Southwestern Archaeology, Inc. (SWA) " Got CALICHE ? " Newsletter Archaeology, Anthropology, and History of the Greater Southwest! Thursday April 24, 2003 ***************************************** MEXICO http://mexicanculture.about.com/cs/mexico/a/cincomayo.htm In 1861, Benito Juárez suspended foreign debt repayments for two years due to financial instability, mainly attributable to the expenses of the Mexican-American War. France demanded immediate repayment and decided on military intervention to collect the debt. The French, sent 8000 soldiers to occupy Mexico City. On May 5 (Cinco de Mayo), 1862, as they were marching towards the capital, the French soldiers entered the town of Puebla. When the shooting ended, the French had to retreat to the coast. Cinqo de Mayo is remembered as the day that Mexican people fought and won -- against all odds -- their right to self-rule. ARIZONA From: Pam Jones The Legislature has released its budget. They intend to take $10 million from the Heritage Fund. We Support the Heritage Fund! Economists recommend that even in the hardest of times, individuals save just a little bit of money for their future. We are not asking the governing bodies of Arizona for additional funds. We are asking the legislature not to take $10 million from the Heritage Fund and to instead allow it to be used as the voters intended and to continue its investment in our resources and our future. For information visit . http://www.indianz.com/News/show.asp?ID=2003/04/23/wmat Arizona Congressman Rick Renzi (R) on Thursday will tour historic Fort Apache. The Supreme Court on March 4 held that the US is liable for damages to the 7,600-acre Fort Apache. The 5-4 decision relied on common law trust standards to enforce the government's fiduciary obligations. http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/0423phxhistoric.html Renovations of the Ellis-Shackelford House could begin by the end of the year. The project will include the construction of a small visitors center in the rear of the house and could cost as much as $4 million. Phoenix's Historic Preservation Council on Monday recommended giving $250,000 to the project. NEW JOB OPPORTUNITIES (UT,NV) http://www.swanet.org/zarchives/jobs/jobs2003/piii042403.pdf http://www.swanet.org/zarchives/jobs/jobs2003/wcrm042403.pdf http://www.swanet.org/jobs.html Current Opportunities Editor's Note: For-profit firms and not-for-profit organizations may post paid and volunteer position announcements at http://www.swanet.org/jobs.html CALIFORNIA http://www.redlandsdailyfacts.com/Stories/0,1413,209~22484~1340662,00.html The Serrano language has been preserved on a CD-ROM after countless hours of compilation. Siva's is the sample voice one will hear when learning the sounds and words within the exercises on the CD. The CD features 30 lessons, each with 10 different exercises that teach aspects of the Serrano language, which is still spoken by several tribes. THE ART OF WAR http://www.forbes.com/home/2003/04/23/cz_df_0423ooda.html "Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War" has sold more than 30,000 copies. Boyd's proudest achievement was a theory called OODA, for Observe-Orient-Decide-Act. Developed from his study of Sun Tzu and Prussian military reformers of the 19th century, his theory explains how a combatant can defeat the enemy on the mental battlefield, before the real shooting starts. http://www.dailytrojan.com/article.do?issue=/V148/N61&id=01-complicit.61v.html The loss to global archaeology and to human culture is stupefying. This is yet another shameful act by an administration whose head probably thinks the Fertile Crescent is found in a French bakery. http://www.nationalreview.com/may/may042103.asp The chattering classes have got their dander up: Iraq's antiquities have been vandalized. Those now expressing outrage are careful not to assign blame to the looters themselves -- the American and British forces are clearly to blame. For whatever reasons, too many prominent Americans wish for America's failure -- and claim to find evidence of it everywhere they look. Editor's Note: Below, a prehistoric SW Campaign of "Shock and Awl" has begun to unfold... http://www.athenapub.com/8prewar.htm Archaeologists are entrenched in a paradigm that models the prehistoric inhabitants of the Southwest as occasionally engaging in ritual warfare that produced few fatalities and few social consequences. LeBlanc's book presents several lines of evidence supporting his model for the prevalence, nature, and consequences of warfare. LeBlanc follows the evolution of warfare technology in the American Southwest, noting that certain objects like large bone awls or tchamahias may have been misinterpreted by earlier researchers. Large bone awls were actually used as daggers. Wetherhill Cave 7 holds weapons made of bone and stone associated with 97 human skeletons, some with atlatal points or pieces of stone knives imbedded in their bones. Daggers made of bone were among the weapons recovered at this site. http://www.infoshop.org/inews/stories.php?story=03/04/23/3838260 Gatherer-hunter societies are marked by the presence of a "war machine" at the core of their social being, which serves to ward off the emergence of the state-form. Thus the function of war in oral societies is not to win hegemony but rather "to assure the permanence of the dispersion, the parceling, the atomization of groups." The rise of literacy and the forms of mediation that developed out of it are what formed the basis for the rise of the state apparatus and the subsequent appropriation of the war machine by it. How can the war machine can be reclaimed from the state and reembedded into "global civil society? There is a growing acceptance for the need for dispersion, multiplicity and decentralization, the strength of a dispersed, network-centric approach. A reembedding of the war machine may be one of the most important steps towards a more peaceful, unmediated future. ARTIFACTS http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/23/arts/artsspecial/23JORD.html The museum registrar tracks objects in the collection, and makes them available to anyone who requests them for study or for worship. "We're doing something unique here. But I still love how the artifacts don't talk back and don't ask many questions and are easily humored. They're the story here." http://www.theeagle.com/aandmnews/042303archstudent.htm The primary way for archeologists to study an artifact has been to conserve it, which involves carefully removing the materials encrusted around it. Performing that task without damaging the piece is a challenge. By scanning the artifact, archaeologists can uncover the original shape and design of the object without having to risk damaging or destroying it by physically removing its time-fashioned outer covering. http://www.discover.com/may_03/featoil.html Andreassen and others anticipate that a large chunk of the world's agricultural, industrial, and municipal waste may someday go into thermal depolymerization machines scattered all over the globe. If the process works as well as its creators claim, not only would most toxic waste problems become history, so would imported oil. Editor's Note: If you think this technology is impressive, just consider what it is that we do: archaeologists strategically plumb the dimensions of the time-space continuum and systematically gather discarded wastes that lay scattered in fossilized in situ relational contexts. They reduce these contexts, conserve material culture and ecofacts, create new scientific information about cultural behaviors in ecosystems, recover ancient knowledge, and through adaptive re-use, recycle prehistoric materials and memes into new, higher-value productive goods and services. THE GOOD LIFE http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/23/dining/23WELL.html?ex=1051675200&en=5b98247a5cb1d09b&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE The difference between "science-based" and "value-based" approaches to food safety is summed up in a wonderful passage from a 1982 book by Mary Douglas, an anthropologist, and Aaron Wildavsky, a political scientist: "The risk experts claim to depoliticize an inherently political problem," they wrote. "Science and risk assessment cannot tell us what we need to know about threats of danger since they explicitly try to exclude moral ideas about a good life." When officials and experts dismiss dread-and-outrage concerns as emotional, irrational, unscientific and indefensible, they raise questions about their own credibility and competence. http://magazines.ivillage.com/goodhousekeeping/hb/news/article/0,,usatoday_2003_04_23_eng-usatoday_news3_eng-usatoday_news3_051549_7865805787957238609~ew~xml,00.html For decades, cities, towns and suburbs have been developed on the assumption that every trip will be made by car. Our own definition of what the good life includes, which is a couple of cars and a house on the cul-de-sac, means you can be a couch potato. http://www.trib.com/AP/wire_detail.php?wire_num=91563 hopes to create a Libertarian utopia. When the number of registered Free State supporters reaches 5,000, likely by the end of the year, they will vote on which state to target. Then supporters will have five years to move, with an ultimate goal of 20,000 going to the winning state. Ben Irvin says that Idaho has 1.2 million people, a fairly robust economy and a big distrust of government, but Mormons aren't likely to support legalizing prostitution and drugs, ending taxes on booze and tobacco, or a strict separation of church and state, Irvin said. "Montana is more socially permissive than Idaho. They have casinos and no one in Montana can remember the last time a prostitute was arrested," Irvin, a social anthropologist, noted. ***************************************** Contact the Newsletter Editor: archaeologist@rocketmail.com dogyears@dogyears.com www.swanet.org (url) 602.697.5754 (cellular) 602.372.8539 (digital fax) 603.457.7957 (digital fax) Post letter mail and other media to: Southwestern Archaeology, Inc. P.O. Box 61203 Phoenix AZ, USA 85082-1203 SWA invites you to redistribute SWA's "Got CALICHE?" Newsletter. 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