Archaeology for Kirstin

One-on-one lecture! Learning from Calvin was so fun.

I met Calvin at Bridgewater State University. He held a spot for me in the parking lot and then showed me up to his classroom in the Anthropology building. He had just finished delivering his lecture on Myth and Culture to a room of bored undergraduates, and he was ready for a different kind of student. I laid down the armful of textbooks Calvin had loaned me the week before, took a seat in the front row, and pulled out my notebook. 

Calvin wrote on the white board the title of today's class: Archaeology for Kirstin. By mutual agreement, we were both taking this lecture very seriously. 

Calvin has wanted to teach me the craft of archaeology in detail for several years now. We've had small lessons - how to map a site, the parts of a ship, what is site formation. But most of those lessons were procedural. We were co-designing studies and discussing how to collect our data in the field, not the broader questions behind our pursuits. 

Until today. 

Calvin took me through the history of archaeology as a field. He showed me the four major eras of archaeology, each with their own school of thought. It started with collectors in search of rare antiquities. As time went on, scholars began to sort artifacts into eras - turning archaeology into a form of historical research. The field really hit its stride in the late 20th century with an emphasis on scientific questions and hypothesis testing - this is where Calvin and I fit. 

As Calvin showed me the development of the field he loves, I started summarizing and repeating his message in my own words. "So it's not about the shipwreck," I said. "It's about the culture and the society that created it. What can we learn about that culture by studying what they left behind?" 

I stopped myself. Calvin's face gleamed. Realization dawned for me. Holy crap, I sound like Calvin.

"You get it!" Calvin exclaimed. Yeah, I really did get it now. It's not about the shipwreck. It's never been about the shipwreck. A shipwreck is a data point that we can use to learn about cultures of the past. 

Calvin flipped to the next slide in his lecture, which bore a quote from the father of modern archaeology, Lewis Binford: "Archaeology is anthropology, or it is nothing." 

I'm very grateful for Calvin's tutelage so I can see our interdisciplinary work from his perspective. Herein lies our challenge: to define the important questions, and then go about answering them. If archaeology is anthropology, then it is much more difficult but also much more rewarding - a branch of science all its own. As Calvin and I work together, we can define questions that sit right at the intersection of marine biology and archaeology/anthropology to learn how humans interact with their environment over time. Our research can only get better from here.