#small finds

[eccentricrachel]

Bronze wire bracelets, based off of a 2nd century CE find in Vindolanda (SF9025, fig. 4.6, p. 139-140 in The Roman Jewellery from Vindolanda: Research Reports, New Series Volume IV, Fascicule V: Beads, Intaglios, Finger Rings, Ear-rings & Bracelets by Barbara Birley and Elizabeth Greene, 2006).

The original bracelet dates to Vindolanda’s period IV, c. 105-120 CE. There are also several extant finger rings of this 6-loop style from different sites around England.

[eccentricrachel]

I am having vastly too much fun with Anthropeum.

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[moocowmoocow]

Teeth that bite like candy spikes Gnaw away the pain Fur that flies on bony lines Claw my way to sane Got a face like a rundown tragedy Could you love me all the same? Let's run until the sun goes down Until it fades away

[cursedswicken]

Hummingbird moth!

[oldandstriped]

Slow and Small Archaeology: Some Thoughts

Recently I got into a twitter-conversation with Sean Graham &  Bill Caraher about Slow Archaeology. Sean had written a blog post “Slow Archaeology?” in response to Bill’s chapter (starts on pg 21) Slow Archaeology: Technology, Efficiency, and Archaeological Work , Bill responded on his blog Preliminary Thoughts on Digital Practices in Archaeology.  I believe that Sean and Bill have been working on a few projects together of which I know nothing, I just jumped in to a twitter-convo without knowing the background.  Nor have I ever met either Bill nor Sean, we are just tweeple - who haven’t [yet] interacted in the real world. In a weak moment I suggested I might write my own blog post, and Bill tweeted some interest in such a thing. So here it is.

I don’t pretend to be a ‘digital archaeologist’ - I can’t even figure out how to link to the twitter exchange we had.  But I am an archaeologist that collects data and a librarian that digitizes and thinks more deeply than most about metadata, catalog structure, taxonomy, typology, and how to use them properly to get my research ‘out there’. I think this little exchange resonated with me because for several reasons I have been really feeling the slowness of my archaeological experiences and practices. I’ll elaborate a little below upon this.

I’ll just say that if anyone practices slow, its me. It took me twenty years to finish my PhD, although some of the delays in the last years were not entirely my fault, and it took some time to recover. I work full time, 11 months out of the year as a librarian, with very little time beyond nights, weekends and vacation time to devote to archaeology. But everyone has a work/life balance issue, and I have managed to get a lot of digging and studying of artifacts done, I’ve collected a lot of data, and false-started many drafts of chapters and articles over the past decades, and I did make tenure. While I’ve managed to give a lot of conference papers, and travel most years to archaeological digs, what I haven’t done is get a lot published. This has been weighing on me lately as start the process toward applying for promotion. The fact is, its not [always] me, its archaeology. The structure of archaeological publication is SLOW, and in my circumstance it’s really damn slow.

While archaeological publishing structures are slow, there are other systems and structures gumming up the works, including power and control and hierarchy - and I think also gender, money and status. Perhaps I just enumerated what’s wrong with the whole world, and we should just work to forward the revolution. But in the meantime, I’d like to get some of my research out the door so people can read it and I can move onto new projects!

I am not the director of a excavation project, I am a specialist. I’ve been working on digs in Jordan, Syria and Turkey since 1995. While I have been a field archaeologist at most of the sites I’ve worked upon, including digging some gnarly trenches, I have also been studying tiny things that some would consider more decorative than utilitarian, also known as “small finds”, mainly figurines, beads and pendants. I’ve been recently considering the implications and structures in place for small finds, and how they do and do not fit into how we study material culture and determine what is diagnostic to a particular culture.  I gave a talk called Discoverability of Small Things BANEA-Glasgow and I’ll give another talk titled ‘Doing’ Small Finds at TAG-Toronto.

OK- im tired, I’ll finish this post tomorrow.

12/2018 Update - I never did finish this post BUT looking forward to TAG-Syracuse 2019 - which has Slow Archaeology as the main theme

[laukdown]

[lostornaments]

Small find labels are now available should you want to help with the collection. These print out on an 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper, Cut along or between the lines. They are too large to fit in a tiny 2x3 small find bag so you will have to fold it (upper left). They fit fine in a 3 x4 small find bag (upper right). You can use a pencil or ultra fine point sharpie (the two main tools of the archaeologist) to fill out the form, please leave the last line "#___________" blank for me to fill in. Please email me at elbelcher [at] gmail [dot] com if you want to join the survey team.

For this project, 'ornament' is broadly conceived.  It can be the traditional small adornment of the human body and garments, e.g., button, bead, sequin, earring, It can also be an object of ornamentation of an object, animal, vehicle or structure. Perhaps its an object not originally intended as an ornament, but can have a secondary function as one because it bears a perforation.

One restriction is size, it should be a size that could go unnoticed by most and tiny or small enough to fit in a 3 x 4 small find bag.