Undergraduate research at UNCG

Each year, the Undergraduate Research, Scholarship, and Creativity Office here at UNCG hosts the Thomas Undergraduate Research and Creativity Expo, which provides a venue for undergraduates engaged in faculty-mentored projects to present their scholarly and creative work to the university community. This, the 11th such event at UNCG, included over 200 students, four of whom worked with me on various topics:

• I participated in an Ashby Dialogue last year that focused on the use of Social Network Analysis (SNA) in archaeology. As part of that dialogue, I was asked to lead a discussion in my area of expertise, the Paleolithic. I soon discovered that there was, in fact, no example to discuss. So, I downloaded some data and threw it into Cytoscape to see if a SNA approach could provide some insight on social landscapes during the Magdalenian. This time period is justifiably well-known for its beautiful portable art, which provides a rich database of social information. I have since become really intrigued by SNA, and it just so happens that a colleague in the Department of Computer Science, Jing Deng, specializes in social networks. After a couple of informal meetings, Jing and I decided to recruit two undergraduates, one from anthropology and one from computer science, to work with us on a collaborative project. We secured some funding from the Undergraduate Research, Scholarship, and Creativity Office to support Amanda Chase (anthropology) and Nathan Arnold (computer science). While Amanda collected data on Magdalenian artwork, Nathan programmed, from scratch, an application that (1) allows users to upload archaeological data; (2) visualize the location of archaeological sites in true geographic space; (3) calculate the similarity of archaeological artifacts based on artistic motifs; (4) visualize the archaeological sites in "network" space to identify social relationships. Amanda (oral presentation) and Nathan (poster presentation) both did a great job, and Jing and I are currently putting together a grant proposal to secure long-term funding for this project.

• As part of my research at Olduvai Gorge and as director UNCG's Olduvai Gorge Paleoanthropology Field School, I am engaged in a long-term project to document the distribution of bones on modern landscapes. Olduvai lies on the eastern edge of the Serengeti, and I am particularly interested in the factors that influence where bones are distributed in this dynamic area. Ultimately, I hope to apply this information to the fossil assemblages that we are excavating within the gorge itself. In 2015 and 2017, we collected over a thousand bones from two microhabitats: an open, treeless grassland and a wooded area surrounding a seasonal watering hole. Faith Wilfong, who was recently accepted to the graduate program in anthropology at the University of Iowa, attended the 2017 field school and, with funding from the Undergraduate Research, Scholarship, and Creativity Office, helped me analyze these two bone assemblages. Faith found that the open grassland assemblage likely accumulated over decades, which, given how dispersed the bones are, implies that even diffuse scatters of bones require a long time to form through "natural" (i.e., non-human) processes. She also found striking differences in the density and pattern of distribution of bones within the two microhabitats. Bones were much, much more common in the wooded habitat and tended to be distributed most densely under trees. Faith presented these data as an oral presentation at the expo and as a poster at the Paleoanthropology Meetings in Austin.

• Finally, I worked with Ashley Nelson (who participated in the 2016 Olduvai Field School) on an open-access, online paleoanthropology database. The University Libraries here at UNCG offer Digital Partners Grants, which provide library expertise to a faculty member interested in working on a digital project. I was lucky enough to be awarded one of these grants, and I recruited Ashley to help put together a database that cataloged the location and artifact and fossil inventories of paleoanthropological sites. We are working with the extremely capable Danny Nanez, a web applications developer with the University Libraries, to get this database online and available for researchers to not only map paleoanthropological sites but query them based on age, artifact type(s), and the presence/absence of fossils. I hope that this will be a useful tool for researchers, students, and instructors alike. 

I should also point out that another one of our undergraduates, Curran Fitzgerald, working under the direction of our own Donna Nash, won first place for his poster presentation "Archaeoastronomical analysis of Wari ritual spaces in the Osmore Valley, Peru."

Building the National Museum of African American History and Culture

The Harriet Elliott Lecture Series is one of UNCG's marquee events. The College of Arts and Sciences has a large endowment to bring dynamic speakers to campus to address important and timely issues within the social sciences. The event cycles among the departments within the College here at UNCG, and this year's host department was History, who organized everything around the theme "The Power of History: Memory and Representation."

The keynote speaker was Dr. Lonnie Bunch, the founding director of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. As the Chair of the Harriet Elliott Steering Committee, I had the pleasure of meeting him in person before the keynote address on the evening of March 27th. An extremely pleasant person, Dr. Bunch was at ease discussing everything from history to baseball. (He did relate a disturbing story about White supremacists who would periodically visit the museum to laugh at the slavery exhibits.)

The keynote address, which was attended by about 190 people, was entitled "Building the National Museum of African American History and Culture." Dr. Bunch is a wonderful storyteller. He was so engaging, in fact, that I was hardly aware of the passage of time: I couldn't believe that an entire hour had elapsed. Some of the highlights:

• I was surprised to learn that serious schemes to create a museum dedicated to African American history and culture first appeared before World War I, and President Calvin Coolidge signed legislation in 1929 that created a commission to design and construct such a museum. Unfortunately, pressure from Southern politicians ensured that no funding was attached to the resolution, and the onset of the Great Depression sidetracked the enterprise. It was not until 2003, when President George W. Bush signed another authorization, that momentum for a museum again gained traction.
• The story about the museum's collection was particularly fascinating. With what was essentially the Smithsonian's version of Antique Roadshow, Dr. Bunch and his staff scoured the country for items. Ultimately, of the ~40,000 pieces in the museum's collection, about 70%, including a bible owned by Nat Turner, were pulled from peoples' attics, basements, and garages.    
• The final price tag for the museum came to $540,000,000, and the average visit lasts about 4-6 hours. (The average visit for the other Smithsonian museums is about 1.5 hours.)
• While assembling the collection was a gargantuan challenge, the most difficult task was deciding what sort of museum to build. The ultimate goal, Dr. Bunch said, was to confront what it means to be an American. So, the museum needed to create not only a Black experience, but an American experience. Dr. Bunch also wanted the museum to humanize history and, in so doing, help people embrace ambiguity and nuance. What, then, should the museum be about? Pain? Slavery? Famous firsts? Should the exhibits and the museum be for African-Americans alone? The answer was to find the right tension between all of them. My sense is that the purpose of the museum is to invite people to take ownership of our past, to confront memory, and to invite reconciliation. 

History organized a follow-up panel discussion, attended by ~85 people, entitled "History Matters: Searching for LGBT History" featuring John D'Emilio and Mandy Carter. Hats off to the Organizing Committee from History, especially Anne Parsons and Asa Egar, who put together an absolutely fantastic event.

I think the impact that the museum could have on Americans was expressed best by Princey Jenkins, a 93-year-old African-American who, when interviewed by Dr. Bunch during the planning phase of the museum project, said "People used to remember. Now they forget."