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Rowe, Rowe, Rowe Your Boat - Ep 51
384 Plays5 years ago
In this episode, we chat with Chris Rowe, a returning guest who originally appeared in Episode 12. We begin by catching up with him on his life and his work situation through Covid. After that, we talk about the potential of an archaeology trade school while also discussing the CRM and academic divide. Chris and the cohosts delve deeply into the curation crisis, what it is, what are some contributors to this crisis and ultimately suggestions on how future archaeologists can change the status quo in regards to curation.
Video: https://youtu.be/hxDI6b4Z8cc
Contact For Guest: (Twitter, email, etc.):
Chris’s Instagram: @crowemagnon.man
Chris Rowe’s literature recommendations:
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
The Fifth Beginning: What Six Million Years of Human History Can Tell Us about Our Future by Robert L. Kelly
Contact
- Email: alifeinruinspodcast@gmail.com
- Instagram: @alifeinruinspodcast
- Facebook: @alifeinruinspodcast
- Twitter: @alifeinruinspod
- Website: www.alifeinruins.com
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Transcript
Introduction to Episode 51
00:00:00
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.
00:00:13
Speaker
Welcome to episode 51 of a Life in Ruins podcast, Reinvestigate the Careers of Those Living Life in Ruins. I'm your host Carlton Gover. And as always, I am joined by my co-host, David in Howe and Connor Jonin.
Chris Rowe's Career Updates
00:00:25
Speaker
For this episode, we are pleased to have our friend and colleague Chris Rowe return to the show. You may remember him early on from episode 12, Artifact Road Shows, where Chris had recently arrived to Augusta working with David at New South Associates. And for those of you to not listen to the episode,
00:00:41
Speaker
We all went to graduate school. The University of Wyoming got our master's degree with Mr. Rowe. So Chris, how are you doing? What have you been up to since you were last on the podcast? I am doing fantastic. Not doing a lot though. There's been a pandemic since the last time we spoke. So been doing the same thing. Everyone else has zoom meetings and then eventually a nine to five work day and then fading into the abyss of television in the evenings.
00:01:09
Speaker
Fair enough, man. How is a Nebraska football fair this year? Oh, man. Let's just skip past that part of it. I do want to point out that we did a spring game, though, on it must have been like NCAA football 2007 or something like that, and they live streamed it. So they brought back like all it was like the perfect Husker team versus the perfect Husker team. It's like all the stars from from all the all the old times and
00:01:39
Speaker
It was, it's pretty funny. They had full on announcers for it and it lasted a good 45 minutes and we watched it because what else are you going to do? What else are you going to do? What can you do? What can you do? It is what it is. You guys are back into like actually working in the office at this point.
Remote Work Challenges in Archaeology
00:02:01
Speaker
Oh very much. So yeah, we, uh, can't really do our jobs very well from home for a sustained amount of time.
00:02:08
Speaker
I was telling Chris this the other day, and I have friends that have been working remotely since lockdown last year. And since they work very white collar jobs where they can just use an Excel sheet at home remotely, they're like, well, just tell your boss you just want to work from home. At least write him a letter. It doesn't work like that. I have to be there to manage artifacts. And he's like, but surely there's something. You could teach them virtually. And I'm like, no, they will replace me virtually.
00:02:39
Speaker
And Chris, Chris and I were talking about how that's like the blue collar, white collar divide of archeology.
Should Archaeology Be a Trade Degree?
00:02:44
Speaker
Like it's honestly a blue collar job in a lot of ways. And Chris had a point about trade schools. Yeah. Yeah. It's just, you know, it could be a trade degree. It could be a two year, go to school, land in a job degree. Honestly, I don't think I even understood or cared about theory in my undergrad.
00:03:02
Speaker
Right. Cause yeah, if you wanted to just do like for like people without an anthropology degree can do forest service, archaeological reconnaissance. I've seen that on people's applications before, but like just with enough schooling to, you know, learn what lithics are, like how to find them and like site deposition easily do survey. It's just the field school aspect. I mean, you could take, you could create that and transfer that into a trade school and dibs on that idea. So none of y'all get that.
00:03:32
Speaker
But obviously, academic archaeology would still be a four-year thing. And to get your RPA and all that, I imagine that would be the same.
Working with the Forest Service
00:03:41
Speaker
But it's overthought. And Chris, you are certified as a, if I remember correctly, you were an archaeologist over the summers back at Wyoming working for the Forest Service. And didn't you get forest fire qualified or something? Because remember when we had that huge fire outside of Laramie? You were raking in overtime just by sitting near the fire trucks.
00:04:01
Speaker
Just wait for it to burn out. That is pretty much exactly what happened. I went to fire school. I truly, everyone raves about how they love going on fires and doing firefighting with the forest service and stuff like that. For whatever reason, it's not for me. I don't know if I was just too out of shape at that point in time. Like it's changed.
00:04:26
Speaker
uh, still too out of shape to do it. I think if I had started it at like age 20, yeah, I'd be gung ho about it, but you know, I, it was, it was not, it was not for me. Uh, the overtime was super nice and all I had to do was deliver supplies. And if you do that once a day and go out to the fire line, you get hazard pay. So it was a pretty sweet gig. Don't get me wrong. It was long hours and ate up a weekend, but
00:04:51
Speaker
Yeah, it's, it's super interesting. I feel like there's a ton of people,
Archaeology and Fire Management
00:04:54
Speaker
ton of archeologists. I know who have done that worked in fire for the forest service with an archeology degree. I mean, it's, it's interesting how much overlap there is. I mean, they probably just take whoever they can get honestly, when, when things get out of hand. Well that, and also there's the fire archeology aspect of it as well that you have to consider. So you want to make sure that, you know, they're not going to run a dozer line through a
00:05:19
Speaker
through a listed site or something like that. So there is like spaces to do it as an archeologist out there. But yeah, I am definitely in the minority on that where it wasn't for me. Everyone else that I've ever talked to has worked for the forest service. They love fire. It is their jam. I totally get it. I like campfires. I don't know what it was. It wasn't for me. Well, I have a question though, like, you know, to prevent the fires, like why don't you guys just rake the leaves?
00:05:50
Speaker
That is good. I don't know why they haven't thought of that. Yeah. I just came up with it on the spot, much like a certain person did. You're going to have to run that up to the highest echelons of the gun. He's the highest of the high. I mean, he, the man tried to guess the cure for the Corona virus live on television. I think he, um, he figured out the forest service forest fire issues with just a stroke of a word, you know, I don't know what we're going to do about this Biden guy. He's crazy.
00:06:18
Speaker
Or it could have been like a legit stroke. I don't know if it was a stroke of genius or a legit stroke that might have put him on the raking leaves thing. Yeah, and Biden's a mess. So hashtag Trump 2024. Don't you put that evil magic on me, Ricky Bobby.
00:06:40
Speaker
Bell can edit that out in post, right? Exactly. But I think, kind of circling back, you guys brought up an interesting point that I would like to get into before we get into the curation and collections thing about, could archaeology be
Relevance of Archaeology Education
00:06:54
Speaker
a trade school? Because we haven't really talked about that. Recently, the CRM
00:06:58
Speaker
arc podcast here in the APN that's hosted by one of our producers, Chris Webster. They were talking about how there's like a stigma in higher academia, specifically archeology, PhD levels, a stigma against CRM and CRM work.
00:07:14
Speaker
I've only did one CRM job back in with the Mountain Valley Pipeline for two months before moving out to Wyoming, but you guys are all making money, professionals, and I'm the idiot that decided to get a PhD, like a moron. Do you guys think that your master's education really prepared the three of you to go into a professional
00:07:38
Speaker
hands on archaeology career? Yeah, 100%. When I got to grad school, I was I thought I knew a lot. And then I realized that I knew almost nothing. And so yeah, I think it did prep me. And going through it, like all of my advisors knew that I was going to be going into CRM in the end, because that's that was my goal at the time. And I obviously worked out. So I think I kind of tailored my experience to that more so than some of the other folks that
00:08:08
Speaker
that tailor it towards maybe going on to doctoral school or focusing on academics.
00:08:15
Speaker
That's a great point, too, because no one ever really talks about that. You're supposed to have an idea of what you want to do when you go to grad school, maybe what you want to research for thesis, or in your case, your job. But the interesting thing is, and I didn't learn this in class when I hated it, like theory class, but now being post-grad school for me, what your ideas of the past are and what you want to do and study about the past.
00:08:41
Speaker
When you're in theory class, you're molding that worldview. They're giving you the tools in which to do so. So like I did all my papers on the dog stuff and that's currently like all I think about now.
Finding Your Niche in Graduate School
00:08:50
Speaker
But my thesis ended up being on something else. Yeah. Do you guys see what I'm saying? Sorry, I'm going on a tangent. Like if you go into it, you get what you want out of it, which could be, you know, biased as hell, but like, I don't know.
00:09:02
Speaker
Well, I think the classic is that like you get kind of your, your general understanding of anthropology from your undergrad, and then you find your niche in grad school and you really narrow your focus. And I think that that plays out for just about everyone who makes it through grad school and onto the professional world.
00:09:22
Speaker
So you went right from grad school into the, well, during grad school, you were in the forest service. So like, do you think, like Carlton asked, like, did that really help like what you learned in theory and bio and linguistics? Somewhat. I tended to focus my classes, like specifically on what I would be able to use in the real world. So like lithic classes, so art classes.
00:09:46
Speaker
things like that because as a CRM archaeologist, you need to have a very broad understanding. You can't just go out there and be like, well, I'm only going to record prehistoric sites that are from the middle archaic. You can't do that. No, here's another cabin. Here's another mine. You have to record them because they're there. You have to know historic stuff too. You have to know pre-contact. You have to know historic
00:10:11
Speaker
and at least have a good enough grasp on stuff outside of your niche in order to write it down properly and record it. Because most of the time, that's the only time that site is ever going to get looked at, especially if it's not eligible. You're just moving right along. No one's ever going to pay a fine to it in the future. What are your thoughts, Connor?
00:10:30
Speaker
I went into grad school kind of with a general idea, like a super, super general idea of what I wanted to do, not knowing if I was going to finish at a master's or anything like that. But I think theory and all the classes I took helped me understand what I was passionate about, what I really wanted to study, and how you can apply certain things.
00:10:54
Speaker
Grad school was more of a discovery moment than it was a niche, finding a niche. And I think you're just given more opportunities to find out and be associated with certain projects and whatnot through the university as a grad student. I think that the opportunities just increased like an insane amount. What's your thoughts, Carlton?
00:11:17
Speaker
I don't know. I think there is definitely a bias. Granted, my sample size of schools is rather limited. Boulder doesn't really. You can master out, but there's not a specific master's degree that you apply for. You can, but most people do the master's PhD track. But at Wyoming, where you guys do have a master's degree, I saw
00:11:41
Speaker
a decent amount of folks come in specifically for the masters to be like, yeah, I'm coming in here to help me with CRM, but I just haven't seen that here at Boulder. And I think there is not just a bias against CRM here in several different institutions,
Biases in Archaeology Education
00:12:00
Speaker
right? But in terms of like, I don't think they're training. Modern archeology departments for doctorates are not training
00:12:07
Speaker
people to be archaeologists in the 21st century. I think we still have a lot of professors who haven't been on the job market for 50, 40 years, who think it's a completely different market, completely different world. And we're not ready, fundamentally, right? Because there's only so many PhD jobs, then what do you do with all those guys who've never worked CRM or who have never done museum work? What do they do?
00:12:32
Speaker
Yeah. I never really noticed a, you know, I guess I kind of picked up on some, or I felt it, you know, that there was a stigma against, you know, going to get your PhD versus like, Oh no, he has to go work. Cause he didn't get into his PhD, but like there's not, or their PhD, I should say. And like there, you feel that in school, but I don't know so much if that is the case. Cause some people are just like, I want a nine to five, I want to go home and you know, see my wife or my husband or my wife and my husband. Um, but.
00:13:00
Speaker
my wife's boyfriend. Either way. But what I'm getting at is like, if they, you know, if academic archaeologists want to look down on CRM and like have a stigma against it, they can get right over themselves because like, there's so much stuff that needs to be dug up. And like, how can you have a degree about preserving the past and then just be like, yeah, but those people that dig it up are just peasants, you know? And like, it's not
00:13:25
Speaker
They can get over it. Like, come talk to me. And the CRM grade literature holds far more information in raw data on the archaeological record than anything a PhD student will do for their dissertation, right? Like if they're doing a site report, but if you just look in the CRM grade, there's like hundreds of thousands of it's just boring to read, but it's there.
00:13:51
Speaker
And Chris, you looked at, for your master's thesis, you looked at biases between different land types based and to understand the archeology in the past. I think, you know, private land and certain like federal lands, because there's so much CRM, we have a different understanding of the past on different land types, essentially. And didn't you find something similar to that with your thesis work? Yeah. Yeah. So like that was.
00:14:20
Speaker
probably a good segue into what we're going to talk about is that I was using repository collections to generate a baseline of what would be expected from public lands.
Using CRM Collections for Research
00:14:30
Speaker
So that was using the gray literature, using the stuff that was just collected on a project here and there, and then compared it to the data that I generated by working with those landowners. So yes, I would say that there are differences and it's sometimes only CRM archaeology that's going to
00:14:49
Speaker
have access to that because, you know, of a right away or something like that where they're allowed to be in there. Can you give the audience a quick TLDR of your like results from your thesis? Just so they remember. Sure. Yeah, absolutely. So basically compared public versus private land projectile points, grouped them into categories, temporal categories, rough ones. And then basically just saw how they compared through time and essentially found that paleo
00:15:20
Speaker
age stuff was more prevalent on public land and the more recent stuff was more prevalent on private land. Okay, cool. Yeah, it was a, it was a really cool thesis. I remember watching you do it and how excited you were to, you know, go to the road shows and stuff.
00:15:36
Speaker
Excellent. And if you do want a more like in-depth analysis of Chris's thesis, definitely go re-listen to episode 12. Get the full thing. And with that, we're going to go ahead and end segment one of Life for Roots Podcast. We'll be right back with Chris Rowe here on episode 51 during segment two. Welcome back to episode 51 of Life for Roots Podcast. We're here with our friend and boy. He's our boy.
00:15:59
Speaker
I don't know where to get that. So in this last segment, we were kind of talking about stereotypes or perceived notions of what serum archeology is. And we kind of touched upon, as David said, we have a lot of stuff to get out of the ground, but kind of moving forward with what we wanted to talk about with today's topic, the curation crisis or the collection crisis here in the States in which we have too much stuff already.
Ethics of Artifact Collection
00:16:26
Speaker
So, is it ethical for archaeologists to continue to be digging up more stuff when we have already a bunch of stuff out of the ground that hasn't been examined yet? Chris, what are your thoughts? My thoughts, and I've seen this play out in my professional career so far, is that we need to be much more mindful of the things that we are collecting and pulling in for curation. I kind of think about it like, you know how
00:16:53
Speaker
People say that if you save someone's life, like you are their keeper or whatever for all of time and you're supposed to take care of them. I mean, that's essentially what we're doing with artifacts is we're rescuing them and then, well, we better take care of them forever. And well, as the curation crisis gets worse and worse, I mean, we're seeing that every, every day at all of the repository jobs that I've had is that this stuff is just falling apart. It hasn't been taken care of. So.
00:17:21
Speaker
I just want to plug our newest book coming up. It's, uh, our artifacts keeper. It's a new bestseller. It's a love romance novel by John Green, forward by John Grisham and or Nicholas Sparks. Uh, but so we have this, this project going ongoing down in Durango right now. It's associated with kind of late Pueblo folks. And as part of this project, we.
00:17:50
Speaker
just discovered tons and tons of these huge matates, just the same types over and over and over again. And we ended up collecting most of them because it's going to get destroyed and whatnot. But we're at this point where these this museum doesn't that we're supposed we have this curation agreement with doesn't really want all these matates. So like
00:18:15
Speaker
There's this there's this weird place of what do we do with these artifacts that we're not putting in because we have this crisis already. And I'm not sure that there's a really, really good solution for that at this moment. I don't know if you guys have encountered anything similar or whatnot.
00:18:33
Speaker
Well, I mean, just to put it into context, for those that might not know what a matate is, think a mortar and pestle, but instead of a pestle being like, which one's the bowl? That's the pestle, right? We're going to have them backwards. Yeah, so the pestle is the bowl, but a matate is like a giant, if you're seeing this on video, it's like a giant slab.
00:18:51
Speaker
of stone that they use to grind up grains and other things. So they're heavy, A, and then B, they do take up a lot of space. It's not like a couple of flakes. And they vary in size from, you know, about yay big to like, you know, a whole table and they can be even built in the ground and stuff like that. So they're just not efficient users of space. And it seems like that we need to really think about how we're sampling
00:19:18
Speaker
the past and what we need to preserve as part of that. Do we need 20 of the same type of metate from the same site? Probably not. Probably not. And I think you have to look at how are you going to use it moving forward. We all know what metates were used for. We know the time periods that they fall into now. We're not doing a culture history where we need the artifact itself and you can write a whole paper on an artifact. So are you going to
00:19:44
Speaker
be able to do some sort of residue analysis on it to see exactly what they were grinding or has it just been sitting on the surface for the last 500 years and that's all going to be probably, you know, worn off of there. So yeah, I think with things like that, like personally, if I came across that, my gut reaction would be to maybe, maybe collect the smallest or a medium sized one and then record the rest probably as features.
00:20:11
Speaker
Well, maybe, right? I think one of the cooler classes I've taken on a museum studies program from emerging technologies and museums, you could use photogrammetry or 3D scanning to store that data in a virtual space. And then I know Pueblo people are really particular about taking things out. Maybe there's an agreement of like, okay, let us scan these metates, put them in a virtual space,
00:20:33
Speaker
and then put them back and then record it and it's like done. The devil's advocate here. The point of this is to keep them so people can research them eventually if they want to. So
Digital Preservation of Artifacts
00:20:43
Speaker
what if somebody wants to do like a residue analysis on there to be like, Oh man, they were grinding cannabis out in the Southwest. Like let's test for it.
00:20:50
Speaker
And you want to go test, you see it in the site report, but it's not in the repository. So I guess I'm answering my own question. You could know to go out in the field and get it, but why not just collect it? I see where, Connor, you have that dilemma. Well, and the thing with our company is that we do these residue analyses as part of it.
00:21:10
Speaker
And we get all this information that we can out of it. And then I didn't know that as good. Yeah. So we, we built that in there to have that information because I don't know past that, what kind of information you really get at. I mean, you can look at maybe patterns of where or something like that. But even then I think I'm not sure that photogrammetry is there at this point, but eventually I think photogrammetry is going to be able to allow us to analyze something like that striations, all that kind of stuff. So I think.
00:21:40
Speaker
But yeah, you have to be able to get some sort of data out of it in some sort of sense. Well, how many matatas, for instance, are in storage already to have it been looked at? So many. Exactly. So that's what we're talking about, the ethical problem. We already have so much stuff in storage that no one's looked at back in the 19th and early 20th centuries where it was just like, take it and put it in a museum somewhere. Do you think
00:22:04
Speaker
I have a crazy question. Do we start deaccessioning things and open up this stuff? Because there's so much of this stuff that's already in there. I feel like that's got to be the way of the future is where you deaccession things and get rid of them, put them as educational things and open up that space for better sampling in the future. I don't know. Do you guys agree, disagree?
00:22:29
Speaker
I think we should start looking at the stuff we have already.
Managing the Curation Crisis
00:22:33
Speaker
I think you guys with New South, I know we can't really go into it, but the grant you guys are operating on is certain agencies are bringing you guys their collections they haven't looked at, and that's how you're training your techs, right? Yeah, essentially. Yeah, so I think we need a lot more of that maybe, like some of these larger institutions really bringing in, putting them... We as a field in archaeology should
00:22:55
Speaker
in my opinion, but a more concerted effort into financing positions to really analyze the stuff that we have. Yeah. And I don't think you can do any sort of deaccessioning until we do actually know what we have so that we can keep the most critical artifacts of each set. Absolutely. Of course, there's all sorts of issues with who owns the artifacts at the time and things like that. So you have to have some sort of scope
00:23:24
Speaker
But yeah, I think deaccessioning somewhere in the future is probably going to have to happen. It's like when Hannibal Barris asks, do you think we have enough? And the guest is like, no. I think that there's enough. But yeah, I mean, the point is, you know, like romantically, our goal is to preserve indigenous heritage in a way, you know, so like.
00:23:49
Speaker
is it wrong to pick and choose what artifacts we preserve and not based on our perceived like need for them, right? Like do they have a spiritual, like I guess our Western scientific need for them, like, oh, that's all we can get out of a mano or a matata, you know, leave it at the site. But like, if we're gonna collect the rest of the site, would it not be beneficial for indigenous culture for us to just keep it all together and not separate it, you know? And like, you gotta think about these things. I have personal opinions on it, but like,
00:24:19
Speaker
It's just things you got to think about when you're a collections manager. And Chris, obviously, you know. That goes into a whole bag of worms. Most indigenous nations want this stuff left in the ground to begin with. And then you got people saying, no, no, no, this is relevant. Someone in a Facebook group posted a picture of a bundle.
00:24:39
Speaker
which is a huge no-no, even in the group itself, it was like, no, don't do that. And some of the comments I saw, it was like, some dude was like, y'all Indians need to grow up. Like, we're preserving this for you, because you don't take this for, you take this for granted. I'm just like, dude, this is not how I want to start my morning reading these comments. But what David's talking about, right, with that sampling bias of what do the researchers perceive as important.
Preservation vs. Research Balance
00:25:04
Speaker
But I think there's methods you could use to integrate cultural relevance, indigenous ideas, traditions, all that stuff, and also have a sampling of certain time periods and areas. I think we're good at that. That's what we're good at as archaeologists is fundamentally building a sampling strategy. We don't just go in there and collect everything. Part of our duty is to
00:25:29
Speaker
sample what we have of the past. So I think there is room in our brains and in our discipline to, you know, use a curation sampling strategy, but I don't, you know, how that works fundamentally, I really don't know. Well, and that might be one of those ways that we can sort of bridge this disconnect between academics and CRM is like, because when you're out there for CRM,
00:25:53
Speaker
You're recording, you know, what you come across and you're sampling. If you are collecting at all, you're sampling what you think a hypothetical future researcher would maybe want. But if those hypothetical future researchers came to, you know, CRM folks and agencies and said like, Hey, specifically we're researching this right now. What can you do to help us, you know, get data on that? I think that would a help kind of close the gap between the two and B lead to better research.
00:26:24
Speaker
Absolutely. I think, yeah, I think there just has to be that communication between academic folks and CRM folks. Cause we're, it's yeah. And I think there's a, there's a large disconnect at this point and not a lot of respect either way between them. And maybe that's like you said, Chris, that's the way we, we ultimately begin that relationship to mend it, you know?
00:26:49
Speaker
Yeah, here's my whole thing. Make the essays cheaper and I'll show up. Chris, why don't you come into a planes conference again, man? You took me to my first one. You took me to my first one. Yeah, you went to Lincoln after that. I haven't seen you at a planes conference. Yeah, I know. I'm terrible. I'm terrible about. Well, you got to come to Boulder this fall. Now that's a tempting offer. Yeah, that is a tempting offer.
00:27:17
Speaker
We're going, we're going hard. We're going hard. Here's something Chris can speak to. Like there's the issue of like in government, right? There's like the, do we spend this money or tax money on these stupid liberal things or do we spend our money on the, like, do we not spend them on these stupid conservatives that, you know, like.
00:27:37
Speaker
There's all that. And I know half the country probably is like, do I need to be paying taxes for a mono to sit on a shelf? And that is something I identify with as being like, do we? And we just talked about that. So Chris, like from your federal perspective, like what do you think about all this kind of stuff? Well, yeah, I mean, that's the whole thing, right? Is if you're going to be spending the public's money to do this, the public has to get something out of it. So.
00:28:06
Speaker
Whether that's making them more accessible through museums or something like that, a lot of people who aren't archaeologists are very interested in archaeology in the past. It's not hard to get the support. We just have to do it in a way that garners the support. Absolutely. I think with all this COVID stuff going on, museums are really taking this critical view of what they
00:28:30
Speaker
Is the museum the only thing they can use to talk to the public or other websites or other avenues?
Museums and Digital Engagement
00:28:37
Speaker
And I know Talia, who was on some sort of episode in the past, really kind of talked about how that transition is occurring. So I'm hoping that they use that money to digital collections and whatnot.
00:28:50
Speaker
Yeah, I know there's been a benefit to the creation crisis, especially in the project I'm doing with the Pawnee Museum, because we're like looking at how much space we can have. And like history, Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming are like, we're like, if we have a collections facility, can we have our stuff back? Like take it, get it off our hands. We need the space. Like just take it back with you. And we're like, Oh, sweet. Like it works to our benefit. Like they need the space and we'll take it home. But that's, you know, not, that's very, a very rare occasion.
00:29:19
Speaker
And how, I mean, like, I think of my lab, my office, right? And we still got like field school collections from CU Boulder from like 2010 hanging around just in shelves all over the place. And it's like, okay, we're running out of room, Douglas. Where do we put the new stuff?
00:29:42
Speaker
And that's just trying to find more and more space. But at some point, like we've been talking about, museums had a precipice. How much do you fund this stuff for? History Nebraska spent pretty penny on their new storage facility. They have the electric shelves.
00:29:58
Speaker
Nice. And I'm talking about, yeah, just wait for one of those motors to burn out, Rob Bozell, and see how much that's going to cost to fix it before you have something you can't even move anymore in access. That is something you definitely want to get analog. Like just manually crank it. It's fun. It's fun. Spin in the wheel. You feel like a ship captain.
00:30:22
Speaker
Uh, I had a fleeting thought there. Oh, there we go. So another benefit to having all of this stuff. I just like watching you like thinking real time. I just saw your brain function and it's hilarious. So it's, it's, it's browser tabs that open in my head, right? And then the browser tabs drift off into the, like the abyss. And I have to literally jump from one to the other and catch it before it disappears. Like my brain is agony. Anyway, let's keep going. Um,
00:30:50
Speaker
Chris did essentially what is middle range theory for his thesis, right? And that is using the stuff we have in the middle, right? Not something that's not academically researched yet, but something that's already been dug out of the ground and just some middle ground, right? You're trying to use what we have already to infer something about the past. And Chris actually found a very poignant thing with his thesis. So it's like.
00:31:13
Speaker
If we deaccession all this stuff, somebody can't take those physical artifacts and bring them to a roadshow and show somebody to be like, Hey, do you have these? I guess you might've used cash. I don't remember. But anyway, you guys see what I'm saying? Like there's, there's the idea of the theory and you got to hold it with your hands to know. Like if someone messages me on Instagram and they're like, what is this? I'm like, I have to hold it, dude. Like don't send it to me again. Like, I don't know. But I think, and I think that, uh, this is kind of like taking a small tangent, but
00:31:42
Speaker
I think the publish or perish and the idea that we need to find something new, different and all this stuff is contributing to this, this curation crisis. Cause everyone feels like they have to go to a new site and find new artifacts and blah, blah, blah. Find the newest thing because you have to publish on it and because you have to exist as a professor and that's just fundamentally what you have to do. So I think.
00:32:06
Speaker
that is part of this kind of contributing factor. I think you're really onto something there, Connor, and it meshes with something that I've been thinking for a long time. I think, I don't know, would you guys agree with this? I think as a whole, archaeologists are really bad at following through and fully finishing something.
00:32:22
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, my, my dis and thesis has been used on previous data. Like my dissertation, I'm not getting dates on new sites. I'm going back to old collections and redating them. Yeah. I'm not going out there with a shovel. I wish, but I'd rather go to Lincoln Topeka or Denver to look at their existing collections to see what they have and then redo it with
00:32:42
Speaker
modern analysis. And I guess we'll get to this in the next segment because we're running out of time here. And so we'll be back with segment three of episode 51. Stay tuned and enjoy our word from our sponsors.
00:32:55
Speaker
Welcome back to episode 51 of a life in ruins podcast where we have the road show master, the railroad row, your boat, whatever it is. He also has another title. He's David's editor on ethnocyanology. And there's a post coming out here in the near future. Chris, I hear about editor in chief, please. And thank you. Yeah. Yeah. I believe it'll be a very interesting post that I will do a fantastic job editing.
00:33:23
Speaker
If anyone else needs editing skills, you can look me up. My LinkedIn is my name. Oh, he's not joking. Chris is actually a phenomenal editor. He does like all of our stuff at work. He's out of the journals, like hire the guy. But yeah, I got, I got Chris on retainer and I can literally say I got a guy and it's good. And I'll just send them a text and I'm like, Hey edit this. And he's like, I'm playing D and D what I'm sleeping with my wife. And I'm like, yeah, but do it now.
00:33:52
Speaker
I'm very good at multitasking. Yeah, that was combat fire. But anyway, yeah, Chris, I just want to say that on the air. You're a very good writer, very good editor, and it's blessing working with you.
00:34:05
Speaker
Oh, guys, stop. So we kind of, I think we kind of ended talking about academia, the curation crisis, new sites, you know, all this kind of stuff. And we talked in like the interim about how do we make this easy for us as curation people, as curation managers? How do we ultimately
00:34:27
Speaker
create a process method standardization that allows us to analyze things that have been recorded and things that are going to, you know, be curated in the future. Do you guys have any thoughts on that? So one thing that I learned in my time at, at Wyoming, especially through Dr. Jodi Clowder is that work with repositories to develop your field recording methods. That way it can transfer seamlessly.
00:34:58
Speaker
into the repository. Like, yeah, there's some work that has to be done, but if the correct data is already generated in the field and is getting transferred directly to the artifact tags and things like that, it makes everything go so much smoother. So that is, that would be my big one. Shout out to Jodi for that.
00:35:19
Speaker
Yeah. And Chris and I call this at work, you know, the archeology of archeology, like you're trying to literally piece together human behavior in the past by being like, what were they thinking by calling this that, or like just hyper analyzing the flick, just call it a stone, like chip stone. Let those just go. It doesn't need to be tertiary quartzite proximal distal, you know, cortex on it. We got a picture of it. We can see that. So like,
00:35:44
Speaker
I don't know. And there's also the funny thing, and this is just an aside, like no matter what repository I've worked at, and like I've worked at three, you can find that in the 1980s and late 70s, stuff gets real wonky. And like, we're like, what were they thinking? And then it was a wild time. Right. And then I always, I'm like, Oh, right. Cocaine. That's why this is bad.
00:36:09
Speaker
And then it just checks out though. Like in the eighties, it's like, there's just some hiccups and you're like, what were they doing? But the other funny thing is, and I'll stop talking after this, you know, when you've had a bad day in the field and you're dehydrated and you got to write notes and you just write whatever, like finding those gems is really fun when you're a curator. I have, I have my most favorite one of that. So there's this project that was done in like 1991.
00:36:36
Speaker
maybe 1993, I was a young'un when it occurred. And the report had never been written. And it was actually a pretty significant site on the Nebraska and hadn't been really recorded before. And it was a recreation area. So there was numerous reasons to get a report written about this. So I got to write that report. And among all of the other issues of doing archaeology, of archaeology that I encountered, my favorite was this grad student's field notes from it because
00:37:05
Speaker
You could tell that, you know, when he first got out there, very precise, very well written, very easy to read notes. And then by the last day, you could tell it was like July when they were doing this and in Western Nebraska. So it was hot. There's no shade in that area at all. This guy was out there and the soils all clay.
00:37:24
Speaker
And it just says the tiny little evil pets in the screen won't die. And I just lost it because it was it was like scrawled into the journal like drums in the deep. They are coming. And it was it was hilarious. It was the perfect end to his journal.
00:37:45
Speaker
I, for the CU field school, they made me and Devin, because they're the TAs, take journals. What they didn't tell me is that they were going to photocopy them and keep our field notes afterwards. I thought it was just like best practice. And I am terrified of the day that that has become public because the things I wrote in there should not be read by anyone. Cause I thought that was just for me. Cause I am not, I'm a very critical person. And that comes out in my writing about, about some of the students and just like what's going on.
00:38:14
Speaker
and a little bit of, maybe not cynicism. What's the word when you're full of yourself? Arrogance? Narcissism? That one, yeah. A lot of arrogance and narcissism come out of there, especially with the site's mind to myself and I'm the one in charge. But anyways. Who hasn't been a horrendously arrogant archaeologist the first time they get a little bit of power to run a project?
00:38:35
Speaker
Especially I'm wearing that pit helmet and I'm just sitting there like it is on the pit helmet. I'm just staring at them like you're all mine today. You better save it that water boy. The only you getting, I'm actually a huge fan of the peons journals because they write, you know, the, the meaningless and minuscule things like it rained today really pissed me off or
00:39:01
Speaker
It was hot as bleep today. Blah, blah, blah. This person's making me angry or whatnot. It's just, it's, it's funny. There's a lot of drama that I've seen as part of that. Yeah. There's like love stories in them too. You can see people are like, Oh, she, like not that someone looked good today per se, but you can tell they're like very fixated and reading about this one person and you're like, okay, something clearly up there. And then you get the ones that I've written in the past are like, I saw a turkey. Yeah.
00:39:32
Speaker
Yeah, I've had to scan those in before and they're always a treat. I love them. Yeah. So back to, back to the question, Chris, what do you think are some ways we could standardize how things are done in the field? Cause it would have to be per agency, right? They can't just do like a federal mandate of like you do it this way. It would have to be at like the fundamental level. So like if we're using the forest service as an example, I would say it would be at the forest or regional level, probably forest.
00:40:00
Speaker
And then that forest, I think they should coordinate with whatever their main repository is to develop a standard set of protocols that work for both of them. And I think that would get a lot of things off of shelves that aren't properly curated right now into a proper environment.
00:40:19
Speaker
Honestly, I think every archeologist should take like one collections management class. Like that should be mandatory. Please. Yes. When I started getting into this museum certificate where I'm taking like six to seven museums classes and I'm sitting there with curation folks and we're going through bags of stuff excavated in the sixties or they're talking about how archeologists don't care about what's going on in the field.
Long-term Artifact Management
00:40:39
Speaker
I'm having like non flashbacks of like just telling students, I don't know, just call it pottery. They'll figure it on down the road. And now I'm the guy down the road trying to go through this. Like what are these people thinking?
00:40:48
Speaker
Why? Because what I found so fascinating about this museum stuff and the museum theory is realistically, as we've talked about, the archaeologists or the Cowboys of Science, but the museum folks have to deal with it. That's their job for life, is to hold these objects of cultural heritage
00:41:06
Speaker
in perpetuity. So they have to think long-term. And as you said, Chris, maybe it would be a great idea if archaeologists knowing, especially excavating private land, whatever, have an idea of what an institution is going to go to. So they have their protocols for what they need. I mean, granted, you always have site, unit, whatever, but some of these other things, like if we could categorize them so it's easier for those interns or the data entry folks to just blast out the data quick and get it digitized.
00:41:35
Speaker
Once things are digitized in general, and this goes back to my call for we need to 3D scan things, then they're accessible instantaneously via the internet. You don't have to ship artifacts anymore, or information. Once it's on the web, the internet has it. I find that archaeologists are so hesitant to get rid of these field forms that have been physically scanned and are in a location. There's always this hesitancy to get rid of that
00:42:01
Speaker
this paper thing. And I don't know if that's like a holdover from like 70s, 80s, cocaine fueled, you know, note taking or whatnot, but there's, there's actually like a physical like reaction to like throwing the stuff away. When we have a copy of it, everything's fine. And it's, it's, it's just breaking those habits that we need to really work on. And I think having a collections management class where you talk to someone who deals with this crap has got to be the way like Carlton and Chris have both mentioned.
00:42:29
Speaker
Yeah. And I think the main counterpoint to what you just said, Connor, would be, oh, but like, what if there's a huge EMP or something and it knocks out all of our records? Well, I can tell you if there's a big enough EMP that knocks out all of our digital records, no one's going to give a crap about archaeology anymore. We're going to be dealing with bigger issues. So like.
00:42:52
Speaker
Grab a lead vest and an AK because things have gotten better and we have bigger problems. Like with what happened with Texas, the governor of Texas, he's like, all right, guys, the power grids are out, but the real important thing is here is one, Hillary Clinton did this and two, what do we do with all of the collections? What do we do with our precious artifacts? They're not climate controlled anymore.
00:43:18
Speaker
There is a box of bricks that is currently sitting at 65% humidity instead of 60.
00:43:27
Speaker
Dude, that's, that's another thing about curation, dude. Like there's that, that meme, you know, about like dads, when you touch the thermostat, they pop out and they're like, who touched the thermostat? Well, like there's a lot of things in my day that I will like forget to check just in my general life, you know, just how it goes. But like one thing I always look at is a thermometer and like, make sure that humidity is okay. Because like my dad has just instilled that in me. Like don't touch the thermostat. And I'll look at it and be like, Oh man, 78 degrees and we need to turn the air down guys.
00:43:56
Speaker
I don't know, just little things like that. But to end that tangent, taking a collections management course for anyone listening, think about going into museum studies, think about if you're going to do anthropology, think about doing collections management route. Because, and even if you go to do on the dues like CRM or do it more academic stuff that's not collections management, just knowing
00:44:19
Speaker
the basis of what is wrong with the, you know, the creation crisis and just having that, that lens, I guess, you know, of looking when you're digging, all right, how do I make this easier for somebody in the lab 30 years from now to figure out what this is? But when you're in the sun and you know, it's hard to write stuff, but
00:44:35
Speaker
I mean, even just from a professional standpoint, if you have a museum certificate or a museum degree under your belt on top of archeology, you're far more employable to a wider group of people. You can go work with David and Chris or, you know, at a museum as an archeologist because those exist, but it's hard to get an archeology gig at a museum anymore without a museum background. You can't just show up. So that's been a huge impetus of me getting this museum certificate so I can be like, I could do both. Double threat.
Career Shifts in Archaeology
00:45:00
Speaker
Yeah. And I mean, I've known several, you know,
00:45:02
Speaker
older archaeologists that still love going out in the field and can do it every day. But not everyone can do the field work forever. And it's real nice to have that backup of an inside job where there's air conditioning and plumbing and, you know, all of the things the modern creature. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
00:45:24
Speaker
It is nice. Yeah. I'm even for DMNS. That's where I want to work. If I could stay here in Colorado and continue to hunt wild game and have that cushy AC job where I could still do like field work every once in a while, I'd be, I'd be set. The museum is a gem of those hands. It's good. Oh yeah. And yeah, speaking of manual things, they have like manual drawers where you like, Oh my God, they're so fancy. Yes. You should have gone with the pirate wheels, man.
00:45:51
Speaker
Should've gone with the pirate wheels. You can sing Wellerman while you're doing it, too. Have fun with it. Someday the Wellerman comes to bring us sugar and tea and rum. I'm glad we did that. VL. Crap. I lost my thought. I guess I'm trying to... Get the tab. Look, David. Grab it.
00:46:14
Speaker
Oh, I typed an impedance to make sure that was it. Um, so I think something we wanted to end with is so Chris, what is your, what is your one thing you wish you could tell the archeology community, anthropology community, anything like
Balancing Career and Well-being
00:46:31
Speaker
that? What was your monologue of where things should be? What, what they are, et cetera. Oh, I have all of the power in the world right now to say,
00:46:43
Speaker
My piece. No, I, I would say archeology is a wonderful career. You meet wonderful people, but don't forget to keep an eye out for your own like mental health and your relationships and even your paycheck. Cause I think a lot of us archeologists would know none of us got into it for the money, but
00:47:11
Speaker
Like, be careful about that because the future, you know, comes faster than you think. And so make sure that you're taking care of yourself out there as an archaeologist, because we tend to run ourselves ragged. We tend to not always make the best decisions for our futures. So that would be my piece.
00:47:31
Speaker
Yeah. That's a good piece. Yeah. It's a very good piece. And Chris mentioned it earlier, like going into school, knowing what you want to do. Obviously it's intimidating to do that, but like Chris, obviously like he's good at this. Like he, he is diligent at what he does and he has a very analytical mind. So don't
00:47:53
Speaker
you know, think you're pressured into going and getting a PhD. Like my grandma's like, yeah, your PhD yet. And I'm like, no, grandma, I live with my mom. That was when I did. Now I don't, but I have a master's degree. I'm 26 and I live with my mom. How do you think I'm doing grandma? But what I'm saying is that like, you don't have to do those routes, right? You can do the practical nine to five route and like,
00:48:19
Speaker
It's honestly more rewarding in a lot of ways. And like Chris is sitting here with, like, you can't see it, like with a bunch of guitars behind him. He gets to go home at night, like just hang out. You know, like there's, there's a way of archeology of doing like a real, like a real life job. And like a lot of people don't show you that. And also one thing that I've, I've learned recently is like, don't be too hard on yourself or disappointed when it turns into just another job.
00:48:48
Speaker
it eventually will. Inevitably, it will just turn into another job. So make sure that you have, you know, other hobbies, other interests outside of archaeology that, you know, so you don't want to go to work all day. That is just another job and then go home and only be able to talk about, think about work on archaeology stuff. You know, keep your other hobbies active. Keep your other interests active.
00:49:13
Speaker
Absolutely. And Chris, I know we didn't prompt you, but do you have any book recommendations for our listeners? I mean, they don't even have to be necessarily curation focused. We'll go ahead and say The Fifth Beginning by Robert L. Kelly. That's a given. Yes. That is a fantastic, fantastic little book there. Pick it up, read it in a night. You'll be able to.
00:49:34
Speaker
You're supposed to read it on a plane ride. There we go. Exactly. And, and it is indeed perfect for that. I am currently reading the left hand of darkness by Ursula K Le Guin. And if you're unfamiliar with who she is, she's Alfred Krober's daughter, the anthropologist. And so it's a, it's a sci-fi novel, but basically written as an anthropologist traveling to an alien world.
00:49:58
Speaker
And it delves into what is gender, what is humanity. It is pretty fantastic so far. I'm going to have to go ahead and recommend it. Absolutely. That sounds like a fun one. What's it called? The left hand of darkness. Okay. And then also a clan of the cave bear. Cause it's accurate. Hey, all might've had a time machine. You don't know. Yeah.
00:50:26
Speaker
Those people left behind no evidence for us to study to know what their ways were. So that's true. So we we normally ask this question only once, but because we love you, we're going to ask you again. And going through Covid and all this stuff, would you still choose to live a life in ruins, even if the ruins were in bags and were of confusing provenience?
00:50:53
Speaker
Yeah, like 75, 80%. Yeah, I would. What's the 20? What's the 25 or the 20? Flying an airplane. Oh, dude, I'm there with you. Yeah. I got the headset for it. Right? Oh my god. Hey, United Airlines, if you listen to a Life in Ruins podcast, I need glasses and I have never flown a plane, but give me a job. Also, listen to us when you punch your next customer.
00:51:22
Speaker
Chris, if you ever move out to Nebraska and work for History Nebraska, I'll take flying lessons with you. I wouldn't mind flying over the Nebraska prairie. Hey, you're not going to crash into anything. There's nothing out there. All right. On that note, if you guys could, you know, please give us some Apple reviews. If you enjoy the show, you know, we've got some emails. If you guys email us directly, like we do read it. We actually love it. We've got a few of those that have been great. But if you can just give us a review on Apple, because that's how they measure how you're doing.
00:51:51
Speaker
For the love of God, can you please give us some reviews? And if you can like and subscribe to the podcast, that also helps too. If you are not a member of the Archaeology Podcast Network, consider doing it. It's like five bucks a month membership if you want. Get all access to everything that's on there. After free shows, bonus episodes that aren't on there. Yeah. You can join the Slack. Yeah. We're going to end this. See you guys. I choked on my wine.
00:52:27
Speaker
Thanks for listening to a life in ruins podcast. You can follow us on Instagram and Facebook at a life in ruins podcast. And you can also email us at a life in ruins podcast at gmail.com. And remember, make sure to bring your archeologists in from the cold and feed them beer. So this is from, from Dean, Dean, John, and my dad sent me this wonderful page and read a joke from it. I built a model of Mount Everest and my son asked me if it was the scale. No, I said, it's to look at.
00:52:59
Speaker
Yeah, okay, thank you Connor, thank you Dean
00:53:17
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his RV Traveling America, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, 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.