Renew your Membership for 2021
View MAC-sponsored webinar

☛ Council for Minnesota Archaeology Symposium (Virtual) Preliminary Schedule and Registration (More info PDF - Register Here)

☛ New Videos on Archaeology of Personhood and Soul Concepts of Pre- and Post-contact Indians of the Eastern Woodlands (direct link to videos, full notice with symposium details)

☛ Congratulations to Jane Buikstra and John Richards as 2020's Distinguished Career Award recipients!

☛ Midwest Archaeological Conference/University of Notre Dame Press Dissertation Awards for 2020 are Dr. Kathryn Frederick (Michigan State University) and Dr. Christina Friberg (University of California Santa Barbara).

☛ Recent passing of two giants in archaeology: W. Raymond Wood on October 2 and George C. “Doc” Frison on September 7, 2020. 

☛ University of Illinois NAGPRA Update: Moratorium

☛ Announcing 7th Grant Cycle for SPARC Funding Dedicated to Promote Geospatial Research in Archaeology

☛ Elizabeth Baldwin (Betsy) Garland obituary (Read here)

☛ MCJA Moves to a New Publisher

☛ Larry Dean Grantham passed away on June 23, 2020 (Read obituary)

☛ Online guide to “Talking About Race,” designed by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (webpage)

☛ MAC member Lynn Goldstein will be this year's recipient of the SAA Lifetime Achievement Award!

☛ Introducing a new book series Midwest Archaeological Perspectives

MAC-sponsored webinar Dec 11

Dear MAC Members,

Now is the time to renew your membership.  We encourage everyone to consider the benefits of membership in MAC including our excellent peer reviewed journal, the Midwest Archaeological Perspectives series, and upcoming meeting opportunities to connect with colleagues.  One way to connect will be the webinar described below. 

Please view this recorded webinar (from December 11), and then renew your membership for 2021.

View the Recorded Webinar

As part of membership renewal for 2021 the MAC Board requires self-certification of either participation in the December 11 webinar or later viewing of the recorded session.

View the recorded webinar here: https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/share/scUQpnyQa6dUYwljvECdAHE-0qQ4z3FwepRdtSn91EDlIwa4ftWF6GHyVwN9xwdP.D3x6YAZzcHQ0UtWy

Passcode: 2E&GGjEU

Webinar Agenda

Advancing Archaeology by Adopting Modern Thinking

  • Understanding the impacts of ignoring racism and sexism in archaeology—in field settings, agencies, consulting, business, and on campuses
  • Understanding why valuing racial and gender difference and inclusion advances archaeological work and centralizes the importance of the profession

Advancing Archaeology by Embracing Racial and Gender Equity and Inclusion

  • Identifying productive racial and gender mindsets and behavior in archaeological education, professional workspaces, and field settings.

Advancing Archaeology Through Action

  • Strategies for creating invitational, diverse, and equitable archaeological educational and workspaces and professional relationships.
  • Strategies for successfully navigating conflict related to race and gender among colleagues.
  • Strategies for recruiting and retaining women and BIPOC archaeologists to the profession and MAC.

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Jan Brashler         
President, Midwest Archaeological Conference            

John Doershuk
Chair, MAC Anti-harassment Task Force
Past President, Midwest Archaeological Conference

Council for Minnesota Archaeology Symposium (Virtual) Preliminary Schedule and Registration

The virtual conference runs from 11:00am to 5:30pm on Friday, February 26th and from 9:00am to 2:00pm on Saturday, February 27th. If people are interested in attending, but need to miss all or parts of the conference, recordings of talks will be made available post-conference. Those interested in viewing the post-conference recording will need to be registered if they wish to be notified when these recordings will be made available.

Open this PDF to view the preliminary schedule.

If you'd like to attend or view recorded presentations after the event, you can register through this link (2021 Council for Minnesota Archaeology Symposium (Virtual).

Final programs and webinar links will be sent out to registrants prior to the beginning of the conference.

Laura Koski, MSc, RPA
CMA Vice President
Zooarchaeo Consulting, LLC
ljoreenl@gmail.com

New Videos on Archaeology of Personhood and Soul Concepts of Pre- and Post-contact Indians of the Eastern Woodlands

Dear Colleagues:

I hope this finds you in good health and spirits. It is a pleasure to announce the online posting of a set of videos that present research on the topics of personhood and soul-like essences as conceived by pre- and post-contact Indians of the Eastern Woodlands and as used ritually and strategically by them in their lives.

The videos include nine researchers’ and two discussants’ presentations written for a symposium for the 85th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, Austin, Texas, April 23, 2019.  When the meetings were canceled, we constructed the videos as an alternative means of sharing our ideas with the profession.

The contents of the symposium videos and contact information for the participants are summarized in the linked PDF.

The videos have applicability to subjects beyond Eastern Woodland Indians archaeology and ethnography.  They will be of interest to those who study the archaeology and ethnography of New World indigenous peoples, the archaeology of religion, mortuary archaeology, bioarchaeology, identity, folklore, performance, comparative religion, and the “ontological turn” movement in archaeology.

The videos can be viewed at: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLq8AGDwGZC7qHiXWlE3mTXpt52D9fxDLP

Feel free to show all or any of the videos for teaching purposes in your college and/or professional classes.

Please pass on this announcement to colleagues of yours who might have an interest in it for their research or teaching.  Thank you. 

Wishing you the best,
     Chris Carr

Christopher Carr
Professor Emeritus of Anthropology
School of Human Evolution and Social Change
Arizona State University
Tempe, AZ 85281-2402

Mailing address:
5428 Valinda Drive
Chapel Hill, NC 27514

Email: christopher.carr@asu.edu

University of IllinoisNAGPRA Update: Moratorium

Effective September 15, 2020, as part of our commitment to NAGPRA and to the concerns of Tribal Nations, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign will implement a moratorium on research, teaching, display, imaging, and circulation of human remains and cultural items that are potentially subject to NAGPRA at the University, including all on-site collections in the University's custody or collections that the University has loaned to other organizations. 

More information can be found on the University's NAGPRA web page.

Announcing 7th Grant Cycle for SPARC Funding Dedicated to Promote Geospatial Research in Archaeology

SPARC (SPatial Archaeometry Research Collaborations) is an NSF-funded Archaeology and Archaeometry program dedicated to promoting geospatial research in archaeology, hosted by the Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies at the University of Arkansas, Dartmouth College, and University of Glasgow. Now in its 7th year, SPARC offers direct support to archaeological projects through awards in three categories:

  • Fieldwork: On-site data collection
  • Data & Analytics: Preparation, processing and analysis of geospatial data
  • Publication: Presentation, publication and archiving of complex geospatial datasets

For this solicitation, we will be prioritizing Data & Analytics and Publications proposals due to uncertainties related to the COVID-19 pandemic, and those which align with our analytical development priorities such as microCT and imagery analysis (see the https://sparc.cast.uark.edu/ homepage for full list). However, we will consider other projects on a case-by-case basis.

We particularly encourage applications from scholars underrepresented within the field of archaeology, early-career scholars, and those working in the public sector or at public institutions. Late-stage PhD students are eligible for SPARC submissions. The Program sets no priorities based on time period, geographic region or specific research topic, but projects should have an anthropologically relevant focus and qualify for NSF archaeology funding.

Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis through April 2021. Pre-application consultations are required before submission. Please visit our website at https://sparc.cast.uark.edu/ for more information about the Program and the application process.

Regards,
Carla Klehm, Jackson Cothren, and W. Fred Limp, University of Arkansas
Jesse Casana, Dartmouth College
Rachel Opitz, University of Glasgow

The SPARC Team
SPatial Archaeometry Research Collaborations
http://sparc.cast.uark.edu/

MCJA Moves to a New Publisher

With the advent of 2020 MCJA will be moving to the University of Illinois Press as its new publisher.  During most of my service as Editor, the journal has been in transition, moving from AltaMira, to Maney, and most recently to Taylor and Francis.  This transition has seen the journal production move from snail mail to email to a fully electronic editorial and delivery system.  While creating a sometime abrupt learning curve for the editor and editorial assistant, these changes have brought production up to modern standards that allows MCJA to fully function in the digital world.  Many of these changes have been positive such as the ability to employ a completely electronic editorial system and the welcome opportunity to post articles online as soon as they accepted, rather than waiting for the printed issue to be published.  Other changes such as the movement of the publisher to the UK and the production process to the Far East have made aspects of publishing the MCJA challenging.  These issues caused the MAC Board to reconsider the current arrangements for journal publication and explore other opportunities.  The result of this process led to the signing of a publishing agreement with the University of Illinois Press in July, 2020.

While this transition to a new publisher will change how the editorial office interacts with the production process, MAC members should observe little difference.  The journal will continue in its current format and style consisting of three issues (Spring, Summer, and Fall) per volume with a annual length of about 312 pages, and continue to provide early online digital access to accepted articles.  Institutional subscribers, however, will notice a pleasant change as annual subscriptions drop from the T&F rates of $205 to $241 to a new UIP rate of $110.  This should encourage our readers to request their libraries continue or initiate new subscriptions to the MCJA.  The individual member rates will continue to be $45.00 per annum.

Authors and reviewers should also notice a pleasant change.  Many found the T&F Editorial Manager to be cumbersome and difficult to navigate.  Unfortunately, the MCJA editorial staff had little ability to manipulate the system and had to rely on production staff in the Far East to address problems, thus entailing long time-delays to achieve solutions.  With the move to the UIP we will now be adopting the Open Journal Systems, Editorial Software ver. 3.   While we have just begun training on the new system it is clear that it is user-friendly and generally straightforward, especially for authors and reviewers.  Furthermore, MCJA editorial staff will have much greater control over manipulating the software.  This is also true for the production process housed at the UIP.  The Press does not outsource any part of the process.  It also helps that the UIP offices are located two blocks south of the MCJA editorial office on campus!

Of course, what the MCJA depends on to thrive are manuscripts and willing reviewers.  As this current situation continues we hope that researchers will continue submitting their works to MCJA.  For all those past contributors and reviewers, a Big Thank You.  We appreciate your past and future support.

Thomas E. Emerson, Editor <mcjaeditor@gmail.com>
Sarah Boyer, Editorial Assistant

SAA Lifetime Achievement Award goes to Lynne G. Goldstein

For her pivotal theoretical and empirical contributions to our field, in the areas of mortuary archaeology, Midwestern prehistory, historical archaeology, archaeological ethics and repatriation, and public engagement, as well as professional and institutional leadership.

View this listing on the SAA website