March 1999 - Society for California Archaeology

6
SCA Business and Activities
SCA Annual Meeting
Sacramento
April 23-25, 1999
Countdown to the SCA
Annual Meeting
Kathleen L. Hull
The program and events for the
33rd Society for California Archaeology
Annual Meeting are in place, and
the meetings promise to be both
valuable and stimulating. Scheduled
for riday, April 23 to Sunday, April 25,
the meetings this year will consider a
diverse array of theoretical, methodological,
and regional research issues
important to California archaeologists.
A full list of the participants and topics
is presented in the preliminary
program contained in this issue of the
Newsletter. Sessions encompass Native
American collaboration; the Gold
Rush; education; recovery and analytic
methods; State Park archaeology;
Sierra Nevada, Santa Barbara coastal,
southern, central, and northern
California archaeology; cultural
landscapes; and historical archaeology
on land and under water. In addition,
the State Historic Resources Commission
will be holding their meetings in
conjunction with the SCA, and
conference attendees are welcome to
drop in at the conference site on the
Commission Meeting on riday April,
23.
Of particular note is this year’s
Plenary Session entitled “Treasure or
‘Tyranny?’ The Use of Ethnography
in California Archaeology.” We are
fortunate to have a distinguished group
of speakers and discussants who will
bring diverse views to the topic,
including John Johnson, Craig Bates,
Sandra Hollimon, L. Mark Raab, and
Robert L. Kelly. Most of these
scholars are well-known to California
archaeologists through numerous
publications on ethnography and
archaeology of the state, while Dr.
Kelly will add his perspective as a
Great Basin archaeologist and author
of The oraging Spectrum
(Smithsonian Institution Press), which
deals more generally with insights on
hunter-gatherer lifeways that can be
gleaned from ethnographic data.
Discussants for the Plenary Session are
Catherine owler of the University of
Nevada, Reno, and Robert Bettinger
of the University of California, Davis.
Initial inspiration for this session
came, in part, from Raab’s 1996 article
in the Journal of California and Great
Basin Archaeology entitled “Debating
Prehistory in Coastal Southern
California: Resource Intensification
Versus Political Economy.” The title
of the session also acknowledges H.
Martin Wobst’s 1978 American
Antiquity article entitled “The
Archaeo-ethnology of Huntergatherers
or the Tyranny of the
Ethnographic Record in Archaeology.”
The session promises to go well
beyond the issues considered by Raab
and Wobst, however, and it is hoped
that the Plenary Session will promote
discussion and debate throughout the
meetings. As a step in this direction,
individual participants in other
sessions are encouraged to consider if,
and how, they have used or might use
ethnographic information in their
specific research.
The theme of alternate viewpoints
will also likely surface again during
the keynote speach at the Awards
Banquet on Saturday night. This
year’s speaker is Dr. Ian Hodder of
Cambridge University, who is in
California this Spring to teach a
seminar at the University of California,
Berkeley. Dr. Hodder’s early work in
archaeology addressed such methodological
topics as spatial analysis and
the use of mathematics in archaeology.
He is perhaps best known, however,
for his subsequent critique of
processual archaeology beginning in
the 1980s and the series of published
exchanges with Lewis Binford on
future directions for anthropological
archaeology. He remains the preeminent
spokesperson for “postprocessual”
archaeologies, and has
incorporated his views on multiple
perspectives on prehistory into the
conduct of his on-going research at the
well-known Neolithic site of
Çatalhöyük in Turkey.
Another special social event at the
meetings will be the “SCA Night at
the Harness Races” barbeque and
silent auction on riday night. Some
proceeds from the silent auction this
year will go specifically to public
education. Come contribute to this
worthwhile cause, and join the fun at
the track!
Meeting registration packets were
mailed to SCA members in early
ebruary, and are due back by March
15, 1999 to avoid late registration
charges. If you have not received your
registration packet or if you have any
questions about meeting registration,
contact Local Arrangements Chairs
Bill Hildebrandt and Kelly McGuire at
ar Western Anthropological Research
Group, (530)756-3941. See you in
Sacramento!
Hodder Speaks!
A. Craig Hauer
As mentioned above, Dr. Ian
Hodder, a dominant voice in the
postprocessual movement, is scheduled
to be the keynote speaker this
year at the SCA meetings in Sacramento.
In addition, Hodder has
graciously agreed to hold an informal
question and answer session with
students attending the meeting.
Currently, Hodder is a visiting professor
at Berkeley and is the director of
the Çatalhöyük Research Trust,
Cambridge University, in cooperation
with the Turkish Ministry of Culture,
Middle Eastern University, and Ankara
University. This ongoing excavation