The Department of Anthropology Colloquium Series

Thursday January 14^th, 2010
3:00 pm in Crawford Hall 115
Reception to Follow

Richard Gould,
Emeritus Professor of Anthropology,
Brown University,
presents,

Empirical Archaeology, or Where Does the Evidence Take Us?

Minimalist, empirical archaeology with the fewest possible assumptions is a versatile tool for finding out "what happened" in the human past. Three brief examples will demonstrate the value of this evidence-based approach. One, from Australia, relates to the remote past of prehistory and involved ethnoarchaeology. The second, from the more recent past, is a shipwreck in Bermuda that involved the use of historic documents. And the third, from the very recent past (2003), showed what archaeology accomplished at a disaster scene in Rhode Island. These cases show how archaeology works best as a historical science, with as little ideological baggage as possible and with conclusions that follow rigorously from the physical evidence. When finding out what happened in the past, archaeological standards should rise to the same level in both the "court of history" and in the "court of law."

Dr. Gould just retired after 28 years as Professor of Anthropology at Brown University. Before that he taught for 10 years (1971–81) at UH-Manoa, and, before that, was Curator of N. American Archaeology for 6 years at the American Museum of Natural History, NY. His field research includes ethnoarchaeology in NW California, Australia, and Finland; underwater archaeology in Bermuda and the Dry Tortugas, FL; and disaster archaeology at the World Trade Center, "the Station" Nightclub fire in RI, in Gulfport, MI, and in New Orleans following Hurricane "Katrina." He has published 12 books and monographs as well as 43 papers in peer-reviewed journals and 72 other articles on these topics. He is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and former Chair of Section H (Anthropology).

for more information, please contact the Department of Anthropology at anthprog@hawaii.edu

page last updated March 5, 2010