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Archaeology in Germany with Michaela Schauer - Ep 13
758 Plays4 years ago
Archaeology around the world may be different but the different ways in which countries operate may surprise you in their similarities, particularly when it comes to the things that could be better.
Today's episode I sit down with Michaela Schauer who was one of the founding members of CIfA Deutschland. As a relatively new organization in Germany, CIfA Deutschland used the blueprint laid out by Chartered Institute for Archaeologists in the UK and adapted it to what was needed in Germany. We discuss the challenges of getting people on board and how getting involved is a way of things changing and improving.There was recently a survey of archaeologists in Germany, including students and companies to report wages, conditions.
One of their findings was that there are not enough archaeologists in Germany.There are a number of other organizations including DGUF (Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Ur und Fruhgeschicte) which hertiage professionals can be part of, but CIfA aims to provide a broad coalition from all areas and subjects of study. Michaela tells me about her work on pottery and the chemical analysis that can be done to determine how they used and shine a light on early populations that lived on European continent.
Siegmund, F., Scherzler D. (2018). Einführung in die DGUF-Tagung am 4. Juli 2017 in Mainz. „Ein Berufsverband für die Archäologie?“, Archäologische Informationen 41, 15-20. - https://journals.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/index.php/arch-inf/article/view/56913/48292
Schauer, M. (2018). Bericht über das Online-Forum "DGUF-Vortagung 2017 – Ein Berufsverband für die Archäologie?", 6. März bis 9. Juni 2017, Archäologische Informationen 41, 31-54. - https://journals.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/index.php/arch-inf/article/view/56915/48294
Scherzler, D., Schauer, M., Hesse, S., Rauhaus, J., Rind, M. M., Deutscher, L. (2018). Ein Berufsverband für die Archäologie? Zusammenfassung der Debatten beim World Café auf der DGUF-Tagung am 4. Juli 2017 in Mainz, Archäologische Informationen 41, 99-108. - https://journals.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/index.php/arch-inf/article/view/56936/48301
These links refere to the online-conference and conference we did on the question of Germany needs an professional association. In our talk yesterday I mentioned the second which is a report about the online-conferenc and mentiones how CIfA got involved in Germany.
Siegmund, F., Scherzler D. (2019). Die derzeitige Wirtschaftslage in der privatwirtschaftlichen Archäologie Deutschlands – DGUF-Monitoring-Report privatwirtschaftliche Archäologie 2019. Archäologische Informationen 42, 78-98. - https://journals.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/index.php/arch-inf/article/view/69349/62687
Siegmund, F., Scherzler D. & Schauer, M. (2020). DGUF-Umfrage "Evaluation Beruf Archäologie", 10. 6. 2019 - 31. 10. 2019: Durchführung und Teilnehmer der Umfrage (EvaBA 1). DGUF-Preprint, online publiziert 23. März 2020. - https://www.dguf.de/fileadmin/user_upload/EvaBA/DGUF-Dok_Preprint_EvaBA_1_Durchfuehrung-u-Teilnehmer.pdf
Siegmund, F., Schauer, M. & Scherzler D. (2020). Löhne und Gehälter in der deutschen Archäologie – Auswertung der DGUF-Umfrage "Evaluation Beruf Archäologie", 10. 6. 2019 - 31. 10. 2019 (EvaBA 2). DGUF-Preprint, online publiziert 28. Mai 2020. - https://www.dguf.de/fileadmin/user_upload/EvaBA/DGUF-Dok_Preprint_EvaB
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Transcript
Introduction to Modern Myth Podcast and Guest Michaela Schauer
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.
00:00:27
Speaker
Hello and welcome to another episode of Modern Myth. I'm Tristan, the an archaeologist and today's episode I'm speaking to a very special person who I've actually met in person several times at conferences and I just want to take the opportunity to sit down with her on one of these shows and just talk at length about aspects of archaeology including her own PhD work at the moment
00:00:52
Speaker
and also what it's like for archaeologists in Germany and the institute, the new SIFA Deutschland group over there. So thank
Michaela's Journey in Archaeology
00:01:04
Speaker
you very much for coming on the show, Michaela Schauer. Oh, I'm using my English word. I'm sorry, I'm using my English voice and it's really weird. So thank you for coming on the show and apologies for my English pronunciation of your name. Thank you for your invite.
00:01:22
Speaker
And that's completely fine. Normally, people struggle very much with my first name, so that's fine. It's one of those things, isn't it? And then, of course, somebody's called Jeff in G-E-O-F-F. And I always find that a really weird spelling, actually. I find that one too. That's a weird one. And nobody can get Tristan right. I get emails consistently with the misspelling of Tristan, so I know that pain.
00:01:53
Speaker
But anyway, I want to kind of cut a circle back. So you're currently doing a PhD, is that correct? Yeah, I'm doing that for some years now. And finally, now I got time to really dive into it, just because of Corona. And so I'm here and not on projects.
00:02:17
Speaker
I've spoken to a lot of people who are doing PhDs and a lot of them say it is quite strenuous, it is quite difficult. How has it been for you? Well, yes, it is. But it basically is because I didn't really have
00:02:35
Speaker
the kind of finance in the beginning where I could concentrate on the PhD. So I was working in commercial archaeology and then I got a job with SIFA and then I got a job with university. And then I tried to do my PhD, but it just didn't work out. And so for three years or so, I really didn't do that much on my PhD. But now having just the job at university, I finally have the time to do it.
00:03:03
Speaker
And as I was one of the lucky ones who could really just go to the supervisor and say, Hey, this is what I want to do. It's fine with you and just get a yes.
Archaeological Organizations in Germany
00:03:13
Speaker
Um, I'm in that lucky position that I really, really can do what I want to do. And just for our listeners there, which university is that? It's Munich. Oh, Bavarian.
00:03:28
Speaker
Are you originally from Bavaria? Yes, I am. I was raised around Munich and I'm still there. So I tried to go somewhere else. I went to Kiel for one semester, but I had to come back. I'm sorry. Munich is the best city. I couldn't leave.
00:03:46
Speaker
You know, I have been to Munich before actually, and it struck me actually how different the Bavarian tongue is to normal German. I always find it very, very interesting. Have you ever had a lecturer presented to you in Bavarian dialect? Oh yeah, we have some of our lecturers that have a really strong dialect.
00:04:11
Speaker
They normally try in the beginning to really use Hochdeutsch but then they move more into the dialect and I just really love it because I grew up in a small town around Munich where we have our own dialect too. Oh wow, a dialect within a dialect. Interesting.
00:04:31
Speaker
It's really like that sometimes you don't understand what the neighbors from another, you know, not far away small town are talking because they have such a different dialect that you don't get it.
00:04:46
Speaker
I'm just wondering now that I'm on this train of thought, is there any archaeology terms that are in the Bavarian dialect that aren't in Hochdeutsch? Have you ever had a conversation with somebody and said something and they've not really understood what you meant because you've
00:05:04
Speaker
or I don't know, a potter shirt or something. We have some of those, but normally as ecology is pretty descriptive, you can understand what the other person wants, even if you're using a strange word. But that's pretty okay. So I was able to talk with those in the north of Germany, and we kind of got what the other one was saying.
00:05:29
Speaker
That's good, that's good. And obviously that works into this communication between archaeologists all over Germany is now in a kind of a newer phase than it was before. Before, you know, you mentioned by joining SIFA and having a job at SIFA Deutschland. Can you tell me a little bit about what happened? Do you know what Germany was like before SIFA Deutschland was around?
00:05:54
Speaker
Because I know there are other kind of groups and organizations in Germany that deal with archaeology and heritage. Yeah, we have a very, very diverse landscape of organizations because it all just grew in a way.
00:06:08
Speaker
And there was never something like, okay, let's sit down and talk about what do we really need? Which organizations do we have? Which was something about the last conference of the Rijgof. So, Deutscher, Welschafur and Frugeschichte picked up and we discussed it there. So, in fact, it didn't change that much since we have it's safer.
00:06:37
Speaker
There was not really an organization that was called a professional association and was acting like one in all of the ways that a professional association should act. So we have some who set rules and say, okay, if we, we are part of that organization, then we follow this and that code, but there's no one who does something if something goes wrong. So, um,
00:07:04
Speaker
Yeah, but we have a lot of different organizations. We have NGOs. We have also organizations like the Organization for State Ecologists, where they meet together. We have organizations for students. We have a lot of scientific organizations who deal with specific times of ecology or specific topics.
00:07:30
Speaker
So yeah, there's a lot of organisational stuff going on and it's really difficult to find out who's really doing what and who is really doing something. And just so I understand, if you are in commercial archaeology in Germany, do you have to be part of one of these institutions? Do you have to sign up to at least one of them or can you kind of freelance and actually not have any ties to any of these?
00:07:59
Speaker
Yeah, you don't need to be in any of these organizations. Also as an individual ecologist, you don't have to. Normally we all end up in being in several of those organizations because, well, we have different research interests. So you go to that group, various research interests is, and then you start to work in another country. And then you think, well, that organization is now of interest for me too. So.
00:08:27
Speaker
you normally have several memberships. Ah, that probably comes with it. Several cards and several monthly fees as well, I'm sure. It does. Oh, a choice. Now, it's quite interesting having quite a history myself of how SIFA operates. I'm quite interested to know what SIFA looked like from the outside and why not start
00:08:56
Speaker
Why do you know why they didn't think about starting their own kind of institute for archaeologists from the ground up? It seems more like SIFA kind of, you know, mobilized over and, you know, into Germany rather than like something sprang up by itself. But maybe that's the wrong perspective on it. How did that actually happen? Yeah, that's a really good question because this is how it's normally perceived.
00:09:25
Speaker
also over here, but it's just, let's say, wrong. Because it was a really big discussion that started already in autumn 2016. Dig of Dan asks their members if they would be interested to talk about professional associations for Germany. So do we need that? And they had
00:09:52
Speaker
really so many replies, not just from their membership, but also from outside the membership that said, yes, please, let's talk about that. It's so necessary. And they put together a group, and I was part of that then, who should organize an online conference.
00:10:11
Speaker
And it was all about discussing that topic. Do we need a professional association? If so, how should it look like? Who should be included? What should it do? How should it be financed? What are the issues that need to be addressed? And we really did that discussion for several months. And we set the rough topics from the organizational side, but if topics came up during that discussion, we just added them.
00:10:41
Speaker
and used them. And it's also published. So we've also written down the results of that. And during that discussion, we often spoke about that. Is it a good idea to build something from scratch or is that something we can use? And really, I had never heard of SIFA before that. And during that whole discussion,
00:11:11
Speaker
It came up in some places, but I never really realized that until we came really to the end of the discussion and we had that question. So what do we want to do now? Really that do we want to build something new? Do we want to take something? There again, it came up and then I realized, oh, look, there are professional associations outside of Germany, which we can really look at and see what's happening there. And then.
00:11:41
Speaker
Sifo, who had a look at that debate for the whole time, came back and said, well, okay, as we can see that your result might be that you want to use something that already exists, we would be there. So if you're interested, we could help you with the stuff we know with all our experience and help you set something up that works for you.
Cultural and Economic Challenges in German Archaeology
00:12:03
Speaker
And we would finance someone part-time that can help to make our system work for you.
00:12:11
Speaker
and to make all the necessary changes. And then you can start to build the committee and then you can start to work in Germany as it is needed in Germany. And then after that online debate, we had our normal conference where we again discussed this topic and again came up with that, okay, we don't have the financial resources to build something from scratch. It's just not working.
00:12:39
Speaker
We don't want to wait for, I don't know, 20 years or so until something is working and we have everything discussed and we have all the rules set up. We want something now because we need it now if we want to save ecology and especially the commercial sector. And yeah, so we decided or a group of us decided that SIFA is the right way to go. And well, then about
00:13:07
Speaker
50 people agreed that we want to start FIFA Germany. So that's how it went.
00:13:16
Speaker
That's good. And I'm just wondering, you talked about needing the requirement to protect archaeology, to secure it. And as an ongoing project, I know that in the UK at the moment, I mean, I'm not to date this episode, but obviously we're in the middle of a pandemic at the moment. And one of the concerns is that there might be
00:13:45
Speaker
there was a government minister recently said that they were looking at cutting red tape when it came to housing development and obviously that rings alarm bells because there have been discussions over the last number of years about the planning bill and what it would mean for if archaeology wasn't a full requirement or that the bar the standard for which you had the standard of archaeology that you had to take
00:14:12
Speaker
before you were allowed to develop and build was lowered, that that would be a concern and a threat to the profession. I'm just wondering, in Germany, how is it much the same with how commercial archaeology works? Is it because people want to build or develop? Is that the same concerns that you have over there?
00:14:37
Speaker
Yes, it's exactly the same. So we have polluter pays principle over here, which means as long as someone built a house and there's a rule in place that says before that you have to dig, then the polluter has to pay. And of course the polluter doesn't like that. So there's always that threat if politics decide to go with the polluter and they
00:15:04
Speaker
change something in the law that the rules are not that strict anymore, that ecology really really gets into big trouble. So our highest goal is to make ecology important to the public and to politicians so we can show what we can do and why. Why it's not okay to destroy the ecological record but
00:15:33
Speaker
As soon as money is in the game, it always gets difficult. And yeah, we're very worried what happens if funds get cut when laws are changed. Yeah.
00:15:47
Speaker
You mentioned earlier about taking aspects of SIFA in the UK, the Charter Institute for Archaeology in the UK, and adapting them into what would become SIFA Germany, SIFA Deutschland. What changes do you think broadly are different? What are the differences between the UK and Germany in that way? And what changes did you feel needed to be adapted for that to kind of work?
00:16:15
Speaker
Yeah, that's a really good question because our main goal is to stay safer as most as we can, because we want to be part of safer. We don't want to be our own organization or something. That's not what we want to do. But we are a different country, we are a different culture, and it's much more different than all of us ever expected in many cases, especially in communication.
00:16:44
Speaker
and how you present stuff to people that really really differs a lot from the nice gentleman way like Sifa is talking or as I perceive it is talking in the UK to the more blunt way we're talking in Germany or at least this is how I feel with it. So we need to change just some of the wording and convey the messages differently. So the flyers need to convey the same
00:17:14
Speaker
message but be written differently we react differently to pictures or so in some ways yeah well i feel that's that is the differences between like the uk and germany um i i do i do love a good bit of german bluntness to be fair like i i love the fact that there's a straightforwardness to how things are done which is very nice uh because i mean like i've
00:17:44
Speaker
I've worked a lot in customer service in speaking German and I do like the fact that you're able to say, well, this is how the system works. I can't change it. And they're like, fine, but your system's terrible. We're fine. I just love the aspect of like, well, that's it, you know, okay, there's no fighting. It's great.
00:18:06
Speaker
But I like this idea that, you know, these are really important cultural differences that I think it makes such an impact when things are tailored because it would have been so easy to kind of just try and copy paste SIFA. The real challenge there is to actually making that a meaningful change and making that kind of work with
00:18:32
Speaker
all the archaeologists that are in Germany. I'm assuming it's been quite a good response from archaeologists since Sifur Deutschland was set up. Have you had lots of people take up membership? What's been the response to it? Well, the response is quite diverse.
00:18:52
Speaker
And we had some very, very good response. So we have really, really supportive people over here that are really engaged. So I just have to say, I love my committee. They are the best people I've ever met. And they're so, so... Well, they're just so good. The work with them is really amazing and what we can do.
00:19:17
Speaker
But we also have a lot of people that are really, well, they're just looking how things are going. They're just waiting what's going to happen. And that's one of the worst things you can do. Because just waiting, nothing will happen, especially with something like a professional association. If they just look, if we have success, this is not how it works. They need to get involved so the thing can have success.
00:19:47
Speaker
And of course, the people who don't like it are much louder than those who like it. And it's always difficult to argue for a professional association because there are so many things behind it. You need to know to really proper argument for the association, but it's quite easy to say bad things about it that are just half true.
00:20:11
Speaker
And so it's really easy to make people feel insecure. And so they just lean a little bit back and say, OK, we wait how it goes. Well, for me, it's still the best thing we can do in the moment. And I think we are in a good way. So, yeah.
00:20:34
Speaker
I mean, it is very new. We're talking barely a couple of years as well. In comparison, CIFF has been around far much longer than that. And it still has a lot of critics. Even I have criticisms. This is the thing, but for me, there's a difference between, I think, the criticism outside the organization, channeling inwards.
00:21:01
Speaker
and criticism that I might have having seen how the beast operates, you know, seen from the inside.
00:21:09
Speaker
I think there are certain things that are really, really good about certain kinds of feedback that you can get that I think there is always that part of reflexivity, that kind of like reflection, that looking back and thinking, right, is this the right path to go on? Is this the right thing to do? And I think it is really good, even if stuff is kind of like,
00:21:34
Speaker
let's say angry, vicious, and things like that, I think the heart, you know, people, I think most people who are kind of like ambivalent, at least would like something that works, you know, I think I think most people
00:21:51
Speaker
I mean, most people want something that, like, actually, a lot of people feel, I think, that archaeology is quite insular. You know, it's made up of little islands. Either you're in this island of this university or this island of this company.
00:22:12
Speaker
people have temporary contracts, and they get on the boat, and they sail from one island to the other, and they sail to the other island. But because they've only got a wee boat, they've only got a couple belongings, and so they're constantly moving from boat to boat to boat. And I think it would be great to have a way of connecting it, having a bigger boat. This metaphor has really, really gone much further than expected. But it's very, very nice. Does that make sense?
00:22:43
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, oh, I could bring in the rough seas of economic uncertainty. The storm of a pandemic. Oh, yeah. We need to wave the flag and hold everything high and we will survive. But I think that there is an important step there. I mean, in the UK, obviously,
00:23:11
Speaker
this is a big B word that I don't really want to say, but you know, the big Brexit word that... Nobody heard it. No one's sure what it's actually, I've seen both sides of the argument in terms of it's going to be great for archaeology. It's going to be terrible for archaeology. And it's kind of like, I mean,
00:23:37
Speaker
There's been a lot of talk about a high speed rail project, which is meant to have so many jobs, so many jobs in the UK, we're going to run out of archaeologists, which I think is the funniest phrase I've ever heard. In Germany, are you ever risking running out of archaeologists for all the work? Yeah, yeah. Oh, really?
00:23:59
Speaker
Yeah, we really are. It's kind of funny because we just did a very big study with DIGUF, which is called IBABA, evaluation of the profession, ecology. And we asked a lot of stuff from how does your contract look like? What do you earn? Up to how do you feel about yourself and ecology? How safe do you feel?
00:24:29
Speaker
what's about family, all that kind of stuff. And we also went to universities and asked, how many students do you have? How many do you really get the degree? And we asked companies in another survey, how many people do you have? How many people do you need? And it turned out that the companies need much more people than we have at the moment. So there is really not enough trained ecologists to go
00:24:59
Speaker
into the commercial sector in the moment.
00:25:04
Speaker
Wow, right, everybody get your visas ready. Because one of the common complaints over here is there's not enough jobs or there's not enough of a certain type of job. I really like to hear what happens in Germany. I mean, in the UK, the last time it was profiling the profession was actually 2013. So it'd be really actually interesting to see if we could do another study like that and see how far that's coming. But I remember
00:25:33
Speaker
A lot of the problems with archaeology is very temporary that a large number of people after about two years quit the profession. And I'd be really interested to hear what happens in Germany with regards to job retention and staff and training and everything like that. Yeah.
00:25:55
Speaker
Well, to back up a little, something you said before, which is people leaving the profession after two years, which is something that's quite common here too, because the complaint is you don't get jobs, which really means you can't get jobs at university or in the public sector ecology.
00:26:19
Speaker
Because talking about commercial ecology at universities is so bad that people feel like they didn't make it if they get into commercial ecology. And of course, commercial ecology is a really hard job to do because you're out there if it's hot or if it's cold, if it's raining.
00:26:40
Speaker
You have not just your boss, you also have the polluter and the state ecologist and everyone is telling you what to do and you need to do your job and you need to be good in ecology, but also be good working with people. And then you need to know your tools and you have to organize all that stuff. So many people just don't want to be in that sector. But saying there are no jobs in ecology is something I feel is just wrong.
00:27:06
Speaker
and we are educating people wrong on what is a proper job in archaeology. So I just felt that I want to say that.
00:27:15
Speaker
No that's really good and I think there is a kind of, I think that in the UK things are getting a tiny bit better because a lot of archaeologists are now joining unions and I'm hoping that creates a little bit of a groundswell of like proper kind of representation and kind of employee-employee relations because I think some people like
00:27:44
Speaker
had a brief stint in commercial archaeology and I mean the briefest of stints and I just couldn't, I mean it was like honestly I can't even say I was an archaeologist at that point it was you know it's so short but it was because I enjoyed it sometime in the like autumn
00:28:03
Speaker
And just come December, they were like, oh, they might have some more jobs for you, you know, like in January when things heat up again. And I'm like, I need a job. This is all temporary, like three-week contract, one-week contract. And, you know, I didn't want to start roaming around the countryside, you know, traveling to like several places, you know, for three or four months in temporary accommodation.
00:28:30
Speaker
That's not what I foresaw as what I wanted to do.
00:28:37
Speaker
And some people are OK with that. But I feel like there's almost this extra standard that only if you submit yourself to these conditions can you be a real archaeologist. And I think there needs to be much more flexibility, I feel, in how companies deal with staff who
00:29:01
Speaker
who are not willing to go to each end of the country and work. Because I actually enjoyed being outdoors. I actually enjoyed the wet and the cold. And I remember digging in clay in rain one time. That was awful. But it was doing archaeology. So I was still excited and happy.
00:29:30
Speaker
But I think it was the other conditions that really put me off, you know, and I just, I couldn't do it. Yeah. I totally get that. And yeah, this is also one of the common issues we also have over here. But coming back to that survey we made, we just published last week or so, a part about contracts and salary.
00:29:57
Speaker
And it turned out that in commercial archaeology, you have less of those contracts who are just for some month, and you have a really high rate of permanent contracts. So there's something changing. Of course, I know we have a lot of companies which still employ people just on those short term contracts.
00:30:19
Speaker
But there are more and more companies realizing that if you have permanent contracts, the people that are there, you can really use them, get to know them, see what they can do, train them in the ways you need them to be trained, build proper teams and stuff like that. And then you're really more efficient. So there is a change in that. And it turned out that there are much more short-term contracts in public sector ecology and universities and stuff like that.
00:30:48
Speaker
than really in the commercial sector. But in the commercial sector, the payment is really bad. Are there like obviously SIFA over in the UK has suggested minimums for different like levels?
00:31:08
Speaker
Well, oh, is this a spicy thing? In Germany, what's an entry-level archaeologist earn, roughly? Like an entry-level commercial archaeologists? Well, this is what we try to figure out in that research, what we did. And well, it depends.
00:31:34
Speaker
If you're really entering before you had any training, then you end up as a helper, something like that. Then you earn in the middle about 1,800 euros, roughly. And if you go up to being a head of excavation, you're
00:31:58
Speaker
Yeah, you're ending up roughly around 3,000 euros in the moment before taxes and everything. Okay, so just to sum that up in year, yearly amounts, that's 21,600 for 1,800 a month. And give me a second, I'm going to figure this out. 3,000 times 12. Sorry, I'm really bad at math. Oh, 36,000.
00:32:26
Speaker
myself in the zone here. I know how much time it's gone. But that's actually, is that better than, I think that might be better than UK. It's really, really bad for German standards. So we are very, very low with that. And compared to those who are working in the public sector, it's between 60 and 20% less than they earn in the same position.
00:32:58
Speaker
I mean, how do you even go about trying to change that? Like, what do you feel needs to happen? Can Siva do something there, Siva Deutschland? We are quite convinced we can. We started before that publication, I now just quote it, came out. We made a quick survey and asked, so guys, this the normal
00:33:28
Speaker
levels of expertise or responsibility we have in the field, so helpers, technicians, head of excavation. And what do you feel those should earn? At the least, really, the sailor benchmark, what should it be? And below that, it's not okay if someone gets less than that.
00:33:57
Speaker
It turns out that what people say, what they really say is the lowest benchmark. We can get there in some years, depending on how we do it, three to five years. We can raise the level we know people are getting now, there, if we develop a good plan. How to do that?
00:34:24
Speaker
And this is our next step, so we will build on our next AGM working group, where we give all the information that we have now from the surveys to them and all the other backup stuff we already have and all the TIFA is doing to keep the Sailorary benchmark or to do it in the UK. And they should develop a plan how we can do that over here. Of course, we can only do it for
00:34:51
Speaker
companies that are registered in SIFA. But we also realized that just what we did with Diego Fincifa so far, bringing people to think about it, to realize that they get so much less than they deserve, that they start to talk, that they start to discuss, that they start to look outside of archeology and say something is not right here. They're only less than those who work for the state
00:35:21
Speaker
which normally is the other way around because there's much more security working for the state. So you can learn less, but it's completely different in archeology. So that people started thinking also already brought us to that state where we can talk about that, which you wouldn't have. I don't think it was possible before we started that discussion in 2017. So.
00:35:48
Speaker
I don't know if it really will work out. I'm quite confident that we can find a way and a plan that really can work for Germany if we include employers and employees and they talk it out together and see what's really possible. So we will see what happens, but I think we really have a good basis to do that with the service we have now.
00:36:16
Speaker
What was the most surprising piece coming from that survey? Was there something that you kind of, results that you saw and you thought, wow, that's that. I really didn't expect that. Or were you kind of like, did it show what you were, were considering what was going on? Well, it was much more shocking than I thought. So that the, the salary is so bad. Well, I worked for eight years in the commercial sector.
00:36:45
Speaker
And then I started to work part-time at university and I was so amazed how much more money I was getting for less time I worked. So I know a little bit, but it's still so shocking to see it on paper, how low the salary really is. And it really hurts me to see what that means for people's life that they
00:37:13
Speaker
that they can do what they love only by sacrificing everything else. So that was really, I thought it was really bad. I was very surprised by that, about the contracts, that there are really less temporary contracts and that in the commercial sector, it really counts what you personally can do.
00:37:43
Speaker
in relation to when you're at the university, for example, where at some point your contract just can't, you can't get another contract because there are laws in place and no matter how good you are, you can't get anywhere. But in commercial ecology, you can get somewhere with who you are and what you can do. So I thought this was really amazing and gave me another view on commercial ecology, even if I really loved that part of my job.
00:38:13
Speaker
So I'm really anxious and hoping that I can get at least one summer project done this year where I can go out in the field because I'm missing it so much, just digging. But yeah, I know that for many others, the commercial sector and all this excavation is really more a threat than something they like. Yeah.
00:38:40
Speaker
I mean, the thing is, I remember I've seen actually reports of people doing archaeology while social distancing at the moment. And I mean, there are some sites and some types of jobs where you can kind of do that in archaeology, but there are some situations where you're in a trench and you can't really do the two meters.
00:39:05
Speaker
So I'm very interested to see how that progresses as everything kind of seems to be moving back to life, whether it should so quickly or not, things are kind of picking up again.
00:39:23
Speaker
I think there's been a lot of archaeologists here in the UK who are furloughed on the government scheme for salary replacement and things like that. And I think even in the UK,
00:39:38
Speaker
the desire to get back to work, I'm kind of, I'm hoping that, I'm hoping it doesn't force anybody into a kind of a difficult position. Because that is one of the other problems with a low salary is that when you, you know, you have to work, because you don't have a cushion.
Michaela's PhD Research on Early Ceramics
00:40:01
Speaker
And it's not really easy to work from home if you're an archaeologist, because you just end up digging up your own garden.
00:40:11
Speaker
Which is great if you have a garden, you know? Broken pot shirts are only going to get you so far, unfortunately. But I know somebody who knows a wee bit about pot shirts and ceramics.
00:40:26
Speaker
So we're having a wee chat pre-recording and you let slip that your PhD is working about on ceramics. So could you tell us a little bit about the ceramics you're dealing with? And I'm assuming they're in fragments because if you get a complete one, that's really something else.
00:40:46
Speaker
Yeah, well, and the settlements I'm working with, there would be complete parts, but they're in museums, so I can't get them. But yeah. You know, if it's late at night, nobody's around.
00:41:00
Speaker
It's not as if the museums are beyond looting places, I can tell you that. Well, the good thing would be I wouldn't need to do something illegal because I'm working with non-destructive chemical analysis. So I'm doing PXRF, so portable x-ray fluorescent analysis on shirts. And I'm working with a very early ceramic.
00:41:29
Speaker
I'm working with linear band karamik, so I think most of us are familiar with that. So it's about 5,500,000 BC. And I was interested in a pottery that is together with Elbika around the Iranian area, and it's called Laoget Pottery. And it's sad that this kind of pottery is made by Mesolithics.
00:41:58
Speaker
or by herders, but we don't really have that much else from that people. And I stumbled over that in my fourth term. And I wondered since then, can we really say that just by having a special kind of pottery, that it's an own culture, because it's normally together in
00:42:23
Speaker
Yeah, well, the settlements of the LBK and just when this ceramic was defined, they thought that no other parts of LBK culture were outside of that area where they normally settle. But now we know that also some axes, for example, are far, far away outside of the normal territory of the LBK.
00:42:44
Speaker
And so when I was thinking what I want to do for my master's thesis then, I said, well, I want to do something with Lao Get. And then my supervisor said, don't do it now. Do it for your PhD. And I was a little bit frustrated. But for the PhD, I got to that point where I said, okay, now I want to have a look if those two pot trees are made from the same clay.
00:43:09
Speaker
Because I can say they are made in the same settlement from the same clay. It's quite logical for me that it was made by the same culture, maybe for different purposes or from different groups inside that society, but inside of that society, it's not two different cultures. And yeah, this is what I'm doing in the moment. And it's so exciting. You never know.
00:43:39
Speaker
That is really cool. And actually, x-ray fluorescence sounds really, really awesome. So I'm assuming the x-ray fluorescence is looking for particular minerals and elements. And I'm guessing you're then fingerprinting almost like the clays. What are the signals that you're looking for with your x-ray fluorescence? What elements are you identifying?
00:44:07
Speaker
Yeah, well, you're completely right. I'm identifying chemical elements, so I can't say anything about the minerals because I just can say, well, there's a lot of, I don't know, strontium in there, but I can't say in which combination. And I'm looking for a whole range of elements, so I can measure about 20 really properly, and I can calibrate on about 20 of them. And there are several that are for the source.
00:44:38
Speaker
So very stable elements like strontium or rubidium or yttrium, those are for finding the source. And then you have other elements like aluminum or silicium or iron, for example, that are more for the paste of the pottery.
00:44:58
Speaker
So you can identify different things by using the ceramics, but you always need to know your pottery. So you can't really do just the chemical analysis without doing microscopic analysis on your pottery. Because if you don't know what temper is in there, you maybe get a wrong idea just from having a look at the chemistry. But if you have a... Sorry.
00:45:27
Speaker
No, go on. If you have a chemical fingerprint for your pottery and you know, or you have some samples from clay sources, then you can try to match them by using statistics and also using just two elements together to see if you really can match your pottery with a sort.
00:45:54
Speaker
I was wondering if how prevalent is stuff like diagenic alteration, like clays are sometimes quite porous and so in certain conditions they can absorb and desorb certain chemicals like strontium and calcium can wash out into each other and stuff like that.
00:46:17
Speaker
How do you know the preservation conditions that these pots are in? Does that give you a kind of stability that you know that these are elements that were in the clay rather than absorbed from around the sediment around it? Yeah, that's a really important thing you need to take into account if you're doing the chemical analysis. So there are some elements you can use to find out, for example, if there is a
00:46:47
Speaker
modern introduction, if there is an issue because of agriculture, for example, so if you have very high phosphorus values and barium values, then you know, okay, something happened because of agriculture. And it's normally very helpful if you have information about the soil around your ceramics.
00:47:12
Speaker
So you know, for example, if there's a lot of calcium in the water that also entered the ceramics, but most possibly didn't enter your clay source because it wasn't in the same environment. So there's a lot you can do if you know something about the soil.
00:47:33
Speaker
Normally, because you do something with the pottery, you know, you put in temper, you burn it, there is some change happening you can't control. And so if you have an analysis, your pottery normally doesn't exactly match the chemistry of your clasers. But there are several techniques, either statistically or just by looking at your graphics.
00:48:00
Speaker
to identify if these clay source can be the source for your pottery, or if it's so far off that it can't. But it's not like you can go and say, okay, these elements, they look all the same. This is my source. This is not, sadly, this is not how it works.
00:48:21
Speaker
When you're talking about sources of clay in the area where these pots were found, is there clay close by? How far do people have to travel for clay? And like you mentioned, these are along the River Rhine, is that correct? Well, most of the settlements, the settlements I'm working with are
00:48:48
Speaker
One is in Hessen, the Weta, so in the Wetaau. And another one is around Rothenburg at the Necka. So it's just roughly in the Rhinean area. And one of those settlements, there I did some sampling on the clay sources in the area. And normally you say, well, they wouldn't carry
00:49:15
Speaker
clay much farther than five to seven kilometers because it's heavy and you need to transport it. You search for clay that's closer. I sampled five different clay sources around the settlement I'm working on. They are about two to two and a half kilometers away.
00:49:40
Speaker
Yeah, so there were different sources in the area following the chemistry and I can rule out at least two of those sources that they really didn't use those because they don't match my pots at all. But the others could be possible. And to be sure that I'm not just getting some random matches, I used
00:50:08
Speaker
I don't know how it's cold. I need to Google that word, I think. It's just a long iron stick or so. You can just put in the ground and then you can take a soil sample. Oh, an auger. Thank you. That's a nice word. An auger. Yes, that's it. I hope it is because, oh no, I need to check this one because if it's not, I'll see if it's an auger.
00:50:35
Speaker
There we go. Yes, I've got something right. Congratulations. And yeah, so I used that too. And it was about a meter long. So I got different depth of the soil and of the clay. So I was sure there are no modern intrusions in there. And it was a lot of fun.
00:50:58
Speaker
Definitely. See, I quite like the obviously like I come from a chemistry background. So obviously any chemical analysis is like definitely my wheelhouse. I really like that kind of stuff because I used cold vapor fluorescence spectroscopy to look at mercury and like trace elements. Ooh, yeah, fancy stuff. I only spilled mercury on myself twice. You know what, I'm fine.
00:51:25
Speaker
But no, that was I was actually ancient hair samples instead of clay I'm quite I must say I quite find it quite interesting the way in which narrow down and These kind of things, you know when you talk about like the distance that somebody might have carried clay I'm wondering at this time in Was there a lot of trading going round? Is it possible that people were trading pots?
00:51:55
Speaker
There are three networks there. Yeah, for the LBCAR especially, it's so diverse. It's so interesting because it's really difficult to compare different settlements and their exchange patterns and the networks they had because every settlement is different.
Cultural Significance of Laoguet Pottery
00:52:18
Speaker
And yeah, you have that LBCAR style, which they use to decorate their pots.
00:52:26
Speaker
It's different in the details, even in the early phase. You have to expect that they brought parts from somewhere else or that they imported parts.
00:52:41
Speaker
And maybe they interpreted the ones that they liked the look of, you know what I mean? I like the idea that there was some sort of sense of like, some people just made pots because they liked the look of them. Do you know what I mean? This kind of like, I find sometimes archaeology, especially in scientific study, can be quite hung up on very kind of like,
00:53:05
Speaker
these formulaic kind of methods of, well, a person would have made the pot for this use, and this is why they made it. And they're like, I'm sure somebody had a go at making pots because they liked making pots. It's very difficult to capture that. And I always wonder if you pick up a pot, you look at it and you're like, why did they want to make it like this? Were they copying or were they making it up as they went along?
00:53:35
Speaker
Because you're saying that these pots are kind of different, but you think that they're kind of possibly from the same kind of group of people. What is the difference in how they're made or like the styling or what seems to be different about them? Well, it's really completely different. So if you've ever had an elbica pottery shard in your hand, you really immediately recognize it.
00:54:04
Speaker
because it's really a special way they made it. And the Laoguet pottery is completely different. So Laoguet has a completely different shape. Normally those, they become pots are more globular, so more rounded. And those Laoguet pots have an egg shape. They have an oval bottom. They are really thin-walled. They're polished. In some cases, not always.
00:54:33
Speaker
And they have... Well, I need to think about the word for that. They have a plink on it. And it's in lines, so you have waves surrounded. And then they just made... Well, I really don't have those words. That's annoying.
00:55:00
Speaker
I just have to look it up. I could not do anything remotely archeological lit in German. It's definitely not my forte at all. I'd be stuck on archeology. No, that's about it. That's fine. You have these plastic rims that are like wave lines and then you have stitches all around it.
00:55:26
Speaker
which you normally don't have in the LBK. So it really looks completely different, the style, the decoration. And then sometimes you have bone temper. So the really classic Laoguet shirt has bone temper. And it's always sad that LBK doesn't have bone temper. But it's only a part of those Laoguet shirts who have bone temper. The others have normal mineral temper in it.
00:55:56
Speaker
It's more really like those stitches, those plastic rims and ribbons, and the form of it. And the way that Larget Potsen made this really characteristic for pottery before you have Neolithic. And you can find pottery of that form in style or comparable style from Japan to the North Sea. And in Japan, it starts
00:56:26
Speaker
at about, well, 26,000 BC already with those kinds of pottery. So it really makes sense to say that I'll get pottery belongs from all the things you can see to a pre-Neolithic lifestyle.
00:56:51
Speaker
But for me, that doesn't mean that people weren't able to do that kind of pottery if they needed it for a purpose that was more in a mobile lifestyle.
00:57:03
Speaker
It's definitely fascinating and I can't wait to, like, you'll have to send me it when it's done. I love to read it. I think this is one of the things that, like, I think this is something that is really, really exciting, both for archaeologists and I think non-archaeologists alike. I think pottery ceramics are, they're really tangible. You can touch them, you can feel them, you can see them.
00:57:29
Speaker
you can really understand them quite intuitively, you know, and if they're not in tiny, tiny pieces you can kind of start looking at how they put together. I think that's really, really, I think quite powerful aspects of archaeology ceramics, but of course probably by the end of this you'll never want to see another pot in your life.
00:57:55
Speaker
Oh no, I think I will never, never get enough of pottery and analysis and working with those kinds of things. And just, you know, I waited so long to get that pottery and to be able to really, well, that sounds kind of creepy, but to touch it and to really look at it very, very closely and to do stuff with it and to understand it. And it's so amazing.
00:58:22
Speaker
And I have that feeling not just for my pottery I'm working with now, but also for the pottery I worked with in Azerbaijan or in Georgia. So I just think it's so a great thing because, you know, I always picture someone who was there and who made it. Someone put time in there. It meant something for someone.
00:58:44
Speaker
Because it takes time and you need it for something. You want to convey something with it. You want to do something with it. And there was a human being doing it. And I just think it's so amazing. That is good. Well, thank you very much for coming and sitting down and sharing your love of pottery with us.
00:59:08
Speaker
Deutschland, if somebody is listening and is interested in getting involved in SIFA Deutschland, what can they do?
Conclusion and Contact Information
00:59:16
Speaker
Well, they just can contact us. So we have our coordinator and you can just Google us via SIFA Deutschland and then you just stand up at our page and there you find the email address and then just get in touch. We are happy to talk about SIFA. That's very straightforward. I love it. Just talk to us.
00:59:41
Speaker
We're gonna let you off this one time. But thank you again and all the best and stay safe.
01:00:11
Speaker
This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com.