Wow, so I just realized that I haven't updated the blog since August. Sorry for the lack of attention, I have been working on keeping my head above water with papers and midterms. On the bright side, my relationship with grad school is a lot less abusive now and according to my mid-term grades, I am not altogether horrible at this - it seems I am actually kind of good. Which has been a nice surprise. Literally, just got out of my second osteology exam. This time it was the bones of the skull plus any of the leg bones from the last section he wanted to throw in. Feel like I did a lot better this time, but I don't like to build myself up and feel cocky just in case things don't turn out so well.
Fall break was last week. Used the time to get a little bit of work done, but mostly just hung out and breathed. It was nice to relax and catch up on sleep...spend some time away from school...after all of the stress and all-nighters from September. Half of my first semester is officially over and for the most part (aside from the usual readings and papers) my attention is turning toward the big semester papers that will come due for two classes in about a month and a half. The nice thing about it is that my profs. have split it up a bit and have deadlines throughout the term to make sure we are progressing correctly. It's a little bit of hand holding that I wasn't expecting and kind of appreciate since I am a notorious procrastinator and will focus too much on all the short-term work (of which there is plenty) and lose site of the long term stuff.
On the thesis front, things are coming along. Hopefully I will be doing something with the Town Creek collection. I have been looking for other settlement sites of the same culture, South Appalachian Mississippian, but so far have not found much in the literature. Apparently the Tennessee Valley Authority talks about them in one of their Environmental Impact Survey, but I haven't found where they were doing their survey work. But there are plenty of mounds in the western part of North Carolina, at least one of them is bound to be from the culture I am studying. Sometime this summer I will need to head out that way and check some of them out if I can, at the least it's a good reason to go get some good barbecue. This part of the state has too much of the Eastern Carolina influence which is way too thin and mustard/vinegary for my taste. And I am still looking for a good Chinese food establishment - found one that is ok (mostly it's just really convenient and cheap), which makes up for the sub-par orange chicken.
It's definitely Fall now. The fact that I lived in Florida for the past two years is now really apparent, because I am ready to break out the heavy coat and everyone else is still walking around in t-shirts. I'm going to have to buy a space heater soon.
Got two books in the past few weeks, one I've read before - the excellent Clea Koff's The Bone Woman...if you want to read about what its like to work as a forensic anthropologist in the '90s Rwanda and Bosnia, this is the book you should be reading. I already knew what I wanted to be before reading this book and after, it has only validated my choice.
The other book is the Forever War by Dexter Filkins. He's an embed journalist who was in Iraq and Afghanistan..though it seems to be more of an Afghanistan emphasis. It reads like stream of conscience and he jumps from one story to the next, current war to one ten years ago, from one country to another...which is slightly disjointed, but the more you read it the easier it is to understand. The thing I like about it so far is that Filkins spent a good bit of time in Afghanistan back in the '90s...and so can contexctualize the current stories he has of the people there with history on the Taliban's rise, what Kandahar was like when the warlords were fighting for power, and the influence of foreign money and fighters in the support and shoring up of Taliban power.
Afghanistan is a place many people in the US don't know much about outside of our current involvment. It's been through a hell of a time for the past couple of decades and lost a lot - the oppressive laws women were subjected to and the loss of important archaeological and cultural history when the Taliban destroyed the statues of Buddha are just a few examples. I'm glad there has been a shift in increased awareness and focus on our military and civil efforts there - the Pentagon has even started employing cultural anthropologists to help provide some insight in what can be done to help the population. You hear so much about America's war fatigue and it has been going on for a long time, but we can make a difference and have been making a difference - we just need to stick it out. But that's the end of my soapbox, I'm going to go start on the copious amounts of homework that I have and look forward to my break tomorrow when I get to have a funnel cake at the fair. Whoohoo fair : )
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