The Submerged Paleocultural Landscapes Project

[shawomet]

This 25 minute film describes a 4 year project, nearing completion, representing an effort to identify Paleocultural landscapes on the continental shelf off southern New England. Representing a full partnership of both scientists and the Narragansett tribe, whose oral history remembers locations now submerged on the shelf. The film does a good job of describing this collaboration. Born out of the need to recognize such sites during the developmental phase of wind farm development in the waters off Rhode Island and Masschusetts:

https://vimeo.com/97244948

The project, as originally described:

http://www.boem.gov/Developing-Protocol ... andscapes/

"Villages beneath the sea":

http://web.uri.edu/quadangles/villages-beneath-the-sea/

Conference poster. Includes good maps showing sea level rise on a portion of the continental shelf since Paleo times:


http://conference.ifas.ufl.edu/aces14/p ... 0David.pdf

This represents an important precedent in making a native tribe partners in exploring for prehistoric resources on the continental shelf. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is attempting to create protocols for dealing with offshore development impacting underwater cultural resources. In southern New England, an effort is being made by scientists to incorporate tribal oral history and perspective. Members of the Narragansett tribe are being trained as divers, and being educated in the sciences involved, as it is certainly interdisciplinary. So a great collaboration and example IMHO. I recommend the short film describing this partnership. And the developing frontier of archaeology on the continental shelf in Eastern North America. Proud to see URI taking a lead in that frontier.

[shawomet]

It's excellent that they do this project, but

This 25 minute film

should have been a 1 minute film.

From the grant proposal:

"The final phase is the development of a documentary film to assist in outreach efforts on the science and traditional knowledge utilized during the course of the study to reconstruct submerged paleolandscapes and the attempt to identify ancient submerged Native American archaeological sites in the southern New England area."

I found the final short documentary to be excellent.
The film, like the project, brings together the perspective of both Western science and indigenous oral memory.
Inconceivable to me to understand how the same results could have been achieved in 60 seconds. I find your suggestion puzzling to say the least. It was very well put together, was part of the grant proposal, and nicely summarized the entire project, providing the perspective and contributions of the participants. I certainly learned a great deal from it. I fail to see how I could possibly do justice to such a groundbreaking project, which happens to be the first such collaboration between native group and scientists in the United States, in a mere 60 seconds. A project representing the frontier of exploration of archaeological sites on the continental shelf, virtually THE next frontier in understanding the peopling of the Americas, and the film describing that groundbreaking work should be no longer then 60 seconds? That's absurd!

[kbs2244]

The rumour was that, in the old days, some grantors never read the applications.
They just weighed them.
The heavier the application the more likely to get money.

Length of a video may be the modern equivalent.