Last week, I was able to send my book manuscript to my publisher for review. This means that my book now has a (tentative) title: Archaeology, Photography, Oil: Workforce Housing in the Bakken. This means that I now have some time to work on other projects. For example, yesterday, I did pre-production work on most of the poetry for NDQ. I finished up some letters of recommendation, and I’m working on two books that are in production at my press. And, of course, there is grading. Always grading.

I am committed to making this winter productive even as the dust settles on the fall semester (amid the dying gasps of a winter storm). I have three projects that I really want to complete.

1. A Kiln at Ancient Arsinoe. In 2023 and 2024, we completed work documenting the kiln and surroundings in the area of E.F2 at Polis. We gave a paper on this at the 2024 ASOR conference. The kiln dates to the Roman period and was part of a multiphase installation that seems to have focused on ceramic production. The article, which we plan to submit to BASOR, will document these features and introduce the related ceramic assemblage. In particular, we’ll propose that a group of lamps found nearby might be the product of the ceramic installation. This assemblage of lamps, including several from the same mould and several showing no signs of use, is unusual at Polis because unlike the lamp fragments found elsewhere at the site, there is a remarkable level of consistency in the assemblage found near the kiln installation. The most vexing thing is that there is no clear stratigraphic (or depositional) relationship between the lamp assemblage and the ceramic production installations. This also is the fun and challenging part of this article.

2. Midwestern Modernism and the Regional Magazine: The First 23 volumes of North Dakota Quarterly (1910-1933). This is my major writing project of the new year and for a volume called the Edinburgh Companion to the Regional Magazine. I’m incredibly excited to write this piece and I am intrigued by the editorial team’s decision to host not only a writing day, but also some lightening presentations from the contributors. This is a brilliant way not only to ensure that we are writing, but also that our contributions will coalesce (potentially) around some key themes. Be prepared to see more on this in the coming months!

Here’s the current abstract:

Founded in 1910 at the University of North Dakota, North Dakota Quarterly represented a new type of regional magazine at the intersection of the expansion of higher education into middle of the American continent and new currents modernist thought—sometimes referred to as “Midwestern Modernism.” This movement developed across literature, art, architecture, and education and found fertile ground in turn-of-the-century “little magazines” which celebrated regional voices in an accessible style and at a modest price. While the magazine initially featured the work of University of North Dakota faculty, it soon expanded beyond campus voices with contributions of appeal to a regional audience. The juxtaposition of regional with national (and even global) issues in its pages reflected the growing sense of cosmopolitanism among Quarterly‘s authors and audience. Ironically the global engagement that played out across its pages ultimately paused its publication in 1933 as a result of university budget cuts during the Great Depression. This contribution looks to the first two decades of the* Quarterly* as a window into “Midwestern Modernism” and the contemporary development of regional magazines across the early-20th century American Midwest.

3. Survey Archaeology and Modern Greece. My colleague Nota Pantzou (University of Patras) and I are slowing bringing together an edited volume on the archaeology of contemporary Greece. This volume will include a paper that I co-authored with Grace Erny and Dimitri Nakassis at the Patras conference. Our paper compares the sites of Lakka Skoutara in the southeastern Corinthia and Chelmis in the western Argolid. The former can now bring in data published by the Eastern Korinthia Archaeological Survey on Open Context.

Since my paper included a good many references to work by other scholars (and our work in these areas), it should not be particularly complicated to expand it to 5,000 or 6,000 words.