elanya

My department is seriously considering a name change from the Department of Anthropology o the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology.

I am not especially fond of the idea, (not that I have any real input into the matter), and I am trying to decide if I am just being resistant to change or if I just disagree with their reasons. Unfortunately, this is only semi-coherent, as I don't have the time to put together something more organized. I have actual work to do, strangely enough! But this is important enough to be to take a half-assed stab at, at least.

The main arguments *for* it are, as far as I can determine...

1. We have a disproportionately high number of archaeologists on staff (mostly because of the Nautical program), and the new name would therefore reflect that difference.

We actually just got sent a chart one of the faculty prepared, that shows that compared to 91 other institutions (I don't know all which, though), we have one of the highest ratios of archaeologists to other anthropologists (see what I did there) in the country, at 54%. We also have one of the higher ratios of combined archaeologists and biological anthropologists to other anthropologists in the country, at 69%. I have no idea how exactly this is supposed to be relevant, as bioarch is *not* archaeology, but considered one of the four fields all on its own. Also - we don't have any linguistic anthropologists that I'm aware of, so what his is really saying is that we still have 31% of the faculty who are cultural, and only 15% are bioarch. Really, my problem with this argument boils down to the question of why having a large number of archaeologists magically separates the sub-discipline from its parent. Get enough of them together, and archaeologists are somehow not anthropologists anymore?

2. Because the new name would better reflect the reality of the department, we would attract more undergrads. We need to attract more undergrads because of the financial crunch and related budget crunch.

First of all, this only works if you assume that kids applying for college know what archaeology *is*, and don't know how to find the relevant department otherwise. Which seems a little silly to me, as the rest of us archaeology types throughout the years seem to have figured it out. The real cynic in me expects that we're going to get a lot more 'so when do we get to the dinosaurs' type questions if we take *this* attitude :p Anyone interested in anthropology has to take one of the many many intro courses anyway, all of which at least briefly discuss the four fields... So anyone considering the department as a major will have already encountered us in that sense. Anyone who googles 'tamu archaeology' is also going to find us - it really is not that hard. Do we have any evidence that kids who are interested in archaeology have trouble finding us? Maybe I'm just not understanding the argument here. maybe they are tying to argue that kids have a better idea of what archaeology is than anthropology, and might be more willing to check out the department.... and, you know, the intro to *anthropology* courses.... because of it? You don't think they're going to go 'where are the into to archaeology courses'? It just seems tricksy. Luring them in is going to create expectations that we're not exactly prepped to handle, because some of our archaeology faculty DON'T TEACH UNDERGRADS! EVER! My program specifically has very slim undergrad course-to-faculty ratio :p and not all the courses taught are even really directly relevant to archaeology, in name or content, and sometimes both. If you are just looking at the undergrad offerings, then our department's distribution is a lot less clearly weighted towards archaeology. In fact.... looking at the catalog of courses offered since 2008, archaeological focused ones only make up around 10% of the undergraduate offerings. Bah.

Obviously the name change is not relevant to attracting students at the graduate level in the same way. At that point, it becomes a completely different and much more internally (to the discipline) political issue, which I haven't seen considered at all.

3. Other reasons
There are some other reasons given, but those are the main onces I've seen pushed. One of the others was that Nautical arch is really not explicitly anthropological, so the general department name is not reflective of what we do. Which really just makes me cringe, because, of course, we *OUGHT* to be *more* anthropological, in my mind. Another is that no one really knows what the department does. And this is just going to send the message that what we do is 'archaeology', which is not anthropology. So, yeah...'hi, did you dig up any dinosaurs lately? Did you find any gold?' The name change is not going to promote any understanding of the department or what we do - it is just going to create more separation in the mind of the public between archaeology and anthropology :p Again, I don't see how this is going to potentially protect us from budget or program cuts. Another is that other universities have split their departments or deal with archaeology separately. As I referenced in regards to attracting graduate students, this is a disciplinary/political issue that no one is *apparently* talking about. Bah. Hello elephant, how are you and how did you get into the room?

I am more or less okay with the four fields approach, though really I think there should be more integration within the discipline (or more recognition of existing overlap, in some cases), not less (and I am going to reference a great blog article for a bigger discussion of the issue, though it focuses on linguistic anthropology, over at Glossographia). The separation is acceptable *within* anthropology, but the idea of defining archaeology as separate from anthropology bothers me. I really am not convinced by any of the arguments presented, as you can see. So... there is the 2cents I currently have time for :p

Now I need to do some real work.