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Dipping Our Toes Into Underwater Archaeology - Ep 151
2.2k Plays1 year ago
On this episode of A Life in Ruins Podcast, we dive deep into underwater archaeology. Carlton starts out recounting his experience taking classes in underwater archaeology at Indiana University. He then details the methods and processes to actually record sites underwater. He then talks about where is going to work this upcoming week. We somehow end up talking about Christopher Columbus again.
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Transcripts
For rough transcripts of this episode go to https://www.archpodnet.com/ruins/151
Links
Literature Recommendations
- Hawley et al 2019 Living museums in the sea: the past, present
and future of underwater cultural heritage
preservation
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Transcript
00:00:00
Speaker
You're
Carlton's Upcoming Dominican Republic Trip
00:00:01
Speaker
listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.
00:00:07
Speaker
Welcome to Episode 151 of Life and Ruins Podcast, where we investigate the careers and research of those living in life and ruins. I'm your host Carlton Gover, and I am joined by my co-host Connor Johnin and David Howe. Well, everyone, I'm about to go on a trip to the Dominican Republic to do some underwater archaeology, and we're going to learn about the process of doing archaeology, but under the sea. So hit the decks as we're hitting underwater archaeology with the Baragic Cannon Fire. That's good, Connor. I like that. That was good.
00:00:31
Speaker
Yeah. You know, I can do some stuff sometimes. So, so caveat. I've only dipped my toes into this world. I've completed the course. I'm all certified. Now I just got to get in, get in the water and actually look at some real shit in the ocean. Cause I've done it in the pool, about 10 feet deep, map some things. And, uh, let me tell you, I think the hardest part about underwater archeology is being scuba certified.
What Does SCUBA Stand For?
00:00:55
Speaker
What does SCUBA stand for, Carlton? I've never known. What, the acronym SCUBA? Yes. SCUBA is an acronym that stands for Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus. Did you have to look that up? Yes. Are you certified? Patty certified. Patty certified. Ten-year-olds can pass the Patty exam. It's not super difficult. And like to calculate all of the, you know, depth tables.
00:01:21
Speaker
All you have to do is P1 times V1 equals P2 times V2. Is that pressure and volume? Pressure and volume. So, okay. Increasing volume, increasing pressure. Has so much math, but suffocate. It's pretty. Everyone has dive computers anyways. I got involved in this. I don't think we've mentioned it much on the podcast.
Indiana University's Underwater Archaeology Program
00:01:44
Speaker
But Indiana University has a top ranked underwater archaeology program. For whatever reason, Indiana is not landlocked. It does share a little bit of the Great Lakes. And so the program here not only works on the Great Lakes itself, but they have a very large ongoing project with other departments in the Caribbean. So Florida, Dominican Republic are the big two that they do. And once I found out about the program, I just kind of swung by.
00:02:09
Speaker
And they were in need of a professor to sign off on things and be a part of the project. And so their attitude was it's much easier to make an archeologist into a scuba diver than a scuba diver into an archeologist. And that program isn't directly a part of the anthropology program.
00:02:30
Speaker
It's super weird. So there are anthropology undergraduates in there. And so here at IU, you have to minor in something. So if you want to be an underwater archaeologist, they either double major or they minor in underwater art. But if you get in good with the program director, Charles Beaker,
00:02:52
Speaker
Once you're part of his little crew, he goes above and beyond for his students. So many of the undergraduates not only get chances at doing research, making publications, but if they're scuba certified, a lot of them have their master diver certifications. And so as undergrads, they're teaching underwater courses on scuba diving through PADI. So it's kind of a very interesting system where those kids basically begin to run the underwater science program, even as undergraduates.
Hands-On Experience for Students
00:03:21
Speaker
master's and PhD students, they even go further. So he's created quite this system in which he trains these students up and gets them not only the dives in, but the publication credentials. He has a lab meeting every Tuesday for two hours, and he sits there and is like, you guys are going to work on this abstract, you guys are going to work on this grant, and it gets them hands-on experience and professionalism.
00:03:44
Speaker
That's kind of wild. They come out with like an actual professional certification. Cause I mean, you can like, as, as we do an archeology, you get, you do a field school and you can kind of be seen as like, I can do field tech stuff, but you don't really get like a cert like this. Yeah.
00:03:59
Speaker
Yeah. And they developed their own, there's only a couple of these in the country, scientific diver certificate, and that's what I'm working on. So you get credited as a scientific diver to do this stuff. So like all my pool work and then my dives this coming weekend, and then the field project that I'm going on in May, which will be down there for three weeks.
00:04:16
Speaker
all those go towards my certifications. And then as I'm diving more and more, since all of the students, including some that I'm on committees for, some of these students that are teaching me are my students. Since they're all certified, I can get my advanced certification through them as we work. Are you familiar with the Kelp Highway hypothesis? Yes, David, I am. Nope, tell me. Are you familiar with the fact that a lot of Paleo Indian sites may be submerged off the coasts?
00:04:46
Speaker
Yeah, I've thought about that quite heavily. Are you aware that you have a PhD and you're an indigenous archaeologist and you're about to have a scuba certification? And are you aware that you've actively said that I don't want to do paleo-winning archaeology? You know what you're lined up to do, Carlton? Prove us all wrong.
00:05:09
Speaker
Oh, do it. You're on a goddamn crash course. The whole impetus for this is like, I want to go and dive reservoirs in Nebraska and Kansas that were dammed up in the thirties. And
Exploring Reservoirs in Nebraska and Kansas
00:05:22
Speaker
during those site surveys in the thirties, they might have
00:05:25
Speaker
many of times only excavated one or two hamlets, and there's a whole valley of archaeology. For me, it's a question of not only being able to get in there and see what's going on, but also to see the taphonomic processes that have taken place now that those sites are submerged. Since they're submerged, they haven't been affected like any of the other ones that are now farmed up. That's my impetus in how I got into this. They're teaching me, so then I can go and take some of these students with me
00:05:49
Speaker
and go do these dives in Nebraska and Kansas. The next step, though, is I have to get cold water certified, which we're doing in a couple weeks.
00:05:58
Speaker
because the best time to dive Nebraska and Kansas where there's like more visibility than like three inches is like January. Also there's less, you know, like harmful chemicals and manure in the water. So, but I have thought about David doing some underwater arc in Southeast Alaska or Northwest coast. I've like Googled it a little bit. People do do it. It's just really inhospitable. Like it's not enough.
00:06:24
Speaker
If we don't want to go get that mammoth, that Chesapeake mammoth and mastodon, that's highly protected. No, I've thought about it. It would be, it's a great tool for my toolbox. Yeah. And it's just fun. And I told Connor and David, you, if you guys get certified, there's no reason why I can't just like take you because as we talk about later, there's not much precision excavation that happens in underwater archeology.
00:06:49
Speaker
Just photos and notes. A lot of notes, a lot of measurements and prior research, especially like all the Caribbean stuff is historical archeology, right? Like they're, as we'll talk about in a bit, looking at shipwrecks. So there's a lot of preemptive research. I'm trying to figure out where some of these things went down, but since you can do photogrammetry just by swimming, that's kind of the main impetus is doing like 3d models of these sites, mapping the art objects before that's
How is Underwater Photogrammetry Done?
00:07:16
Speaker
pretty cool. Pulling them out.
00:07:18
Speaker
Okay, question. I guess how does one do photogrammetry? Do you have a camera on you and you stop and take pictures periodically or is it automatically taking pictures? How does that work? You take a GoPro and you bake a rig for it and you set the GoPro to take a photo every three seconds and you just like swim at the same rate at the same level and you just do transects.
00:07:44
Speaker
You're the drone in the water? You're the drone in the water. That's it. Someone at the SHAs, when I was with Charlie, was asking, have you ever thought about doing drones? He's like, why would I have students who can swim? It's like, why would I spend this much money to do that that will cost battery when I can just have students go do it? Are there any issues with refraction and shit like that? Or is there an adjustment that could be made on?
00:08:09
Speaker
Cause like, I mean, you're already under water. So there's no real refraction, but there is depending on the lens. Like if you get one of those fish eye lenses that are too wide, yeah, that'd be an issue. But it's like, you're still the kind of the same photogrammetry method where you need at least 60% overlap between photos to stitch that bitch back together. Okay. Gotcha. What about sharks?
00:08:32
Speaker
Not where I'm going. That was question number one when I asked, but in the Southeast part of the Dominican Republic. Well, yeah, not in Nebraska, but Nebraska does pose its own risks. Not in the winter though, but Kansas, Nebraska, those reservoirs are known for rattlesnakes. Oh, I was sorry about that, but not for this time. Yep. But there is hazardous marine life in the area, mostly in the, you know, like urchins and things that sting you. Crab people. Those two, lots of crab people.
00:09:02
Speaker
Clamsman. The Clamsman, that is a reference to Sea of Thieves and a particular enemy type that we have to have the Clamsman because they're walking clams. So like the work that I've done by work, I mean class,
00:09:18
Speaker
There's a lot of preparatory reading. There is a lot of relative chronologies of different technology on board ships, so like the styles of cannons, going from wrought iron to cast iron, how those evolved over time, in which, where do you put the wheels and where does it sit on the ship? That also goes with cannonballs. Wrought-art cannonballs were made out of pecked granite, so they basically fired stone balls.
00:09:40
Speaker
And once the cast iron process was created, then you can make cast iron balls. Ship masts and then anchors are another big indicator. So anchors change over time. So there's a lot of relative chronology work to help identify ships in the water. So like Christopher Columbus's ships, which run
00:09:56
Speaker
The caravels, those all had wrought iron, but after the caravels, once you actually get into galleons, frigates, sloops, and bricks, those all have cast iron, and then being able to track the relative age of a ship is based on the anchor, because many times, especially in the Mediterranean, or not the Mediterranean, sorry, the Caribbean, most of the wood has deteriorated, so you got to look for those metal artifacts. It's the same thing as projectile points and other technologies. It goes and changes through the times pretty consistently.
00:10:25
Speaker
Absolutely. Okay. Yeah. And we learned this historic arc too in my undergrad. Like you can definitely in like new England, you can date old buildings just based on how the bricks are laid. I never like thought about that being a thing, but I imagine something just as simple would apply to ships like that. And that doesn't make sense, like dating the anchors and things. Cause sure that tech change did Caravels even have anchors at that point? I feel like anchors are a pretty recent thing.
00:10:50
Speaker
Caravels had anchors. Yeah, there was some pretty rudimentary anchors that they had. I think they sat outside the ship, but I'd have to double check to be honest. Caravels are really interesting because they're basically just like wooden bathtubs the way they sat in the water. With like a routine sail and that's it. Really bowed at the both ends.
00:11:09
Speaker
Yeah. Could you imagine making, what was it? Six months across the Atlantic in that you're basically in a longboat. Like it's not a lot.
00:11:21
Speaker
Yeah, but they were like bathtub shape. They had a shallow draft keel. They had like a high faux castle and a high stern castle. So they basically just looked like bananas in the water, like just tubby bananas. It's so amazing. Yeah. People can actually, could actually do that. Cause that's not the easiest of sailing. I mean, it's not the hardest of sailing to do that, that route, but it's no.
00:11:44
Speaker
They just sat high in the water. They basically just like made whatever will float. They hadn't figured out that. Like later ships like galleons and frigates and stuff, they sat lower in the water, you know, because those like the, the fuddocks of the ship towards the bottom would be extended. So you kind of have the ship round out almost like a figure eight and then come back up.
00:12:04
Speaker
Great question. You find the shipwreck, how do you begin the process of mapping and documentation? Did they walk you through that whole process? Walking through would be a very polite way of describing the process in which they taught us how to do this.
00:12:22
Speaker
I'm in this underwater archeology class. It is an undergraduate level course. I am the only archeologist in this course. Everyone else comes from a different science. Most of these kids are professional scuba divers. All of them. This is what they do. They do the kinesiology. They do underwater science. They're geologists. They're whatever.
00:12:40
Speaker
And, but it would start off or just be like, all right, we have, they would go to the pool. There'd be artifacts in the water and they'd be like, okay, we need you to map them. And it was basically kind of like a trial by error where you have to go in, try to coordinate with your team. And that was the hardest part for me where it was like, I know how to do this shit, but then when you're underwater, you can't talk to anybody. So then you're trying to explain to your crew, like your teammates of like what you're trying to do. You're like trying to point at shit, like taking the tape out of their hands.
00:13:05
Speaker
Then, what kept fucking me up was I'm used to taking depth measurements, but we had to do it from the surface. Mind you, this is water, so the tape is not straight. All of the measurements you're doing are approximate. That tape is not getting straight. No matter how you want to do that.
00:13:27
Speaker
sometimes your compass won't work underwater. So you're also trying to get orientations of objects as best you can, doing rough sketches. And mind you, you have underwater clipboard, but you only get one page of that. So as you're trying to write and take notes and also trying to communicate with your team through that, that clipboard gets filled very quickly.
00:13:47
Speaker
Then if you haven't done your vocabulary and you're staring at something and there was a time where we didn't know what an object was and we're trying to figure it out because none of us had done the reading or done the flashcards. That's the difficult part of doing this, of the science to me is I can map
00:14:04
Speaker
I can measure, I can do the orientations and inclinations. It's the communication part. So there is like a lot of prep work before it, whereas like we've all done terrestrial archeology. We're used to like Bob or Todd or someone or like, Hey, do it this way. And then correction fixed. Whereas underwater, if you can get the communication across, you're wasting time. Right. Cause you only have like two and a half, three hours of air.
00:14:29
Speaker
And then you got to go up and you're done for the day. So like these site surveys and like excavation, they're going down there for like a couple hours. And then by that time you're exhausted because you're fighting the current, you're swimming like it's a full body or deal. Yeah, damn.
00:14:46
Speaker
That's wild. Is it a lot of hand signals and pointing at stuff, or is there a method of communication that they've established? There is the PADI and underwater signals, but those are two-handed. When you're doing underwater research, one of your hands is pretty much always full. We've had to adapt to try to use one hand, doing numbers.
00:15:10
Speaker
has been difficult. It's not super difficult. You got five, but then you rotate your hand like this and that's six, seven. So if you're trying to get like pressure and air gauges, you have to like, like I have, you know, two, one, nine or something of air left, or basically 2900.
00:15:27
Speaker
And that's, you know, that's been the most difficult part. I mean, shark is still fucking easy for everybody. But like the one that I've struggled with is like when people ask me if I'm okay, like I want to do thumbs up, but thumbs up means like go to the surface. So I have to be like that and then like, no, no, no, no. Okay. Okay. Okay. Like, so there's just like goofy stuff like that. But in terms of like, how do you know sign for different objects in the water that are, there's not just like basic communication that's going to keep you alive.
00:15:55
Speaker
I've found doubloons in the forward stern. It's just that's fucking metal. Um, but like the projects that we, we do, it's not just archeology. Like it's a whole underwater science field school. So we bring in archeologists, geologists, and marine scientists, which we can get on into the next segment. So we write back with episode one 51, one 51. We back with the band. Hopefully no bad.
00:16:26
Speaker
Welcome back to Episode 151 of our Life in the Nerds podcast. I'm here with Carlton Gover, Connor Johnen, and myself. And we're going to talk to Carlton more about his upcoming trip to the Dominican Republic. Carlton, that's where you are going, correct? That is correct, David. What will you be doing there specifically?
00:16:43
Speaker
So while I'm there for this, I leave Thursday, I get back Sunday. There's going to be two days in the water and it's just a site survey for the upcoming field school. So basically just going to check on the three site locations as well as get things prepped because the field school will begin
00:16:59
Speaker
Basically, yeah, next month. So we fly in May 7th. So we're just meeting up with the dive shop that we work with and working with the local partners. So when we go down the field school itself is only two weeks.
00:17:14
Speaker
And then the students will leave and then I will stay with the other project PIs and graduate students. And we're going to be doing some more advanced stuff, which I'm not quite sure what that means yet for an additional week. But Charlie's curated such good relationships. One of the sites that they excavated, made underwater a living museum in the sea, is in the boundaries of a resort.
00:17:35
Speaker
property line in the water, the own part of the ocean. He helped create this and it's a major tourist attraction and place to dive like many of the sites are. When it's just the PI time, we're staying at a resort for free. The place that we're staying with field school is somewhere similar. It's not a resort, but it is a local hotel that has food and stuff. We're taking full advantage of that.
00:18:04
Speaker
There are no days off. Like it is just straight work for 21 days. Basically we have breakfast at the hotel or the resort. We get on the boat. We drive out to site or sail out to site. We don't sail. It's driving cause it's a like dingy. And then, uh, in the water for a couple hours, come out, go to lunch and then write reports and object object, uh, curation.
Creating Living Museums in the Sea
00:18:28
Speaker
So these are, these are previously known sites. You guys aren't doing survey for new things.
00:18:33
Speaker
as part of this or? No, we're basically going to a couple of spots. They're doing ongoing work. So part of the interdisciplinary nature of this is creating these living museums in the sea. And these are a way to protect the cultural heritage and the biological environments.
00:18:51
Speaker
That's why we go down there with geologists and marine biologists. Many endangered corals really like iron. You can refound coral colonies with iron objects. One thing that we also do, they do in the project,
00:19:10
Speaker
is oftentimes like part of these living museums as they're creating these heritage sites where they get plaques to get on the national register and then become major dive spots. They're like by cannons and like objects that are the same age.
00:19:23
Speaker
as the ship and then like bring them out to the site and like part of the plaque is like these cannons are not part of the actual ship and they'll like make a little ring of cannons like around the area. So you're taking the little idol off the thing in the temple of Indiana Jones and replacing it with a little bag essentially.
00:19:42
Speaker
No. So they're the cannons that were picked up by looters and pirates and they try to sell them at a dive shop. So we're reintroducing them back in. So you'd be like, yeah, replacing the Indiana Jones bag of sand with the monkey. So bring it back home. Okay. So reverse. Yeah. Yes. Cool. That reverse in the garden.
00:20:02
Speaker
And part of that is experimentation, right? The ecologists and geologists do that for experimentation and preservation at the same point, is my assumption? Yes. Because these shipwrecks are like major marine habitats. So a couple of years ago,
00:20:21
Speaker
they had sunk, purposely sunk a US ship off the coast of Florida. There's a video of it. Apparently it was a shit show because it didn't go down properly. So it flipped, it capsized and then went down, which was not what it was supposed to do. And then they try to lift it up and that didn't go very well either. So they like try to tie these giant air balloons to one side in hopes that it would like raise and flip the ship.
00:20:46
Speaker
The video on YouTube is hilarious. You just see Charlie, he's just sitting there like, this is never going to work. But eventually a swell came in and the tides flipped the ship and it settled where it was supposed to. Because the purpose is, in addition to curating, maintaining, and advancing these maritime ecosystems,
00:21:07
Speaker
recording the cultural heritage, it also creates tourism, which is really what the Dominicans want. It also stimulates local economy. That has become interesting for some of the projects. One of the things that's often talked about and that I'm in prep for is that these sites are still active recreational diving spots. As we'll be working and as they've worked in the past,
00:21:33
Speaker
there will be randoms that will show up diving and interrupt your work. That is included. One of the students has a funny story of where they're doing photogrammetry and they still have to have targets on the ground because some of those sand beds are extensive. We talked about earlier with photogrammetry that you need at least 60% coverage overlap between photos. One of the best ways to stitch those together is to put targets down.
00:21:57
Speaker
Then some fucking scuba diver just came down, picked up one of the targets and was swimming off. The students had to chase him and grab him by the fins and point like, that's fucking ours, give that back. They're confused because sometimes the dive teams, they don't tell the people or they're not notified that the archeologists or the scientists are there.
00:22:20
Speaker
about two dozen scientists underwater working on the site trying to do all of the various tasks. While we're sitting there measuring artifacts and everything, the biologists are down there. They're doing species samples and species counts and identifying the plants and corals. You have someone doing photogrammetry of the entire site to encapsulate all of that. Then you have the geologists down there trying to do their own stuff.
00:22:45
Speaker
So it gets pretty busy. Like the videos that they do down there are just like really cool and like makes me feel safe. Like this, I should have announced this. I'm not a huge fan of open water.
00:22:57
Speaker
I like to be able to see the bottom. As long as I can see the bottom, I'm fine. So the Caribbean's great. I'm trepidatious when it comes to what David's saying, like, oh, just go to the Aleutian Islands. And just like, no, one, there's great whites and Greenland sharks in there and orcas. I've seen blackfish. Salmon sharks, too. And salmon sharks. But also, the visibility is super low, and you can't see the bottom. And it's like, that's terrifying.
00:23:22
Speaker
Yeah, you can see the bottoms there. It's like, I should be fine. And like with a larger group of people, like you're one of six seals for a great white shark. Like, you know, your chances of surviving are 15%. Just don't be the slowest swimmer as they say.
00:23:36
Speaker
I'm like, I'm like worried this week or just like me and one student and we're going out there surveying. It's like me and her and like she can out swim me really quick and I'm definitely the fatter seal out of the bunch. It's like knowing me, it's going to be like Jaws 3, Jaws' Revenge where there's going to be some random great white down there prowling the seven C's. We're going to clip that for when Carlton doesn't come back. Yeah.
00:23:59
Speaker
I was just thinking about like the terrestrial version of that is that's like someone coming onto your site and like pulling out like corner pins. Yeah, things in the ground. I mean, which is I think is easier to do on land because you can talk to people and be like, hey, hey, hey, but how do you communicate that down below?
00:24:16
Speaker
You can't, right? You have to rely on people up top. So there will be people watching the boats. There are dive buoys up above on the surface of the water, letting people know that one, there's divers in the water, but two, all these living museums in the sea have these marker buoys. And there are plaques underwater that they place.
00:24:34
Speaker
kind of funnier things is like they have photographs of like they're moving these cannons into place. Well, the deeper you go, the lighter things become. So there's this amazing photo, amazing photograph of like Charlie, Sam, and a couple of other students, these four adults, like moving this giant fucking 1200 pound cannon over their shoulders, like fins off, like walking on the seabed, like place it where it needs to go. Is it like Jack Sparrow walking underneath the, pretty much the ship. Pretty much so.
00:25:04
Speaker
Yeah, the whole thing. That's what I'm excited to do because it's mostly for me as I'm doing this class, I'm thinking of like, okay, this is how I do it on land and prepping for when I get in the water. And there's that added having to watch your oxygen, your buoyancy has been problematic for me because I can take such big breaths that I'll just rise, especially with the vaping habit where I take deep breaths naturally.
00:25:26
Speaker
I'll just do it. I'll just fucking start dropping. So I'm like trying to manage my breathing while I'm down there at the same time. But the craziest part is just how fucking quiet it is. It's like, you're in there and there's, there's no music. There's no talking. There aren't any trails in the background to listen to. You're just, you're just there. Stuck with your own thoughts. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All three of us got real quiet after that.
00:25:56
Speaker
The water all around Long Island is just like brown or green. It's just not good looking water. And like, that's what I always like. Newest water. I went to Jamaica when I was like four. So I don't I don't remember what the Caribbean looks like. But I imagine that water is a little more inviting. But currently the air I've seen the Pacific to which reflects blue. But it's kind of dark when you go in it. So at least in California. So I.
00:26:43
Speaker
Miss me with that. Yeah. It's going to be a no for me, Doug. No, I'm just kidding. I would love to do that. And Carlton and I are going to start a company doing that. It's not super. It's challenging in a different way, but like.
00:26:51
Speaker
I'm not a fan of open water myself.
00:26:59
Speaker
Very much like historic archaeology, once you're in the component that you know you're at, there's nothing above or below it generally. Once you've found the ship, you just need to map where the objects are and then get them out. That's Dominican Republic. It's a 50-50 split.
00:27:16
Speaker
So you don't remove everything. The rules down there are fucking crazy. So like there's still like a rampant problem with treasure hunters and they're like very much into the local economy. So treasure hunters in the Caribbean. Yeah. He wouldn't say still still pretty bad. There's interesting articles online of these treasure hunters are going after Charlie and his work and trying to discredit him because like Charlie doesn't take anything.
00:27:40
Speaker
like he gives the 50 to the museum and it takes 50 back to IU to be curated and then go back to the DR.
Challenges of Treasure Hunters and Preservation
00:27:46
Speaker
There is an issue in the DR though where like objects have a knack of disappearing and so that's problematic and then also once these sites are found there are some rather
00:27:59
Speaker
wealthy individuals around the world that are really interested in Taino archeology and the local indigenous folks of the Dominican and Haiti, as well as like age of sale. And they pay big bucks to pay some of the dive shops or like some people around to go and like loot these sites. And so like the cultural heritage preservation is such an issue. And it's like one of those weird, there's an added layer to it where there's a UNESCO charter
00:28:28
Speaker
that what they're trying to do, so France and Spain and England have signed on to that, that any other shipwrecks have to go, all of it go back. But then all the countries in America are like, fuck you, that's our gold. No, no, no, no. The ships are yours, but the shit on them, the precious things that you want do not actually belong to you. And the United States is trying to stay out of this because there's a bunch of shipwrecks off of Florida.
00:28:50
Speaker
And there's some really weird maritime laws where for a long time there's the Abandoned Shipwreck Act or the Abandoned Boat Act. Basically, if you left your boat and someone found it, that's now their boat. And that was used in the 60s and 70s. These treasure hunters would go into a dive site and be like, the boat's abandoned. This is now my boat.
00:29:10
Speaker
and then like claim to it. Like 250 years later. Yeah, no, they fucking do this and like it happened. Like people would do that and they would take all the treasure and shit. Like it's crazy. Like the laws that are in the way of a lot of this stuff and they're like trying to do this work is interesting. Cause it's still not going back to the indigenous, you know, the home countries at all. But that's where this difference in the living museums in the sea is like getting them recognized, making them protected.
00:29:39
Speaker
and getting photogrammetry and counting all the objects. And then each object gets an ID, it gets a tag. And if it ends up on land, like it's flagged, it's supposed to be flagged, but there's that layer of trying to like just cultural preservation to it.
00:29:55
Speaker
And it's one of those things where my guess is that you obviously don't take everything out. You might take some important pieces and elements of it because I assume that the curation crisis or the lack of facilities also applies to underwater stuff in general.
00:30:12
Speaker
About the DR. They got space for these? Well, a lot of these shipwrecks, mostly what's left is maybe the keel and iron objects, and all the good stuff has been looted a long time ago. So there's ballast weights that you can figure out the position that are in the holes of these ships. So a lot of ships would have 20 fucking anchors in them, two that you might actually use. And your bottom of your ship is basically just filled with trash as ballast. So a lot of metal.
00:30:40
Speaker
And so you end up like shipwrecks now, you'll find maybe the keel, like 15 anchors in a square, some like ballast balls, some like cannonballs. Like you build the skeleton of the ship just based on the position of these ballasts, like the iron material that's left. Like anything that has like ship identifiers, like plaques, bells, those are gone. So it's basically stuff people couldn't pull up are not seen as valuable.
00:31:05
Speaker
So there are projects like the Captain Kidd ship that was identified by IU. That was a big one. The name was like the Queta Merchant. And that one's really interesting because the ship itself, so they found it. They found the upper hole, the structure, and many of the cargo hold had a bunch of stuff. But one of the big parts of it, I believe,
00:31:31
Speaker
I'll have to double check, but there's a ship that they recovered that was built by like one specific Indian shipyard that was still operating building ships the way they used to up until like 10 years ago when they stopped. But it's the way they like merged the planks together was highly specific.
00:31:50
Speaker
I made for a very tight seal. And I believe it was Captain Kids. No, that name. Yeah. And it was lost, but I might be totally wrong. But the reason why it was lost is like it wrecked and the crew was like, anyone that takes a look at this ship will know it's our ship because the way they built it was so unique. There was no other ship in the Caribbean that was like that. So they like basically set it on fire and threw it down river.
00:32:16
Speaker
to try to get away from it so they can come up with a different like, Oh no, we're just rum runners or something. You know, so they might get branded as pirates. Hmm. Well, on that note, we will end the segment and we'll talk more about something in the next segment.
00:32:32
Speaker
and we're back to episode 151 of Life Room's podcast. David, you had mentioned earlier that you've been to the Dominican Republic before, and I didn't know that. What were you down there for? I did not go, but I had many friends who went, and it was my freshman year of college. None of them listened to this podcast because you're about to find out why.
00:32:50
Speaker
It was like a church group on campus that they all went to the Dominican Republic and like to get money to go to the Dominican Republic to do charity work down there. I think they were building a church or a school. They had to petition their family members and ask for money to take this trip for a bus of 50 white kids from fucking Tennessee to go down to the DR to do like live with these like kids and like do church stuff and build a school or it was a school or a church or something with a roof.
00:33:18
Speaker
Anyway, I was like, they were like, do you want to come? And I was like, no, I don't want to ask my aunts for money to like help me go do a mission trip. I wasn't really a member of the church. I just went with them because it was something to do. And anyway, they go down there and they like take pictures with all these kids that were like clearly impoverished and like posting all this stuff and like they build this roof to get in there. I'll see videos. Then this is early Instagram days, mostly Facebook, swimming in pools, the hotel, having a good time.
00:33:46
Speaker
And then they came back and I was like, so how'd it go? He's like, oh, it's great, man. We got so many kids. I think we touched so many people. And for some reason, they had to rebuild the whole school and the whole roof as soon as all the American kids left. And he's like, I guess we could have just donated all that money to them anyway. And they could have just done it from the beginning. And I was like, you don't say.
00:34:09
Speaker
You just want to go down there and take Facebook pictures so you could look good for God on your Facebook, dude. That's all those are. And I told you that from the beginning. And he was like, I just wish we could have done more. And I was like, there's nothing more you could have done but have a nice vacation. I don't know. Maybe there's some great mission trips out there. But that really irked me.
00:34:28
Speaker
I mean, that's what a lot of those mission trips are. It's just, yeah, makes the people go out and feel good when all the people they're trying to help could do it better themselves. Just give them money. I'm not saying all of them. There's probably people who go out there and do good work. Great. Yeah, for sure. Just not that one. Just not that one. Case study.
00:34:49
Speaker
I did my cultural anthropology undergrad paper on how that mission ship didn't work. There was a class called, it was literally because in undergrad you had to take two upper division culturals, two upper division archeology, and two upper biological. And my, the only upper division cultural offered that semester was refugee and migrant children.
00:35:09
Speaker
So I took that as a lot about Syria, a lot about Mexico and a lot about Latin America. And yeah, learned a lot. And then like for my term paper, it was like talk about refugee and my, and it was like, cause it was after the hurricane or the earthquake and the DR and I wrote my paper on that and I got an A. I think she gave me everybody. Yeah. That's a, that's a heavy, heavy class. I feel like a lot of my cultural and classes ended up being like, let's take like the saddest subject about humans and then let's talk about it for 10 weeks.
00:35:40
Speaker
Yeah, I don't want children. It's going to be endless amounts of mass migrations in the next 30 years, and I'm just not trying to have a kid weigh me down on all that. I will, however, racketeer a bunch of bottled water and sell it to kids at a high price, but not my kiss. That is the official stance of the Life in a Room podcast. No, I will not do that.
00:36:02
Speaker
I watched a one, there was a documentary they showed in one of my classes, it was like, what the US looks like in 50 years. And it's like, year 2030, Vegas runs out of water, dun dun dun.
00:36:15
Speaker
One of my favorite talks ever. So I had, I had, uh, Eric give a presentation of the fraternity at university of Wyoming. And it did the title of the talk was like, where will you spend spring break in 50 years? And it was like really weird because the kids wanted to hate it, but they're also appreciated because Eric's like, so global warming exists. He's talking like a bunch of like libertarian Republican kids from Wyoming.
00:36:33
Speaker
He's like, this is where the water line is going to be. So this is where you should invest in properties. That's how he got to them. He's like, this is real, but we can make this profitable for you. So I actually had them sit down and listen to it. But they wanted to be mad, but they're also like,
00:36:47
Speaker
but we could invest in these properties in Kansas, what's on the ocean side a little bit. They were like, oh, we never thought about the way to take advantage of this disastrous situation. Muckermann several other stuff in New York. Manhattan, Long Island sell all your land. Yeah, buy property in Selena, Kansas, and just wait for the floods, and then you can build condos.
00:37:12
Speaker
In New Mexico, in Arizona, and Nevada, just constantly not stressed about water. You can't even collect rainwater in California, I've been told, legally. It's against the law. No. Dude, the Rio Grande near Texas, near El Paso, has been dry forever. Water just does not make it to the border anymore. And they're just shit now kids, left and right. And they're like, we're fine.
00:37:33
Speaker
Well in Phoenix is like a booming So is Vegas it is like on a crazy boom of people living there and it's like you can't even drink the fucking tap water in Phoenix they go they have a water store that you have to go to to buy water Wow, yeah, really? Yeah, it'll just give you no offense to people having children out there, but like just why? Well a lot of it has to do with like though the water
00:38:01
Speaker
The treaty they made with Mexico, the way they did it was just happened to be like a really wet year when they wrote it. So like the amount of water, that percentage of water that was supposed to get to Mexico, like it was basically predicated on the US gets so many gallons of water before it gets to Mexico. And since they did it on a year with exceedingly high rainfall, that metric is just fucked because like Mexico will never get to see that.
00:38:26
Speaker
So like it just, and then we, of course we divert the Colorado all the way out to LA. Yeah. Well, but we could stop the Colorado in Colorado and Vegas doesn't exist. Arizona doesn't exist. New Mexico doesn't exist. Like those places don't really exist. Okay. Crazy to me. Colorado can just dam it up and just pick. All right. Goodbye. I'm calling it.
00:38:50
Speaker
But anyway, yeah, so that was my story about the DR. I have not been, I've been to Jamaica as a kid, probably wouldn't go back. Cause I remember watching Shamu at the nursery. Um, and that was all I remember of Jamaica. What? Like what nursery, what type of nursery? Jamaican Sea World. Is there one?
00:39:10
Speaker
No, like we went to Jamaica when I was a kid. I think my parents like got to, you don't remember when travel agents were thing. They got like a huge discount on travel agent and they'll get you go to Jamaica. There's a very impoverished country where they completely need your tourism to complete keep feeding the poverty. And they went and they dropped me off at this nursery at the near the hotel or in the hotel to like watch me while they went and did Jamaica stuff. And I remember watching ship or no free Willy, excuse me, free Willy every day.
00:39:40
Speaker
and the nurse was Jamaican. Is that kosher? I don't think that's something that happens. Free Willy did not take place in Jamaica though. It took place in some made up theme park I think in California. He was watching it on TV. Free Willy into the thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was like, that's all I remember. And there was like a life-size chess set. I remember playing with that one time. I remember the ocean and that was it. And my dad got offered weed on the bus.
00:40:07
Speaker
I promise that when we go as the three of us, me and Connor will put you in a different nursery. We'll put you in a different daycare. Anytime we're in the Caribbean, you catch me at whatever the bar is, the tavern, having a good time bartering in Spanish for our passage back to Spain. Me and Connor will come back and see you taking pictures of your feet and auctioning them off.
00:40:33
Speaker
Ms. Piz, Ms. Piz! Cinco peso! No, I'm just coming down there. I'm never coming back. I'm gonna take her to the Jeff Xpero. How much is property? I don't mean to be like colonial fuck, but like the Dominican Republic property. This is pretty colonial. I'm down to get a bungalow. I'm on a sailboat. As long as it has. I almost said something very fast. Good, good.
00:41:00
Speaker
Let's just draw up a treaty of tortoises as round two electric bugaloo. And I get everything left of Cuba. Excuse me, right of Cuba. You get everything left.
00:41:12
Speaker
Some of these houses do aren't so bad. Like 350,000 for two beds, two baths with 1500 square feet. Do you have beachfront? Probably not. Don't don't tempt me Frodo. Are you going down to the Caribbean Carlton to purchase property? Do you remember when we talked about me wanting to become a boat person? We did. I'm just saying the next slippery slope after buying property in the Caribbean is an encomienda. So you need to dip your toes into drugs like your narco.
00:41:43
Speaker
You're not going to get stopped at an embassy. Can we talk about Columbus? Are you going to apologize for your previous comments on Columbus?
00:41:54
Speaker
I think this is your space to apologize to the world for being a Columbus apologist, man. What am I supposed to apologize for? You said that Columbus wasn't so bad. He connected all the worlds together. I did not say he wasn't so bad. Yes, you did. I said he discovered America, sure, in many ways, but not necessarily it was the first to discover it. We can roll the tape. If I said he wasn't so bad, then lock me up, dude. War tribunal.
00:42:34
Speaker
He opened up the Western world to the new world. And in some cases he made the new world open up to the old world. That's what I would say. That doesn't mean it's a good thing. Did he make the new world better because he connected to them? Is that what you're saying? According to the Portuguese, yes. But according to me, absolutely not. Yeah. And it's funny you said that, Krelsen, because the Portuguese language, am I right?
00:42:43
Speaker
I think it was your glorification of discovery that was a little questionable.
00:42:58
Speaker
Oh, that. Yeah. The S.H.A. comment. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Let's not talk about colonialism here and just think about how so many people got to hear the beautiful Portuguese language because of it. It was just like Jesus Christ. She was telling me she like everyone hates Portuguese because it sounds like everyone hates Portuguese, but the Portuguese Brazil would rather speak something different, apparently.
00:43:20
Speaker
Well, that's a big issue because it's more like Brazilian Portuguese speakers than like Portugal Portuguese speakers. And they're trying to tell the Brazilians like what proper Portuguese is. I'm like, fuck you. There's more of us than you. We'll tell you what real Portuguese is. We're the captains now. I guess that's true because there's more American English speakers and English English speakers and there's more Mexicans, Spanish speakers and Spanish speakers. It's almost like the new world got colonized. You don't say he made your powers.
00:43:50
Speaker
You were mentioning stuff about Columbus. Let me, I have the book here.
00:43:54
Speaker
Yeah, what was the book? I was going to ask you what the book was. The Four Voyages of Christopher Columbus. Also, his name was Cristoforo Colombo, not Christopher Columbus. Also, John Cabot. His name is Johannes Caboto, or Cabota, something like that. I can't remember what it was. He was Italian, but we're like, it's John Cabot. And he went down the thing, and then it was the other guy, too. With a ship full of Gabagool. With a ship full of...
00:44:21
Speaker
Johan is Caboto or Cabota. I can't remember. It was area at the end of it. But yeah, he did like the Hudson area, like up north. Like anyway, all those people wanted to sail and like explore and like get paid to do it. And all the monarchs were like, we already have like eight people doing that. Like go to Canada. He's like, all right. And then he went to the freaking English crown and they're like, who's this Italian guy? Just go on. Just give him some money. And that's how John Cabot like did his thing. And
00:44:51
Speaker
Hedger-Hudson, all those guys. Had you read Christopher Columbus's journal? Yeah, that's what I was trying to get to.
00:44:59
Speaker
But is that his actual journal? This is the four voyages. It has excerpts from it, but it doesn't have, I haven't read his journal journal. Oh, I have the full thing. Unless this is his journal. Fuck, it is not a good rendition. That's one of the things that the Spanish and Portuguese always try to distance themselves from. Those early Conkey stores were just pieces of shit, even in their own right. It wasn't like, oh, with the context of the time, it's like, no, they were bad people for their time.
00:45:27
Speaker
Like, at least in the stuff I was reading, they went back to Spain and they were like, hey, this Columbus guy that you let govern this island is like, it's getting wild over here. You need to send some people and they they locked him up, took him back to prison. And he like he wrote in his journals for sure that like the stuff about like the women are fair and like make them good courtesans and things like that. It's just like that's how he was thinking. Whereas the other guys were like, we're supposed to like look for Japan, bro.
00:45:58
Speaker
I think you have to be a little like fucked in the head to think that you're going to go across and like, yeah, you're sociopath. I don't know if I would.
00:46:10
Speaker
Yeah, he went to jail. During his governancy of the Dominican, Spaniards were like, this guy is a fucking piece of shit. And he was jailed in San Domingo for two years before he was sailed back to Spain to have trial, where he was acquitted. But that whole thing. And it's the same thing with Cortez. Cortez wasn't supposed to interact with the Spanish. He was supposed to make contact with Maya. He didn't. He just went north, landed.
00:46:35
Speaker
when did some shit at Tenochtitlán? Cortez? Yeah, Cortez. Well, that's a whole other thing too. Then he, like some guy from the shore that they left there, like ran back, was like, hey, they're looking for you. So he had to go back to the shore, set up a town, create a kangaroo court with the provincial mayors and shit, and have them draw up new orders from the crown so he can go take over the Aztecs. Like he, the whole thing is
00:47:02
Speaker
fucking wild. So he made a second government. Yeah. He basically like, there's, there's something in Spanish law where if they had a town and they could speak on behalf of the crown. So he like, he made his own town, elect his own leaders. And then it was like, I beseech you to make new orders. And like, what were they going to say? No, like the whole thing was just a farce. Like that's, and the same thing with the guy that went to fucking Peru. Like all of those guys were just not good people. Pizarro. Yeah.
00:47:27
Speaker
Well, like with fucking Cortez, I was talking to this Mexican guy about this this weekend. He said that, like, I've heard this a million times, like, and it's just part of the history. All the Aztecs were super expansionist. Like, they were like going all over it and like kidnapping people and like making it like, I know this gets into the Black Legends stuff too, but like everybody around the Aztecs hated the Aztecs. So when Cortez got there,
00:47:53
Speaker
He was like, wait, so where's this big? They're like the giant city where they keep killing us. Like, let's go. So all the indigenous tribes like around him like allied with him and they make it seem like it was these 20 Spaniards kidnapped the emperor. But like, no, he went and rallied every single group around them and was like, help me get this guy. They like went down all of that. Like you're saying, though, Carlton was without the king and queen of Spain being like, sure.
00:48:19
Speaker
He was on the run because he like, also when he left, he was in prison, wasn't supposed to go. And he basically just snuck out of jail, gone on a ship was like, all right, guys, we got to go. We got to go. We got to go. And just dipped out. Like he wasn't even supposed to leave the island. He was supposed to go stand trial back in Spain. And he basically just.
00:48:37
Speaker
Cortez, he just like hot rotted a fucking sailboat and just laughed to go. Like the dude escapes prison and the next time you see him, he's like, I've conquered an entire territory in Mexico. And they're just like, what? He's like, it's fine though. I set up a town. They allowed me to do it. Like we're good. I also have like the whole thing is wild.
00:49:00
Speaker
It's just absolutely wild. Before we go, I was watching a YouTube thing about there's this whole YouTube drama, this one guy who made like in defense of Columbus and like just saying like a lot of recent stuff comes out that's just like fuck Columbus, fuck Columbus. And they get all the facts wrong and like, yes, fuck Columbus. But there's also sometimes where you just can't you can't just make up information about Columbus thinking the world will shave like a parry. He mentioned that once in one paragraph. Anyway, then another YouTube response came out saying that
00:49:28
Speaker
he was completely wrong and he's being a white supremacist. Then he made a rebuttal video saying, hey, I'm sorry, I made these points wrong, but here's what I was trying to say. And that guy was like, no, you're still not getting it and came up with stuff. Bottom line, the end of the story, the main guy who like did the rebuttals that like I, I'm on his, not his side, but I think he's telling the most accurate history here. Is this, is this the Columbus apologist or the
00:50:14
Speaker
Columbus prosecutor.
00:50:21
Speaker
And he was like, who went back and brought another three indigenous people likely against their will or clearly tricked them into saying, get on the ship and come across this ocean, which you've never done before. Come on over here. Guess what that's called? Trafficking a human being. And they're like, he started the transatlantic slave trade no matter what you say, though he wasn't like the CEO of the company. It just like it began that idea of, oh, and that's what encomiendas were too. It's like you get a plot of land.
00:50:50
Speaker
And that's why they all wanted to go there. And if there were indigenous peoples on that land, oh, you get to do with them what you please. And of course that became serfdom and then quickly slavery. So it's. And Columbus's diary, like when he meets the time, you know, like in his notes, he's like, I can take these people over with a hundred men.
00:51:06
Speaker
Like that's like his first thought. Like when he comes back on the second voyage, he brings like 17 ships full of Spaniards. Like he, his intent is we're taking this place for ourselves. It wasn't like exploration and like a humanitarian like trying to explore the world. He gets, he gets there and he's like, Oh, these people are all, all he's just like salivating all together.
00:51:30
Speaker
Yeah, not, not the, not the greatest guy, but that's like, it's just business. And like that business makes you ruthless, you know, and like, it's not what the Nazis said. It's the guy in pirates, the Caribbean, as the ship's blowing up, he's like, it's just good business. And it's like, he's being eviscerated by a pirate fleet, but
00:51:54
Speaker
It's like business makes you do crazy cutthroat shit, not saying it's good. They were very, very greedy people and human lives had very little value to them. It's frankly remarkable how much they devalued lives. It's like, whoa.
Locating Columbus's Ships and Studying Horse Genetics
00:52:12
Speaker
But part of this is like, yeah, I mean, just to tie this up, like we are part of this project this summer is to look for one of Columbus's ships during one of his voyages. And then also this has been tied up into the horses human sighted project. We're actually looking for horses and horse remains in Haiti and Dominican Republic to start getting the genetics of those, like the first horses that arrived.
00:52:33
Speaker
So that's like this whole thing that's been happening this week as a result of that science paper. It's just like, oh, yeah, we know there's horses down there. And so we're interested in how that happened. It's a horse graveyard. I can't get away from these fucking horses. I'm trying to go down below the depths and I'm still horses are trotting behind me. Well, like, review, podcast. Thank you for listening something. Columbus did do wrong. He did not do Columbus. Columbus was wrong. Here we go.
00:53:03
Speaker
official stance, official stance of a life and roots podcast. I think he discovered America in the sense of the modern historical world. Just stop. Did he have the right to ship humans across the ocean and build a jail and burn it down himself? No.
00:53:26
Speaker
I think that's the best we're going to get. Okay. Please be sure if you're listening to us on the all shows feed, please, please, please subscribe to our podcast on our own show. You're downloading our show directly from our feed helps us get advertisers and sponsors. We're currently working on that. So really appreciate everyone that listens. Be sure to rate and review the podcast. And with that, we are out. This wasn't good.
00:53:52
Speaker
Alright, if you've made it this far, you know what time it is. It is time for Connor's witty joke. Connor, what do you have for us this week?
00:54:07
Speaker
Thanks for listening to a life in ruins podcast. You can follow us on Instagram and Facebook at a life in ruins podcast. And you can also email us at a life in ruins podcast at gmail.com. And remember, make sure to bring your archaeologists in from the cold and feed them beer. Why didn't the admiral buy a new hat? Wait, it's a trap.
00:54:30
Speaker
He was worried about capsizing. That's pretty good.
00:54:52
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his RV traveling the United States, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, DigTech LLC, Culturo Media, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Chris Webster. 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.