Ajtz'ihb

Make sure to clean up the area behind you that'll be visible on screen. Also, it's very important that if you mention any research centers at the university or project sites where faculty are working that you get the names right.

I'm personally a fan of "Sent from my smartphone, so please excuse any hippos" and "Sent from my phone, so beware of typhoons." Nothing at all to worry about.

I would spruce up a little bit. No need to bust out the jacket and tie, but you know...wash your shirt, no liquor bottles in the background, etc.

BTW I just noticed I have a typo in the title. That's embarrassing.

No. We engage with existing social theory and generate our own, which is generally ignored by non-archaeologists. I find this particularly ironic given how popular "materiality," material culture, and object-oriented ontologies have become, given that archaeologists have been wrestling with those concepts in sophisticated ways for a long time. Given the nature of the material we study and the questions we (tend to) ask, archaeologists often engage with different social theorists than do cultural anthropologists. And much like cultural anthropology, there are different branches of archaeology that either love or hate certain theorists. Some people still cite Leslie White and Julian Steward admiringly, others love Heidegger and Kant. Bourdieu and Giddens are very popular--if not always read as carefully as they should be--because practice and structuration are useful for thinking about how societies change over the long term. That said, archaeology does tend more towards empiricism than cultural anthropology does. Or rather, the archaeologist tends more toward the empirical than does the cultural anthropologist...

I have a question for those of you in cultural anthro and related fields. Why is it that writing in the social sciences--especially those that skew towards the humanities--so often uses definite articles with singular nouns or nouns derived from adjectives? As in "the anthropological," "the hipster," etc. My instinct is to assume that this is an artifact of translation from French, which like the other Romance languages loves to use definite articles, that was then picked up by scholars working from those translations. This style of writing certainly seems to be most prevalent in circles that draw heavily from mid-20th Century Continental philosophy (like Foucault and friends). The only other idea I've come up with is that this is a way of illustrating monolithic abstract concepts, that it's somehow a shorthand criticism for the way we essentialize things that are inherently plural by subsuming them in abstract, normative categories. Although that seems a tad too deliberate for something most people seem to default into. Anybody have some insight on this one?

Agreed with the above. I would check back with them in early January, and try not to worry about it until then.

I see your location is Earth, Coatlicue. Would Coatepec perhaps not be more appropriate?

I hope you did your impression of Binford entirely in third person passive voice. I'm curious, what's your "worst concept?" Nazis notwithstanding, I would have to pick Darwinian archaeology. Nothing like flogging a metaphor to up the ol' publication count...

Anybody interested in materiality should take a peek at the literature archaeologists have been producing on the subject over the past 20 years. Ian Hodder's Entangled is a good starting point, but there are many others. This is a literature that's developed largely separate from parallel developments in cultural anthropology, so you may find some valuable points of comparison and different analytic angles.

I highly recommend Sabrina if you're into talking mechanical cat puppets from the 90s.

You guys have such classy taste. I watched all seven seasons of Sabrina the Teenage Witch on Hulu in one semester last year...

I'm an archaeologist lurking over here, but I heartily agree with m-ttl above.

Look at that: dependently originated jokes!

I prefer to call it the Emptiness Bomb.

smg, you should check out Nagarjuna and other Madhyamika philosophers (and their interlocutors) if you're into old-school thinkers whose ideas are constantly re-discovered and recycled. Pity that they're outside the Western tradition and therefore count as "religious philosophers" rather than "philosophers." That said, I do still like Boas. Even if he was a bit stiff with the verbiage.

I don't personally know where to point you for good GIS MA/MS programs, but I will say that I think your plan is a good one. If you're still narrowing down your interests and trying to develop experience and professional connections, an MA program is a great strategy. When it comes time to look at Ph.D. programs, you should think seriously about Tulane (especially if you stay Mesoamerica-ish with your interests). We don't have a terminal master's program, but we do have a new GIS lab designed and operated by Francisco Estrada-Belli and about 10 Mesoamericanist faculty members in the department.

Travel reads: Paul Theroux, Dark Star Safari (apropos) Salman Rushdie, Satanic Verses David Graeber, Debt: The First 5,000 Years All suitably long and capable of holding your attention. Robert Kaplan is an interesting author to read on the road but he's a bit of a jingoist so he's not for everybody.

Yeah, I think the only way around that is to be up-front about it. Some programs put undue emphasis on GRE scores (like mine), whereas others don't worry about them too much. I hadn't realized that there were some places that didn't ask for them altogether--that's pretty cool.

Agree with #1. Can't hurt.

Mine too. There are a few people in my program who sent out a raft of 7 or 8 applications, but most focused their efforts on 4 or so and it paid off for them. Fit should absolutely be your main focus--and your SOP should be geared toward helping the faculty see why that program is a good fit for you and vice-versa.

This is excellent advice, and as another currently enrolled Ph.D. student I enthusiastically endorse it. I also agree that Academia.edu is a great resource for scoping out what other people in the program are doing, allowing for the fact that it's a selective and imperfect sample. I'll add a few random thoughts from my own experience: Visit if you can By visiting you can put a name with a face for faculty and you give yourself the chance to talk with them in a more informal setting, which makes it easier to ask questions based on what they tell you and generally gives them a chance to get to know you somewhat. This will also give you the chance to meet other graduate students and hear what they think of the program. Pick the right letter writers You want to get letter writers who both know you and your potential as a scholar and who are unlikely to be total strangers to your POI. Of course this can't always be helped if you're coming from a wildly different background. But wherever possible, you want your letters to come from people your POI knows or knows of, because this gives them a frame of reference for evaluating the recommendation. And finally, for the statement of purpose, I basically concentrated all my efforts on Dan's Paragraph 5. I didn't have a topic picked out so there was nothing for me to cite, but I did have a general sense of my goals as a researcher and I was very detailed and very explicit about what those goals were and why the places I was applying to were good fits. I also tailored every letter very closely to the program it was meant for.

Yes, absolutely apply anyway. Professors are busy people and unfortunately that means they occasionally drop off the e-mail radar. It doesn't mean they've lost interest. As for things you could do to improve your application/chances at a school you've applied to before, I would advise you to reach out to other faculty beyond your potential advisor whose interests overlap thematically or topically with yours. You'll need more than one person on your committee anyway, so you might as well get in touch with a few other people in the department. This can also help when it comes decision time, since having any sort of relationship with multiple people in the department could add voices in your favor. If you can afford to do so, I also highly recommend traveling to meet with faculty in person. This can be set up through a departmental secretary but it's also worth e-mailing faculty directly. Having a face to put with a name is always good, and if you meet with people it gives you a chance to ask questions and chat a little more freely than is possible in an e-mail. In case you don't do it in the SOP you have--and if you have the space--I would mention other faculty and university resources in your SOP, which makes it obvious you've really paid attention and thought about why you're applying there. Hope that helps!

Janet Monge is really great, which you could probably tell from your last interaction with her. I went there as an undergrad and took a few of her classes, and she's a wonderful teacher. Is she able to take her own advisees? Or would you be applying to have somebody else as your official advisor and Monge as a more informal supervisor?

Given that you've got a while until applications are due and longer still before any decisions are made, I would give it a week or so and then send a brief follow-up email. If you don't hear back after that I would just go ahead and apply anyway, then try and get in touch again as decision time comes up in the late winter/early spring.