Comments and suggestions on your proposal

This topic submitted by Andy and Bill on 2/18/03. Additions were last made on Tuesday, February 18, 2003. Section:

Bill's Comments

This will be an interesting study, but a much clearer scientific component should be considered.

Why not look at how Native Americans used the creek and how they might have impacted its quality.

You might want to read Stephen Kellert's Kinship to Mastery for a discussion of biophilia across cultures.

"Water quality testing" is far too vague. Think about several specific measures of water quality that can help you to answer your research question. Cultural history and water quality are related and you should make the links between them explicit.

Would it be possible to give several specific hypotheses for your project? What does it mean to say that "there were scientific reasons for placing burial grounds near a river."

Andy's comments

Your intro needs to be more specific. You have designated a topic, but not an issue or hypothesis. Your idea that "having an emotional bond with nature is an inherent human quality which is experienced across years and culture" is interesting but it's not something that you will test or investigate---it's well established, so you can assume it. Maybe you can investigate what form it has taken in the FMC area?

You have some interesting sources! However, you will also need sources about the area you are studying: the Miami Valley in general and FMC in particular. You will also need sources on the groups that built the structures you mention: Hopewell? Adena? These groups were not "Indians" in the historical sense. I have some resources you may be interested in.

Your proposal looks multidisciplinary, but it's not interdisciplinary yet. How do science and history converge to address a central question or set of questions? You're getting close when you raise the question "if Native Americans chose this spot for scientific reasons along with their traditional reasons" but you won't have much access to the "scientific reasons" of prehistoric people. You could, however, ask if physical conditions might have affected their choices.

What is your experimental design? Be specific. What will you be measuring and why? You haven't discussed what data you will collect and how you will treat it. some of your data are quantitative and must be handled statistically. Others are qualitative and must be handled in other ways. The proposal must include a preliminary discussion of those ways are.

What are the social and cultural dimensions of your study? Will you be surveying people? Interviewing? If, include your interview/survey instrument.

Each landscape has a history. Have you included a history of your landscape?

Describe important materials and how they will be used.
How will your team work with each other?
have you considered statistics?
Have you included a data sheet?
Include a specific time line.

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