Renew your membership for 2023

☛ Call for MAC Distinguished Career Award nominations

☛ Death of Indiana's second State Archaeologist

☛ Read James (Jim) Skibo's obituary 

☛ Announcing 2023 Summer Field School in Historical Archaeology with Southern Illinois University (SIU)

☛ Two new rules on NAGPRA from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (https://cam.illinois.edu/policies/rp-14/ and https://nagpra.illinois.edu/procedures/)

☛ 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)

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

☛ Introducing the book series Midwest Archaeological Perspectives

MAC Membership Renewal- Webinar

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.  

Please view this recorded webinar (from December 11, 2020), and then renew your membership.

View the Recorded Webinar

As part of membership renewal for the MAC Board requires self-certification of either participation in the December 11, 2020 webinar or later viewing of the recorded session: https://youtu.be/UBHI8R96Mrc

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

Call for MAC Distinguished Career Award nominations

Dear MAC Colleagues,

Nominations are being solicited for the 2023 Midwest Archaeological Conference, Inc. (MAC) Distinguished Career Award. The award recognizes an archaeologist who has demonstrated excellence and contributed significantly and regularly to the advancement of Midwestern archaeology. This award is the highest one made by MAC and truly honors someone with a lifetime commitment to Midwestern archaeology and achievement in areas such as research, publication, collection and site preservation, program development, and education. We encourage everyone to consider and nominate those senior archaeologists who have participated in archaeology for a substantial part of their career and contributed significantly and broadly to Midwestern archaeology. The nominee must be alive at the time of nomination and does not have to be a member of the MAC at the time of nomination, but typically will have been an active member and contributed to the mission of the organization during their career. The award winner will be recognized at the 2023 MAC Annual Business Meeting and will be invited to comment on his/her career. An award citation will also be published on the MAC Web site. To nominate an archaeologist, please send a letter explaining why the nominee is qualified for the Distinguished Career Award, and forward her/his current CV. Letters of support must be included with the nomination packet. Previous nominations that were not elected for award can be updated and resubmitted.

Please send your nominations by Friday, August 4th, 2023 to MAC President Mark Schurr (president@midwestarchaeology.org) in a pdf format. The MAC Executive Committee will make the final selection.

Regards,

Sean Dunham
MAC Secretary

Death of Indiana’s second State Archaeologist 

It is with great sadness that the Indiana Division of Historic Preservation and Archaeology (DHPA) shares the news that Dr. James R. “Rick” Jones III, Indiana’s second State Archaeologist, passed away yesterday. Dr. Jones retired from the DNR’s DHPA at the end of August 2014. He had been with Indiana’s State Historic Preservation Office, since 1987 and was appointed State Archaeologist in 1991, making him Indiana’s longest serving State Archaeologist to date.

On his last day of work before retirement, he was awarded the Sagamore of the Wabash by then Governor Mike Pence. The DNR director and State Historic Preservation Officer at the time stated that the award honored “his many decades of dedicated service to the archaeological resources of our state, the discipline of Midwest archaeology, and the people of Indiana.”

Dr. Jones will certainly be missed by his DHPA colleagues, current and former, as well as many others in the archaeology and historic preservation communities. The DHPA Archaeology Team members specifically will remember him for his over 25 years of mentorship, guidance, friendship, and sharing of Indiana archaeology knowledge.

He was a true friend to many, and an influential teacher to quite a few professionals practicing in our field today.

Indiana has lost an important archaeologist.

Amy L. Johnson
State Archaeologist, Archaeology Outreach Coordinator, and Team Leader for Archaeology
Indiana Department of Natural Resources
Division of Historic Preservation and Archaeology

Announcing 2023 Summer Field School in Historical Archaeology with Southern Illinois University (SIU)

We are going to be working at three historic sites Fort Kaskaskia 1 (11R326), Fort Kaskaskia II  (1R612, and the James West Site (not site number yet). Fort Kaskaskia I and II are French colonial (Fort I) and early American Republic (Fort II) military sites in southern Illinois. The French fort (1759-1763) may have been built by African slaves from the nearby town of Kaskaskia and thus may be one of the oldest African Diaspora sites in Illinois. The American fort (1803-1806) supplied men and supplies for the Lewis and Clark Expedition and may have been established to specifically support that expedition. The James West site also is an African Diaspora site in that it is the home of an 1850s AMA abolitionist missionary who was driven out of southern Illinois by a pro-slavery mob under threats of death to him and his family if they did not leave. Students will receive instructions in remote sensing, mapping, and hand excavation of archaeological features at all three sites.  The field school runs from May 22-June 30. Total cost for this six credit course is $2441.80. Housing is available in the SIU dorms for an extra fee. We, however, currently have over $11,000 in scholarships to defray tuition and housing costs that students can apply for and we expect to receive more. Please see that attached flyer and application form for further information or contact Dr. Mark Wagner at mjwagner@iu.edu for additional details. 

Detailed PDF Flyer

Application

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