Professionalization Of Archaeology Research Articles

Reconstructing the riverside of the Danube in the medieval city of Pest

AbstractIn early 2017, an astonishing number of archaeological finds were unearthed during the excavation of two sites in Molnár Street (Budapest), led by the archaeologists of the Budapest History Museum. As the construction works of a new hotel took place on a registered archaeological site, and historical monuments of the city were expected to be found, the presence of archaeological professionals became essential. Even though the location was inhabited for centuries, the early modern and medieval layers were found unaffected.Because of the nature of the site, the wet and muddy soil layers along the Danube provided a favourable environment for the preservation of organic materials and metals. As the climatic conditions in the Carpathian Basin are less favourable for the survival of organic material, the findings are very special both on a local and a broader regional level. In the Middle Ages, the Danube flowed over a much wider area than it does today. Today's embankment was often under water due to its proximity to the river, especially in the days before its regulation. The population, accustomed to the threat of spring floods, built their houses much further inland and along the river. Only urban landfills and, in safer times, ports and loading docks were established.The aim of this paper is to specify past ground levels along the river, and changes in the water levels as well as the path of the Danube, with the help of as many environmental archaeological methods as possible. Similar research was already conducted on Margaret Island, in Vác and in Visegrád, so this new case study is hoped to be a useful contribution to reconstructing past landscapes along the river.

Professionalization of Archaeology in the Alabama Museum of Natural History: 1929-1950

Professionalization of Archaeology in the Alabama Museum of Natural History: 1929-1950

Digital Archaeology and the Living Cherokee Landscape

Cherokee Landscapes is a digital conservation project to protect and preserve heritage in ways determined by Ani-Kitu Hwagi (Cherokee) stakeholders. This digital repatriation project requires new ways of visualizing archaeological information and geographically integrating Ani-Kitu Hwagi materials that are dispersed among many national and international institutions. The platform for Cherokee Landscapes is mbira, an open-source program developed by Michigan State University’s MATRIX: The Center for Digital Humanities and Social Sciences. Mbira, an interactive map interface, and other open-source programs offer novel ways of visualizing spatial data that benefit archaeological professionals and the public.

Incidental Archaeologists: French Officers and the Rediscovery of Roman North Africa by Bonnie Effros

Reviewed by: Incidental Archaeologists: French Officers and the Rediscovery of Roman North Africa by Bonnie Effros Eileen M. Angelini Effros, Bonnie. Incidental Archaeologists: French Officers and the Rediscovery of Roman North Africa. Cornell UP, 2018. ISBN 978-1-5017-0210-5. Pp. 371. Effros examines the previously understudied French military officers' fascination with the Roman remains they discovered in Algeria from 1830 to 1870 (the period immediately following the conquest of the Ottoman Regencies of Algiers and Constantine), and the resulting violence that arose out of their archaeological exploration, which led to the development of a new identity for French military and civilian settlers. In her introduction, "War and the Destruction of Antiquities in the Former Ottoman Empire," Effros sets the stage for her study by drawing a comparison between the current press given to the destruction of ancient archaeological sites in Syria and northern Iraq by Daesh and the lack of attention given by journalists to the fact that "for more than a century Europeans argued that these antiquities, and the monuments of which they were a part, had little or no value to the Arab inhabitants of the lands from which they were purchased, stolen, received as gifts, or taken by force" (1). She further elucidates how 1870 and 1880 legislation met with limited success in its efforts [End Page 263] to ban the export of ancient remains as well as to establish antiquities museums in Istanbul and Tunis. Yet, even more painful to learn in "Knowing and Controlling: Early Archaeological Exploration in the Algerian Colony" is that while these French colonizers were conducting their work, they destroyed the history of long-established Muslim communities, thereby establishing an odd combination of respect for the Maghreb's ancient past while violently suppressing and exploiting its nineteenth-century existence. Particularly relevant in "Envisioning the Future: French Generals' Use of Ancient Rome in the 1840s" is her demonstration of how the French believed that in learning from Roman successes and mistakes, they would achieve complete domination of the region. Across the chapters "The View from Ancient Lambaesis," "Institutionalizing Algerian Archaeology," and "Cartography and Field Archaeology during the Second Empire," Effros demonstrates that through their efforts to record the history of the ancient Romans, while at the same time persecuting the Arab and Berber inhabitants of colonial Algeria, the French sought to acquire knowledge at the expense of others in order to become European imperialists: "By the early 1850s, however, French archaeologists, a significant number of whom were by this point metropolitan scholars or civilian settlers rather than military officers, were content to claim that Arabs and Kabyles were entirely uninterested in Roman antiquities" (161). But Effros is deliberate in explaining the actual position of the Arabs and Kabyles: "Antiquities played an integral part in their daily lives, belief systems, and customs, as has been demonstrated in contemporary cases in other parts of the Mediterranean such as newly independent Greece" (161). Complementing her analysis of how the French conducted themselves in Algeria from 1830 to 1870 is her epilogue, "Classical Archaeology in Algeria after 1870," which underscores how French actions in Algeria contributed to the professionalization of archaeology in France. Eileen M. Angelini SUNY Empire State College Copyright © 2020 American Association of Teachers of French

Formal Learning About the Past in Schools in England

This paper explains how archaeology has been used to teach history to children in English schools, museums and heritage sites. We describe six successful schools-linked projects then focuses on the Young Archaeologists’ Club, which has over the past 40 years nurtured many members of today’s archaeology professionals. Finally, we consider how archaeology education practitioners can use what has been learnt in those projects to plan for a sustainable future.

The Past Is Male

ABSTRACTQuantitative analyses of how the past and archaeological professionals are being depicted in, for example, exhibitions and popular books offer valuable—and sometimes confronting—insights about how presentation practices continue to reflect gender stereotypes. It turns out that very often archaeology and the archaeological past are still almost exclusively associated with males and masculine activities. This, of course, distorts the truth about what actually happened in past societies. It also raises the questions of whether or not such biases have an influence on public participation in archaeology and if they may hinder the sector's ambition to foster inclusivity. In this article, we will share some of the preliminary results of an ongoing systematic evaluation of presentation practice in Dutch archaeology and on the public perception of gender stereotypes in the past.

The Efficacy and Analytical Importance of Manual Feature Extraction Using Lidar Datasets

ABSTRACTThe availability of lidar datasets has led to several advances in archaeology, notably in the process of site prospection. Some remote sensing practitioners have aimed to create automated feature extraction (AFE) techniques that increase the efficiency and efficacy of identification and analysis. While these advances have been successful, many archaeological professionals who might have an interest in lidar-derived products do not have the technical experience to modify or create AFE techniques for particular regions or environments. Additionally, some features are not appropriate for AFE. Instead, the most widely used technique is still likely to be visually based manual feature identification. Using authors of different experience levels, we seek to evaluate the use of manual techniques for feature identification and subsequent analysis by implementing a publicly available lidar-derived digital elevation model (DEM). We demonstrate that manual feature extraction (MFE) can be accurate when more than one researcher is involved in a sort of “checks and balances” process. We also show that the use of confidence ratings can be an important part of this process if those ratings have some systematic and clearly defined underpinning. Finally, we argue, using a case study from American Samoa, that manually identified features can be analytically important as part of larger landscape studies.

Achieving Professional Credentials: South Korean Archaeology and University Degrees (1945–1979)

The professionalization of archaeology is an understudied research topic in the history of South Korean archaeology. Literature on the subject has so far focused on the mechanisms that separate amateurs from professional archaeologists—in other words on the academic recognition and the credential system of the discipline. However, researchers have not considered the effect those mechanisms have on the social organization of the field. This paper claims that university degrees are not only important elements in the professionalization of archaeology, but also mechanisms of social organization within the field itself. The study of archaeological education and training in South Korea from 1945 to 1979 shows how academic education and degrees affected the subject, creating social networks and different positions in the field represented by different specializations within it. In order to study this process, this article focuses on Seoul National University’s Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, the first of its kind in South Korea.

Awkwardness of becoming a boundary object: Mangle and materialities of reports, documentation data, and the archaeological work

ABSTRACTInformation about an archaeological investigation is documented in an archaeological report, which makes it the boundary object par excellence for archaeological information work across stakeholder communities such as field archaeologists, heritage managers, and land developers. The quality of reports has been a subject of debate, and recently it has been argued that more emphasis should be placed on making primary research data at least similarly available. This study explores the changing materialities and reciprocal formation of documents and their users with the advent of digitization, and how documents form and lose their status as boundary objects in these processes. The study posits that in order to be functional, a boundary object needs to provide a disclosure that makes it accessible to cognate communities. Further, it shows how assumptions about the functioning of the human and nonhuman (material artifacts) influence the ways in which archaeologists conceptualize the preservation and archiving of archaeological information and the role and potential of different types of digital and paper-based documents. This article is based on an interview study of Swedish archaeology professionals (N = 16) with theoretical underpinnings in the notions of boundary objects, mangle of practice, and disclosure.

Turismo y arqueología. Una mirada histórica a una relación silenciada

The Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries saw the development of the professionalization of archaeology and also the emergence of government interest in the tourism industry. Researchers have analyzed these two phenomena as if they were separate processes; the first centered on increased knowledge of the national past and the second focused on the economic benefit brought by leisure activities. This paper analyzes whether these two developments, archaeological tourism and the professionalization of archeology, have actually evolved independently of each other. Preliminary research suggests that they have not, at least in some countries, especially in those with monumental ruins. This paper analyzes the possible relationship between these developments and the extent to which they are connected, first to nationalism and more recently to commodification.

Prehistoric stone tools, chess expertise, and cognitive evolution: An experiment about recognizing features in flint debitage

Prehistoric stone tool knapping was an expert skill. This experiment was a cognitively demanding test of modern day knappers using an adaptation of the classic Chase and Simon paradigm from chess expertise (where chess experts/novices are briefly exposed to chess positions and later asked to recall the patterns). Here, pieces of flint debitage were used instead of chess pieces, and it was a recognition test rather than recall. Expertise was measured by social status and questionnaire. Three participant groups were tested (archaeology professionals, students, and nonexperts) in 15 trials each, each comprising four tasks: (1) sorting task, (2) exposure, (3) sorting task, and (4) recognition task. The sorting task (interference) required participants to sort flint debitage by size into different buckets. In the exposure task, the experimenter showed the participant three types of rock (flakes, miscellaneous rocks, cores) seriatim for 2 seconds each. The recognition task required that the participant attempt to identify previously seen rocks on three tables (flakes, miscellaneous, and cores tables). Experts performed significantly better than students and non-experts. Post-session interviews revealed a diversity of strategies, suggesting that increased expertise enhanced perception. This result parallels chess expert studies, and template theory in chess might apply to knappers.

Africa’s Fragile Heritages: Introduction

African cultural heritage is of immediate concern to those of us who work on the archaeology of the continent. In comparison with the situation elsewhere, heritage infrastructure in African countries is often in its early stages; as archaeologists, we have a moral and practical interest in seeing that infrastructure develop (Alexander 2011; Lozny 2006). In addition, attention to African heritage reveals insights that can allow a re-evaluation of principles and best practice developed elsewhere, giving a crucial perspective on supposedly universal discourses of global heritage. It was with this in mind that ‘Africa’s Fragile Heritages: Future Challenges’ was designed. The workshop was held at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge, October 1–3, 2009. The problems of conserving the sites and landscapes on which archaeologists depend, as well as conserving remains and artefacts for the future, fall into a sphere of work that can sometimes be isolated from the work of archaeologists. It was hoped that dialogue between heritage and archaeological professionals would encourage engagement from each side with the concerns and priorities of the other. Attention to heritage also necessitates consideration of other interest groups, including the public to whom the past is being presented (both tourists and local communities), the international heritage infrastructure, and the politics and priorities of individual countries. We deliberately chose to draw attention to the fragility of Africa’s diverse heritages. As many of the participants at the workshop underlined, heritage and culture are rarely among the top priorities of national and international policy; this is particularly the case for many African countries. As emphasised by Phillipson (2003: 3):

Analytical information horizon maps

Sonnenwald, D.H. (1999) introduced information horizons as a theoretical framework for information behavior. Later, she and her colleagues developed a data-gathering method based on information horizons theory and user-drawn information horizon maps. The method provides a good basis for in-depth discussions and complements interviewing as a way to gather data. Based on interview records of Finnish and Swedish archaeology professionals, researchers drew diagrams called analytical information horizon maps with the purpose of structuring, describing and analyzing typical information behaviors related to the work roles of the interviewed individuals. The findings indicate that the analytical information horizon maps provide a practicable and qualitatively valid means to visualize, communicate, and structure individual and shared patterns of use of the information resources and the organization of information activity.

Supply, demand and a failure of understanding: addressing the culture clash between archaeologists' expectations for training and employment in ‘academia’ versus ‘practice’

A university degree is effectively a prerequisite for entering the archaeological workforce in the UK. Archaeological employers consider that new entrants to the profession are insufficiently skilled, and hold university training to blame. But university archaeology departments do not consider it their responsibility to deliver fully formed archaeological professionals, but rather to provide an education that can then be applied in different workplaces, within and outside archaeology. The number of individuals studying archaeology at university exceeds the total number working in professional practice, with many more new graduates emerging than archaeological jobs advertised annually. Over-supply of practitioners is also a contributing factor to low pay in archaeology. Steps are being made to provide opportunities for vocational training, both within and outside the university system, but archaeological training and education within the universities and subsequently the archaeological labour market may be adversely impacted upon by the introduction of variable top-up student fees.

Alice B. Kehoe;, Mary Beth Emmerichs (Editors). Assembling the Past: Studies in the Professionalization of Archaeology. (Based on papers presented at the First Joint Archaeological Congress, 6 January 1989, and the American Anthropological Association annual meeting, 16 November 1989, Washington, D.C.) viii + 241 pp., bibls., index. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1999. $49.95.

Alice B. Kehoe;, Mary Beth Emmerichs (Editors). <i>Assembling the Past: Studies in the Professionalization of Archaeology</i>. (Based on papers presented at the First Joint Archaeological Congress, 6 January 1989, and the American Anthropological Association annual meeting, 16 November 1989, Washington, D.C.) viii + 241 pp., bibls., index. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1999. $49.95.

Assembling the past: Studies in the professionalization of archaeology

Assembling the past: Studies in the professionalization of archaeology

Assembling the past: Studies in the professionalization of archaeology

Assembling the past: Studies in the professionalization of archaeology

Assembling the Past: Studies in the Professionalization of Archaeology. Alice B. Kehoe and Mary Beth Emmerichs, editors. 1999. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque. 241 pp. $49.95 (cloth), ISBN 0-8263-1939-4.

Assembling the Past: Studies in the Professionalization of Archaeology. Alice B. Kehoe and Mary Beth Emmerichs, editors. 1999. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque. 241 pp. $49.95 (cloth), ISBN 0-8263-1939-4. - Volume 67 Issue 1

Assembling the Past: Studies in the Professionalization of Archaeology:Assembling the Past: Studies in the Professionalization of Archaeology.

Assembling the Past: Studies in the Professionalization of Archaeology:Assembling the Past: Studies in the Professionalization of Archaeology.

Neolithic Society in Greece:Neolithic Society in Greece.

Assembling the Past: Studies in the Professionalization of Archaeology. Alice B. Kehoe and Mary Beth Emmerichs. eds. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1999. 241 pp.