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Near Eastern Archaeology with Maria Diget Sletterød - Ep 46
405 Plays5 years ago
In this episode, we are pleased to introduce Maria Diget Sletterød, a Danish archaeologist studying the Pre-pottery Neolithic in the Near East at the University of Copenhagen. We start off with a brief introduction as to how the hosts found Maria which was through an Archaeologists in Quarantine episode with Carlton hosted by Tash. Then we delve into her diverse archaeological research and excavation projects and how she has worked all across the Near East and Europe. David and Maria swap stories about visiting/working in Israel. We follow up with a discussion on Maria's thesis work and where the discipline of archaeology fits in the Danish educational system and what exactly is the "Pre-pottery Neolithic". We close the episode out by asking Maria about what it's like to work in the Near East, a region that is known in the American media for being geopolitically tenuous.
Contact For Guest:
- Maria's Instagram: @maria_archaeology
- Maria's Email: mariaconstanze@hotmail.dk
Maria's Source Recommendations:
- The Agricultural Revolution in Prehistory: Why did Foragers become Farmers- by Graeme Barker
- The Archaeology of Mesopotamia - By Roger Matthews
- The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt - By Ian Shaw
Contact
- Email: alifeinruinspodcast@gmail.com
- Instagram: @alifeinruinspodcast
- Facebook: @alifeinruinspodcast
- Twitter: @alifeinruinspod
- Website: www.alifeinruins.com
Affiliates
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Episode 46
00:00:00
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.
Meet the Co-hosts and Guest
00:00:12
Speaker
Welcome to episode 46 of a life in ruins podcast to reinvestigate the careers of those living a life in ruins. I'm your host Carlton Goldberg. I am joined as always by my co-hosts Connor, John and David in how in this episode, we are pleased to introduce Maria yet. Sletra, a Danish archeologist studying the pre pottery Neolithic in the Near East at the University of Copenhagen. Thank you so much Maria for joining us today. How badly did I butcher your name?
00:00:40
Speaker
half bad. No, it's okay. It's a Maria. So it's like very, like very hot. And then you have it. So again, it's the sound you need to make. Like you're throwing up or something. That's the Danish way to pronounce things. I just got nervous. That's like,
00:01:07
Speaker
It's a very weird language. That's an absolutely beautiful way to describe it. Yeah, and when you read something, it's like don't pronounce half of it because then like half of the words, like half of the parts of the words you don't like really pronounce. So it's very difficult to learn and very difficult to speak if you're not native, I would say, because of the weird sounds we make. So yeah, I think it did well with my name.
The Instagram Connection
00:01:36
Speaker
Thank you. I got nervous. I know we were practicing beforehand. Well, how are you doing today? And what time is it? Are you in Copenhagen right now? Yes, I'm in Copenhagen. It is very dark. It's 6 o'clock or 10 past 6 in the evening. And it's really, really cold outside. I would say minus 3 degrees.
00:01:57
Speaker
celsius but that's like because it's a very windy country that's like minus 11 instead so that's really cold here but i'm good a bit frozen for that no um we have good heating here so no i'm good i'm good thank you
00:02:13
Speaker
Excellent. So me and you first met through Natasha on Approaching Colonialism and Archaeology episode, Archaeologists in Quarantine episode six. And then we got to talk about some fun topics with Natasha and Gabby. And so we were really excited to have you on because as Connor was saying in pre-episode, we haven't had anyone who's worked in the Near East and nor have we had a Danish archaeologist
Maria's Archaeological Journey Begins
00:02:38
Speaker
on.
00:02:38
Speaker
So, I mean, how did you originally get to meet Natasha and get on archaeologists in quarantine? Well, it was back in April last year. And there was someone who made like a chain message group on Instagram.
00:02:52
Speaker
And I unfortunately don't remember the name of the person who did it. So it was during the first lockdown here in Denmark. People in the group started to talk about what they are doing in archaeology. And at some point, Natasha then asked if any of us would be interested in doing a group chat like on Zoom. And she would stream it to her YouTube. So we were a bunch of people from the group who was like, yeah, let's do it. And it was super fun and a really great initiative.
00:03:21
Speaker
shout out to Natasha for that. But that was how I met her actually in a group chain message group chat thing on Instagram. So a bit random.
00:03:31
Speaker
That's very, that's very cool. And, uh, yeah, I want to shout out to Natasha for keeping us and, and for you for participating in Carlton, for participating in, for helping to keep us sane, uh, during these lockdown times. So we usually start out kind of our first section asking about like, kind of how, how you came into archeology and what were your like early interests. So could you, could you let us know how you kind of got into archeology and when you first kind of encountered it?
00:04:00
Speaker
Well, I don't have like this amazing origin story as I know a lot of archaeologists do, but I've always been like as a child, been very interested in ancient cultures and history and my mom
00:04:13
Speaker
took me to museums literally from the day I was born, basically. So we always used to go to this place, a museum in Copenhagen called the GliptoTech. I was really interested in the ancient Egypt department there, which was really cool or is because it has like this
00:04:31
Speaker
crypts where you first go into a room where they showcase like what the pharaohs would have with them in the grave and then you go down this like really wide and big staircase and it's really dim and then you go into a room with mummies and that was just my favorite thing.
00:04:48
Speaker
Um, so, and when I was around six, I had the classic dinosaur obsession. So I wanted to be a paleontologist. Well, then I kind of got away from all of this archeology and history and wanted to become a singer and be happy. I didn't because I can't sing. And then I wanted to have a bakery and then I wanted to be a teacher in Africa. And then when I was maybe 22, I was like, Oh wait, I really liked this like ancient Egypt and ancient like, um,
00:05:18
Speaker
Southwest Asia and I found out that I could actually study archaeology as an actual degree which was specifically about Egypt and Southwest Asia only.
Fieldwork Adventures in the Middle East
00:05:30
Speaker
So I ended up having that as my goal and then I started university a few years later. So it was like kind of a culmination of many moments throughout my life I would say.
00:05:41
Speaker
What exactly got you interested in like Southwest Asian archaeology in general, like being from, you know, Denmark?
00:05:49
Speaker
Well, that's actually a hard question, because I think, like, as I said, I was really interested in Egypt as a child, I think a lot of like, children think it's really cool, you know, and then I, I didn't have the biggest, biggest interest in Southwest Asia, actually, but then I started university. And I think as many people normally do, they have a big interest in like, the very known, well known, like civilizations and
00:06:18
Speaker
the pharaohs and the kingdoms and the great wars and stuff like that. But I started to figure out that like Southwest Asia was really interesting and especially prehistory. So like Southwest Asia became like the thing for me when I started university actually. Before that, I thought it would be into Egypt. So I gotcha. Yeah. Egypt's kind of like a gateway drug into all the other. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Dinosaurs as well as we've established on this podcast.
00:06:46
Speaker
Have you had an opportunity to kind of excavate into work in Southwest Asia or the Near East? Yes. So at the university, you have like a mandatory field school, you have to go on after the second semester. So you have to, the university has one for you, but you can also choose outside, but usually like
00:07:06
Speaker
Most people would just choose the field school that this department of Near Eastern Archaeology has, which is in Jordan. It's fully paid, so you don't have to really take care of any expenses. And it's one month, and that was a Bronze Age site called the Ritual Landscape of Muregard, and it's a bit south of Amman, the capital. So I went there years back for a month, where I just learned everything basic, and then
00:07:36
Speaker
been to Cyprus the year after for like a two week field school, which was experimental archaeology and human remains mainly. And then in 2019, I was in Israel for three months on an internship with the Israel Antiquities Authority at a really large site called Mozart. And that was like a really amazing experience. So yeah, so I've gotten that opportunity.
00:08:06
Speaker
Where in Israel is that Moza site? Moza that's like five kilometers outside of Jerusalem. So yeah, I lived close to the site in a small town outside of Jerusalem. Yeah. And I was there for three months. That was cool. Yeah. It's a, it's a gorgeous city for sure.
00:08:25
Speaker
Yeah, a lot of tension, but I wouldn't want to live there. But it's beautiful to visit. It's beautiful to visit and see, but I wouldn't want to live there. And I know a lot of Israeli citizens feel the same way. Yeah, that was the general consensus I got when I was there.
00:08:44
Speaker
Oh, yes, I also went to another site in Israel while I was working at my internship. Actually, I almost forgot. It's called Amuda and it's an Hellenistic site, I guess. And it's, I went there because when I arrived in Israel, there was like two weeks after I came, it was Passover. So everything was closed, like every work site. But the director, one of the directors of Mutza, he was like, do you want to
00:09:14
Speaker
Go to a different site because you know was like obsessed with working on sites. So he he contacted some people and they Had this one site on Buddha which is on a military base so it's actually only excavated during holidays and it's in the Judean
00:09:35
Speaker
lowlands highlands. Well, it's, yeah, it's close to, uh, didn't give desert and it's really beautiful. Um, yeah. So I was there for, I was there twice for like week and a half altogether. And yeah, it was cool.
00:09:49
Speaker
That's yeah, that's super interesting. And I think we're going to talk more about this in the third section a little bit, but it's, it's gotta be interesting working in a place where this, this tension exists like that. You know, it's, it's, it's interesting, you know, visiting places and touring and doing like tourism in these places, but actually working there has got to be kind of a surreal and very interesting experience.
00:10:13
Speaker
Yeah, especially I'm from Denmark and it's like such a peaceful country, like nothing happens. We love murder mysteries because nobody gets murdered here, basically. It's like, you know, some of the best crime writers is from Scandinavia because like it's all in our imagination. We would never ever kill someone. We just write it down in a book.
00:10:33
Speaker
No, I don't know, but it's very peaceful here. So like we don't have wars and we've had like, we don't have terror attacks. We have like one or two, like, I don't know, my whole life, maybe three, I'm 31. And it's like, it's very peaceful here. So it's very different to go to a place like Israel, for example.
00:10:51
Speaker
And everyone's walking around with like giant rifles and stuff everywhere. Yeah. It was jarring. Yeah. Yeah. It was a bit scary just to see like 18 euros just walking around with a rifle and be like, whoa, you're not old enough for that.
00:11:06
Speaker
You can vote, but you shouldn't carry that. And it's scary when you come from Denmark, because there's no weapons here. People don't have guns, so you don't see weapons here unless something is wrong. So you only see weapons when there's been an attack or been some big thing happening. You see police with guns or weapons, but it's not every day. It's very rarely that happens. So it was a very weird thing to see.
00:11:36
Speaker
Yeah, we call seeing 18 year olds with guns walking around a trip to a trip to Cabela's or Bass Pro Shop. That's a weekend activity for many Americans.
00:11:47
Speaker
Exactly. In Israel, I spoke to people and they were like, oh, but it's to be prepared if something happens. We're in Denmark, it's okay, we will do this, take out the guns and the rifles if something happens in Israel. But something could happen anytime, so we'll just be prepared all the time.
00:12:11
Speaker
But that makes sense because there is more tension and more conflict and stuff. So I kind of get it, but it's like really weird to see when you arrive and it's like, what? Yeah. Yeah.
Exploring Italy and Spain
00:12:25
Speaker
Yeah. A guy sitting at the bus stop with a hoodie on just holding a rifle. I was like, what's happening? What? Yeah.
00:12:34
Speaker
David, didn't you say you could hear like missiles going off when you were in Jerusalem? We were in the Golan Heights and like it was near the Syrian border and then like the UN peacekeepers were there and they were like, well, there's this old like abandoned bunker. We got to go tour and they were like, oh, that's just a drill. And we're like, I don't, I don't think so. Uh,
00:12:58
Speaker
But yeah, I think the most interesting part was that every single shawarma place said best shawarma in Israel. Yeah. Like that was like the biggest sign and it was all good, but they all said they were the best. Yeah. Yeah. That was my experience too. Like I am a vegetarian, so I don't eat shawarma, but like, so I never got to try it. But like, it's the same with the falafel. It's like best falafel in all of Israel is like, Oh, okay. I'm happy with that.
00:13:23
Speaker
They have good for law for those, so I might suggest it might be the best. So moving away from the Middle East real quick before we end this segment, have you had the opportunity to excavate outside of the Mideast? Yes. So I've been to, let's see, Italy. I excavated in Rome on a site
00:13:45
Speaker
which is called, we just call it Vio Stienza. It's a Roman site with a lot of cremation burials. So we excavated the urns but the urns are set down so you can't remove them. So it's like really difficult work because you have to like sit
00:14:01
Speaker
your body over the, um, inside a wall and then like, yeah. So that was pretty cool. And then I've been to Spain twice on two different excavations, uh, both Neanderthal sites. Um, one is Sima de las Palomas and the other is called. Yeah. It's pretty nice.
00:14:25
Speaker
Were there actual doves in the cave or was it just called that? There was when they kind of found it. And there is like, when we're there, there's a big main chamber because it's been used before they found out that there was an actual site. It was used for, I think it was salt mines. There was some kind of mine and they tried to get water. So there's like this big main chamber and sometimes there's doves down there.
00:14:52
Speaker
But like the excavation is like you go up this rock.
00:14:57
Speaker
thingy and then you go to the top of it and then you go so there's like scaffolding and it's like 20 meters I think like from bottom to top and then like you go down the scaffolding and then you sit like five meters from the top and then there's 15 meters down and there's like this really small square you can sit on an excavate and then sometimes there's doves downstairs so yeah there is doves it was a long explanation for the doves but yeah
00:15:26
Speaker
So we definitely saw on your CV that you talk a lot about the pre pottery Neolithic and we were discussing before like we started talking with you today, like we don't
The Pre-Pottery Neolithic Period
00:15:35
Speaker
actually know what exactly that is. So in the next segment, I hope you can tell us in the audience kind of what that is and what your thesis was about.
00:15:43
Speaker
Welcome back to a live endurance podcast. We're here with Maria Sletirot. Is that right? Did I? That was very good. You can say Maria if you want to. Maria Sletirot. Maria Sletirot. Okay. I'm going to say Maria. So in the last segment, I talked about the pre pottery Neolithic. Now I'm familiar in the Levant. There's like the Epipaleolithic with the, you know, the Natufians. Is that synonymous or is that a different thing?
00:16:12
Speaker
No, it's like the Natufians are before the pre-Pottery Neolithic. So it's like the preceding period. So you have like the Natufians and then you have the pre-Pottery Neolithic and then you have the Pottery Neolithic. Can you elaborate on what the pre-Pottery Neolithic is, I guess?
00:16:28
Speaker
Yes, so it's the period where you start having agriculture. So that's like a very Neolithic thing, of course, let's see the timeline of it might be actually very nice to know. So it's, it's divided into three phases. It's the pre-partury Neolithic A, and then B and then C. This begins around 9,500 BCE and ends around 6,500 BC. I think that would be like
00:16:56
Speaker
the round numbers of it the agriculture comes around and you start to have the larger settlements where people actually stay instead of moving around so you have like actual villages with like two three thousand people living together which is very interesting i think and houses changes from round houses to like
00:17:19
Speaker
rectangular and square houses, so they become a bit bigger and have more rooms. And then you have some really cool, I don't like the word ritual, but sometimes it's the best to describe things, I think, where there's a continuation from the Natufian, how you engage with the dead in your society. So in the Natufian, you would have dead people buried under houses, under the floor.
00:17:46
Speaker
and you would see at some sites removal of the skull after death, most often after skeletonization of the body. So that continues in the prepoderyneolithic where you bury people under your
00:18:02
Speaker
Lime plaster floor so you have like your plaster floor and then you ruin it very people and then you wait a couple of years ruined the floor again and then take out the head and Then you place it somewhere else or you decorate it and with plaster and shells for example, which is cool That's crazy
00:18:24
Speaker
Yeah, that's yeah, that's really cool. And you have like clay figurines and stuff like that. So it's a period where a lot of things happen, I guess you could say. So it's like, and so the neolithic be which you are specifically kind of studying as part of your thesis is that so that's like the mid section or the mid time period between whether or not going like full, they're not using pottery, they're, they're kind of still transitioning into
00:18:52
Speaker
agriculture and expanding and things like that? Well, the PP&B, you have full-on agriculture and domestication of animals. So like in a tsuvian, you start to see people being more aware, but not really domesticating. Then the PP&A, people start to domesticate, and then PP&B are like, okay, this is what we're going to live off. We're going to live off domesticated stuff.
00:19:15
Speaker
So yeah, that's like, I think the period is around 1500 years. So it's a long time they live together, the PPMD.
00:19:26
Speaker
That seems like a very, really, really interesting time period to study because you're having all this change and things are getting wild. Yeah. And also my dissertation on my BA was about the transitioning from the PPN, prepoderyneolithic to the poderyneolithic, because a lot of wild changes happens there too, where you have like these
00:19:51
Speaker
as I said, large villages, the biggest of them we call megasites. And they kind of collapse at the end of the pre-Pottery Neolithic, where people start moving away. And then people start living fewer people together and
00:20:10
Speaker
Like the rituals you have in the pre-pottery Neolithic, it doesn't really exist anymore. There is not a lot of burials, or we haven't found the burials there, of course, or they have done something with the bodies. So like that transitioning was really cool too, to study like what happened, why did they kind of collapse and why did all these ritual things change, for example. So yeah, it's a cool period altogether.
00:20:37
Speaker
Yeah, it seems like it. And so your thesis is titled, The Missing Children in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B Record, a meta database to investigate differences in similarities in Southwest Asia in burial patterns of infants and children, and how this may help create an understanding of the live life and role of the infant and child in pre-pottery Neolithic B societies.
00:21:06
Speaker
How do you say that in Danish if you don't mind?
00:21:14
Speaker
Yes. So actually, because you did send me this question beforehand, and I'm happy you did, because I wouldn't have been able to make a translation while reading it in English, because I've never said the exact wording in Danish, because my thesis is in English. All of my archaeology stuff has always been in English. I have not had a single course, I think, in Danish. So everything archaeological for me is in English.
00:21:42
Speaker
So I had to- Wait, hold on. What? You go to a Danish university and everything's in English? Yeah. So my, my supervisor is from Germany and the other professor is from Germany. And then we have like associate professors from Canada and England, I think. So
00:22:04
Speaker
Yeah, we've had some Danish associates which got fired because humanity studies are not very high prioritized. So I've had like lectures in Danish, but yeah, the degree is basically in English.
00:22:21
Speaker
Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt, that was just mind-blowing to me. So how do we say your thesis in DATIS for the first time ever? Yes, okay.
Research Inspiration and Methods
00:22:51
Speaker
That was well said. Sounded like I was vomiting a lot, right? I think that's probably what English sounds like to like Latin speakers, you know, like Latin language speakers. Yeah. There you go. But yeah, that's really cool to hear. It's like you can tell it's Germanic, but like just not English in any way. No.
00:23:15
Speaker
When people ask about your research, like, what is your elevator pitch, right? Like, I don't know if you guys have that colloquialism in Denmark, like the elevator pitch being, if you're stuck in an elevator with someone for like two minutes and they ask you, what do you do? Like, what would you say?
00:23:31
Speaker
Well, I would say my research is about the children in the pre-podrieneolithic, because in the southwest Asia, in the pre-podrieneolithic, there's been a lot of focus on, and that's the general thing in archaeology.
00:23:48
Speaker
until the 80s, 90s, I think 90s at first, actually, that children are not regarded as very important to the archaeological record. So you have the issue of children are not being recorded, and there's not a lot of ideas about what happened to children and what was childhood, because there's a very weird thing that
00:24:13
Speaker
kind of changes from culture to culture, from time to time. And I think it's interesting that children, they learn so much, they evolve. We can use them for so much to understand pre-historic societies from their bones. You can see if there was malnutrition during their childhood.
00:24:35
Speaker
growth patterns. And yeah, so I think like children is like a really important factor in societies, which are really often like overlooked, like imagine a village. And then I you would probably imagine that being children, but like in the archaeological record, they're often not there or like at least three nineties.
00:24:55
Speaker
And they're really missing in the prepodery Neolithic. And I want to get them in there. So I'm creating a metadata base with child burials from
Danish Archaeology Studies
00:25:04
Speaker
seven or eight different sites in the Southwest Asia region and trying to figure out like how were they buried and what are the differences from different sites and other similarities and what can we kind of tell from this. Yeah, I've never done it.
00:25:21
Speaker
Yeah. That's fascinating. I mean, we had a guest on the podcast not too long ago, Matt Corey. He does something similar and he hit the same things you just did talking. He looks at evidence of children in great plains, prehistoric and the nomadic horse cultures and looking at differences in teepee rings. So just hearing you talk, it's like, all right, sweet. There's more of this work being done.
00:25:45
Speaker
elsewhere, which is, you know, as you said, like there's children are fundamental part of, you know, someone's lived experience. Like you, you don't get adults without children. So, and, and what was this, like, what could you say was your inspiration for kind of pursuing this, this course of, of research?
00:26:04
Speaker
So actually, I had a course at the university, which we called the Berlin Copenhagen Seminar, where the Freiun visited in Berlin and then the university in Copenhagen. We have like an arrangement where we all do like presentations about a topic under like a bigger subject. So that year it was gender.
00:26:27
Speaker
Then the people like the students from Copenhagen we go to Berlin and we present our topic and I research about this topic to like the other the class in Berlin and others who might want to attend and then like a few months later the students from Berlin come to Copenhagen and do the same thing.
00:26:48
Speaker
So when I did this course, it was gender, as I said, and I looked into the pre-pottery of the thick children, whether or not gender was kind of a thing. If it was something, you would be assigned from birth.
00:27:03
Speaker
And I did that by looking at, as I told you, like the skulls in the pre-pottery in your lithic, where you remove them and then you, then you decorate them and such. You also have like in vivo cranial like deformation. So like.
00:27:19
Speaker
deformation to make on the cranium intentionally. And that has to happen at birth, like around birth, because then you can still form the cranium. So the interesting thing for me was to see if this was a selection from the sex of the of the child if more boys
00:27:40
Speaker
then girls were, um, had their head deformed. Like you can't really figure out the sex of a baby or child without like doing DNA testing and DNA testing in the pre-pottery neolithic is difficult because DNA isn't really very well conserved. Then I had to look at the adults, like who had their head shaped differently. And if that could tell us something about if
00:28:05
Speaker
you had a gender or if more boys than girls were selected for this. And that's when I came across like how childhood is so neglected.
00:28:14
Speaker
That's really interesting because you hear about cranium deformation and I think it's pretty popular in like the South America, you know, with like the different societies down there that would shape, elongate the cranium and things like that. But you don't really don't hear it talked about in this kind of Southwest Asia in this pre-party area. It's really cool to hear about it. Yeah.
00:28:40
Speaker
It's interesting. So you're taking for your thesis, you're taking an osteological approach to this. And how are you going? Are you studying just infants? Are you studying adults? What are your methods around that?
00:28:56
Speaker
So, well, I'm studying infants and children, so I'm not really the adults. That would be too much work to look at all of them because I'm using, I think it's seven different sites to make these patterns, like see if there's any patterns and differences. So it's a really large database I'm creating right now. It of course isn't big enough if I really wanted to say something, but it is big enough for this thesis, which has to be like 60 pages.
00:29:25
Speaker
So it's a lot of gathering data from reports and articles, basically, and then put it into a database. And it's been difficult with some of the sites because if they're before like the 2000s, there is not always a lot of information on the children. So a lot of the boxes in my database is just like no information, no information, no information. There's nothing, but it's also good because then I can discuss like, well,
00:29:55
Speaker
you see this could have been interesting to know but people didn't care about children so yeah that's that's that's interesting and and uh the woes of data collection is something that is very real in any sort of research or anything like that it's it's uh especially with time and things have changed
00:30:15
Speaker
And so I think wrapping up this segment before we move on to segment three, I don't know if we have much time, but I guess we can get into this more in the next segment. But we were kind of talking about, my mind was blown that everything in University of Copenhagen is in English. But where does archaeology fit in the Danish academic system? Because here in the US, you know, of course it's anthropology and we know in like England, another place that's under history. Where does it sit in Denmark?
00:30:38
Speaker
So in Denmark, it's, well, we have three different branches of archaeology.
Cultural Dynamics in the Middle East
00:30:43
Speaker
In Copenhagen, it's a Near Eastern archaeology, classic archaeology or classical and then prehistoric archaeology, which is Danish archaeology. So first of all, they're all in different departments, or like the Near Eastern is in the cross-cultural and regional studies at the Humanities Institute.
00:31:02
Speaker
And that's also where the two other archaeology branches are at the same institute. So I'll do this in humanities and then in a different department. Yeah, so you have like three branches and every branch you only focus on that one subject area. So I've only been taught about the Near East, nothing else since day one. So yeah. So it's like regionalized. That's interesting. Yeah. That's really interesting.
00:31:29
Speaker
I think the two others are in the, at least the prehistoric is in Saxo, which is like also history is also there. I think the classical one is too. I'm not sure. I don't remember, but yeah.
00:31:42
Speaker
Well, uh, this episode is turning into quite the classical one. So, um, on that note, we will, we'll catch you in the next segment. And welcome back to episode 46 of life and ruins. Um, we're here with Maria. And so for this third segment, we wanted to talk with Maria about what it's like working in the middle East or Southwest Asia. Um, it kind of touched on some of us, some of like the,
00:32:11
Speaker
the environment, the cultural and political environment in that first segment, we really kind of wanted to dive in it today. And so Maria, at any point when you were working in Jordan or Cyprus or Jerusalem, was there ever something going on politically between countries in the Middle East or different groups that kind of had tensions pretty risen?
00:32:33
Speaker
I would say Jordan is probably the most peaceful country in the Middle East, at least at the time I was there. There isn't really any conflicts ongoing in Jordan as such, but there is a lot of refugees. And yeah, when you drove on the highway, there would be military tanks or cars.
00:32:53
Speaker
big weapons on them and stuff like that, parked at the side way or on the road. I didn't really notice much there. I was living in a very, not a big city, it's called Madara.
00:33:10
Speaker
actually a Christian city, I think, in Jordan. And you would follow that. We're living at a hotel and stuff, so you don't like, and then kind of what we did was go to and from site every day. And then in the weekends, we would go and visit two different places. So we went to
00:33:26
Speaker
Petra and Jerry and stuff like that. So in Jordan, I didn't feel it much. It was mainly like seeing like sometimes you drove in a bus and saw like refugee camps, which is not something you really see when you come from Denmark. So that was very different.
00:33:42
Speaker
And I would say like where I felt it the most was definitely in Jerusalem, just like the feel of going into the old city. It's an amazing place, but you can feel there's like some tension. And I guess we spoke about in the first segment about like the young people with guns everywhere, rifles. Yeah. I think like after I'd been in the first week I was in Israel, I lived in inside of Jerusalem and then the week after I moved a bit out of it because I could live for free.
00:34:12
Speaker
I think it was like, yeah, two weeks in, there was a missile attack. It was down south, but there was just like helicopters everywhere around Jerusalem. And it was just kind of scary because I knew it wasn't going on in Jerusalem, but it was still like, okay, this I'm not used to like, knowing there's like a missile attack and knowing that like, there could be something here and
00:34:40
Speaker
Yeah and when i was there was also a election i think it was the first out of the what are they on the third or fourth in two years or something they're just keep on going with the election so that was the first one there was a day i know that he was in.
00:34:59
Speaker
Jerusalem was like don't go to Jerusalem to the old city because they can be trouble and then there's a day called Jerusalem day where the Israeli occupants or like inhabitants they celebrate that they won.
00:35:15
Speaker
the six-day war, I guess it is. That unfortunately means that there can be a lot of chaos, especially in the old city, because the Palestinians will close out their shops because the ultra-Orthodox youth will march around and spit on the doors and windows and be like
00:35:39
Speaker
yell some really ugly stuff. So there's like days when people like don't go to Jerusalem today because of this and well the whole religion thing is very interesting and very weird. This is very normal for all archaeological excavations in Israel but I think especially around Jerusalem and that
00:36:03
Speaker
Orthodox Jews will come to the site and they kind of investigate if there's something Jewish on the site, if something Jewish has been found, and if they suspect it, they will just be like, you can't dig the animal, we have to check this. And these are people who have no
00:36:19
Speaker
archaeological experience or anything. So, Mutsa is a pre-Pottery Neolithic site, but there's also Roman things, and there's also Bronze Age things, so there can be Jewish things. So, the issue was when you were digging a burial,
00:36:37
Speaker
They could come and be like, oh, this burial, you shouldn't take it out because it might be Jewish. And that's a problem when you're on salvage excavation, um, where you have to like move really fast. But I would say like working at that site, it was also very, you have this thing. I don't know if this happens any place, any other places, but like in like the Middle East, it's very normal that.
00:37:02
Speaker
an excavation, you hire workers who do like the hard job of like, pig axing, like with a big hose. And that was cool. Yeah, the big pig axis. And I kind of like do all the hard work. And then, and that was the case of moods that they had hired, I think it was 2-300 Palestinians to do like the hard work. And it's the same in Jordan, we hired people to do all the hard work so we could sit and do like the more relaxed work and
00:37:31
Speaker
So yeah, yeah. And I just have to remember white and remember my privilege and the colonialism of it all and all of that when I'm there. And remember, I'm a guest in their country, in their culture, in their heritage. Yeah. That seems, that seems really interesting, especially since I've only, like, and I mentioned earlier, I've only worked kind of in Wyoming and Colorado where, you know, the worst thing that can happen to you is either you get
00:37:57
Speaker
extremely sunburnt like Carlton does when he forgets sunscreen and whatnot. Or you can, you know, um, you can be dehydrated. It can be hot and things like that. Or, you know, sometimes you come back to and a famous celebrity, celebrity dies or something. You know, I was in the field when Robin Williams died. So like, how is it, is it really easy to focus on the archeology with all this kind of extra tension going on?
00:38:22
Speaker
Well, I think so. For me, it was pretty easy. It kind of depends on how you work, I guess. I get very hyper focused on stuff when I work, so I forget to eat lunch and stuff like that. So to me, it's like I start working and then I forget everything else.
00:38:41
Speaker
But yeah, you can focus on the archaeology. I think you're just aware of, for example, I had three good friends at the site who were Palestinians and there was one day we had to remove a box with a burial inside of it. They had boxed the burial and we had to remove it and it was really difficult because they're
00:39:02
Speaker
They had boxed it, and then rain season came, so there was really muddy, and it was so difficult. And they were just like, oh, you just sit down and supervise us removing this. So I was feeling a bit like back to the, I don't know, 1900s, where the white people would just sit and watch people work. And I was like, what can I do to help you? Because it felt kind of wrong.
00:39:25
Speaker
to just do nothing and supervise them for removing a box. But I didn't feel like I had to be like, I think the only thing was that I shouldn't discuss politics too much in Israel. And my supervisor before sending me on the excavation, he was like, just don't discuss politics. Thank you. Because yeah, so I think that's like the biggest thing is like, don't
00:39:49
Speaker
put all the politics into the archaeology when you're there, don't start being like, oh, but Israel is doing this shit to the Palestinians and the other way around because you won't make friends and they won't be open to you and want to work with you if you're judgmental from the beginning, I guess.
00:40:09
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's, I would say that's probably pretty good advice for even people in the US as well. It's interesting. Did you ultimately kind of bond with the workers that you're working with?
00:40:23
Speaker
Yes, there was a language barrier because I actually don't speak Arabic. I'm hoping to learn that at some point. So there was a language barrier because a lot of them don't speak English from the workers. But I had one who was kind of helping me in the beginning called Achmet.
00:40:39
Speaker
And we became really good friends and I talked to him every day and he calls me his sister so I got a really close relationship to him and I'm like his son. He got a son a few months after I left and I'm his son's aunt.
00:40:57
Speaker
Like the workers knew who I was and were always smiling and calling things to me, which I didn't always understand, but like they would always try and share their lunch with me and stuff like that. So yeah, I feel like I got. That's good. But that's the good thing about the Middle East is that people are so open and welcoming. Like you don't even speak the same language and you can become friends almost. It's a good place to go with.
00:41:23
Speaker
want to go outside of your country but you're a bit nervous about meeting new people and stuff. It's like I went to the old city and helped a man translate something. He had a sign and he had learned Danish from someone in the old city. Some tourists had told him something in Danish.
00:41:40
Speaker
So he wanted to be sure that he had written it right in Danish. And I was like, yeah, like he was just, can you write it for me? I did it. And he was like, Oh, I have a gift for you. And hey, do you want to come inside and have some tea with me? They come to my shop, have tea. So like, people are so welcoming. So it's very easy to like, even I am a super introvert. But like, I feel so comfortable there so quick, because people just want to be your friend.
00:42:05
Speaker
The people I met, they were very nice. I liked that aspect of it, but the tension for sure, especially in the old city, it's palpable. Other than that, it's looking outside of Jerusalem, all the hills, and they have the same... I don't know if I ever told you guys this, but they have a... You have to use this specific Jerusalem stone to build buildings so it all looks flush, kind of like Santa Fe. It's really cool. And it's cool, the hills, I don't know.
00:42:33
Speaker
It was neat, but then also at the same time, you're like, well, I can't go to the other side of the city at this time of day, kind of thing like that. It's weird. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Definitely. It's odd to have those limits. I lived inside of Jerusalem the first week and I found a room where I could stay and a man was like, he showed me around the area where the apartment was and he was like,
00:42:56
Speaker
Yeah, so this is one of the safe places. Just don't go that place after dark. Don't go there. Don't go there alone. Don't use that gate, which is closest here to into the old city. Someone was stabbed over there and over there. And I was like, well, I'm from Copenhagen. Like, this is safe. So it's weird.
00:43:18
Speaker
Yeah. If you had like one thing to tell the audience listening about like your work there or like your thesis or just your experience in archeology, like what would be the one thing you'd want to let people know? Oh, I don't know. Always wear sunscreen. No. Um, I'll stand by. I'll, I'll stand by that. If you just get one really bad burn right in the summer and you have the base layer and you're set, but like cancer, is that a thing? I don't know. Like, I don't know.
00:43:48
Speaker
Oh, in America, of course. No, but I'm really, really white. When I came to Israel, I was really white. When I left, I was really white. Then I went to Spain for almost two months, and I was really white. When I came home, I was in warm countries for five or six months, and I didn't get a tan at all, because I'm so white, I need a factor of 50 plus.
00:44:11
Speaker
And the one director at the site in Jerusalem, he said that when you arrived, you were kind of see-through-white. Now you're only like paper-white or something. I was like, oh, thank you. I turned like a minuscule. Well, sun cream and drink water. But it's a hard one. It caught me off guard.
00:44:36
Speaker
See, I think just enjoy like excavating and enjoy the process. And I think it's really important today, like when I was at the other side of Buddha, all the people I was excavating with almost everyone was from the US and there was so many like Baptists and there was a lot of like Trump supporters and like I still got really well along with them. I'm like,
00:45:03
Speaker
socialist, atheist. So I think it's also really important to just always keep an open mind. Yeah, I don't know. I think that's a good answer. Like, just keep it like, especially as an anthropological thing, just everywhere you go, keep an open mind and don't judge it. Yeah, sure. This is a weird question before we end. Did you see the elevators in like town, like on the Sabbath, they like constantly run?
00:45:30
Speaker
So that instead of like actually using the elevator, you can just get on it and then like get off at a certain floor. Yeah. There's like little loopholes around the city like that. So you didn't have to use technology on the Sabbath. And that's fascinating. That's so weird.
00:45:46
Speaker
It's such a weird thing. Also, that was one of the weirdest thing of being in Israel. Like you just had to know that like four o'clock, five o'clock, you can't go anywhere Friday until Saturday, seven o'clock. And it was like, I don't have a driver's license yet. So I couldn't rent a car. So I was actually just stuck in a small city, like without being able to do anything, but go for a walk because it was really religious. So I couldn't go to a cafe or anything.
00:46:11
Speaker
So it's just like, you just have to be standby. And I know that there's like, when I was searching for a place to live, it was like, oh, you have to be like shepherd friendly in this apartment or this neighborhood, which means you can't use electricity for like 24 hours. And it's like, well, that's not going to happen.
00:46:29
Speaker
And yeah, so there's a lot of weird things. And yeah, it was, it was odd, but I, fair enough. I think the thing that I spoke to a lot of other people with, who are also Jewish, when I, when I, well, like, that's fine. They want to do it. But does, does that mean that I can't choose the bus because they don't want to? Like, you know, stuff like that. Why should everybody? Because they're a minority, right? They all throw out the dogs, even though they,
00:46:57
Speaker
kind of expanding with all the children that are having, there's still like a minority group. They just have so much power. It's insane. The Orthodox. Yeah, they have a lot of power. As I said, they can go to a site and just be like, oh, you have to shut this down because we think it might be Jewish. Yeah, they can shut the whole country down because of Passover. You can't buy anything
00:47:21
Speaker
other than dry biscuits in the supermarket almost.
Learning Resources and Wrap-up
00:47:25
Speaker
You can't buy bread and stuff like that, so it's there. All right. Well, before we end the show, Maria, what are a couple of sources, like books, articles, videos, et cetera, that you would recommend for anyone interested in Near Eastern archaeology?
00:47:37
Speaker
That's a good question. So there is my issues always remembering the author's name. So there is the archaeology of Mesopotamia, which I think is a good introduction. I think it's Taylor and Francis group who has done it. But I also have like on my Instagram, I have like a fixed story with different titles on it.
00:48:00
Speaker
But then there's also Ancient Egypt by Ian Shaw. And then there's, for me, a really great book is The Agricultural Revolution in Prehistory, which I use a lot. It's not only the Near East, but that's Graham Barker. And I really like that one. So it's like all across the world, but there's a really good section on the Near East there. Excellent. And speaking of your Instagram, where can our listeners find you on social media? Maria underscore archaeology.
00:48:28
Speaker
Very cool. And because this is a life in ruins, we always ask our guests at the end of it, you know, if you had a choice in life, if you go back and redo this, would you choose once again to live a life in ruins? I would. Definitely. Awesome. Excellent. We just interviewed Maria Degette-Sleptherog, a master's student in archaeology at the University of Copenhagen.
00:49:03
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. So once again, this is coming from my dad jokes given to me by my father. Shout out Dean. So I heard Sony's coming out with a new console during the pandemic. It's called the plague station five. Oh.
00:49:38
Speaker
Mazel tov.
00:49:56
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 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.