Thursday, December 17, 2009

The Finished Product

After meeting with Emily to discuss the layout and interactive components of our joint project, it should be up and running by December 22! I have finished all of the text (after hours of research and writing) and it just needs to be put onto the website. There will be a women, modeled by Emily, and two Guaman Poma illustrations with descriptions of each article of clothing. I am very proud of this final product and I hope that readers will gain a better understanding of Inca clothing and textiles. I wish I had started earlier so that Emily and I could have a male model to accompany the female, but I believe it is still a great presentation. I would like to give a special thanks to Anne Tiballi for her help in reconstructing how the Inca were clothed. Lastly, if this project were to be continued in the future, I would to try and cloth the other models created by my classmates. I have a much better understanding about Inca culture after completing this project and I cannot wait to see my other classmates contributions!

Final Project

For the last few weeks of the semester, I have been working on my part of the final class project. I originally wanted to research rituals conducted during the height of the Inca Empire and compare them to a some still practiced now. However, it was not long into my research that I realized the information documenting rituals occurring in modern day Peru did not have many reliable sources or enough information to make a legitimate comparison. So, with not much time left in the semester, I decided to completely change my focus to help with the project as a whole. My individual contribution then became research on the clothing and textiles of the region worn by upper-middle class Inca men and women. I met with Anne Tiballi, a graduate student at Penn specializing in this field, and she provided me with great resources. Since I am unable to do any modeling myself, I partnered with Emily to create a female model and descriptions. Tune in to see the final product on the website!

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Week 2

So I have finally downloaded SketchUp and and trying to make some designs. I have the basics down so far, but I am having trouble figuring out how to create arcs. I'm sure I'll get it after a bit more practice!

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

After finishing the reading for this first week, I found many similarities among the articles. To start with, the first three articles captured the many cultural views/cliches surrounding archeologists. I found myself nodding my head at the stereotypes surrounding the nutty professor and Indiana Jones versions of archaeologists. Even now, when asked to picture an archaeologist, I still envision a man in khakis and a wide-brimmed hat. There is also an interesting contradiction that pops up between Holtorf and Russell's articels. Holtorf claims that archaeology is perceived well by popular culture while Russell points out that many archaeologists are thought to do "evil" things (such as playing with ancient forces that they don't understand).

However, I found the last two articles to be the most interesting of the bunch. Membury acknowledges the very few female characters shown in film centered on archaeology. I really had never thought of this before, but the more I try to think of examples the more I agree with this statement. Also, Hal discusses the fact that social change with respect to women in society has a positive correlation with archaeology seen in film. That caused me to wonder whether or not there is also a rise in female archeologists in the real world to positively correlate with the acceptance of women in other scientific fields. I am in the process of researching this and will hopefully find out soon. More to come...