IUP ANthropology Newsletter We Need a Better Title

Message from the Department Chair

Welcome to the first edition of the IUP Anthropology Alumni Newsletter! And sorry for the giant photo of my face.

You are among hundreds of IUP Anthropology Alumni and we want to keep in touch with you. The purpose of this newsletter is to let you know what is going on in the department and offer a way for you to stay in touch with us and other alums. The plan is to put out one newsletter each fall. We are already collecting items for next edition, so please drop me a line at ben.ford@iup.edu with any news you'd like to share. News can be updates, new jobs, births, marriages, fun facts, whatever you want others to know.

But first, we are going to need a better title for this newsletter. Please email suggestions to ben.ford@iup.edu. If you'd like to receive future newsletters directly in your inbox, you can also email me and I'll put you on the list.

The following pages contain a variety of stories and blurbs about your favorite anthropology department, but this newsletter is still a work in progress. If there are types of information or features you'd like to see more (or less) of, please let us know.

Lastly, Anthropology now has a new home. As a result of IUP's restructuring, we are now in the Kopchick College of Science (formerly the College of Natural Sciences and Math). This has been a largely administrative change, though we did combine the Applied Anthropology and the General Anthropology BA tracks a few years earlier. We continue to offer both the Applied Anthropology and Archaeology track BA degrees and the Applied Archaeology MA degree. This fall we are welcoming approximately 20 new students to the department. It has been a turbulent few years at IUP, but we are persevering, and occasionally finding opportunity in the chaos.

Student Spotlight

Archaeology, BA: Lindsay Gruesu

Lindsay has been the student face of IUP Anthropology for the past few years. She served as the department ambassador attending various events on behalf of the department and providing valuable feedback on department initiatives. Originally from Greensburg, PA she chose IUP because it had the best archaeology program in the area. Lindsay loves both history and science and found that archaeology is a wonderful way to combine both of those passions into one mission. She’s finishing her Department Honors thesis on Polynesian seafaring this semester but has already started work as a Cultural Resource Database Tech for Florida DOT. In this position she’ll be helping inventory and manage artifacts from DOT projects statewide over the last 30 years.

At the risk of sounding corny, I really admire AP [Dr. Andrea Palmiotto]. She has not only made her name in the field but has done such meaningful and honorable work in her missions to recover missing persons [see more on this work below in Department News and the photo in Student News].

Lindsay participated in both the 2020 Forensic Archaeology Field School in Germany and the Archaeology Field School at the Newport Site. She notes that teamwork and inclusiveness are an important part of archaeology (and IUP Anthropology): “Even though I have struggled with physical limitations at times, there is always a way to contribute to archaeological work and research… Field School was such an incredible way not only to practice archaeology but to really see how everyone on the crew matters and becomes an integral part of the process.”

Student Spotlight

Applied Archaeology, MA: Luke Nicosia

Luke is originally from Rochester, NY and started at IUP in 2021 after completing an undergraduate degree at Dickinson College. He says, “I’ve always loved history, and I’ve always loved doing stuff with my hands. So a good way to combine those things, to me, was archaeology. Also, as my mom was a former volunteer historian, and my dad a dentist, I think doing historical work with dental tools is not only a good way to follow in both of my parents’ footsteps, it pretty much summarizes archaeology in a nutshell.” Luke participated in the 2021 archaeology field school at Newport Village near Blairsville, PA and made an important connection between historical and classical archaeology: thoroughness. He says, “One of my former professors told us this story about being sure to crumble up every ball of dirt, as one time he found a Mycenaean seal ring in a clump of clay on his screen, one that someone didn’t sift all the way before abandoning. Sure enough, on my first excavation unit ever, Shannon and I crumbled up a ball of dirt, and out came a beautiful ring.” His cat, Fritz (R. Crumb reference, anyone), is also an aspiring archaeologist. Fritz is a regular attendee in Zoom classes, and was recognized as Luke’s “desk assistant” during his Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission internship. Luke plans to go into CRM after graduation…we’ll see if Fritz makes the cut.

I chose IUP because not only did it provide an opportunity to further my professional development in archaeology in both theoretical and practical senses, throughout my graduate school selection process I felt unbelievably welcome and supported. Pretty much everything indicated to me that this was a perfect fit for me and my interests.

Book Review

The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber and David Wengrow

Over the pasty year we had a bit of an Anthropology book club and several us read The Dawn of Everything. Massively overwrought title, and exorbitant page count, aside, this book is likely of interest to anyone with an Anthropology degree. Graeber was anthropology's preeminent public intellectual of the early 21st century (his Bullshit Jobs is a personal favorite) and Wengrow is an equally broad-thinking archaeologist. Together they argue that pretty much everything you learned about the development of social hierarchy was wrong.

Drawing from global archaeological and ethnographic examples, Graeber and Wengrow demonstrate that the development of hierarchy was in noway linear and was not all that closely tied to population density. In their examples, societies flirt with, adopt, and reject social hierarchy over hundreds or thousands of years. They also show examples of large groups of people living closely together without subjecting themselves to rigid hierarchies. Graeber, as self-described anarchist, takes particular pleasure in making the second point. The book also highlights the the variety of ways in which groups of humans determine how to organize themselves. One of the more interesting points is the idea of schismogenesis - defining your group in opposition to neighboring groups. The authors suggest that schismogenesis is an explanation for why non-hierarchical, fiercely independent societies sometimes occur adjacent to very hierarchical, slave-owning societies.

From the perspective of North American archaeology, one of the most compelling arguments of the book is that North American Indigenous societies had experience with significant hierarchy prior to the arrival of Europeans. Indigenous peoples had adopted, or lived adjacent to, hierarchical societies and decided to reject them. So, when Europeans arrived, the Indigenous peoples were making an informed decision about whether to accept or reject European claims about social organization. This argument re-frames much of the argument about colonial processes in the New World.

There are parts of the book that are questionable such as the interpretations of 17th and 18th philosophy or the clan structure of Native American cultures, but the overall work is remarkable. The results and interpretations of this study bear serious consideration. In fact, many of the ideas from this book have already begun to filter (uncited) into popular archaeological reporting such as Archaeology magazine. Future students will also likely see aspects of The Dawn of Everything appearing in their IUP Anthropology classes.