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Eat, Pray, Quarantine: The 2020 Summer of Covid - Ep 30
288 Plays5 years ago
In this episode our three intrepid hosts re-cap their summers in quarantine. They talk the missed field work opportunities, the pressures of publishing, oh and Connor got married.
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- Email: alifeinruinspodcast@gmail.com
- Instagram: @alifeinruinspodcast
- Facebook: @alifeinruinspodcast
- Twitter: @alifeinruinspod
- Website: www.alifeinruins.com
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Find this show on the educational podcast app, Lyceum.fm!
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Transcript
Introduction and Hosts' Summer Recap
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.
00:00:14
Speaker
Welcome to episode 30 of a life in ruins podcast, reinvestigate the careers and journeys of those living life in ruins. Welcome back for another edition of our ruin lives. I am your host Carlton gover. And as always, I am joined by my co-host Connor, John, and, and David and how we are recording today. It's just the three of us. We don't have a guest. We are just kind of reflecting on our summers and just some
00:00:38
Speaker
Some announcements are going to talk about some theories, so kind of a laid-back episode for you guys today.
Connor's Wedding Celebration
00:00:43
Speaker
We do want to congratulate our host, Connor, who we're recording this August 26th, and Connor got married to the beautiful
00:00:56
Speaker
It's Taylor. I was present. I was there for the wedding. I just, I just slipped for some reason. I wanted to say like, he got married to the beautiful Taylor, uh, last week at Crested Butte, uh, me and David were both present. It was amazing. Great wedding, great service. And, uh, so yeah, Connor is a married man now. And, uh, moving on from that embarrassing gaffe, uh, David has some shout outs, uh, for our listeners.
00:01:23
Speaker
That was a human blue screen right there. I get it though. Happens to me twice a day.
Engaging with Listeners
00:01:27
Speaker
So we have quite a lot of active listeners to my surprise. I didn't know what we actually did. People that kind of respond to our stories, people that comment on our posts and people that actually like message us saying like, Hey, great podcaster, you know, we listen, yada, yada. We have a long list of those. So I'm just going to get cracking on those right now.
00:01:48
Speaker
Leonie Kohenie Ribiero, he is a Brazilian urologist. He's actually a good friend of mine through ethnocynology. We chat a lot, also ask him some questions about urology. And he also has a page called Kohenie Paleoart. So it's k-o-h-e-n-e dot paleoart. Also shout out to Ashley Sutter. I know you're a huge fan. You've also been super supportive of us the whole way. Nikolai Gorishnik, it's nick.geo54.
00:02:16
Speaker
is your name. Can't say I'm butchering the German there. Nate Smith, Berger and Thais, Samuel Wilford, Michelle Davenport. I know you listen. Thank you so much. Bruinhart, thanks for reaching out. Lisa Lantik, you're amazing. Cody Wolf, Jedi Wolf is your name. Great talks all the time.
00:02:32
Speaker
Joshua Miller, he's a fellow anthropologist. Billy Rules Dude is his name. I think it's just his name might be Billy. Rob Will Ark, do some awesome Mississippian stuff. Celes Chapman, we've given you a feature Friday, I believe. Coollythicsguy has a YouTube channel. Sighless. Say it with me. Sighless. Sighless. Sighless. I'm assuming. Correct us if we're wrong, Celes.
00:02:57
Speaker
C-list maybe? S-I-L-A-S. There we go. Robin S. Morgan. Wait, no. Morgan Robbins. That's your actual name. You're one of my good friends. I shouldn't have messed that up. The second you said that, I was like, that is not how you say her name.
00:03:16
Speaker
Alise Maloney. I don't know how you actually say that. That was probably wrong of me to do that. She did cool stuff in Ireland. She lives in California. Cool stuff. CRM. No, in school. One of them. You're great. Mark Torinder. You were a guest on the show. Thanks for listening all the time. You always messaged us saying that you've listened or had a pointy thing to say about the episode. So thank you. Darcy Miller. Who the hell is that? Oh, Darcy Shane Miller. There you go. Also been a guest on the podcast.
00:03:43
Speaker
Mariah, Shane's first name is Darcy, guys. Dude, we're in a group chat with him. We talk to him daily now. Yeah, I've known him for like eight years and I forget that's his first name.
00:03:54
Speaker
Mariah's, I think he's tried to bury it is the main reason. Mariah's story, she's the one who made our comic book art, right? Yeah. She made the archaeology Avengers art. She's a huge fan. She listens to our podcasts when she draws sometimes. Huge fan. You guys should definitely go and follow her at Mariah B's story and subscribe to her comic about archaeology. It's fascinating. I own actually the physical copies and I follow on webtoons and it's just a fun time.
00:04:21
Speaker
Great. Also Rob Barlow. He listens to all of them. Thanks man. You'll probably be on at some point, Todd Suravel. Uh, the name kind of sounds familiar. I don't know who that is though. And then Heather Rockwell. Thank you so much for listening. Todd. I'm just, I cursed Todd $1 in the jar. That's two. What did they do? What did they do? You said the D word too. Yeah.
00:04:43
Speaker
I'm so bad at this. You're not a beaver. All right. If I didn't get you on there, it's because I literally ADHD'd for 45 minutes trying to find all the screenshots of people that I said I was going to give shout outs to. If I didn't, please respond to us. Angry reacts only to the Instagram or the Twitter, preferably the Instagram, because I don't check the Twitter. Twitter is just a garbage place. Oh, I hate Twitter.
00:05:06
Speaker
If you can just message us, I will give you a shout out the next time. And if you have anything we want to plug or shout, or if you want to be featured on our feature Fridays, please let us know. Actually, every Friday morning, probably around 11 AM, we're like, Oh God, who's our feature today? So like, if you want to be featured, just shout out and we'll get you on there.
00:05:23
Speaker
And please don't say things like, I don't think I'm worthy. It's like, dude, just, or dudette, reach out to us and just say, Hey, I'd like to be featured. This is what I do. Dude, we're going to, we're going to do it. We're going to feature you because that's what we're here for is a showcase up and coming anthropologists.
00:05:39
Speaker
to our followers. Also just kind of piggybacking. If you want to just reach out to us and talk to us for advice, Chris Dial reached out to us and I chatted with him via Zoom for like an hour the other week talking about grad school and how to apply. We've had a couple of those. So like, if you have questions for us or just want help, and I did it again a couple of weeks ago as well for another guy,
00:06:00
Speaker
Please reach out to us. We'd love to pass on some of our wisdom that we've collected. I wish I had someone when I was an undergrad who could help me out other than a professor handing me a book of programs saying, we'll figure it out for yourself. So we're here for you. Yeah. And double piggybacking off of that, I want to shout out Cesar Castillo who
00:06:21
Speaker
chats with us on Twitter and shouts us out. We super appreciate you engaging with
Transcripts for Academic Use
00:06:25
Speaker
us. And also to Dr. Brooke Drew at Indiana State University, who we are sending the transcript for the Dr. Robert Kelly episode. And she's going to actually use it as part of her syllabus in class as kind of a teaching method. So thank you for reaching out to us and help making us get our stuff together and get on those transcripts.
00:06:50
Speaker
So, thank you very much for that. Yeah. So, that episode's now also on YouTube. We have a complete transcript. It's captioned, so it's ADA compliant. So, if you guys have an episode that you like and want to share or want to use in your class, email us at alifandruinspodcastatgmail.com and just let us know. And if you give us at least two weeks notice, we can fit in our schedules. It takes like three hours to transcribe an episode. So, just give us time and we'll get it done because we really want
00:07:17
Speaker
It was really flattering to have a professor reach out and want this to be one of our episodes to be part of their class. Yes. And piggybacking off of that, one, I just realized I didn't put my pop filter on the microphone, so sorry for your ears before that. It should be better now. Two, got to give a shout out to Matty Mackey and Chase Mahan. You guys always listen and respond as well.
00:07:38
Speaker
And lastly, if anybody wants to help us get these transcripts, the thing is it takes a while. If you've got nothing to do, if you want to put on your resume, hey, I helped a Life Remover's podcast, or a famous archaeology podcast, or a professional dude, or whatever, just shoot us a DM, preferably on Instagram, Twitter, just that's cool. And let us know, because you can actually really help us out. And I will give you some free merch. Once we get some merch on here, I'll send you something too.
00:08:05
Speaker
And I want to do one more, one more shout out to these crazy people named Dean and Jennifer Johnan for guilting me almost every single week into, you know, becoming an adult and stopping the cursing. And also I want to thank them for listening to us all the time and entertaining my friends, even though my friends are degenerates. And thank you Dean and Jennifer for all you do and for making my wedding fantastic and for
00:08:32
Speaker
giving the talk to Carlton and David. I didn't get a talk. Actually, no. Your dad watched me try to open a bear-proof trash can, and I failed for a good 30 to 45 seconds. And then he said, how many degrees do you have? And I just responded with just an associate's, and he left. Congrats on getting married.
00:08:53
Speaker
Yeah, thank you. So we wanted, this is the inspiration, Carlton kind of brought this up in the beginning for this episode is that we had this fantastic episode last year that was full of cursing and was just so
Theme Introduction: Eat, Pray, Quarantine
00:09:04
Speaker
ridiculous. It's called, we call the eat, pray or eat, dig, love. Um, and it was a kind of Carlton
00:09:11
Speaker
recapping his crazy summer in Ukraine, you know, mid jet lag, just kind of doing his whole thing. So we wanted to do an episode where we, we do something similar, even though our summers have been less exciting and less, less interesting and less archeological focused, I would say. So that's kind of where this episode, the inspiration comes from it is we're going to do this episode called eat, pray, quarantine.
00:09:39
Speaker
Yep. That is the title. They said it in the title. Yeah. So yeah, exactly. That is the title. Yes.
Pandemic Impact on Archeology
00:09:49
Speaker
So as we've talked about already, as you guys heard, like Corona's going on, field work was canceled. We've all been stuck inside. I've been working for the museum here at Boulder. Connor's still been working. Um, David's still been working. It's was, and as we like talked with Bob Kelly on a previous episode, like this is just weird for all of us. Yes.
00:10:09
Speaker
And we're hoping to move past it, I guess, you know, like if you're an archaeologist or field scientist in general, you know how much the summer means to do fieldwork and things have definitely thrown us off for a loop. Um, so, I mean, like really the major part of the summer was like, I don't know, for me, I got to do some research in Oklahoma. You know, I did all the quarantine steps and then, you know, Connor's wedding was kind of the highlight of the summer and a good way to end it for me, at least.
00:10:39
Speaker
Yeah, and I want to thank Carlton and David for making it from their respective places to join me, celebrating my nuptials. It was outdoors, so we tried to be as COVID friendly as possible, but it was quite the experience. I'm sad to hear that you guys didn't get to do your field work that you would normally do, Carlton, and I know being stuck in Boulder at this time isn't the
00:11:05
Speaker
easiest thing to do. And I know being stuck in Georgia is also not the easiest thing to do. Oh my God, it's so hot and I step outside and my glasses get all fucked up constantly. You asked. It's uh, it's not my favorite place to live, but it's, it pays. Oh man.
00:11:30
Speaker
so yeah i'm i'm i'm a little i feel like i'm a little jet lag do you guys feel like you guys are a little jet lag from uh yeah i mean like it was i mean it's just it was just weird dude in terms of like my schedule
00:11:46
Speaker
you know, I'm used to like school ends in May. I go to field work. Last year I went to like Ukraine and then like I came back and I'm ready to go back again. Like not having, like having school end in March and just being at home from March till Monday, this past Monday, I really haven't had that reset switch if that makes any sense. So I'm not, I don't think I prepared as well as I should have for the start of the semester. I'm kind of just like,
00:12:15
Speaker
I don't know. Does that make any sense? Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah. Yeah. Like summer break, even in like elementary, middle and high school, it's like a solid reset. And then in archeology, like you get to do like your fieldwork every summer. And now that we
00:12:33
Speaker
don't get to do that. I haven't done it for the past two years every summer. I can't imagine having done it the past two years and just stopping right now for literally no reason other than disease. It's for the CRM profession. Winter is this time where you try to catch up on things, try to finish things.
00:12:56
Speaker
You know, and then ultimately get super bored and the company ends up losing a bunch of money because you're not actively doing field work or anything like that. So it's cool. And the summer was kind of this anticlimactic thing because we're usually waiting and all of a sudden we get these like tons of projects and like, everything goes nuts and you're just have, you know, everything's hectic, but it's exciting and everything's new. And we, we totally missed that this year. Instead I was sitting in my house staring at the hemp field behind me.
00:13:26
Speaker
and watching the pesticide sprayer dive bomb me. And it's been awfully disappointing. Yeah. You know, I think really what I missed most, like what made me nostalgic for field work, it's like, you know, you get the memories on social media and seeing all those things and just like kind of reflecting back on where I was last year. And then also like two years ago at Wyoming and then like Radford, it's just like,
00:13:53
Speaker
Not only do we not have a field season because of uncontrollable events, but I was getting constantly reminded of how much fun I was having in previous years. I was supposed to go back to Ukraine. I was actually going to go back to Ukraine in August, and then the travel ban on Americans happened. That just blew that away. I actually was ready to go for field work.
00:14:17
Speaker
I was like, okay, I might not be able to work at Lynch this year, but you know what? I'm going to go work on this Bronze Age site back in Cordova Island. That's how I'm going to top off my summer, go back to Ukraine, see my old friends, and be able to get some digging. Then it was like July 3rd, no more Americans. We're not allowing them into Europe. You're done. That was really disheartening. My roommate at the time was supposed to go to Iceland for a huge hike, and that got canceled too. We're just both sitting at home in July like, well,
00:14:48
Speaker
This is great. Like now it's not really set into like kind of how much of a bummer it was. Yeah. So at least you guys got to work from home, right? I did for a month or two. And then there's actually more cases in Georgia right now. Actually, I think Georgia is the worst in the state as of worst in the country, August 26th. But there's more cases now than there were when we actually had the shutdown in Georgia. So like,
00:15:15
Speaker
I don't know, I'm back in. I'm teaching and running the lab with five employees, three other coworkers, wearing masks, constantly distancing. It's a different vibe for sure. I mostly forget to put my mask on half the time. It's not so much that you gotta wear it all day. But yeah, it's interesting. And Carlton, you guys are doing, and we were talking about this before, you're doing a hybrid, at least for this class you were just telling us about before this episode, that you're doing a hybrid where you have
00:15:45
Speaker
half the students in there and half of them on Zoom and stuff? Well, so it's kind of funny. So before we were doing this episode, I had to hold them up so I can send out an email to my students explaining what this hybrid session is. So half my students show up via Zoom, the other half show up via in class, and it switches by week. And so I sent this email telling my students, hey, if you don't want to come in at all, just email me. It's fine.
00:16:08
Speaker
And through the course of this first segment, I just got 10 emails that say, hey, I just want to be online for the rest of the semester. So like half of my students already just want to be online out of this 25 student class. I have another class that's fully online as it is. So like I probably actually won't end up having a hybrid class if like three students want to show up in person because I'm not going to campus at 8 a.m. to sit in front of three kids and yell at a computer at the same time. So, you know, we'll see.
00:16:38
Speaker
But, you know, even then, Mr. Jonnan, I have the sneaking suspicion that in about two to three weeks CU Boulder Campus will be all online anyways. On that note, we're about to go offline for between 10 and 30 seconds. So catch you on the flip side.
00:16:56
Speaker
And we are back with episode 30 of Life Grewins podcast, another edition of Our Alone Lives. So just kind of like moving forward with our discussion in the previous segment about this COVID summer in academia, something that I struggled with, and this is really a reflection of the mental health issue or the mental health conversation that we had with Alex Krave. It's that even though I didn't have field work and wasn't in class,
00:17:25
Speaker
there was like an extreme pressure on myself and other academics in my department to publish or to do something, you know what I mean? Like, even though we didn't have field work, there was this innate pressure from the academy that you should be, if you're not working in the field, you should be publishing.
00:17:41
Speaker
And that was kind of a struggle for me. I remember kind of talking to you guys about it. It's not that I didn't do anything. I was able to get a first authorship that's in review. I have two co-authorships in review, and I have an edited volume that's being put together, though I didn't finish my prospectus, which I'm finishing up now. And it sucked. And even though I was still able to do these other things,
00:18:06
Speaker
I still feel like I didn't do enough. And that's coming from this academic perspective, right? The whole publisher perish. And I know there were other graduate students in my department who did CRM, which they usually do.
00:18:22
Speaker
And it kind of made them think. It's like, well, if no one's doing fieldwork and they're publishing, what's happening to me just doing CRM? And there is this really weird dichotomy between the archaeologists, the ones who had the canceled summers and the ones whose summers weren't affected. And I still really struggle with, you know, I didn't get my thesis published, which I've been working on. And actually, oh, God, I got to I got to respond back to Dr. Eric Robinson. He hit me up yesterday about it. I totally forgot. It's just weird.
00:18:50
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. It's like no one's, no one prepared us to be locked in our houses in an undergoing, you know, global pandemic. And then there's this added pressure of, like you were mentioning, this publisher parish that, you know, we're already stressed about
00:19:07
Speaker
You know, this, this published pairs thing would throw on a global pandemic and then throw on being stuck in your house. Like there's, I don't think there's a good way to cope. And I don't, I think it's, I feel sorry for people who felt pressure under that because it's not, it's not fair to have to deal with all of that at the same time. You know, that just doesn't, it doesn't seem fair to me.
00:19:31
Speaker
Yeah, it's just weird. And we still have the podcast going. We still crush that over the summer, getting that done. For those that listen to Bob Kelly's episode, I was in El Paso, Texas. And that's why my audio sounded like garbage, because I was in this office trying to mitigate echoes. And it took me till the second segment to figure it out. But I really just want to start this off with, for our listeners, if you're undergraduates, graduate students, I know your summer's reflected, your time will come to publish. For a lot of people, including myself, the way that I try to zen out,
00:20:02
Speaker
I would go camping as often as I could with my partner. We would just run off to the mountains. She almost got killed by a moose. It was a whole deal. It got to the point at the end of July
00:20:13
Speaker
where I had been working on these articles and like working on the research and I just said, I'm done. Like I need to take three weeks off to try to decompress because like having that added stress just wasn't fun. So for those that also underwent the same summer through Corona and don't feel like they accomplished you as complicated as much, like your worth isn't measured by your CV. Like the length of your CV does not equate to your worth as a person. And we all move at different times.
00:20:42
Speaker
Don't stress out about it like I'm still trying to figure it out like I talked to I'm fortunate enough to have Connor and David to bounce things off like we're in a group chat every day and When I'm feeling feeling blue I hit up my boys David will also often send a gift of Kermit jumping off of a window. Oh, he's not jumping He's jumping he's yeah, he's yeah, it's yeah, so
00:21:05
Speaker
The whole point of this is like, I felt this way. And even though I did what I did over the summer, you guys shouldn't worry about it. There'll be more. You'll have your time to write your articles, do research. Hopefully next summer in the States, everything with Corona is wrapped up. We can get back into the field. So yeah, that's my soap box. Thank you for listening to it. Yeah. Keep your head up. Yeah. Keep your heads up.
Debunking Myths: Giants in Archeology
00:21:29
Speaker
That's all I gotta say.
00:21:30
Speaker
Speaking of heads up, how do you guys feel about the Giants? Not the New York Giants, like literal archeological Giants. I get a lot of DMs about Giants because they saw it on a documentary on, you know, Christian Nation 5 or whatever the channel is. So like... Christian Nation 5. Yeah. Or like Discovery sometime. I don't know where it comes from. Discovery did the thing about mermaids one time.
00:21:54
Speaker
Yeah. Can I say they also did one on Megalodon? And I vividly remember watching Undergrad with my partner at the time. And she's like, I can't believe the shark's that big in the water. And I'm like, Katie, what are you talking about? Like, this is a fake documentary. And she was just like,
00:22:12
Speaker
No, it's on Discovery Channel. This is real. And I stopped it and tried to show the CGI of this megalodon taking a whale. And it just looks so unnatural. And her response was, it's on Discovery Channel. They wouldn't do this. This is real. I am scared to go on the ocean that megalodon is there. And it's like, wow. So I was on that same line that the mermaids came out. It was the same production company.
00:22:35
Speaker
Oh, man, I hated that. And they said they said up front. They're like, this is not true. This is a work of fiction. People still thought I was real. Yeah. Yeah. It was like painful. I had painful conversations with people. It's based off the the aquatic ape theory, too, which is like honestly interesting. But like there's no appearing.
00:22:56
Speaker
that one of the reasons we're bipedal and hairless is that we were like wading through rivers and swamps like getting fish and whatnot because the interesting is only other the only other animals that are like really hairless mammals besides like mole rats are dolphins cetaceans and
00:23:11
Speaker
aquatic ones, like manatees and whatnot. So she was thinking, I forget who the anthropologist was, possibly we spent a lot of time in the rivers, like waiting around and it helped us regularly. And we also have our fat outside of our muscle, like other animals do, or marine animals. But that does not mean there's a giant civilization of cannibalistic mermaid people living in the ocean that use spear tridents out of shells. I love the idea, but like,
00:23:37
Speaker
Where are they in the nets? We find all sorts of other crap in the nets, like boots and Toyotas. Like where were the mermaids? No fam. That's my answer. No fam. And you know, it's funny. I look back on those days. Like I remember that conversation so vividly with my former partner and it's like, you know, that's, that's what happens when you date a sorority girl who's majoring in, you know, criminology.
00:24:00
Speaker
And I think I have, I don't know, I don't think Lana would be as gullible to things like that being a double PhD student. I'd imagine she's, she watched something like that would be okay. But yeah, I remember that mermaid thing. And talking back to Giants, we've had a couple, I'm trying to think on.
00:24:24
Speaker
David, I remember, I think I shared on the Instagram once before that I went to a leather shop to buy stuff for moccasins and my regalia and the dude was like, oh, she know that for jackets.
00:24:34
Speaker
And then remember we reached out to my cousin who runs the American Indian Museum in DC. And I was like, Kevin, is it true that the Smithsonian is hiding giants? And his response was something like, shh, don't tell. And it's like, yeah. Over Twitter. Over Facebook. He's like, you're not supposed to talk about that. I'm like, dude, you're supposed to squash this for my audience right now. And you're actively not engaging with the topic, which makes me think that there might be giants in the Smithsonian.
00:25:02
Speaker
Maybe, dude, maybe it's in the basement repositories. Denver National Airport's got giants underneath it, but continue, David. Oh my God. I was at the airport the other day. I thought it was a secret Nazi sub base or something. It's the New World Order headquarters. And actually when I was there recently, there's like giant construction signs that say like renovations or secret tunnel on it. Like they just fully embrace it and I love it.
00:25:26
Speaker
It's great. It's like new restaurant or secret hideout for the lizard people. Pizza gate headquarters. I don't know.
00:25:37
Speaker
I get people that DM me a lot about giants. I've had some friends ask me about it in the past. The person that sent me this thing, I don't know if you listened to the podcast or not, but someone said, they sent me multiple articles about it and then multiple video clips and then said, there's so many, surely it has to be true. And I was like, oh.
00:25:59
Speaker
Cause like, there's so many other things that say like, your oxychloroquine's good for you, but like, there's also a lot of stuff that says it's not.
00:26:08
Speaker
You know, it's just, hey, is that the one that quoted a blog? Oh, that was a different one. That was about like the window of our bog people and that like there was Caucasians here first. That's a whole other thing. But the other giant one I got was when I should go back to like your hometown and like people are like, Hey, hey, how's it going? Like I heard you're a paleontologist and I'm like, no, I'll just, and then you got to do that. And then everyone's like, so like, tell me about some digs and stuff. Well, I went back to the music store that I used to work at.
00:26:36
Speaker
And like all the employees and like music teachers that worked there were like, hey David, how's it going? And like asked me questions. And then one of the music teachers who I'd never met came out and he was like very enthusiastic and like eager to ask me this question. And he comes out and he's like, hey man, like I've seen so much stuff about them giants. Is that true? And I was like, uh, no, no, that's not true.
00:27:02
Speaker
And usually I'll try to sugar coat it in a way that is like, I mean, maybe, but like that time I was just like, no, I gotta, I gotta shoot this guy right down.
00:27:11
Speaker
If you think about it, was Andre the Giant, or whoever those big tall dudes was, they got a lot of health issues in their 30s, 40s, 50s, and died young? Andre the Giant and Princess Bride, there's this scene where they're trying to choke him out. His back couldn't support the weight, so that's a whole rig scene that's not putting pressure on his back. He had multiple surgeries. Even in his later wrestling days, you'll see he's not supporting weight. For a big guy, you think his friend could take it?
00:27:40
Speaker
But you're not, I mean, gigantism sucks for that reason. Our body is through the process of evolution is meant to be the frame it is. And when you have gigantism, you're messing with that formula. Speaking of support, if we brought this up before, the populations you would need to support Bigfoot, Giants, all those things requires more than just one little person running out in the woods.
00:28:09
Speaker
Yeah, very true. And if like your stature couldn't support like the, going off of the support, you know, your, your body weight, could you also then build a Puma Pumku or Tewa Tewa con and lift up heavy builders to build things? I don't, I don't think so. You'd probably ailing a lot.
00:28:29
Speaker
Yeah, I think, you know, it's I think the whole Giants thing usually ties back with in European context. I want to say like on the same line as ancient aliens. I know, like there are some Southwest indigenous nations. They have stories about Giants and something that I kind of, you know, as David says, when people like, well, don't you believe, you know, I have I have family who are affiliated with Southwestern tribes when they talk about, well, we have stories of Giants.
00:28:58
Speaker
And my response, it's like, okay, well, in these stories, do they actually say how tall they were? And then usually it's like, no, they just say that they were large people. And I'm like, okay, so are you envisioning giants based on, you know, kind of like the social phenomena that we know what a giant supposed to be? I mean, in terms of cultural relativism,
00:29:16
Speaker
In prehistoric times, how tall was the population? What is a giant to them? For instance, if we're talking about the Vikings, that the Saxons were considered giants by the English, right? Because the English were generally 5'6", they didn't have a protein-rich diet, and so when Scandinavians showed up on raids, they're sending out...
00:29:38
Speaker
Six, six foot, they're drinking milk, a lot of cheese, eating a lot of meat. They were taller. And like, you know, you're talking about six inches difference, four inches difference, then they were considered giants. You know, so you have to bring that into context. It's like when you're thinking about giants, are you thinking about what you've seen in popular culture or, you know, does that make sense? Like there's the whole concept of giants is relative, you know, to David, Connor and I are giants, right?
00:30:13
Speaker
halflings. I want to jump in off that conversation. I want to, I was the funniest thing. So I'm a little hungover over the slides. You're good. You're good. So I'm a little hungover after this, this wedding weekend. I think it was the day before we turn on the TV and we're watching ancient aliens. Like it's on, you know, whatever. I'm going to, I'm going to do this. I'm just, I'm going to give them their second. And I have never been so mad at my life.
00:30:38
Speaker
That's funny.
00:30:38
Speaker
They use these indigenous oral traditions, don't give them context, and then make them seem like their support for aliens coming here and doing this and whatnot. Oh my god, I was like, I've never been less hungover in my life after I've seen something. I was so...
00:31:00
Speaker
freaking pissed because I could pick it out. We had like the subtitles on. I was like, OK, so there's the white guy, you know, consulting with the indigenous tribe. There's getting the story and then they're going to be like, oh, yeah, that means this is aliens, even though there's no context. And oh, my God, it's just it got me mad. It got me mad. It got me madder than, you know, David being short all the time.
00:31:22
Speaker
Oh my god. Yeah, watching Asian Aliens, I could stomach a half hour of that where I could do five minutes of tonight with Tucker Carlson, but they both kind of rub the same vein in me that just explodes in my head. Yeah, it's hard. Hey, you guys called me short twice. Let's go back to the Viking thing. Have you guys ever played katan? Settlers of katan? Yeah, of course I've played katan.
00:31:47
Speaker
I'm asking you, I'm asking the audience, but yeah, but I am asking you guys facetiously. I think we've played it together. Anyway, you know how like when there's like the robber or someone's like, Hey, can you trade with me or whatever? And you're like, I, I, I swear to God, I don't have any sheep. Like I only have like one wheat or whatever. Anyway, my friend Ben and I, sheep. That's the one thing you have in Katana. So we will play, you know, if they are rampant, they're, they're, they're pest.
00:32:16
Speaker
I will trade a gram of coke for some gosh darn clay. We make up stories for our people. And it's like, my people have been downtrodden for centuries and all they require is just one wheat. And anyway, we'll go into that thing and he's like, you swear to God, you don't have any brick. You don't have any wheat. You don't have any sheep. And they were like, whoa, milo, milo. The Vikings milo.
00:32:41
Speaker
They came out of the mist, they took a field, they took me wife, now we have no wheat to give me load. We'll like go, we'll like make this like insane thing and give the guy like a name and then throw out the game. He's just like, I'm sorry, me load. No, the sheep's been dead for the blight, me load.
00:33:04
Speaker
But it always ends up with the Viking, you know, they, they came for the mist to the ship's back. Anyway, irrelevant. You go straight.
00:33:18
Speaker
I have not, but be tunic, milo. Oh boy. Oh boy. All right. On that ridiculous note. Next thing. Yeah, we need to go. Welcome back to a life of his podcast. This is episode 30. Eat, pray, quarantine. Unfortunately, David's here. Unfortunately, Carlton's here. Unfortunately.
00:33:45
Speaker
So we wanted to take this last segment to talk about some funny, funny theories people get in archaeology, because you spend a lot of time out in the field with people and you get to talk and get the chatting. You get a little dehydration going and people come up with some really funny things and some really, you know, interesting theories about things. And I think David has one called the, I think it's the Dean John in theory.
00:34:14
Speaker
It's just the Dean theory, but if Dean Gianna, you are listening, this does not pertain to you. You are a great man. He's lying. Connor says only one. So I worked for SWCA environmental consultants and I had a field director.
00:34:32
Speaker
Hashtag SWICKA. They are always hiring guys if you need a job. Look up SWICKA. I will give you a recommendation. Just give me a call. Not that they care about my, you know, opinion. The Dean Theory was by John Kennedy, was my field director. Hilarious dude. So let's say you get to a site.
00:34:47
Speaker
And you got some cool, there's a riverbank, there's like a flat part of the site where you can see a stone circle, you got some Aeolian, some Falluvian action, it looks kind of cool. And then you have like a big lithic concentration on one side. So like the village where they were making stone tools. But then,
00:35:03
Speaker
And they're all nice stone tools. But the other side of the site, you find two or three little scattered flakes that just suck. They're like tertiary just shatter. They're bad. And you find like this really crummy by face. Now, normally you would look at this and just be like, oh, it's an isolate find in the site or it's just something on the site that got dropped over here or it's just a scatter. But John's idea was that there was a young boy named Dean. And if you can picture Ralph Wiggum from The Simpsons.
00:35:33
Speaker
And he's like, the leprechaun tells me to burn things. It's like this guy and Dean hung out with grandma while the other paleoindians are archaic and indigenous peoples were on the one side of the site, laughing it up, eating some deer, bison, whatever, what have you, making some great stone tools, costly signaling, getting women, getting men, whatever their.
00:35:55
Speaker
you know, whatever they wanted.
The Humorous 'Dean Theory' and Thesis Anecdotes
00:35:56
Speaker
And then the other side of the site was Dean and his little grandma, and she was like, Dean, you make the best points. And he was like, thank you. And he has his little point, and they just suck. And he just dropped them over there. And we called it the Dean theory. And every site you would get, you get it, like, especially out west in Wyoming, where there's just lithic scatters everywhere, you'd find this great concentration
00:36:19
Speaker
And then you'd find this one little thing and then we'd be like, we found Dean and they'd come over. And it was like this crappy little bi face that was just God awful. And it wasn't even like courts. It was like good material and someone just messed it up. So this might've been a child a hashtag. What's, what's the guy's name we're having on here? Crap Mackenzie. We're literally working with him and met him many times. So anyway,
00:36:45
Speaker
It could have been a child making this stuff, but we imagined it was this little Ralph William kid. He was like, Grandma! Grandma! Look at my pie face! And it was just bad. Like, that's a fine pie face, Jack or Dean, wherever he is. And anyway, so we would just shout out that we found him. A presentation of pre-Columbian indigenous people is of Southern grandmother rocking on her porch, drinking sweet tea.
00:37:10
Speaker
just like, Oh, sweet Dean, sweet, sweet child. Look at, look at that beautiful point you've made for grandma. Come over here and give your boo boo a kiss. Exactly. And like the, the other, the other Flynn nappers would let Dean hang out sometimes and, you know, show them the ropes.
00:37:27
Speaker
And he would try and try and try to make his best bilaterally reduced overshot flaked point, but Dean just couldn't hang. And they were like, all right, Dean, here's your little wigwam teepee, your stone-circled
00:37:42
Speaker
structure over here and you can you can play in that so that's also why the the smaller structures came up that could have been hunting blinds that could have been smaller like you know play houses but it was definitely Dean's house and we just I bet you know Dean couldn't make a buy face to save his life but I bet he was a hell of a trap after after done with their nice points they're like you know Dean knows how to type tie and not real good
00:38:07
Speaker
He did the sap where you get the turtle crap and the rabbit poop and the resin and then made the hafting. He just was eating the glue. What am I talking about? What is that stuff? Coronavirus. I need to say one thing. He was the best hafter or he was the best father.
00:38:34
Speaker
Oh, that's sweet. That's a good way to think of Dean. Oh, cause you're going back to your dad. None of that was thrown at Dean Jonnan for sure. Dean Jonnan has become one of my top, top 10 favorite people, like meeting him for the first time through your wedding. And he's just like, man, I listened to that podcast. It's like, I've known you already. And I'm just like, I am so sorry, sir. You've had to hear the ridiculous things that have come out of my mouth or yelling at your son about duck effigies in the Southwest.
00:39:02
Speaker
I hope we have a clean slate here at this wedding. I will do my best to make up for my persona on the Life Growns podcast. What is this material called that you bind the points with? Like it has a word, right? It's new. It's in you. No, it's in you. It's like the deer back strap, but like the glue. Why am I blanking on that? I hated it. Pitch. Pitch. There you go, bind pitch. Yeah. It was just the pine pinch eater. I have to say, like here's our dean for you. I can definitely taste the rabbit poop in this one.
00:39:33
Speaker
I think you just use like, I think you just use burned, it's just burned sap, isn't it? I didn't realize there was rabbit feces and such in there as well. Yeah, it's, um, binds it. It did, but it did binds it.
00:39:46
Speaker
And in the dock, Ms. Byneson. No, you could use rabbit poop, charcoal, and sap. But in Mexico, to make the macawattos, like the Aztec swords, they would put turtle poop, turtle dung into, that's really hard not saying the S word, turtle dung into the epoxy or the pitch or whatever to make it like really hold, because they were like beheading Spanish horses left and right, according to Cortez, but that was probably just an embellishment. Oh my gosh, I got the best commercial, you know, for pitch.
00:40:15
Speaker
It holds this crap together. That was a sweet pitch. A sweet pitch for pitch. There was a lot going on. There was a lot of symbolism in that. That was excellent, Connor. Thank you for bracing us with that in the corner. The puns on puns, man. The puns on puns in that one. That was brilliant. Class A stuff. I'm just killing time at this point. So we have the Dean theory. Connor has left the group, man.
00:40:48
Speaker
Jesus has left the message. I have a theory that's like less funny. Like it's not a Dean worthy. It's not Ralph Wiggum, but it's also pretty hilarious to think about prehistoric people in the past. Can I, can I go there? Yeah. Is it overkill hypothesis? No, that's, that's not funny. That's just sad.
00:41:12
Speaker
I'm so sorry. So this process of flint knapping isn't isn't something you just do overnight, right? You start out with the flake or you start with the core or even before that, even before that, you go to a quarry, you get this big. Even before that, there was nothing. There was a big bang.
00:41:38
Speaker
And then we had these weird little fish frogs come out of there, and then there's humans. And then, you go, you quarry, you get your material, you take it back to your location, you put it on a travois, whatever you do, you knock a flake off to begin this process, you start, you know, you're like, oh, that's a nice flake. Oh, I think I want to make this into a biface. You know, you start flaking on both sides, you start shaping it, start bleeding everywhere because everyone bleeds when they flint nap.
00:42:08
Speaker
That's so metal. That's wrong. Everyone bleeds. That should be a good metal. I bet that is a metal octave song.
00:42:18
Speaker
I bleed. So and then you're like, oh, OK, this is you know, this is pretty this is pretty flat. I wonder if I could turn this into a projectile point. OK, OK. I'll keep going. Keep shaping. Keep bleeding. OK, you know, it's getting pretty shaped. Well, let's do some really fine flaking to get the the notches and whatnot. And then you just like your things almost done and you just slip up and the sucker just breaks in half.
00:42:46
Speaker
And all you do, the worst, the worst, all I, all I imagine is someone taking that rock and just chucking it as far as they could. And that's the explanation of why you find isolated broken points really close to. Did I ever tell you when I pitched that idea to Bob for a thesis?
00:43:12
Speaker
like that one of the first few weeks I was at Wyoming and he was like David let's meet and discuss some thesis topics and I was like okay and I was like so what about like when people get real mad and just like break a point and then throw it and like we could do refit analysis and he was like David there's other processes that move points around the landscape and then just like was listening off like all the different reasons that could have moved he's like that would just be an absurd thing to do
00:43:36
Speaker
or something along those lines. I don't know, Bob, if you're listening, I don't remember what you said, but you definitely, definitely were like, nah, don't do that. The only thing I've been thinking about this entire time is like, aren't rocks technically just like blood of, blood of the earth, like cooled blood, like a scab almost? Cause it's like, you know what, nevermind, just ignore me. I don't know what I'm saying. Just I... Connor, I don't know. Did the mushrooms just hit? I think the mushrooms just hit. The Vikings below.
00:44:06
Speaker
They took their mushrooms and came through the town.
00:44:10
Speaker
So all I can think of with this Chukkit thing, we're still there. I'm still talking about it. Yeah, it's a problem. I shouldn't be talking about it. All I think of is like the scroll of truth meme, you know? Like, oh, I found the scroll of truth. And they open it up and it says something just ludicrous and they just huck it. That's all I can think of. Yeah. Cause like when you messed up something foot napping, you just want to throw it as like far as you can. Cause it's like,
00:44:38
Speaker
It's honestly, to say it's the most frustrating thing in humanity is like not a far stretch because it's probably been frustrating for 3 million years. Is that how Ootsie got that in his hip? Ootsie got shot in the back. Kennewick man got shot in the hip. Okay, okay. I think, right? I might be flipping those up, but I think Ootsie definitely slept with someone's wife or husband. Yeah, I think you're spot on. Yeah.
00:45:09
Speaker
because they left them with this stuff. Like you would have brought, if you came back with Utsi's axe, they'd be like, hey, where's Utsi? And you're like, I don't know. Like it's not gonna work. He definitely got offed. Yeah, yeah. He got offed. There we go. Yeah. He got offed. He got offed and then offed. Have you quit checking emails?
00:45:31
Speaker
I've blue-screened. I just don't know how to deal with students. I'm so sorry. I'm back in it. For those that don't know, just got an email from a student asking her classes, you know, check your syllabus. For all of our listeners who are not in graduate school, check your syllabus. You know, your recitation teacher won't hate you for it. So I got names tomorrow.
00:45:54
Speaker
Did I tell you guys the story of the expected values with Todd? The what? My expected values.
00:46:04
Speaker
Carleton, I don't know if you heard this one. I don't know. It was in Todd's quant class. I was doing part of my thesis and testing to see how far the distance of the arrows would shoot based on the weight of the mass of the points. Todd, if you're listening, he's probably dying. But I was in his office and we were going over the data and he was like,
00:46:27
Speaker
What'd you get these expected values here? And I was like for the Chi square and I was like, uh, well, like 55 feet. That's how far I expected it to go. And then he like looks at me with this blank stare as if I was joking, but like, I'm so dumb that I wasn't.
00:46:43
Speaker
And then he was just like, no, you can't just make up expected values, David. And I was like, oh, oh, yeah, yeah, totally. No, I'm joking. I did not know. I did not know at all. Honestly, I had a similar experience. Like in my thesis at the end, I wrote something like, yeah, it's reasonable that like a 50-year overlap should show cultural continuity. And Bob and Eric, their response was, where's your citation? I was like, oh, I just made it up.
00:47:12
Speaker
What's it based on? I don't know, it just feels right. And then we're like, Carlton, if you're going to get this published, you need to fix that sentence. And I was like, can I just delete it? And they were just like, sure, just get rid of it. But no, I feel those vibes. I feel those vibes. Can I be the guy that just says, yeah, 50 years seems good.
00:47:31
Speaker
People can cite me from that one. Back in the sixties, Benford and all them just made things up and just said, yeah, prove it. I mean, like why in radiocarbon dating, do you need to have at least a minimum number of dates at five for a site for it to like accurately date a site? Like they just made that up. Yeah. Some guy. So I can't, why, why can't Carlton be the guy that says, yeah, 50 years seems legit. Do you think we're the deans of archeology? You know, I often wonder that.
00:48:00
Speaker
Uh, yeah. I mean, I guess in terms of like, you know, what we're doing and compared to what our colleagues are doing, I think we're deaning it out. I look, I always thought you were talking about like, you know, the deans of archeology. You know, like we're the, we're the administrators, which I feel like is our strong suit. No, I don't administrate anything, but pure heroin into my alarms.
00:48:31
Speaker
Some of that black tar, but good stuff. Alexa. Alexa. Play two by Africa. My my heart rate is seriously at is at 130. Looking at this email, I am I. Oh, OK, sorry, sorry, sorry. I forget that guy's name. He's at five. Your heart rate is not at five. That's why I want to be a lizard person. Are you a person?
00:49:00
Speaker
I'm not going to say I'm not. Have you guys heard the the Louis CK bit where it's like, I mean, it's on the nose at this point, but like he calls some I think it's like Rush Limbaugh or someone. Then he's like, I'm asking right now, are you a lizard person? Do you wear a lizard skin? The guy's like, I'm not going to dignify this answer. And he's like, it's a yes or no question, sir. He's like, I will not dignify. And it goes on for like five minutes. He's like, he won't say that he's not a lizard person. It's fantastic humor.
00:49:35
Speaker
This is our summer. I think this was about when I got back from Ukraine last year. Yeah. I mean, interesting summers. Thank you. You know, I think we had, this was a fun episode. All I got to say is hindsight is 2020.
00:49:50
Speaker
I wish I had the high sight with the Vikings came along. You want the full sight there Jane? You need the full sight to see the Vikings come in to take all you would. I planted all the potatoes below, the bite of the potatoes and I lost my investment below and they took it and I have nothing below.
00:50:11
Speaker
Oh boy. We still need to do our let's play. Yeah. I think, I don't know if we'll have time this semester. This is, but we can try. We need, we need like equipment for that, right? Like we need a video camera.
00:50:29
Speaker
I think you can just webcam it with Twitch or whatever, but what is Twitch? It's like four gamers, but like this YouTube celebrity made a million dollars off of only fans.
00:50:43
Speaker
She's not even doing pornography. She's just doing like, she's a celebrity that's established and it's like doing what Cardi B is doing and just like having an interaction with the fan base. Like a day she opened it, a million dollars. That's just, I don't think I'll ever see a million dollars in my lifetime. I think like my bank from all my student loans will see a million dollars, but like, I don't think I'll ever at one point in time have a million dollars in my bank checking account.
00:51:07
Speaker
And on that note, a shout out to our only fans, Caleb Welch, Dean Johnin, Jennifer Johnin, David's mom, and Carlton's brother. Thank you so much. All the people we mentioned before, thank you colleagues and friends from the University of Wyoming that support us.
00:51:27
Speaker
Thank you so much for listening to us. This is episode 30 of a life in ruins podcast.
Closing Remarks and Future Episodes
00:51:32
Speaker
We'll catch you in episode 31. It's going to be disappointing. Just like my life. What? I told you to behind the pickles in the fridge more. We've been there for 35 years. Of course I know where the pickles are. Get the shaman, not the Scott. It feels better on my bum.
00:51:56
Speaker
Sorry, my wife was yelling at me. I didn't mitigate that situation. And with that, this has been life in ruins episode 30. We will see you guys next time.
00:52:16
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.
00:52:43
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 chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com.