UMass Boston - Winter/Spring 2007-2008 - (Page 16)

learn geophysical survey techniques, and John was really good about letting us try. It was so cool to use the remote sensing and then to excavate. You could go look on the computer and say, ‘That’s the wall we’re seeing.’ We did GPR over a mound and we could see multiple walls like aisles. Some of the walls had rock borders.” Based on modern examples, they knew they had found a sheep house. Digging into the mound, they uncovered the exact building the GPR had drawn. Tephra dated it to the 1700s. the beSt pArt oF the Summer For undergraduate Mike Slawson, the best part of the summer was digging a 1-meter-square, 2-meter-deep hole into a charcoal pile. “Seeing the tephra layers in the side walls was exciting. Finding a floor dated to before 950—well, that was very exciting.” His soil sample provided the most significant find of the season: a kernel of charred barley. Heather Trigg, a senior scientist at the Fiske Center, had taught the students how to make a float machine—essentially a showerhead and a 55-gallon drum. Light particles float and are caught in chiffon nets; heavy particles sink and are trapped in a screen. “We only look at charred botanical remains,” said Jessica Bowers, “because that’s the only thing that lasts. We didn’t identify everything while we were there; we were looking for certain things, like barley. Somebody will now look at the rest.” Charred barley, Trigg told me, is a sign that the grain was grown in Iceland, not imported. “Here’s one possibility. They plant barley and harvest it with sickles. But they don’t get all of it. They allow their livestock to graze in the field, gather the dung for fuel and burn it. If the fire is smothered, you’ll get charred seeds. Burning can change the seed a lot—it has to do with the water content of a seed. Some of them puff up like popcorn and burst. But the barley we Above left: rita Shepard of uClA with a screening device. Above: umass boston students Krissy larkin, peter gangemi, and Kate Johnson excavate a trough with team members mike mcintosh and Ayse Yeager. left: larkin, John Steinberg, and gangemi (l-r) check gpr readings. found looks a lot like barley.” The barley brings Steinberg closer to answering a critical research question. So far he has found big, well-built longhouses and flimsy little huts. “What is the relationship of the small houses to the longhouses? Were there simply fewer people in the small houses or were they occupied for less time? Or is there a qualitative difference?” The answer will help him describe how Iceland evolved from a society centering on the family, to one led by chieftains, to a central state. “That’s a very old-fashioned question,” Steinberg admitted. Most anthropologists have moved on from the evolution of human societies. But to Steinberg, a better answer could give us insights into our own times. “For example, globalization has no parallel in history. If you want to understand it, you have to understand what came before it. A chieftain controlled every step of the economy. Now we can’t figure out how the lead paint got into our toys. Obfuscation may be an important part of globalization—that seems to me where you get the profit and power that the chieftain got by keeping tight control. For students, it’s really interesting to see how these very primitive anthropological questions can go along with constant experimenting with the methodology.” Nancy Marie Brown wrote about working with John Steinberg in her book, The Far Traveler: Voyages of a Viking Woman (Harcourt 2007), which tells the story of Gudrid the Far-Traveler. Photos by Ken Stuart. For use terms, visit http://sassphotos.com n umass boston http://sassphotos.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of UMass Boston - Winter/Spring 2007-2008

UMass Boston - Winter/Spring 2007-2008 Contents U News Values and Vision, Bricks and Mortar An Inauguration to Remember An Expedition to Iceland An American Original Reciprocal Dedication About Alumni Alumni Calendar A Report on Private Giving Generous Friends

UMass Boston - Winter/Spring 2007-2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.