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The Supernatural Gamekeeper with Dr. Tirtha Mukhopadhyay - Rock Art 130
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Dr. Tirtha Mukhopadhyay from Guanajuato, Mexico one of our most popular guest scholars, is back for a discussion on the Supernatural Gamekeeper. Much to say about this figure and how they are rendered on stone canvasses, what they mean, who they are, and what we can learn from Native people regarding the protective and abiding deities that ensure nourishment and sustainability for our indigenous brothers and sisters. Great discussion!
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Transcript
Introduction to the California Rock Art Foundation
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. Hello out there in archaeology podcast land. This is Dr. Alan Garfinkel. I'm the president and founder of the California Rock Art Foundation. And what we do is we identify, evaluate, manage and conserve rock art both in Alta, California and in Baja, California.
00:00:21
Speaker
We conduct field trips, we have trainings, exercise, we do research, and in every way possible we try to preserve, protect, and coordinate treasures of Alta and Baja California rock art, of which there are many, and diverse.
Call for Support and Podcast Invitation
00:00:35
Speaker
We also work closely with Native Americans and partner with them to recognize and protect sacred sites.
00:00:42
Speaker
So for more info about the fabulous California Rock Art Foundation, you can go to carockart.org. Also, i'm I'm open to give me a call, 805-312-2261. We would welcome sponsorship or underwriting, ah helping us to defray the costs of our podcasts, and also membership in California Rock Art Foundation, and of course, donations since we are a 501c3 nonprofit scientific and educational corporation. God bless everyone out there in podcast land.
00:01:16
Speaker
You're listening to The Rock Art Podcast. Join us every week for fascinating tales of rock art, adventure,
Collaboration with Tirtha Mukhabadai
00:01:22
Speaker
and archaeology. Find our contact info in the show notes and send us your suggestions.
00:01:33
Speaker
Welcome out there in archaeological podcast land. This is your host, Dr. Alan Garfinkel. For your Rock Art Podcast, this is episode 130.
00:01:44
Speaker
and We're bringing back one of our favorite, favorite guests. This is our scholar. from Mesoamerica, from Mexico, Guanajuato University, Tirtha Mukhabadai, who I'm proud of you know and blessed to call my friend and colleague. Tirtha, are you there? Yes, Alan. Thank you very much for introducing me once again. And it's always a pleasure and honor to be here and talking to you. And you're you're you're speaking from where?
00:02:16
Speaker
I'm speaking from the state of Guanajuato. This is south-central Mexico, and you know just on the lap of the ah south-central mountains of Mexico, which kind of you know runs towards the east from the Sierra Madre.
00:02:37
Speaker
Occidental. Well, for those that are that have never heard you, which yeah as is possible, give them a you know one or two minute intro to our ongoing collaboration and association and your ah fascination with similar subjects relating to indigenous cosmology, rock art and cultural materials.
00:02:58
Speaker
Yes, Alan, thank you very much for asking me to talk on this relationship ah that has grown over the years and on the lines of common interests.
Symbolism of Gamekeepers in Rock Art
00:03:14
Speaker
I have been interested in cultural anthropology and especially rock art as my background is, as you know, is in aesthetics.
00:03:23
Speaker
herbeneutics of art and also cognitive and behaviors in relation to artistic expressions. So that has been my background of studies and so I I became interested in rock art, especially in the course house when I got an invitation for a Fulbright senior research fellowship at the University of Santa Cruz. That was in 2013. And so then I got acquainted with you and then we have grown this friendship
00:03:57
Speaker
and we have dedicated a good deal of for time to the study of the rock arts of the Kosos, the symbolism, and while you were creating this enormous database of information on the coastal rock arts and the rock arts of the Mojave and ah adjacent areas in the American Southwest. I was looking at the images per se and trying to deconstruct the meaning and trying to relate that meaning to
00:04:32
Speaker
the belief systems of these peoples in the American Southwest and Mesoamerica where I now live and work at the University of Guanajuato. So I guess today, as we had been chatting a little while ago, but we would like to talk on again this symbolism of the gamekeepers on the rock arts of the Kosos and, you know, those affiliated tribes of the Uto as second language spectrum. Yeah. Let's give our listeners a little thumbnail in the sense that many of you may be aware, talking about our our listenership, that Tirtha and I just published a book, a 70,000 word book by Bergen Publications,
00:05:25
Speaker
on the iconicity of the U.S. Tekins,
Indigenous Perspectives on Sacred Symbols
00:05:28
Speaker
and I know I've spoken about that in Tirtha has as well, but on an additional matter another book has come out in which I have a chapter and that book is edited by Richard or Rick Chacon, and it's ah on a ah study worldwide of what's called the supernatural game keeper. And that is ah actually a ah good terminology, even and even calling that same individual or an analog for it some sort of an earth mother or earth father, and even in sometimes a ah lunar or solar god and goddess.
00:06:10
Speaker
There's ah a bit of a package there in terms of symbolism and also in terms of the cognitive map of the universe that the indigenous people have. Would you agree yeah with that? Yes, is of course. the ah What this means is that as we tend to use the the metaphor of the game keeper, we are actually talking about a hunter-gatherer context.
00:06:39
Speaker
and the 90% of human prehistory, or if you look at the meta-historical spectrum. We have been hunter-gatherers mostly, and agricultural settlements wouldn't date from before the middle-blaster sign or the Paleolithic I guess. The reason that I was asked to be in that book, that supernatural gamekeeper book, and this has been something I've spoken about before right on on this rock art podcast, is there's a unique example, which is somewhat rare, ah not unique alone, but extremely rare, even worldwide, that there is a panel, a rock art panel, a pictograph,
00:07:30
Speaker
in the Tehachapi Mountains and the and in the homeland of the Kauai'asu Indians that is called Yahuera Kanina, which means home of Yahuera. And Yahuera is a supernatural gamekeeper. And so they have ah you know an actual term in their own language for that place. But further than that,
00:07:55
Speaker
They have a very robust theology that's been ethnographically documented, and even documented historically, you know, within the last several years ah through the Kawaiasu Language and Cultural Center, that tells us all the details surrounding this picture and how the what the Kauai'is who believed and what the function of the images are and what the actual nature of this particular place yes was in terms of the indigenous cosmology. And so even in this worldwide book, when we have people
00:08:38
Speaker
you know, chiming in from the Altai, from Torrey Strait, from certainly Mexico and the South America, et cetera, et cetera. It is quite rare for anthropologists and the native peoples themselves in some instance to share this knowledge, which of course is is is rather secret and rather important and rather spiritually endowed to identify exactly how a picture, a picture on stone relates to all of these matters that we're talking about, including
00:09:19
Speaker
things Things like hunting magic, which i don't I know we don't like that term, something like increased rites, or the ah the resurrection the resurrection and transmogrification of the spirit animals.
00:09:34
Speaker
yeah allowing them to be rebirthed and transformed and enter back into the terrestrial world and also that this deity is it needs to be connected with spiritually and the animals must be hunted in a very reverent way in a sacrificial way and when they are hunted one must also provide the reference and the cognition that we they would have to be thankful to this particular god or goddess and also perform certain key ceremonies so that they could be allowed to hunt again and if that wasn't the case
00:10:21
Speaker
then in the future hunting would be difficult to impossible and they would be unable to acquire the needed nourishment for their people. Am ah am I somehow explaining all that? ah Yes, yes, of course. I mean this is this is crucial to our contemporary studies of the sacred symbolism of these of these cultures. Part of the reticence the unwillingness to talk about any sacred symbol or icon lies in the fact that the discourse of the of the sacred or the semiotics of the of the sacred that these cultures possess
00:11:04
Speaker
or continue to nurture and and respect and you know practice in some ways or yeah or the other, would be invaded by foreign or external methods of interpretation.
Gender Roles and Sacred Symbols
00:11:20
Speaker
even ethnography or ethnology. you know if you If you look back at the origins of ethnographic studies in in Europe in the 19th century and the way ethnologists or ethnographers were approaching and trying to interpret These cultures but They also they had a very prejudiced way of looking at them. I wouldn't know I wouldn't call it. ah I wouldn't ascribe a value Judgment to that. I would say that it's ah it's it's their own way of it's a more scientific. Yeah, it was a Western way yeah ah Cartesian way. How's that? Yeah, exactly exactly And this was something yes that I think
00:12:05
Speaker
in some ways, ultimately offended indigenous people. Am I correct or wrong? Yes, yes. Of course, they were trying to preserve that that archetype which they had respected and for which they had this the sense of belonging for for generations, for eons of history, of time. The other thing that has occurred and in my in my current effort, four-year effort i that I'm trying to put out is that Is that much of a literature yeah on on on such deities was very androcentric, very male.
00:12:48
Speaker
Very gender-specific, yeah. Yeah, let's talk about that for a minute. What what do we mean by that? Yeah, I'd love to talk about that. I mean, yeah this is the distinction that we were talking about, you know, the etic and the emic and how about looking at it from inside and at looking at the gender, looking at the gender issues. Well, what I wanted to just rehash for today while talking about the game keeper symbolism is the fact that but before i I jump on to the gender question,
00:13:22
Speaker
I would love to you know articulate some of the ideas very briefly that ah that I have about the Gamekeeper. And this is that the Gamekeeper is a layer of human evolution. It's important, indispensable that and The starting point ah for for any inquiry into these deities, like the gamekeeper, the Yawera, Kanina, it comes from a process which we can call representational miniscularity.
00:13:57
Speaker
In fact, even as far back as, you know, when I was studying for my doctoral research, I tended to fall back on this idea of the visual scarcity in the availability of the are the visual cues that were giving us a message in these archetypal visual symbols, like It's a miniaturized form. It's an impression of a human shape that does not have a very realistic, depictive rule of engagement. What we have instead is an anthropomorph and an impression of something like a human being. And it's it's a miniatur. It's contained. The features have been co-opted subjectively by the by the artist.
00:14:49
Speaker
in the proportion of the lengths of arms legs the head to the its body the dimensions of the torso you know the adjuncts to the body like the eyes ears the mouths the horns sometimes they have antennas it seems that Though the deity has a human resemblance, there are differences in the actual appearance of these adjunct forms, but they are meant to draw or call your attention. ah The gender is also part of this
00:15:26
Speaker
interesting game that the ritual artist is playing. So this level of curiosity, attention, power of the gaze of the gamekeeper, the gamekeeper is looking at us with a single eye or a concentric shaped head. It has a miniaturized body And it's like, it also looks like this this gamekeeper looks like a shepherd or a um like a pastor, a keeper of animals. Let's stop there. Let's pick this up on the next segment because you're talking about some rather important aspects of trying to understand the imagery of these figures. See you on the flip-flop, gang. Welcome back, gang. We have Trithamukahabodai.
00:16:14
Speaker
our doctor who teaches at the Guanajuato University, and this is segment two of our rock art podcast. And before the break, we were talking about the attributes and the figurative elements of these supernatural and super mundane beings. Taritha, let's go from there.
00:16:36
Speaker
Yes, so or even if we try to explain the the meaning of this ah these symbols from an etic, from an external ethnographic point of observation, we notice that the basic function of of this Gamekeeper symbol is sustenance, it's a provider figure, it's ah keeping and the animals are all playing around it and it's there that all the ah the animals, the presence of animals is so interesting. that That's another aspect of these universal prototypes because
00:17:21
Speaker
What role do do the animals play in the theatre of the Gamekeeper? That's the question. So, the emot emotionally, they they connect the connect viewer you know with this ah the idea of security, promise, abundance, the playfulness of life. If you look at the Yawera, so they have ah the The message is clear. It's it's the the affect. The affect is very important in in such symbols. And there there's this question of affect, that that this that this God-like figure, this what you know what the Indian,
Dreams and Rock Art Symbolism
00:18:02
Speaker
indigenous gen groups call the Bonga, the Aztecs call them their deities, the gods and goddesses of of the Aztecs.
00:18:15
Speaker
Teotl, the word that signifies or refers to deities, all these god-like figures because they there is an emotional question involved here but that they are protecting you, they are our protectors. The gender question is very important because in in nature, gender Gender is a cultural construct, but gender roles are also biologically intertwined or entangled with questions of you know ah physiological bodily
00:18:55
Speaker
functions and behavior, although those those roles those biological, predetermined biological roles are changing with the interventions of modern science. ah Traditionally, the kinds kind of affect that is represented in these images would always assure the viewer, would assure the participant of that culture who is was an emic participant, like looking at the culture from inside and believing in the real presence of such impressions, such psychological moments, the effect, the connecting affect would be very important for them.
00:19:35
Speaker
So a female figure who takes care of her children, you know, if we if we extend that that metaphor to believe in the motherly aspect of the of of the relationship, the Mother Earth symbol, for example.
00:19:54
Speaker
And the it's also a power-wielding entity, someone who has control over your life and who is protecting you. And this message is very important. And I think the success of the archetypal rock art lies in the ability to communicate that message for us and and it is this message that that that actually fascinates us even to this day when we stand in front of you know like the the the kozo animal masters and the
00:20:36
Speaker
the gender question, the like ah like a protecting father or a protecting mother, god or goddess, there is gender ambiguity in certain instances. And these questions are also very closely connected, I believe, to the nature of the dream. Yes, yes, absolutely. One thing that you just mentioned about gender ambiguity, I know from the Aztec, the Nahua cultures, that gender ambiguity was embraced. And that in much of the way they thought about things, was this, you know, oppositional forces or the plus and minus that were available simultaneously. It wasn't wasn't seen as
00:21:22
Speaker
as difficult to embrace a dichotomous example of both a male and female figure in one. yeah When the Kawaisu talked about this Yahuera figure, this supernatural guardian, the ethnographers and the people the Kawaisu themselves say,
00:21:42
Speaker
that the women recognized and saw this figure as a man and the men recognized and saw this figure as a woman. five And that this was, they would enter into this connection, I believe in times in a dream. I think the dream world was something they would embrace as well and and be ah able to see and connect with with such figures in their dreams. that And that appears to be common. Certainly um the the dream time worldwide seems to be the envelope, the conduit, the portal to the world of the supernatural, isn't it? Absolutely. I mean, how far can we go back in time? Or should we not go back in time?
00:22:36
Speaker
to to understand this phenomenon of dreams, the honoric. on a logical ah image because the especially the the rock arts and and even even if you consider the representation of the deities, polytheomorphic religious deities, the gods and goddesses with with ah ten arms, hundred arms, sometimes of ambiguous gender, as in the Buddhist representations of
00:23:10
Speaker
the Bodhisattvas, the spiritual beings who have been coming for the edification of people in different periods of time. They have ambiguous gender, for example, but they are part of a dream continuum and the the physically, visually,
00:23:32
Speaker
the image resembles ah the experience of that image is very similar to the experience of a human being whom you might have known in real life. But as you would see see him or her in a dream, when we have dreams of our parents, of those who have departed, ah those who have or are maybe even our grandparents, our great-grandparents, I mean, they might come back to us.
00:24:00
Speaker
in a dream. Let's pick this up on the next segment. See you in the flip flop game.
00:24:06
Speaker
Welcome back, gang. You're at the ah Rock Art Podcast, Episode 130, with ah Turtha Mukahabadai from Guanajuato, Mexico. Hi, Turtha. Hi, Alan. So let's pick it up where we left it left it off, please. Go right ahead. Yeah, sure. So actually came up to a very interesting juncture where we were really trying to correlate the characteristics of the Rock Art images, the anthropomorphs, the animal figures, the visual adjuncts, all those semiotic elements on the panel. And we were trying to correlate those characteristics or features to the experience of the dream.
00:25:02
Speaker
the honoric experience in other words and what is evident here is the similarity of the rock art image which is like a floating numinous anthropomorph, you know, with those bird-like feet, giving us an impression of appearing, the momentariness of that image. and you' And you're exactly right about all that in terms of some of the analogs that we've seen, even with Mesoamerica, when you look at co-op liquid, yeah, she's the, yeah you know, the
00:25:38
Speaker
snake skirt snake figure, yeah one of the queen goddesses, her legs hu have ah you know the talons of a bird, there's feathers at her legs, and then of course it's she's either birthing a snake or connected to the earth with some sort of a snake-like tether,
00:25:59
Speaker
And then she's covered with skulls and snakes. And feathers. Which of course shows us that you know binary opposition of both life and death.
00:26:10
Speaker
Yes, it's it's it's like, yes, it's the numinous, it's the ah plumed serpent, right? So that it has wings and it is bud-like features, but it's a snake at the same time. So it's it's combining all those characteristics. And so this is, the image has a really the the gamekeeper, animal masters, anthropomorphs, they have a dream-like quality.
00:26:34
Speaker
And the significance of this is, I guess, i mean this is we are not we cannot claim any kind of absolute truth or verity about the
Hunting Rituals and Symbolism
00:26:48
Speaker
claim. But ah what what this reminds us of, in fact, is that from this from this perspective of the storytellers because these the ancient peoples or the people who communicate by means of rock art, they they are storytellers.
00:27:06
Speaker
and the they are they create dream images for us. So the dream archetype is essentially a semblance. It's like a film. It's like a theater of characters that we have actually seen or experienced. Hence an image such as a dream enables a transition, you know, through planes from from reality to dream and from dream to reality. So it's like passing through a membrane of experience, a membrane of characters who live on the other side of on the other side and are far away from us who are full bodied and they do not, they are like, you know, like
00:27:57
Speaker
I remember Shakespeare saying stuffs that dreams are made of. So they resemble those dreamlike characteristics. And this is because the dream connects us to the numinous experience, the numinous image. And what we have, therefore, in with the Gamekeeper is as the experience of a dream in which of a human-like figure appears and is connected, ah reveals to us his or her connections to the creatures of Mother Nature. And this is this is a very important kind of assurance for anybody, for the hunter, who has to perform these specific rituals
00:28:48
Speaker
before he goes on a hunting trip or project and who has to apologize for harming those animals, for killing those animals, yet receiving them with the with the blessings of the of these spirit keepers, these game these animal masters.
00:29:11
Speaker
So all those emotions I believe are involved in the archetype of the gamekeeper. And i it's what seemed to fascinate me is that it's not just not just in in this in the American Southwest. And I just started compiling ah literature on a cultural anthropological research on the connections of animal masters, gamekeepers, images in the southwest, in the Kosos, in Mesoamerica, in the Aztec religions, in the various expressions of the Mixteca. And if you look at Codex Borgia or um some of the other codices, there's a god called Mishkwatl.
00:30:04
Speaker
which is Mishqatl is the god of hunting. And the the defining elements of this god in the codices, as Mishqatl is represented in the codices, are very similar to the Yawera. It has some kind of staff, or you know an atlatl, or arrows, or a spear-like ah hunting tool.
00:30:29
Speaker
or an obsidian, you know the addition of the the very region-specific reference, the obsidian. Then there is this, he wears an animal skin, much like the textiles which with patterns on it, which resembles the textile patterns on the Southwest, ah anthropological cultural identity groups.
00:30:57
Speaker
So, the Mikshquatl is a brother of Tezcatlipoca, is also a brother of Quetzalcoatl, they are three brothers. And so, this entire myth, the story of the hunter a god, of the god of hunting, is very much intrinsic to the Aztecs. It is very much intrinsic to the Asian, Asian relations.
00:31:26
Speaker
And you know, even as they are practiced today, the Chinese pantheon, the Indian religious pantheon will have these gods and goddesses, which bear hunting tools and arms, and they kill animals, and or they are they are they ride yeah they ride on the animals, like the and they and they can change shapes.
00:31:50
Speaker
The changing of shapes is a very important dream quality that these images have. Yeah, there's there's a lot here to sort of reflect upon and and get and insights and wisdom regarding these particular figures. One of the problems I'm dealing with in this upcoming book of mind is this class of figures, this decorated animal human figures, which are, you know, very simple, to yeah similar to Yahuera. Yahuera and the Kwaisu ethnography was a key for me to understand these decorated animal human figures that are ubiquitous in the Kosos. There's, um oh, I don't know, let's say 700 to 1000 of them
00:32:35
Speaker
there and we can date them. We can actually date them because we can date them in a variety of ways and they're very very ancient. They go back to this period even earlier than the Newberry known as the Little Lake period associated with Pinto style projectile points. And that is in the in in the range of but what I call it maybe 5, 6, 7, or 8,000 years old. And we know this because of dating of these images through portable XRF, X-ray fluorescence, and because of other other ways to access information.
00:33:17
Speaker
including their so position Yeah, would would you say that the yeah projectile points, and we have a chapter on the Newbery, you know, the projectile points from Nevada, right? And would you say that these these hunting tools. the ah the The hunting tools themselves, again, they resemble some kind of, you know, some new numinous or de-ethic. Right, exactly. yeah Something something that that stuck in my craw for the longest time and I could not understand it. I said, here are these figures
00:33:55
Speaker
that appear to be super mundane, you know, figures that are deities. And a large number of them are obviously women. They have, you know, the the gendered elements of anatomically women. Why is there women and there's the super mundane figures? Would they be associated with male hunting equipment?
00:34:20
Speaker
And it it just, it just was such a paradox for me. But when you pierce the veil and study the information, you know, ethnographic information across the globe.
Transformative Nature of Symbols
00:34:33
Speaker
And then especially looking at the ah American Southwest and high cultures of Mexico, they show female figures anatomically with these weapons of war and weapons of fighting because they are perceived in part as as sort of weapons that are of of creation. when we bring in When the men brought in and slayed a game animal, it was like they were birthing or bringing in you know ah the nourishment to create life.
00:35:10
Speaker
And so it was a life creation metaphor as well as a death dealing weapon. Does that make any sense? Yes, exactly. And that's possible in a dreamlike state. You know you can you can interchange those those symbolic elements to mean something else.
00:35:31
Speaker
and there is complete transparency, there is complete freedom because because in the dream world you do not really have the these impediments of objectivity, the impediments of identity and affixity. There is the special privilege of of the ability to transform and for the object itself to transform so we can look at it in multiple ways. I mean the mother the mother who is who gives birth, who is a sustainer,
00:36:10
Speaker
also ensures death at the same time the mother can can kill you know these images of the indian the tantric gods and goddesses which are which probably have their origins in in central india and which have been further you know, being developed and in various ways and complex iconographic representations in Tibet, in the tantric traditions of Tibet and Buddhist tantric traditions. So you're saying that even even though the the gender is female, yeah there's there's sort of the dealers are providers of life and death because they have it in their power to both create and destroy. Am I right? Yes.
00:36:58
Speaker
they they are They are destroying and they are renewing as well. So that is is exactly what happens in nature because what one generation is decimated and you know it's ah it' it's buried in the earth. But it gives rise to like crops, harvest.
00:37:20
Speaker
and life and it's part of the cycle of life and death. right So this is yeah so this is very very important and very interesting. and and and you know So if we were going to put sort of a bow on this and and say something to our listeners,
00:37:38
Speaker
what's What's the takeaway? What's the most important element of the discussion that we've been providing about these these beings that may be both men and women, that are protectors, but you have death dealers, creatives, etc.
00:37:56
Speaker
what What should they understand in terms of the theology of the indigenous and the relationships of their cultural material, their descriptors that we see in rock art and in um you know in the and the also the statuary, et cetera?
Personal Experiences with Supernatural Symbols
00:38:11
Speaker
What is the key takeaway that helps them understand or appreciate and explain some of this?
00:38:17
Speaker
Well, i can I would like to and bring in on an interdisciplinary perspective to the answer to this question just because it is so close to what I have been doing for a long time ah studying iconography from a philosophical theological yeah perspective. And I think one of the takeaways, I mean, even if you are considering this question from a positivist view, and it retains this its ah its value, its universal character, and it is this, that there is ultimately a very subjective
00:39:02
Speaker
personal experience in any event involving your encounter with a supernatural gamekeeper. it's There's a personal element involved in that experience.
Conclusion and Credits
00:39:18
Speaker
And that personal experience ah resembles, in many ways, a dream experience. OK, I think with that, we're going to have to close very closely. OK. Let's put a bow on it and and say goodbye to our listeners and tell them we'll see him on the flip flop. Sure. Thank you. Bye bye. Well, thank you.
00:39:46
Speaker
Thanks for listening to the Rock Art Podcast with Dr. Alan Garfinkel and Chris Webster. Find show notes and contact information at www.arcpodnet dot.com forward slash rock art. Thanks for listening and thanks for sharing this podcast with your family and friends.
00:40:18
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his ah RV traveling the United States, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, Dig Tech LLC, Cultural Media, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Rachel Rodin. 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 chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com.