Note: This is an edited version of the paper I gave at the 2016 SAA session organized by Ben Davies. Simulation can be used to do anything. That’s part of its problem. It can easily be used try to replicate a particular past context. But should it? Anyone who has tried to build general archaeological…
@billcaraher reflects on what counts in academia and what counting means. Picking up on that reflection, I need to point out that the people who decide what counts in academia are we who sit on the committees that hire Assistant Professors, give out grants, award tenure, promotion, and merit pay, and those of us who…
While there has been little empirical study of the phenomenon, it is a widely held belief among aspiring musicians that 'all the good band names are taken' (multiple anonymous informants, pers. comms). Given that there is also a belief that a good band name is important (Indie Professor, 2011), there is significant 'band name anxiety'…
Note: Twenty years ago today, on October 3rd 1997, we performed analyses of metallic residue attached to ceramics from two Early Metal Age sites in Northern Finland at the Electron Microscopy Institute at Oulu University. Here are the results, along with a bit of discussion and some cell phone pictures of some sweet vintage dot-matrix…
Back in 1944, Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal warned that there was a dangerous tension at the heart of American society: The “American Creed”, as he defined it, her founding documents, ideology, and the identity of Americans were based in concepts of equality of opportunity and universal kinship, but its economic and social reality was founded…
