See the abstract and link below!

Anthropological Archaeology Underwater

Anthropological archaeology underwater is a new field. What type of research is this and how do anthropologists go about it? When most people hear the phrase ‘underwater archaeology’, they think of shipwrecks and dramatic images of lost ships at sea, but the underwater archaeological record is vast. In addition to historic vessels, water preserves some of the oldest landscapes on the planet. While archaeologists are interested in the past, those working underwater apply the latest technologies to provide fresh understandings about ancient human behaviour. Underwater environments provide preservation that is unmatched on land and therefore the data collected is novel – providing information about human lifeways and creating a picture of the past we would otherwise never see. This Element will explore the world of anthropological archaeology underwater, focusing on submerged sites, and review the techniques, data, and theoretical perspectives which are offering new insights into the human story.

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Mary Brodrick (1858 – 1933) was an archaeologist and Egyptologist of great distinction and was one of the first women to excavate in Egypt. She began her academic career at age thirty after a trip to Egypt in the winter of 1888 during which she sailed up the Nile and became fascinated by ancient Egyptian history and culture. Upon returning home to London, she sought to study Egyptology and archaeology but found no local institutions that women were permitted to attend. Brodrick then decided to contact Gaston Maspero, a professor at the Sorbonne in Paris. Maspero, who had previously worked as director-general of the Egyptian antiquities service, was initially reluctant to admit Brodrick, but he did bring her case to the council of the Sorbonne, which found that there were no rules prohibiting women from attending. Brodrick attended lectures at the Sorbonne and the Collège de France studying Egyptology, demotic, Coptic, Egyptian law, Hebrew, “Semitic archaeology,” and Roman law and history.

Returning to London in 1890, Mary Brodrick was then permitted to enroll at University College, London, where she studied archaeology and Egyptology under Sir Flinders Petrie. She also began working with Peter Renouf at the British Museum were she eventually taught three courses in Egyptology and Archaeology. At that time there were few English-language Egyptology textbooks, so Brodrick revised and translated several texts including Egypt Under the Pharaohs: A History Derived Entirely from the Monuments (1891) and Outlines of Ancient Egyptian History (1890). After serving as English honorary secretary for the Egypt Exploration Society in the U.S., Brodrick received a PhD from the University of Kansas in recognition of her work. From 1894 to 1896 Brodrick lectured in Europe and Egypt, wrote A Handbook for Travelers in Lower and Upper Egypt and held a Pfeiffer fellowship from the council of College Hall. Then for nearly a decade (1897-1908) she worked in Egypt and collaborated on several publications. Brodrick excavated during the warmer months and spent winters on the Nile sailing in a Dahabeah, a type of shallow-bottomed barge used to traverse the river since the time of the Pharaohs. During this period, there were increasing numbers of British women working as archaeologists in Egypt including Kate Bradbury, Emily Paterson, Margaret Alice Murray, Margaret Benson, and Janet Agnes Gourlay. Brodrick was once spotted in a Dahabeah with a party consisting entirely of women – something that was quite unusual at the time.

Mary Brodrick was incredibly active throughout her career in terms of research, writing, lecturing, and involvement. She was a member of the Egypt Exploration Society, the Society for the Preservation of the Monuments of Ancient Egypt, the British Society in Egypt, the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, College Hall in London, the Comitè de la Sociètè Franḉaise d’Ègyptologie, the Royal Geographical Society, the American Geographical Society and the Society of Biblical Archaeology and an honorary dame of the order of St. John of Jerusalem. In addition to Egyptology, Brodrick also studied, wrote about, and lectured on Biblical and Near East archaeology. Her friend Eversley Channing Robinson wrote of her lectures, “People, places, things rose again as the lecturer described them with punctilious accuracy, clearness, humour and insight into character. The dry bones of the past awoke again to life as she caught their spirit and clothed them with imagination, tempered by patient historical research” (Egypt Papers, xii). The 1922 discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamen was a remarkable event especially for Egyptologists of the day, and Brodrick described her own excitement at finally seeing “the complete equipment of a royal tomb” (Egypt Papers, xii). In her later years Brodrick made donations to College Hall and University College London in gratitude for their support of her academic career. She retired to a Villa in Italy and passed away in 1933 at the age of 75.

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Born is 1911, Harriet M. Smith was the first female archaeologist in Illinois and led early excavations at Cahokia including the salvage excavation of Murdock Mound (Mound 55). Smith received her Doctorate in Anthropology from the University of Chicago where she studied under Fay-Cooper Cole, who was one Franz Boas’ students. After graduating, she was hired by the Illinois State Museum as State Supervisor of the Museum Project in 1938. In 1940, a landowner adjacent to Cahokia Mounds Park began leveling a mound in preparation for house construction and discovered human remains. An archaeologist contacted the director of the Illinois State Museum, Thorne Deuel, who sent Smith to excavate Mound 55, where she supervised a crew of WPA archaeologists. Smith’s interpretations of the mound and Cahokia were generally rejected at the time but are consistent with our current understanding of the site. For example, she used ceramics and stratigraphy to accurately date the continuous occupation of Cahokia, suggested that Cahokia was a planned city with houses oriented on a north-south axis parallel to Monk’s Mound, and recognized that the foundations of houses themselves were dug into the ground rather than being built on the surface. Smith’s thorough excavation and analysis make Mound 55 one of the most completely excavated mounds at Cahokia.

After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, all excavations at the site came to an abrupt halt; at that point, Smith left the Illinois State Museum and joined the Chicago Field Museum’s education department. When speaking of the challenges she faced as a woman working in the field of archaeology during the late 1930s and 1940s, Smith said, “I assure you, my training and qualifications are adequate and the whole problem hinges on whether my prospective employers are willing to take a chance on a young woman, in what by precedent, is a man’s field.” For more information about Harriet M. Smith and other pioneering female archaeologists see this Midwest Archaeology Conference from 2017:

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Assistant Professor, Dept of Anthropology, Loyola University Chicago

��Friday, March 3, 2023 @ 3:30 pm��

Sabin Hall G28 (3413 North Downer Avenue, Milwaukee)��

Abstract: Globally, scientists are finding an alarming link between water insecurity, or the inability to access and benefit from affordable, adequate, reliable, and safe water, and human health and well-being. This talk presents multi-disciplinary research in Indonesia and Peru about the relationship between water insecurity and multiple forms of mental and physical health. This work documents associations between water insecurity and measures of human biology, depression, and experiences of gender-based violence. The research highlights how anthropologists can work with global health and conservation experts to understand and address issues of contemporary concern.

Speaker:�� Dr. Paula Skye Tallman is an Assistant Professor of Biological Anthropology at Loyola University Chicago. Her research integrates theory and methods from anthropology and global health to examine how environmental factors are linked to human biology, health, and well-being. Dr. Tallman received her B.A. in Behavioral Biology from Johns Hopkins University, her Ph.D. in Biological Anthropology from Northwestern University, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship focused on indigenous well-being and conservation at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. Her work has been supported by funds from the British Academy, the National Science Foundation, and the Wenner-Gren Foundation.

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