Stipend Report: Loren Clark

Posted on October 14, 2021 by Jared Koller

7000 Miles Away: Geoarchaeology and Landscape Research in the Middle of a Pandemic

Loren Clark, 2021 Eric & Carol Meyers Summer Stipend Recipient

It has been no small feat, as all of us in archaeology know, to continue archaeological research and collaboration during the COVID-19 pandemic. With the aim of keeping everyone safe and healthy, most fieldwork and travel has come to a halt. For those of us who work outside of our home countries, it has been even more difficult to plan for the future of our research. For those of us conducting research as part of the UC San Diego and the University of Haifa collaboration, this has meant shifting our focus to the archive of sediment cores that were shipped to our lab in San Diego from the other half of our team in Haifa. In-field collection and meetings became Zoom calls, and planning sessions were discussed with maps on a shared screen. The 10hr time difference had our breakfast coffees in San Diego shared with Israeli dinner. Through the hard work of our directors and each team member, we were able to continue a portion of the research that we were conducting pre-pandemic.

These sediment cores contain a high-resolution dataset of depositional processes and environmental change along the Carmel Coast during the Holocene. The specific core that was funded through this stipend is located in the northern part of the Kebara marsh in NW Israel. The analysis of the core in 2020 allowed for preliminary conclusions to be made about cycles of drying and wetting throughout the life of the wetland. Laminations of organic-rich layers juxtaposed against paleosol and sandy layers are present throughout the core, which have allowed us to posit questions related to regional and local climate change.

Once washed and sieved, samples are picked and separated under a microscope to identify the makeup of each coarse fraction.

The goal this summer was to isolate specific proxies that serve as indicators of climate, environmental, and landscape change for the area between the Carmel Ridge and the coast. Specifically, we decided to focus on pyrite as it can be an indicator of changing salinity in waterlogged areas. Understanding the environmental change in the area is crucial in tracking the wetland as a resource for communities from the Neolithic – Iron Age. The Carmel Coast is known for the intense concentration of archaeological sites from various periods of prehistory, and the data that we have compiled will only add to the ever-growing picture of life along this critical landscape. The data from this project is still being analyzed by multiple researchers, including myself, and will be presented at the ASOR 2021 Virtual Annual Meeting in December. It has been an honor to work under this funding from ASOR to continue our research in this remote world. As safe travel opens up for international research, we plan to continue adding to and analyzing the existing datasets along the Carmel Coast.

Loren Clark is a 3rd year PhD student at the University of California, San Diego in the Levantine Archaeology Lab, directed by Dr. Thomas Levy. She is also a scientific diver for the Scripps Center for Marine Archaeology which focuses on submerged archaeology in the Eastern Mediterranean.

To keep up with this project (and many more) being conducted through the collaboration between UCSD and the University of Haifa and being funded by the Koret Foundation, please see our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/SCMAKoretProject

During the summer of 2021, ASOR supported 27 undergraduate and graduate students through the Summer Stipend Program. These students undertook non-fieldwork archaeological research projects led by ASOR-affiliated project directors. They also took part in monthly cohort group meetings hosted via zoom. Read a summary of these cohort meetings here.

Stay tuned for more updates from the 2021 Summer Stipend recipients!

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Summer Stipend Cohort Meetings

Posted on October 5, 2021 by Jared Koller

Summer Stipend Cohort Meetings

And just like that, Summer is a wrap and Fall is well underway! But before the first leaves fall, let’s take a look back at what happened during ASOR’s inaugural Summer Stipend program cohort meetings, hosted by Marta Ostovich (ASOR) and Sydney Pickens (ASOR/AITC). The monthly cohort meetings were designed to encourage student connections and promote professional development. Participants from Lebanon to California joined us over the course of the summer to participate in these lively, informative conversations via Zoom:

Community, Mentorship, and Social Capital. Our first cohort meeting centered around cultivating intentional relationships, both professional and personal. We asked, who are you currently in a community with? We encouraged participants to evaluate their present communities, identify need gaps, and develop a criteria for building relationships that help push them into purpose. We prioritized community over network to encourage genuine, human to human connections that foster more sustainable relationships. This is particularly relevant for the fields of Anthropology and Archaeology, where the work is first and foremost situated within the human experience.

Self Advocacy. Our second gathering featured a discussion on finding, making space for, and using your voice in academia. The conversation focused on two phenomena particularly prominent among women and people of color: imposter syndrome and code switching. Imposter syndrome causes people to question their abilities, instilling a fear that they will be exposed as a fraud. Code switching is a strategic shift between language and/or vernacular to communicate more effectively with a given audience. However, the switch is often unidirectional and perpetuates a culture of assimilation to dominant power structures. We explored how these phenomena are fueled and perpetuated by systemic bias, and discussed how more inclusive practices and supportive academic environments can reduce their prevalence. Throughout the conversation, facilitators and participants exchanged tips and tricks for showing up in academia (and elsewhere) both authentically and confidently.
Academia Reimagined/Alternative Futures. Our third meeting featured a panel of speakers who shared their experiences and advice on the academic world: Sarah Kielt Costello (University of Houston-Clear Lake), Jay Crisostomo (University of Michigan), Kate Sheeler (Cathedral High School), and Julia Troche (Missouri State University). Many of the Summer Stipend cohort members are interested in pursuing futures in education and all of our guests work in education, though in a variety of settings. They spoke about the experiences that shaped their careers/career paths: from graduate school to navigating the job market. We discussed what an alternative future in archaeology looks like, how to balance research and professional goals with personal well-being, and how the culture of academia is changing.
Future Fieldwork. For this meeting, our cohort group was joined by Debra Foran (Wilfrid Laurier University), Rachel Hallotte (SUNY-Purchase), Morag Kersel (DePaul University), and Tom Roby (Getty Conservation Institute) for a conversation on the ins and outs of archaeological fieldwork. This was an interesting conversation since fieldwork has been on hold due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Summer Stipend program was focused on non-fieldwork research. This pause in fieldwork offers time to reflect and be thoughtful about getting (or staying) involved with projects in the future. Our guest speakers offered perspectives from their own field projects and experiences, and the cohort students shared what they were looking for in fieldwork. Through this exchange, we identified important considerations for deciding what projects to join. Topics ranged from the professional (how to pick your first field project, how to stay involved long-term with a project, skills that you can gain from fieldwork, etc.) to the very practical (level of support, physical/mental effort required, school credit, project infrastructure, cost, living situations, etc.).

A huge thank you to all of our guest speakers who joined us for these meetings to share their experiences and chat with the cohort!

As part of their Summer Stipends, each cohort member submitted a report on their research and the first report is now available on the ASOR website. Read Shannon Burton’s report on preparing photographs for exhibits in a planned Community Heritage Center in El-Kurru, Sudan here. Stay tuned for more reports from our Summer Stipend recipients on their research in News@ASOR this fall!

To close out the Summer Stipend program, students are being paired with an ASOR mentor. The goal is to give students a chance to connect with someone in their field who can encourage, support, and guide them along their career paths, and/or provide advice in a specific area (publishing, applying to grad school, etc.). Mentoring is also a major part of ASOR’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives. If you’re interested in mentoring students, please take a moment to fill out our mentor survey. Thank you to everyone who has already signed up to be a mentor! You’ll be hearing from us with more information about the mentorship program in the upcoming weeks.