« Sam Harris on Islam and the Danish cartoons | Main | Far out Maya archaeology »

Wednesday, February 15, 2006

A tale of two papers

I have a paper proposal due on Monday for the Ancient States course I’m taking. Last semester in Chiefdoms I wrote on water management and claims to land resources during a shift from a kinship social structure to one defined by kingship in the Maya lowlands. One section of that paper was to be about state appropriation and management of water resources but I ended up scrapping it because it seemed forced at the time. I’m thinking about reviving my thoughts on that for the Ancient States paper and narrowing it down to talk about either a) the similarities/differences between water management in territorial states and city-states (a distinction made in Trigger’s Understanding Early Civilizations, our course text) or b) continuities between prestate and state forms of water management (perhaps as related to agriculture?). I’d really like to take one of these routes because I already have a nice stack of articles on the topic from some stuff I did last semester. I’m waiting on some feedback from my prof/advisor because I have yet to come up with a nice, solid thesis. Oh how I miss the days of doing book reports on other countries where the most complicated research involved tracking down the average annual precipitation and major exports.

In Paleoclimatology, I am working with two of my archaeology friends on a group paper due at the end of the semester. In two weeks we have individual papers and class presentations about a research technique used in paleoclimatology. I wish I could tell you more but after a brief review of a fraction of the literature, I've determined that geologists and climatologists speak a foreign language (not sure what it is yet). We're the only three archaeologists in a class of about 15 environmental science grad students studying advanced techniques and theories. For instance, here's what I picked up from today's lecture (each ellipsis represents about 10 minutes lecture time): "OK, welcome...the earth...climate change...rotates on an axis...sediment cores...*professor coughs*...temperature variation..."

Posted by Will at February 15, 2006 02:48 PM in Papers and Essays