Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
The Amulet of Uncertainty (part 2) - Trowel 32
448 Plays17 days ago
It’s time for part two of Ash and Tilly’s discussion with archaeologist and jewellery historian Dr Sigrid van Roode all about magical amulets. In this episode, the three look at the archaeological evidence for magic, and how exactly you go about studying ancient jewellery. But how much can we really interpret when it comes to magic? And is it just a relic of the past, or is it still around today?
Books Mentioned
- Wyrd Sisters (Terry Pratchett)
Links
Contact
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: @and.my.trowel
Transcripts
- For rough transcripts of this episode, go to: https://www.archpodnet.com/trowel/32
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
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction & Guest Overview
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. You have my sword. And you have my boat. And my trowel. Hi, you're listening to episode 32 of And My Trowel, where we look at the fantastic side of archaeology and the archaeological side of fantasy. I'm Tilly. And I'm Ash. And this is the second part of our discussion with Dr. Sigrid van Rohe chatting all about magical amulets. Welcome back, Sigrid. Hello. Hi, hi.
00:00:30
Speaker
So let's just remind ourselves of where we were before we were ah interrupted by our remembering to deliver a package to the museum. Sorry. It's my fault as well.
Identifying Magical Amulets in Archaeology
00:00:41
Speaker
While searching through the archives of the Fellowship of the Trial Society headquarters, we stumbled across what appeared to be a magical amulet. But what kind of magical amulet is it? And how can we possibly research it?
00:00:53
Speaker
So we've looked at the representation of magical amulets in the world of fantasy, but what about if we look at the archaeological evidence? Are there such things? What do you say, Sigrid? I say yes, there are. Excellent. So what's your favourite example? i mean What immediately comes to mind when someone says to you, the archaeology of magical amulets?
00:01:16
Speaker
that is difficult, because here we enter like immediately the difficulty of archaeology, especially when it's from a period in which we do not have written sources, that we have actually no idea how to interpret it, some jewelry that you find. So I was thinking, and that was why I started saying but well look um ah the amber beads, for example, that you find in Neolithic prehistoric burials. Are they jewelry in the sense of adornment? Are they wealth because these things may come from afar? Or or are they amulets based on comparisons with cultures that still live today and that attribute meaning to amber? So, you know, that's really a difficult question. What immediately pops up in my mind is we don't know. What kind of clues would there be to sort of tell you that an object might have been considered as as magical or an amulet?
00:02:13
Speaker
When there is writing on it, that would be most helpful. Sometimes you have these these ah magical inscriptions on them. They can be little prayers. They can be invocations. They can be a series of gibberish that just invoke the power of writing itself as an act, but do not mean anything necessarily.
00:02:33
Speaker
And you can maybe see something from the context in which is it is found. So is it worn on a specific place on the body? Has it been associated with other objects that we know to have had magical function? And otherwise, it's usually a sort of a guessing game, I'd say. That's very interesting. Yeah. and So do you find them predominantly in burials as well, these amulets? Well, that's also the thing.
00:03:03
Speaker
When we find human remains, that usually is in burials. So that is when you find jewelry that may be associated with that person that might be an amulet. That's a lot of may and might and maybe and and possibly you know like
Symbolism in Amulets: Knots and Senses
00:03:17
Speaker
an archeologist. yeah say like archeology like archeology right And then there is things that are not jewelry that have been buried intentionally, like foundation deposits,
00:03:29
Speaker
You have these witch marks on posts and on buildings and on other things. ah Churches also, graveyards, that sort of thing. But that is not jewelry. But you do see sometimes the same repetition of patterns that you see in these inscriptions repeated in jewelry. Like, for example, the knot.
00:03:51
Speaker
which is a very powerful symbol because it's ambiguous really it can go by both ways you can use knots to tie something together to keep it together to fasten something and so giving it permanence but you can also use it to strangle to bind to make sure that something else doesn't move when it's a really complicated knot The general idea is that evil, which is apparently not considered that smart, gets lost in knots and in labyrinths. I mean, I don't play it really. Yeah, it follows its own tail kind of thing, doesn't it? Yeah, follow it does. It really does. It just runs up a certain avenue and then gets caught up in the knot that you place there. but Okay.
00:04:34
Speaker
Which is a good trick. If you're ever being followed by like an evil spirit, just... Confuse it. Confuse it with something gleaming, for example, or something that also works. Okay. Well, they which is why you'd have a magical amulet. Sorry. No, no, no. There's also like that kind of somewhat almost amulet thing where, especially in Scotland, and I think it happens in other places too, but like in the six No, it'll be the 17th century. They put witch stones and in walls. jim and jeify Yeah, so it's literally just very shiny stones and they put them in a little bag and it like draws all the evil that could possibly enter the house into
00:05:15
Speaker
the wall. And then it's shiny and they're like, Ooh, look at the shiny stones in that bag. I'm just going to sit in there forever. bla was What was the terminology we learned in the last episode? Bling, bling, bling.
00:05:32
Speaker
sorry sacred good i interrupted you no but so That is ah one way of recognizing if something can be an amulet. If you find these patterns on a piece of jewelry, it may have had a double function, but that also goes for the materials used, for example.
00:05:48
Speaker
So you have the shiny objects that indeed are blind evil or distracted. You have dangling, jingling things. Note that in the lexicon of scientific terms. j jangling and ding lean yeah evil is apparently also easily scared away. So you have these these beautiful Hulstadt brooches, these big clanky things. That jingling also announces the person coming like Terry Pratchett announced the d witch coming.
00:06:23
Speaker
yeah But it also scares evil away. Apparently evil is very fidgety and easily scared and distracted. That's so interesting that, like, amulets are almost meant to be heard as well, as seen. Or smelled. A smelled smell, yeah. Smelled is also a part of amulets, but that is, archaeologically speaking, very difficult to ascertain. I could imagine all that feeling, yeah.
00:06:48
Speaker
Who's speaking as a candlemaker here? A candlemaker who likes at archaeology all the time? Yeah, I totally understand that. But you mentioned something, this is sort of talking about indeed archaeological sources where you don't have the written sources, but you mentioned last episode, your sort of specialism is the last kind of 100, 150 years in various parts of the world. So is it then easier to be able to identify these things if you have that written source? And how are you able to basically relate that back to archaeological sources as well?
00:07:16
Speaker
Well, yes and no, because it's never easy with magic, is it? so So on the one hand, you have written sources that detail spells and rituals and acts and things that you have to create ah quite literally. And that helps, of course, a lot because then you have literally a fabrication manual for an amulet.
00:07:37
Speaker
But what you also have, and that is something that has given me much food for thought to interpret magic in the past, is the role of what I now call, for lack of a better term, the wise women.
Crafting Amulets: Materials and Makers
00:07:51
Speaker
Women that are not necessarily witches,
00:07:53
Speaker
But you know the elder women of a generation, say people who may have read a certain children's book like 40 years ago, that group, they will they have seen it all by the time they reach 50, 60 years old. And they create amulets that are often very much based in the immediate surroundings of a settlement.
00:08:18
Speaker
So an example is I went through all of Winifred Blackman's amulets. She has collected tons of amulets in Egypt in the 1920s. And these are now in the Pitt Rivers Museum parties in Liverpool. There are some in the Bridge Museum. I went through all of these ah just to see if I could find some common denominator for which type of amulet does what.
00:08:44
Speaker
And when I went through them, there's literally thousands of items. At some point I thought, when you fret my goal you have been duped because there were pebbles and pieces of rock and pieces of bone and that were described to help against spirit position against spirit position by two shakes a shake is a ah possessing spirit spirit position by a girl spirit position for boys who have been possessed but also pain in your left knee headaches i could do with that
00:09:16
Speaker
you need very mo pick up any pebble and then I thought okay so if it is not but what it looks but if it's not visually distinguishable then maybe it's the process in which it became an amulet so then I imagine there's someone coming to one of these wise women and say, oh, I i have cramp in my left leg, what should I do? And she would say, well, go out at sunset or at at dawn to this and this place and pick up the first piece that jumps out at you that that catches your eye. And that then would become the amulet. If you look at it this way, all we are left with as archaeologists is the material remains
00:09:58
Speaker
of a process that we do know nothing about. So yeah, anything could be an amulet. Is that confusing enough? I love that basically the end result of this podcast, these two episodes is going to be, we don't really know anything about the past. We can't tell if it's magical. And if we do, it's very confusing.
00:10:19
Speaker
which I mean this is archaeology in a nutshell, but it reminds me of it as well. I mean, this idea of the magical amulets and everything, it's almost, yes, sometimes it's the physical reputation, but like you say, they were told to go out and like pick up the first pebble that they saw, but then in doing that, they would probably exercise their legs. And in doing that, they would work out the cramp in their leg and everything. This reminds me of, and I hate to bring it up again so early in the episode, but it's very precious. Early in the episode. are you
00:10:46
Speaker
This is the latest you've ever done it. We're 11 minutes in. So, Granny Weatherworks is the, well, she's not the head witch, but she, because witches are non-hierarchical, but she is the headest witch of the non-hierarchical witches. And her thing is, yeah, called headology. And she basically, like, I can remember there's one scene where she's basically telling a man who has a bad back and she's like, oh, you know,
00:11:07
Speaker
yeah I drink this ah sucrose aqua mixture and lie on the board of an oak tree that has been, you know, hardened for this long. And la he's like, all right, so that like the knots in my back can go into the woods. And it's like, oh, Granny was impressed. She hadn't thought of that. you know kind of thing but yeah she's basically telling them to do things that will be like biologically beneficial for them but in such a way that it's like oh yes and you need the tree of an oak that is has seen five winters under the moonlight of the blah blah blah or whatever but it's basically like just put a board under your bed to make it a bit more solid so that gets better
Practical Magic: Health and Cultural Symbols
00:11:43
Speaker
Which I guess is a lot of what magic is and what magical abulets are as well. It is. There is such an analogy between our world of everyday and everything things that we do that get translated into jewelry. I mean, if you return to knotting, we do that all day long. You knot so many things, especially in antiquity when we don't have zippers and velcro, there was a lot of knotting to be done. but So that can be a magical act like pinning a fibula, for example, a clothing pin.
00:12:12
Speaker
That in reality, of course, the practical sense, it keeps two things together. So if you do that with intent, it might also become a love charm. oh yeah the and tension the tension behind it yeah yeah But when you excavate a fibula, you cannot see that whether it has been used as such.
00:12:35
Speaker
I guess is what we were saying last episode as well, about our own jewellery, and how even though on the outside it might just look like a pretty piece of bling-a-ling, it's actually the meaning behind it indeed, and the sort of interpretation which is so interesting. That is also what I find with archaeology, you also have to consider it in its own timeframe. Because for example, take amethyst as a material,
00:12:57
Speaker
Pliny writes about that this is going to be a golden tip for all of you listeners that it works against drunkenness. It prevents sex drunkenness. So what you do is you take an amethyst, you tuck that in your mouth when you go to a party, somehow you need to keep it there and then you will not get drunk. Because you can't drink. can increase yeah But then when we move to the Middle Ages, you have the German Hildegard von Bingen, who writes that Amethyst is absolutely perfect for skin irritation, skin rashes, skin diseases. and Both of these things, of course, go back to Amethyst being this blotchy purple-colored stone, so it could either be the color of wine or your face when you've had enough.
00:13:46
Speaker
or irritated skin, so it works through an allergy that is relevant in that particular culture. And from this we learned that apparently in the Middle Ages there was a lot of skin diseases going on, and which is how jewelry works as a historic source.
00:14:00
Speaker
And i mean just you mentioned different cultures and stuff. like Do you notice it as well? Do you have any particular... nice Because you've say you've worked with a couple of different different cultures and a different historic groups. do Are there sort of different representations of magic or different ways that magic is shown? Or is it pretty ah do you see a lot of patterns?
00:14:18
Speaker
I see so many patterns that are similar. The underlying principles always, almost are the same. It's analogous magic. It's a form of Do Udes I give, so you will give. that is There's a lot of threatening going on also. If you do not heal my son, I will smash your statue kind of stuff.
00:14:40
Speaker
very threatening. It's in the analogies themselves that we lose track of what they actually meant. So there are a lot of ah solar symbols, for example, circles, triangles, might be a goddess, could be a mountaintop, could be a pyramid, could be a skirt, so many things. You need to see that in their specific cultural context.
00:15:01
Speaker
hu Okay. Well, I think with all this information and all this knowledge, although we can definitely try to make a start on interpreting what this object that we have certainly is. But before we chat further about that, anyone for second breakfast? Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Good shout. We'll be right back, everyone.
00:15:19
Speaker
You can't beat a good mushroom and potato omelette, my opinion. I couldn't agree more. So now that we're feeling refreshed, Cigrid, based then on your experience as a jewellery historian, how would you approach our particular scenario? So we have this amulet. What actually is your like practical approach, like your methodology, shall we say, when you're looking at a new item of jewellery?
00:15:41
Speaker
Okay, so first I would ask you where you got it from. So I know it's on the back of a shelf in your archives, but how did it get there? And if you do not know, I would want to know who rented the building before you, you know, so how did that piece of jewelry, come into your possession and what, if anything, do you know of its previous history? And then I would, you know, do what any archaeologist does. So take measurements, do a description, find parallels if anywhere. And from there, try to piece together what this might be.
00:16:15
Speaker
Okay. And I mean, in terms of, because you mentioned in your own sort of research, you're looking at very a couple of different cultures. You said you mentioned kind of Dutch historic and prehistoric items, but also North African and Asian cultures. Are there different methods or approaches for these different cultures in terms of ancient history and jewelry?
00:16:35
Speaker
For the methodology, I usually just do the same process, ah but it's the different contexts that is always important because when you use something really simple, white is a morning color, morning as in grieving. um For one part of the world and in the other part of the world, it's black.
00:16:53
Speaker
So it's really relevant, the the context that any piece of jewelry comes from. So does that mean the material is also relevant? So what can that material tell us? Like if it's made from silver or if it's got a jewel? or oh Yes, absolutely. The the material is very, very relevant again in its context. There is a colleague of mine who has done research into amulets from Palestine where she found that there are amulets that have been made of twings and this is from the 1920s, this collection.
00:17:25
Speaker
And these twigs had to come from a ah very specific type of tree that grows in a very specific location. So if we were to find such a thing in the Netherlands, that same background would not hold true. So we'd have to look in a different direction. Which, gosh, so you need to know, like, you don't just need to know about joy, you need to know so much about the cultural background. I mean, I guess you could say the same with archaeology, but it seems to be extra essential with this.
00:17:52
Speaker
especially since jewellery is portable, it travels a lot, so it might end up in a different world. One of the things that I love the most about pieces that carry meaning, that could be even an amulet, is the Valley Cotton Cross that is, I think it's now in the Bridge Museum in the Silk Roads exhibition, which is an early medieval cross, so it's it's of equal sides, equal arms, and in the centre,
00:18:16
Speaker
it has an intaglio, an inscribed stone in Arabic, which is set not in its normal reading direction. I believe it's either ah completely inverted or in vertical. Anyway, that is too levels of meaning mixed into one piece, and it could very well be that the person who used that Arabic amulet thought, well, I can't read this, but it must be powerful. So going to smack it in the middle of a cross and then the cross will be extra powerful. But didn't know how to actually read the Arabic, so just put it in as they thought it was. Yeah. Wow, that's really interesting. And like, if you're looking at different kinds of jewellery as well,
00:19:02
Speaker
and they're different? I mean, you hip this is probably just going to be really boring because you're probably going to be like, no, it's all the same. But i I need to ask the question anyway. like Because um you mentioned you've looked at rings, you've looked at kind of amulets in terms of thought, like sort of necklaces, you've looked at, ah you mentioned scent in the last episode as well, is that also? so So are there different kind of approaches depending on where it was worn, how it was worn that you would look at? On the body, you mean? Yeah.
00:19:28
Speaker
Or yeah the way it was used, I guess. Yes, because but here for for this you would also need insight in the culture itself. Why do you wear a particular piece of jewelry on on a particular space on your body? And is that different from regular jewelry, which might indicate that it is an amulet, like under your clothing versus over your clothing, for example? And then there is when when you talk about scents in current-day Morocco, there is a specific scent, and this is also very useful information, that is used to undo spells. So that is burnt, just in general. It's it's not worn on the body or anything, it's just burnt, and it will undo spells. But the flip side of this is that it will also undo spells that are beneficial to anyone.
00:20:15
Speaker
So if you went to say a magical doctor for, ah I don't know, a medicinal problem or something, and that person would have prescribed you an amulet, do not go near this smell because the amulet will be annulled. Okay, interesting.
00:20:30
Speaker
It's that classic, right? If you're like, do i if I have to get rid of my whole deck of cards now, I'm going to lose this cool thing, but I'm also going to lose these like poison things that are in there. sure yeah but that That's interesting because Tilly almost assumed that you were wearing an amulet. So does that does that mean an amulet doesn't have to be an item of jewelry and you don't have to wear it?
Ritual and Economic Aspects of Magic
00:20:53
Speaker
Oh, absolutely. I mean, we're talking about jewelry basically because I'm a jewelry historian. yeah An amulet can literally be anything. So it can be a pattern that you paint on your walls or carve into your doorpost. It can be an object that you bury in your house or something, just an object that you position somewhere in your settlement.
00:21:15
Speaker
I think even words can be an amulet. If you say words that you feel protect you from something, smells can be an amulet. emulla Literally everything can be an amulet. This is going to be a really big job, isn't it? But yours is tangible, right? You have a tangible object. There you go. In terms of so sort of measuring things, description, writing things, finding parallels, but like are there any ways? Can you give some some examples of
00:21:49
Speaker
pieces of jewellery or items of ancient jewellery or modern jewellery or historic jewellery that have been interpreted as some kind of magical amulet and what was the what were the clues that that gave that description?
00:22:05
Speaker
from off my mind. So there is a jewelry that was used in Egypt in a possession ritual where ah women would experience that they were possessed by spirit, that spirit would make them feel terrible. And then the thing you do is you ask the spirit, what do you want? What does it take for you to leave me alone? And in that ritual jewelry was used And that is also basically the very short synopsis of my book, everything from the amulet. So there you go. But what distinguished the they're not really amulet powerful pieces that were used in that ritual is their engraving. It shows pictures of spirits.
00:22:46
Speaker
And the fact that it sports dangles, ah so it it made a sound to to keep evil at a distance. But on the other side, we're talking about pendants that have been engraved on two sides, is a religious text from the Qur'an, which is the throne verse. So the interesting thing is that when it was worn, it would be worn with the spirit side towards the wearer. So you could not see that from the outside. From the outside, it looks like a regular pendant That carries an accepted text, a text that is known to be very powerful against evil. On the other side would be the imagery of the spirits that were possessing you. And that makes it sort of stand out as a different type of jewel, not just your regular jewel. How did they know what the spirit was that possessed them to draw it?
00:23:37
Speaker
that is what you would need a ritual specialist for. And that would also be, again, one of these wise women, and she would know from experience which spirit it was that was ah troubling you. But here's also one of the things that we haven't touched upon yet, but which I find really interesting in Math Reality of Magic, if you could say, there's an entire economical world, actually,
00:24:02
Speaker
surrounding this. So this ritual special ah specialist, she would be sort of like a business partner of the silversmiths. And she would tell them like, you need to engrave this, this type of spirit or that type of spirit. And of course, when you think about it, almost all amulets need to be purchased, if they are already made amulets, if they're not, you know, the pieces of boat that you need to pick up.
00:24:27
Speaker
the services of the ritual specialists need to be paid for. There is literally an economy of magic going on, which is also something that I find really, really fascinating.
00:24:39
Speaker
it sounds like a great business model not i say this podcast fails ah
00:24:46
Speaker
Start up when the archaeology society crumbles to dust, we can start up. Yeah, Secret, do you want in? Oh yeah, Calvin, I've got the age, so yes. You can be It a wise woman. sounds like a great business model. I'm still waiting for that magic to happen. I'll be the wheeler dealer that goes, I think you're possessed by a spirit. So I'm going to go. I just happened to have engraved the perfect spirit engraving on this necklace. Oh, look at that. That'll be 50 pounds.
00:25:18
Speaker
And i mean it would it have then been, i mean at what point does magic amulet stop? or you know what what point does Because magic is something that we we see so much in kind of mythology and in ancient texts and in historic sources, but when does magic start to become less kind of normalized in that respect?
00:25:39
Speaker
well Again, difficult answer because my first inkling would say never.
Magic's Role in Modern Culture and Archaeology
00:25:44
Speaker
Never. i mean Of course it is, everyone listening in. Listen, but look at every one of you out there. Look around you. How many iBeats can you buy in your local drugstore, for example? How many car amulets, car angels are out there there? We still feel that intrinsic need, I think, to wear amulets. Now, the thing is that in research,
00:26:10
Speaker
Magic is still a little bit frowned upon. i I see a trend in which looking into ritual practices or magical practices ritual is increasing. so that and then It's becoming more serious, I think. People are taking it more seriously as a research field. But in everyday life, magic is everywhere. Everywhere.
00:26:32
Speaker
I suppose it's part of your life way as well, especially culturally and then even now. I mean i know I talked a bit about my jewellery that I wear, but I'm convinced if I don't if i take off a piece of jewellery, something bad will happen. like I don't know why, it's just like ingrained in me that if I somehow take it off,
00:26:54
Speaker
something bad is going to happen to my family or something. So I think they're a bit of amulets and a bit of, and if I'm doing certain things, I'll wear certain jewellery that'll help me. And it's it's not necessarily logical, but no I But I do all the time. It's the feeling and it's the the significance of it to you. Yeah, ah but then it's that's magical in a way, isn't it?
00:27:19
Speaker
is part of what I believe and my life ways of interacting with the world. And if that piece of jewelry helps me, then why am I not going to do it, you know? well You know, just also talking about what what in the human humanities then is is called you know agency, which is a very fashionable term for the meaning that a piece of jewelry or an object can have. We have right now in ah the Netherlands, in our National Museum of Antiquities, a fantastic exhibition on the Bronze Age. And in that exhibition, for the first time since the Bronze Age, are six swords or dorks, you could call them, that
00:27:59
Speaker
have now been reunited for the first time that possibly have been made by one and ah the same maker. They are fantastic, they are powerful, they are absolutely goosebump, inducingly beautiful. They are now reunited for the first time and I saw them on that exhibition just last week.
00:28:18
Speaker
And you know I'm a very rational archaeologist who does not read fantasy books. so you know just I was looking at that setup of these swords together and my first idea was Would something happen now? and I was about to say, did the portal open? yeah Exactly. But that's that's the feeling that you get from from seeing these objects. So I think magic is inherent and still in the world. It's present. ah It's whether you choose to do something with it or not. That makes all the difference.
00:28:50
Speaker
Oh, well, I think that's ah an excellent sentiment to to start wrapping things up with. So as I see that you've been taking notes. So what would you say would then be our kind of approach to this particular amulet?
Research Methodologies in Amulet Studies
00:29:03
Speaker
So we have to look at the context of the object, as Sigurd said. So how did it get there? What it's made of, where did it come from? Maybe someone else rented our property beforehand. Then we should take measurements, descriptions, and find parallels. So a bit of research behind there as well. And perhaps look at what the materials it's made of and understand what the significance of that material is and look to see if there's anything on either face of the jewellery. True, yeah, we need to check anything scratched in, anything added afterwards that might be like, yeah, to make it into an amulet. Okay, interesting.
00:29:37
Speaker
Well, sacred, before we wrap up, is there anything in particular that you would like to share with our listeners, any exciting research coming up any exciting projects you want to talk about? Well, there's so many interesting projects that I could film a podcast on that, I think. So no, other than a warm invitation to download the book, which says ah it's really impossible to distinguish between joy The summary is we don't know how to do anything magical. But here's some really cool examples that might be, which is basically archaeology again, I think. um And if people want to follow you or find out more about what you do, where's the best place to do that? That would be my website, BedouinSilver.com, which is also where I run a blog, this might interest you on magical jewelry and amulets.
00:30:31
Speaker
There you go. Perfect. We will put the link to that down in the show notes, so do check that out and follow Sigrid there. That's about it for this episode of Am I Trial? We hope that you enjoyed this quest. Thank you so, so much, Sigrid, for helping us out with this particular problem. It was so great to have you join us, and we've definitely learned, if not tangible and information, we've learned about how to approach the situation, which I think is the most important thing. So thank you so much. And we've learned that magic still exists. Yes, exactly. yes
00:31:03
Speaker
And as always, everyone listening in, we are always open for new episode ideas. So if there's any suggestions that people have for an episode, maybe you've gotten some inspiration from a fantasy book, maybe there's an archaeological concept or material that you don't really understand, but we might be able to help to explain through fantasy. Maybe there's something in a book that you want to find out more about, the archaeology of or the history of, anything like that, get in touch via email or social media.
00:31:27
Speaker
All of the contact info for us as well as for Cigrid and references and for further reading for all the points that we've discussed today can, as always, be found in the show notes. Tilly, have you looked outside recently? al Outside? No, why? Erm, well, is it me? Or has that oak tree in our courtyard just grown an extra couple of metres overnight?
00:31:50
Speaker
Oh, well, yeah, I think you're right. ah do Do you think we should tell someone about this? Actually, we already know someone who can talk about this.
00:32:04
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his ah 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.archapodnet.com. Contact us at chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com.