Audio transcript for

ArchaeoCafé Podcast – Episode 2-12

Archaeology and disabilities: An interview with Jon White

 

This recording has two speakers.
OC = Otis Crandell
JW = Jon White

[Intro clip with background music – Aquarela do Brasil]

Otis Crandell (OC):
Grab your trowel and a cup of coffee ’cause you’re listening to ArchaeoCafé and I’m your host Otis Crandell.

[music fades out]

Otis Crandell (OC):
Welcome to another episode of ArchaeoCafé. I’m Otis and today I’m talking with Jonathan White, PhD candidate at the University of Buffalo State University of New York and assistant director of alternative testing and assistive technology at the Disability Resource Center at the University of Albany State University of New York. Welcome to the podcast.

Jon White (JW):
Thank you very much, Otis. Great to be here.

OC:
Well great to have you here today. So, when did you first become interested in archaeology?

JW:
To be perfectly honest it goes back to when i was three years old. i grew up in New York city and my parents were trying to get me to be a little cultured so one of the first movies i watched as a child was “Don’t eat the pictures” a Sesame Street special where they get trapped in the metropolitan museum of art overnight. so, i developed an interest in museums and the museums of New York city from a very early age and as i grew older my interest in museums developed and narrowed down until i realized it was archaeology that i was most interested in. so, it’s a slightly different pattern than the standard Indiana Jones trajectory I hear a lot of archaeologists have.

OC:
You got a much earlier start. Did you visit a lot of museums then when you were a kid?

JW:
Oh yeah. I practically grew up at the American Museum of Natural History and that’s actually where i got my first job. i was an intern in the education department and the anthropology departments there while i was in high school.

OC:
What is the most interesting project that you’ve worked on?

JW:
That was a little difficult to answer. i have to admit, i’m going to have to say the most interesting project i worked on is the one i spent the most time on. that would be the site of Idalion in Cyprus and that’s partially because i worked there for so long. i was there for about seven field seasons and just seeing it come together year after year and watching the progress build, being able to see that happen and look back and remember being there for when some of the earlier work was done, that i think makes it the most interesting of the projects i’ve been on.

OC:
What was your role in that project?

JW:
I was the general registrar. it was a fancy way of saying i was the lab director. so, i was mostly processing the finds and providing back-end support for the project.

OC:
What are some of your interests in archaeology?

JW:
So, my main interests in archaeology are using critical theory to examine marginalized groups such as people with disabilities in the past and also more generally i am interested in issues of urbanization and urban growth and issues of ritual life in the past.

OC:
What types of disabilities in the ancient world do you study?

JW:
So, in general, i study all of them, i would say. or any kind of disabling condition. for the most part my research focuses on mobility disabilities because those are the ones that have a – i would say have a higher likelihood of leaving identifiable traces in the archaeological record both in terms of bioarchaeology and material culture. but, one thing i’m learning as i’m writing my dissertation is as i’m reading the research of other people who are working in this field is that once you know how to apply the theory you can actually see evidence of far more disabilities or disabling conditions or impairments than you might have suspected outright.

OC:
How do you investigate this subject?

JW:
So i mostly keep an eye out for for any sign of physical difference. i do focus on the physical disabilities more than some mental learning disabilities and then i investigate a little closer. see what sort of context we have, what evidence there is that a person might have had a condition that might have impaired their – that might have impaired their life somehow – and then go from there. so it’s a lot of reviewing previously established material because the likelihood that you’re going to find exactly what you’re looking for in an active excavation is pretty low. so i look a lot at bioarchaeology and human remains but also i look at built environments and artifacts as well.

OC:
What have been some of the most interesting results of this research so far?

JW:
I think the most interesting thing that i found was something that my colleague Debby Sneed also discovered – that there’s a much wider range of socioeconomic statuses that we can look at. i assumed when i – at the get-go, that it was going to be given that all the remains i would find, all of the people with disabilities i could locate in the past, would be people of high socioeconomic status. i thought that, you know, only the rich would really be able to provide accommodations in most ancient societies but it’s becoming pretty apparent that you can, if you know what you’re looking for, you can find evidence of people with disabilities at various levels of society and that i think surprised me the most – that i would be able to work outside of this preservation bias.

OC:
So, in addition to being an archaeologist, you’re also the assistant director of alternative testing and assistive technology at the disability resource center at the university of albany. what does this job entail?

JW:
So, it entails a few different that it’s a lot of moving parts and i actually wear a few different hats. that’s sort of why the title is – has got such a large umbrella. i’m primarily in charge of running our alternative testing program where i provide testing accommodations to students with disabilities. those are modifications that they might need in a testing environment. and i also help research and recommend assistive technology. that’s for students who might need exams or textbooks read to them. i help them find apps or machines that will do the reading for them – voice to speech, text to voice applications and things like that. so, i do all the research on that so i can get the students the assistive tech that they need.

OC:
What are some of the types of disabilities that can often affect archaeologists?

JW:
i don’t have exact numbers or exact um statistics on that for you i would say that it’s it’s theory it can theoretically be the same types of disabilities that affect anyone we’re going to see some archaeologists with learning disabilities some with physical disabilities some with mental health disabilities so it’s sort of you have to more look at if you want to get an answer you might want to look at the statistics of who’s going into archaeology and then those sorts of people what disabilities are most common in that group i would suspect personally and this is this is just my gut instinct is that you’re going to see quite a few archaeologists with some form of adhd attention deficit hyperactivity disorder because people with that condition tend to be risk takers um and they tend to be a have a sort of adventurous personality so i would imagine that archaeology is fairly attractive people with adhd

OC:
what are some of the common ways that these disabilities can be or have been accommodated

JW:
well it depends on the context so so in terms of a testing accommodation we would accommodate most disabilities would wind up getting something like extended time on tests but and that’s the most comm that’s just the most common though really what would happen is that a person from in high school the special education office or in college the disability support office would sit down with the student and talk to them about exactly how their disability impacts them and then we’d recommend accommodations specifically for that student in the context that’s affecting them so i don’t have a specific answer because it just runs the gamut sometimes we worry more about it’s more a question of testing accommodations and the person might not need accommodations of any kind in other aspects of their life sometimes they need accommodations in their personal life but not their academic life sometimes they need an accommodation in a classroom setting but once they’re outside of a classroom setting they might not need an accommodation so it’s going to depend a lot on the disability and it really depends a lot on the environment that they’re in

OC:
what about things that might be specific to archaeology for example one one aspect of archaeology it’s not always an aspect of it but it’s very frequently is field work what are some of the ways that fieldwork can be made more accessible to people with physical disabilities

JW:
so i’d say that again i’m going to have to give you the answer of there’s no one-size-fits-all solution in general the biggest thing is for the principal investigators and the staff of a project to be open to having a dialogue and finding a good solution that’s catered specifically to the students mobility disability so for instance a person who is in a wheelchair there might be concerns with whether or not they’d be able to navigate a well-excavated site where most of the transport is on thin bulk walls where there’s not a lot of room maybe an answer is for that particular person to work mostly at the tech side of things or taking photos but at the other end of things you could have a person who has a bit of a problem walking but can get around just fine the only accommodation that person might need is for someone else to carry their bags for them so a lot of it is going to depend on what the specific barrier is what exactly the student’s mobility disability is but also what the site looks like and you would probably want to you’re probably going to come up with a different accommodation for a site that for a site that is well excavated with a lot of architecture versus a site that is just opening up and doesn’t have a lot of architecture you’re also going to want to take into account the local terrain so it’s going to really i think it’s going to have to be really a personalized solution to that depending on everything

OC:
post university once people are out in the workforce in archaeology do you think that there is more of an effect for physical disabilities or learning disabilities or are there some ways that these things can affect people that maybe site directors or company directors might want to be aware of

JW:
so once you get outside of the college setting in archaeology or in any other field there’s a big shift in how services are provided for the most part services for things like learning disabilities and psychological disabilities goes away and it really becomes the responsibility of hr departments uh to provide accommodations for disabilities such as mobility disabilities and things like that that would require a lot of physical access so the principal investigators on projects and the directors of say crm companies um whatever their mechanism for hr is they would have to be aware of what the legal ramifications are what legal requirements are for a person would be considered officially disabled in whatever the governmental definition of that is in terms of things like learning um or mental health disabilities there’s going to want to again be a more private conversation between supervisor and employee about how something like that might be accommodated if a person’s got adhd and they might need a little more time to get their maps done that’s a conversation that needs to happen between supervisor and employees so a lot of this and i don’t want i know i’m gonna sound like a broken record by the time this interview i assure you um a lot of it’s gonna come down to trying to make that personal connection have that direct discussion about what sort of accommodation can be made but in the workforce the workforce presents a slightly different challenge because you’re working with hr as opposed to working with them a disability support office and that changes a lot of the dynamic so people with disabilities in all fields are going to have to be self-advocates especially after they graduate

OC:
yeah i’ll just think of what might be some examples that other people who don’t have these disabilities that might be working with them maybe they’re in a supervisor role it might be good for them to take into consideration when they think about how could i deal with this how could i accommodate this situation maybe if they heard some examples they would think oh yeah okay that’s something that i could do as well to make my own work my own workspace more accessible to you know more people with disabilities

JW:
oh yeah so if we’re talking again if we’re talking if we’re talking an interior workspace like a lab or the crms act or the crm firm’s actual office again that’s going to be the work of whoever is the company’s ada compliance officer just make sure pathways are clear make sure there’s enough room for a person to wheelchair to turn around make sure that any doors that need that where a person might need access are properly wired that’s going to be the work though of the ada compliance officer who’s usually worried about structural accessibility in terms of something more on the learning disability side um again it’s going to come down to the personal situation but for student with for student or employee who has adhd or dyslexia additional time to complete certain tasks might be necessary i’m not saying like give everyone a week longer than you need to to write their reports or do their necessary background reading but be mindful of the fact that some students might take longer to do certain tasks that a neurotypical person or a non-disabled person would would think is a breeze a person with adhd their mind might wander they might need more time to get their focus reading or writing done a person with dyslexia might have learned all their coping strategies they might have worked really hard on their reading but it still takes them a little bit longer to read because that condition doesn’t go away and so the biggest advice i would have to a pi or a director of a firm would be ask ask if there’s any disabilities or conditions that a person might want accommodation for and then have that discussion about how that might help and then chances are i think i think you’re good i think that most people are going to find out that the accommodation is not going to be as extreme as people are worried about

OC:
how often do you think that archaeological field work is planned or adopted to accommodate students or field crews with disabilities

JW:
i would i of course can’t speak for the entire industry um but i would i would say not very often and my experience um i mean most of the people i’ve worked with have been amazing but my experience a lot of people running field schools and running professional projects aren’t really prepared for deviations from the norm and whether it’s a disability or whether it’s some other kind of condition unfortunately and i think that’s just because there’s so much planning that goes into planning a field season that suddenly when it’s very close to starting something comes along that’s out of the norm and i think it almost throws a monkey it throws a bit of a monkey wrench into the planning because suddenly you have to stop what you’re planning to do and you have to uh worry about this but i don’t think it’s on the radar of most people certainly when i was going through my field school experiences i would say that most of my pis didn’t really understand the sorts of accommodations or considerations i was requesting i mean my the pi in my first ever field school was absolutely great but then i did another field school when i switched geographic areas and the people on that field school had a lot more difficulty understanding how to change their expectations of what i was able to do because of my disability and they sort of unfortunately their response was to sort of ignore it which is not really helpful

OC:
right

JW:
and then another time i was working on a professional project and one of my other disabilities is that my handwriting is quite bad due to a neurological condition that prevents my brain from interacting with my hand muscles properly so my handwriting’s horrible and one of the senior staff on the project essentially made me skip my siesta it was a mandatory a siesta was mandatory on this project or an african break at least and i was told i had to skip my afternoon break to rewrite my notes because they were illegible.
and that’s not really an accommodation um especially when it’s something else that that’s sort of creating a separate but equal environment there were a few other ways that that could be handled um i could have been told okay during like the designated notebook catching up time you need to do this or hey maybe instead maybe you can dictate the field notes to someone or maybe we take you off the field notes and just double your trench time or something like that so to go back to the original question i don’t think it’s really on everybody’s radar unfortunately but to uh raise a point actually that my colleague debbie snead who works on disability in ancient greece has raised she points out that accommodations are already happening whether people realize it or not it’s just that when you add disability into it people sort of start to get defensive or they start to um let their own implicit biases get the better of them another project i was on the guy who was doing our ground penetrating radar and magnetometry he had a bad back and this isn’t an official disability this is just you know lifetime back pain from sitting in an office chair perfectly natural happens to a lot of people and so we were told okay well everyone needs to pick up the gpr instrument and turn it around for him because he can’t do that because he has a bad back um okay that’s an accommodation he didn’t provide medical documentation he didn’t have to jump through any hoops but the project directors were like okay no problem we will make sure that the rest that other people just rotate the the machine for you but then when you add the element of a disability and suddenly people are like oh should you be out in the field doing that should you even be handling this machine are you sure you don’t need any more help so i think it’s that sort of bias that we sort of need to tackle because these little these little uh these tiny little things these tiny little accommodations are already happening the only difference for disability accommodation is that it does need to be specifically addressed and when you talk about it in terms of disability it makes it seem more official to people

OC:
are there any publications on this where i know i mean i know that there’s there’s probably stuff out there on disabilities in general how to they can be addressed in the workspace but have you ever seen any that are specific to fieldwork type work

JW:
i have not actually and i recently looked into um i tried to find more information on people with disabilities becoming practicing archaeologists and there’s very little there’s really very little research on it in general i believe that the us government um department of health and human services probably has some guidelines for ada compliance and certainly there’s a lot of legal precedent and legal decisions which probably discuss how people with disabilities are supposed to be accommodated in the field but one problem that you’re going to run into is that american disability law does allow for exemptions if the people who are doing the hiring have enough of a case that a person’s disability can’t be accommodated for then that person doesn’t have to get the job opportunity so i’ve not seen any evidence of it but i would imagine that some people in archaeology would unfortunately fall back on that and say well we really can’t this person really can’t manage it without really doing the without really trying to understand what the issue is and in the private sector i’m sure there’s uh or in other industries i should say i’m sure that this is happening a lot more often

OC:
why do many academics not disclose the disabilities particularly invisible ones such as learning disabilities

JW:
oh the simple answer to that is ableism the structural bias against people with disabilities whatever your definition of disability is and ableism it’s it’s just like the other big isms that a lot of people are fighting against today it’s same as sexism and racism and homophobia it’s this it’s sort of the societal structure that causes people to other people with disabilities and think in many cases think less of them so in academics specifically i’m sure many of them don’t want to disclose disabilities because they don’t want to be thought of as lesser they’re worried about other people judging their work either judging it too harshly because of their disability or judging it not harshly enough because of their disability because i’m sure you can have that reverse system where people are like oh well that person their research is very good but but you do have to remember that they had adhd so it’s really good so i think that there’s the concern about being stigmatized for the most part and i’m sure that most academics are disclosing what’s necessary to their hr departments but not necessarily to their colleagues or their students

OC:
how can we encourage more people in archaeology to make archaeology more accessible

JW:
education is the answer to everything really i think and specifically in archaeology or as you mentioned any other any other discipline that requires a lot of fieldwork there needs to be a little more outreach and there needs to be a little more communication with the college disability departments and so one thing that would be really good for anyone who’s considering a field school for example is the field school usually involves a class treat that class like any other syllabus and put a disability statement out there the best thing that you can do is i think really just acknowledge that there might be people with disabilities who are interested in whatever the opportunity is and acknowledging them in the promotional materials for and in the actual materials for after acceptance is going to go a long way so just knowing that this is a population that’s interested and working on understanding that i think is going to go a really long way

OC:
what advice would you give to archaeologists particularly undergraduate students who have disabilities that might affect them in their careers

JW:
don’t ever think of your disability as something that limits you i know that’s sort of the definition of the word but you’re the only person who can decide whether something is a barrier i’ve learned i’ve learned now and i’m in my 30s now what my disabilities actually do prevent me from doing and they’re not quite the same thing as what people who i meet on the street or on projects assume that i can’t do so my advice to students is know yourself and know your limits don’t know the limits that other people are putting on you and don’t be afraid to self-advocate if you want to go and be an archaeologist go and talk to your archaeology professor and be a self-advocate have a clear rational conversation about what your real limitations are and address their concerns remembering of course that you have a certain right to privacy in terms of your own diagnosis

OC:
Right. Well, thanks for taking the time today to come on and to talk to us about disabilities and particularly how they might affect people in archaeology. I think that it’s something that will be quite useful for people to think about. And, your research is very interesting in how it actually ties into your current job. So, thanks again for coming on today and talking with us.

JW:
You’re very welcome.

OC:
Well, have a nice day.

JW:
You too.

[Outro clip with background music – Aquarela do Brasil]

OC:
You’ve been listening to the ArchaeoCafé podcast. For more information and news, check out our website our social media pages. Links can be found in the episode notes or simply by searching online for “ArchaeoCafé podcast”. If you have any questions or comments for the presenters or guest speakers, we’d love to hear from you. Until next time, keep on diggin’ and never throw in the trowel.

[music fades out]