Professor of Anthropology Maria Nieves Zedeño presented the paper “Archaeology, Territorial Legitimacy, and Partnerships for the Future” at the conference “Renewing our Relationship with the Land: Blackfoot and Archaeology” (University of Lethbridge, Alberta, June 4–5, 2013). This was the first conference organized and hosted by the Piegan Tribe of the Blackfoot Confederacy to bring together science and traditional knowledge about the past. The conference was sponsored by TransCanada and the Glenbow Museum. The UA had a prominent presence, with four research posters by faculty and students.

In partnership with the ConfluenCenter, The Southwest Center, and Tucson Meet Yourself, Dr. Maribel Alvarez (Associate Professor of Anthropology; Associate Research Social Scientist, Southwest Center) is leading a seven-day Ethnographic Fieldschool in Banamichi, Sonora this week. The focus of the Fieldschool is the expressive culture of rural life in Sonora—food, folk occupational technologies, crafts, farming, and the history of Northern Mexico. Dr. James Griffith and Ph.D. Candidate in English Rhetoric Regina Kelly are joining Dr. Alvarez as faculty, as well as Mexican anthropologists Ernesto Camou Healy and Emma Paulina Perez. The Fieldschool was offered to adult learners in the wider Tucson community; a total of twelve participants signed up. Among the participants are a professor of education at UA South, a staff member in Conservation from the Arizona State Museum, faculty in anthropology from Pima Community College, and staff from the Dean’s office in Social and Behavioral Science. The school’s curriculum includes demonstrations and hands-on activities learned from local artisans and tradition bearers combined with lectures and seminars on ethnographic note-taking, folkloristics, and key words for the study of expressive culture such as “beauty,” “tradition,” and “community.”
 
In a quick field-report from Sonora this week, Dr. Alvarez said: “As we have learned from archaeologists for the last 100 years or more, this region is rich with cultural resources that are fitting for teaching in a field school format; the socio-cultural dimensions of the region offer similar opportunities for inquiry and teaching in ethnographic methods and cross-cultural research. We are excited to offer this opportunity to the public at large, hoping that it helps us get more people interested in anthropology and how much our discipline has to offer for understanding the human condition.”

Photo captions:

1. Field laborer at La Martina ranch in Banamichi demonstrates techniques of flood irrigation on summer bean crops.

2. Ramona Ochoa of Las Delicias demonstrates Sonoran technique for sugar-roasting coffee beans.
 

Riecker Distinguished Professor of Anthropology Michael Brian Schiffer’s latest book has just been published by Springer at a scandalous price. Titled The Archaeology of Science:  Studying the Creation of Useful Knowledge, the book pulls together—and illustrates with interesting case studies—the variety of specialized and generalized research strategies that yield new insights into the processes and products of science. The research strategies include experimental archaeology, ethnoarchaeology, and archaeometry in addition to studies on the prehistoric and historical records. Among the case studies are the pigment Maya Blue, Chaco Canyon cylinder jars, the nuclear rocket engine, the Roanoke colony, and the Polynesian colonization of New Zealand. In addition, the book explores artifact-intensive discovery processes and defines the varieties of scientific knowledge in behavioral terms such as experimental law, recipe, and theory.

Erin Durban-Albrecht, a Gender and Women’s Studies Ph.D. candidate with a minor in cultural anthropology, was awarded a $5,000 Confluencenter Graduate Fellowship. The fellowship supports interdisciplinary research in the humanities and social sciences. Durban-Albrecht will use the fellowship to continue her dissertation research on gender, sexuality, and histories of US intervention in Haiti.