Getting grounded
For UC Irvine anthropology major Brian Lam, the social sciences have been more than just a course of study — it's been almost therapeutic, he says. "It helped me better place myself in the world and understand my connection to everything," he says. "It's grounding."
As a child of hard-scrabble Vietnam War refugees, Lam bounced between Fountain Valley,
Tustin, Anaheim, and Cypress as a youth. He struggled to find his footing among his
peers and in his early academic career. After a stint at Biola University, he enrolled
in Cypress's community college. It was there that he took his first archaeology class.
"My thought initially was to go into forensics, so I studied administration of justice
as well as biochem. But during that, I fell out of love with forensics," he says.
The techniques between field work in forensics and archaeology, however, were largely
transferable.
"Archaeology satisfied a lot of my academic cravings," he says, if not all of them. "I wanted to branch out, pick up a different skillset, but still have some continuation of archaeological study." Interested in learning more about socio-cultural anthropology, which focuses on human interaction as opposed to a more artifact-analyzing archaeology approach, he was drawn to what he calls the "robust social sciences division" at UC Irvine, which he knew would afford good support and even better opportunities. He transferred to UCI in the fall of 2024 and enrolled in the School of Social Sciences.
Under associate anthropology professor Ian Straughn, Lam, now a fourth year, is doing honors research focused on archaeology. Titled "Lost in Collection: Archaeology and Missing History," his thesis has to do with records and artifacts that were unearthed from the UCI campus itself.
"In general, the archaeological materials of UCI are very scattered. They're not in one place. There's not a complete copy of the various records from the different projects that happened over the years anywhere by UCI, really. And the materials were taken out in boxes and sent to basically everywhere over the years, as well."
His project is centered not on the content itself, exactly, but rather on trying to understand all the processes that went into its archival: the different organizations involved, the different motivations, the legal areas (and the legal gray areas). In essence, he's trying to determine what went where and why, in hopes of trying to build a more complete map of the archaeology resources and work that's happened on campus.
"Archaeology has a lot of spotlight on excavation, and that's where projects get most of their funding: the field work. But there's not a lot of funding or support for the artifacts after they're taken out of the ground," he says. "Some very nice, you know, museum-centerpiece-level finds that will get all the spotlight, and they'll get treated nicely. A lot of other stuff, though, like the ceramic shards that came with it? Maybe not so much. When it comes to the collections and record collections, after the fact, there's not a clear standard on how they should be managed. All the collections from one site might get split up and then sent out to a bunch into different repositories all over the place."
It's not a matter of management. Archives face challenges like underfunding, which can result in suboptimal conditions for storage. "It's a messy business," says Lam. Sometimes, there is loss of materials that could have been avoided.
Anthropology professor Angela Jenks was instrumental in helping Lam figure out how to develop a research question and start the project. Professor Tom Boellstorff shepherded Lam through much of the research itself. "He's been a very good guide," he says. Interestingly, Lam saw certain parallels to the research Boellstorff did for a book he cowrote called Intellivision, about a video game that rivaled Atari in the early days of at-home videogames. "Both had a lot to do with trying to find, locate, and analyze tons and tons of very old, rather dusty documents."
Straughn, Lam's advisor, has been a great help, too. "He's been fantastic," says Lam. "All the archaeological material is considered sensitive, so you need certain credentials to be able to access it. So he's been very, very helpful in helping me get access."
At present, Lam is taking the opportunity to study abroad in Tokyo. He'll be a student at Hitotsubashi University, which has a strong social sciences division, through August, before returning to Irvine in the fall to wrap up his bachelor's degree. In the meantime, he's been mulling over grad school and pondering getting a Geographic Information System certification, which could be applied to archaeology in a number of ways. For example, it can be helpful in finding concentrations of different types of artifacts or features, like house floors or post molds (which indicate where posts were once erected), creating a better overall picture of a site's settlement pattern. "There's a greater concentration of animal bones over here compared to over here, so over here could have been a butchery," he says.
His honors project sparked an interest in a possible career managing archaeological collections. Lam is interested in how archives navigate obstacles such as scarcity of funding or manpower, as well as general management practices.
On the other hand, he feels compelled by cultural resource management, a branch of archaeology that's distinct from academic archaeology (the latter of which is usually funded by private institutions or universities). "CRM is for land development," he says. "Companies will hire archaeologists, usually from a firm, to basically monitor the land development, the construction site, to make sure that things are compliant with legislation and make recommendations if, like, the archaeological material on site happens to be significant enough to warrant taking mitigative action."
It's a tall order for someone who once identified as a misanthrope, but Lam is a different person than he was just out of high school. "Going to UCI and studying here has basically developed my entire current-day toolkit," he says. "It's definitely given me more confidence."
Looking back on where he started, the growth is undeniable. "It's been quite the journey," he says. "I think, studying general social science, I just kind of came to understand people better. And now when I think about studying social sciences, it almost feels like looking into a mirror. I can definitely see myself in others, and see others in myself. It's just this kind of relieving experience."
-Alison Van Houten for UCI Social Sciences
-pictured: Brian Lam at Hitotsubashi University Kunitachi west campus.