Grinnell Fields the World's First Collegiate Atlatl Team

Atlatls are prehistoric spear throwers, the predecessors of the bow and arrow. Essentially a stick with a hook on one end, an atlatl acts as a lever and extension of the arm, and can propel a spear much farther than the same arm unaided. They were in use over much of the prehistoric world, and to historic times among such folk as the Inuit, who use atlatls to throw harpoons from kayaks, and the Aztecs, who fought the Spanish with them. Archaeologists are not the only ones interested in atlatls; spear throwing is a small and eccentric but growing sport. There are now several regional atlatl groups in the United States and Europe, and a World Atlatl Association was established in 1987 .

When classes began this fall, John Whittaker recruited enthusiasts from his Archaeology of North America class and elsewhere, and 12 students made atlatls and began to practice in September. The weekend of October 11-12, Coach Whittaker and five students (Courtney Birkett, Jodie LaPoint, Gabe Lewis-Kraitsik, Greg Lind, and Liz Neerland) drove to Cahokia State Historic Site near St Louis and returned covered with glory and mosquito bites. In the shadow of the ancient mounds of Cahokia the Grinnellians took on a field of some 40 atlatlists, coming from as far as Colorado, Wyoming, and Michigan, and ranging in experience from beginners to the current world accuracy champion. In the European style event (30 shots at targets from 10 to 26 meters distant) Whittaker took second place over all, and Courtney Birkett won the top female honors. The most prestigious event is the International Standard Accuracy Competition (5 shots at 15 meters and 5 at 20 meters at a standard bullseye target). This was established three years ago and is now widely used and recorded in both America and Europe. Newcomer Courtney Birkett astounded the multitudes by shooting a 66x out of a possible 100, thus becoming the highest scoring American woman so far, and outstripping the several seasoned female competitors at this meet. The rest of the team performed honorably, although with less success.

Besides the sporting aspects of the trip, we had a chance to see the museum and mounds at the most important prehistoric site in North America, and meet a lot of unusual and interesting people expert in a variety of primitive crafts. Ray Madden, one of the Missouri Atlatl Association hosts, gave us all slings, so we have another throwing sport to try. Bill Tate, representing the World Atlatl Association from Colorado, gave us bumper stickers ("Ask to see my Atlatl!"), and the Michigan Atlatl Association pressed us to come to one of their events or host one they could attend, so as the season of outdoor sports in Iowa comes to an end, we look forward to expanding the team in the spring and seeking new challenges.

An Archaeologist's Story

William Green, '74

Office of the State Archaeologist

University of Iowa

I might not have been pre-adapted to become an archaeologist, but nurture amply supplied whatever impetus nature might not have. It began in the earliest days of high school when I took an experimental Social Studies course partly designed by a University of Chicago archaeologist. This was basically a World Prehistory course for 14-year-olds. I was hooked. In the afternoon and during summers I worked for Sol Tax at Current Anthropology, one of the world's top anthropology journals. During my senior year I worked in the University of Chicago's physical anthropology lab, learning about the human skeleton by handling hundreds of bones and teeth from Arctic burials. Across the hall from my family's apartment lived Eva and Robert Hunt, two dynamic anthropologists whose kid I baby-sat and whose books I read. Few high schoolers have these kinds of opportunities dropped in their laps.

I entered Grinnell in the fall of 1970, eager to pursue all fields of anthropology but especially archaeology. I had just spent a summer in the wilds of western Illinois digging mounds for a U of C student's dissertation project. A friend from Chicago lasted less than a week in the communal but authoritarian atmosphere, cut off from "civilization" as we had known it. But I loved it out there: three months of digging and sweating, touring the Koster site during the first deep testing there, learning about arrowheads and almost stepping on one that was illustrated the next year in a point guide, swimming in spring fed creeks after work, going to county fairs and drive-in movies, cruising the drag in Quincy and Hannibal, driving to Missouri to do laundry, eating road kill raccoon stroganoff, and making ice cream by hand. Doing archaeology was so invigorating that I knew I had to do more of it.

In college I took as much anthropology as I could. My freshman year was Doug Caulkins' first year. It took most of his and Ron Kurtz's courses. I could have registered for Ralph Luebben's 1971 field school in Colorado, but I signed up for a more exotic dig: on the biblical site of Beersheba, in the Negev Desert of Israel. About 200 American and French students lived in a tent city protected by local Bedouins. Every morning we turned our shoes upside down to empty out the scorpions. I excavated at a Roman fortress on the summit of a huge city mound. We washed thousands of pot sherds every afternoon and threw out all that did not have inscriptions. I got my picture in the Des Moines Register after a freelance reporter saw me digging while wearing a Grinnell T-shirt, though he was disappointed when he returned to the site after our mid-morning break and found I had changed shirts. We found the grave of a Turkish soldier, most likely a victim of a train wreck that occurred when T.E. Lawrence blew up the bridge that crossed the wadi just below the site. We went to the movies to see Lawrence of Arabia with French, Hebrew, and Arabic subtitles. Half the audience was made of Bedouins who cheered every time Beersheba or Gaza were mentioned. I toured archaeological sites throughout Israel and returned home marginally trained but doubly excited about archaeology.

The following summer I obtained a small grant to help me attend a field school in Britain. The first part involved class work at Oxford University, where I lived in a 16^th century dormitory. We toured all the local sites and museums. I had hoped to work on a small island in the Inner Hebrides off the west coast of Scotland, but a dockworkers strike meant we couldn't get any supplies to the site. So, instead, I worked near Sheffield in the north of England. Field work focused on two Mesolithic sites, one underneath a deep peat deposit and one in a pleasant rockshelter. I enjoyed the rockshelter and the pub where we downed pints during lunch. We excavated one of the earliest structures ever found in Britain. We watched archaeomagnetic samples being taken; we were doing serious science.

At Grinnell, in between these exotic adventures, I was itching to do something locally. In the spring of 1971, I got together with another student named Steve Snider, who had excavated earthlodges on Iowa highway salvage excavations. He and I and Professor Luebben decided to establish an archaeological site on campus in order to provide local training for students and to see what would happen to artifacts and features over a period of weathering. Steve knew what earthlodges were supposed to look like, so he pretty much designed the site. We created this site at the north edge of campus between the railroad track and the newly built running track.

We dug a roughly square house-floor about 5.5 by 6.7 meters, adding a central fireplace, cache pits, various types of artifacts, and animal bones from (I think) Snider's family farm. We buried this "site" under a few feet of dirt and let it sit for about 18 months.

In the fall of 1972, we excavated our earthlodge with students in a 2-credit practicum. Ralph provided excellent instruction in field techniques, directing us through about four hours of work per week until the weather made outdoor work impossible. The students found relatively few of the scattered floor artifacts but completely and enthusiastically excavated the pit features and hearth. As an Independent Study project, I took some overall field notes and reviewed the student's work. I was awfully harsh with them in my final report, both for not finding more of the material we had planted and for losing interest at times, especially when they worked in sterile soil. I was harsh on Snider and myself for not having recorded our planted material more carefully the previous year, making it almost impossible to judge the success of the dig. We couldn't really determine what had happened to the site and its contents during the year. I couldn't quantify the success of the project in terms of the amount of planted material that was recovered or the effects of burial and weathering on different types of material and features. I did learn the importance of a well-thought-out research design and of careful recording.

I discovered one significant artifact we had not planted. This was a small file box full of index cards noting "suspicious" activities of various community members, mostly students. I found it while checking the site alone one day, so I was the only one who knew about it until I showed it to my roommates. My best recollection is that the cards recorded rumors or observations related to drug use. The cards may have been compiled by some informant, either self-styled or working for law enforcement. After wondering what to do for a while I burned the cards in the Smith lounge fireplace.

After graduating I still wanted to be an archaeologist but wasn't sure I could make a career of it. I soon got a paying job in archaeology, and although it was below minimum wage, I never looked back. The year-and-a-half between college and graduate school was one of the most valuable episodes in my life, allowing me to explore options and to decide upon a graduate program. I chose Wisconsin (well, Wisconsin chose me), and I pursued Midwestern archaeology there. The qualifying exams for the Ph.D. program were fairly comprehensive. I drew upon material from Grinnell courses as much as from my graduate courses! I was satisfied for a while with the M.A. I received in 1977, but I had to take leaves from and eventually resign a cushy archaeo-bureaucrat job to nail my Ph.D. in 1987.

Since then I've been back in Iowa, at the Office of the State Archaeologist. The OSA is a research and service unit of the University of Iowa. It's great to work in an academic environment when so much of North American archaeology is done in government agencies and private businesses. My office employs about 25 permanent professionals and about twice that number of temporary employees in archaeological work throughout Iowa. My own research centers on paleoethnobotany, the relationships between ancient people and plants. I focus on native crops and try to extract lessons regarding agricultural diversity and sustainability. As State Archaeologist most of my time is spent on administration and management, so even a stray hour or two in the field or the lab is a pleasant break.

Since returning to Iowa it has been a treat to work with Grinnell anthropology students as interns. I marvel at the Grinnell anthropology department's tremendous growth since I left. The number of student opportunities is staggering, and the department's well deserved move into the renovated Goodnow Hall is a sign of strength matched by few liberal arts college anthropology programs.

Being an anthropology major at Grinnell did more than just prepare me for graduate school and a career: it gave me confidence that what I was interested in was important and worth studying. I probably would have felt the same way even had I not ended up with a career in archaeology.

IN THE HALLS OF GOODNOW

With the end of the Sesquicentennial celebrations and the completion of the Science rennovation, the decor in Anthro saw some changes. The main seminar room was moved to the magnificently finished former sesquicentennial room on the first floor, and the second floor seminar room is now an informal meeting and seminar room with cushy furniture in keeping with the building's architecture. The octagonal case by Byron Worley which displayed the section of elm tree was reclaimed by Science despite our remonstrations that the first date in the elm's rings was the construction of Goodnow, we teach about dendrochronology (tree-ring dating), and their construction was the death of the tree. To be fair, their money paid for the display, but we are sorry to lose it. Some of the historic artifacts from the old science labs also went to new displays in Science, and the front displays of building history were re-arranged to make room for a display of faculty faces and publications.

FACULTY NEWS

Publications:

Bentley-Condit, V.; Smith, E.O.; Torrez, B.; Pearson, S. 1997 "A comparison of baboon (Papio cynocephalus) and rhesus macaque (Macaca mulatta) mother-infant proximity during infants' first three months." American Journal of Primatology, 42:94.

Bentley-Condit, V.; Smith, E.O. 1997 "Female reproductive parameters of the Tana River yellow baboons." International Journal of Primatology, 18, 581-596.

Brown, P.; Bentley-Condit, V. 1997 "Culture and obesity." In Handbook of Obesity, Bray, G.; Bouchard, C.; James, W.P. (eds). Marcel Dekker, Inc., New York.

Ghosh, Gautam, 1997 Review of Liisa Malkki "Purity and Exile: Violence, Memory and National Cosmology Among Hutu Refugees in Tanzania." American Ethnologist, February 1996

Papers Presented:

Bentley-Condit, V.; Smith, E.O.; Torrez, B.; Pearson, S. 1997 "A comparison of baboon (Papio cynocephalus) and rhesus macaque (Macaca mulatta) mother- infant proximity during infants' first three months." Presented at the American Society of Primatologists Meeting, San Diego, CA. Bentley-Condit, V.; Caulkins, D.D. 1997 "Using the Human Relations Areas Files in anthropological research." Presented at the Iowa Academy of Science Meetings, Dubuque, IA. Bentley-Condit, V. 1997 "Kentucky meets Kenya: The "honorary male" status of female primatologists in male-dominated African societies." Presented at the Afro- American Studies Inter-Disciplinary Conference, Grinnell, IA.

Papers Co-Authored with Students:

Ray, L.; Hougham, C.; Bentley-Condit, V. 1997 "What males want: An evolutionary perspective." Presented at the Iowa Academy of Science Meetings, Dubuque, IA.

Sturgis, M.; Spector, G.; Williams, B.; Bentley-Condit, V. 1997 "What females want: An evolutionary perspective." Presented at the Iowa Academy of Science Meetings, Dubuque, IA.

Meredith Good spent the summer in Dingwall, in the Highlands of Scotland,interviewing residents for Doug Caulkins' Celtic Cultures project. An earlier part of that project is the subject of a poster paper at the Psychological Anthropology meetings in San Diego in October. Authored by Caulkins and Tanya Hedges, the paper is entitled "But is it Irish? Consensus or Contestation in the Construction of Irish Identity." Hedges, who temporarily "went native" after finishing interviewing residents of Carrick-on-Shannon, Ireland, now works for one of the local manufacturers in that community. Elaine Weiner and Caulkins, who did field work together in Wales in the summer of 1996 are presenting a paper on "Career Continuity or Fragmentation? Women in the labor force in Wales and the Czech Republic" at the 22nd Annual European Studies Conference in Omaha, Nebraska. Weiner is in the Ph.D. program in Sociology at the University of Michigan.

Grinnell's Archaeological Field School Featured in Book

Kathy Kamp has just published a book that teaches basic methods of archaeological fieldwork, analysis, and interpretation using Grinnell's Summer Archaeological Field School excavations at Lizard Man Village as a primary example. Life in the Pueblo: Understanding the Past Through Archaeology is both a short, readable account of the way archaeology is done and a description of a prehistoric Puebloan people known as the Sinagua who resided in the Flagstaff, Arizona area some 700 to 1400 years ago. Most of the site descriptions that archaeologists publish are like the book on Lizard Man Village that Kathy and John Whittaker, her spouse and research partner, are publishing with the University of Utah Press--long, detailed, and often a bit boring to anyone except an archaeologist. Kathy was frustrated with being restricted to this mode of presentation, because it limited effective communication with the very students who had participated on the Grinnell excavations and whom she teaches. The interpretation of the Northern Sinagua that Kathy and John propose contradicts the current predominant models which suggest the Sinagua were hierarchically-organized, perhaps something on the order of a chiefdom. Instead, Life in the Pueblo describes the Sinagua during the occupation of Lizard Man Village (approximately A.D. 1050-1250) as an egalitarian culture with primarily very small agricultural communities utilizing dispersed fields and relying heavily on hunting and gathering to supplement corn, beans, squash, cotton, and a variety of other cultigens. Shortly after the abandonment of Lizard Man Village, the Sinagua began to agglomerate in larger settlements like New Caves Pueblo, the site currently being excavated by Grinnell's Summer Archaeological Field School. New Caves is located on a volcanic crater. Its location may well be defensive, which accords well with recent findings that warfare appears to be endemic in the southwest during the 14th century. Unfortunately, the resources in the Flagstaff area are not well suited to large communities. Water is scarce and soils are thin. Without the ability to farm wide areas extensively, the Sinagua were unable to survive and shortly abandoned the region entirely. In addition to explanations of archaeological methodology and reasoning, Life in the Pueblo includes pictures of real people doing archaeology (photographs of a number of Grinnell alumni are featured, of course), drawings that attempt to reconstruct elements of prehistoric pueblo life, descriptions of possible similarities between the modern Pueblos and the prehistoric Sinagua, and a fictionalized tale of the inhabitants of Lizard Man Village.. The book, which retails for $12.95, can be purchased through Tom McBee in the Grinnell bookstore or directly from Waveland Press.

Jonathan Andelson organized a roundtable presentation/discussion at this year's Communal Studies Association Conference at Tacoma, Washington, in October dealing with the subject of what anthropological perspectives can contribute to our understanding of intentional communities. The half-dozen anthropologists who regularly come to this conference have been struck by how unfamiliar other scholars are with such basic anthropological methods as participant/observation and ethnographic interviewing, and with such basic concepts as culture, adaptation, the relativity of point of view (even the basic "emic"/"etic" distinction), and symbol and ritual. A major publication in the field of communitarian studies appeared in May, 1997, from the University of North Carolina Press. America's Communal Utopias, edited by Donald E. Pitzer (University of Southern Indiana) contains seventeen chapters which examine the cultural history of intentional communities in America, from the Colonial-era examples of Zwaanendael, Ephrata, and the Woman in the Wilderness to the mid-twentieth century Peace Mission Movement in the nation's inner cities led by Father Divine. A chapter on "The Community of True Inspiration from Germany to the Amana Colonies" was contributed by Jonathan Andelson, with other chapters on such groups as the Shakers, New Harmony, Oneida, Fourierist phalanxes, Jewish agricultural colonies, Theosophical communities, and the Hutterites.

Anthropologist Presents Congressional Testimony on Korea

[From AAA Anthropology Newsletter September, 1997]

Roy Richard Grinker, '83, (Anthropology Department, George Washington University) presented testimony on coordinating US policy toward North and South Korea before the House International Relations Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific on February 26, 1997. The defection of a high-level North Korean official who claimed that North Korea planned to invade South Korea prompted the congressional hearing, chair by Doug Bereuter (R-NE).

Grinker's testimony focused on how current US policy toward Korea hinders unification, a sacred goal of all Koreans. According to Grinker, US policy toward North Korea is de facto a policy toward South Korea, and tensions arise in South Korea when the US works separately with the North. Grinker stressed the importance of a coordinated US policy that includes both North and South Korea in talks, recognizes the paramount goal of unification and prepares for some of the real social, economic and political costs that will accompany unification.

Grinker cited his research among defectors from North Korea now residing in and around Seoul as a means of suggesting the future of a unified Korea. The findings are forthcoming in his book Korea and Its Futures.

Archaeology in Practice

By Matthew Horstman, '99

Archaeological excavation has been a life-long dream of mine, and this past summer I fulfilled this dream. I enrolled and participated in the University of Colorado Archaeology Field School from June 1^st through July 3^rd. The field school was taught by Steve Lekson, a curator at the University Museum at the University of Colorado, Boulder. The field school excavated a Great House, Great Kiva, and midden located on a hill above scenic Bluff, Utah (population 200). Lekson hopes to connect this site to the Chaco Culture, the dominant Anasazi Indian culture centered in Chaco Canyon in northwest New Mexico from 950-1100 AD.

Most of the work that I did involved excavating large amounts of dirt in the hopes of finding a wall, a large piece of charcoal (carbon 14 dating to find the age), pottery sherds, lithic flakes left over from tool making, corn cobs, animal bones, and anything else left behind by the prehistoric people who inhabited the area. There were several crew chiefs helping the thirteen students excavate the site, one of whom was Jonathan Till, an anthropology major who graduated from Grinnell in 1989 and now works for a contract archaeology firm based in Bluff during the rest of the year (there are real-life jobs for anthropology majors).

When field school was over I caught a ride down to Flagstaff, Arizona, where I volunteered for the archaeologists in the Kaibab National Forest. Last spring, when I found out that I was going to be in the Southwest this summer, I talked to Professor Whittaker to see if he knew any archaeologists in the Southwest with whom I might be able to work. He gave me the phone number of Neil Weintraub' 86 (another anthropology major), a forest archaeologist for the Kaibab National Forest (KNF). I called Neil, and he told me that I could volunteer anytime during the summer. I worked with Neil in the Williams District of the KNF for one week doing archaeological survey. Archaeological survey involves walking transects back and forth through the forest watching the ground for evidence of prehistoric or historic (older than 50 years) activities. We found three prehistoric habitation sites and a couple of flaking sites. After a week with Neil, I moved up to the Tusayan District of the KNF to do some more survey with Brian Culpepper, the forest archaeologist for that district. I worked with him for about three weeks, with one weekend interlude when I went to the North Kaibab Ranger District to do artifact analysis for Connie Reed, the forest archaeologist in that district. The archaeological survey work was my favorite part of the summer because it meant walking through the woods for upwards of nine or ten hours a day, being miles away from "civilization", and occasionally finding a site.

As a volunteer for the Forest Service, I got free government housing on the Forest, as well as a food/living expense stipend. It is difficult to put in words how valuable my experiences were to me this summer. Surveying for the Forest Service gave me more practical experience with archaeology, rather than simply excavation. I would highly recommend anyone interested in getting some real-life practice of archaeology to volunteer for the Forest Service.

ALUMNI NEWS!

[Disclaimer: We have now exhausted our alumni news! The information below may not be accurate. Please fill out the alumni news form and return it with updated and accurate information so we may include it in our newsletters! Share with other anthropology majors what is happening in your life. Or, you may e-mail information to [wingerter@ac.grin.edu]. Thanks!]

Vivian Era Adzaku, '68, is an assistant professor at Ferris State University, in the Intensive English Program.

Martha Wacker, '73, works as a staff nurse (R.N.) for a home health agency.

Harriet Phinney, '81, is doing her dissertation research in Hanoi for a Ph.D. in Anthropology for the University of Washington in Seattle. She will be in Hanoi until the end of October at which time she will be returning to Seattle to write the dissertation. Her research is on productive strategies of single women in northern Vietnam who have decided to have children out of wedlock. Mrs. Phinney is examining these women's behavior in conjunction with the law and the social discourse taking place around them, marriage and ideas of the family.

Najwa Adra, '85, finished her dissertation on tribal dancing in 1992 as it represented the tribal concept in highland Yemen. She received a post-doc from The Population Council and did consulting for USAID, FAO, UNICEF on issues of mother and child health and women in development, particularly women in agriculture, in Yemen (1983-1986). Since then, she has taught as an adjunct at Hofstra University and done recruiting work for Ford Foundation. She has also served three year terms on the Boards of Directors of the Society for Visual Anthropology and the American Institute for Yemeni Studies. She is currently preparing her dissertation for publication and making career decisions for the next 5-10 years full time teaching or foundation work or overseas consulting.

She is married to Daniel Varisco, also an anthropologist, and has one son, Jon Varisco.

Thad Q. Bartlett, '88, in 1995 conducted dissertation research on the socio-ecology of the white-handed gibbon (Hylobates lar) in Thailand. He is completing his dissertation in Anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.

Maren Van Nostrand, '88, is currently working as Hazard Mitigation Specialist writing environmental reviews for the Federal Emergency Management Agency. They review and approve funding to repair communities after natural disasters occur, usually floods, in Alaska, Washington, Oregon and Idaho. Maren enjoys the work as it involves travel. She is beginning to think about grant proposal ideas to include cultural education and local history in K-12 curricula. Any ideas anyone?

Cara Johnson, '93, has earned her Masters Degree in Philosophy and is currently working towards her Ph.D. in that subject.

Amy Johnston, '93, is currently a housing advocate with HomeStart (formerly the Greater Boston Housing Initiative) in Boston. "I help homeless people look for housing in Boston, which is not an easy feat. But I do enjoy it--for now."

Jonathan C. Cook, '95, is a graduate student in the Master of Arts in Teaching program at the College of Education of the University of Memphis. He is earning his certification in elementary education with the long term goal of finding a job teaching the first grade. His graduate assistantship is with the Center for Research in Educational Policy. Among other things, he contributes to research on school reform models and develops web pages for the Center and local schools. In the Fall of '97 he will begin his Thesis research, which consists of qualitative study of justification that MAT students at the University of Memphis use to support their positions on the use of corporal punishment in schools.

Jennifer Paine, '97, will be attending Columbia University in fall of 1997.