Elizabeth Bollwerk

In archaeology, we are accustomed to investing great effort into collecting data from fieldwork, museum collections, and other sources, followed by detailed description, rigorous analysis, and in many cases ending with publication of our findings in short, highly concentrated reports or journal articles. Very often, these publications are all that is visible of this lengthy process, and even then, most of our journal articles are only accessible to scholars at institutions paying subscription fees to the journal publishers. While this traditional model of the archaeological research process has long been effective at generating new knowledge about our past, it is increasingly at odds with current norms of practice in other sciences. Often described as ‘open science’, these new norms include data stewardship instead of data ownership, transparency in the analysis process instead of secrecy, and public involvement instead of exclusion. While the concept of open science is not new in a...

This paper serves a dual purpose. First it is an introduction that aims to frame a set of papers that describe and discuss the process of co-creation in a variety of archaeological projects. We discuss the challenge of community engagement in public archaeology and offer co-creative practice as a method for improving our relationships with descendant communities and the general public. We begin by providing a definition of public archaeology and a brief overview of its evolution over the last few decades. Second, we discuss co-creation’s origins and utilization in the museum and business sectors, where the process is applied to address challenges similar to those archaeologists face. We then demonstrate how co-creation fits into the public/applied archaeological framework. We argue that co-creation must be both co (that is, share power in some way) and creative (that is, not just do the same things better, but do something new). Within this framework, we discuss how co-creation alig...

... So you're in... now what?: steps to take after being admitted to a graduate program. Autores:Elizabeth Bollwerk; Localización: SAA archaeological record, ISSN 1532-7299, Vol. 7, Nº. 3, 2007 , págs. 26-28. Fundación Dialnet. Acceso de usuarios registrados. ...

Simon (2010:187) notes that the purpose of co-creative community projects is "to give voice and be responsive to the needs and interests of local community members; to provide a place for community engagement and dialogue; and to help participants develop skills that will support their own individual and community goals.”  This paper explores the role co-creation currently plays in digital public archaeology and discusses how co-creative methods can inform broader archaeological digital engagement efforts.  It begins by placing co-creation in its proper context in order to demonstrate its unique characteristics, value, and how it complicates approaches used in other types of archaeological engagement projects, such as Open Access initiatives.
Having demonstrated the significance of digital co-creation the discussion turns to evaluating its impact and the broader need to measure success in digital public engagement projects.  A discussion of research from the archaeology and the cultural heritage sectors provides examples of evaluation metrics and methods for assessing digital public archaeology projects.  The paper concludes by suggesting that all digital engagement projects can benefit from incorporating some of the principles that are inherently part of co-creative methods but that not all archaeological digital engagement projects should strive to be completely co-creative.

This paper explores the variety of spatial approaches Middle Atlantic archaeologists have used over the last 150 years to depict past Native social landscapes. It argues that the primary model used throughout the early 20th-century, cultural territories and complexes, illustrated past Native societies as isolated, static, and rigidly bound. The paper then explores how Middle Atlantic archaeologists in the last half of the 20th-century and the first decade of the 21th-century have provided alternatives to previous depictions by using different methodological and theoretical approaches and interpretative frameworks when considering variation in Native material culture. These approaches have revealed dynamic aspects of Native social landscapes that were overlooked by previous models. The acknowledgment of social complexity introduces the challenge of how to depict the more intricate social networks of past Native communities. However, a review of regional literature suggests that archaeologists are not using the full variety of maps at their disposal. The conclusion of this paper explores how archaeologists can continue to improve and diversify the cartographic conventions they use to illustrate Native social topography.

This dissertation explores the integral role Native tobacco smoking pipes played in the processes of interaction, individual and group expression, and innovation that were part of Native social networks in the Middle Atlantic region of the United States during the Late Woodland and early Contact periods (A.D. 900 to 1665).  While previous work in the region has focused on mapping similarities in ceramic wares and projectile points that were thought to represent the boundaries of cultural areas, this dissertation examines how stylistic variations of material culture are linked to other axes of social differentiation and interaction that also constituted Native social landscapes.  Data from a sample of 2,543 pipes from 70 archaeological assemblages distributed throughout the Middle Atlantic was used to evaluate what the stylistic variations of pipes mapped across space and time reveal about the dynamic social and ritual processes that were an integral part of Native societies.
The project’s analysis begins by synthesizing information from sixteenth and seventeenth century historical accounts to explain how pipe smoking was an important spiritual and diplomatic practice primarily associated with elder male leaders among prehistoric and Contact period Native groups.  Next, a stylistic analysis of pipes assesses variability among pipe forms and attributes.  Significantly, spatial analyses conducted using ArcGIS reveal that the geographic distributions of many of the forms and attributes did not ‘map on’ to traditionally defined cultural boundaries.  In many cases, geographically dispersed stylistic patterns support textual evidence that pipes were an integral part of interaction between groups spread throughout the region.  In other instances however, the clustered patterning of certain forms and stylistic units suggests such elements may have been used to communicate information on an intra-community level.  Changes in distributions over time were also apparent.  Additionally, an LA-ICP-MS test of the chemical composition of a subset of clay pipe fragments indicated that it was the circulation of ideas and not pipes that had caused some stylistic elements to be widely distributed.  By providing a more comprehensive picture of Native social geography this dissertation demonstrates the dynamic nature of past Native communities.

It was not until recently that the focus of archaeological and historical studies has taken attention off the disappearance of Native American culture and focused on evidence that demonstrates multiple strategies used by various Native American groups to sustain themselves in Euro-...