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Albania: Mapping it All Out with Erina Baci - Ep7
418 Plays6 years ago
On this episode of A Life in Ruins, we interview Erina Baci. Erina Baci is an Anthropologist and Archaeologist, studying at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor - one of the top anthropology departments in the US. Erina studies Bronze and Iron Age settlement patterns in Albania and Kosovo. We delve into GIS, the history of archaeological study in Albania/Kosovo and David and Erina talk about their academic connections.
ContactEmail: alifeinruinspodcast@gmail.comInstagram: @alifeinruinspodcastFacebook: @alifeinruinspodcast
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Transcript
Introduction to Podcast and Guest
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. I'm muting dude, I can't do this.
00:00:14
Speaker
Welcome to Episode 7 of a Life in Ruins podcast. I'm your host, Carlton Gover, and I'm joined by my boys, Concrete Jonin and David Howe. Tonight's guest, Irina Bocce, is an anthropologist and archaeologist studying at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor, one of the top anthropology departments in the United States. Irina studies Bronze Age settlement patterns in Albania and Kosovo. She's also highly proficient in ArcGIS and uses this mapping software to analyze geospatial data of archaeological sites.
00:00:42
Speaker
It's rare to find a North American archaeologist who specializes in a specific European period and culture, so we're excited to learn more about it. We met Erina last year at the Society for American Archaeology meeting in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and discussed a possible interview with her in the future. Luckily for you, that interview is today.
Irina Bocce's Background and Passion for Archaeology
00:01:07
Speaker
All right, Irina, if you don't mind starting it out by introducing who you are and your credentials as of this moment. OK, hi, guys. Thanks for having me on the show. My name is Irina Bachi, and I'm currently a PhD student at the University of Michigan. I'm currently in my second year. How is Ann Arbor these days?
00:01:25
Speaker
Um, it's, it's been all right. Um, I keep waiting for it to get cold, but it hasn't been happening yet. Um, so we've been enjoying the rare glimpses of blue sky. The sky is perpetually gray here. Usually does it just dump snow at a certain like part of the fall? Or is it kind of, do you have a good fall? We have like a decent fall for like a month and then October hits and then, you know, it's like perpetual winter until like April.
00:01:50
Speaker
But I'm kind of used to that kind of other. Well, fair enough. So you're a PhD student at one of the top archaeology departments in the country at University of Michigan Ann Arbor. So just real quick, what got you interested originally in anthropology and archaeology?
00:02:06
Speaker
I've always been interested in becoming an archaeologist. It has a lot to do with, I guess, my background. Growing up, I was super headstrong from the age of six, determined that I would become an archaeologist. And I was very hellbent on studying the prehistory of Albania from a very young age. And it's something that kind of just followed me.
00:02:27
Speaker
Throughout my, I guess, education, throughout high school, people were changing their minds about what they wanted to do. I knew exactly what program I wanted to apply to, what school, and the same applies for when I applied for my master's and my PhD. I was always very determined and I always knew what I wanted to do. Oh, very cool. Where were you actually raised?
00:02:47
Speaker
Yeah, so that that that ties into like my I guess my interest in Albania. So I was born in Albania. I'm a first generation immigrant, my family immigrated to Canada when I was five or five or six. And I was raised in Toronto, hence the getting hence being like familiar with cold weather.
00:03:06
Speaker
Oh, right. Yeah. Yeah. So I spent most of my life in Toronto. But yeah, growing up, I would hear a lot about tales and stories about the people before of a prehistory of Albania. And I always just wanted to know more.
00:03:19
Speaker
That hometown back in Albania, where that you're from, it's near one of the most famous archeological sites in Albania, is that correct? Yeah, so again, that has a lot to do with my interests. My dad was an amateur archeologist, so I guess my love of archeology kind of comes from him. His hometown is Selzapostme, and it is home to the royal tombs of Selzapostme, and it's one of the most famous sites in Albania. It was excavated in the 70s by an Albanian archeologist named Neritanseka,
00:03:49
Speaker
And my family's ties to the site are actually, long standing, a few of my aunts and uncles actually worked as laborers on the site. And I visited the site for the first time when I was 16 and it was just like this kind of moment where everything like kind of cemented. I knew that this is what I wanted to do. I wanted to come back here and I wanted to study the prehistory of the place where I was born.
00:04:11
Speaker
What made you choose to attend Mississippi State for your master's? Because you got your bachelor's in Canada, right? And then you decided to, yeah, University of Toronto. Then you came to the American university system.
Academic Journey and Cultural Experiences
00:04:23
Speaker
So what kind of, what was the impetus for changing countries? The desire to work in Albania.
00:04:29
Speaker
I really enjoyed my time at the University of Toronto. It's a wonderful program, but I found that my research interests were kind of limited in terms of what I could pursue afterwards. I knew I wanted to work in the old world, but I didn't want to go into classical studies. So I just went on the internet and I googled archaeologists that work in Albania because it was very important for me to find an advisor for my master's that
00:04:53
Speaker
A, has worked in Albania, and B, has an interest on taking a student who wants to continue to work in Albania. It was very important for me to have that sort of tie to working in Albania. So I Googled archaeologists who work in Albania, and like four people came up, so I emailed them all. And I heard very good responses from a lot of people, but everybody was telling me that I needed to email Michael Galati at Mississippi State, because he has been actively working in Albania.
00:05:23
Speaker
So I sent Mike an email asking if he was taking our students and he said yes. I went and I visited the campus and I really, really loved what I saw in terms of how the department was shaped and how everything was. And it was kind of a no-brainer after that. The department also fully funds masters, including international students, which is really, really rare. So again, it was a no-brainer, full funding, an advisor that works in Albania and that was willing to let me take on a topic of my choice. It was like a dream.
00:05:51
Speaker
That's pretty cool. Now, I imagine there was a culture shock going from Canada to the... Starkville, Mississippi. Yeah, Mississippi of all places. Oh, yeah. I think the biggest difference was... Okay, so I went to my... I did my bachelor in downtown Toronto. So going to Starkville, Mississippi, the biggest difference was the Greek life. That's a really big thing here, and I had never seen that before.
00:06:19
Speaker
Oh, yeah, it's the South. We party. Oh, I can vouch. I can vouch. It was so strange. It was the strangest thing. It was a really interesting cultural thing to observe. But other than that, like the shift wasn't too different. Coming from Canada, it's fairly easy. I mean, the language is the same. The system is more or less the same. And despite being a small town, I really enjoyed my time in Starkville, Mississippi.
00:06:45
Speaker
Did you get to go to Bops a lot? Yes. Oh my God. They're frozen yogurt, bug custard. Yeah, we went to Bops a lot. I think Derek and Molly took me there. It was pretty good. There was some Cajun place too. I can't remember what it was called. Oh, there's a few Cajun places. That makes sense. Yeah. I've been to Starkville a few times. It was hot, but like it's a cool college town. It is. It's a great environment to be in, but yeah, oh my God, the humidity.
00:07:09
Speaker
Yeah. That I considered jumping off a bridge constantly. Every time I go back to Virginia, I remember starkly why I decided to go out West. Yeah. I remember my first few days there, like literally thinking to myself, where have you come? Cause you go outside and literally in two seconds you're covered in sweat. It's like the most uncomfortable feeling. Yeah. It's like going into a sauna like every, like just, yeah, just stepping outside as a sauna. David, can you say sauna again?
00:07:38
Speaker
Solana. Thank you.
Fieldwork and Research Techniques
00:07:41
Speaker
Oh, right. Yeah, he's sorry. I have apparently a talking problem. So Ed Starkfield, did you get to work with Shane? I know you went to Topper once or twice. I'm sorry, the Allendale Cherk Quarry, as it were.
00:07:56
Speaker
I did. So Shane was actually my thesis advisor. He is a wonderful, wonderful advisor. GIS and stats wizard, of course. And I did good to go out to the top or side. Shane usually takes students out when we have like a week long breaks, either spring break or fall break. I went for, I think the spring break and it was so bitterly cold. We were camping. We camped at some point, we lost water. It was, you know, it was adventure.
00:08:26
Speaker
But it was totally totally worth it. We got to see the topper site which Somebody who's always been obsessed with archaeology you read about the topper site But you don't think you're ever gonna go to the topper site and then I just found myself one day literally digging Like not on the topper site proper, but like off of it Like yeah, you guys were on this website. Yeah, and it was just amazing. Okay. Yeah
00:08:50
Speaker
So like for anyone listening, well, the Topper site is, it's a large Clovis site and it has, it's one of the biggest in the country, I think. And it has a controversial pre Clovis component to it where they believe people were there 50,000 years earlier than thought. Actually 40,000 years earlier than thought, which some people subscribe to, some people don't. But the, I'm sure Irina, what you saw is anywhere around, it's a big jerk quarry.
00:09:16
Speaker
So anywhere you stick a shovel on the ground, you pull out, like literally like tortilla chips full of like just tan shirt that are all like Uter Pase flakes. They're like from the surface all the way down to Clovis. It's pretty amazing. It's supposed to be like pretty easy digging too, right? You just like digging through sand.
00:09:34
Speaker
Oh my god, it is literally sand and it was the strangest experience for me. I had never dug in like such sandy material before. Like I'm used to working in like Albania, which is sunbaked, right? And we actually have people with pickaxes out there.
00:09:49
Speaker
Yeah and like in Greece where you have pickaxes and there I'm like I was like my first like my first time actually going in I was like you know bracing myself getting ready to feel some resistance and then I was so surprised at how easy my travel just kind of like glided it was yeah it was a new experience for sure.
00:10:07
Speaker
I think it's all sandy. I can't remember. I know it's sandy loam. It's some parts sand. I don't remember, but it's, it's literally just 10 YR 40. Like every time I shoot a monselle sample, it's pretty straightforward nerd. You were telling me, David, that you just like, you'd take like one scrape and you'd be down a level and you'd be like, yeah, you go through it so fast. So easy.
00:10:26
Speaker
And Derek Anderson, who's like, he's a Wyoming grad too, but he's a six foot, I want to say like nine dude, like he's tall. He would like come crouch next to you as you're digging. And I would get so self-conscious that I was digging too hard and like sweating from like him staring at me, I would just like scrape too hard. And he's like, you went deep. And I was like, damn it.
00:10:45
Speaker
It's just so easy to do. So that was basically Carlton. For those listeners who listened to the last episode, that was Carlton in Nebraska. Staring down people's throats. Yeah. Yeah. 100% the TH role, just going around, making people's lives miserable. My favorite thing. Working with Shane. So Shane was my field school advisor and he's kind of just been like my
00:11:10
Speaker
like letter of rec person for years now. Cause he's just, I know him well, like it, it's cool to me that like a lot of us can be from all these different places, but we have kind of a similar network and pedigree. Has Shane's advising of you helped you at all at Michigan? Oh my God, so much. So Shane taught us a stats class at Mississippi state. And that was like one of the most useful classes I've taken. And he was so helpful in terms of like.
00:11:36
Speaker
Just even when I was doing my research, I would run into a problem either with ArcGIS or if my stats weren't adding up right. And he was just like always there, always willing to help like sit, like sitting down with me, going through my chi squares. Like, um, so yeah, I would say quite a bit cause I have, I think a fairly decent knowledge. I would like to say a stats now, thanks to Shane Miller. So nice. Shane studied under, uh, I think Steve Kuhn and Mary Steiner at Arizona, which I think
00:12:05
Speaker
I think that's what Shane did, but yeah, that's what Todd and Nicole did for us at Wyoming. So it's like, we have a similar, Todd's just a stats wizard. So it's like, we both kind of have a similar education, but going to different schools, which I think is super cool. Cause then you learn different things in Mississippi. We learned different things at Wyoming. Yeah. Uh, Carlton, did you have some more questions?
00:12:25
Speaker
Oh yeah, dude, absolutely. I'm really just curious what the difference in the theory of perspectives between Canadian anthropology and archaeology and American archaeology and anthropology that you've noticed since you've been through both systems.
00:12:40
Speaker
To be honest, I don't think I've noticed a very big difference. I think because Canada and the United States are very similar in terms of just both being in North America. I think the field has the fields in both countries have kind of just progressed along the same way. I think there's a more of a stark difference in terms of like the discipline in Europe.
00:13:03
Speaker
and the discipline in North America. But in terms of Canada and the United States, I found it to be more or less the same. And I find that in each department, it slightly varies based on the people that are there. So if you've got people that are more science driven, you've got more perceptual tendencies. And if you've got people that are more interpretive and postmodern driven, then you've got different kind of tendencies.
00:13:27
Speaker
I feel like it varies by department but overall anthropology and archaeology in Canada and the United States I feel like follow the general trend of the discipline in North America if that makes sense.
European vs North American Archaeological Practices
00:13:39
Speaker
Yeah, no, absolutely. No, it does. Absolutely. But yeah, I did notice that there's a little bit more of a difference between the disciplines in Europe and in North America. And I think that has to do a lot with the history of how the disciplines have evolved over time, like with archaeology being rooted more in anthropology here in North America and it being rooted more in history and classical studies in Europe.
00:14:05
Speaker
So I think that there's a difference there. There's a classic rivalry between like European and North America as you as you evolve through history or as you go through history in terms of archaeology like the board versus Binford debate is classic and it goes back into that too as well.
00:14:22
Speaker
And it's something I noticed. I just I did six. No, I did four and a half weeks in Ukraine doing Ukrainian archaeology. And they're very much part of that European mindset. So like sit down and like be the single American on a crew full of Ukrainians and talk with them about how they do archaeology, how they look at the archaeological record. And those were some definitely very enlightening and fruitful conversations because it's definitely a different mindset to how they deal with their material record.
00:14:51
Speaker
Yeah, there's some things that like, I feel like aren't even on the table in terms of considerations when you're working, I guess in Europe as they are here, for example, when you're an archaeologist in North America, you have to be very careful about, you know, where you're digging in terms of is could this site have any implications for Native Americans and stuff like that.
00:15:09
Speaker
Whereas that's not so much a case there. I was at a site in court, which is like Southern Albania. It was a commercial archaeology project. And I had people come up and ask me all the time. And I don't know why they came up to me. I guess it's because I was the English speaker in the area, but I was just an intern. So I'd have higher ups come up to me and be like, what do you think about these people that were digging up? Will people be upset that we're removing them? Are we going to repatriate them?
00:15:37
Speaker
stuff like that and I'm like that's not really an issue here as much and like those are good questions to think about but those are questions that I guess aren't thought about as much over there.
00:15:47
Speaker
Right. And I think a large portion that has to do with that European CD archaeological record that they're dealing with as their own ancestors, where you get prior to 1492 and the Americas. And there's definitely a population shift and a culture shift and I think a different mindset that goes along with that. Yeah.
00:16:08
Speaker
So, but, uh, well, the Royal Mounted Canadian police are declaring this podcast as a crime against humanity. Once we get this sorted out, we'll be right back with section two and continue our interview with Arena Bachi. All right. So we're back to a life neurons podcast. We are all masters here, I believe. So that means we've all written a master's thesis. Um, and I'm just curious or, you know, what did you do your master's thesis on? And please feel free to elaborate.
00:16:34
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Well, not surprisingly, I wrote a master thesis based in Albania. So I did. Yeah, no surprise there. So I did a massive kind of macro scale settlement pattern analysis.
00:16:47
Speaker
And my goal with my research was I wanted to better understand the interactions between the native populations in prehistory in Albania and kind of outside groups of people, mainly the Greeks and the Romans. And my drive for that was having an education in North America. I never really got to read about the prehistory of Albania. So I write about the Greeks, I write about the Romans.
00:17:13
Speaker
And I read what they said about the Illyrians, which is the native population that lived in Albania and most of the southern Balkans in prehistory. And of course, it's like a very biased opinion you have the Greeks calling them barbarians like they did everybody else. And you have the Romans conquering the area like in the first century BC. So I wanted to know
00:17:35
Speaker
what the settlement pattern looked like before major contact with outside groups of people. I know there's a caveat to be considered because people have always been interacting with each other, but I wanted to know, generally, what was the pattern before you have a consistent outside presence? For example, before the foundation of Greek colonies,
00:17:57
Speaker
And then following onward from that, so when the area was made in the Roman province. So of course, this is a master's thesis, so I couldn't go too deep into it. And I kind of ran out of time near the end of it because I wanted to do a multi-scalar analysis. I think multi-scalar analysis provides a lot more insight. So I was going to initially incorporate data from surveys that have been carried out in Albania, one in the south and one in the north.
00:18:27
Speaker
I ran out of time. I finished the program in two years when it's supposed to be three years, so I just kind of cut that part out. Congratulations on that. I don't recommend that to anybody. Love yourself more. Take your time. I just did the macro analysis, which is essentially looking at three snapshots in time. I used GIS to do that. I compiled this massive database of every site I could possibly find that fell within my study period, which is a massive period.
00:18:57
Speaker
The Iron Age in that part of the world was just like 1100 BC, up until the fall of the Roman Empire in that part of the world, just 395 AD. So it's a massive time slice. And I partitioned it into periods that I thought were relevant to my questions. So my first period was what I called the pre-contact period, which is 1100 BC to the foundation of the first Greek colonies.
00:19:21
Speaker
And then I had my second period, which was the Greek influence period, which was after the foundation of the first colonies up until Roman incorporation. And then the third period was Roman incorporation until Roman fall, or fall of the Roman Empire. And I pretty much created three. Yeah, it was a massive, massive time. I created three snapshots using ArcGIS. I did quite a bit of analysis, actually. I did distance analysis.
00:19:49
Speaker
I did like dense heat maps. I wanted to see if there was new creation. And I guess my theoretical tendencies for my analysis were a little bit world system-y, which I understand people have problems with world systems, but my argument was if there's colonies, they're going to act to attract people. Like colonies attract people for various reasons. One that I was looking at was, you know,
00:20:13
Speaker
perhaps economic interests. So one of my main hypotheses was that through time, we're not only going to see more sites, but we're going to see sites clustering around colonies. And in a nutshell, that's what I found. I found that there's a massive settlement shift
00:20:31
Speaker
After a Greek presence and after a Roman presence, sites kind of shift down to the south of Albania. They shift to the coast and they shift to the colonies. And what was really, really interesting for the Roman period, you have this massive band like up here across like the middle of Albania.
00:20:51
Speaker
which is where a Roman road called the Via Ignatia would have been. So you just have this like kind of linear hotspot along the road, which I thought was super interesting. It was, it was super cool. I didn't expect to find like, I didn't expect to get that kind of like results. And I did a lot more analysis. I did like, I looked for, if there was trends in regards to proximity to rivers, if there was trends in certain elevation preferences, if there was trends in proximity to roads.
00:21:19
Speaker
And I tested all that statistically with millions of chi-squares. So yeah, that was my master's research in a nutshell.
00:21:28
Speaker
That's super awesome. Because I'm a GIS person myself, I have two questions for you. How many times did your ArcMap crash because you had such a huge data set and how frustrated were you with it? And could you explain the multi-scale analysis and how studying things at different scales can give you different information?
00:21:50
Speaker
First, it crashed multiple, multiple times, especially when I was doing my viewshed analysis because raster analysis is a lot more like labor intensive for the computer than a simple like vector analysis. So when I was trying to do my viewshed analysis, which is essentially a type of analysis that looks at what's visible from your
00:22:09
Speaker
Point of reference it would just wouldn't work it would crash and just i got so frustrated i like i ended up going to shame and be like shame please help and so we eventually to make things work a little bit we eventually put buffers so that it would only calculate a view shed for a certain range because afterwards it kind of became pointless.
00:22:28
Speaker
We reasoned that the human eye can only see so far anyways, so I gave a buffer that is like, okay, there's no way a human eye could possibly see more than this anyways. And it really cut down on the analysis time and it finally worked. And I think I needed to take my laptop to shame for it to work because afterwards it just decided it wanted to. So that's how GIS is sometimes. It doesn't work until it does.
00:22:58
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. I've left stuff overnight because you're like, just please work, please, please, please, please work. Yeah. And especially with raster analysis, like you mentioned, they're insane. The elevation, anything like that, when you're trying to analyze, you know, these squares, it's just, it just beats on the computer no matter what computer you have. And the worst is when you haven't saved your work recently, like save every two minutes.
00:23:25
Speaker
Yeah, on any program you guys use, just anyone listening, just control S just constantly, especially doing something that requires a lot of RAM. Yeah, I love some work. If you're an art catalog, don't delete anything, because it won't come back. Oh, no.
00:23:40
Speaker
No, no, no. Don't delete things. Don't move files. Let them be. For people who aren't savvy to this, can you guys explain what GIS is? Obviously, it's a mapping software, but can you guys elaborate? You did mention earlier, Reena, a multiscaler approach and how you would have used that. Just briefly recap why you feel like that would have mattered and just explain the different kinds of approaches.
00:24:05
Speaker
Yeah, sure. Do you want to take the GIS question, Connor, or do you want me to take it? No, I'll probably need you to fill in some blanks if that's OK, because I'll mess it up somehow. So GIS is Geographic Information Systems. It's basically a system that helps us analyze and understand space. And you can do this on the amount of research that you can do on GIS is
00:24:32
Speaker
pretty much infinite. You can ask infinite amount of questions depending on what you're interested in. We are both working in archaeology, so we usually are working with site data, archaeology site data, which is a defined area of where the archaeological remains are.
00:24:50
Speaker
But in the most popular program for this is run by Esri, which I had mentioned in the last episode is the devil, but I love them. Please don't send a cease and deserve. I love and hate them. I love a hate relationship. Yeah, because it's just a, it can be a frustrating program because things shut down, but it's also the most usable one of them out right now. So I don't know if you have anything else to add to that, Tarina.
00:25:18
Speaker
I think you got it. And I think the reason why it's so prevalent in archaeology is because archaeology is inherently spatial. And I think you touched on that. So it's like a really useful tool for us to ask questions of the past. Absolutely. And in regards to the multi scaler question, so
00:25:35
Speaker
I guess the reason it's important for us to use a multiscaler approach is that I think there's certain biases or limitations of your analysis if you're looking from just one scale. And if you can incorporate finer scale data, you can kind of fill in the gaps of just any one approach. So if I was hoping to use survey data, right, and survey data can be very fine scale,
00:25:59
Speaker
So by kind of linking a kind of a macro analysis with kind of a more of a meso or micro analysis, you kind of help reinforce your results, if that makes sense. I think in archaeology or like any science,
00:26:14
Speaker
In general, I think the more kind of the more tools you use that kind of go with each other that kind of help help make up for some of the limitations for the other, the stronger your results. And again, with scale, scale is arbitrary. You set the scale. So based on how you set the scale.
00:26:32
Speaker
it kind of pushes your results in a certain direction, right? So like when I'm looking at such a large scale as all of Albania, I'm bound to miss stuff. And I think like I acknowledged, you know, like no data set is perfect. So by incorporating different kinds of scalar analysis, you kind of help account for some of the limitations.
00:26:53
Speaker
Yeah, that's solid. Totally agree. Did the same thing for my thesis. But how does this, so you clearly passed two years out of three. Very impressive. Yeah. Good Lord. Don't recommend it. I'm telling you, if you don't have something pushing you to finish faster, take your time. Yeah. Yeah. So how does this play into your dissertation research?
Bronze Age Settlement Patterns in Kosovo and Northern Albania
00:27:16
Speaker
Well, my dissertation research is essentially an outgrowth, especially methodologically. So I already have an idea of what I'm going to be doing for my dissertation, and I've actually already started working with the data, and I did some preliminary research this summer. So what I'll be doing, ideally, is a settlement pattern analysis, no surprise there, of northern Albania and western Kosovo.
00:27:39
Speaker
I'm going to be focusing mainly in Kosovo, but I'm going to be looking at the two regions broadly. So this research that I'm going to be doing goes along with the research of my advisor at Michigan and goes along with a project that I am the geodatabase manager of. So I'm part of a project called RAPID-K. We've got a really cool acronym name. So it stands for Regional Archaeology of the Pan Istok Districts of Kosovo.
00:28:05
Speaker
And it's a multi-year project. We just wrapped up year two this summer. It is co-directed by my advisor, Michael Kaladi. We have Kosovo archaeologist Haji Mehmeta, who used to be director of the archaeological institute Kosovo, and Silvia Kaladi. So we have three co-directors. We've been going out there for the past two years, and we'll hopefully be going out for a few more.
00:28:27
Speaker
And I've been involved with the project from the very beginning. I made the very beginning maps for the proposal, if I remember correctly. And actually, I just finished the last of the 2019 season maps today. So that's good. I feel good about that.
00:28:42
Speaker
I know they've been like on my mind. I've literally been churning out like 50 maps a day. It's been ridiculous. But yeah, so my research is going to be kind of running along parallel to the research of the project. And essentially, I'm going to be looking at like, what's going on in this part of the world and prehistory in regards to where the people
00:29:00
Speaker
are settling and how people are moving. And these research questions kind of grow out of the research that my advisor has been doing in northern Albania for the past few years. There was another survey project in northern Albania, the Jekka Jekka Skodroskash for short, and it was a pretty much like an intensive five-year survey looking at the prehistory of northern Albania.
00:29:23
Speaker
And what the results showed from this project was that, you know, there's a lot of movement around this time and it seems, to use the words of my advisor, that all roads seem to leave to Kosovo. So we want to know in prehistory if there was movement between these two regions, what these people were doing, how they were settling.
00:29:40
Speaker
And I'm going to be looking at a time slice, specifically Bronze Age Iron Age, looking at, specifically, hill forts, actually, to see what their function was and what role they played in the settlement and movement of people, ideally. Let's see. So this is interesting to me because I'm a prehistory nerd, but over here, where we dig, we don't have, we get Copper Age way up north, but that's about it. We don't turn into the steel age until the Europeans get here.
00:30:10
Speaker
In Europe, can you see a stark change from the prehistoric with stone tools and things to a metal using culture? Or is that something that you're looking at with your research?
00:30:21
Speaker
See, I'm not going that far into the past in terms of stone tools, but we do see them in survey. We have recovered a lithics. So it's there. This part of the world has been inhabited for thousands and thousands of years, and it has a long, continuous record. But from my research, I'm not going far into the stone age or when they were primarily using stone tools. Sure. I'm not even going into the Neolithic. I'm specifically interested in the Bronze Age.
00:30:49
Speaker
And the Iron Age, mainly because this is the time when we see certain socio-political complexities emerge. We have burial tunuli. We have big settlements. And I'm kind of interested in trying to understand these things, specifically the way of life. The research shows that this is in the Bronze Age, that these people were pastoralists. They were moving around the landscape.
00:31:13
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, so these are Francid pastoralists and the moving around and the landscape. And actually, it's really interesting because there's quite a bit of continuity in terms of how people have lived in that part of the world up until history. I don't know if I said this earlier, but Albania is one of the enigmas of Europe, right? It's a really interesting place. I know I sound biased by saying that because I'm from there. Up until the 19th century was the only place in Europe that had tribal-level societies, right?
00:31:38
Speaker
So, yeah, it's super interesting. Up until the 19th century, we had people living in Northern Albania following a neural law code, the code of Lektokajin. So, it's an interesting, interesting place to study. And the tribal societies in Northern Albania, I think, are a very interesting kind of enigma, right? These people living these pastoral ways of life, even in recent history.
00:32:04
Speaker
You said some words about a cult there. Can you explain what that was? Or was it a culture? Uh, a cult. I don't, I don't, I don't recall a cult. Oh, he says it was something that was practicing up until like the 19th century. Oh, tribal, tribal level society, like a tribal way of life. So basically up until the 19th century, we had like a tribal organization where
00:32:28
Speaker
people were organized in terms of kin or feasts, family. And that was something that dominated from the time of Skenderbeg, from the time of the beginning of the oral law code up until the 19th century. And there's parts of that way of life that are still very prevalent in Albanian culture and life today. There are certain parts of the law code that are prevalent today, for example, the Albanian notion of honor,
00:32:54
Speaker
the Albanian notion of hospitality and then the more not the more kind of uh what's the word for it the more like Hollywood uh famous the blood feuds that some people may or may not have heard about so yeah but yeah very very interesting yeah well on that note the geographic projection system of this project has changed which has screwed up our data and once we get it re-projected we will be back
00:33:22
Speaker
All right, welcome back to Life in Ruins podcast section three with our guest, Irina. Just real quick, figured out what the confusion was during the last segment. Irina did not say Colt. David just misheard her say code of law.
00:33:38
Speaker
Got that figured out. No cults were mentioned. So we're all good. No cults and English is my second language, FYI. So sorry about that too. Oh no, you're good. It's my first language and it was abysmal for me to be through school at this point. So yeah. Anyway, all good, but we had some talk about tribal society. So that is also interesting. Always, always. Continuing on then with that conversation.
Challenges and Contributions in Kosovo Archaeology
00:34:02
Speaker
So what are you most excited about with this thesis? Yeah.
00:34:07
Speaker
I'm just really, really excited to be working in Kosovo. It's a place that I think is very understudied. I mean, Albania is understudied, but Kosovo is even more understudied. So I'm really excited to be a part of the survey project, RapidK, and I'm excited to continue on my own research just because I feel like the contributions that our research is going to have to the field I think are just going to be
00:34:29
Speaker
And I feel like they're going to take the field in a good direction. It's a place that, like I said, hasn't received the attention that it deserves. And it's got such a rich archeological record that I think it, you know, it deserves its place in the spotlight. And when you're, when you have places like this that are understudied, I think understanding them better helps us understand the record as a whole. So knowing what's going on in bronze and iron age constantly, I think it's going to help us better understand what's going on in the Balkans, right?
00:34:56
Speaker
Um, giving us kind of a more holistic understanding of what's going on in the past in this part of the world. So I think that's like what I'm super excited about just doing my, my part in helping fill the gaps. That's awesome. Yeah. I hate you so much. I was going to say, why do you think it's so understudied or what is it the culture? Is it the kind of, um, the things.
00:35:24
Speaker
What contributes to this lack of studying these areas? I know Carlton had mentioned Ukraine, it's very understudied, and I think he said something to do with funding. Yeah, funding can definitely be a part of it. For Albania, for example, it was a communist country for a
00:35:42
Speaker
half of a century. So it was closed off to the rest of the world. So while archaeology was going on, nobody knew what was going on. So like in Albania's case, the archaeology of Albania and like the world sphere has only existed for God, let's say like 20, 30 years after the fall, like when communism fell. So like in the late 80s, early 90s. So we haven't been out there for so long. And then in the terms of Kosovo, Kosovo is not even 11 years old, right?
00:36:10
Speaker
It's a baby in terms of countries. So there just hasn't been the infrastructure to study the archaeology of that area. Right. And, you know, now there's finally resources to do so. I mean, Kosovo had other problems before in terms of, you know, trying to gain its independence. And now that that's been established, we can turn our attention to other things like it's prehistory. Nice. Yeah, that's something like Connor touched on that I was going to briefly talk about, like the the vibe that I got from Ukraine and what I was told
00:36:41
Speaker
definitely related to the Communist Party and Eastern Europe and Southern Europe being part of that and my buddies in Croatia when I visited I just chilled with archaeologists from Croatia the entire time and it was kind of like this common denominator of
00:36:56
Speaker
first, it was the Soviet system reshaping itself out of the Soviet system. And then the countries that were able to, I guess, transition better like Poland and some of the other countries who has, you know, those countries have a pretty decent archaeological record at this point in time. And it's, it's like as an American archaeologist, or like a North American archaeologist, it's almost a golden opportunity
00:37:20
Speaker
to get your foot in the door and be part of new research and being able to apply the existing methodologies and the existing theories on what is essentially like a Bambi-like archaeological record.
00:37:34
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, there's research going on there for sure. Like, there's so many talented archaeologists from these countries doing what they can with the resources they have. The problem is resources. I've met so many talented archaeologists in Albania and Kosovo. There are some of my dearest colleagues. The problem is funding. The problem is, you know, getting grants. The problem is
00:37:53
Speaker
getting people to be interested in the archaeology of these places, right? So I think for people that want to go over there, these collaborations are so important to work with local archaeologists. We have, for example, one of the co-directors of Rapid Kay is a local Kosovar archaeologist, right?
00:38:10
Speaker
So actually, we have two local Kosovo archaeologists, because Sylvia is also from Kosovo. So it's real and like our team in Rapid K is comprised of like, we have people from Kosovo, we have people from Albania, we have people from America, like that collaborative atmosphere is really prevalent, right? And I think that's super, super important. Because, you know, there are people doing things there. It's just resources, I guess, in some cases.
00:38:35
Speaker
and you can you can help as like an archaeologist come there and bring that money and help employ people in the local community to help you know at least yeah exactly get the community some sort of yeah absolutely i think that's or like even train students yeah
00:38:51
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I think it's super cool. Yeah, because like one of the things we do, yeah, like what we do at the project is we have undergrad students from the University of Pristina and University of Tirana come out and we help train them in methods that maybe they haven't learned before. I talked to them about GIS, I had a moment that I can and I noticed that there's like this big desire to like learn it, but the universities don't have like
00:39:16
Speaker
the infrastructure to teach it to their students, or at least the archaeology students aren't having access to this. And this is something that I think about a lot because I realized the importance of geospatial analysis and I saw how much interest there was in the students to learn it, but the resources aren't there. So this is kind of like a little project that I have at the back of my mind, something that I want to develop in time, hopefully. Oh my God, do they want
00:39:40
Speaker
GIS specialists. Remember that's the first thing they asked me like, do you know GIS? I'm like, no, but I can do Bayesian analysis of radiocarbon dates. That's useful. Yeah. They're like, we don't have a radiocarbon record in this country, so you're useless. And I was like, well, I'll just start digging that. Yeah. Digging works. Digging works. That's super interesting because you guys brought up the fact that archaeology hasn't really been done until recently. Like here, we get kind of mad like in our theory class, like, oh man, they did it so bad in 1880, but like,
00:40:08
Speaker
they were still doing archaeology. I mean, it was bad, but like I didn't think about that not being a thing over there, especially with that. And I know in when I had visited Israel, I had like checked out all these sites that I wanted to learn about and I had researched them and all of them had started or like all the publications came after 1967, which I thought was interesting. Obviously, that's when Israel formed. So it's like, oh, so right as that happened, like all of these universities were like, all right, let's go dig some shit. And it was like,
00:40:38
Speaker
super cool. So I didn't think about that. The fall of communism probably brought on a lot of archaeology across Europe. That's kind of interesting. I wonder what the Palestinian archaeologists did or if there was Palestinian archaeology and if there was where that content ran off to, but that's just an aside.
00:40:55
Speaker
What I was going to say though, in Albania, that's the record. I know the best. Archaeology was actually super popular during the communist regime, but the problem is your results had to go along with the ideals of the party. So while archaeology was being done,
00:41:11
Speaker
And one of the other things that for the archaeological record of Albania is for a very long time, the people that ran the show were outsiders. So you had French, Italian, German archaeologists digging in Albania with almost no kind of leadership roles by Albanian archaeologists. And we finally had leadership roles under the regime because everybody else was kicked out. But again, your results had to follow certain guidelines. So it's only more recently that we have, you know,
00:41:40
Speaker
I got some more scientific research. Oh, in Ukraine, their big problem was in order to get a PhD, they had to discover a new culture as an archaeologist. So there's been big work in Ukraine recently of like coalescing all these new cultures into the one culture they actually represent. But that was the only way to get your PhD. You had to find something new.
Impact of Historical Politics on Modern Archaeology
00:42:01
Speaker
So a lot of these people, when they dug sites, they're like, oh, this is a brand new culture because they had to. So not only did the communist regime collapse, and like you said, Irina, that they've been doing archaeology. It was just under a different system with different rules. But one of their guidelines during that system was this push to develop a new culture. So they've not only had to reformat themselves into a new way of doing archaeology, even in Europe, but also
00:42:29
Speaker
their archaeological record is heavily, I wouldn't say skewed, highly variable where it shouldn't be. Yeah, I get that, yeah. But you know, things are changing now, right? So that's good. Things are going in the right direction.
00:42:45
Speaker
Oh, absolutely. It's perfect work. Do you find data, either spatial data or site data, um, before the fall of communism useful, even like the kind of, we call it here in America, the gray literature, which is like CRM reports and stuff like that. Do you find that super useful or is that kind of in the same vein that they had to kind of massage that to be within appropriate with the government?
00:43:10
Speaker
I think there's use to data from the communist period for sure. Some of the articles I used were written in that time, and a site location is a site location. For me, it wasn't necessarily problematic. I just needed to know where the site was and what periods were associated with it. Again, I guess at that time,
00:43:31
Speaker
association of a site to certain period can be problematic because no radiocarbon dates. But I don't think we should cross out those data sets. I think just be wary of the biases. I mean, every data set is going to have a biases even data sets that you create now because a data set is just a set of values, right? It's not the artifacts itself. It's what you take out of the artifacts based on the questions and the measurements and the analysis that you do.
00:43:56
Speaker
no matter what your data set is going to have some sort of bias, but I think it's important to acknowledge that and work with it if that makes sense. Absolutely. I love that interpretation. The way that I always explain it is that archaeology gives a voice to the voiceless, but the answer you get depends on the questions you give it.
00:44:15
Speaker
Exactly, exactly. And your questions are driven by your theory and on and on and on. Exactly. But yeah, so every data set has a bias. It's just, you know, account for it as best as you can. That's awesome.
Promoting Archaeology in Albania and Kosovo
00:44:28
Speaker
What is your favorite part about working in Albania and Eastern Europe? South Eastern Europe. Sorry.
00:44:34
Speaker
I generally like I have such a deep love for Albania and Kosovo and my reasons for that I get you know I'm from Albania I love going back to my home country and I'm so generally blessed to be able to work in my home country I understand like I acknowledge that I'm super super lucky to be able to do what I do
00:44:52
Speaker
And I really hope that, you know, by, you know, by more people going to these places and by trying to bring the prehistory of these places to the forefront, people will understand that Eastern Europe is not a scary place. It's a wonderful, wonderful place. I know there's like certain ideas that people might have about Eastern Europe, you know, like Thank You Taken, For Giving Albanians a Bad Wrap Everywhere. You know, these places are, you know, they're wonderful places to be. The people are friendly. The culture is amazing. The archaeology is brilliant.
00:45:23
Speaker
Like, don't be scared of these places. Go see these places. I know people say, oh, you should be careful in Eastern Europe. Don't travel by yourself and don't do this and don't do that.
00:45:32
Speaker
I travel by myself all the time. I know the bus system of Kosovo and Albania, and et cetera, et cetera. And I'm a woman traveling by myself with a suitcase and a backpack, and nothing has ever happened to me, knock on wood. But what I'm trying to say is these are safe places, places that are full of rich, beautiful culture and caring, wonderful people. So I think that's something that I love about these places, and I wish more people knew this aspect of these places.
00:46:02
Speaker
Oh, totally agree. I'm super excited to get back to Ukraine this summer. And like that whole experience, I've never been to Europe and I went to Ukraine first time. And that's just one of the things I mean, I had no idea what I was getting myself into, but.
00:46:17
Speaker
Did people tell you to be careful? Don't go certain places. People told me to be careful. I do recall, though, the first time I showed up to site in Zaporizha, that I went out to go get supplies by myself without telling... Well, not by myself. I was with Kudra, and I didn't tell the site director, and he was frantically calling people trying to figure out where I was, because he was worried. But I never had a problem. I guess my only barrier was the language.
00:46:45
Speaker
people who want to go to Eastern Europe, I'd highly recommend or just anywhere in general, know the local language to get by. It took me two weeks to be able to order beer by myself without having a translator. So you learned eventually. I did. I did. Google translate. Shout out. Always there to help us out. But yeah, I mean, we had undergrad students from University of Michigan come out. Right. And they loved Kosovo. They didn't want to leave.
00:47:12
Speaker
One of the students became so fluent. It was amazing how much they embraced and loved the culture there and being there and the archaeology there. So yeah, it's a really wonderful place to work. Well, we have a special listener who is extraordinarily engaged, not only with this podcast, but also with our social media. The dude's name is Caleb Welch, and we highly appreciate him. And Arena, would you have any book recommendations for our listener? Because he's been dying to get some new material on his plate.
00:47:42
Speaker
Now in terms of for fun or like? I guess for someone who's like wants to get into anthropology, archeology.
00:47:50
Speaker
at the top of my head. Yeah, it is. It is a hard question. I mean, I could suggest like a pop science book. The fifth, I mean, the fifth beginning is good. Or is it the sixth beginning? Yeah, we're biased for Bob Kelly students. So we will throw that out there. He doesn't I doubt he has a podcast dude. He doesn't even have a TV in his house. I don't think he has a
00:48:13
Speaker
I don't think he listens to podcasts, but yes. He's not listening to ours. Definitely not ours. He's done with us. He's definitely done with me.
00:48:22
Speaker
Well, that's a great book, I think. It's like super short, super comprehensive. It gives you a nice quick rundown of archaeology, human history, and it's just enjoyable to read. But if you want a book on Albania, John Wilkes is the Illyrians. Now that's a good one. It's a little old, but a goodie.
00:48:45
Speaker
Perfect. So there you go, Caleb. You got The Fifth Beginning by Robert Kelly and the Illyrians by John Wilkes. So go to your local bookstore, support local business and see if you can get those orders. Don't use Amazon.
00:49:02
Speaker
I have a quick question after that. When he asked me that question, I was like, man, I don't really know. And then you also said, man, that's tough. Why do you think that is? Why is there not an easy book to recommend on anthropology? That's a good question. I think honestly, because I think for a long time, archaeology and academics in general were just not geared to the general public. And I think that's something that we need to change and thankfully is changing.
Public Engagement and Accessibility in Archaeology
00:49:27
Speaker
As creators of knowledge, I think we owe it to the public to make this knowledge accessible. And I think one of the ways we can do this is by writing books that are accessible to everybody so everybody can read them, understand them, and know what in the world we're doing. I mean, we can write articles all the time that are going to go in journals that nobody can afford or understand. I think we kind of owe it to the public to share the knowledge that we're creating. So I think that's why it's a problem because for a long time,
00:49:53
Speaker
like the most famous archaeology book of like, or the most famous book about human pre history wasn't even written by an archaeologist and referring to like, diamond. Yeah, so like, yeah, I mean, I think we owe it to the public to kind of make our knowledge accessible. And that's why it's so difficult to point out an archaeology book, that's, you know, a good, easy, fun read, because there's not that many, at least not to my knowledge.
00:50:18
Speaker
Do you think social media helps with that? And do you want to plug your social media? Yeah, I think social media is a wonderful tool, just like GIS. I think it's an easy way for us to kind of reach and engage with the public and let them know what we're doing, let them know academics are humans too. We read and write all the time, but we also love our dogs and cats and our families and stuff like that. So give them a human aspect of what it means to be an academic.
00:50:45
Speaker
Absolutely. And because this is a life in ruins podcast, we have to ask this. If you could do it over again, would you choose to live a life in ruins? Oh, 100%. I don't even think it was ever an option or a question for me. I think this was always kind of the path for me, a life in ruins in Albania.
00:51:05
Speaker
It's solid. Well, thank you for that. Well, everyone, we just chatted with Arena Bachi. She's an anthropologist and archaeologist studying at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. And you can follow her social media. Her Instagram account is at Arena Bachi. So at E R I N A dot B A C I. Thank you guys very much for listening and we'll be back next month.
00:51:34
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 archeologists in from the cold and feed them beer. Hey, guys, why did people get stuck in the Bronze Age for so long? Oh, Jesus. They couldn't seem to iron out the details.
00:52:05
Speaker
Oh, God. These games in our show. Oh, that was painful.
00:52:25
Speaker
This show is produced by the Archaeology Podcast Network, Chris Webster and Tristan Boyle in Reno, Nevada at the Reno Collective. 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 chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.