ALPACA at Metropolitan State College of Denver

Salutations, ALPACA members! Summer has come to a close and a new semester is upon us! I truly hope that your summers were miraculous and are ready to get back in the swing of things! First, officer elections ran during the summer months and the polls have ended. So, without further ado, your new ALPACA officers are as follows: Liz Moore - Vice President Janelle Roach - Secretary Sam Williams - Treasurer Congratulations! As newly appointed officers, all three of them are capable of answering any questions you may have about the club and can update you on what our future plans are. Next, we are moving to a new page! As of this point, we will be posting all new information, events, articles, and other related items on the new page! The link is: https://www.facebook.com/ALPACAMSUD You can also search ALPACA at MSU Denver in the Search bar and it should come up. So, please swing by the new page and give us a Like! We also have a new Twitter account! Follow us on Follow us on Twitter for new updates! Welcome back and I hope everyone has a fantastic semester! Hope to see you all soon!

ALPACA at MSU Denver Welcome to the official page for ALPACA at MSU Denver, the anthropology organization for MSU Denver students!

Follow us on Instagram at alpaca_msu_denver

Greetings members!

The time has come for elections to be held! The following link will take you to the official election poll:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/578XTDJ

Please take a quick second to fill it out. The poll is one page and three different categories. The polls will end on August 5th, so this gives everyone an opportunity to vote, as I know several of you are traveling and/or attending field school! So, please, take a moment to fill out the information.

Good luck to the candidates!

Can you spare a few moments to take my survey? Please take the survey titled "New Survey". Your feedback is important!

Reminder: Any ALPACA members interested in running as a candidate for officer positions, please email me at [email protected] before June 1st! Any member that is a current and registered MSU Denver student can run for a position! The positions available include Treasurer, Secretary, and Vice President.

If you or anyone you know would be interested, contact me ASAP! The deadline approaches...

Greetings and salutations, ALPACA members!

I hope the last few classes and finals of the semester went well for everyone and that you all are kicking off the summer with some fun! You all are receiving this email because you all have the opportunity to become candidates for ALPACA officer positions for upcoming semesters! The positions available include Secretary, Treasurer, and Vice President. If anyone is interested in holding one of these officer positions, please contact me before June 1st. The compiled list of interested parties will then be placed in an online poll on the website Surveymonkey (website provided when election time comes) and members can vote on their favorite candidate until the election ends (dates of election TBA). Please keep in mind that if given the position, you will he in the position for multiple terms and must be committed to fulfilling your role! Also, please keep in mind, all candidates must be currently attending Metropolitan State University of Denver and have registered for classes in the Fall 2014 semester.

So, if you have an interest in working to make ALPACA the best anthropologist student organization it can be, don't hesitate! Shoot me an email at [email protected]

Hey gang!

April is here and there are a lot of great events happening for ALPACA members! I wanted to send a quick list for you all, so you can put all of the information on your calendars, if you haven't already!

SCHEDULE
-----------------
Wednesday, April 2nd -- Mike Finnegan, leading expert in forensic anthropology, will be giving a lecture on his experiences in the field and about general forensic anthropology. Dr. Finnegan has researched paleopathology and non-metric variation for population studies and forensic science application. He has worked in Africa, Australia, the Antarctic, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Europe and has identified downed pilots in Vietnam and the remains of Jesse James. He has received several awards for his contributions to forensic anthropology and is a Distinguished Fellow, served as a Director and Vice President of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences; a Diplomate, and past President, of the American Board of Forensic Anthropology, Inc.

The lecture will be at 7:00pm in North Classroom 1202.

Thursday, April 3rd -- Student hosted lecture, "At Home In The Mile High City: Student Digital Ethnographies". This lecture outlines the work done by students who were involved with the project "At Home In The Mile High City" in fall 2013, which explores notions of locality and identity embedded in speech in communities in the Denver Metropolitan area.

The lecture will be at 5:30pm in South Classroom 241.

Friday, April 4th -- Doug Owsley, Division Head of Physical Anthropology at the Smithsonian Institute and an influential anthropologist, will be lecturing at University of Wyoming in Laramie, Wyoming of the remains found during the "Starving Times" of the Jamestown Colony. Doug Owsley has worked with several agencies on aiding in identification of human remains and has worked on archaeological sites such as Jamestown and on remains found in 17th century iron coffins and forensic events such as the Waco seige and the 9/11 Pentagon attacks.

This lecture will be held at 4:10pm on the campus of University of Wyoming, in the Agriculture Building. Email me ([email protected]) if you are interested in going to this lecture. I wanted to get a total of attendees so we could all be in contact and work out potential carpooling options. Let me know by Thursday!

Saturday, April 19th -- Lee Berger, paleonathropologist, physical anthropologist, and archaeologist will be lecturing about his recent work in paleoanthropology, including the discoveries of hominid fossils in Rising Star Cave and the interpretations. Professor Berger's work includes body proportion studies on Australopithecus africanus, project director of Rising Star Cave, and discovery of Australopithecus sediba.

This lecture will be held at 4:30p at the Springhill Suites: Marriott on campus.

Thursday, April 17th to Saturday, April 19th -- High Plains Society for Applied Anthropology 2014 Annual Conference is being hosted by ALPACA! From the website, "The High Plains Society for Applied Anthropology is a regional professional organization of university and college teachers, students, practitioners (government, private, consulting, etc.), community representatives, and others interested in using the tools of anthropology and related fields to solve human and environmental problems." The conference will exhibit some of the ongoing projects between anthropologists and communities.

The conference schedule is as follows:

Thursday, April 17th -- 5:30pm to 10:00pm, Tivoli, Adirondacks (440/540)
Friday, April 18th -- 8:00am to 2:00pm, Tivoli, Sigi's Cabaret (140)
2:30pm to 8:00pm, Tivoli, Adirondacks (440/540)
Saturday, April 19th -- 8:00am to 8:00pm, Tivoli, Zenith (640)

Information and registration for the conference is at http://www.hpsfaa.org/Events?eventId=846048&EventViewMode=EventDetails

If you want to volunteer to work the registration booth (and other potential positions), please email me ([email protected]) and let me know.

That should be everything! If you have any questions or want to contact me about carpooling or volunteering, again, please email me.

Cheers,
Jeremiah Camp

--
ALPACA is the Metropolitan State College of Denver Anthropological Society

President -- Jeremiah Camp
Vice President -- Brandon Theige
Treasurer -- Desmond McNeal
Secretary -- Alison Lewis

Faculty Advisor - Dr. Todd Yokley

[email protected]

Check us out on facebook! Most up to date information on events, and announcements. www.facebook.com/alpaca.metro

If you would no longer like to receive e-mails from ALPACA please reply and ask to be removed from our list.

Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail

ALPACA is pleased to announce an upcoming guest lecture from Dr. Mike Finnegan. He is a lead expert of forensic anthropology and has researched paleopathology and non-metric variation for population studies and forensic science application. He has worked in Africa, Australia, the Antarctic, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Europe and has identified downed pilots in Vietnam and the remains of Jesse James. He has received several awards for his contributions to forensic anthropology and is a Distinguished Fellow, served as a Director and Vice President of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences; a Diplomate, and past President, of the American Board of Forensic Anthropology, Inc.

The lecture will be in North Classroom 1202 at 7:00pm on Wednesday, April 2nd. Please, come join us as we learn about Dr. Finnegan's experiences and forensic anthropology!

ALPACA proudly present an upcoming lecture held by students on their research work.

ABSTRACT
This session showcases the work of students who were involved in the ethnographic research project “At Home in the Mile High City” during fall 2013. The project explores notions of locality and identity embedded in the speech of people living in the Denver Metropolitan Area. Researchers worked with a single participant throughout the semester. Utilizing ethnographic data methods such as Participant Observation, audio recording of naturally occurring speech, photography and life history and other semi-structured interviewing, they gathered qualitative language and cultural data and conducted a preliminary analysis. Additionally, students constructed short digital ethnographies from the photographs they took and audio from the interviews, following the seven steps of Joe Lambert's How to Tell a Digital Story. The session will include the screening of seven digital ethnographies and a discussion of the following four underlying themes: Denver's Physical Beauty, having socioeconomic freedom, establishing a home and a strong sense of community.

The lecture will be held in Cherry Creek/South Classroom 241 at 5:30pm on April 3rd, 2014. Come support your fellow students/ALPACA members and learn about about the cultures of Denver!

Hope to see you all there!

Jeremiah Camp

Hey all!
I just wanted to send you some information with regards to an upcoming lecture from Dr. Douglas Owsley! I had pitched the meeting to those who came to the January ALPACA meeting without any solid information. I have just received the official information! Dr. Douglas Owsley is a physical anthropologist that works for the Smithsonian Insititute. He has done analyses of human remains that have come from the Pentagon during the 9/11 attacks and the Waco siege. He has also done work and analyses of human remains found in 17th century Chesapeake Bay iron coffins and from the original Jamestown settlement! If any of you guys were hoping on attending, please let me know so we could perhaps carpool.
Friday April 4, 4:10pm Agriculture Auditorium
Dr. Douglas Owsley
Division Head of Physical Anthropology
Smithsonian Institute
18th Annual Mulloy Lecture
A Skeleton’s Story from Jamestown’s Starving Time
Let me know if you guys have any questions!
Cheers,
J. Camp

There's a Social Science Career Panel being held on February 11, from 11:00a - 1:00p in Tivoli 444. The panel will be an oppurtunity for students to speak with people engaged in the fields of archaeology, history, politics, psychology, and more, to learn about the job market for said fields. There will also be guest speakers dealing with different subjects within Social Science. For more information, visit MSUDenver.edu/Career, or you can call the office at 303-556-3664.

For those of you interested in an introductory archaeological field school and for those who are interested in Peruvian studies:

The Institute of Peruvian Studies (IEP), one of the most prestigious research institutions on the social sciences in Latin America, announces the third season of its international field school in archaeological methods "Peruvian Central Coast". Our field school offers training in mapping, survey and excavation techniques in the field as well as basic training via onsite workshops on
statistical sampling in archaeology, bioarchaeological analysis, ceramic analysis and cataloguing, and lithic analysis. Prior experience in archaeological fieldwork is not required.

Fieldwork will take place from May to August 2014 at the site of Panquilma, a XII-XVI century's pre-Hispanic community located in the hinterland of one of the most important religious centers of the Andean coast: Pachacamac. Panquilma is a multicomponent site composed by monumental, household and funerary remains. During the 2014 season, we will pursue the excavation of a sample of each one of these components aiming to reconstruct ritual activities associated with monumental architecture, daily domestic activities in household remains as well as funerary behaviors in the cemetery sector of the site.

All project members will live and work in a recently completed research facility in Punta Hermosa, a small beach community located 40 km. south of
Lima. This is a great opportunity to gain experience in the field and in a foreign country, which provides its own set of challenges. Students may be able to obtain credit from their department after discussing that option with their department chair. Senior staff would be willing to discuss this with the department and provide feedback on student participation after the field season is completed.

If you have any question please do not hesitate to contact us: [email protected]
For information about lodging facilities, school’s program, and costs visit our webpage: www.iep-pachacamac.org

Follow us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/arqueologia.iep
We regularly pop things on our page that don’t necessarily make it to the website, so be sure to like us and get all the latest.

http://iep-pachacamac.org/es/commentarios_detalle.php?id=

http://phys.org/news/2014-01-rainforests-east-humans-years.html

Rainforests in Far East shaped by humans for the last 11,000 years New research from Queen's University Belfast shows that the tropical forests of South East Asia have been shaped by humans for the last 11,000 years.

If anyone is interested in an MA program that works on cultural anthropology in Andean and Amazonian Ecuador, Patrick Wilson, an associate professor at University of Lethbridge, needs 1-2 students. The MA program is fully funded and will focus on themes related to indigeneity, race and ethnicity, the cultural politics of development, or agrarian history.

If you're interested, contact him at [email protected]