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Microwear Analysis with APN Host Dr. Matilda Siebrecht - TAS 265
466 Plays4 months ago
Meet Tilly, the amazing host of Tea-Break Time Travel, and co-host of the And My Trowel podcasts. She is also the woman behind the @the_archaeologists_teacup Instagram account, and all the APN social media! Today we chat with her about her all podcasts, as well as her areas of expertise: microwear analysis and experimental archaeology. Finally, she lends her expert opinion on a recent news article that used some cutting edge microwear analysis techniques to draw some pretty big conclusions.
Links
- Tea-Break Time Travel Podcast
- And My Trowel Podcast
- @the_archaeologists_teacup (Instagram)
- Microscopes and Magnifications (The Archaeologist’s Teacup Blog)
- The little things in life. Investigating the past one micrometre at a time
- 130,000-year-old Neanderthal-carved bear bone is symbolic art, study argues
- Burroni et al 2022: The Surface Alteration Features of Flint Artefacts as a Record of Environmental Processes
- Matilda's Academia page with all her published studies and theses
- https://linktr.ee/archaeobookclub
- https://www.instagram.com/scientistswhoread
Contact
- Chris Webster
[email protected] - Rachel Roden
[email protected]
RachelUnraveled (Instagram)
ArchPodNet
- APN Website: https://www.archpodnet.com
- APN on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/archpodnet
- APN on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/archpodnet
- APN on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/archpodnet
- Tee Public Store: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/archaeology-podcast-network?ref_id=5724
Affiliates
Transcript
Podcast Introduction
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. You're listening to The Archaeology Show. TAS goes behind the headlines to bring you the real stories about archaeology and the history around us. Welcome to the podcast.
Interview with Matilda Seabrigt
00:00:15
Speaker
Hello and welcome to The Archaeology Show, episode 265. On today's show, we have an interview with APN podcast host Matilda Seabrigt about her shows and her career as an archaeologist.
00:00:27
Speaker
Let's dig a little deeper, but not too deep because this is microwave analysis. I don't know, but you'll find that out soon. Welcome to the
00:00:43
Speaker
Oh, God, not that again. Archaeology show. I'm bringing it back. Could you please? I'm editing that out. I've had enough of the... We were at a sports ball bar last night. Not really. We were at Red Robin. But we sat in the bar because kids. And I saw that particular university up on the TV screen. It just came rushing back to me. So, yeah, I had to... Oh, my God, you're so annoying. That's so annoying. You're annoying. Anyway.
00:01:11
Speaker
Well, we're, we're, this is going to be exciting because a lot of times I feel like we haven't moved much in the last few months. So we haven't had a lot to say as far as our travels go, but like for the next six weeks, we're going to be somewhere every week, somewhere different. Yeah. Like we're moving fast. We're going to be in a different time zone every single week until we get to the next time zone.
00:01:31
Speaker
Yeah, in like three weeks. But we had a plan to get to New York state by July and we're in Washington right now. So we're going to make it happen. It's just going to be a lot of travel. Don't crucify us if we miss an episode here or there, but hopefully we won't. I think we've got a plan to keep that from happening.
00:01:50
Speaker
Well, and for some of the diehard fans that listen to everything in order, we are releasing these out of order of recordings. So don't freak
Future Podcast Plans
00:01:57
Speaker
out because this is being recorded in Washington state, but being released after the one we're recording next. So yeah, yeah, there's going to be some weirdness going on there when you're talking about our travels. We're just trying to get ahead. Yeah. Yeah. A little bit. Yeah. But anyway, let's introduce the second employee of the archaeology podcast network kind of.
00:02:21
Speaker
Wait, am I the first employee? I think you are. Yeah. We have lots of volunteers.
00:02:30
Speaker
I report to you. Lots of volunteers, yes. There's many people that help keep this ship going, trust me. It's definitely not a one-person job.
Matilda's Archaeological Journey
00:02:38
Speaker
But no, Matilda Siebrecht is a podcaster. She's got two shows on the Archeology Podcast Network, but we'll have her talk about all of that. But Matilda, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Very exciting to be on the guest's side for once. I know.
00:02:54
Speaker
Yeah. And for context, Chris and I were just sitting around talking one day and we were like, we have so many amazing people creating amazing content for the APN. And we were like, why haven't we interviewed any of them? Like, why don't we have them come on the APN? We're always like looking around for people that we don't know to come on and do an interview. But I'm like,
00:03:16
Speaker
We have all these amazing people right here at our fingertips. So this is hopefully going to be the first in a series where we are interviewing the other hosts on the APN network. And, you know, we wanted to start with Tilly because you're newer. Your shows are newer to the network than some of the others. And I just wanted to give the opportunity to introduce your shows to our listeners.
Specialization in Material Culture
00:03:39
Speaker
Fantastic. Yeah. Excellent.
00:03:40
Speaker
Ha ha, maybe I can get in, get in on that big business ship. Well, they should listen to your shows because they're amazing. We'll get to that.
00:03:49
Speaker
Yeah. Why don't we start with your, your background? What's your archeological background? Well, so originally I was just a general, general archeologist and I decided I wanted to specialize in material culture. So artifact analysis. So I did an undergrad I did at Aberdeen university up in Scotland. And the nice thing with doing a degree in Scotland, which you are probably aware of because Tristan is actually one of my co-classmates, the other founder of the archeology podcast network. So I was there when all of these ideas were running around.
00:04:17
Speaker
his head as well. So it's been fun to watch that develop. And then at some point I was like, wait a second, I want to start a podcast. But I know this guy who was talking about like some podcasting. So I did that degree and that was in like cultures of the north, but it was a very, very broad degree. I don't know how it is in the US, but generally in the UK, if you do sort of an archaeology degree, you have like an introduction to everything. So you had like a zoo archaeology, a geo archaeology, a theory of archaeology, and you know, all the field work, all of this kind of stuff.
00:04:45
Speaker
And yeah, so I had a sort of general overview, but I decided I wanted to specialize. So I went and did a master's. I worked for a year first in commercial archaeology or CRM, as it's known in the US, which was fun, but it did make me realize excavation is great, but it's just, you know, it's nice for like a summer or like a week. I can totally understand that. When it's not too long, it's warm enough. Yeah. So I enjoy it, but it's not, I'm not one of those archaeologists who's
00:05:14
Speaker
desperate to get back out in the field, which I know a lot of my colleagues are. So, you know, I'm leaving more space for them on the field work season.
00:05:21
Speaker
So it made me realize that, and it made me realize I was definitely interested in the objects and the artifacts. So I went and specialized in archaeological science, specifically artifact analysis, and more specifically, microware analysis, which I think we'll talk about later. So I won't go too much into detail. But yeah, so and then I enjoyed that so much, I decided to continue and do a PhD in that. So I did that. And then, yeah, reach the inevitable quarter life crisis that most PhDs get to when they
00:05:48
Speaker
we realized what life in academia means. So I'm taking a bit of a breakout from a life in academia at the moment and doing some other things. So currently working for for you guys. And also, actually, I'm back working for the same archaeological company that I worked with before I did my master's, but I'm doing defines analysis and stuff and defines I'm the sort of finds officer and outreach
Role at CRM Firm in Germany
00:06:10
Speaker
sort of coordinator there. And I'm working for EXARC as well, the Experimental Archaeology and Open Air Museum Society. So yes, very different, lots of different things. Lots of pies. So it sounds like you're kind of working for a CRM firm. Yeah, yeah. And you're in Germany, right? Yes, I'm in Germany. Yeah. So like, is that lab work, essentially? Is it like people are going out and excavating, they're finding things, and then they're bringing that back to you, and then you're doing the analysis in the lab, basically?
00:06:37
Speaker
Well, I mean, that's the dream. I'm hoping my boss listens to this so that she's like, oh.
00:06:44
Speaker
Because that is the idea. That's the sort of aim. And they do have a microscope. And I saw it one day. Getting closer. I saw it. It was kind of hilarious. I think I can say this because now she'll listen. My mother's lovely, but yeah, she's very busy. So she doesn't like the microscope, but she'd forgotten to put the ocular lenses in, which is the bit that you look through to look through the microscope.
00:07:08
Speaker
So it's kind of important. And I was like, something's weird. Like, why is it like it's really, really far away? And then I was like, wait a second. And then she was too busy and she couldn't find the thing. So it was like a one five minute look at a microscope. And I was very excited. And then it hasn't happened again. So I mainly I mainly am sorting away all of the I mean, there's so many things that are found. So I maybe select them all. I sort them by material. I pack them away in boxes. They go to the sort of not state archaeologists, but the provincial archaeologists, I guess.
00:07:40
Speaker
And I'm starting to do animal bone identification, which is fun. I never did do archaeology, but hey. And I do what you've got to do, right? It's one of those, I guess, I don't know if it's the same in the US, but it's sort of assumed that you do a bit of everything at these kind of firms. So even though I am specialised at the firm, it's sort of everyone kind of chips in and then you'll have some tasks that you're more likely to do and you have kind of more
00:08:06
Speaker
knowledge about, so you'll be the one teaching others, if that makes sense. Totally. Okay. Well, let's, let's talk about your podcasts on the APN and let's talk about T break time travel, because that was your first one on here.
Podcast Origins and Tea Break Time Travel
00:08:19
Speaker
And man, that's been going for a couple of years now, I think. Now that was based, I first saw that that was based on, was it just an Instagram channel or do you also have YouTube? I can't remember what that was originally based on.
00:08:33
Speaker
It started out with Instagram and which also started out weirdly. Like that started out because I had at some point in between my masters and my PhD, I ran a small business which sold jewelry inspired by prehistory, which was fun. I used to do like market stalls and things. I had an Etsy shop. Like it was, it was fun, but it didn't go anywhere. I wasn't very, I wasn't a very good business woman at selling things. Oh man, I totally understand that.
00:08:57
Speaker
I'm so with you on that. I think I just, I like people to enjoy it so much that it's like, oh, buddy, oh, that's fine. Don't worry. Why am I not making rent? But yeah, so I started an Instagram channel because of that. And then at some point it just kind of turned into a, oh, archaeology is cool channel. And then when I was in my PhD, actually, I discovered academic Instagram,
00:09:21
Speaker
which I never even knew was a thing. But it's this whole thing, like a whole community of like science communication and sort of academic research is creating a network basically through Instagram. And so then I started doing more stuff about archaeological research and everything. And yeah, I started doing these T-day reels. So Tuesdays and Thursdays. The T-days.
00:09:39
Speaker
And yeah, it was just one, at that point you could only do a reel for one minute. So I had one minute to talk about different objects. I have quite a lot of replicas. So I basically would just take one minute and I would introduce a replica, describe it and yeah, talk about it for a bit. And it's ridiculous. That was, I think I timed it well because that was the time when Instagram really liked reels. So then my follow account went from like 600 to like 2,500 in like
00:10:05
Speaker
two months or something. It was ridiculous. Like still not loads, obviously. I know there's people with like 25,000 and you know, stuff, but you know, for me, I was like, what people like this. And I really enjoyed it. But I was thinking, I mean, one minute is quite sure. And so I started trying to do YouTube videos as well. So that's when the YouTube started. And I wanted to do
00:10:24
Speaker
like longer ones where I would try to replicate the objects and then I would talk about the objects while I was replicating them, which I've done a couple of episodes and I really need to do more, but I just have no time. So that's kind of fallen by the wayside. But then, yeah, I thought I, I enjoy podcasting. I had already been doing a podcast for EXARC for about a year, I think, and enjoyed it. I think they realized that I am the sort of person who, if you just give me a topic, I can just blabber on for a while. So which, you know, is okay with
00:10:51
Speaker
podcasting. So yeah, I decided, okay, this is something I enjoy doing. And I like this topic and other
Podcast Format and Guests
00:10:57
Speaker
people seem to find it interesting too. And I have this old classmate of mine who has a producer at the archaeology podcast network, maybe I can ask him. So yeah, so and that's, that's how it all kind of came about. And yeah, asking guests on each time
00:11:10
Speaker
So I try to find someone who is somehow related to, it's not always one specific object. It could be like a type of object or it could be a material. We've also had materials and yeah, we, we just talk about the object itself. We answer the most asked questions on the internet. So sort of the Google auto-fill search thing, which is quite fun. That's one of my favorite parts. I love that part.
00:11:40
Speaker
I'm glad, I'm glad. And some of them you're like, oh, for goodness sake, but you have to answer them. And yeah, and then we just sort of talk about stuff. And I also try to, so the guests have always been a bit of a mix. So we've had academics on, but we've also had professional craftspeople. We've had people who have sort of studied something, but then gone in a slightly different direction, but still stayed within that sphere, if that makes sense. So it's a really broad range of people who come on as guests, which I think is really nice. And so I also try to introduce that a little bit as well, to show that like, look,
00:12:10
Speaker
just because you're an archaeologist doesn't mean you have to be a field archaeologist. You don't have to just go and dig all the time. You can. There's so many other things you can do and still be involved in archaeology in some way. So, yeah. Totally. Sorry, very long answer. No, that's okay. I love your podcast, Tea Break. And I also love your other one, which we'll talk about in a second.
00:12:32
Speaker
I think one of the things I like the most about Tea Break is that you pick an artifact or an artifact class to focus on, but then you bring context to it. Because I think one of the problems with archaeology in the media sometimes is that it's an archaeology of things, right? And then people, it's like a collecting thing. Like people want to own these things and then you get the looting stuff that comes because people feel like they should own these special things. But when you bring context to it and you understand
00:13:00
Speaker
you know, why the people created it, what they were doing with it, what was important about it, then it takes that ownership and thingness away from it a little bit. And I feel like your show does a really good job of that. And that's one of the reasons why I enjoy listening to it. Thanks. Well, it's good that you enjoy listening to it because you edit them also. Oh, yes. Yeah. I am kind of forced to listen to them, but that's OK. I do enjoy it. I appreciate that.
00:13:27
Speaker
And then onto your other show.
Archaeo Book Club and Collaborations
00:13:29
Speaker
So your most recent one that you started is called and my trial and you have a co-host for that one, Ash. So I'll let you tell about that one. Yeah, that one happened on his like, uh, well I started a book club. That was also like two years ago now because I was in a book club called the scientists who read quick shout out. They also have a podcast which talks about their books. They're very good.
00:13:54
Speaker
They basically are a load of scientists, people working in STEM, who miss being able to read for fun. So they started this book club and it's now got like a ridiculous amount of people. They're doing very well. They have Patreons. They're really cool. If you're interested, please do go check them out. And I joined it and I really enjoyed it. And it got me back into reading. I really love reading, but I just haven't been able to. I think a lot of people have the similar thing that when you go and study, you find it very difficult to get back into reading for joy after you've had been forced to kind of read
00:14:23
Speaker
thousands of articles. So it got me back into reading, which I was really happy about, but I was noticing that even though I had done archaeological science, so that's why I thought, okay, I qualify as a person doing this, then I wanted to talk more about archaeological science, not sort of other types of science. And I thought, there must be, there must be a book club about archaeology somewhere out there, but there's not.
00:14:44
Speaker
And, you know, the old saying goes, if you can't find something, you've got to do it yourself. So I started a book club called the Archaeo Book Club. And yeah, we basically we look at a different book each month and we're trying to look at the sort of the representation of archaeology in popular fiction or nonfiction. We've also dealt with some nonfiction books as well.
00:15:01
Speaker
And yeah, from that I met, well, I already knew Ash. She was actually the first ever episode I recorded of Tea Break Time Travel was with her. Even though it's actually her episode is episode two, but like she was the first ever one. I love her candles. If you don't know it, I'm going to do another shout out. Go and check out Ashley candles because they're amazing. And so she's one of those people that I've basically met through Instagram and now we leave each other about 20 hours worth of WhatsApp messages every day.
00:15:31
Speaker
She's that Ash? I didn't know she was that Ash. For some reason, I just never put that together. I remember that episode.
00:15:47
Speaker
So yeah, we knew each other from that. And so and then I had her on my show and then she joined the book club and then she became a co admin of the book club along with another lovely lady Judith. And then we were just chatting at some point about wouldn't it be really funny to write a book about an archaeologist being in a fantasy world and then you have to like deal with all the stuff, but it's real archaeology, but it's with fantasy subjects and you could kind of
00:16:11
Speaker
try to teach people about archaeological methods through that way. And then we were like, why don't we do a podcast about it? At that point, I think I was a bit podcast crazy. And she was up for it. So we decided to, yeah, again, I thought, hey, I know this great channel. They've already got me on one show. Maybe they wouldn't mind if I do a second one.
00:16:32
Speaker
And you guys liked it, liked the ideas and gave us a shot and it seems to be doing quite well, which is nice. So yeah, it's good
Diverse Podcasting Projects
00:16:40
Speaker
fun. We sort of, sometimes we have a guest on, sometimes it's just the two of us and we basically deal with, we try to deal with like a fantasy concept and an archeological concept each time, which sometimes is more difficult than others.
00:16:52
Speaker
It's super great. And you guys have a great rapport. So it's a really fun, like back and forth chat, which is my favorite kind of podcast, which is probably why Chris and I are the same way on this show. We're just back and forth with each other. And so yeah, that's my favorite kind too. She's a great co-host as well. So yeah, it's really good fun. It's a great, it's a really fun podcast to do that one because yeah, for sure. Yeah.
00:17:17
Speaker
Also, if we had more members, arcpadnet.com forward slash members, then speaking of
00:17:27
Speaker
Speaking of speaking of being podcast crazy, I think every single conversation Rachel and I have about anything either involves involves one of two things, either starting a restaurant, which is really just crazy, because it's like, man, I would never actually do that. But no, I never actually do that because I have literally no expertise in that. That's whatsoever. But, you know, that that's kind of fun. Or the other one is starting a podcast because I would podcast about everything if I could. If I had the time, if I had the resources, yeah, podnet.com forward slash members.
00:18:05
Speaker
So, which is just like, basically 10 minutes to 10 to 20 minutes a week, like every month. So it's like very tiny, but I was like, we should totally do a podcast for this too, guys. Are we up to four podcasts for you then? Is that what I'm hearing? I have two co-hosts on the EXOC show, so I only have to do one of the three months for that one, which is nice.
00:18:19
Speaker
Or if I had the, you know.
00:18:29
Speaker
All right. Well, with that, I think we should take a break and we're going to come back on the other side and talk about your specialty micro wear analysis.
Microwear Analysis in Archaeology
00:18:37
Speaker
So we'll do that on the other side. Back in a minute.
00:18:41
Speaker
Welcome back to the archaeology show episode 265. And we've got Tilly on here talking about her podcasting. And now we're going to talk about what you actually do as an archaeologist and what you're interested in. And really, this kind of leads into the article we're going to discuss in segment three as well. So your interest, as we kind of discussed in the beginning, is micro-aware analysis. So let's just talk about that. What is micro-aware analysis? Why do you need microscopes? What does a microscope do?
00:19:08
Speaker
What can't we do with microscopes? Why don't we need microscopes? I think it's microscopes. Yeah, so microanalysis, there's also multiple words for this, by the way, as well. So you have traciology, you have use-wear analysis, you have microscopic analysis of use-wear traces. There's so many different ways to say it. I've just gone with micro-wear because it's an easy way to say it.
00:19:31
Speaker
So it's basically using microscopes to look at different kinds of microscopic traces. And you can look at sort of different things with that as well. So the easiest way that I usually explain it is you can look at how things were made and how things were used. And to do that, you need kind of different levels of microscopy as well. So for example, for my masters, I looked at amber beads from the Neolithic, late Neolithic, early Bronze Age in the Netherlands. And I was trying to determine whether I could work out what kind of material the drill bits
00:20:01
Speaker
was made from that had been used to create the hole in these beads. So which was good fun. So I had to do a lot of experiments, had to drill a lot of beads. And then I basically created a kind of catalog of traces, we call them traces, which are kind of the marks that you see from different activities being performed on an object in some way. And so by looking at this, these different traces, you can then make a little almost, it's called sort of a reference collection. And then you can compare that with
00:20:29
Speaker
similar traces on the archaeological objects. And what was quite nice is that I could indeed see some beautiful comparisons with that, which was amazing. So there was, for example, some some holes that have been made with the flint drill bits, and they created a very specific kind of trace compared to those that had been drilled using an antler drill bit. And then when you looked at the, you know, 5000 year old beads, you could see those same traces and those same two kinds of traces as well on different beads. So that was quite exciting.
00:20:54
Speaker
I should state, by the way, that doesn't necessarily mean that those beads were definitely made with Flint or with antler, but it's more you can sort of show what the possibility is in respect. Sure. Very cool. Yeah, that actually leads into one of the questions I had is, well, my basic question was, what is the relationship between micro-ware analysis and experimental archaeology? But I think you kind of just covered that. And it sounds like when you get into this sort of thing, you kind of have like two opposite sides of
00:21:22
Speaker
of a coin right like you've got this sitting over a microscope looking at tiny little detail and then you also have like playing with fake artifacts you know outside so it's it's a cool like juxtaposition of two really different things is that one of the things that drew you to it i'm i'm wondering
00:21:41
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And that's why I love, I mean, I said that I'm not a massive fan of field work, but I really love practical research. And the practical research that I love is the experimental archaeology side of things in that respect. So yeah, and of course, for quite by the way, apologies, we can hear my daughter in the background. No worries. Very enthusiastic about her dinner. Right. I mean, or more about the fact that her sister might be getting dinner and she's not that might be what
00:22:09
Speaker
Yeah, so the important thing as well, though, with experimental archaeology, especially when it comes to microanalysis, is because you're looking at such fine detail. And also, by the way, if you look at how things are used, you're looking at even finer details. So you're using even higher levels of magnification to look at like really, really, really tiny traces. The sort of authenticity of the experiments
00:22:30
Speaker
If I don't have experience with doing a particular activity or working with a particular material, if I then create traces with those and try to compare them with the archaeological record with people who probably were spending their entire lives doing this activity, that's obviously not going to be a very valid comparison. So it's also very important when you're doing micro-analysis to understand your own limits when it comes to experimental archaeology and be able to work with people who actually have experience in those things.
00:22:56
Speaker
Yeah. Cool. Yeah. You know, I'm wondering just with the term micro wear, cause you mentioned other terms for this. When I hear the term micro wear, I mean, wear implies use, right? And I think about this cause you know, I also produce and sometimes a co-host on the rock art podcast. And I always struggle with the fact that it's still called the rock art podcast because
00:23:18
Speaker
you know, art and sometimes it's called rock drawings. I know we can't call it the petroglyph podcast because a lot of people who listen to it don't know what a petroglyph is when they're trying to find it. It's not a very searchable term if you don't know what you're looking for. So that's why we still call it that. So you don't want to imply that it's art. So can you imply that it's where, you know what I mean? That it's been used and things like that is like, what would be a more generic term or what are some more, I guess what I'm trying to say is what are some more sources of the
00:23:47
Speaker
the thing that you're seeing besides use, you know what I mean? Yeah. So there are kind of tricks that you can do to get around that though, because of course, indeed, as so for example, some of the objects that I was looking at in my PhD, they were excavated in the 50s. And at some point, they had obviously been treated with something. And so you look at the first one I looked at, I was like, Oh, wow, these are really, really clear striations, like lines on the thing. And then I realized, wait a minute,
00:24:12
Speaker
that no that's brush strokes like from whatever they were like coating it with because I was looking at such a high level of magnification even though it was like a tiny teeny little pink brush probably that they were using I could see the brush strokes on the like the varnish or whatever it was that was on the top
00:24:28
Speaker
of the object, which was great. It meant that I had to get rid of like half of the collection because I couldn't see anything, but anyway. Right. But like, so at some point you have to indeed be careful and you have to think like, right, what has happened to this object? Like since it's been excavated, what could have happened to it during? So there's also been a lot of studies on like trampling traces and stuff like that to see if like, okay, there was a great study done actually. Unfortunately, I can't remember the name of the authors, but hopefully we can find that later and put it in the show notes or something.
00:24:57
Speaker
There was a really great study done where they basically just left a bunch of different Flint tools in different paddocks for a year or two and let cows trample on them. And then just compared the traces that that leaves with like other experimental traces to see like, well, okay, if we did this, would random activities also create the same traces? Or can you say, no, that's random? And most of the time, you can see if it's random or not.
00:25:23
Speaker
like you can see if it would have been environmentally done. You also have tricks, for example, you always want to try and look at part of the object which would have been the most hidden while it was in the ground sort of thing. So areas like, for example, the inside of the hole of a bead are the sort of least likely to have anything happen to it. Whereas anything that happens on the sort of very outside of a bead, that could have the most influence, if that makes sense. So there are kind of tricks to get around it as well. But of course, you also always do need to
00:25:52
Speaker
make sure to account for any potential. Yeah. Uh, what's the word? Oh, I forgotten what the word is, but you know, when something influences it. Yeah.
00:26:02
Speaker
Yeah. One of our colleagues actually did a trampling cattle trampling analysis out in Nevada on shirt artifacts. Yeah. Do you remember that Rachel? It was out at, um, South of battle mountain. Oh, that's right. He did. Yeah. It was one season. Cause we did a couple of seasons out at this excavation and we were just seeing a lot of shirt artifacts, AKA Flint. We just don't call them Flint out here. Yeah.
00:26:29
Speaker
But yeah, because we were getting a lot of artifacts and they were broken in interesting ways. So I think one season they just made a bunch of them from a source material and then just like kind of distribute them because there were cattle everywhere. And then just kind of came back to it one year. They plotted them all out with a total station and then went back and looked at where they had been distributed to and what they had looked like. So it was an interesting analysis. I'm actually not, I don't think I saw the paper they wrote up on that, but we discussed it. So yeah, it's fun doing stuff like that though to see what's going to happen with it.
Insights from Experimental Archaeology
00:26:58
Speaker
Yeah, I just I love experimental archaeology because it it takes you it takes you into the mindset of the person who created the artifact that you're studying, you know, it feels like a much more like visceral connection to the ancient people than when you're just like even just excavating. I don't I feel like you don't get the same connection. But like for me, because I'm a knitter, right, like
00:27:20
Speaker
Sometimes when I sit there and I'm like knitting the sock, I'm like, I'm doing the exact same thing right now that a knitter 200 years ago did. And that is like such a cool connection. And the fact that I learned from, you know, my grandmother too, like it's just, it's this family, family thing. And yeah, that connection to the past peoples you get through experimental archaeology is so cool.
00:27:45
Speaker
And well, and you can even see, so for example, with the experiments I did in my masters with the beads, and so you have to drill them from both sides, all of the perforations were biconical. So they've been drilled from not just from one side, but from two sides. And you can see that was because it was a kind of like hourglass shape if you cut it through. So you could tell that like the drill had come from two sides.
00:28:02
Speaker
And when I was doing it, you do it from one side and then you turn the bead over and you're trying your hardest to drill from the other side so that they meet in the middle. But you're using a bow drill so it's not exactly the most efficient for me personally. I'm not as good at that. And occasionally there would be a bit of misalignment and it's like, oh man. But then when you look at the archaeological beads,
00:28:24
Speaker
You see exactly the same thing. You see a slight misalignment. You see where they've had to re-drill part of the bead because of something else. And I think that's my favorite part when you see the mistakes that were done in the past. And it's like, oh, good. It's fun.
00:28:37
Speaker
Did you have to become an expert at drilling beads then in order to complete your research? I became pretty good at drilling beads. Then for my PhD I was making a lot of needles. During my PhD research I became very good at making needles because I had to make 50 needles for out of bone and ivory.
00:28:57
Speaker
Yeah. But I, again, I made sure to use some control needles as well that have been made by someone who actually knew that we're doing. And yeah, it's always good to, my tools that I use to make the needles, they had been made by someone else because I'm terrible at flip mapping. So I asked a colleague to make me some neurons. And he did. He was lovely. I mean, does that give you just a little bit of a side note here? Does that give you an appreciation for
00:29:21
Speaker
you know, people of the past of any age, because you got a sense that modern people who are not archaeologists, of course, they're just like, oh, those primitives, right? But they were such skilled craftspeople. So much so. Right? Like, napping is, to me, the ultimate and the reason that I suck at it is because I can't picture
00:29:42
Speaker
the end result in the, that lump, but you have to be able to do that in order to be able to create it. Cause you have to know like how to hit all these different things. And because it's not, it's not like you're just kind of shaping it, like scraping off the flint, you know, to make that nice final shape. Like you have to hit it in such a way that you prepare for the next
00:30:02
Speaker
hits. And then that has to prepare for the next hit. You have to plan like 10 hits ahead. And I can't do that personally. I'm just really impatient, but they would have done that. So like, yeah, everyone, whenever you hear that people being like, Oh yeah, but they only had stone tools. It's like, do you know how hard it is to me? Yeah, it totally is. Like I only tried flint knapping one time.
00:30:22
Speaker
And it was awful, but it had such an impact on me that like it was 15 years ago, one time with a friend and I'm like, Oh yeah. Like that is the hardest thing I've ever tried to do. And these people who made these, these tools were geniuses. They were absolute geniuses at what they did because you see some and they're beautiful. They're so like tiny and little like,
00:30:49
Speaker
Yeah, points coming off. They're pieces of art, really. Yeah. Well, there are some that people think they were art, and I don't use the term broadly. But like, let's use headquarters, what is art? But anyway, that's a whole lot of discussion. Oh, man, that's like a whole podcast. That's a whole like series. We can go into that. I can do podcasts. Well, for the final, my final study of my PhD, actually, I basically, it could be summarized in the question, what is art? Which, you know, hey.
00:31:18
Speaker
But what's really interesting, you spoke earlier, Rachel, about you get such a connection to it and the experience of it. And there's actually this whole debate a little bit in experimental archaeology about experimental archaeology versus experiential archaeology. What is it and how can one classify it? And if you're not actually getting
00:31:38
Speaker
practical results out of it? Is it really experimental archaeology or is it just experiential archaeology? But I would say the two go hand in hand so much. I've had so many experiments where then something new has come to me purely through doing it. And if I'd just been in a lab doing it all with robots, it wouldn't have worked.
00:31:57
Speaker
You have to have that room for creativity so that you can see future questions or even help inform the question that you're trying to answer in that moment. So I feel like they should go together. But I also see wanting to distinguish between them two because, you know,
00:32:13
Speaker
science. It's so subjective as well, of course. And I don't know, to give an example, like one of the studies from my PhD was looking at these needles and we sort of worked out through it. And I had read about it as well, but we went up to the Arctic. I was lucky enough to be able to go up to the Arctic and work with some wonderful Inuit seamstresses who they use. They don't, obviously they don't use bone needles anymore. They use metal needles, but they still work a lot with skins like steel skins, caribou skins, et cetera. And that's what I was testing through my experiments.
00:32:42
Speaker
And so I had gone up there and I wanted to ask them what they thought of these replicas, what sort of was their experience with using them to sew. And we worked out the way that we sew in the south is very different to the way the Inuk method it's called like of sewing. And so us doing our experiments had probably done it completely differently to how an Inuk person would have used the experiments and all this kind of stuff.
00:33:04
Speaker
That is so fascinating. It was really interesting. And what was even more interesting was that the Dorset needles I was looking at, so the paleo-innovate needles, seemed to have more similar traces to the way we were using it compared to the way the innovate were using it, which shows that the techniques had changed and developed over time as well. Oh, that's fascinating. As I said, I wrote a whole paper on it, so please go read it. We'll have all kinds of links in the show notes, too, to your website and everything.
00:33:28
Speaker
But that's an example as well, right? That your own experience biases you so much in experimental archaeology. So that's also something really important to keep in mind when you're doing it, especially if you're then creating microwave traces that you want to compare against archaeological pieces. Like there's so much, yeah, there's so much you have to take into account with
Neanderthal Carved Bear Bone Analysis
00:33:44
Speaker
it. Well, it sounds like to me, like we need to make an experimental archaeology podcast, our podnet.com forward slash members. Oh, that would be so awesome. Let's do it.
00:33:54
Speaker
If there's anybody out there listening that is an experimental archaeologist that wants to start an experimental archaeology podcast, please reach out, chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com. So with that, we are going to talk about an article. So we're going to go back to the TAS style, but we're going to have Tilly join us on this breakdown of an article and we're going to talk about, well, art or is it art? Who knows? Probably not. It's not art. We'll find out back in a minute.
00:34:23
Speaker
Welcome back to TAS episode 265. And we forgot to mention there is an experimental archaeology podcast, which I host. I really remember that. Well, it's only once every three months, right? And to be fair, we don't always focus on experimental archaeology. So it's from EXARC, but each episode is not necessarily just on experimental archaeology. So there is probably still room out there for a podcast completely focused on experimental archaeology.
00:34:52
Speaker
So as someone who has taught classes on podcasting and things like that, one of the things you first teach is focus on a topic. So for a quarterly podcast, I would probably suggest that you focus on experimental archaeology. I'm just saying.
00:35:07
Speaker
It is monthly. I just only do every three months. The podcast itself is monthly. We share shifts. The aim of it, very briefly, was because during COVID, we were supposed to have a couple of meetups and things, obviously, and everyone was stuck
00:35:26
Speaker
at home. So we were trying to do it as a way to keep that connection between our members. So the main aim of it is to kind of showcase what different EXARC members are doing and like the different things that everyone's up to. But then now it's kind of expanded out. And so now it's not just EXARC members who we have on and things like that. So that's how it kind of grew, I guess.
00:35:41
Speaker
Gotcha. All right. Okay. Okay. Well, let me introduce the article. Rachel found this article. It happens to be something that is looking at micro wear and use wear and things like that. I know it's from live science and the title is 130,000 year old Neanderthal carved bare bone is symbolic art study argues. So Rachel, why don't you kick this off and tell us a little bit about it.
00:36:04
Speaker
Yeah, so the sort of sub headline is, the carved bear bone is one of the earliest human-made artifacts with symbolic culture, in quotes, unearthed in Europe. And that's a big statement, but we'll get to why that might be a big statement in a minute here. Yes, we always have notes about sentences like that. Journalism. Anyway, so.
00:36:34
Speaker
The artifact itself though, let's just get that out of the way. The artifact itself is a roughly cylindrical bone. It's about four inches or 10.6 centimeters long. And it has, and this is the interesting part that they were doing the analysis on, it has 17 irregularly spaced parallel cuts on one of the sides of the bone. And
00:36:52
Speaker
It was first discovered in 1953. So this sounds like it's kind of similar to the stuff that you were working on, Tilly, for one of your degrees. It was discovered a long time ago, but this is a reanalysis that is happening because probably we just have much better equipment these days. So that is what we're working with here. So Tilly, I'm interested when you look at something like this, what is your initial thoughts when you see something like this?
00:37:20
Speaker
Well, so indeed, as you mentioned, it's from the 1950s. And as I said, like the way that they were treating them was a bit different. And indeed, so one of the reasons as well, I actually also I didn't look at freshly excavated stuff. I think the freshest, the freshest one I had looked at was still six years old. So I mean, it's fresh ish, but not.
00:37:35
Speaker
super fresh. It wasn't like I was going out and excavating my own objects. It's not even necessarily that the equipment or the analysis method is improved, although I would say it was because microwave analysis became a bigger thing since 1950, but more the theory and the difference in how we perceive things as well. What you were talking about in the last one about primitive cultures, they wouldn't have known that, whereas now we're like, maybe they could have, so we should maybe consider that as an option when we're doing this analysis.
00:38:04
Speaker
Looking at it in new ways, I think, is also a really nice way to... That's why old materials should be re-examined and reassessed every so often, because there's such radical changes in how we think within archaeological research, so it is a new way of doing it.
00:38:18
Speaker
And it means that things should be preserved in a way that doesn't ruin that too, you know? And our preservation techniques from 50 years ago are a lot different than they are now, well, 70 years ago rather. So yeah, so you have to kind of hope that they didn't do anything crazy to it. Oh God. So many of the needle, and I was looking at needles and they're tiny, right? They're like two millimeters wide and they were pasting on like things and gluing stuff on and writing in marker. And I'm like, Oh,
00:38:45
Speaker
like catalog numbers and stuff like that. It's still done in Canada. I don't know if it's the same as in the US, but for example, in Canada, you still have to apparently put the object number on the object itself. It's sort of still part of policy. And so, you know, as a microwave analyst, I'm like,
00:39:03
Speaker
Yeah. When I was working for the lab, I went to UNC Chapel Hill and when I was working for the archaeology lab there in college, so this is 20 years ago now, we were putting numbers on the artifacts even at that point. So yeah. Sounds like a Chapel Hill thing. Oh hush.
00:39:25
Speaker
Chapel Hill is an amazing college. You be quiet. Yeah, indeed. I got a quick question. Doesn't this look like, I mean, 130,000 years ago, I would assume these are fossilized, but they kind of look fossilized, but I'm not really sure. They don't say it in the article. They don't say that in the article, I don't think, no. So it probably would have been treated too much if it was fossilized, I would assume.
00:39:46
Speaker
It looks some pretty good Nick from the photo. I actually, I went to the original journal of archeological science article because I was intrigued and they had a lot more pictures in that one of the actual object. And it looks a really good Nick, which if it's from, I mean, all of my, my PhD work was in the Arctic and that like the preservation is astounding. So this is also from fairly North, I think.
00:40:07
Speaker
which also could just be that it was beautifully preserved and then was been looked after well enough since it's been in the museum.
00:40:17
Speaker
Yeah, from a cave in Poland. So that's probably a really good one. But I think I do agree with your statement that like, that's a big statement. I mean, what I've just been saying for the whole last bit of the podcast, right? It's like, there's so many things that you have to take into account and nothing is certain. And it's all, I mean, this is basically what I say in tea break time travel the entire time. Anyways, that we don't actually know anything about the past because there's so many, there's so much influence and there's so many things
00:40:43
Speaker
that also like in the article, I mean, I don't know, I just also like I said, I looked in the original one, and for example, they were they were comparing with traces that have been seen in other articles and identified it in other articles to be like, Oh, it's not this, which is fine. Like that's good to do. And by the way, this is a really good study. Like I'm not at all like the way that they the methodology that they use in this is fantastic. It's so cool to see such
00:41:07
Speaker
like scientific application and to see that they're trying to be really objective about it. But at the same time, you have to understand, as I've been saying, that both experimental archaeology and microwave analysis is so subjective. So it's quite often, even if there's already previous experiments that have been done, sometimes it's good to just replicate the experiments to just double check and also to do experiments to kind of exclude things as well, like exclude things.
00:41:31
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Well, speaking of the methodology, let's talk about that a little bit. So the researchers, they basically re-examined this bone using a 3D microscope and CT scans. And that's basically as far as the news article goes. So I was kind of hoping you would sort of fill in what that means exactly. Like they made this digital scan or digital model of it. But like, what exactly were they doing?
00:42:00
Speaker
Like, what does that mean? Well, because usually, so also the way I do it, right? I mean, if you don't have access to these fantastic machinery that they had access to and these methods that they had access to, you have to just, you know, you look through a microscope, you see the traces, you identify the traces based on what you have in your mind. And so therefore that's very dependent on your view, your experience and your kind of perception of what those traces look like. But what they did is
00:42:28
Speaker
do all these scans and this microscopy and look at the graphs and do all these statistics to try and be as kind of analytical as they could and to try and just show, look, this is literally what is there. It's not what we are seeing. It's not what we are perceiving. It's actually what's there. And therefore you, as an other person, can also look at this and make your own view of it and kind of see that what we're saying is true. So that part, I think, is really cool.
00:42:57
Speaker
amazing way to do it. But yeah, I mean, gosh, I can't even imagine what it would be like to try and do this on like hundreds of objects, because that would just be so much work. So yeah, it's really cool if you have like one interesting object that you want to prove something about. But that's also not often the case, I guess it's sort of those are very rare situations in that respect.
00:43:17
Speaker
Oh yeah, I suppose this is a very special artifact to get that kind of intense study. Yeah. Yeah. Well, do you see in your circles or your reading at all, any progress towards, I mean, that's the AI revolution right now, right? So do you see anybody going to the point where, cause I don't know how long it takes to do this like intensive CT scan of an object of this size, right? So.
00:43:37
Speaker
are we at the point where somebody can just like, you can get a, an intern or a, you know, a student or something like that to just start dropping articles or artifacts into a CT scanner and saying, bam, bam, bam, let's just get these done. And then it starts cranking out models. And then you get a, you get a, you know, you get something to just start analyzing this stuff based on, you know, predictive modeling and then start spitting out results. Are we even close to that yet? The problem is there's so many
00:44:06
Speaker
I know I sound like a broken record, but there's so many things that could create similar traces to some other things. So, for example, actually, in my Masters again, I don't know why I keep talking about my Masters rather than my PhD, which I've just done and took me four bloody years, but anyway. It was an additional piece of work. It was funny.
00:44:28
Speaker
So my husband, actually, he did image analysis of CT scans and 3D models and things for his PhD research. My daughter, honestly, she's just shouting at me in the background going, Daddy's going to come in soon! And I'm like, okay!
00:44:45
Speaker
And so he actually tried to see whether he could identify the traces based purely on their directionality and see whether he could create graphs based on that. And you can, you can do that, for example. But then, for example, what does that mean? It's like, okay, well, there's traces that go that way. But what does that actually mean? So at some point, you do still need to have that understanding and that kind of analysis, I think, from a human perspective, because there's so many different things that can influence it. And there's so many possibilities that we aren't even aware of yet as well.
00:45:13
Speaker
Okay. Yeah. Right. I hope that answered your question. Sorry. Yeah. Well, let's just run through what their conclusions were for this article. They concluded that these parallel marks that are on this bone were repetitive and they have the same basic shape, despite the fact that there were some size differences. They were also confined to one area, even though they could have utilized other areas on the bone they chose not to.
00:45:41
Speaker
And that having that choice is the interesting piece of that. And then finally, that these marks were organized with the cut marks placed in a systematic way. And here's where the experimental archaeology bit comes in. The researchers, they tried to replicate this on fresh cattle bones. So they used replica flint blades and knives and used seven different incision techniques to try and replicate this. So yeah.
00:46:09
Speaker
Which, again, I think that the experimental part was slightly limited in this one. That would be my only criticism. It seemed like it might have been, yeah.
00:46:18
Speaker
I like that they had the, and I don't know how, how accurate this was given the limited nature of it, but they said they had the comma like curves to the right at the end of the rule. Nick marks because the, and that determined that the person was probably right-handed that did it, which I thought was really cool. I mean, lefties back in the Neanderthal area, I guess, whatever, you know,
00:46:40
Speaker
Well, you guys are the, you know, the slighted group in the world. So Chris is left handed for those that don't know. And he likes to let everybody know.
00:46:58
Speaker
New podcast, left-handed archaeology. What is it, roughly like 10% of the world? I made that up completely. It's got to be 20 by now. Is it like 90% of all percentages are made up on the spot?
00:47:19
Speaker
Well, okay, the big conclusions of this article are that these markings on the bone, they seem to be purely for adornment and not tool making or some other utilitarian use. That's the conclusion that they're drawing. And that they also don't think that this is an object of ritual importance.
00:47:38
Speaker
Which is shocking. But also, the fact that they're so specific about saying, oh, yeah, no, it's not for utilitarian use. And you're like, oh, OK. How do you know? Why do you say that? Because also, then Neanderthals aren't humans. They're a different species. And I think a lot of people forget about that. So we're like, oh, well, if they did this, we would have done it that way. So that's how they did it as well. And I think that that's, I don't know, something that is quite often forgotten too.
00:48:05
Speaker
I don't think in analysis we can say what something wasn't used for. I think we could say what something probably was used for. If we can experimentally show what something could have been used for, I think that's the only statement we can probably make and still put quotes around it or maybe an asterisk on it, right? And lots of potentials and probably we suggest that. But to say something couldn't have been used for this or something like that, it's like, my God, yeah, that's,
00:48:33
Speaker
Yeah. And that, yeah, who knows? So, and to say an object wasn't of ritual importance, I mean, a stick could be of ritual importance. A mountain is of ritual importance. Yeah. Yeah. All of that was, that's what drew me to this article. Cause I'm like, wow, those are some, those are some things to say about 130,000 year old artifacts. So
00:48:57
Speaker
I wonder what their contemporaries in San Diego 130,000 years ago were thinking about this. Oh my God. Can we please stop her? No, we're not talking about it. In fact, I'm editing all this out. The people of Cerruti would have something to say about this. I always have to edit you when you say dumb things. Hashtag life in ruins, come back.
00:49:20
Speaker
Well, that was all like deep tracks for people that listen to every single podcast on this network. So that's right. Caleb knows what I'm talking about. Oh my gosh. All right. A fan shout out. All right. Well, Tilly, thanks for coming on the show. This was fun. This was our, this was our first. Yeah. We haven't interviewed another podcast host on the show yet. I don't think we have. Thank you so much for having me. It's been really fun. It was great.
00:49:47
Speaker
We appreciate it. Thank you. And I think next we've got a news episode coming up. So we'll catch back up with some news and we will see you guys next time. Bye.
00:50:04
Speaker
Thanks for listening to The Archaeology Show. Feel free to comment and view the show notes on the website at www.arcpodnet.com. Find us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at arcpodnet. Music for this show is called, I Wish You Would Look, from the band C Hero. Again, thanks for listening and have an awesome day.
00:50:28
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his RV traveling the United States, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, DigTech 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.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.