my favorite out of context quotes from my archeology professor so far in no particular order
- and floridians are just as human as you and me!
- and the moral of the story is that there are no deadly snakes native to alaska
- you might know this guy as one of the only archaeologists cool enough to be mentioned by indiana jones
- it’s my dream to have my name said by harrison ford
- i’m not going to apologize for having this class at 6am because you paid for it and it’s your fault.
- we don’t all dress like lara croft. i tried to get it to be a thing on a dig and my colleagues yelled at me.
- they were pretty good archaeologists except they were too racist to realize anything they found.
- i take back what i said about us not dressing like lara croft because lewis binford here is wearing nothing but short shorts and a cowboy hat. take notes for an academic halloween costume!
- archaeologists can be good artists! not me, though. or anyone i know. but if you can draw just know you have options.
- sometimes you find dead bodies when you dont really expect it and you just have to deal with it
- archaeologists are the only people allowed to get exited when they find corpses.
- once i ruined thanksgiving dinner when i told my family i had gotten my degree in archaeology and my uncle commented he liked dinosaurs too
- the closest i’ve ever been to a grizzly bear is when i left my glasses in my tent on a dig in alaska, saw a big rock in the distance, and almost screamed
additional quotes
- ah yes. archaeologists. or, as i love to call us, pottery analysts
- i mean he was kind of a good guy for helping us beat britain but he owned slaves so that really cancelled it out.
- archaeology is like cultural anthropology, except after you interview the person you turn around and shoot them in the head.
- do not use trees! trees are bad! don’t do it!
- usually you find shards, but it’s super exciting when you find a really big shard
- it’s basically like a waterpark, except you’re fully clothed and walking through a dark tunnel knee deep in muddy water. so, basically splish splash.
- i dont believe in curses but my colleagues and i like to encourage the idea of them so people stop touching our stuff
- usually, you would find a knife in a kitchen. or underneath your pillow to really freak out your roommate who is a history nerd and has no idea why you would sleep with a knife under your pillow and he’ll get really scared and freaked out and okay i’m getting off topic
- no matter what the other scientists say, archaeology is a real science.
- don’t worry, i promise you, and whatever government agency that’s spying on me right now, that i’m not a crazy communist trying to overthrow the government
- by now you’ve noticed the big “POP QUIZ” written on the board. there isn’t one, but i wanted to see the looks on your face when you saw it. but you’re all dead inside so it’s not really funny.
- everything was fine except the citizens of pompeii just woke up dead the next day
- the number one question you should ask when you read old archaeology papers is “how the hell do you know?”
- nothing pisses off old men more than young people asking “why” and “prove it” so do that as often as possible
- this is incredible! all it takes is a computer the size of this room!
even more from the margins of my notebook!
- when in doubt, it’s ritualistic
- coprolites are the only shit archaeologists get excited over
- i know the only reason you’re not laughing at my hilarious jokes is because it’s early
- they called it the garbage project. which is also what people call the projects i work on when we apply for funding.
- what you have to realize is that people are fundamentally weird. they do weird stuff now and they have done it thousands of years ago.
- things come and go but pottery is forever
- i dont know if you all know this but moose are terrifying abominations.
- and today’s lesson is about the difference between dirt and soil!
- please, please, please do not eat old butter you found buried in a bog.
- normally i would say this blackboard is a feature because it isn’t portable and can’t be moved but this is a community college so who knows
one of my biggest fears is that this will get so many notes that someone in the class will see it and show it to the professor and he’ll realize half the notes ive been taking in class are jotting down the weird shit he says
This was the most magical thing I’ve ever read.
I would have loved this class. There are some good nuggets in there, among the weird. I’ve told my students a variant of this one:
“nothing pisses off old men more than young people asking “why” and “prove it” so do that as often as possible”
That right there is half the religious education for middle schoolers curriculum I’m writing.
Tag: archaeologist
When I die I want to be buried with grave goods that make future archaeologists think I was of much higher status than I actually was so that my grave will be referred to as a princely burial and I’ll be remembered by some cool name like “The Colchester Barrow Princess” (I’ve decided that I will be buried in a highly visible barrow, possibly with a ship) and the National Trust will erect a small museum about me filled with entirely incorrect but cool sounding archaeological assumptions
Be buried literally holding a sword and axe and then sit back and watch the endless ‘powerful warrior queen v. just usual valuable grave goods indicating a high status individual’ debate from the afterlife.
I want a spring-loaded casket and non-degrading glitter. I will be remembered as “that *£^$% thing that killed Professor Hannover”
As an archaelogist I completely support this.
“Characteristic of 21st century society is the sharp delineation between the funerary practices of more conservative, traditionalist groups and the generally younger and more creative subcultures. While those who identified as more conservative nevertheless frequently included personal items in their grave goods, the individuality of their burials pales in comparison with the eccentricity and extravagance of the neoteric groups.
Funerary archaeologists have been hard pressed to find commonalities between these individualistic burials. It is likely that members of these subgroups competed to include the most unique ritual items amongst the grave goods of the deceased.
One example from Colchester could be read as a highly detailed homage to the seventh-century Taplow boat burial. Dendrochronology of the vessel dates the burial to the mid- to late-21st century. The opulence of the burial is at odds with what we know of contemporary social structure. As such, it is likely that the deceased or their family wished to indicate a strong connection to the area by aligning their identity with the Anglo-Saxon royal history of the region.
Another example, this one from Milton Keynes, included a bewildering array of items. Archaeologists uncovered a Tudor coin, a Whitney Houston CD, and a mobile phone inscribed “Bite me, historians”. Taken together, these grave goods indicate a disdain for archaeological research and the reconstruction of identity using material culture. It is possible that members of this subgroup sought to use creative anachronism to conceal the date of their death. Some researchers have argued that individuals buried under similar circumstances believed that this knowledge could be used for identity fraud or necromancy.
There has been some research done into the psychological trauma associated with excavating human remains. Most of this research has focused on the emotional challenges of excavating mass graves resulting from genocide or plague, with the occasional footnote regarding individual burials (such as the excavation of a lead coffin in Whitechapel which produced a fountain of liquefied Roman remains when the air seal was pierced). It is my view, however, that further research in this field is urgently needed following the sad and horrifying events of the recent excavations on Orkney. I am sure I do not need to go into further detail about the dig that shook our discipline to the core, and will refrain from doing so. For those of a gruesome persuasion, the full excavation report has been lodged with the ADS. Field archaeologists are advised to wear protective clothing including goggles and, where possible, shields when excavating graves of this period.
Professor Hannover is sincerely missed and a monograph of papers in her honour is scheduled for publication next year.”
… it got better.
When I was a very small child, my mom used to bury coins in my sandbox, leave huge boot prints in the sand, and tell me pirates had come in the night and buried treasure. I would be out there happily for hours, with my little sieve, and my mom got a quiet morning to herself for the price of a handful of pennies.
I was always kind of skeptical about Santa, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy, because visiting every kid in the world did not seem reasonable. But the pirates only visited me, so they were probably real.
So that’s the story of how I ended up being an archaeologist. How about you?
knitting in the dark 