SoA Director Barbara Mills was recently honored to be the William D. Lipe Visiting Scholar in Archaeological Method and Theory at Washington State University. The Lipe Visiting Scholar Endowment was created in 2001 by the students, colleagues, friends, and family of Bill Lipe to honor his contributions to the field of archaeology and WSU. The program brings a leading scholar to Pullman each year to conduct a session of the Archaeological Method and Theory seminar taught by Bill for more than 25 years. The scholar also gives a public lecture and spends a significant amount of time meeting in small groups with anthropology graduate students and faculty. Dr. Mills’ public talk was on “How Migration Transformed Social Networks in the Prehispanic Southwest.”
 
Abstract: Migration is now one of the most studied topics by Southwest archaeologists. Rather than focusing on whether migration occurred, however, most archaeologists are currently focusing on the social consequences of migration. Using social network analysis (SNA) on a large database of ceramics and obsidian from the late prehispanic Southwest (A.D. 1200–1500), we can see where, when, and how migration transformed networks of interaction at multiple scales. Networks based on decorated ceramics, in particular, show how migration initiated new ceramic networks that then became widespread as part of religious movements. These networks also show how differently migration impacted the northern and southern Southwest.
 

Ph.D. candidate Victoria Phaneuf has published her article “Negotiating Culture, Performing Identities: North African and Pied-Noir Associations in France” in the latest issue of The Journal of North African Studies (17(4): 671-686).
 
Abstract: The integration of minorities in France, particularly those with roots in North Africa, has been of national concern since the 1980s and remains so today. Official and public discussions about minorities, and social relations with them, are saturated with mutual distrust and misunderstandings. Despite structural and social impediments, these minorities are encouraged to integrate into the national mainstream and to avoid communitarian and community-building practices that might be interpreted as a rejection of the nation. Minority cultural associations are among the focal points of these negotiations, being places where communities can both strengthen internal bonds and create zones of intercultural contact, mutual education, and debate. In the following I analyze the activities undertaken by North African and Pied-Noir cultural associations in France as examples of boundary maintenance (Barth, F., 1969. Introduction. In: F. Barth, ed. Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Difference. Prospect Heights: Waveland Press, 9–38). I argue that community building activities within associations are a necessary component in their ability to organize outreach activities designed to create dialogue and improve inter-communal relations.
 

T.J. Ferguson, SoA Professor of Practice, received a Water, Environmental and Energy Solutions (WEES) Graduate Student Support grant of $2,000 for the NSF-funded project: “CNH: Long-term vulnerability and resilience of coupled human-natural ecosystems to fire regime and climate changes.” These funds will be used for salary and ERE for one of the graduate student Research Assistants working on the project and will help offset the increase in graduate student ERE recently implemented by the university.

Professor of Anthropology Vance Holliday was on an hour-long archaeology radio program discussing geoarchaeology. The weekly program is "Indiana Jones: Myth, Reality and 21st Century Archaeology" on the VoiceAmerica radio network. Dr. Holliday and geoarchaeologist Sarah Sherwood were interviewed by program host and geoarchaeologist Joseph Schuldenrein.
 
You can listen to the show or download it here.