Category Archives: International

A graduate student’s musings on the NEH and NEA

by Genevieve Everett

By: Genevieve Everett

The arts and humanities have always meant a great deal to me as I was lucky enough to be raised in an environment in which expressing oneself was done through painting or drawing in or outside the lines. As a child, my mother and grandmother both took me to as many museums in Delaware and eastern Pennsylvania as they could. All of these experiences opened my eyes to the world around me. However, it wasn’t until fourth grade that I found a way to express myself. Fourth grade was the year when students were given the opportunity to pick out the instrument of their choice and get weekly music lessons from the school music teacher. No, I did not go to a fancy private school, on the contrary, I went to PUBLIC school where my education was FREE. I still remember the day my mother took me to the school cafeteria to pick out the instrument that I would end up playing for nine straight years, the clarinet. This is going to sound real cliché, but music made me who I am today. I struggled with attention deficit disorder as a kid, but still managed to do well in school, because I found something that I excelled in and enjoyed. I credit my interest in the arts and humanities to those music teachers that taught us to tap our feet in time to the music, to the women in my life that showed me that the past is part of the present, and the history, anthropology/archaeology teachers that broadened my understanding of the world.

You may be asking yourself, “why did she just go off on that tangent about music and art and history?” Well, without the arts and humanities, I would not be where I am today: a graduate student studying applied archaeology. The things I listed above, the experiences, especially learning to play an instrument cannot be directly attributed to the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) or the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), but the federal recognition of importance of the arts and humanities in the 1960’s created programs that would affect millions of Americans and American institutions for years to come.

Okay, a little background information on the NEH and NEA…

The NEH and NEA were established as federal agencies by President Lyndon B. Johnson on September 29, 1965 in response to a 1964 finding that, “the emphasis placed on science endangered the study of the humanities from elementary schools through postgraduate programs”. The 1960’s were a time of civil unrest, and the American people began to question the status quo. The civil rights movement was in full force, the first real talks around human impacts on the environment were being seriously discussed, and people recognized that the arts and humanities were not getting their fair share. Since the implementation of the NEH and NEA, it has not all been smooth sailing. The agencies have experienced drastic cuts throughout their 50 + year tenure. Now in 2017 the NEH and NEA are facing similar cuts under the new administration. So, we tell ourselves, “oh, no big deal, they’ll bounce back just like they have in the past.” WRONG. The new administration wants to cut federal spending by $10 trillion dollars, and the NEH and NEA are low on the totem pole when it comes to funding priorities under a conservative agenda.

What does this have to do with archaeology? While archaeology is technically considered a science (whether social or a ‘true’ science, it is a highly debatable within archaeology), it still falls in the ranks of the humanities, such as history and social studies. The NEH provides grants to archaeological or closely related archaeological projects. For example, Sustaining Cultural Heritage Collections is one of the NEH grants created to help, “cultural institutions meet the complex challenge of preserving large and diverse holdings of humanities materials for future generations by supporting sustainable conservation measures”. It is projects like this that protect cultural resources from destruction and deterioration. Although having little do to with archaeology, a project that uses art for the betterment of the American people is the NEA Military Healing Arts Partnership which, “supports creative art therapy programs to help our nation’s wounded, ill, and injured service members and their families in their recovery, reintegration or transition to civilian life”. Without the NEH and NEA, projects such as these will fall by the wayside, and the arts and humanities, including archaeology will suffer.

If you are reading this, and are a concerned citizen just as I am, you can sign this petition: Do not defund the NEA or NEH AND speak to your state and local representatives.

 

Material referenced:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/30/arts/design/donald-trump-arts-humanities-public-television.html

https://www.neh.gov/about/history

Image:

NEA and NEH logo image

 

PCSS Conference

by Genevieve Everett

By: Genevieve Everett

This past weekend I drove out to Harrisburg for the 63rd annual Pennsylvania Council for Social Studies (PCSS) conference. The conference theme this year was “Creating Global Citizens Through Issues Focused Instruction”.

Part of my public archaeology assistantship is to go to this conference to present to social studies teachers from all over the state. My contribution to the conference was a presentation on “The Crisis in Archaeological and Cultural Heritage in the Middle East”. The first question I asked my audience, “have any of you taught arpcss-conferencechaeology in your classrooms?” was received with side-glances and heads awkwardly turning to look at their neighbor to see if they had taught the subject. I took that as a resounding, “NO”. From there I began to discuss cultural heritage destruction, and back that up with several case studies. I began with two based in the Middle East concerning the Giant Buddha’s of Bamiyan Province in Afghanistan and Palmyra in Syria. These are two examples of religiously motivated destruction of cultural resources and heritage, but I didn’t want my audience to think that this only happens in the Middle East. I wanted to drive home that the destruction of cultural resources and heritage is a global issue. Not all destruction is religiously motivated, we also see looting and selling of antiquities on the black market in economically depressed countries, and individuals that loo

giant-buddhas

Giant Buddha of Bamiyan

t sites for their own personal collections. I continued to explain context and its importance in archaeology. When artifacts and features are looted, broken or completely destroyed, they lose their meaning and interpretive value. I ended the discussion by talking about Sarah Parcak, the satellite archaeologist that is using satellite imagery to compare maps over time that show increased looting, especially in Egypt. Parcak hopes to use these maps to prevent further looting of sites worldwide. Did I mention she is my hero? To read more about her research follow the link below!

looting

Two satellite images depicting increased looting holes at a site in Egypt between 2009 and 2012

My main goal at this conference was to get these teachers interested (and excited) in incorporating archaeology into their curriculum by providing resources that they can use in their classroom. One such lesson plan called, “Trash Talk” has students examine modern trash the way that archaeologists look at trash pits to make inferences about the people that were using the objects, and how they were used. I even found a lesson plan pertaining to context, which I will provide a link to below. I had fantastic social studies and history teachers growing up, but I do not recall being taught archaeology at all. I hope that my presentation opened the eyes of some of these teachers, veterans and newbies to a new way of presenting the past to their students.

Links:

Sarah Parcak- National Geographic fellow and satellite archaeologist

Context exercise

 

International Archaeology Day 2016

by Genevieve Everett

By: Genevieve Everett

International Archaeology Day is upon us! Saturday, October 15th to be exact. Get excited!! Dr. Lara and I have been meeting weekly to discuss logistics, and reaching out to undergraduate and graduate students to get involved. Some of you have participated in the past, and for some of you it’s your first time. Our event will include Historic and Prehistoric archaeology, a GPR demo, flintknapping, Zooarch, a kids table, and much more!open-house-flyer-16-1

This is our chance to show the community what we know, and why archaeology is important, and connects us to the past. It is not only our duty to educate the community, but make it fun at the same time. If we just put a bunch of artifacts on a table and tell our guests what they are and where they came from, that isn’t interesting or fun. We as archaeologists know that they are interesting, but how can we make them come alive?

We can ask people to come to Archaeology Day, even bribe them with snacks, but we want them to walk away saying, “Wow, that was really cool! I want to get involved in my local archaeology chapter” or “I am changing majors tomorrow”. Most importantly, we want them to walk away thinking that archaeological sites are a valuable resource that should be protected. Now, I know that isn’t going to happen with everyone, but that is how we should think about this day. It’s an opportunity to show the public why we do what we do.

We look forward to seeing you all there!

The Bronze Age in Northern Vietnam

by Genevieve Everett

By: Francis Allard

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Bronze artifact from Hanoi

During the month of July, I spent one week in Hanoi (Vietnam) with a colleague who teaches at another university. Our objective was to meet with archaeologists at the Institute of Archaeology of Vietnam to discuss the establishment of a new project that focuses on the development of Bronze Age societies in northern Vietnam, from the earliest evidence of bronze metallurgy in that area (in about 1200 BCE) to the last centuries of the first millennium BCE (at which point large complex bronzes such as drums were being manufactured). Although I’ve worked mostly in southern China since the 1990s, I’ve also made multiple trips to northern Vietnam over the past 25 years. My interest in the archaeology of that area is in fact not surprising, since these two adjoining areas (southern China and northern Vietnam) share many cultural traits with one another.

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Dog with a 2,000 year old decorated brick (village near Hanoi, Vietnam)

While in Vietnam, my colleague and I also met with a number of archaeologists at universities and museums, visits which resulted in us gaining access to over 20 bronze artifacts or fragments dating to the period we’re interested in. As you can see in the photos, it’s possible (and sometimes preferable) to work with incomplete artifacts or even small fragments (as long as we know which type of artifact it came from). We were given permission to take these objects out of Vietnam and are planning to conduct XRF (X-ray fluorescence) analysis on them to determine their copper, tin and lead content, information that can then be used to understand how knowledge of metallurgy was transmitted among craft specialists and adapted to meet local conditions. Following the completion of the XRF analysis, our plan it to return to Vietnam to do the same with additional bronze objects and to discuss with our Vietnamese colleagues the future expansion of the project to include field activities.