Past Seminars

Dr. Edward A. Jolie, RPA, is the director of the Perishable Artifact Laboratory at Mercyhurst University, one of only a handful of labs globally that specializes in the documentation and analysis of perishable material culture such as string, textiles, baskets, nets, and footwear. His scholarly interests include the archaeology of the Americas (with particular reference to the western U.S.), sociocultural diversity in the past and present, perishable material culture worldwide, Native American-Anthropologist relationships, and ethics in anthropology. Being of mixed Oglala Lakota (Sioux) and Hodulgee Muscogee ancestry, and an enrolled citizen of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation of Oklahoma, he strives to cultivate collaborative relationships and research partnerships with descendant communities.

Perishable material culture, including items such as string, nets, baskets, mats, footwear, and clothing, has been critical to human lives and livelihoods for tens of millennia, but has historically suffered from a lack of scholarly attention owing to the biases of preservation and gender. This seminar introduces participants to the diversity of perishable material culture that they may encounter in field and museum settings and provides a foundation for pursuing more intensive research on these objects. The instructor will place particular emphasis on the essential knowledge required for the proper recognition, handling, basic analysis, and documentation of perishable artifacts.

1. Improve knowledge of the recognition and proper handling of perishable material culture.
2. Explore the basic structural and analytical attributes of the major technological classes of perishable material culture.
3. Establish the basics of perishable artifact analysis and documentation.

Gabriela Oré Menéndez is a doctoral candidate at Vanderbilt University. She has been the social media co-chair of SAA's Queer Archaeology Interest Group and one of the webmasters of the Queer Archaeology web page since 2017. She has given invited talks at universities in Peru and the United States on the topic of Queer Archaeology. She has developed and given workshops and syllabi for complete courses for the undergraduate level on Queer Theory and Anthropology.

Queer Archaeology is a way to question the approach and biases of the discipline of archaeology. The topic has regained traction twenty years after the publication of the journal of World Archaeology special issue on Queer Archaeologies. This one hour-long seminar will discuss how to apply the concepts of Queer Theory to archaeological contexts and how to make archaeological practice more welcoming to folks from all genders and sexualities.

The Rising Scholars seminars are opportunities to learn from students and early career archaeologists as they share their current research or emerging methods and theories.

Carol Patterson has 20 years experience teaching rock art recording field schools. She learned the techniques while a PhD candidate attending a rock art field school in Australia in 1998. In the United States, she co-taught with Dr. Alan Watchman several 3- 5 day field schools, offering college credit to students and free tuition to Native students. These classes included participation by members of the Northern Ute, the Wanapum tribe in eastern Washington, and the Southern Ute tribe in Colorado. Over the decades, Dr. Patterson has continued to conduct rock art documenting sessions in the field and annually teaches classes in university classroom settings at Colorado University at Denver, Metropolitan State College, and Mesa State University. She also conducts rock art recording for Colorado Archaeological Society chapters, Program for Avocational Archaeological Certification classes, rock art research groups, and site steward volunteers.

Learn a simple and efficient way to record rock art without expensive equipment, suffering in extreme temperatures, or fighting difficult lighting conditions. This method uses digital systematic photography on site, and then processing and drawing the digital images. The instructor will use examples from many different field schools, with challenging geographic locations to guide you through the process, demonstrating how to draw exactly what is there. This can be easy, fast, and fun, with low-tech materials that yield high-tech illustrations. The instructor will also emphasize the need for Native partnerships in understanding what information is important to collect from their perspective and what future researchers need to create multi-cultural, user-friendly rock art databases.

1. Learn how to produce the most accurate reproduction of prehistoric rock engravings and paintings possible with systematic documentation.
2. Explain how to record rock art within the context of the surrounding resources, like water/springs, edible plants, game trails, eco-zones, and archaeological features.
3. Identify threats to the images including natural weathering, spalling areas, and human threats.
4. See how to photograph the viewscapes to place the panel within the context of the rock formation, and surrounding land features.

Mary Beth Trubitt has worked in Cultural Resource Management and academia, and for the last twenty years has served as a research station archaeologist for the Arkansas Archeological Survey. She has written archaeological reports and has read many more of them, and brings a perspective on what makes reports interesting to write and useful to read. In 2020, Trubitt concludes a term as editor for Southeastern Archaeology and begins a term as editor for Caddo Archeology Journal.

It may seem overwhelming to sort through the details of archaeological fieldwork and artifact analyses and sit down to write the technical report. Just as you need a plan for investigations, you need a plan for summarizing the results. This seminar will provide archaeologists with strategies and resources to organize and write a technical report that will provide readers with the necessary information.

1. Identify the audiences for your technical report and the information they expect
2. Discover helpful resources for organizing and supporting your report
3. Learn some do’s and don’ts for better writing technical reports

Carla Hadden is an Assistant Research Scientist in the Radiocarbon Dating Laboratory at the University of Georgia Center for Applied Isotope Studies. Dr. Hadden specializes in radiocarbon dating, environmental archaeology, and zooarchaeology, and is an Associate Editor for Radiocarbon, the main international journal of record for research articles relevant to radiocarbon techniques. She regularly publishes on radiocarbon method development and archaeological applications in high-impact journals such as Science Advances, American Antiquity, and Radiocarbon, and is regularly called upon to peer review manuscript submissions on radiocarbon dating and Bayesian chronological modeling in archaeology.

Bayesian chronological modeling revolutionized chronology building in archaeology. It provided a robust mathematical framework for incorporating all the dating information available, including radiocarbon dates, stratigraphy, artifact typologies, and the written historical record. The purpose of this seminar is to provide archaeologists with an introduction to the key concepts, assumptions, and terminology used in Bayesian chronological modeling; an overview of the basic structures and applications of age models; and an introduction to the “iterative approach” to sample selection and chronological modeling. We will introduce the audience to the several software options available for age modeling (OxCal, BCal, and various packages implemented in R) and compare their pros and cons. We will not provide a step-by-step “how to” for constructing models in any one program, but participants will receive a workbook and “quick start” guide for modeling in OxCal. This course will enable participants to understand and evaluate age models that they encounter in archaeological literature; will provide a necessary foundation for those interested in exploring how Bayesian models could contribute to their own projects; and will provide resources for those who wish to learn more about constructing chronological models. The intended audience includes those who have no previous experience in Bayesian chronological modeling.

1. Understand the basic terminology related to Bayesian chronological modeling, e.g., event; phase; sequence; boundary; MCMC; prior probability; posterior probability; likelihood; parameter; convergence; agreement
2. Evaluate and interpret model outputs
3. Understand and follow the conventions for reporting modeled dates in technical reports and scientific journals