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Microfauna Analysis at the La Prele Mammoth Site: Implications for Clovis Diet and Paleoenvironments with McKenna Litynski - Ep 147
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For this week's episode, we are joined by McKenna Litynski, a newly minted PhD student at the University of Wyoming. And we say newly, because she literally just defended her MA thesis this past week at the University of Wyoming. McKenna is also the youngest person we know in graduate school, let to have a Master’s Degree. We delve into her early years and how she got into archaeology. Then we take a deep dive into her thesis and her research. We end the episode talking about what the future looks like for her.
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Transcripts
For rough transcripts of this episode go to https://www.archpodnet.com/ruins/147
Literature Recommendations
- Clovis Hunting Strategies, or How to Make out on Plentiful Resources by Nicole M. Waguespack and Todd A. Surovell
- Should we expect large game specialization in the late Pleistocene? An optimal foraging perspective on early Paleoindian prey choice by David A. Byers and Andrew Ugan
- The Archaeology and Paleoecology of the Aubrey Clovis Site (41DN479) Denton County, Texas by C. Reid Ferring
- Misidentified Clovis-age fish bone at Shawnee-Minisink and the problem with single case studies in Late Pleistocene archaeology by Joseph A.M. Gingerich, Thomas R. Whyte and Scott Whittaker
Guest Contact
- Instagram: @mllitynski
- email: [email protected]
Contact
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Transcript
Introduction to Podcast and Guests
00:00:00
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.
00:00:07
Speaker
Welcome to episode 147 of Life in Ruins podcast, where we investigate the careers and research of those living life in ruins. I am your host, David Ian Howe, and I'm joined by my co-hosts Connor Johnen and Connor Johnen. For this week's episode, we are joined by McKenna Latinski, a newly minted PhD student at the University of Wyoming. And we say newly minted because she literally just defended her master's thesis this past week and we snagged her as soon as we could. McKenna is also the youngest person we know in graduate school, let alone have a master's degree. We'll talk about that.
00:00:35
Speaker
Her fieldwork and research took place at, you guessed it, the Laprelle Mammoth site in New Hampshire.
McKenna's Academic Journey
00:00:40
Speaker
Just kidding, Wyoming, like everything else we talk about. And let's get into all that and what she'll be doing for her PhD. Welcome to the show, McKenna. Thank you so much. Yeah, it's such an honor to be here, honestly. I've listened to your podcast so much. So it's kind of surreal being in this position of being interviewed. So thanks for having me. There will be better things on your CV than doing this podcast.
00:01:04
Speaker
You probably shouldn't put this on your CV. I don't know. I don't know. No, no, no. But seriously, I'm very excited. Can I ask you how you are like feeling in general post master's degree?
00:01:20
Speaker
Yeah, it's very surreal. I mean, I just defended like four days ago. So I'm very fresh off of the defense. I was quite nervous going into it, but also kind of confident because I worked really hard for my research. I knew
From Psychology to Archaeology
00:01:35
Speaker
the topic.
00:01:36
Speaker
pretty well. So I think coming off of that, I'm very excited that I get to be called Master McKenna Latinski now. That's pretty cool. I'm also pretty relieved just to know that the process is done and I can take some time to work on my other publications, my other projects, work on, you know, helping my students more in my TA position, things like that. But yeah, overall, I'm just like, do I really have a master's? It's very weird.
00:02:04
Speaker
It is a weird feeling for sure. Connor and I have also gone through that. Yeah. Cause it's like, you're not a PhD. You don't get like a new title. You're not Dr. McKenna or Dr. David, but you're like, you have a higher degree and you have to tell people, Oh, I actually have two degrees. It's like a weird, weird situation to be. I don't know how you feel about that Connor, but
00:02:24
Speaker
Yeah. Well, and so I get to fill out like an extra step in some things. What is your highest level of education? Oh, I went to graduate school. But also I feel like there was a weight on my shoulders when I was doing my, my master's degree. And I think that weight gets lifted once you defend. And I like felt at peace for like the first time in a long time.
00:02:46
Speaker
Yeah, that's a good way to describe it because like your two years are leaning up to this defense, like this one moment in your life that only lasts a couple hours. So yeah, I understand that feeling a little bit. I think it's going to take me a couple more days to like truly feel it and be like, oh my gosh, I really am done.
00:03:07
Speaker
but ride the high while you can. I will say one of my favorite nights of my life was my master's thesis defense. Then the party after it was just like, just that relief. Like it was, it was so nice of years of just mental trauma and stress and anxiety and like all of that in grad school until like, okay, I'm done. Except you are not done because you are doing another, what four or five years of PhD there.
00:03:31
Speaker
Yeah, at the University of Wyoming. Yep, hopping into that PhD program. I don't know if I'm crazy or I'm just interesting. And I think we'll dive deeper into that and kind of see where your research is going. But to start us off, what is kind of like your first memory
00:03:54
Speaker
with archaeology, history, the past, dinosaurs, asteroids, goblins, meteorites, goblins. Yeah, it's a really good question. It's something that's like, I think, bigger than just like this interview.
PhD Studies at University of Wyoming
00:04:10
Speaker
But I feel like my first instances of like archaeology, per se, are like the typical Indiana Jones like watching
00:04:19
Speaker
those movies and being like, oh, he's stealing something from a cave. There's a boulder rolling down to kill him. Cool. That's archaeology, you know? I mean, obviously, I've seen a couple of documentaries, but as a kid, I never really understood the archaeological process very well. It's just like cool findings, right? Like Mayans and Egyptians and just cool shit, for lack of better words, across the world.
00:04:48
Speaker
But yeah, I don't think it was really until my undergrad that I realized what that discipline actually meant, like the rigorous nature of the field and how important it is to our understanding of where we are today, I feel like. That was a great answer, actually.
Master's Thesis on Microfauna
00:05:08
Speaker
Thank you. Yeah. Did you just happen into an anthropology course, archaeology course, or was that something you were looking for?
00:05:16
Speaker
Yeah. So my, as a kid, you know, everybody has different life goals. They're like, I want to be a doctor. I want to be an astronaut. I definitely went through all of those phases. I had like 10 different jobs that I was like, I'm going to be that I'm going to be the youngest realtor in the world. I'm going to be a psychologist.
00:05:34
Speaker
Oh, it was great. But actually going into college, I was very interested in psychology. So I was taking psychology classes. I started out taking classes online through Oregon State University, actually. And one of my professors mentioned, oh,
00:05:50
Speaker
anthropology kind of intertwines with psychology. It's a study of humanity. And I'm like, what? There's a discipline on the study of humanity. Like that's broad. And I was like, but that's cool because I like people. So I was like, I'll try it. So it was an intro to anthropology class and I loved it. Oh my gosh. Because I mean, the reason why I wanted to go into psychology is because I liked people. I just, I love talking. I am extroverted. And so, yeah, it was just very interesting.
00:06:20
Speaker
that there was a whole field that could study people and their culture and their biology and their language and then I happened to stumble across an intro to archaeology class and that's kind of where I was very fascinated by that. That being said, I wasn't completely sold on archaeology after that class. In fact, I actually wanted to go into neuroanthropology
00:06:46
Speaker
going into when I transferred to St. Mary's College in Maryland. So I wanted to study nature's effects on the brain. So living in more forested, mountainous landscapes compared with cityscapes and how that affects our brain chemistry, our ways of thinking. And so I knew that I wanted to get an anthropology degree, but I wasn't completely sold on archaeology per se.
00:07:11
Speaker
That kind of led into my advisor at the time in my undergrad and he was like, hey, you should take a field school because as part of your degree, you have to do an internship of some sort and this counts as an internship. Keep in mind, I was living in Maryland at the time. Maryland is humid. It's hot.
00:07:31
Speaker
It's muddy sometimes. And I was like, oh, like, that sounds disgusting. Like me being outside all the time in the dirt in Maryland. That sounds horrid. I was dreading it. Bugs? I'm a mosquito magnet.
00:07:47
Speaker
I can't even tell you how many mosquito bites I got that summer. But that being said, I found my first artifact in the ground. And I think it was
Future Research and Interests
00:07:56
Speaker
something super simple, like a nail or a brick, because I was excavating a historical archaeology site. And I was like, oh my God, like someone 300 years ago was holding this artifact in their hand, using it for some purpose. And it kind of hit me in that moment that I really wanted to do this as a field of study.
00:08:15
Speaker
I had a similar experience doing that. I think the actual physical recovering of an artifact can really, it like changed my brain chemistry after that. And then became super excited about archeology in the past. And I kind of had the inkling that was going to go into it, but the actual field science part of it convinced me as well. Yeah. It's very convincing. You're from the East coast, right? Sorry, I just cut you off.
00:08:44
Speaker
Oh, no. Yeah, I am from the East Coast. It's kind of funny, I did like a mini circle around the East Coast in terms of where I lived. So I was born in West Virginia. And I lived there for a couple years. And then we moved because I thought the PetSmart was the zoo.
Advice for Aspiring Archaeologists
00:09:00
Speaker
And my parents were like, we should enculturate this child.
00:09:05
Speaker
And so we moved to Pittsburgh, big city, and then we moved to Annapolis. I don't know. We kind of got tired of the city environment. So then we moved to more rural Maryland and I lived there for quite some time. So I think I spent most of my life in Maryland. Okay. Then seguing from that, I remember you telling me you were at homeschooled, right? I was, yes.
00:09:28
Speaker
I think you're the first that I know of that said so, is the first homeschooled archaeologist you've had in here. Do you think that influenced you into like what you're doing now? Like the way you like learn to learn and things like that?
00:09:41
Speaker
I feel like it has, and it's mainly because my mom homeschooled me from kindergarten all the way through high school. And I think having the experience to constantly improve my love for learning, because I have a constant love for learning. I mean, that's kind of why I'm going into the PhD.
00:10:01
Speaker
If you don't like learning, then you don't continue your education, right? And I feel like my mom was very helpful in that direction. Like she kind of pushed me to pursue whatever I was interested in. In high school, I was reading neuroscience books. I was reading sports psychology books because that's what I was interested at the time. So I could kind of tailor my education to my interests during that particular period in my life.
00:10:26
Speaker
That being said, obviously we had to fulfill specific requirements. We had portfolio reviews every year where we had to give our portfolios to an educator in a public school. They had to review our portfolios and they had to approve us so that we could move on to the next grade. So we had the requirements, but we also had very flexible learning opportunities.
00:10:49
Speaker
Yeah. Cause it's always struck me interesting. Like the way you're so, I would say like, yeah, you just really like learning and you're super intelligent. Like it's the way public school is, it kind of puts those fires out for a lot of people cause they don't want to, they don't know stuff like this exists. So they think they have to go to college to be.
00:11:11
Speaker
you know, an accountant or something dumb. They don't want to deal with math, but like, it's just, yeah, you're, you're, you're excelling at what you're doing. I think because of that, because you had an environment which didn't stifle you, I guess.
00:11:21
Speaker
Yeah, thank you. I kind of feel like that too. And I think something else that kind of helped me going into college actually was the ability to learn by myself and like figure out problems by myself. I mean, yes, I had my mom's help, but I also had a lot of self problem solving situations in my homework.
00:11:42
Speaker
And so I kind of sat down with that homework page and was like, okay, how do I figure this out? And I feel like ultimately that helps me in college with like group projects. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. And then I feel like it also helps me in grad school too, because I mean, I'm dealing with this like crazy research question of whether or not people 13,000 years ago are eating these mice, right? And I kind of had to sit down and be like, well, how am I going to test this?
00:12:09
Speaker
Yes, I had the help of my advisor, a lot of help, but I also had to deal with this question on my own and tackle it. So it was fun. Cool. Yeah. I think, at least for grad school, I mean, it's super important for you to learn the skills yourself and have help and have guidance and stuff like that.
00:12:30
Speaker
Actually learning those things, I feel like is what grad school is for. Learning to write, learning to research, learning to a bunch of trades, et cetera. So I'm glad that you felt like you got that experience and can bring that into the next stage of your academic career. Yeah, thanks. Yeah.
00:12:51
Speaker
If I remember you telling me correctly this summer, homeschooled and then you went to, you did the Oregon online thing. Then you went to Maryland and you went to campus classes there. And then from there, how did you get to Wyoming?
00:13:05
Speaker
Yeah, so I was homeschooled up until I was 16 and I graduated high school at 16. And then I went to undergrad and I finished that in two years with double majors and a minor. So I finished undergrad at 18. And so I kind of had a crossroads at that point. I kind of had to decide whether or not I was going to continue my education.
00:13:30
Speaker
just go for grad school or go and gain some work experience and then come back to grad school because I was so young and I kind of had that option, right? So ultimately I decided to just go for grad school, take the plunge because I was still really interested in learning and I feel like
00:13:53
Speaker
I also wanted to have the opportunity to learn new theoretical perspectives because in college, it was all historical archaeology based. And I knew that through classes in college, I wanted to pursue zoarchaeology. So the study of anemor amines in archaeological contexts.
00:14:12
Speaker
That being said, I was getting tired of looking at chickens, pigs, and cows and sheep on a consistent basis. Those four species. It was very bland.
00:14:28
Speaker
So I knew I wanted to diversify my taxa, like learn new osteological markers, understand different ways of differentiating species on a wider scale. To do that, I needed to work in a place with really good faunal preservation. Back East, that's not great. There is humidity.
00:14:51
Speaker
and acidic soils that just destroys bone. So from that, I knew that I needed to look at grad schools out west where the final preservation was better. So I applied to a couple of different grad schools. I got into all of them, but I ultimately chose Wyoming for a number of reasons.
00:15:11
Speaker
One, I really aligned with the professor's research interests. We really connected in a lot of different ways over Zoom meetings because it was at the height of COVID, which was interesting.
00:15:24
Speaker
I also found that in talking to some of the grad students at Wyoming, they were very supportive. They were like, yeah, this is a good environment. It was important for me to reach out because I am a female in academia, wanted to make sure that the professors were actually telling the truth in terms of where they're at in regards to females in academia, if you know what I mean.
00:15:46
Speaker
And I also, I think what really sold me on Wyoming was that the department was so collaborative and everybody was willing to uplift each other and help each other out in their projects. Whereas I feel like at a couple other grad schools I applied to, that kind of wasn't the case. It was a more competitive environment and more cutthroat. And that really wasn't what I was looking for. Good. Obviously the three of us are biased, but I'd say you made a good choice. Thanks. Go Wyoming.
00:16:17
Speaker
I think that's the perfect note, Connor, do you want it? On that note, we're going to cowboy our way out of here. Welcome back to episode 147 of Life and Ruins podcast. We have McKenna Latinski here, and I am just going to start off by saying that your defense was probably one of the best I've been to. Well organized, well spoken, well thought out the whole process.
00:16:44
Speaker
I was really, really impressed. And we had talked before and kind of chatted about stuff and your research. And it was really cool to see it all kind of come together in this kind of final presentation.
00:16:56
Speaker
Sometimes defenses are bad and it's hard for people who are in grad school to present well. Mine was boring as shit, I can tell you that. Been pretty dry. Yeah, it was bad. But it was like, I felt way more entertained and I really truly enjoyed your defense, so well done.
00:17:20
Speaker
Thank you, that actually means a lot because sometimes from an insider's perspective, I don't know how well I'm doing. I'm not gonna lie, I practiced against a wall. I'm not kidding, at least 50 times. I practiced every single day for a month, sometimes more than once a day, just to make sure I was articulating my sentences correctly. I was not able to look at a script at all. I put a lot of effort into it.
00:17:49
Speaker
It showed. Absolutely. I appreciate it. I overthink a lot. So that's probably why. I haven't seen it yet. I mean, I couldn't be there, but I'm excited to see it because I've heard from multiple people that you knocked it out of the park. So thank you. Good job. And yes, some defenses, no offense to the people that were there in my tenure. Just sometimes you're like, that wasn't good.
00:18:16
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, I mean, not everyone is like a super good speaker and that's, I don't think that's fully taught at least fleshed out in grad school. I mean, you should be presenting a lot and doing it, but that is something. Yeah. For the audience listening that doesn't, that hasn't gone to school or wants to go to school, writing obviously is the main thing you need to be good at. That's why they make you take English classes as pre comps.
00:18:40
Speaker
in college because you got it right. But also every class we ever turn paper, you usually have to defend it. And in grad school, for sure, you have to be able to talk in front of people. And I took a public speaking class in my undergrad, which really helped because I was pretty nervous before that. And I guess it worked out well for me. But in grad school, you get that.
00:19:00
Speaker
constant practice with every turn paper turn paper and you have your peers that you go to every class with so it's a comfortable group that you get pretty much comfortable talking in front of which I think is another benefit of a cohort.
00:19:13
Speaker
Yeah, and you get lots of, at least our stuff was a lot of discussion based. So you're pretty much presenting your side of the case every time you're in class and making arguments and stuff like that. So it really forces you to be articulate or articulated as a Sebastian said, right?
00:19:34
Speaker
I feel like Wyoming does a really good job of preparing you for the defense. Todd was basically telling me that they wouldn't put a student in the position of defending their thesis if they weren't ready. I feel like there's a lot of nice steps towards the defense. At the end of your first year, you have the four field presentation where you have to
00:19:56
Speaker
pose a master's thesis topic, kind of defend that. And then obviously there's the prospectus. I really enjoyed the prospectus defense. That was really fun. And I think that prepared me the most for my defense was just because like I proposed my thesis, I proposed my methods and everything. And then it was an hour long brainstorming session with my three committee members. And it was intimidating, but walking out of it, I was like, I had so much fun.
00:20:26
Speaker
It was great. To reiterate for the audience, what she's talking about is a woman. I mean, you can explain it like what's the prospectus presentation. It's like it's private, right?
00:20:35
Speaker
Yeah, it's private. It's just with your three committee members associated with your thesis. Essentially, you go in, you describe some background research, what you propose to research for your thesis, your timeline, what your methods are, just the steps you're going to take to make sure you can complete your thesis, basically.
00:20:56
Speaker
And then afterwards, they ask you questions or your committee member, committee members ask you questions. And then they kind of feed off of that. I describe it as intimidating because you're sitting in a room with three people that already have the doctorate degrees and they're clearly smarter than you and they're brainstorming themselves. And it's like, oh my gosh, like this is crazy.
00:21:22
Speaker
Yeah, I remember mine too, because it was like a small room with Dr. Kelly, Dr. Servile, and this guy named Dr. Walrath who fell asleep during mine. And I was like, I think Todd and Bob are both like kind of talking louder and louder to get him to wake up because he,
00:21:41
Speaker
So the other thing too, you have to have an outside committee member that shows that you can collaborate with people outside of your discipline. And like, I found an engineer who like clearly had no interest in archeology and he was just like there to look at my math, which Todd could easily do himself anyway. And he was just kind of like, it was like eight in the morning. He's just not, I didn't blame him. But yeah, afterwards though, the brain session and he brought in some good points about like physics and like the parameters of the experiment and things like that. So.
00:22:08
Speaker
Yeah, it is beneficial to do that. And yeah, I don't think we've talked about that in detail here before. Yeah, I think I blacked out mine. I don't remember it.
00:22:18
Speaker
All right. I remember that's just grad school in general. So onto your actual defense and your research, could you explain, I think you had three or four broad topics that you were focusing on as part of your master's thesis, which is first of all, impressive because I had two. So there's that. But yeah, if you don't mind explaining that.
00:22:42
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. So my master's thesis focuses on analyzing the microfauna remains from the lapral mammocyte, which is a mammoth killing campsite located in Congress County, Wyoming, dates to around 12,900 years ago, contains a diverse assemblage of artifacts, including lithic technologies, ochre, charcoal, bone needle fragments of bone bead, and the remains of large and small vertebrate animals.
00:23:09
Speaker
To back up a little bit, what really took off or kickstarted my thesis was this big debate in Clovis archaeology known as the generalist versus specialist debate. And that's kind of focused on the extent to which paleoindigenous peoples preferentially targeted large animals on the landscape or whether both small and large animals were pursued upon encounter to ensure hunter-gatherer survival.
00:23:35
Speaker
So there's lots of different articles on taking different sides of the debate. So that's kind of where my first question comes in, is I'm trying to test whether or not these small animals that exist at Laprelle are naturally associated, if they're just natural occurrences or intrusions on the landscape, or if people 13,000 years ago were cooking and consuming these microfauna to aid in their caloric needs, their subsistence purposes.
00:24:05
Speaker
So that's kind of question one. To supplement question one, I pursued a proteomics-based method known as zorecheology by mass spectrometry, or zooms. Essentially, what that entails is using peptide mass fingerprinting to differentiate between animal taxa.
00:24:26
Speaker
So you extract collagen from bone, you run it through chemical processes. One of those chemicals is actually an enzyme known as trypsin, so it chops up.
00:24:37
Speaker
the collagen protein chain into smaller bits called peptides. It chops them at very specific amino acids called arginine and lysine. So it just standardizes those lengths a bit more. And then you run it through a very specific mass spectrometer. It's called a Malditov. That's an acronym. I won't go into the long name unless you want me to.
00:24:57
Speaker
But essentially, it results in a series of peaks on a screen. And by comparing the positions of those peaks on the x-axis, which represent the masses of those different peptides, you can compare an unknown archaeological spectra to a known animal spectrum. I think right now we have 60 animals in our library. At the time of my thesis, we had 54.
00:25:22
Speaker
And we can make at least family level taxonomic identifications. Sometimes we could make genus and species level identifications from bones that otherwise we didn't know what the heck they were because the bone fragments were so small.
00:25:37
Speaker
So that's the second variable. And then the last variable was a different question. And that asks what the environment was like back then during site occupation around 13,000 years ago, and how that kind of plays into which vertebrate animals were available on the landscape if these people were pursuing the animals for subsistence purposes. So those are kind of the three variables that I looked at from my thesis.
00:26:08
Speaker
I'm going to ask two questions, I guess rhetorically, just to, I mean, I think I know the answers to them, but just so the audience gets a feel. So after filming you, do the zooms like process and stuff, my, in my head, my analysis of it was essentially
00:26:25
Speaker
You break down this bone dust, liquefy it, put it into a computer, and that liquefied bone looks a little more like this deer liquid bone than it does the chicken one. And therefore, is that right? You're reducing the bone down and comparing it to living samples.
00:26:43
Speaker
Yeah, that's essentially it. So you're specifically looking at the collagen associated with that bone. So you're not looking at the mineral component at all, just the collagen structure. And yeah, you're able to, through this liquid sample that you spot on to this moldy plate,
00:27:01
Speaker
And then the series of peaks on the screen, which kind of looks like a barcode. I like to call it a barcode for species identification. You can essentially say, okay, this barcode looks more like the steer or this pocket gopher or this squirrel. And therefore you can come up with likelihoods of it being a particular species.
00:27:23
Speaker
Okay. Yeah. And I guess for people listening to like the, you can, with a bison mandible, you can pick up a bison mandible if it's intact and you can compare it to a wolf mandible and say like, okay, this is clearly a bison. We know what this is, but for the tiny stuff, it's really hard. And this hard science stuff is like a really cool way to go about it. And it's something I never knew of until you explained it to me.
00:27:47
Speaker
Yeah, especially because it's like that's what's preserved on a lot of sites is small little fragments. So potentially this research allows us to identify these small fragments and really get a better picture of what people are eating in the past or destroying, killing, whatever. Yeah. Yeah. It's very useful for fragmentary assemblages. I know my microphone assemblage only had complete molars in 15 cases.
00:28:16
Speaker
But the rest of the bones, I analyzed 4,796 little fragments and all of them were just that, fragments. Yeah. And speaking of those fragments, something I wanted to ask you to, I guess, to elaborate on is like the, the reason you're doing that obviously is because like, I get this for the audience listening. Basically what I'm saying is for dumb me trying to like put this simply.
00:28:46
Speaker
People think Clovis hunted a lot of megafauna because that's really all that preserves. Like there's big mammoths and bison hanging out there, but there's still all that little bone in the fire and stuff that people are looking at, or that's just still there at sites. And what your thesis is, is looking at that tiny amount, like the small things and seeing what they were eating, right? Is that what a good way to put it?
00:29:08
Speaker
Yeah, because like you mentioned, there's a lot of articles out there, one of which was written by Dr. Todd Surabell and Nicole Wagsback. And essentially they argued that even though proboscidians like Mastodon and Mammoth are very rare on the Pleistocene landscape,
00:29:27
Speaker
They're the most abundant taxa in the archaeological record. And because of that, it suggests a high degree of specialization. But then we have other papers like Byers and Uggen, and they argue that even though megafauna should have been the preferred food source on the landscape, these Clovis peoples in the past should have been pursuing a wide variety of taxa, including rodents and lagomorphs, to ensure their caloric and nutritional needs.
00:29:55
Speaker
So that's essentially the framework that I'm going off of. And I'm looking at the microfauna in a couple different ways to answer the question of whether or not they are natural or cultural. So I'm looking at densities of microfauna according to their association with hearth features with the expectation of if they are showing this cultural pattern, they'll be very dense in these hearths and then slowly become less and less dense as you move away from the hearth.
00:30:25
Speaker
I'm also looking at burning distributions on horizontal and vertical axes through a burning scale. So zero represents not burned at all, three represents fully carbonized, meaning very black in color, and six being fully calcined, meaning it's white in coloration.
00:30:47
Speaker
So that's the second variable that I'm looking at in terms of question one. And then the third is taxonomic distributions, where I'm expecting a significant difference in taxa represented at the occupation service compared with the non-cultural elevations if people were targeting specific taxa for caloric needs.
00:31:10
Speaker
kind of backtracking to expectations for burning. Surgant et al. and Suravelle2022 argued that in terms of invisible hearth features, you should expect to see highly dense and clustering of calcined bone. And so I was expecting to see that pattern in microfauna, just very dense clustering of calcined microfauna in association with the hearths.
00:31:39
Speaker
if these people were cooking and consuming them. And that's the theory. The theory there is that people are sitting next to fire eating, discarding, and that those remains stay close to this central feature.
00:31:53
Speaker
Yeah, and it's actually based on a previous paper by Kennan and Meltzer because they argued that there are several sites with strong evidence, quote unquote, for microfauna subsistence use in North America associated with Clovis sites. I think there are seven different sites that they proposed. And I would argue for various reasons that the Aubrey site near the Trinity River
00:32:19
Speaker
in Texas is one of the strongest arguments for possible subsistence use, but even so they only used a single variable to justify this
00:32:32
Speaker
kind of idea of microfauna possibly being consumed by people in the past. And that one variable was burning. So they essentially looked at the microfauna assemblage. They said, hey, some of these bones are charred black. Others are calcined white. And based on that alone, we're kind of brushing our hands and saying people were eating these. Some big brain stuff.
00:32:57
Speaker
I think on that note, maybe we'll have her summarize the findings beginning in the next segment. Yep. That's my next question, I guess. So yes, next next segment. Sounds great. I'm here with Connor and our guest, McKenna Latinski. We've been talking about her master's thesis and her work. And I guess last segment we've covered what you did, but I want to ask McKenna, what'd you find?
00:33:22
Speaker
Right. So in the last segment, we basically summarized that I was looking at what people were eating, right? Are they just eating large animals or just eating small animals or both?
00:33:35
Speaker
So I found that based on the number of variables that I looked at, it's looking more like the majority of the microfauna at Laprel are natural rather than culturally associated. So let me go into that a little bit more. Burning, we're not seeing calcined bone. In fact, out of like 1,080
00:33:57
Speaker
burned bones, only eight were calcined. So that kind of rules out that a little bit. In terms of density distributions from hearths, we're seeing that the archaeological distributions are deviating from a randomized model to a lesser extent at the occupation surface compared with the non-cultural elevations. Those peaks at the non-cultural elevations are probably impacted by fragmentation,
00:34:27
Speaker
and other site formation processes. So just how many bones are there and fragmented at particular locations. And then based on taxa,
00:34:40
Speaker
I kind of thought it was interesting. There was a statistically significant difference between taxa at the occupation surface compared to the non-cultural elevations, but that difference was largely driven by the abundance of bird bone at the cultural occupation surface. That is
00:35:00
Speaker
Not a cultural signature, though. That's a result of taphonomic bias or natural processes that lead to a higher degree of fragmentation associated with bird bones. So it's not really saying, oh, people in the past were eating birds. It's not the case at all. It's just how these bones ended up in the ground and what processes impacted them after the fact.
00:35:24
Speaker
You said that there was like a one bird bone that was, was it 17 pieces for one bird humerus or something ridiculous like that? Yeah, it was a single point in the ground and there were 30 different fragments of bird bone. And I have a lot of confidence that they all belong to the same bird humerus because they were all 30 bird humerus fragments. It seems kind of sketchy. All the same place.
00:35:55
Speaker
So what those results then does that lead you more to think that they were generalists or that they were specialists? That's a good question. So I'm not fully discounting the concept of people possibly consuming small animals at this site.
00:36:12
Speaker
Just as an example, in a hearth context, a rabbit phalanx was recovered and it was completely calcined. So if we're thinking about the ethnographic record, I read a paper and it basically was arguing that it takes a young man a lifetime to achieve the efficiency of hunting a large animal.
00:36:34
Speaker
So if we're thinking about that concept, they were probably practicing on these smaller animals and maybe, maybe, I don't know for sure, but perhaps that's why that rodent phalanx, rabbit phalanx to be specific was calcined in that fire. But that being said,
00:36:53
Speaker
the majority, the large majority of the bones at Laprel look more natural. They're showing a natural pattern on the landscape, more randomly distributed, compared with a very undeniable cultural signature.
00:37:09
Speaker
So based on that, Laprel, as a case-specific site, it's looking to be more specialist. They're looking like they are focusing in on eating that mammoth, bison and tickless, and other large ungulates at the site.
00:37:28
Speaker
Again, I can't speak to Clovis culture as a whole across North America yet, because La Pral is so case-specific. I mean, we got the mammoth there, right? We know that they were eating the big thing.
00:37:47
Speaker
But that being said, I feel like my thesis gives future researchers the tools and the opportunities to undertake these detailed analyses focusing on microfauna across other sites in North America. Because right now, as far as I know, no one's gone to the level of detail that I have in microfauna analysis in closed context.
00:38:12
Speaker
So it just gives future researchers and archaeologists the opportunity to say, hey, we can do these analyses. We can try to see if Aubrey, per se, is actually cultural or natural. Damn. Are you going to continue this sort of research into your PhD or where do you envision that going?
00:38:35
Speaker
Yeah, I'm still kind of brainstorming about PhD topics. I definitely want to continue with zooms, that's archaeology by mass spectrometry technique, because there are very few people in North America pursuing this proteomics-based method.
00:38:58
Speaker
The majority of people doing zooms are over in Europe. So the fact that I have the opportunity to learn more about this technique, refine our methods, I feel like it's very cutting edge and could contribute to the field a lot. So I definitely want to keep doing that, but
00:39:16
Speaker
I'm kind of 50-50 on whether or not I want to stick with microfauna or kind of branch out into the other larger animals. Because like I mentioned at the beginning of this talk, this podcast, the reason I came to grad school is to improve my ability to analyze and identify taxa in general. So I wasn't specifically coming to grad school to look at rodents.
00:39:44
Speaker
where I ended up, but my goal was to look at as broad of taxa representation as possible, I guess. Would that involve possibly other time periods too, or are you going to stick your toe, foot, whole leg into the Clovis debate?
00:40:01
Speaker
Yeah, so I'm kind of undecided on that too at this point and whether or not I just want to stick with Clovis for my PhD. I definitely want to stick with pre-contact archaeology. I'm kind of done with historical archaeology. No, no offense to the historical archaeologists out there. You're in good company. But it's not for me. So I definitely want to stick with pre-contact archaeology. But yeah, I think
00:40:30
Speaker
I'm very interested in studying the different species of megafauna a bit more. It's something I never had the opportunity to do in undergrad at all.
00:40:39
Speaker
So I definitely want to dive into that a bit more, probably study birds and fish and become very efficient at identifying those. I know as a side project, I analyzed a little over 3,000 fish bone fragments for breedering associated with a site up in Alaska. So that was later pre-contact and I had a lot of fun with that. So I'm just open to exploring my options.
00:41:06
Speaker
For those listening, nobody wants to look at fish bones and bird bones usually, because why would you do that when you can look at marathons? So if you want to do that, you'll be very employable. This research will do well. Yeah. Fish bones are very hard, very hard, especially because the assemblage I was working with also was very fragmented.
00:41:28
Speaker
And these things were tiny. So I was losing my mind because I had to get my analysis done within a semester. And so I was analyzing over 3000 fish bones on top of my thesis, on top of teaching two labs and taking another class that semester. I was, it was boxers. Who are you? Are you a real person?
00:41:54
Speaker
I don't know. Maybe. Your work ethic is beyond me sometimes. It's very impressive, dude. Thank you. I was going to ask like this summer when we were digging, you know, I dug it, I have to plug it again, but Lapprell, and then we dug it. Warren Mann et cetera. I don't think we've talked about on here yet. When you were digging this summer, so like
00:42:18
Speaker
How did I phrase this? I didn't do a fieldwork based master's thesis. Connor did, but like yours wasn't an excavation. Connor was just survey. So like McKenna, when you're out there knowing what you wanted to do for your thesis, like when you're digging, are you actively thinking about this stuff and like thinking about the hards that way? Or is it kind of just you're out there digging?
00:42:37
Speaker
I think my second year at La Pral, I was thinking about those questions. My first year at La Pral, honestly, I didn't know what I wanted to do for a thesis yet. In fact, it was that summer, my first summer at La Pral that Todd Servile, my advisor, came up to me and he sat down one night and was like, so McKenna, you like animal boons? And I was like, yeah, I like animal boons. And Todd was like, do you like small animals?
00:43:07
Speaker
And I kind of pondered and I was like, um, tell me more. But that was kind of at the end of the summer. So I wasn't thinking about those questions at the time. I was just trying to dip my toe in Clovis archaeology because it was something that's totally new to me, right? Pre-contact archaeology was totally new to me, let alone a 13,000 year old site.
00:43:29
Speaker
But I think after my first year of grad school, knowing what I wanted to do for my thesis, I was in the mindset of like, okay, if I see small animals at this site, I'm really going to take my time to look at them either.
00:43:44
Speaker
institute, meaning like in the ground or in the water screens. I mean, David, you kind of saw me picking through the water screens. The reason I asked that, I was about to bring this up too, is like when I met you, we were picking through stuff at the screens and you were like amped about this like rodent, like femur. And I was like, Jesus, kid.
00:44:06
Speaker
You were really into the bones, which is like those kinds of things. And this is why your thesis is good. Not to say I don't care about them because I do now, but like at the time it's like, okay, it's a little rodent bone. Like, cool. I'm going to go dig up a mammoth. But like you're, you're looking at stuff. That's a really important question that no one has like really looked at before, especially with Clovis. It's kind of cool.
00:44:29
Speaker
Yeah, no, I get that though, because in my thesis, I kind of talk about how a lot of researchers in the past have focused in on the larger animals because they're cool, right? And you can learn a lot about the site from these large animals as a whole.
00:44:45
Speaker
And so a lot of times the small animals are overlooked. So I think that's kind of why I was hyped about, I think it was a cry Saturday rodent. You named like the genus and species of it. Just look at it. It was, I couldn't get down to genus and species, but I do remember it was the cry Saturday family, which is to the audience, a huge family in rodents. It's like, I mean, we're taxonomically thrilled.
00:45:16
Speaker
I was very excited, but I think it's because like going back to the excavation procedures at La Prelle, the only reasons we're able to recover the small animals is because we're doing one sixteenth inch water screening. Otherwise, they would have just fallen through the screen and I would never have the opportunity to look at them. So yeah, I was super excited. I also remember
00:45:39
Speaker
in the auger, because we were augering this summer, there were fish bones. It was a pre-opercal and a subro-opercal. And I was so hyped about that. I still look at those pictures and I'm like, hmm, that looks nice.
00:46:00
Speaker
It was a bad joke that just didn't land. We'll continue. I will say on the opposite side of that, you do get good data of it, but it is a fucking pain in the ass to screen there. Yeah. Yeah. I would even go as far as like soul breaking. Yeah. I would agree.
00:46:25
Speaker
You kind of get to the end of the day and you're like, just get through the screen, you little sediment dirt. And the conversations that you have at the screen, like, yeah, it's just so, you're like delusional. Honestly, you're sent to prison for the day, essentially. Like some people love to scream. I don't.
00:46:44
Speaker
I'm out and like I was volunteering too. You guys were all getting paid. So I was just like, uh, I don't have to screen, but I probably should. Yeah, it's not my favorite, but the screens are super important because that's where, well, once that, so I guess what we're talking about guys is like,
00:47:01
Speaker
You get giant chunks of dirt out of the ground, dig it up, put it into a bucket. The bucket goes down from the site down to a place where you dump it through a screen, but it's such thick sediment called calcium carbonate. You have to push it with a hose and then scrub and scrub it and scrub it through like this wire mesh. And then once that's done, you put it in the sun and it will dry out in that place within like 10 minutes because it's so hot. And that's where a mechanic goes in and like picks through and finds those tiny little bones and shell and
00:47:31
Speaker
Most of us, I would be looking for lithics there, but there are a lot of bones in there that you found. Since we're winding down, what would you recommend? Do you have anything you would tell undergrads, possibly even homeschooled kids who are interested in anthropology, archaeology, and any advice you can give to them?
00:47:50
Speaker
Yeah, that's a big question. And I'll try to answer it to the best of my ability. I think the best advice I can give to people is go after your dreams, like go after what interests you. And if people tell you that you can't do something, prove them wrong. I mean, obviously, don't do something crazy, but
00:48:12
Speaker
Within the realm of reason, yeah. Yeah, but if you want to go into archaeology, don't let someone tell you that you can't because it's an amazing field. You learn so much about yourself and the world around you.
00:48:28
Speaker
I think to homeschooled kids, I know from experience that some people give homeschool kids shit, for lack of better words, for being homeschooled. They're like, oh, you lack social skills. You lack the ability to go to classes and socialize in that environment.
00:48:47
Speaker
And I think going into college, I proved a lot of people wrong, especially because of my age. I mean, in undergrad, I didn't talk about my age at all. I mean, I was an undergrad from the time I was 16 to 18 and now I'm 20 and finished my master's. So in that respect, like, yeah, I just feel like in summary, do what you love and what makes you happy.
00:49:14
Speaker
So yeah, good way to put it. Um, yeah. Thank you for coming on. Thank you for having me. This has been so much fun. I appreciate it. And congrats again on getting your master's is good stuff. Thank you. Yeah, I'm very excited. So we usually ask for any literature books, things that you would recommend for people who would be interested in microphone or stuff that you do currently.
00:49:40
Speaker
Well, I would recommend Byers again, 2005. Should we expect large game specialization in the late Pleistocene and optimal foraging perspective on early Paleo-Indian prey choice? So that's one that I would recommend.
00:49:59
Speaker
I would also recommend faring 1995, which is basically a summary of the Aubrey Clovis site down in Texas. It's just a good read and to give the audience some more contextualization as to what past research has been done on microfauna assemblages and how people in the past have argued whether or not these small animals are cultural or natural.
00:50:26
Speaker
Oh, fun read. Gingrich, 2019, misidentified Clovis age fishbone at Shawnee Minnes Inc. And how that fishbone was actually black paint. That's a fun one. Classic who done it. Fishbone is black paint, okay.
00:50:47
Speaker
Obviously, wags back in Suravel 2003, Clovis hunting strategies or how to make out on plentiful resources. It's a good one. To just counteract the fires and again, paper, it's just, it falls on a different side of the spectrum. It's more a specialization framework. And then just, I don't know, I would recommend just looking up microfauna archeology Clovis sites and just see what pops up.
00:51:16
Speaker
It's not going to be much, but there's going to be more here soon. Makenna, where can the audience find you on the social medias, the emails and the LinkedIn's? Sure. Yeah. So my Instagram account is private, but it's M L Letinsky. And then my email is M L I T Y N S K I at U W Y O dot edu. So that's a great way to contact me.
00:51:45
Speaker
Cool. And I guess, yeah, that's, uh, that's it for me, Connor. We have to ask this because this is a life of ruins. If you were given the chance again, would you still choose to live a life in ruins? Micro ruins. Specifically studying. Yes, absolutely. If I had to go back and do my thesis again, I probably would.
00:52:11
Speaker
Sorry if I stole your thunder on that car. I didn't realize you were building up for that. I was like, you missed it.
00:52:20
Speaker
My bad. All right. Well, I just destroyed Connor's soul and we just interviewed McKenna Latinski. You can find her contact information in the show notes and description below. And guys, please be sure to rate and review the podcast provides feedback on whichever podcasting platform you're listening to on the show. If you do so this week and send us a screenshot to the laugh endurance email, Carlton will send you a sticker. He is not here to confirm that he can or can't, but he will. I can't, I can't promise that one.
00:52:47
Speaker
But anyway, yeah, McKenna, been great having you. Yeah. Look forward to see what you do for your PhD. Look forward to digging with you both this summer. That's my point. Actually, I can't dig. So I'll look forward to sitting in a chair. Watch you guys dig. I'll see you guys. Sounds good. Thank you again. This was the best. All right. And with that, we are out.
00:53:15
Speaker
Thanks for listening to a life in ruins podcast. You can follow us on Instagram and Facebook at a life in ruins podcast. And you can also email us at a life in ruins podcast at gmail.com. And remember, make sure to bring your archaeologists in from the cold and feed them beer. Don't you tell a joke at the end? It turns out we do. Why are plants so thin? Why? They are light eaters. Wow. Nice.
00:53:44
Speaker
She's not advanced. Clean. All right. Yeah, it's been great. We'll talk to you soon. Bye.
00:54:06
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his RV traveling the United States, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, Dig Tech LLC, Culturo Media, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Chris Webster. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archapodnet.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.