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Monday, May 01, 2006
PR Grrrrita!
Made it back last night from Puerto Rico safe and sound. Five days on a Caribbean island isn’t a bad way to wrap up a long semester and go to a conference. The SAA meetings were fun (yes, there was a point to the trip). I volunteered at four symposia: one about paleoethnobotany, another about Maya architecture in northern Belize, one about political ecology in Belize, and the one where my friends were presenting about “agrestic” centers in Northwest Honduras. After seeing several papers, I am starting to agree with Brian Fagan that archaeology is becoming far too specialized, with a small handful of people becoming experts in obscure topics that may be relevant but limit a broader understanding of past culture. The meetings this year also reminded me what a wise decision it was to pursue a degree in applied as opposed to traditional archaeology. A few of the papers I heard left me scratching my head and thinking, “that’s interesting, but what’s the point?” There usually is a point but too often, it is pushed to the side in favor of highlighting the contributions to those highly specialized sub-sub-sub-sub disciplines of archaeology I mentioned. The best speakers I saw were generally the big names that had been at it for a few decades. Timothy Beach and Emily deTapia were a few memorable presenters. A few side notes: I ran into my mentor from UNC-Wilmington that I hadn’t seen in about a year and was invited to the department graduation in a couple of weeks. Oh, and the title of this post comes from the hundreds of signs and car decorations we saw while citizens were protesting government cutbacks (Scream, Puerto Rico!).
A neat street scene in Old San Juan:
On Sunday, we drove up to the mountains where there is a weekly street fair type event...
...and we ate some roasted pig that was delicious:
The best part of Puerto Rico: the amazing beaches and jet blue water:
Posted by Will at May 1, 2006 01:08 PM in Graduate School