Plant Domestication

Volume 21, Number 2 Bulletin of the General Anthropology Division Fall, 2014

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In This Issue

Barrett and ArmelagosonEmerging Diseases

Fuller and Murphy onIndian Agriculture

Dunn onFinding References

Paleoanthropology

Useful Ethnographies

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Overlooked But Not Forgotten:India As A Center forAgricultural Domestication

By Dorian Q. Fuller and CharleneMurphyInstitute of Archaeology, UniversityCollege London

When the general public thinks ofthe origins of agriculture they of-ten think of V.G. Childe’s (1923)

Neolithic Revolution, the Fertile Crescent,and the spread to the West of a few selectcereal crops and to the East, with separateorigins only in China (a story popularizedby writers such as Jared Diamond (1997) andIan Morris (2010). They do not often thinkof the subcontinent of India, but this needsto change. Like several other parts of theworld, recent and growing archaeologicalevidence combined with better botanicaldocumentation of wild crop ancestors, sug-gests that there were at least 19 primary cen-ters of crop domestication (Larson et al.2014). This includes at least three areas ofSouth Asia (comprising primarily the sub-Himalayan countries of Bangladesh, India,Sri Lanka, and Pakistan), although as we sug-gest below we should consider 5 regions ofSouth Asia. Thus, archaeobotanical researchon these overlooked centers of domestica-tion is contributing to a growing globalawareness of a new paradigm of “protrac-tion and entangled processes” in the originsof agriculture (Fuller 2010).

India possesses a unique Neolithic tran-sition that has shaped the cultural and eco-logical trajectory of the subcontinent. Re-gions of the world that have long been rec-ognized as independent centers of agricul-tural origins and early civilization include (1)the well-known sedentary cereal cultivators

Disease

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Teaching Scholarship toUndergraduate Students

An Unnatural History ofEmerging Infections

By Ron BarrettMacalester CollegeGeorge ArmelagosEmory University

Editor’s Note: This article is excerpted withminimal changes by the authors from thefirst chapter of An Unnatural History ofEmerging Infections published by OxfordUniversity Press: 2013.

Microbes are the ultimate critics ofmodernity.1 Devoid of thoughtand culture, they can nevertheless

adapt to our latest technologies by the simplemeans of genetic mutation and rapid repro-duction. Bacteria, viruses, and othermicroparasites have evolved to operate inalmost any human environment: in our ov-ens and refrigerators, in our heating ventsand air-conditioning ducts. Some thrive inthe industrial excrement of our oil spills, car

One of the ironies of the digital information age is that while increasingamounts of information are available

to wide audiences, traditional scholarly pub-lications, such as academic journals, are lessapparent to students. The content of mostscholarly journals is now available electroni-cally, and is accessible 24/7 in remote loca-tions and on a variety of devices. Yet, tothose who are unfamiliar with the conceptand content of academic journals, the move-ment of scholarly publishing to electronicformats, along with the removal of manyhard-copy versions of journals from univer-sity libraries, has made these journals “in-visible” to the average student, even as ac-cess to electronic journals has increasedsubstantially.

At the same time that traditional aca-demic publications are becoming more vir-tual, many undergraduate students lack di-rect experience with scholarly output. Fewundergraduate students understand thescope of scholarly journals, and even fewerhave purposely sought out information fromspecific journals. Although many studentshave a general sense that journal articles aresources of new (or curated) research results,few are adept at locating specific informa-tion from these sources. Thus, when con-fronted with a research assignment, manyacademically inexperienced students choosethe seemingly simpler option of doing aGoogle search (or a somewhat more erudite-sounding “Google Scholar” search), whichfrequently produces tangible (though lim-ited) results, generally resulting in students

By Janet S. DunnUniversity of Michigan-Dearborn

Teaching Strategy

General AnthropologyPage 8 © 2014 by the American Anthropological Association. All Rights reserved.

Morris, Ian2010. Why the West Rules- For Now. The

Patterns of History and what they revealabout the future. London: Profile Books

Patel, A. K.2008. New radiocarbon determinations

from Loteshwar and their implications forunderstanding Holocene settlement and sub-sistence in North Gujarat and adjoining ar-eas. In South Asian Archaeology 1999. E.R.Raven, ed. Pp 123-1. Groningen, Netherlands:Forsten.

Sharma, G. R., Misra, V. D., Mandal, D., Misra,B. B., & Pal, J. N.

1980 Beginnings of Agriculture (Epi-Palaeolithic to Neolithic: Excavations atChopani-Mando, Mahadaha, andMahagara). Allahabad: Abinash Prakashan.

Smith, Bruce D.2001 “Low-Level Food Production”.

Journal of Archaeological Research 9(1):1-43.

Southworth, Franklin C.2005 Linguistic archaeology of South

Asia. London : Routledge Curzon 2005

Tewari, R., R. K. Srivastava, K.S. Saraswat,I.B. Singh, and K.K. Singh

2008 “Early Farming at Lahuradewa.”Pragdhara 18: 347–73.

Weber, Steve2003 “Archaeobotany at Harappa: Indi-

cations for Change.” In Indus Ethnobiology:New Perspectives from the Field, pp. 175–98. Maryland: Lexington Books.

Weber, Steve, and Arunima Kashyap2013 “The Vanishing Millets of the Indus

Civilization.” Archaeological and Anthro-pological Sciences.

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feeling satisfied with the outcome of theirsearches while remaining ignorant of thewealth of information available in the vastarray of academic journals.

What otherwise technology-savvy col-lege students seem to lack is a clear under-standing of where scholarly results reside,how they are disseminated, and how theycan be retrieved, evaluated, and used byscholars and others. Because academic jour-nals have been at the forefront of the digiti-zation of their content, and because in manydisciplines journal articles are the primarymeans of scholarly communication, digitalcompetency for college students should in-clude a thorough understanding of what jour-nals are, what type of information is con-tained in them, and how this information canbe accessed. Linking this understanding toinstruction in the use of citations and refer-ences—both to identify the sources used inacademic publications and to avoid the pit-falls of plagiarism—further emphasizes theimportance of being able to identify, locate,and use scholarly sources in the digital age.

Students’ lack of familiarity with schol-arly material and with the conventions forciting sources present a challenge to instruc-tors in courses that aim to engage studentswith academic writing. Many resources ex-ist for presenting this material to students,including traditional writing handbookssuch as The Little, Brown Compact Hand-book (Aaron 2012), web sites such as PurdueUniversity’s Online Writing Lab (PurdueOWL 2014), and librarian-led instruction forstudents at many colleges and universities.In spite of the availability of these resources,I find that students need hands-on experi-ence in finding, reading, using, and citingacademic works in order to become comfort-able and adept in the use of scholarlysources.

This article describes a teaching strat-egy that engages undergraduate studentswith peer-reviewed journals while illustrat-ing the use of citations and references. Akey feature of this strategy involves the useof a Reference Style Guide worksheet by stu-dents to collect examples of particular typesof references (e.g., a single-authored article,an edited volume, etc.). Using paper or elec-tronic copies of American Anthropologist

(or any other easily sourced journal), stu-dents find examples of various types of pub-lications in the reference sections of pub-lished articles. The completed worksheet isthen used by each student in all researchedwriting assignments as a personal style guidefor the formatting of references according tothe American Anthropological Associationstyle (AAA 2009).

Learning about Peer-Reviewed Journals

Before beginning the worksheet exercise,I provide an overview of academic jour-

nals, explaining the general concept of peerreview and the difference between popularmagazines and peer-reviewed journals. I de-scribe what peer review is, how the processworks for journal articles, and how theprepublication review of journal articles dif-fers from other, more familiar types of re-views, such as book reviews and productreviews. Here, I find it useful to provide avisual contrast between a traditional peer-reviewed journal (such as Science) and ahigh-quality popular magazine (such as Sci-entific American or Natural History, whosearticles many students have read). Such acontrast demonstrates the difference in thecontent of each type of publication, and canbe used to illustrate the scope and intendedaudience of each periodical. Since many stu-dents have difficulty determining whetherparticular journals are peer-reviewed, thiscontrast also emphasizes the need to lookbeyond the title (or cover) of a publicationfor information about its status as a schol-arly journal or popular magazine.

Following the general discussion ofpeer review, I then illustrate the “look andfeel” of various peer-reviewed journals,showing examples from the many subdisci-plines of anthropology as well as selectedjournals from other fields. I like to includehard-copy versions of journals in this pre-sentation in order to emphasize the formatsof physical journals—formats that are famil-iar and logical in printed journals but lessevident when viewed only in electronic for-mat. To further make the connection betweenthe printed and digital versions of the jour-nal, it is useful—if the classroom is Internet-connected—to browse the electronic ver-sion of the same journal issue, pointing outthe various parts of the journal (such as thefront matter, table of contents, articles, andother content) and demonstrating how these

Fall 2014 © 2014 by the American Anthropological Association. All Rights reserved. page 9

parts can be accessed. Whether looking atprinted or electronic versions of the journal,I use this opportunity to point out the loca-tion of critical identifying information foreach journal (i.e., the title of the journal, thevolume and issue numbers, and the pagenumbers for each article), since this informa-tion is essential for locating and referencingthe content of peer-reviewed journals.

Learning about Citations and References

Following this overview of peer reviewand tour through one or more journal

issues, I examine several articles in an an-thropology journal, pointing out the use ofcitations and references in the articles. Whilethis information seems intuitive andcommonsense from the instructor’s perspec-tive, a surprising proportion of upper-levelstudents have had little or no experience read-ing works that utilize in-text citations, andthus they are unsure of what this parentheti-cal information means and how they can useit.

I use examples from articles (projectedon a screen by whatever technology is avail-able) to show the direct correspondencebetween the in-text citations and the refer-ences listed at the end of the article. Here Ipoint out the use of in-text citations through-out the text and the format of these citations,including examples of single- and multi-authored works, multiple publications by thesame author (in the same year and in mul-tiple years), and publications authored byinstitutions. I also point out the inclusion ofpage numbers in the citations for quotedmaterial as well as the standard format forciting several different works in one paren-thetical list of citations, since these detailshave confounded many students in theirprevious written work.

Next, I move to the references sectionof the article, pointing out the overall formatof the alphabetical list of references and theparticular features of the AAA style for ref-erences (AAA 2009). In the references sec-tion, I identify various types of publications,including journal articles, books, chaptersin edited volumes, reports, dissertations,web sites, and conference presentations.Since many of the writing assignments inmy courses involve finding journal articles,I also make a point of showing how one candifferentiate a journal article from a book (or

book chapter) in a list of references by pay-ing close attention to the information pre-sented in the reference.

At this point—since student interestoften wanes with a heavy focus on smalldetails—I like to move beyond the articlebeing examined and locate several of thepublications included in the article’s list ofreferences. If the classroom is Internet-con-nected, students can identify several jour-nal articles to look up, and the classroomcomputer (or students’ own devices) can beused to locate these works through theuniversity’s online library collections. If real-time library searches are not possible in theclassroom, a simulation of the process canbe devised by preselecting several worksfrom the list of references, locating copies ofthese works before the class presentation,and projecting images of the selected works,along with information about the steps in-volved in locating the works.

Whether the examples are selected dur-ing class by students or pre-selected by theinstructor, this demonstration of how to lo-cate specific publications from an article’slist of references makes a tangible connec-tion between the scholarly article and thesources used in the article. It also reinforcesfor students the steps involved in findingparticular articles in a given journal, stepsthey can later follow in their own researchprojects.

Learning a Reference Style

After presenting an overview of peer reviewed journals and the mechanics of

citations and references, I begin the exerciseinvolving the Reference Style Guideworksheet (see Figures 1 and 2). This exer-cise—during which groups of studentsscour journal articles for examples of par-ticular types of references—usually takesone class period, though it can be contin-ued outside of class by individuals orgroups. At the completion of the exercise,students will have created a personal styleguide for the formatting of references, usingexamples from a standard anthropologicaljournal. Students then use this style guidewhen preparing their own written work laterin the term.

For this exercise, I like to use paper cop-ies of American Anthropologist so that stu-

dents become familiar with the look and feelof anthropology’s flagship journal. However,other titles—or electronic version of jour-nals—can be used for the exercise. What isimportant is to have students find examplesof various types of scholarly publications inthe references section of a typical journalarticle and to copy each correctly formattedreference so that these examples can be usedas guides in later writing projects.

To complete the exercise, I have stu-dents work in groups of three to five indi-viduals, and I give each group an issue ofAmerican Anthropologist, instructing themto find examples of ten different types ofpublications in the references of one or morearticles in their journal issue. The publica-tion types include the kinds of referencesthey are likely to encounter when research-ing topics related to the course; these are:(1) a book with a single author, (2) a bookwith multiple authors, (3) an edited volume(with the editor[s] listed as the “author”), (4)a chapter in an edited book, (5) a journal ar-ticle with multiple authors, (6) a journal ar-ticle with a single author, (7) a paper pre-sented at a conference, (8) a thesis or disser-tation, (9) a publication with an institutiongiven as the author, and (10) an electronic/online source.

Each student in the group also receivesa double-sided worksheet (Figures 1 and 2)that lists the ten publication types and thathas space for inserting two examples of eachtype of reference. The right margin of theworksheet also has a place to indicate thevolume, issue, and page numbers where eachexample reference was found, allowing stu-dents (or the instructor) to locate the origi-nal information at a later time, if needed.

Although using only one copy of a jour-nal for a group of several students can seemawkward, the group nature of this exercisehelps to involve students of all experiencelevels. In most of these small groups, one ortwo students have facility with the project,while one or two others are initially lost. Byworking together to find examples of vari-ous publication types, all members of thegroup usually succeed in compiling at leastone illustration of each type of referencefound in the pages of the journal. And bywriting out (in the correct format) examplereferences for various types of publications,each student is forced to pay close atten-

Page 10 © 2014 by the American Anthropological Association. All Rights reserved. General Anthropology

Figure 1. Reference Style Worksheets

tion to the components of the reference andthe formatting of these components in a ref-erence list.

One useful variation of this exercise isto have half of the groups work on only theodd-numbered publication types on theworksheet while the other half work on theeven-numbered types. Then, after eachgroup has completed its assigned referencetypes, a representative of each group writesout for the class (on the blackboard/whiteboard or on a projected device) an ex-ample of one of the types of references foundby the group. When all of the examples havebeen displayed (and conceptual errors ormisunderstandings have been noted andcorrected), students can also copy these newexamples onto their worksheets, therebyensuring that they have at least one illustra-tion of each type of reference. In this way,students can benefit from the diligent in-class work of their classmates, especially inthe illustration of the more uncommon typesof references, such as theses and worksauthored by institutions.

Another variation involves completingonly a few examples in class and having stu-dents work on the remaining examples out-side of class. In addition, the completed stu-dent worksheets can be compiled, postedon a course site, or collected and reviewedby the instructor. In my classes, I like to havestudents retain their worksheet until thecompletion of their final papers, instructingthem to use their personal Reference StyleGuide to ensure that the list of references intheir own written work is complete and ac-curate. In this way, the worksheet serves asa resource for each student throughout theterm, and the repeated reference to the infor-mation contained in it reinforces the lessonslearned during the in-class exercise.

The end result of this teaching strategyis that students learn to recognize varioustypes of publications, and, together with anunderstanding of the scope of scholarly jour-nals as well as a grounding in how to locateparticular journals and their content, theyare better able to find, use, and cite schol-arly works in their own writing projects. The

experience of handling academic journals andusing these journals to pull out detailed in-formation from lists of references familiar-izes students with scholarly works whileengaging them with the mechanics of usingthe AAA reference style.

References

Aaron, Jane E.2012 The Little, Brown Compact Hand-

book. 8th edition. Boston: Pearson HigherEducation.

American Anthropological Association(AAA)

2009 AAA Style Guide. http://w w w . a a a n e t . o r g / p u b l i c a t i o n s /style_guide.pdf, accessed June 3, 2014.

Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL)2014 Online Writing Lab. https://

owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/, accessed June3, 2014.