Hello! I’m a bioanth/arch, currently an adjunct assistant professor at the University of Notre Dame, and this paper is titled ...And the Kitchen Sink: Autoarchaeology and How to Keep Your Analytical Skills Sharp in Isolation. 1/20 #PATC5

This presentation will discuss how to re-examine one's own surroundings with the eyes of an archaeologist, by looking at household furnishings and detritus: closets, bookshelves, drinking vessels, and the eponymous kitchen sink. 2/20 #PATC5

Learn how to project yourself into the future, explore the etic to your emic, and return to the theoretical roots of archaeology in this very simple, yet useful, guided exercise. 3/20 #PATC5

So, you’re stuck at home, fellow archaeologists/the archaeologically curious, and that’s a drag. No summer field school, no museum work, no way to keep your archeology current. Or is there? 4/20 #PATC5

I often give the following exercise to my students, who usually have no archaeological training, as a way to get them to think archaeologically—imagine you are an archaeologist, a thousand years in the future… 5/20 #PATC5

Now pick up an artifact in your surroundings. Let’s start with an easy one: we all have a water bottle, or a cup with a lid—these are ubiquitous in 2020 culture, but if you do not have one, bring up a picture of one on your screen. Why did you choose that exact one? 6/20 #PATC5

Look at its shape. At its size. At the features it has (spout, straw, lid, handle). Look at its decorations. The form follows the function in this case—we can identify it as a container meant to carry liquid, due to all these features (apart from decorations). 7/20 #PATC5

What interpretation can you give to the decorations? Are they ritualistic? What about additional features like insulation, or filtration, or locking mechanisms? In this autoarchaeology, what does your water bottle say about your liquid storage priorities? 8/20 #PATC5

Let’s move on to a more difficult example: your closet. Are your clothes hung up? Are they in any sort of order (mine are by type and color), are they representative of the current decade’s fashions? 9/20 #PATC5

We often use surviving textiles as a temporal marker, but what survives depends on many variables; fabric type, dye, prevalence, & storage media all influence the survival of fabrics. If you fancy natural fibers your clothing will decay faster leaving less evidence. 10/20 #PATC5

So, if you were to remove all cotton, wool, silk, and linen from your closet, what does what’s left say about you, your tastes, your habits, the time period in which you live? What would future-archaeologist-you intuit from your closet? 11/20 #PATC5

This idea about survivorship, what I like to term the “museum-quality paradox” for our tendency to continue to house only what survives and what is prettiest or most unique, takes us to our next example: your computer/tablet/phone. 12/20 #PATC5

For this part of the exercise, take a look at whatever you are using to read this tweet. Are you on a desktop computer? A laptop? A tablet? A smartphone? Each of these have certain features in common, though the features are not always visualized in the same way. 13/20 #PATC5

Each has a screen. The ability to type, whether by keyboard or e-keyboard on the screen. A power outlet. A charging cord. Buttons that turn it on and adjust the volume. Now, recall, we are 1000 years into the future; your device is long dead. 14/20 #PATC5

Possibly the logo has worn off, or the screen is scuffed to dullness. If you’re on a computer, the keys have been worn away in places, making standard alpha-numeric characters a fraction of their symbolic selves. How would you interpret them? 15/20 #PATC5

Does future-you even speak the language these characters were meant to represent? Can you reconstruct them from old written work, or are they gibberish? Can you understand what is meant by “return,” “caps lock,” “fn,” and “control”? 16/20 #PATC5

What is the purpose of this flat (or foldy) shiny thing w/random holes around the outside, and a few buttons (or several if it has a keyboard)? With power connectors changing by the year (sarc/ #ThanksApple) can you find something to charge it with and boot it up? 17/20 #PATC5

What would this object have been used for? Let me know what you come up with in the responses to this thread! My students come up with the most interesting ideas when faced with looking at their own laptops with new archaeological eyes, and I’m curious about yours! 18/20 #PATC5

Now that you are thinking archaeologically, look around at the rest of your belongings—what do you have on your bookshelves (books, and other things as well)? What do you keep in or around your kitchen sink? 19/20 #PATC5

What do you use on a daily basis that would be interesting or curious to a future archaeologist? What comprises your autoarchaeology? I look forward to discussing it with you below! 20/20 #PATC5