Upcoming Seminars

Jarrod Burks is a professional archaeologist specializing in the application of geophysical surveys in archaeological contexts. Dr. Burks is the Director of Archaeological Geophysics for Ohio Valley Archaeology, Inc., a private archaeology firm in Columbus, Ohio. He received his PhD and MA degrees in anthropology (archaeology) from The Ohio State University and his BA degree in anthropology from the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign. Dr. Burks’s training in archaeological geophysics has been honed through over 20 years of work in the field, as well as attending and teaching at the National Park Service’s “Current Archeological Prospection Advances for Non-destructive Investigations” since 2001.

Magnetometer surveys are an important part of the archaeologist’s toolkit. In this seminar, we will explore the nuts and bolts of magnetometry from the beginner to moderate level. Topics will range from the basics of why and how the archaeological record is magnetic, to exploring the various kinds of instruments available today, and how to process data. We will look at good data and bad, small archaeological features and large. Examples include pre-contact period American Indian sites and historic-era sites such as farmsteads and urban/industrial sites. Finally, we will spend some time examining the use of magnetometers in burial surveys.

1. Understand how magnetometers work and the range of instruments now available to archaeologists.
2. See what good and bad data processing look like to help establish expectations in those who want to do magnetic survey or evaluate the results of others.
3. Explore the different settings (terrestrial) in which magnetometers can be used.
4. See how different kinds of archaeological features appear in magnetic data, and develop an understanding of the importance of contrast as it relates to detectability.

David Knoerlein is the vice president of FDI Precision Photography. He is a Certified Evidence Photographer (Evidence Photographers International Council/Professional Photographers of America), with over 30 years experience in forensic photography in law enforcement. Mr. Knoerlein spent 3 years in Iraq in charge of all photography for the Mass Graves Investigation Team. Applying these skills to archaeology, he has worked with the Veterans Curation Program (VCP) for 10 years, designing and installing all the photographic stations at their labs. He provides one-on-one artifact photography training for veterans in the VCP program as well as the lab managers.

 

This course will be a live demonstration of professional photographic techniques used to produce high-quality diagnostic images of artifacts using a tabletop camera setup. The topics to be covered include: basic equipment and software, basic camera settings, composition, and exposure. The instructor will also demonstrate creative lighting to show surface details without shadows without the need for Photoshop. Additionally, the instructor will make recommendations for quality control procedures to ensure consistency.

1. Understanding of basic photographic principles as it applies to artifact photography
2. How to get museum quality images every time
3. How to develop and maintain a quality control program to insure consistency

Darrin Pratt is the Director of the University Press of Colorado, a position he has held since 2000, and a past President of the Association of University Presses (2016-2017). He was responsible for expanding University Press of Colorado’s fledgling program into one of the premier archaeology lists in the country. Additionally, from 2009 to 2011, Mr. Pratt served as the Principal Investigator on the Andrew W. Mellon-funded Archaeology of the Americas Digital Monograph Initiative, a joint project of the University of Alabama Press, the University of Arizona Press, University Press of Colorado, the University Press of Florida, Texas A&M University Press, and the University of Utah Press. Together these six presses explored the possibilities for publishing scholarly monographs enhanced with multimedia and rich data sets.

Allyson Carter serves as Senior Editor of the University of Arizona Press and acquires titles for specialists and general readers in archaeology, border studies, Indigenous studies, space science, anthropology, and environmental science, and oversees nine series. She has contributed to the UA Press’s Acquiring team for 16 years, including eight years as Editor-in-Chief, and has acquired over 450 titles. Dr. Carter has a Ph.D. (1999) from the University of Arizona in linguistics and cognitive science, and undergraduate degrees in anthropology and linguistics from UCLA.

Many archaeologists reach the point early in their career where they consider the possibility of publishing their dissertation as a scholarly book. Unfortunately, although some of these newly minted scholars received good advice from their tenure committee or their graduate school advisor, many are left to sort it out for themselves, leaving their questions unanswered. Will a publisher even be interested in my dissertation? Could it be published as is, or does it need to be revised? What are publishers looking for in a book project that started as a dissertation? How do I put my best foot forward? This online seminar will address these questions and more in an attempt to demystify the process and offer pragmatic advice to help junior scholars move forward with publishing their research.

Help junior scholars to:

1. understand some of the key differences between a dissertation and a book;
2. evaluate for themselves what steps they need to take to move their own dissertation to book form; and
3. know when to take what steps to maximize the positive impact on their career.

Dr. Ashley Lemke is an Assistant Professor at the University of Texas in Arlington. Formally she was a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in the Museum of Anthropological Archaeology at the University of Michigan, where she received her Ph.D. in 2016. As a prehistoric underwater archaeologist, Lemke’s research seeks to understand the social and economic organization of hunter-gatherers by investigating now-submerged ancient landscapes. These research questions have led her to work in North America and Europe on both terrestrial and underwater archaeological projects from the Lower Paleolithic to 19th-century Nunamiut archaeological sites in the high arctic.

Dr. Amy Mitchell-Cook, RPA spent 10 years as a maritime archaeologist before shifting her focus to maritime history. She has written numerous chapters, articles and book reviews on the subject. Her book, Sea of Misadventures: Shipwreck and Survival in Early America, is based on more than 100 accounts of shipwreck narratives from 1640 to 1840, and explores the issues of gender, race, religion and power. She co-wrote a chapter in an upcoming book, Methodology in La Belle: The Archeology of a 17th Century Ship of New World Colonization, on the methods archaeologists in Texas used to record and excavate the French ship that sank off the coast of Texas in 1685.

Dave Ball, RPA is the Regional Preservation Officer for the Pacific Region of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM). Dave joined the BOEM Gulf of Mexico Region (then Minerals Management Service) office in 1999 and transferred to the Pacific Region office in 2010. He has almost 30 years’ experience in archaeology and has directed field research on both terrestrial and underwater archaeological sites across the US, including inundated pre-contact sites in Florida and Washington, World War II shipwrecks, and deepwater shipwrecks in the Gulf of Mexico. Dave is a member of the ICOMOS International Committee on Underwater Cultural Heritage and has served in various roles with the Advisory Council on Underwater Archaeology.

Cultural resource managers, land managers, and archaeologists are often tasked with managing, interpreting, and reviewing archaeological assessments for submerged cultural resources. This seminar is designed to introduce non-specialists to issues specific to underwater archaeology. Participants will learn about different types of underwater cultural heritage (UCH) and some of the methods employed to help protect those sites. This seminar is not intended to teach participants how to do underwater archaeology, but instead will briefly introduce different investigative techniques and international best practices. The purpose of this seminar is to assist non-specialists in recognizing the potential for UCH resources in their areas of impact.

Help terrestrial archaeologists and land managers to:

1. Identify the potential for underwater cultural heritage resources in affected areas;
2. Recognize best practices for treatment of underwater cultural heritage; and
3. Understand basic qualifications required for proper documentation of underwater cultural heritage.

Teresa Wriston, Ph.D., RPA is an Assistant Research Professor and Geoarchaeologist at the Desert Research Institute. Over the past 17 years, her geoarchaeological work has focused on human adaptation to changing environments as reflected by site location, preservation, and stratigraphic contexts in the western U.S. and southern Africa.

Archaeologists know the importance of cultural context in understanding the past but often fail to recognize the importance of the natural contexts of sites, features, and artifacts in their interpretations. Looking through a geoarchaeological lens can help every archaeologist begin to understand the natural contexts of their finds. This course is designed to introduce basic geoarchaeological methods to archaeologists interested in improving their research designs, optimizing their fieldwork strategies, enhancing their stratigraphic descriptions in ways that aid component definition and sampling procedures, and using natural contexts to complement their interpretations.

1. Describe what geoarchaeology is and why is it important to archaeologists
2. Explain the difference between soil and sediment
3. Illustrate why the position of an archaeological site on the landscape matters
4. Explain how natural processes effect the archaeological record

Kurt Dongoske is the President and Principal Investigator for Zuni Cultural Resource Enterprise. He is also the Tribal Historic Preservation Officer for the Zuni Tribe. Mr. Dongoske has over 40 years of experience as a professional archaeologist working within cultural resource management. Mr. Dongoske has spent the last 29 years working collaboratively with Native Americans in implementing archaeological and ethnographic research. He has designed numerous ethnographic projects that incorporate the traditional environmental perspectives of both the Hopi and Zuni people. Mr. Dongoske is a Registered Professional Archaeologist and holds a Master of Arts degree from the University of Arizona. Mr. Dongoske has published numerous articles on Native Americans, cultural resource management, and compliance.

Kurt Anschuetz is an anthropologist and archaeologist based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. His research foci are the archaeology of late Prehispanic and early Historic period Pueblo agricultural water management and Native, Hispanic, and Anglo cultural landscapes. Dr. Anschuetz currently is assisting the Pueblo of Acoma in preparing a Traditional Cultural Properties study in Chaco Canyon and the greater the San Juan Basin. He has worked with Acoma in contributing to the Mount Taylor Cultural Property Nomination to the New Mexico State Register of Cultural Properties, and is a member of the Pueblo’s team of consultants in the adjudication of the waters of Rio San Jose. He has completed comprehensive cultural landscape studies of Native, Hispanic, and Anglo communities’ relationships with the Valles Caldera National Preserve. Dr. Anschuetz also serves as an Expert Witness for the U.S. Department of Justice in water rights adjudications on behalf of the Rio Grande Pueblos of Cochiti, Isleta, Kewa, Ohkay Owingeh, San Ildefonso, Santa Clara, and Taos.

By definition, "mitigation" is reducing the severity, force or intensity, seriousness, painfulness or grief of an event, development, procedure, or situation. As part of the CRM mitigation processes, direct, indirect, and cumulative effects on cultural resources that fulfill one or more of the National Register of Historic Places’ (NRHP’s) criteria must all be identified in order to address any competent approach to and for mitigation. Two key questions must then also arise within any mitigation process: (1) By whom is mitigation developed and implemented? and (2) Whose interests, concerns, benefits, and well-being are addressed? Historically in the United States, mitigation in CRM has focused on the status and character of a material property itself. Recognition of traditional cultural properties (TCPs) has provided productive directives to identify and consider properties vital to different cultural groups' living identities, histories, values, belief systems, and lifeways. These directives have concomitantly presented a challenge to consider what culturally sensitive and respectful mitigation may—or may not—be. The instructors present examples from their experiences working with the Acoma and Zuni people to illustrate how approaches to mitigation can be sensitive and respectful, as well as lessen the pain, grief, and even wrath, for harms and losses that the people are asked to endure.

1. Guidance in designing and conducting compliance with the NHPA that more meaningfully and equitably involves Native Americans
2. Greater appreciation and understanding of Native American heritage concerns, including their personal and collective relationships to the landscape
3. Recognition of patterns of systematic cultural bias embedded in the language of the NHPA and the ways in which that affects how archaeologists characteristically implement CRM legislative mandates and regulatory protocols