continues to work as a consulting archaeologist in Hawaii and rumor has it that he likes life in the South Pacific quite a lot.
Nate Clough has been working as an Americorps volunteer in Burlington. He is a community outreach and special events coordinator at the Rental Opportunity Center. Nate will be entering UVM's Geography Master's degree program this coming fall.
Denise Cote lives in Gallup, New Mexico, where she teaches an all-Navajo fourth grade class.
Sarah Courcelle reports that she is "happily student teaching at Central School in South Burlington." She has been applying her knowledge and interest in East Asian cultures in her teaching, including developing a unit on Japan, a trip to Koto, and a Feng Shui house in the classroom.
Frank Cowan lives at 6509 Craigland Court in Cincinnati, Ohio, and is currently operating his own consulting archaeology firm, specializing in lithics analysis. His settlement pattern research was featured on the "Ohio Archaeology Week" (June 15-21, 2003) poster for 2003.
C. Randall Crones is still practicing the life of a wandering consulting archaeologist, having worked recently in Hawaii and most recently spotted in the wide-open spaces of Nevada.
Joanne Della Salla moved from Vermont to Colorado last fall to begin her graduate studies in archaeology and museum studies at Denver University.
Andrew Fletcher has recently returned to Vermont after a stint in Colorado. Andy is currently employed by the UVM Consulting Archaeology Program.
Emily Franks began graduate studies at the Columbia University School of Social Work in 2002. Before grad school, Emily was working as a researcher in San Francisco at the American Society on Aging.
Jeff Fuccillo is living in Tokyo, Japan, where he has been teaching English. He recently got married to a Japanese woman named Haruna.
Christopher Gosline carries his interest in anthropology and academia forward at present. Chris will be applying to several Ph.D. sociology graduate programs in the autumn.
Michael Heckenberger, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Florida, is presently in the Brazilian Amazon conducting archaeological research. Rumor has it that he will be also working in Surinam this summer.
Kaija Helmetag, who works as Communications Coordinator for the Population Media Center in Shelburne, just traveled to South Africa and the Philippines to work on an AIDS conference.
John Henion was last reported in the Lake Tahoe area and is seeking to undertake graduate studies in development and social transformation issues at the University of Cape Town.
David Houston is pursuing a Ph.D. in Anthropology at McGill University, while working full-time at UVM in Computing and Information Technology. He is currently working on his qualifying exams and planning for field work on information technology in India. David has also been teaching anthropology courses at UVM and St. Michael's College.
Linda Jones continues to live in the Boston area and she is currently enrolled in the Donovan Urban Teaching Scholars Program at Boston College.
Since graduating in 2001, Jessica Kessler has been working as a VISTA volunteer in the Amherst, Massachusetts, area. She reports that lately she has been working with connecting recent Cambodian immigrants to others who speak their language, so that they can receive public services.
John Krigbaum is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Florida, where he teaches biological anthropology and is working toward tenure.
Jonathan Larson, who is pursuing a Ph.D. in Anthropology at Michigan, has been doing work in Bratislava, Slovakia.
Congratulations to Tyson Lewis, whose New York City band "The Law of Fives" just produced a CD.
Kathryn (Casey) Morley has split her time between Montana and Michigan this year and she expects to begin her studies at the University of Michigan dental school in the autumn.
Peter Mills will be enjoying a sabbatical from his position at the University of Hawaii-Hilo this coming autumn, and expects to spend some time on the east coast.
Congratulations to Scott Moshen, who has been accepted to a graduate program in Political and Social Science at New School University.
Matthew Muth is currently working as a ceramic analyst for Animas Ceramic Consulting in Farmington, New Mexico. His consulting archaeology work is focused on analysis of a large Hohokam project and we hope that the innumerable pot sherds don't get him down.
Maribeth Nitschke was reportedly living in Los Angeles this winter, but has recently moved to San Francisco. She was investigating consulting archaeology work at last report.
Caitlin O'Neill spent several months this year in Hawai'i working on an organic farm.
Koren Pappas has lived in Portland, Oregon, for the past several years. She is currently working at the Quintana Native American art gallery and hopes to pursue an M.A. in education in the near future.
Jessica Reed spent much of the past year working on a large-scale consulting archaeology project near Pittsburgh. At present, she is reportedly back in the Albany area doing archaeology work.
Congratulations to Amy Salmon, who has been accepted to the Master's program in Social Work at Bryn Mawr College for this coming fall. Since her 2001 graduation, Amy has been working in Philadelphia as a social worker.
Sarai Schultz is working at Vermont Institutes for 1.5 years. She continues ski racing, Tae Kwon Do, and playing violin. She will be getting married in October.
Anna Smiles writes in from Washington, D.C., to report that she is working at the Legal Aid Society of D.C. coordinating the intake program and investigating for attorneys. She is very interested in experiential education and service learning, and has plans to go to graduate school in higher education/social justice education.
Debbie Stevens-Tuttle has been working as a research assistant in a neo-natal intensive care unit at Fletcher Allen Hospital. Aside from T.A.ing a physical anthropology lab class this spring, Debbie has been taking pre-med courses to prepare for a graduate program in physical anthropology.
Since her graduation, Nicole Sullivan has "been doing some deep thinking and searching." In January she decided to go to Ecuador to take Spanish classes and had plans to go to Peru to do volunteer work.
Rebecca Tarling continues in her position as an administrative assistant for the UVM Consulting Archaeology Program, but plans to begin graduate studies in education within a year or so.
Joshua Toney is spending his second summer this year in the Upper Xingu region of the Brazilian Amazon with Michael Heckenberger. Josh began his graduate studies in archaeology at the University of Florida in January 2003.
Corbett Torrence continues to make progress on his Ph.D. dissertation on mound-building Native Americans in Florida, while working as a teacher and consulting archaeologist in southern Florida.
Sarah Wilson is currently a graduate student in anthropology at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Although she is studying southwestern archaeology, she is still interested in northeastern archaeology as well.
Matt Wing was back in the Burlington area recently, taking a break from life in St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands.
Christopher Young lived for several years amongst the splendor of the Colorado Rockies. He moved to Eugene, Oregon, a year ago and is currently working all across the state as a consulting archaeologist.