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| Achoma Staff (were we lived) in the lower left corner. Built for Canadian Engineers working on the Majes Project. Colca Valley, Peru SA Fall, 1984 - photo by author |
The challenge I had was articulating what I wanted my major course of study to be and how it was going to relate to a life and career after college. In retrospect what I was really doing was casting a big net to see Who, in What department would be willing to move forward with my interests, allowing me to focus on a combination of self-imposed study as well as structured classes that would facilitate a career investigating contemporary maritime disasters for large, multi-national insurance companies to assess Risk and Fraud. I was aware of F.E.R.I.T - Far East Research Investigation Team affiliated with Lloyd's and based in Singapore - and somehow had envisioned a life that was part Banacek (George Peppard) from NBC's Mystery Movie anthology and The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau.
I sat in the back (top) of the auditorium classroom in the William Simpson Godfrey Anthropology Building, commonly called the pit, and was captivated by this 40 something year old Irishman with salt-and-pepper hair and beard lecturing in a voice that filled the entire room not from his volume but his tonality and knowledge. After the second class I asked to meet with him to discuss my major and we had an agreed upon a time later that day in the lounge of Godfrey.
Dan showed up late, had totally forgotten that he had agreed to a meeting with me, was very dismissive of any TRAC II major I may have in mind and assured me that no one in the department, let alone him, would be interested in acting as an faculty advisor. I remember him saying something about his interests in South America, archaeological field work, and maybe something about quantitative analysis and mathematical modeling. Oh well, maybe that guy in the Education department would be more receptive.
Within a few weeks I had replaced Banacek and Cousteau with a strong interest in archaeology. I assured my parents my new interest had nothing to do with the red-headed freshman girl from Ohio who I had also taken a strong interest in and who was attending Beloit specifically for the anthropology program. And by the end of the semester I had figured out a few things. First, I actually had definitions for what archaeology and anthropology where and was confident I could explain them in at least broad terms. Second, I spent more than three minutes walking through that entire anthropology museum (Logan Museum) attached to the Godfrey building and actually enjoyed reading the labels and looking at the stuff (artifacts) behind the glass. The fact that the cute red-head was doing work/study at the museum was not a bad bonus either. And, third, I was beginning to understand that my interest in history had some common ground with what I was seeing and hearing at this other end of campus.
So after a class around Thanksgiving I asked to speak with Dan again. This time he knew me by name - I had gotten A's on his tests and had no challenges asking questions or otherwise verbally engaging him during his lectures. The first thing he asked me was how a major in archaeology was going to help me in my pursuit of shipwrecks unless I was going to pursue graduate school at Texas A & M and George Bass' program. I remember saying that there was a lot for me to learn right there, I was ready to replace education and Government with Anthropology and I asked him to be my advisor.
Class Room Study: Over the next three semesters I had a number of classes from Dan as well as in the Anthropology Department. Post-Classic Mexican Archaeology was a favorite class as we worked in the "dirt lab" sorting, sifting and analyzing crates of artifacts shipped back from the northern rim of the Valley of Mexico in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Under the direction of Dr William S Godfrey, students had excavated a number of sites with exotic names like La Magdelina (Q-25), Q-36, etc. This had been an "expedition" from Logan Museum complete with a 1-ton pick up truck and camper shell called the "Turtle". Dan was making noise that this material needed to documented and analyzed before being returned to Mexico in order for him to be able to get a "dig" permit for Peru.
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| Achoma, Peru in the Colca Valley Fall, 1984 - photo by author |
Class Room Study: Over the next three semesters I had a number of classes from Dan as well as in the Anthropology Department. Post-Classic Mexican Archaeology was a favorite class as we worked in the "dirt lab" sorting, sifting and analyzing crates of artifacts shipped back from the northern rim of the Valley of Mexico in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Under the direction of Dr William S Godfrey, students had excavated a number of sites with exotic names like La Magdelina (Q-25), Q-36, etc. This had been an "expedition" from Logan Museum complete with a 1-ton pick up truck and camper shell called the "Turtle". Dan was making noise that this material needed to documented and analyzed before being returned to Mexico in order for him to be able to get a "dig" permit for Peru.
To me, it just sounded like adventure and interesting academic work. I worked on the student notebooks, re-creating what they had done, found and experienced. More importantly, it solidified my now triple interests in history, archival research and archaeology into an all encompassing discipline I thought of as archaeology. (I was making the undergraduate mistake of confusing the project with the discipline and while Dan became aware of this, he allowed it to continue as part of the development and learning process, that, or he was just amused by it.)
The greatest thing about Dan was also probably the one thing that held him back from having a more prestigious career in South American archaeology. Dan could be easily distracted and he enjoyed few things more than going to a bar and drinking beer with students. I had five or six classes from Dan and never received a grade less than an A. I had countless more pitchers of beer with Dan and it was in the bars of Beloit that a student of Dan's learned about culture, people and anthropology. The discussions were voluminous, the conversations diverse and the gatherings all inclusive. Dan was awesome at making people feel at easy and welcome, whether students from other departments or "townies" who were unemployed or just finishing a shift at the local factory.
With Dan, it was the classroom where you learned the theories & protocols, the field where you learned the techniques & application and over beer where you learned anthropology. He had a tendency to sit back, talk quietly to one or students near him and allow the large group of anthro majors, full of piss & vinegar and fueled by alcohol, to go off on weird tangents of the day or more likely whatever the lecture topics where in the various classes that week. Eventually, someone would say something total obtuse or unfair about the lecture content and Dan would stir, lean forward and launch into seemingly the most well-rehearsed, cross-disciplinary lecture of his career. His logic was flawless, his depth of knowledge vast and his delivery deliberate.
If you stuck around long enough, approaching bar time when the masses had departed for dorm-land, Dan would get very personal with the few remaining as to their interests and futures. Blurry-eyed, but with tone and diction, he held court; he did most of the talking and it was our task to listen, absorb and begin the difficult task of applying what he said to our immediate lives and future careers. This is the only time I ever found him to be intimidating.
After graduation and my subsequent careers started in the suburbs of Chicago, I would pass through Beloit several times a year and detour to the Logan Museum and Godfrey Building I affectionately viewed as the Garden of Eden . Usually these travels were during the week and I would poke my head into classrooms until I found Dan and would then slide into a chair in the back. Within minutes I was 20 again, a sophomore or junior anthro major taking in all that Dan would have to say. After class it was beer time and we would journey down the hill to one of three or four local establishments that were the current anthro department hangout. The process was the same, but the conversations were different.
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| Town of Achoma in the foreground with our main site, Achomany, by the tree on the ridge Fall, 1984 - photo by author |
By August, nine students had asked Dan the same question and in his all encompassing manner, we were probably the most motley, dysfunctional, rag-tag group of students assembled and not assembled to carry the perceived banner of a "Logan Expedition". Dan being Dan provided us with just enough information for us to make our own arrangements with the College, airlines, etc. With the exception of Bill, this is not the group I had envisioned going to Peru or the manner of completing a field school in archaeology. Dan being Dan it was grow-up, buck-up, figure-it-out, make-it-happen although that was only spoken by his actions and in-actions. It would have been a blessing if he would have articulated this to us.
Again, it was Dan's inability to ever (or gift to never) give a student a failing grade (F) and his welcoming nature that made this a true Coming-of-Age experience for me. Five students met up with Dan in late August in Arequipa and four of us travelled to Peru and Arequipa a few weeks later. Almost thirty years later I can honestly say the two groups were oil and water confined by the canyon walls of the Colca and stirred each day by Dan.
In-fighting, augments, mis-understandings, hurt feelings, unbelievable boredom and a few minutes of sheer terror are all accurate, descriptive words and phrases of this time in the Colca. This was the era of the Sendaro Illuminoso (The Shining Path) terror as well as the narco-trafficing of cocaine and something needs to be understood - we all came back and we all moved forward with our lives in a variety of ways none of us could have imagined at that time.
At Dan's on-campus memorial in late August of 2012, four of the group of nine student attended, a fifth woke up ill that day otherwise would have been there, and two more had conflicting schedules they could not resolve. I have lost touch with the other two but have a strong feeling they regretted not being able to attend.
Leaving the Colca, the group split apart and people traveled and hung-out in southern Peru in a variety of changing combinations. I did not have plans other than to travel and see some different things. As a result, I spent almost four weeks with Dan finishing a very preliminary report for the Peruvian government (or who ever it is one writes a report for when excavating in their country) while traveling in Peru, northern Chile and Bolivia with Dan. This included finishing field analysis of pot shards, mostly counting them, some photographic documentation and meeting with several Peruvian archaeologists and low- level bureaucrats. We also visited a handful of museums, archives and two universities in order to gather comparative information.
The four weeks really was a Survival Guide According to Dan on how to live, survive and thrive in Latin America. I am not sure the College would have allowed this course to be taught and I know most parents would never have approved of its syllabus let alone the curriculum, but remember my statement a few paragraphs ago, we all came back. The importance of in-country friends, both new and seemingly ancient from Dan's past (to a 21-year-old), played an integral component to how we moved around three countries, the places that we stayed and the sights & sites we saw. I took it all in and paid particular attention to when Dan told me I needed to start building my own contacts and in-country resources. After all, it would only be a few short years before I would return to run my own projects or so I thought.
Post Peru: Returning to the States and undergraduate studies, the friendship with Dan and his mentoring continued. Dan's love for math and data sets was as great as his love of beer. Both Bill and I continued to work on the data gathered in the Colca and eventually this would become publications for both us as graduating undergrads. He did the most important thing he could have; he let each of us have a lot of control over the information, the analysis and the publishing process. Honestly, I was walking the edge of understanding / not understanding what the data was revealing and how it could be interpreted. At times I thought I had a handle on it and at other times I knew I was completely lost in the process. Dan would provide just enough direction and when I would ask one question too many, the information would stop; it was mine to figure out.
At the same time, the next level of academia was opened up and revealed. I attended a number of professional conferences, meetings and symposiums with Dan and I know Bill did as well. Friends and colleagues were important to Dan and he expected us to be well-read and familiar with contemporary work and research projects. He relationship with contemporaries was very unassuming and I remember having to ask him one time exactly who John and Craig were that we had spoken to that night at the conference in New Orleans. I think he was disappointed that I had not realized we had been with John Murra and Craig Morris, who he had worked with at Huanaco Viejo while a grad student of Don Thompson.
For reasons I can not explain, I did not pursue a Ph.D. in anthropology; instead built a career first in historical museums & historic preservation and then in financial services. Five or six years ago during the all-important-post-visit beer at a some joint near the campus, I asked Dan if he was ever disappointed in how many of his students did not continue on to higher degrees and careers in archaeology / anthropology. He was truly shocked that I would ask that question and his answer was a true shock to me. He answered by saying that at the undergraduate level you could not expect many to follow that path and especially for a school such as Beloit it he was not his task (he said task), rather his task was to expose students to the discipline and let them sort it out for themselves. And then, because we were friends, he asked what my regrets were and we spent two or three hours discussing those choices.
Dan passed away in the Atacama of northern Chile while working with five or six undergrads from Beloit, a grad student who had attended Beloit and his great friend Mario Rivera. Bill told me at his memorial service that he had been diagnosed with diabetes a few years prior and with my own experience with that disease and understanding of Dan, I can not imagine Dan did much to manage his blood sugar. From things that were said at the bar after his service about his behavior in the past year, I am sure diabetes was a significant factor in his passing.
For Dan to die in those circumstances was Dan being true to himself to the end. I had the opportunity to speak with two of the students who were with him in Chile as well as the grad student (I think he is now a Ph.D.), plus the parents of the two undergrads. The first thing that struck me was the timelessness of the conversations. I could have been with them in Chile and they could have been with us in Peru. The almost 30 year difference in time had no meaning and certainly part of that is Beloit students are Beloit student yesterday, today and tomorrow. The second thing was the perfection in his passing. I do not know of anyone who was sadden by the circumstances, in fact, I would say we were grateful. Yes, we miss Dan and we are sorry he died at a young age by today's standards, but come on, he died very suddenly in Latin America surrounded by students and colleagues while he was busy doing the work he loved. No one needs to say much more than that.
And, finally, I was reminded by something a friend in the US Navy taught me about the 3 B's as he was wrapping up his 23-career: "Be Brief, Be Brilliant, Be Gone". Our time with Dan was Brief, even if it was measured in decades, he was Brilliant both in his scholarship and in his mentor-ship and now he is Gone, but our lives continue to take different paths as opportunities arise and Dan's task was to prepare us for those journeys.
