Society for American Archaeology

Last week I attended the 75th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. I’ve been attending and giving papers for my entire 20 year plus career. It is the national meeting for archaeologists who work in the Americas, so it is a big conference. It is usually held in big cities like Seattle, Philadelphia, Quebec city, and St. Louis (this year) and is attended by thousands of archaeologists. This year the attendance was just under 4000. If the thought of being surrounded by 4000 archaeologists makes you uncomfortable, you’ve had the proper reaction. It is a strange and diverse lot.

It takes many kinds to be an archaeologist. The dominant form is still the middle-aged, beer-drinking, slightly overweight, bearded man with precious few social skills. However that form is quickly being replaced by younger types and they essentially come in couple forms themselves. One is the hard drinking, bearded, long-haired, heavily decorated (piercings, tattoos, dreadlocks) young man with few social skills. The other is a young woman, and she seems to come in a variety of forms too. There is the well-dressed, well-spoken, professional woman seeking to make headway in a male-dominated profession. Then there is the hard drinking, rough talking, heavily decorated (piercings, tattoos, dreadlocks) young woman seeking to make headway in a male-dominated profession. Another somewhat rare version is the established, older woman and she also comes in two basic forms like the younger version. The odd thing is that no one seems to really recognize that this male dominated profession is now dominated, at least demographically, by women. This is no doubt a good thing for the future of the profession, both intellectually and socially.

There are other minority types as well. One particularly common form is the technology geek. They have the appearance and sound of your average geek, but all they talk about is technological applications to archaeology. They fit in well with mainstream American archaeologists, because they also have precious few social skills and often drink heavily.

Another very rare type of archaeologist belongs to any of a number of ethnic groups present in our country. It turns out that archaeology is something that, at least in our country, is a pursuit of those that have traditionally had the means for such leisure. In other words, rich white folks and their rich white patrons. Particularly under-represented among the ranks of archaeologists are Native Americans and African Americans. Ironically, those are two groups whose history is studied extensively by American archaeologists. Maybe this is hard to see for some, but it is not for me. It is no wonder that archaeology is considered by many minority communities to be an extension of the same arrogant imperialism that lead to the enslavement of people from Africa and the ethnic cleansing of Native Americans—and other scars on our country’s history.

Of course my friends and I all fit into another rare category among American archaeologists. We are erudite, well-spoken, on the thin side and generally good looking, with plenty of good social skills and most importantly, devastatingly interesting to listen to as we go on about our incredibly important research. Just ask my wife, she’ll confirm all of this.

For some reason I did not enjoy this year’s conference like I normally do. Sure, it is filled with strange types, but they are my people and I am normally comfortable among them. This time I found it more difficult than usual to sit through boring papers and listen to hyper-academic archaeologists drone on about the significance of their “work.” I find that this particularly pretentious kind of archaeologist, so confident of their own self importance, uses “work” in the same way that pretentious, self-absorbed artists talk about their work. You’ve heard them; they talk about the integrity of the work, the craft of the work, and their devotion to the work. It generally makes me want to barf. And it seemed like I walked through too many of those kinds of conversations at the conference. I lost count of the number of times I swallowed back just a tiny bit of barf that had welled up in my mouth.

Fortunately, I was too absorbed in the importance of my own work to worry about anyone else too much. On the flight to St. Louis I had a revelation that lead me to rewrite my paper. I usually don’t do that. I am usually a bit neurotic about papers. I have them done ahead of time and I practice them a lot. This time I was a little behind. I had a version done, but it was only half baked. Then on the plane I had chance to bake the ideas a bit more. The result was that I needed to rewrite the thing, and I am glad I did because the paper came out much better. I really wanted it to be good because the session was organized to honor a very famous and influential archaeologist—James A. Brown. Not the Godfather of Soul, but the Godfather of Eastern US Archaeology. The entire session was the best ever presented at a meeting—as universally agreed upon by the participants—and the honoree was very happy. The result is a testament to our devotion to our craft and the importance of the work.

I did get my one meal of good red meat and a white potato. It came with a pretty good story, too. We were leaving the hotel room to go have a steak at a place near the hotel. We exchanged pleasantries with a man standing in the lobby and he asked if we were headed to dinner. We told him we were going to have a steak and he asked where. We told him and he said it was a good place…but there was a “but” in there so I took the bait. I asked if he knew a better place. He said he did but that he owned it so he was biased. It turned out that he owns a restaurant with Jim Edmonds, long-time St. Louis Cardinals baseball player. He said he would go and get his limo and drive us to the restaurant. He does that for anyone who wants to go eat at his place. Check it out, it is a great place: 15 Steakhouse 1900 Locust Street, Saint Louis, MO 63103, (314) 588-8899. So we got our limo ride and a good steak. We rode back by the conference hotel to drop off one of our party and a bunch of our colleagues saw us in our limo. Honestly, I felt just a tiny bit like I was in a John Hughes 1980s film. Still, we got a good story out of it.

Despite living well for a few days—eating out for every meal—I still did pretty well with my weight. When I got back last week, I weighed 188.5. Today I weigh 187.1. Just one more pound I will have lost 20 lbs!