Classes

[brigdh]

Prehistory of the Near East and Egypt II Prof. Wright (My advisor!)
Our focus is the Near East and Egypt during the pre- and proto-historic periods, from the beginnings of plant and animal domestication and continuing to the end of the third millennium BC, ie in Mesopotamia to the Third Dynasty of Ur, and in Egypt to the Old Kingdom. Principal topics will be the Neolithic, early villages and towns in Upper and Lower Egypt and northern Mesopotamia, urbanism and state development. A rational for studying the two cultures in one course is to develop a comparative view of early civilizations.

The second half of the course I had last semester; I'll much prefer it this time. I only care about people once they invent cities. Homo habilis and Homo erectus and whatever are boring.

Faunal Analysis Prof. Crabtree (Another member of my committee!)
Faunal analysis or zooarchaeology is one of the fastest growing subdisciplines within anthropological archaeology. This course will survey the major methods and techniques used in archaeological faunal analysis. In addition, the course will examine the ways in which faunal data have been used to reconstruct early hominin subsistence strategies (hunting vs scavenging), to trace the process of animal domestication, and to study trade, social status, and ethnicity in complex societies. Topics that will be covered include: the identification of mammal, bird, reptile, and fish bones from archaeological sites, the determination of age at death in mammals, bone measurements, taphonomy, animal domestication, and the use of faunal remains in the study of complex, urban societies.

AHHH. This class terrifies me. I can't look at a bone and announce, "Yes, clearly we have a juvenile female goat humerus." I don't even know what a humerus is! Okay, I do. But not what a goat one looks like.

Lingustic Anthropology Prof. Schieffelin (Someone I don't know!)
In this course we explore the ways in which the study of language and the study of culture have mutually influenced each other in terms of theories, methods and substantive issues. Topics include the relationship among language, thought and culture, including: the role of language in social interaction, language and speech in ethnographic perspective, language ideology, language genesis, maintenance and change, and the acquisition of linguistic and social knowledge.

Well, it was this or Archaeological Statistics. I might be good at math, but that doesn't mean I don't hate it.



In other academia news, I'm not going to Syria this summer. Not because anyone was less than fascinated and enthralled with me, but because the entire project has been delayed to next year for political reasons. Dammit, terrible humanitarian tragedies that will have ramifications for decades, quit being inconvenient for me.

I have to find a new project, now. Today I had to come up with an explanation for why I hadn't yet gotten around to reading some information my advisor had sent me without using the phrase, 'but I was really busy discussing the possibilities of Swordspoint BDSM porn'. People, you know who I blame for this!

But yeah. The options at the moment are: Mongolia, Peru, Arizonia, Cyprus, Japan, Israel, and several others I can't remember. Um, right. I'll let you know when that narrows down.

Comments

[kessie.livejournal.com]

Weeeelllll, I may be going to Japan during June. I'm not promising anything, but it would be kind of awesome if we were both there and we managed to somehow meet up. ¬_¬ It's kind of a pity that Ireland doesn't count because I could definitely assure you that I'd be here.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Hahah yes. And after I go clean up cat puke I've more to add to that mess.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Hooray!

Thankfully I managed to simply be like, "I was really busy this weekened..." and she went off, "Oh, yeah, me too! It's always like that at the beginning of the semester, don't worry about it."

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Dude, that would be cool. And how strange would it be if we both happened to be in Japan at the same time?

But alas, I don't know anyone working in Ireland. Though I feel free to encourage you to visit New York anytime I'll be here!

[rm.livejournal.com]

Hahahaha. Are you at CUNY or NYU, btw? I keep wondering which set of people might have small world theatre connections here.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

NYU. Oh god, shit, you're not allowed to know anyone there; everyone I know is terrible. I dated a girl from the dramatician department for, like, a week, but she was the most boring person I've ever known (I was drunk when we met! It's not my fault that I agreed to see her again!), and now I'm being stalked by this pretentious fuck who double-majors in theatre and anthro.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Oh, dude. I know people there. I _work_ there a few hours a week.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Well, I suppose my vast experience of two people might not really be indicative of everyone there.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Oh, no, you're mostly EnTIRELY right. I felt bad even asking you if you went to NYU since you don't suck.

[weirdquark]

But the discussion about the possiblities of Swordpoint BDSM porn is so interesting!

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Hahahahahaha! I will try to change the reputation by hanging around and being awesomely cool, but it might take a while, given that there's only two of us archaeological grad students.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Are you reading that, too? Man, I can't believe that various other people are following along.

[weirdquark]

Hee. I like discussions of character motivation. They don't require me to think like the characters like writing fic would; if I want to add anything, I can get by on my flashes of insight.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

You're certainly free to join in! It's just funny that this little thing we've been doing to amuse ourselves (or that's how it feels to me) has an audience. I wish I could always be so interesting without having to try!

[rm.livejournal.com]

Also, can I just note that I will ply you for all sorts of weird info if you go to Mongolia, as it is part of my rather bizarre family ancestry, and I'm sort of obsessed with it in a clueless way.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Ha. It's probably more of the unlikely ones, though I can hook you up with a girl who was there for a medieval monastery site last summer.

[veleda-k.livejournal.com]

Hm, I need to post my class schedule. (Well, I don't need to, I suppose. But I want to.)

I think Peru would be really cool. Japan is my passion, so that's where I would go, but Peru would be all sorts of neat.
possibilities of Swordspoint BDSM porn

Link. Now.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

You do need to post it! So that I can read it.

I've never been to Peru or Japan (or any of these except Arizona, actually), so both would be cool.

Link. Now.

threewalls, rm and I have managed to produce 257 (at the moment) comments here (http://threewalls.livejournal.com/202200.html). Though topics also include "what does Alec's accent sound like?", "Is Basil/Theron set up to be a parallel to Richard/Alec, and if so, does that mean Richard's a wizard?", "how many people know where Richard is, once he leaves the city?", "what was Richard's childhood like?" and "what does Alec imagine the afterlife to be?", among others.

[ranalore.livejournal.com]

Dude, Mongolia. Doooooo eeeeeeeeet.

Also, I would be all over that Linguistic Anthropology class.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Man, I wished I had those sort sof classes when I did my anthro degrees. Instead I got lots of Precolumbian archaeology and I can't think of anything more boring that Precolumbian archaeology. I am just not a Mayanist at heart. Physical anthropology, thought, now *there's* something I could sink my teeth into.

Have you ever seen Time Team?

And I'd pick either Mongolia, because, dude, Mongolia, or Peru, because despite what I said about Precolumbian archaeology, I could probably get into the Inca, I love the landscape of Peru, and I'd love to go see Machu Picchu while the guerrillas aren't killing people.

[veleda-k.livejournal.com]

It's posted! (Though I don't go into much detail.) There's a bunch of other stuff too.

Should I finish The Fall of the Kings before checking the post out? I'm only a little more than halfway through.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Whooo!

There's one thread near the bottom where we talk about the implications of the ending, and what it means for the characters, but I think that'll be pretty obvious and easy to avoid. All the rest of The Fall of the Kings discussion is generally things, like 'what are wizards supposed to do?' and 'what do Richard and Basil have in common?'. Or, of course, you could stick to the threads about Richard/Alec, which is where all the BDSM stuff is anyway.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Mongolia seems to be the popular choice!

I've never taken Linguistics before, so it'll be interesting.

[threewalls]

You're reading all that and not chiming in? I suppose I should be impressed that anyone aside from the parties involved can follow it.

[weirdquark]

Actually, I think I'm not chiming in because I'm not following it... I have a thought, and then I think, no, I should get caught up, and by the time I do, I have no idea where I had wanted to leave a comment.

[threewalls]

You could always start another thread? I wouldn't mind and I think the discussion is tangled enough that it couldn't be more confusing no matter what we do to it.

Which sounded more encouraging in my head than it does on my screen.

[weirdquark]

Heh.

I may do so, if I can get my thoughts organized into some coherent fashion.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Ha. One of my favorite professors in undergrad was a Mayanist, but I only had one class actually about that. But there is something more boring than that, and it would be North American Precolumbian archaeology. Oh my god, no one cares about the freaking mound people, y'all.

No, I haven't! Should I? Is it good?

They all look fun, but Peru is supposed to be lovely, and I'd really like to go.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Time Team is a British archaeology show that's been running for about 14 years. It's hosted by Tony Robinson (if you've seen Blackadder - yes, Baldrick), and is basically survey and/or rescue archaeology: they go somewhere and have three days to dig and find out what they can about a site.

American archaeologists will get a frisson of excitement and apprehension running down their spines because they start off most digs with a backhoe. :D They're also, because of the nature of Great Britain (i.e., loads of archaeology everywhere you go), the nature of the show (short time in which to dig), and the nature of the digs (often, they're going in before a housing development comes in and destroys the site), doing a quick survey rather than serious digging on a site. They usually show up at a place to see if they can find out if it's worth doing a real dig there later.

It's here and there on Bitorrent, usually in season-long files that take forever to download. I've got some episodes on CD (just downloaded the 2005 season) that I might be could persuaded to burn for you if you can't get hold of them via BT. :)

I would adore it if the BBC put it out on DVD, but they've shown no signs of doing so so far.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

* It also periodically shows up on History Channel International, although they shove it in under a different name, for some reason.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Oh, it sounds interesting! Even though, yeah, backhoes are terrifying. Much better than that 'Dig Archaeology!' or whatever the show on the Discovery Channel is called. I tried to watch one episode of that, but the host was talking about how some people think aliens built the pryamids, and I had to turn it off.

[ranalore.livejournal.com]

I would so love to go to Mongolia. I'm betting a lot of us would. *G*

My best friend is a linguist. Well, to be strictly accurate, a semiotician. Makes for some very interesting conversations about the grammar of narrative.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

I think I'd prefer South or East Asia, but Mongolia would certainly not be a bad place to spend a few months.

Ah, cool. One of my roommates in undergrad was a linguistics major, but she didn't talk much about it.

[ranalore.livejournal.com]

Nepal was the deep dream of my teenage heart, but Mongolia was on the list. All of Asia is on the list, really; so many years spent in the California public school system gave me a better sense of Asian history and culture than my years in other states' school systems, but I'm still appallingly ignorant, and I'd love to rectify that.

When Gwyn and I were roommates, we talked pretty much non-stop about the interplay of narrative and language, how much language development was the result of the need to voice certain narratives, and how much the narratives were shaped by the available vocabulary. This is why Shakespeare is a genius not only auctorially, but linguistically, because he could conceive of narrative elements beyond the scope of the existent vocabulary, solidify those elements into the concrete form of new words, and then insert those words into the framework of the common vernacular so his audience apprehended his meaning and assimilated the word into their own language matrix. By which I don't mean he came up with concepts that hadn't already been floating around in the collective subconscious, but that he was able to take some of the ones that had not yet been explicated in the English tongue and articulate them.

Errr, which is probably way more than you wanted to know about our topics of conversation. Sorry. *G*