Grief and Loss in the Geek Community

A friend's husband is dying. It's a matter of hours and minutes now; there are no days left. He's been dying since I first met his wife Tashi online a couple years ago, but early yesterday morning he slipped into a coma that he will not ever wake up from. He's receiving Hospice care to keep him comfortable and out of pain, but his lungs are slowly filling with fluid and his organs are failing one by one. It won't be long now. It might have already happened as I'm typing this.

You can read their story here in The Daily Mail or here on their website, but Kevin (a.k.a.: "Wash") has Glioblastoma Multiforme (GBM), an aggressive form of brain cancer. Most people diagnosed with it live for 9 - 12 months, but Wash has kept fighting for 35 months now. Tashi is 25 years old and has been caring for him full time for the past 2 years. She is losing her best friend and her partner at 25 and the universe feels completely unfair.

Tashi and Wash are geeks of the most wonderful sort. They sent a request to Regretsy for a ceramics artist to create a custom TARDIS urn to hold some of his ashes. The remaining ashes are to be launched into the air from several locations in small rockets that he constructed with his friends. This is what he wants, and it sounds like such a fitting tribute to his memory.

Many of Tashi's friends (myself included) have changed their Facebook profile pictures to TARDISes to show their love for her and Wash. I tried to find words of comfort that I could share. I didn't want to choose religious words, because I'm not a religious person and they would have been empty platitudes coming from me. Where better to turn than our favourite show?

"Astrid Peth, citizen of Sto. The woman who looked at the stars and dreamed of travelling. Now you can travel forever. You’re not falling, Astrid… You’re flying."
-- The Tenth Doctor, Doctor Who (Series 4, Voyage of the Damned)

"This song is ending. But the story never ends. We will sing to you, Doctor. The universe will sing you to your sleep."
-- Ood Sigma, Doctor Who (Series 4, The End of Time, Part 2)

And I found comforting words from the scientific community:

"When my husband died, because he was so famous and known for not being a believer, many people would come up to me — it still sometimes happens — and ask me if Carl changed at the end and converted to a belief in an afterlife. They also frequently ask me if I think I will see him again. Carl faced his death with unflagging courage and never sought refuge in illusions. The tragedy was that we knew we would never see each other again. I don’t ever expect to be reunited with Carl. But, the great thing is that when we were together, for nearly twenty years, we lived with a vivid appreciation of how brief and precious life is. We never trivialized the meaning of death by pretending it was anything other than a final parting. Every single moment that we were alive and we were together was miraculous — not miraculous in the sense of inexplicable or supernatural. We knew we were beneficiaries of chance. That pure chance could be so generous and so kind… That we could find each other, as Carl wrote so beautifully in Cosmos, you know, in the vastness of space and the immensity of time. That we could be together for twenty years. That is something which sustains me and it’s much more meaningful.
The way he treated me and the way I treated him, the way we took care of each other and our family, while he lived. That is so much more important than the idea I will see him someday. I don’t think I’ll ever see Carl again. But I saw him. We saw each other. We found each other in the cosmos, and that was wonderful."

-- Ann Druyan (author), talking about her husband Carl Sagan

And here:

"You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. You want the physicist to talk to your grieving family about the conservation of energy, so they will understand that your energy has not died. You want the physicist to remind your sobbing mother about the first law of thermodynamics; that no energy gets created in the universe, and none is destroyed. You want your mother to know that all your energy, every vibration, every Btu of heat, every wave of every particle that was her beloved child remains with her in this world. You want the physicist to tell your weeping father that amid energies of the cosmos, you gave as good as you got.
And at one point you'd hope that the physicist would step down from the pulpit and walk to your brokenhearted spouse there in the pew and tell him that all the photons that ever bounced off your face, all the particles whose paths were interrupted by your smile, by the touch of your hair, hundreds of trillions of particles, have raced off like children, their ways forever changed by you. And as your widow rocks in the arms of a loving family, may the physicist let her know that all the photons that bounced from you were gathered in the particle detectors that are her eyes, that those photons created within her constellations of electromagnetically charged neurons whose energy will go on forever.
And the physicist will remind the congregation of how much of all our energy is given off as heat. There may be a few fanning themselves with their programs as he says it. And he will tell them that the warmth that flowed through you in life is still here, still part of all that we are, even as we who mourn continue the heat of our own lives.
And you'll want the physicist to explain to those who loved you that they need not have faith; indeed, they should not have faith. Let them know that they can measure, that scientists have measured precisely the conservation of energy and found it accurate, verifiable and consistent across space and time. You can hope your family will examine the evidence and satisfy themselves that the science is sound and that they'll be comforted to know your energy's still around. According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone; you're just less orderly. Amen."

-- Aaron Freeman (author), on the NPR program All Things Considered.

ETA: Wash passed away September 11th at around 11:30 PM EST. Please consider donating to the fund to help Tashi with end of life care and memorial expenses. Happy travels, Wash.

ETA2: Added hyperlink to Regretsy follow-up post with picture of the TARDIS urn.

After the Case Study Project

I found myself getting very emotional during the course of my research for our group case study.  I summarized the effects of colonialism on the culture of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe and I tried to condense more than 300 years of abuse, oppression, and desecration of the Klallam people into 1,500 words. I knew it would be impossible for me to do it justice.

Meanwhile, I acknowledge that I am part of that same colonial structure that continues to oppress the First Peoples of Canada and the United States. I live on the Saanich Peninsula, which is home to four Coast Salish First Nations groups (Pauquachin, Tsartlip, Tsawout and Tseycum). I live a few of blocks away from the ocean and a long stretch of expensive waterfront homes. What was on the land before they were built? I don't mean the modest mid-century bungalows that were on those lots a couple decades ago. What was the history of the land I take for granted? I have heard from my best friend that the beach down the road from me was once littered with stone tools. When her grandfather was a boy, he found a partially constructed dugout canoe in a pile of driftwood on that same beach, and if his stories are to be believed, him and his friends vandalized and sank it in the bay. My husband tells me that when the sewage pump station was constructed down the road from his mother's house, human remains of First Nations origin were found. I have tried to find news stories and reports that I could read on this, but I haven't been successful in my search. It's not too hard for me to imagine that the familiar structures around me were similarly built on top of the remains of villages and cemeteries.

The university I attend is built on unceded First Nations land. As a university student, I am part of the power structure that controls knowledge, the avenues of access to that knowledge, and what sources of knowledge are legitimized and respected. As an anthropology student specifically, I have to be aware of the highly colonial origins of this field of study. And as I work towards graduation, I must ask myself, What sort of anthropologist will I be? I have heard fellow students state that the pursuit of knowledge is more important than unquantifiable things like the feelings of the people and artifacts we study. There is a long history to this type of thinking. There is a history of anthropologists studying cultures, but devaluing the thoughts, words, opinions, and feelings of the very people they study. But I don't want to be that sort of anthropologist. I don't want to elevate my own voice above the voices of already marginalized people. Instead, I would like to be like a loudspeaker; an instrument that amplifies the voices of others so their stories can be heard. I feel that as archaeologists and anthropologists, we have a responsibility to respect voices of both the living and the dead.

Here is a video from the Lower Elwha Klallam of band members performing their traditional Welcome Song to a returning canoe. It kind of cheered me and helped me to process some of the emotions I had after working on this project. I hope for a better future.

Hey! Look! It's something about UVic!

I was scrolling through my news feed today and I noticed a familiar name! Dr. April Nowell, an Anthropology professor here at the University of Victoria, has co-published an exciting new study with Genevieve von Petzinger on non-figurative symbols in cave art.

Typology of Non-Figurative Signs (after Genevieve von Petzinger) [Source]

According to the article:

"Building on previous work by other scholars who tended to focus on the local or regional level, von Petzinger and Nowell were surprised by the clear patterning of the symbols across space and time—some of which remained continually in use for over a period of 20,000 years. The 26 specific signs may provide the first glimmers of proof that a graphic code was being used by these ancient humans shortly after their arrival in Europe, or they may have even brought this practice with them. If correct, these findings will contribute to the growing body of evidence that the creative explosion occurred tens of thousands of years earlier than scholars once thought. Von Petzinger and Nowell’s findings have been reported in the New Scientist journal and their research continues to explore the meaning of the symbols." [Source]

So that's really exciting research! Maybe it's evidence of a rudimentary paleolithic alphabet? It's intriguing that the same non-figurative symbols have been used in so many places over such a long period of time. I can't wait to hear more about it as this research continues.

It's always jarring to see names of people you've met in the news, but logically, I know that as I continue on in Anthropology, I'll only come across more and more names that I recognize... professors who've taught me, authors of articles and textbooks that I've read, and later on, former classmates and other colleagues. Maybe my name will be on an article one day, and one of my former professors or classmates will get that shock of recognition and say, "Hey! I know her!"

Just make sure to reference me properly in your bibliography.

Website Analysis Using Rubric

I haven't been able to find a website that covers all of same the material we looked at for our case study project. We analysed both Canadian and US archaeological and cultural resource laws and how they applied to our case study on Tse-whit-zen Village in Port Angeles, WA.  That's pretty specific and I'd like to think that if we'd found a website that covered that topic exactly, we would have chosen to focus on something else (or at the very least, cited it heavily in our bibliography).

Instead, I've chosen to apply our rubric to a website that covers the specific portion of our project that I focused on: the history of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe and the excavation of Tse-whit-zen Village from the perspective of the Lower Elwha Klallam.

For me, the best online resource I have found for that subject was the official website of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe.

Here is a link to their summary of the Tse-whit-zen Village excavation. There are more sub-pages on the subject of Tse-whit-zen Village if you hover your cursor over the "Tse-whit-zen" label on the far-left sidebar. And honestly, I would give their website full marks, even though it doesn't have the benefit of engaging pictures or a bibliography. I would give it full marks because this is a group of indigenous people sharing their own story. Who should we hold as a higher authority on their history? What number of published articles or academic accolades should outweigh the value of people telling their own story in their own words?

This is their culture and their history. I think it's important for all archaeologists (and especially those working on First Nations land) to remember that these are not extinct cultures. They are living cultures and they are not static. They have voices. They have written books with their own words, and they have websites and YouTube channels. I think it's important that when indigenous people are sharing their own stories, that we listen and treat them and their work with respect.

Gender in Archaeology

I find the story of the "gay caveman" perplexing. A Copper Age skeleton identified as an adult male, was found in the Czech Republic, buried in a traditionally "female" burial position for Corded Ware Culture burials. Those are the facts. But there's been an awful lot of conjecture and people jumping to conclusions based on this slim evidence.

Where does one gender stop and another begin?
Image: Four interlinked male and female symbols.
[Source: Martin Strachoň/ Wiki Commons]

Let's talk about what we mean when we're discussing gender:

• Sex is biologically determined (or surgically augmented). Often, sex is determined at birth by what genitalia are present. Biological sex could also be measured by how many X or Y chromosomes a person has. The majority of people are biologically either male or female, but there are also a number of people who are born as "intersex" with both male and female genitalia present in some form, and individuals who have extra (or missing) sex chomosomes. Archaeologically, skeletal remains can sometimes by used to determine the sex of an individual, but not in every case. Humans don't have a high degree of sexual dimorphism, and so the landmarks we use to determine a male skeletons from female skeletons (cranial size, pelvic shape, degree of robustness or gracility in long bones) are not always dependable. Also, differences in sexual dimorphism are not consistent all over the world, and can have high degrees of variability. Without soft tissue, DNA, or other (circumstantial) evidence like associated material culture, sex can be difficult to determine with 100% accuracy.

• Gender is a social construct about identity, often shaped by the beliefs of the society an individual lives in. Sometimes a person's gender "matches" their biological sex (for example, I was born as biologically female, and I also identify as a woman). Not everyone identifies their gender as the sex they were born as, however. Someone can identify as the "opposite" gender, or two genders, no gender, or any number of other variations in gender identity. The number of gender options "acceptable" for an individual to identify as can be restricted by their culture and society, too. In modern Canadian census materials, people are usually only given the option to identify their gender as Male, Female, or Other. Although gender identity is a very personal and individual label, once an individual dies, the gendered treatment of their body is usually assigned by their family or community. For example, a modern trans man (transgender individual born with female genitalia, but identifying as a man) might be buried in a dress and wearing feminine jewelry, if his family wished to identify and memorialize him as female (regardless of the identity held by the individual in life). Archaeologically, unless there is written material telling us how an individual identified their own gender, the evidence found in burial sites tell us more about how peoples' families and communities identified them than about how they viewed themselves.

• Sexual orientation is a separate category from both sex and gender. Sexual orientation is primarily determined by what gender (or genders) an individual is sexually attracted to. Commonly used labels include (but are not limited to): heterosexual (or straight), homosexual (gay or lesbian), bisexual (attracted to both genders), pansexual (attracted to all genders), and asexual (not sexually attracted to anyone). There are many variations on all of these labels. In addition to this, there is the added complication that the gender an individual is most attracted to, may not coincide with the gender or sex of the individual(s) that the person in question is in a primary sexual relationship with. (For example, a man (self-identifying and gender identified by his community as a man) might be biologically male and married to a biological woman, but sexually attracted to other men.) In the archaeological record, it would be nearly impossible to determine an individual's sexual orientation, unless there is supporting written material that identifies it. You can more easily guess a person's favorite colour by their grave goods and skeleton than their sexual preferences. 

This blog post has turned into a long and rather formal-sounding rant. That wasn't really my original intention, but I think it's important to know the meaning of the words you are using. I think this is especially important when these words are used in headlines such as "gay caveman". The individual in the "gay caveman" articles may have been biologically male, or the skeleton may be have been a misidentified female or an intersex person. The gender that the individual personally identified as may have been "woman" (as many people have theorized), or it might have been something else. The gender identity that was assigned to the individual by their community upon their burial may have been at odds with the way the person identified themselves. The "gay caveman" may have been a homosexual man, or may not have been. We have no way of knowing, short of going back with a time machine and watching this person have sex with someone. And even then, for whatever reasons, the individual might not be having sex with the gender they are most attracted to.

I understand that using words like "gay caveman" are attention-grabbing and capture the interest of the public. I understand that public interest helps generate money that pays for research. But even so, I think it is both inaccurate and problematic to assign these labels to an individual from another time and another culture, based on mostly circumstantial evidence. Especially since people of non-binary sexes and "alternative" gender identities and sexual orientations are still fighting for equal rights, recognition, and sometimes their lives.

ETA: I found a cute cartoon about gender when I was surfing the interweb today, so I thought I'd share it!

[Source]

Monument Analysis: Pioneer Square

Our group decided to do our Monument Analysis Project on the monuments of Pioneer Square in downtown Victoria, BC. We set the scope of our analysis to the monuments in the Pioneer Square park and excluded the crypts associated with the adjacent Christ Church Cathedral (as they were not accessible to us at the time we were on site). We also excluded the monuments grouped along the eastern border of the park from individual study, as they were too numerous, out of context, and in such poor condition as to be mostly unreadable. However, we felt the aforementioned monuments to be significant enough to be marked on the map as a group (see: Monument Grouping 21).

View Pioneer Square, Victoria, BC. in a larger map

My Grave Goods (or, How I'd Mess With Future Archaeologists)

I know this is supposed to be a very serious assignment on what sort of grave goods we'd like in our graves, and how we'd like to be remembered, but given limitless options (and money to pull it off) I don't think I'd be able to resist having fun with it and messing with the minds of future archaeologists. Here is a brief list of the things I'd want buried with me:

- Laid over the grave, a stone tablet inscribed with the words: "Here lies Queen Jennifer, who lived to the auspicious age of 1042. She is descended from the royal line of King Arthur, upon his emigration to Canada in 498 A.D. Aided by the royal wizard, Gandalf, she defeated Voldemort and brought peace to the Kingdom of Hyrule, as foretold in the Sacred Texts."

- A silver flask in my left hand. Engraved on the flask are the words: "This the actual true Holy Grail. Awarded for winning the Dance Dance Revolution (and Jousting) Competition of 2012." Inside the flask should be traces of intoxicating drink (possibly gin).

- In my right hand, a golden Nintendo Wii-mote inscribed with the words: "Ye Royal Sceptre."

- On my head, a golden circlet incribed in elvish with the words: "One ring to rule them all."

- A scattering of coins embossed with my likeness would be placed inside my boots.

- Then, just to really confuse them, I would be dressed in a monogrammed nylon track suit.

- My casket would be shaped like a TARDIS.

Imagine the chaos when my tomb is discovered hundreds of years from now! Who was this richly ornamented queen? Where are the sacred texts referred to on the stone tablet? Why does her royal sceptre require AA batteries?

There would be lively debate among Jenniferian scholars about whether I was literally or symbolically descended from a British mythological king who may or may not have existed in post-Roman Britain. Remaining fragments of Lord of the Rings, and the Harry Potter series would be poured over in humidity-controlled rooms by experts in white gloves, looking for any mention of me. Someone would publish a paper on my true age according to the skeletal remains and radio-carbon dating, flying boldly in the face of traditional scholarship's acceptance of my given age of 1042. Someone else would publish an article hypothesizing that I was a priestess and an earthly representation of the triple-aspect goddess, Galadriel-Zelda-Guinevere. A pop-science magazine would reprint the article with the spin that I may have had *~magical powers~*. Someone would speak in a symposium about how the coins in my boots were placed there so I could purchase foot rubs after my long walk to eternity.

In short, I would go to my grave assured in the knowledge that my practical joke will employ generations of future academics... at least until they find this blog entry.