Oregon Humanities Spring 2008

Cover of Oregon Humanities Spring 2008
Kathleen Holt
EDITOR
Jennifer Viviano
GRAPHIC DESIGN
Leigh van der Werff
PUBLICATIONS ASSISTANT
Allison Dubinsky
COPY EDITOR
Editorial Advisory Board
Tom Booth
Brian Doyle
Debra Gwartney
Julia Heydon
Marianne Keddington-Lang
Guy Maynard
Win McCormack
Camela Raymond
Kate Sage
Rich Wandschneider
Curt Yehnert

Oregon Humanities, a journal of ideas and perspectives about the humanities, is published triannually by the Oregon Council for the Humanities, 812 SW Washington Street, Suite 225, Portland, Oregon 97205.

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Field Work: Unearthing Our Past

Dennis Jenkins wants to talk about dung, and after hearing about his recent findings, you may want to as well. As the current director of the Northern Great Basin Archaeological Field School at the University of Oregon and a senior staff archaeologist at the university's Museum of Natural and Cultural History, Jenkins already had a hectic schedule, but it recently ratcheted up a notch when his work was selected as a subject for an Icon Films documentary entitled All About Dung, an in-depth study that sheds light on our ancestors' day-to-day lives.

Since hosting his first Oregon Chautauqua program with OCH seven years ago, Jenkins has become a regular contributor to the Chautauqua catalog, giving scholarly lectures on various facets of Oregon archaeology and anthropology to communities throughout the state. He describes himself not as an antiquarian, but as someone who "is studying cultures and actually bringing life to this material." His current Oregon Chautauqua program, "Obsidian: History through the Volcanic Glass Window," provides Oregonians with the chance to hear about and discuss the ways that Oregon landscape--specifically volcanoes--can teach us about our past. The program also details how the first Oregonians created a society out of rough terrain. "Archaeology is about our heritage, and this is the reason why I think it is appropriate that we offer a lecture--and I say 'we' because I feel like I'm a part of the Chautauqua family--on archaeology," Jenkins says. "It has been my goal to reconstruct the past, and archaeology certainly tells us where we've been."

Before joining OCH's cadre of traveling scholars, Jenkins had already begun a one-man Chautauqua circuit, traveling to small farming communities such as Christmas Valley, Paisley, Burns, and Lakeview to engage citizens in discussion. Using local libraries and schools to generate support and encourage reflection, Jenkins employed many of the same elements shared by Oregon Chautauqua to bring Oregonians together. Jenkins says those informal discussions drew an average of forty people a night, noting, "The comment that I heard over and over [in those communities], through almost twenty years, has been 'archaeologists come here and they dig and then they take the artifacts away, and we never hear about them again.'"

Having lived in Oregon for the past twenty years, Jenkins's ties to the Northwest run deep, as does his respect for the history of the land and its peoples. "In my own way I can contribute to Native Americans' understanding about their past--they have very valuable oral traditions, which inform us about what they thought was important about their past," he says. "In some ways I think [archaeology] helps them to instill a real sense of cultural values in their own kids."

OCH program director Carol Hickman believes that bringing an archaeological perspective to Oregon Chautauqua gives Oregonians another way of interpreting history. "We have to go back and be detectives," Hickman says, in order to understand the ways people interacted in the past. Everything from debris to ancient tools tells us about our ancestors' economic status, organizational skills, and recreational activities.

And what about dung? Jenkins says that after careful analysis, the human droppings that he found at Paisley Caves, which were radiocarbon-dated to 14,300 years old, contain the oldest human DNA in the Americas. He used the remains to deduce ancient Oregonians' activities and eating habits, and now his subject matter will be brought to life not just through community discussion, but, come next June, in celluloid as well.

--Leigh van der Werff

Published in the Spring 2008 issue of Oregon Humanities.

© 2008 Oregon Council for the Humanities