The Elcor Burial Cave: An Example Of Public Archaeology From West Texas

Abstract

The discovery of a small sinkhole cave in West Texas led to the recovery of seven human skulls that represent a secondary burial of undetermined age. Radiocarbon dating of two skulls and anthropometric study of the entire sample suggest that the skulls belong to prehistoric indians physically similar to those of the Trans-Pecos about A.D. 900-1100. The study stresses the importance of following up leads from the general public and involving concerned citizens in various forms of public or rescue archaeology     

Dangerous Places: Health, Safety, and Archaeology

Dangerous Places: Health, Safety,and Archaeology. David A. Poirier and Kenneth L. Feder. eds. Westport, CT and London: Bergin and Garvey, 2001. + 249 pp.     

Mangling Symbols of Gentility in the Wild West: Case Studies in Interpretive Archaeology

Gentility (aka, "Victorian culture") was the preeminent model of propriety in mid- and late-nineteenth-century California. Thanks to industrial production and an efficient supply network, the genteel mores of Victoria's England came to be expressed in a suite of artifacts that became de rigueur for anyone who aspired to a position of respectability—even in the wilds of the American West. The trappings of gentility, however, were not used only by the aspiring white middle class to achieve some kind of nervous social acceptance. In this essay, we present archaeological examples from a high-ranking Mexican-Californio, a Chinese American merchant, African American porters, and an expensive brothel to suggest that the symbols of gentility had power outside the parlors of the white middle class and that other groups manipulated the potent symbolic content of these artifacts for their own diverse ends. [African Americans, Chinese Americans, historical archaeology, interpretive archaeology, Victorianism]     

The Nubian Past: An Archaeology of the Sudan

The Nubian Past: An Archaeology of the Sudan . David N. Edwards. New York: Routledge, 2004. 348 pp.     

Museums and Archaeology in West Africa.

Museums and Archaeology in West Africa. Claude Daniel Ardouin. ed. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1998.178 pp.     

Archaeology of Prehistoric Native America: An Encyclopedia

Archaeology of Prehistoric Native America: An Encyclopedia. Guy Gibbon. ed. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1998.941pp.     

The Archaeology of Solvieux: An Upper Palaeolithic Open Air Site in France

The Archaeology of Solvieux: An Upper Palaeolithic Open Air Site in France. James Sackett. Los Angeles: UCLA Institute of Archaeology, 1999. 420 pp.     

Film and Archaeology in the Indigenous and Industrial American West

Phenomenological and postcolonial archaeologies of film bracket the artifactual images and historical narratives in two films depicting hydraulic industrialization in the 20th-century Native American West of the United States. The documentary Echoes of Yesterday [Ball and Gibby 1939, 1979] consists of industrial and archaeological footage shot in 1939 and remixed in 1979 which depicts the building of the Grand Coulee Dam in Washington State, the relocating of indigenous villages there, and disinterring of Native American dead. The independent magical realism film Northfork [Polish 2003] is based on the building of the Fort Peck Dam on the Missouri River in Montana and the subsequent relocation of people and graves in that area. Both films animate the historic Modern period (1934–1975) and present the cultural losses, nostalgia and redemption attendant in a transition to a Supermodern period (1975–present).