Past Seminars

Michael T. Searcy, PhD, RPA has worked as an archaeologist in the Greater Southwest for the last 15 years in both academia and contract settings. He is currently an assistant professor of archaeology at Brigham Young University in the Department of Anthropology. Over the past five years, he and his colleague have been integrating drones into their research, including studies based in Mexico and Utah. They have also been working to refine UAV methods using multiple drone formats.

Scott M. Ure, MA is a research archaeologist for the Department of Anthropology at Brigham Young University and has worked at a variety of sites in the Great Basin, American Southwest, Middle East, and Mexico for 18 years. He is an FAA certified UAV pilot and has operated several different multi-rotor and fixed-wing unmanned aerial systems domestically and internationally for five years.

This course is designed to provide basic information on the use of drones in archaeological mapping and other field contexts. Instructors will explore some of the variables that have to be considered in the planning, pre-flight, flight, and post-processing stages involved in the integration of Unmanned Aerial Systems. This course will also provide important information regarding the legal use of drones in accordance with associated federal regulations.

1. Familiarize seminar participants with drone formats and their potential applications.
2. Instruct participants on the basic workflow of drone use in archaeology (flight planning, permissions to fly, site preparation, automated and manual flights, post-flight processing of aerial imagery).
3. Provide information on the legal and safe operation of drones in the United States.
   

Jodi Reeves Eyre holds a PhD in archaeology from the University of Exeter (2013), where she studied how experimental archaeology is perceived in archaeological research. She has worked with EXARC, the ICOM-affiliated organization representing archaeological open-air museums, experimental archaeology, ancient technology and interpretation, since 2010. She currently manages the EXARC Experimental Archaeology Collection in tDAR, has conducted participant observation of experimental projects, woven on models of ancient Greek looms, and painted people blue. Jodi is also a co-founder of Eyre & Israel, LLC, which provides research, editing, and digital curation consulting for non-profits, non-fiction publishers and authors, and cultural organizations.

This seminar will focus on designing experimental research to test hypotheses by replicating cultural or past processes. It will highlight the importance of being informed of past experimental research and other archaeological research, the importance of developing experiments in a suitable manner, and making data available and usable to colleagues in order to increase the impact of experimental research. It will also cover experimental archaeology’s historical context, key concepts, and its relationship to experiential research and to interpretation.

The seminar is suitable for researchers, students, and museum professionals who are new to experimental archaeology, or who have not received formal training, and who are interested in including this method in their work. People familiar with experimental archaeology who want to increase the impact of their work by learning about new ways to make data more widely available and who want to learn more about work being conducted by EXARC and its members will also benefit from the seminar.

1. Understand established ways of using of experimental archaeology in research and in public presentation, its relationship with experiential archaeology and interpretation, and basic terminology.
2. Understand the basics of designing an archaeological experiment and what makes an experiment different from an experiential exercise. The importance of technical knowledge acquisition will be discussed.
3. Identify sources of experimental information and data and understand the purpose and basics of recording experiment data and making it available as part of the research process.

Ian Hodder was trained at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London and at Cambridge University where he obtained his PhD in 1975. After a brief period teaching at Leeds, he returned to Cambridge where he taught until 1999. During that time he became Professor of Archaeology and was elected a Fellow of the British Academy. In 1999 he moved to teach at Stanford University as Dunlevie Family Professor in the Department of Anthropology and Director of the Stanford Archaeology Center. His main large-scale excavation projects have been at Haddenham in the east of England and at Çatalhöyük in Turkey where he has worked since 1993. He has been awarded the Oscar Montelius Medal by the Swedish Society of Antiquaries, the Huxley Memorial Medal by the Royal Anthropological Institute, the Fyssen International Prize, the Gold Medal by the Archaeological Institute of America, and has Honorary Doctorates from Bristol and Leiden Universities. His main books include The leopard’s tale: revealing the mysteries of Çatalhöyük (2006 Thames and Hudson).

The aim of this course is to reflect back on 25 years of research at the 9000 year old site of Çatalhöyük in central Turkey. Over the past decades, the instructor has been leading a large team of about 160 people as they try to make sense of this intriguing mound or tell site. Çatalhöyük has 21 meters of occupation deposits consisting of multiple layers of houses with under-the-floor burials, roof entries, and elaborate wall art and symbolism. In this one-hour course, the instructor will explain the changes in methods over time as the archaeologists moved to paperless, digital techniques. He will also explain some of the main interpretive challenges for the archaeologists and how they solved them – what we now think about life at Çatalhöyük. But the instructor will also raise the question of if we have been successful in creating a shared past in which multiple stakeholders participate, and in applying community based participatory research. He will ultimately raise questions about whether it is really possible to decolonize archaeology.

The Knowledge Series seminars are opportunities to learn from prominent archaeologists as they share their experiences and expertise.

Heather B. Thakar, PhD, RPA is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Texas A&M University and the Director of the Paleoecology and Archaeometry Laboratory. Dr. Thakar earned her PhD from the University of California Santa Barbara in 2014. She has over 10 years of experience in Paleoethnobotany, including both private contracts for cultural resource management and NSF-funded academic research. She has published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Journal of Archaeological Science, and Quaternary International among others. Working in Western North America, Mexico, and Central America she has encountered a diversity of preservation, recovery, and analytical challenges that inform her how she approach teaching Paleoethnobotany. She has developed and regularly instructs practical hands-on courses in Paleoethnobotany for advanced undergraduate and graduate students.

Today, archaeobotanical remains are regarded as a fundamental component of basic archaeological research. Despite a rapid increase in expectations that CRM professionals and academic researchers incorporate paleoethnobotany, opportunities for specialized training remain limited. This two-hour online seminar is intended as a crash course in practical field and laboratory methods for students, researchers, and CRM professionals interested in the fundamentals of paleoethnobotany. The seminar will focus on increasing participant familiarity with the basic principles of recovery and analysis of macrobotanical remains and equipping participants with sufficient knowledge to develop appropriate research modifications based on preservation conditions.

1. An introduction to practical considerations in paleoethnobotanical research design;
2. Sufficient familiarity with field recovery methods to develop appropriate modifications as needed depending on the particular preservation context encountered; and
3. A foundation in macrobotanical identification, data collection, and reporting standards. 

Dr. Natasha Lyons received her PhD from the Department of Archaeology, University of Calgary, in 2007. She is a founding partner of Ursus Heritage Consulting, which she owns and operates with her husband in the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia, Canada. She is also Adjunct Faculty in the Department of Archaeology, Simon Fraser University, a department with a long specialty in community archaeology. Natasha conducts collaborative, community-based research with First Nations and Inuit communities throughout Western Canada and the Arctic. She practices and publishes widely on subjects related to community archaeology, ethical research practice, digital representation, ethnobotany and palaeoethnobotany. Her first book was well received in both the archaeology and northern communities: Where the Wind Blows Us: Practicing Critical Community Archaeology with the Inuvialuit of the Canadian Western Arctic (2013, University of Arizona Press).  

Dr. Kisha Supernant is Métis and an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Alberta. She received her PhD from the University of British Columbia in 2011.  Her research with Indigenous communities in Canada explores how archaeologists and communities can build collaborative research relationships. Her research interests include the relationship between cultural identities, landscapes, and the use of space, Métis archaeology, and heart-centered archaeological practice. She specializes in the application of mapping methods to the human past and present, including the role of digital mapping and GIS spatial analysis in archaeological research. Her current research project, Exploring Métis Identity Through Archaeology (EMITA), takes a relational approach to exploring the material past of Métis communities, including her own family, in western Canada. She has published in local and international journals on GIS in archaeology, collaborative archaeological practice, indigenous archaeology, and conceptual mapping in digital humanities.

Dr. John R. Welch (RPA) is a Professor at Simon Fraser University, jointly appointed in the Department of Archaeology and School of Resource and Environmental Management. His doctorate (Anthropology) is from the University of Arizona (1996). He fell in love at first sight with Ndee (Western Apache) territory in 1984 and has served this passion in various professional capacities, including work as the archaeologist and historic preservation officer for the White Mountain Apache Tribe (1992-2005) and ongoing commitments as the board secretary for the nonprofit Fort Apache Heritage Foundation. He joined the SFU faculty in 2005 and directs the Professional Graduate Program in Heritage Resource Management. Recent publications include Dispatches from the Fort Apache Scout: White Mountain and Cibecue Apache History Through 1881, University of Arizona Press, 2016, and Archaeology as Therapy: Linking Community Archaeology to Community Health (Schaepe, Angelbeck, Snook, and Welch, 2017), Current Anthropology 58(4).

The concept of an ‘Archaeology of Heart’ originates in feminist and indigenous models of research and well-being that invite us to know and apply our full emotional, social, intuitive, and spiritual selves, as well as our best intellectual and rational selves, in our research, training, and outreach. While novel to archaeology, this emergent approach draws on the growing literatures of heart-centered practice in the humanities, caring professions, indigenous ontologies, and feminist scholarship. Heart-centered archaeologies provide new spaces for thinking through an integrated, responsible, and grounded archaeology, where we: (1) show care for the living and the dead; (2) recognize we are all emotional and social as well as intellectual beings; (3) act upon our needs for responsible relationships with each other, with a range of communities, and with archaeological records, and; (4) emphasize rigor not only in research and presentation, but in all our relational practices. A heart-centered approach to archaeological practice has the power to transform and add multi-dimensional value to how we conduct our professional practices as archaeologists both within and well beyond the discipline. In this online seminar, we build a toolkit for the heart-centered archaeologist.

We will introduce the concept of a heart-centered practice to archaeological professionals, demonstrate its utility and applications, and show how it can be used effectively in community, classroom, field, managerial and other working contexts and situations.