2001 Workshops: Introduction and Welcome from Anne Pyburn
…that I need to add a few minutes in for opening remarks. Among the things that I find that I don't like about design forms are opening remarks. I hate opening remarks; I hate listening to opening remarks. They always sound so hollow, and the worst part about it is that now that I'm in this position: I really mean it! Welcome to Bloomington and thank you for coming.
Lots of people's dreams and ideas and plans and research are behind this workshop. Not the least of whom is George Smith, who we miss, who is certainly here in spirit, not in person. And in fact his spirit is making me feel guilty this morning, because if George was here, he would begin the way we should begin —with the history of the task force and the history of the curriculum development project and I am bad at that tradition and I am bad ritual and I am not going to do that. So, in absentia, I apologize to George, we're making only one historical point this morning at the beginning, and that is the thing that I think will carry us through the day. I think it's the thing in reality that got us the grant and the thing that also makes us want do this and that is that we are here because our discipline asks us to do this. That wonderful survey that Dorothy Krass did asking the people in the discipline if they felt they needed to change their undergraduate curricula: The people who had time to answer it, answered yes we need this stuff, but we don't have time, help us. So that's why you're here: it's to give help to our discipline.
Now, I admit that it wasn't very much fun to write this grant, at least some parts of it. But, in reality, the more I develop as an archaeologist, the more interested I get in the way that the frame of the question determines how the question gets answered. In truth, George and I had a spectacular amount of fun framing this workshop, because we got to pick you out. And I stand guilty of the accusation of having looked around this discipline and picked out all the people that I admire in life the most to be here. And the most astonishing and exciting thing for me that I just realized yesterday, is that every single person that George and I picked out is in this room. There was a little trepidation in the middle, but in the end…a couple of people are late: Trudy Banta and Susan Bender are going to be in the room a bit later. But every body is here; all the people we picked out are here. So that's really exciting, that's really heady for me. Now, my job as I've said all along is as facilitator for this. What I wanted to do is make the most comfortable frame that has enough structure in it for us to actually accomplish something but not so much structure that people find themselves resisting the structure in order to do what they want to do. If I knew what I wanted you people to produce, well I wouldn't need you. So, I tried to be as open and loose about this as was feasible. And now I realize that my real job is to get out of the way. But I cannot resist making three points. I want to make three points about things that I hope are going to carry throughout our conversation because these are points about curriculum that are very important to me and my personal motivation for doing this. And the first one is: I am concerned about what I see as what I call for shorthand as the mind-body dualism in our field. That is, the distinction that we have between the people who do archaeology and the people who think about archaeology. And because there is that, look to for examples where professionalization has already taken hold in an admirable way on the one hand; on the other hand these disciplines, I believe, have a problem with this mind-body dualism. For example, in England, it's part of the political economy that blue-collar people do archaeology and white-collar people think about it; and you may not agree with me that that's a bad thing, but I'm going to encourage you to keep thinking about whether or not that's a bad thing as we go forth, because I think it might be a bad thing.
Second of all, I think we have to stop training students to be archaeologists, I think we have to stop training students to be curators, we have to stop training them to be contractors, I think we have to start thinking about education as not training people to be something but training people to use archaeology to do something. So, from my freshman now I more and more push my students to answer the question from the beginning of their educational career: what do you want to do in the world? What do you plan to do with your life…that you are going to use archaeology to accomplish that? Are you worried about the hunger? Are you worried about peace? Are you worried about the environment? Ok, that's a good reason to learn how to make a really good map! That's a reason to learn how to read Marx and understand what he was talking about! And that gives a motive and a thrust to becoming something beyond just to be.
And finally, I want us to bear in mind as we go along that I think our most important constituency for these curricula that we are creating, these courses that we are creating, are not the people who are going to be archaeologists. I agree that we are aiming this at majors in many ways and I agree that we need to do a better job of the training and the professionalization in our discipline. But there are never going to be enough archaeologists to carry an election; and there are never going to be enough archaeologists to raise enough money to lobby Congress in a real useful way. So, the people that we really need to reach with this really good curriculum and great classes are the voting public. People who are not majors; or the people that although they may be majors are not really planning to be archaeologists or anthropologists. I think we have an advantage here, I mean how many people take physics as an elective? Lots of people take archaeology because it's fun, because it's inviting, because it's interesting. We may hate Indiana Jones but he is a good P.R., and we can use that to teach about archaeology, about preservation, but also about science and also about thinking.
Quickly, I want to say that we all are going to be recorded. We have students, graduate students, from IU who are here in charge of watching over the recording machine and taking notes. And there will be a transcript from these meetings available to everybody, but I will not make anything public until you get your hands on the transcript and you change it to say whatever is it you wish you said. That's fine with me.
This is not a legal proceeding; I am not trying to get it down to the absolute truth of what you say; I am trying to get it down to just of what we want, to go on record. But two of the students who are recording us, I just want to point out that since we are all archaeologists in the room there will be a lot of, you know, rude cultural anthropologists' jokes…well, a couple of those students are cultural anthropologists, so be careful! This morning the graduate student that's beginning with us is Alfredo Minetti who is a graduate student in the Archaeology and Social Context program here, but he is also Uruguayan. And I bring that up because I want to point out that although everything we are doing here is framed by the United States, is framed for US students, that when this stuff goes off on the Web, people from all over the world will be able to see it, will be able to use it; and probably need it. So, we should bear that in mind as we go forward. Ok, and now I really am going to get out of the way. I think we probably need to go around to do briefly, introductions, although people mostly have their nametags and most of us know each other. I guess I will ask everybody to say their name and good morning. And I just want to close by saying welcome to Bloomington and thank you.
- Good morning, my name is Rick Elia and I teach in the archaeology department at Boston University.
- Good morning I am Tobi Brimsek and I'm SAA's executive director.
- Good morning I'm Ed Neal from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
- And I'm Vin Steponaitis from the same place.
- I'm Glenn Doran, Florida State University.
- Joe Schuldenrein from Geoarchaeology Research Associates
- Good morning, my name is Joe Watkins; I'm the other Joe in the room. I guess we are as common as people say we are! (Glenn Doran: - neither of you are common). I work for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, South West Archaeology
- Liz Kryder-Reid and I'm at the other Indiana University, the one on the Indianapolis campus, which is hooked with Purdue giving us the wonderful IUPUI. And in the anthropology department I teach North American Prehistory but my main work is Director of Museum Studies.
- Jeanne Sept here at IU.
- Good morning I am Shereen Lerner, from (Winston) College, Arizona
- I'm Skip Messenger, a lot of people know me as Phyllis' husband. I teach Anthropology and Archaeology at Hamline University.
- I'm Susan Myster also from Hamline University and I'm primarily a biological anthropologist
- I'm Maria Franklin, UT – Austin
- Bill Lipe, Washington State University and also associated with the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center in Colorado.
- Good morning, I'm Lynne Sebastian, I work for Statistical Research Incorporated which despite the name is actually a CRM consulting firm, at Tucson, Arizona
- Good morning, my name is Dean Snow and I'm at Penn State
- I'm Frances Hayashida I'm also at Penn State
- Hi, I'm Erin, the infamous Erin, I'm Anne's student in the Social Context here; I'm a second year graduate student.
- Hi, I'm Bob Atkins; I'm an undergraduate here at IU. (Anne's comment: he is going to observe what we have to say about undergraduates) (Ruth Tringham's comment: I'm not feeling nervous sitting next to an undergraduate)
- My name is Ruth Tringham, I'm from UC Berkeley
- Rosemary Joyce, also from UC Berkeley
- Good morning, I'm Liz Brumfiel from Albion College
- I'm K. D. Vitelli, also from IU
I'm Nancy White, I apologize for being late, I flunked the first archaeology test of reading the map of the hotel, I won't do that again, I'm from the University of South Florida, Tampa.