Renew your Membership for 2021
View MAC-sponsored webinar

☛ ISAS Publications Sales back online!

☛ Student Paper Competition submission information for 2021 annual meeting (More info)

☛ 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).

☛ University of Illinois NAGPRA Update: Moratorium

☛ MCJA Moves to a New Publisher

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

☛ MAC member Lynn Goldstein is a recipient of the SAA Lifetime Achievement Award!

☛ Introducing a new book series Midwest Archaeological Perspectives

MAC-sponsored webinar (Dec 11 Recording)

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.

NEW LOCATION: View the recorded webinar here: 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

ISAS Publications Sales back online!

After a long year of halted publications sales due to covid restrictions and other issues, ISAS is proud to announce most of our publications are back on Amazon for purchase including:

  • Orendorf Settlement D: A Burned Fortified Mississippian Town in the Central Illinois River Valley
  • Possible Futures for the Recent Past: A Chronological and Resource-Based Framework for Historic Site Research Design in Illinois

Note: a few books are currently unavailable because during our absence, some sellers on Amazon mistakenly thought our books were “out of print” and have increased prices to, in some cases, over a $1000, and so our listings have been put on hold for improper pricing until we can get the issue resolved. Currently, this only affects 4 books, but hopefully they will be back on Amazon within a week or so. The books currently unavailable are:

  • At Home in the Illinois Country: French Colonial Domestic Site Archaeology in the Midwest 1730–1800 
  • Protohistory at the Grand Village of the Kaskaskia: The Illinois Country on the Eve of Colony
  • Bottled in Illinois: Embossed Bottles and Bottled Products of Early Illinois Merchants from Chicago to Cairo, 1840–1880
  • The Vaughn Branch and Old Edwardsville Road Sites: Late Stirling and Early Moorehead Phase Mississippian Occupations in the Northern American Bottom

Thanks so much for your patience during the past year. We attempted to do a limited distro for a while but it quickly got too overwhelming to complete in a timely fashion. If you tried to order previously, please order again via Amazon. We’ll be reaching out to folks who have emailed in the past, but it will take some time to get through the backlog of emails and simply ordering through Amazon is going to be your quickest route to ISAS publications on your doorstep. I have attempted to include people who have emailed me over the past year, so apologies for any duplicate emails.

Thanks,
SARAH BOYER
Publications Manager
Illinois State Archaeological Survey | Prairie Research Institute
isas.illinois.edu

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.

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