Dr. Carroll has been invited to visit Sias International University in Xinzheng City, Henan Province, China as an international scholar from December 17, 2007 to January 4, 2008. She will be presenting a professional paper entitled, Place, Performance, and Social Memory in the 1890s Ghost Dance. The faculty of Sias International University also have arranged for Dr. Carroll to conduct cross-cultural research on cultural sites deemed significant and sacred along the Yellow River, which lies in the heartland of China, and has been instrumental in shaping Chinese cultural practices and identity since the early Neolithic.
Carroll’s cross-cultural comparative research will examine the question, “Are sacred places along the Yellow River culturally constructed in same way as they are among aboriginal communities such as the Western Shoshone and Southern Paiute of North America?” Additionally, Dr. Carroll will be examining whether the rapid development that has accompanied the economic growth in Henan Province poses any threat to the integrity of sacred sites along the Yellow River. Dr. Carroll’s research builds upon original research about the cultural construction of ritual sites in the Great Basin in the United States.
Dr. Carroll will be presenting a paper at the 73rd SAA Annual Meeting, Vancouver B.C. Canada, being held from March 26- 30, 2008. Landscapes in the Northwoods. Current research in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, is a symposium being organized by Luc Litwinionek of Université de Montréal.
Linwinionek writes, “Landscapes can either be viewed as reflecting interactions between human populations and the natural environment or as cultural constructions of the surrounding world. The archaeological record therefore does not only define usage of landscapes but also directs us to the social relationships between groups interacting within these landscapes. By focusing on a regional approach to the study of landscapes, this symposium attempts through the presentation of current archaeological studies in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to provide a better understanding of the relationships between landscapes either natural or constructed and various cultural groups occupying the Northwoods of the "U.P." through time.”
Carroll will be presenting the paper, "Contested Landscapes: Differential Attachments to the Yellow Dog Plains of the Upper Peninsula, Michigan"
Her paper explores both physical and ideological control of places in the past and present. She writes, “Within the United States, authorship over the past is intimately linked to resource management practices in the present. Today, familiarity with this trope characterizes discourse and actions of federal agents, archaeologists, the Bay Mills and the Keweenaw Bay Chippewa Indian communities and Kennecot Mining Company towards a cultural landscape of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan known as the Yellow Dog Plains. This paper explores a diverse range of cultural, economic, and political concerns shaping historic and contemporary attachments to the Yellow Dog Plains as well as the public and private discourse through which these diverse interests are formulated. “
Dr. Marla Buckmaster, retired professor of anthropology at Northern Michigan University, will serve as this symposium’s discussant.
