Judith Storniolo is a professor of Anthropology in the Department of Culture and Communications. She is a Meso-Americanist anthropologist, and has done extensive field research in third world areas; she is also involved with the Maya Database Project, an experiment in networked scholarship that aims to enhance Classic Mayan epigraphic research by compiling a large relational database and digitally transcribing Mayan texts. Storniolo recently sat down with ASK to talk about her work and dispense some advice for future anthropologists

ASK: What inspired you to go into anthropology?

JS: I was raised in Southwestern Pennsylvania. Every time we dug a strawberry-patch, there would be arrowheads. My father and I would go fishing, and there would be a campground that you could find. He would tell me stories of people that were different than us who lived in these places before we did. It got me interested in the past; but my father is the main influence in my life. He was a human rights advocate. He is the smartest person I've ever met who doesn't have a high school education. He fought to get health benefits for immigrants and miners, who had worked in mines that were closed down. He found proof that the mines existed, so they could get health benefits. He exposed me to a lot of people who were struggling, were from other countries, or other parts of this country. I was really impressed at the resilience and resourcefulness that people have. That is what got me started. There was such variation in the way people look at themselves, and how they survive, and how they make use of what they have.

ASK: What is the main thrust of your research?

JS: The main thrust of my research is how the individual sees himself. How that individual sees their world and how they see other people. The more that I study in anthropology, the more I realize that self-identity is everything. For example, when I do fieldwork in Mexico or Guatemala, I see the people are different than we are in the respect that the people have a different identity and they know what that identity is. A lot of people, when they go to another country or an area where there is poverty, what you hear often is that they have such dignity. That dignity is their sense of self. In societies that are marginal, survival itself is a communal effort. You become something beyond yourself. You know who you are because you know what your part is. It is very different from us because we are allowed to reinvent ourselves. In the process something is lost that we could learn from other people.

ASK: Is that something you find difficult to convey in your classes?

JS: To some extent, but it is a kind of stream of consciousness, and I give them concrete examples from my fieldwork experience. When we talk about the environment or different adaptive strategies, I show them a movie or I give them personal experience. Some of them get it; some of them look at me like I am from Mars. Most of them get it.

ASK: What courses do you teach at Drexel?

JS: We all teach Anthropology 101 that is the big one, which is Introduction to Social Anthropology. I teach Mayan courses, the Maya of Yucatan, the Maya of Guatemala. Anthropology 310, I believe, which is essentially globalization. Of course my take on it is victims of progress. They get the third world view of globalization. I have taught a lot of archeology courses. I teach The Human Past, The Ancient Maya, right now I am teaching biblical, well it is really Sero-Palestinian Archeology. I am working on a new course that I think will be helpful in general. I am not an Americanist; I am a Meso-Americanist, but it is sometimes very helpful for students to learn about their own culture from an anthropological perspective. I am developing a course called Reflecting on America.

ASK: What is the difference between Americanism and Meso-Americanism?

JS: Americanists are anthropologists that study the United States. They aren't US citizens and they work on something in the United States. I am a Meso-Americanist because I have done my research in a third world area in a non-European language among people who are essentially marginalized from their society. They are in a third-world economy, and they are what I call fourth-world, because they are oppressed by a third-world economy. When someone loses the equivalent of 25 cents, it is a tragedy. Essentially, the one thing that has struck me in addition to the fact that they are so communal in nature is the fact that they have languages that bear no resemblance to European languages. They organize their world; they describe it; they see it completely differently than we do. You end up with two cultures in your head, and there is a little bit of a transition.

ASK: How often do you do fieldwork?

JS: I used to do fieldwork every summer. I did not want to interfere with the kids. So, I wouldn't go on any fieldtrips or do any fieldwork when they were in school. I did it in the summers and some of them went with me. I plan on going back next summer. This past summer, I went to Arizona, which was new. I followed a medical doctor around; she was part of a federally funded program to provide healthcare to Navajo, and I studied her interaction with the patients and what impact of her learning just a few phrases of Navajo had on her interaction; it was fun.

ASK: Can you talk about the Maya Database Project?

JS: The Maya Database Project is a hieroglyphic database, that I was the senior analyst/linguistic analyst for. It is funded by the NSF (National Science Foundation); we had intended to include every piece of Maya writing that has been discovered. It has approximately 45,000 items right now. It is updated whenever someone comes up with a new decipherment. If you think a glyph represents the syllable "pa," you can run a concatenation program and isolate every place it occurs and be able to refute or support the decipherment.

The other thing [this project] has done is change the way researchers see Mayan hieroglyphics and how they developed. It was once assumed that in the lowlands, where all of the gigantic beautiful ruins were, [was] where the language began and the languages that were spoken there were of one particular group called Cholan. As we ran the database, a lot of the writing had dates. We looked at the dates of the inscriptions; we discovered that early on, the Mayan writing system was phonemic. Each of the signs represented a syllable with a consonant and a vowel. You could combine the syllables to see what the word may have been. During the period of very intense architectural complexity in the lowlands, there were new glyphs infused into the writing system that were not syllabic. They were called logographs because they do not represent a sound. They represent a concept, and they are hard to translate. This is the time when everyone assumed the writing system was developed, and it is not the case. When the lowland society fell apart, you still had writing that was documented in the Yucatan that was phonetic. So, it changed my whole concept of the people. It could be that Yucatec Maya developed the writing system and the Cholan group invaded their lowland area, took over and adapted the writing system to their language. It is very interesting work, and with linguistics I had to keep everyone honest. I was the bean counter for the syllabic work. .

ASK: Is the development of language a central thrust of what you do?

JS: It's one of them. That is what got me started, the interest in language. When I was an undergraduate at Pitt, there was a Heinz lecturer from Peru. He taught a course called Pre-Columbian Literature and the literature was so incredible and so beautiful. It made me want to know more about the past and the people and that is how I really got started with it. Once you get down there and start learning the languages, the living are more exciting to me than the dead.

ASK: Do you have any tips for students that want to study anthropology?

JS: If you don't want to teach, or be an academic, then you should include it as part of another curriculum. It is suited very well to International Area Studies, any kind of foreign service, law, business, marketing; for example, Bill Gates has three full-time anthropologists that work in his business. The anthropological method gives you the insider's view of a group. That is very good for business. It is also very good for law. It doesn't hurt anybody. It changes the way you see things, and is an excellent spot for people who are involved with foreign affairs.

Now, there may be a problem if you get involved with the government because what you may be doing as a method may be used in ways you do not want it to be used. For example, right now the government has recruited 300 anthropologists to go with troops in Afghanistan and act as cultural liaisons. That sounds wonderful, but it is also a conflict because you do not know what is going to be done with the information you give. The American Anthropological Association has a statement that you are supposed to follow that says the first responsibility you have when you go into another country and do research is the safety of the people you study. If that means their anonymity, if that means that you have to refuse to give information to the government, that is what you have to do.

ASK: Thank you for your time.

JS: You're welcome, Rob.