Meyer-Kaiser lab

In every spy movie, there is a scene where the protagonist is in a foreign city. They sip coffee from an apartment window while watching the city below. The windows are open for ventilation but covered in curtains for privacy, and the fabric streams in the breeze. Sounds of the street below waft into the open window - honking horns and crying children and rubber tires over dirt roads. The spy watches life go on around them, because they are in the city but not of the city. A silent observer three floors up.  This week, I am that spy. I am the foreigner intently watching the city below me but unable to join its throngs. Friends, I made it to my next destination: the Solomon Islands. As excited as I am to be here, I have to be patient. A short quarantine is required before boarding the ship, so I have 5 days in a spy-worthy hide-away in Honiara.  I love watching the city. I'm up on a hill, so I have a great view over the bustling capital to Iron Bottom Sound. The architecture in...

This week, I have made a point of exploring the natural world around me, not just the city. I made some very cool finds! Just west of Dayuan, I found rice fields! The plants grow in a very wet environment, and you can see there's a pool of water around their roots. Taoist temples are ubiquitous, even seemingly in the middle of nowhere. A lot of homes have potted plants or small gardens right outside their doors. Lattice structures like this are common - I guess this is the Taiwanese version of suburban gardening. The species identification app I use said this was a Caribbean leafleather slug ( Saransinula plebeia ). They're invasive in Taiwan! Speaking of invasive species, this is a giant African land snail ( Lissachatina fulica ). It's another non-native pest in Taiwan.   Taiwan is really a hub for invasive gastropods - this is the channeled apple snail ( Pomacea canaliculata ), which is native to South America.  I walked to the Taiwan Strait! It was low tide, so I got t...

Friends, it has been an interesting week. After my conference wrapped up, I was supposed to just stay one extra night near the Taipei Airport and then fly to my next destination. I was scheduled to join a research expedition in another western Pacific country. Things did not go according to plan.  I got sick and was unable to fly, so I ended up spending an extra week in Taiwan. Tell you what, if you're going to be unexpectedly stuck anywhere in the world, Taiwan is not a bad option. It's safe, there's great public transportation , and you can find ready-made meals in convenience stores on every street corner. Barely anyone speaks English, but I downloaded Mandarin to the translator app on my phone. All in all, I'm doing fine.  I decided to spend this week doing what I do best: exploring and learning. My hotel is in a suburb of Taipei called Taoyuan, specifically the neighborhood called Dayuan. I have made it my mission this week to explore every corner of Dayuan. The sm...

While we were at the Bureau of Cultural Heritage (BUCH), I finally got an answer to a question I have had for a long time. First, I need to give you some background.  The anchor encrustation A few years ago, Calvin used the term "encrustation" in my presence. My ears perked up. There are so many terms in archaeology - like, established jargon in the field - that sounds funny or even made-up to my ears: historiography , ecofacts, lifeways. Those terms regularly drive me nuts. But "encrustation" was something I could immediately grasp - a crust on an artifact, mostly made from calcium carbonate.  "Hey Calvin," I asked. "Is encrustation a biological or chemical phenomenon? As an artifact gets covered in calcium carbonate, is that because there's a purely chemical process like precipitation going on, or is the encrustation from the shells and skeletons of organisms?" He couldn't answer me. In fact, none of the dozen or so archaeologists I ha...

Warships in Taiwan's waters, representing  different eras of Taiwan's history.  After the 2025 International Conference on Underwater Cultural Heritage wrapped up in Kaohsiung, our group of international scholars still had a few items on our agenda. First, we visited a special exhibit at the National Science and Technology Museum called "War and Shipwrecks."  The exhibit was very well-done. It delved into the close relationship between armed conflict and the creation of shipwrecks. Most importantly for me, the exhibit showed the different eras of underwater cultural heritage in Taiwan's waters. I'm not very familiar with Taiwanese history, so I was grateful for the clear framework. Each era was exemplified by a warship, which was highlighted throughout the exhibition. Taiwan was first inhabited by Polynesian indigenous people . Warships from the Ming dynasty (1368 - 1644) are among the oldest shipwrecks in Taiwan's waters. Dutch colonists arrived in the ea...

It was the second day of the 2025 International Conference on Underwater Cultural Heritage. My fellow speakers and I gathered in our normal meeting space at the National Science and Technology Museum, while conference staff set up and guests registered. I wandered into the hall. To my surprise, the room right next door to us was equally busy - people were filing into what looked like a classroom. Each person had a long, rectangular case on their back. I watched with curiosity as they unpacked what looked like string instruments. I had to know more.  Thanks to one of the conference staff, I learned the instruments are called Erhu. The erhu is a bowed instrument with two strings (A and D), and its sound is iconic in Chinese culture. Back when I was a child, my dad traveled to China for work and brought me back a collection of CDs with Chinese folk music. The erhu was featured in nearly every song. I was fascinated to see this instrument in person here in Taiwan.  Over the course...

Conference hosts, speakers, and attendees Friends, this week, I am in Kaohsiung, Taiwan! I am an invited international scholar at the 2025 International Conference on Underwater Cultural Heritage. My favorite part about conferences is meeting new people, and I have had an excellent chance to do that in Kaohsiung.  I've learned there's a proper way to introduce yourself to a new colleague in Taiwan. Every single person who approached me followed the same procedure, so it must be deeply culturally ingrained. First, they were prepared with a business card in hand. Nobody actually calls them "business cards" in Taiwan; instead, they are "name cards." Western and Eastern naming conventions are so vastly different - think about trying to repeat someone's name back to them to see if you have it right (you won't) and then remembering it for more than a second (good luck). The "name card" convention circumvents all of that. The person gives you thei...