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Of Mammoths and Hand Sprays with Dr. Madeline Mackie - Ep 71
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On this episode of ALiRP, we interview our friend and colleague, Dr. Madeline Mackie. Dr. Mackie just began her position as an assistant professor at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah.
Dr. Mackie studies Paleoindian lifeways and big game hunting, as well as ochre hand sprays. We met Dr. Mackie at the University of Wyoming, where she dealt with our numerous shenanigans.
We start off by talking about her experiences growing up in Southern California and then delve into her MA research on hand sprays in Wyoming. Dr. Mackie then talks about the La Prele Mammoth site and we kind of nerd out about the finds. She then talks about post-doc life and the jobs market.
Literature Recommendations:
- Anything by Dr. George Frison
- The Fifth Beginning: What Six Million Years of Human History Can Tell Us About Our Future by Dr. Robert L. Kelly
- The Lifeways of Hunter-Gatherers: The Foraging Spectrum by Dr. Robert L. Kelly
- The Professor Is In: The Essential Guide to Turning Your Ph.D. Into A Job by Karen Kelsky
Guest Contact
- Instagram: @madmac9
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- Instagram: @alifeinruinspodcast
- Facebook: @alifeinruinspodcast
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- Website: www.alifeinruins.com
- Ruins on APN: https://www.archaeologypodcastnetwork.com/ruins
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Transcript
Introduction of Hosts and Podcast
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. Welcome to episode 71 of A Life in Ruins podcast, re-investigate the careers of those living a life in ruins. I'm your host Carlton Gover, and I am joined by my co-host Connor Johnin and David Howe.
Introducing Dr. Madeline Mackey
00:00:25
Speaker
Today, we are interviewing our friend and colleague, Dr. Madeline Mackey.
00:00:29
Speaker
Dr. Mackey just started position as an assistant professor at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah. She studies Paleo-Indian big game hunting and life ways, as well as handsprays. We all met Dr. Mackey at the University of Wyoming, go figure, where she dealt with our numerous shenanigans. We are super excited to have her on the show today. Dr. Mackey, how are you doing this evening? I'm doing pretty well, and I'm pretty happy to be talking to three of you again.
00:00:53
Speaker
It's been some time, that's for sure. Probably since SAAs and Albuquerque, I imagine. I saw Connor a few weeks ago. Well, like a month ago, I'm in the field. Yeah. I saw you, I guess last was on Zoom at like one of my lecture things or someone's lecture. Yeah, that sounds right. And then SAAs before that. I don't know, Laramie. Well, I do, I do email you to bug you about radiocarbon data quite frequently. Yeah, we've exchanged some emails and I've exchanged texts with all of you since then.
00:01:25
Speaker
That is fair. So Connor, David, you guys met Dr. Mackey before I did. So how did, how did that go? I was wondering this earlier. I was going to ask you, do you remember when we first met? I know it was at Wyoming, but like, or did we meet at the paleo Odyssey and I just didn't know you? No, it was at Wyoming for sure. I remember Connor and
Dr. Mackey's Archaeology Journey
00:01:44
Speaker
I met in the kitchen of rich Adams house about probably like two weeks before the semester started. Yep.
00:01:51
Speaker
And I probably met you, David, like two weeks later would be my guess, but I don't remember specifically. Yeah. Or were you in the field with Brian? That's right. I met you with Brian and that was my first summer in Wyoming, I think. Yeah. First full summer in Wyoming out at Shirley Basin site.
00:02:10
Speaker
Yeah. And Brian Schroeder was on episode one, some number. I can't remember off the top of my head, but yeah, I remember meeting you there and was like, okay, cool. This is what a grad student looks like at the University of Wyoming. Cause I think you were just starting there. Yeah. I can't remember if I, that was before I started or if that was the after my first year. Yeah. I can't remember either. Cause I started in 2012, fall of 2012.
00:02:39
Speaker
Yeah. Maybe it was like, yeah, it was just like, it was one of those things that like, I think that's the first experience I had with someone who was like in the program. So it was, it was cool to see. And I was scared. I was very scared. Yeah. I was very scared of you at first. Cause you like knew everything about like everything and like people were like, just ask Maddie. And I was like, I don't know.
00:03:02
Speaker
I try not to be scary. And then we all like actually meet you and understand that you're a wonderful human being and we love you a lot. So, yeah. I try not to have resting angry face, but I do. It's a problem. If I think about you, I don't really get that vibe, if I remember correctly.
00:03:23
Speaker
I do remember you like always had a party at your house or you were always at someone's party and then you were like, Hey, let's go play Mario Kart at my house. And I do recall that and it was great time. Yeah. So I think we're going to throw it back real far right now. So what kind of got it, got you into archeology as like a kid, a teenager?
00:03:47
Speaker
So I, archaeology was like one of the first, like, even when I was a really little kid, was one of the careers I always said I wanted to do. And when I look back on it, the other careers I thought about like,
00:03:57
Speaker
Seriously, when, like, you know, up through high school, we're often pretty related to anthropology. Although at the time I didn't realize that archaeology was part of anthropology until about my senior year of high school. But I thought about, you know, cultural anthropology and forensics for a while was definitely on the forensic anthropology, CSI, bones, et cetera, and kid train like many people. And I think a lot of it just came back, comes down to when, you know, when I was a kid, a lot of times family activities were museums or
00:04:27
Speaker
vacations were, you know, included going to museums or going to archaeology sites. I think a lot of it probably prompted by my mom. And that just kind of always piqued an interest of mine and those time periods and what the past was like. And by the time I was about 16, I decided that archaeology is what I wanted to do. So I entered college knowing that archaeology was what major I wanted and I registered to like foreign anthropology major from the beginning.
00:04:54
Speaker
Which is not all that common, really.
Master's Thesis on Hand Sprays
00:04:56
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, believe me, we've done this enough to know it's not that common at all. Usually it's, I didn't know this was a job, and then I took a class, and then I switched majors. Everyone has an interest in it, but they don't know that it's a legitimate thing you can do in college. Yeah, and I think it was my senior year of high school, they made it so you could do a presentation on the career you want, and that was when I figured out that archeology was part of anthropology, and I did a presentation on anthropology.
00:05:24
Speaker
Nice, which most of the other kids are probably like, is this like, but I did my, I think junior year research paper in English class on human evolution in Tennessee. And it went over great. But I think I knew that was anthropology at that point. I don't remember, but yeah, we were all nerds is what I'm getting to you. Oh yeah. I was also terrified of talking to anyone. So that was me. Yep.
00:05:51
Speaker
Yeah, I was I was the kid in fourth grade who had the paleontologist. I had a little like a trifold thing that I made that was like how to be a paleontologist and had pictures and all this kind of stuff. So that was I mean, I will say I think a lot of it goes back to Indiana Jones. Indiana Jones was like a big movie in my household. And that was like my first introduction to archaeology. You know, my family was not like an outdoorsy family. Like I think the first artifact I probably found
00:06:21
Speaker
Like in the field was like, it feels cool. Like I never found arrowheads when I was a kid or anything like that. I always wanted to, like I wanted, it was something I wanted to do, but it was just not, that was, you know, we did museums and.
00:06:35
Speaker
some archeology trips. My mom somehow found a way to take, like, found Calico Hills one time, and I, my mom used to make us keep journals in the summer to try to, like, keep her education up. She sent me them when they were cleaning out their house or cleaning out my room, and I opened the front page of it, and it was like, today I went to an archeology site called Calico Hills, and I was like, oh, that was me, that was. Now that's kind of infamous, but, yeah, so from a young age.
00:07:04
Speaker
Did you ever visit La Brea? Because you're from California. Oh yeah. You're from SoCal. Yeah, I'm from like Southern California, Orange County. Yeah, we went to La Brea tar pits, which I loved. And I went back a few years ago and it's still just awesome. Yeah, they have like active, still have the active excavations going on. And I think that has got to be the most miserable thing to dig in. Yeah. Like active, active tar and trying to point plot and or sludge your way through that crap. While tourists are staring at you.
00:07:33
Speaker
They have like these big boxes of like concreted boss, like, well, paleontological remains and they like have pulled out and people like excavate through the boxes. It's pretty crazy. The more recent stuff. Not for me, not for me, but clearly those experiences in California and you went to UC Davis, right? And for underground?
Exploration of LaPrelle Mammoth Site
00:07:53
Speaker
I did. I went to UC Davis and happened into a great anthropology program that really continued my interest in the field and gave me some early research experience, which really kind of continued to prompt me to go to continue on and get a master's in eventual new PhD because I realized I really enjoyed that part of the field itself.
00:08:14
Speaker
Absolutely. UC Davis definitely made better by the piercing blue eyes man, Randy Haas, who we mentioned in the last episode. Actually, that introduces us to a great segue. You did four years of undergraduate. What was that push for you to go into graduate school and get
00:08:33
Speaker
more professional academic training in the field of anthropology. I had always kind of been interested in teaching and I thought it was something that I would really enjoy and becoming a professor. And that was why I really first started looking into going into grad school. And originally I was planning on going straight through and in my senior year, I just got kind of overwhelmed. It was like, you know, I think I should take a step back and get some more experience. So I worked for the Forest Service for six months and then worked at a CRM firm out of California for
00:09:03
Speaker
six months into kind of a year to work in the field and then ended up going to Wyoming. But it really was originally driven by an interest in teaching and also the experience that I gained with doing a little bit of research at Davis really kind of furthered that because it was like, oh, I enjoy this part. I think I can do this part. What was the research? I read some stable isotope analysis with Elmer Urbans there.
00:09:29
Speaker
It actually turned into my first publication, which I'm very grateful for that opportunity. He was a wonderful mentor there and really helped me get my foot in the door and get the wheels going on research and kind of down that academic trend, which is nice.
00:09:46
Speaker
Oh, random interjection. Uh, our company uses, um, I think we use him as our isotope person and our, uh, for all our shell analysis, I think we send to him, which is like super, super random, but yeah, the name gelmer, you can't really, I mean, he's a, he's a fantastic archaeologist and really has done a lot with ice slopes and has some, um, pretty amazing stuff going on out there. So.
00:10:14
Speaker
Can you define archaeometrist for the lemons, including me? I mean, archaeometry is like kind of, I don't know if this is the official definition, you know, kind of this hard science side of archaeology, and it often includes people who do things with, you know, small elemental analysis, really hardcore isotopic analysis, sourcing materials, et cetera, all of that stuff that uses kind of those kind of chemistry heavy hard science techniques and puts them in the archaeology realm.
00:10:43
Speaker
the nerd stuff that Eric does. Yeah, some of the nerd stuff that Eric does, and others. That was the first class I took from Eric, was Archeometry, and yep. My first and only class I took from Eric. That class is brutal. All right, so what programs were you looking into for graduate school, and what ultimately led you to end up in Laredyce?
00:11:10
Speaker
I knew when I was at Davis that I wanted to do North American hunter-gatherer archaeology, influenced by Dr. Irvians and Dr. Bettinger, who were there. So I started looking at hunter-gatherer programs, and I actually had a conversation with both of them about what schools to look into, and Dr. Bettinger was the one who was like, you need to call Bob Kelly.
00:11:30
Speaker
you need to think about Wyoming and call Bob Kelly. So I was also looking at a university of Oregon and Santa Barbara and university of Utah as well. I think those were the schools I ended up applying to. I had a few others on the list. And so I ended up having some conversations with, you know, professors at a lot of those different schools and talked to Bob and actually ended up coming out to Laramie for a visit and met with a number of the faculty. And, you know, it was really Bob that prompted my application to the department, but I also was really interested in a lot of stuff that Todd Servo was doing there.
00:12:00
Speaker
uh, and had a really good kind of interview with him when I was visiting Laramie and ended up getting into the program and felt like it was the right place. And that was, that was how I ended up
Transition to Academia
00:12:10
Speaker
in UW. So were you a BOD student or a top student? I was a top student. So I did my main advisor was Todd. Uh, and then Bob, like, but my, my chair was Todd. Uh, Bob was on the committee and was very influential, but then I did a postdoc for two years with Bob. So kind of,
00:12:31
Speaker
Todd is my chair, but I work with both of them pretty closely for all my years there.
00:12:36
Speaker
That was, I think, me and, no, Bob was yours, Connor, right? Yeah. Okay. I guess that was it. He won't, he won't, he won't claim me, but he was. Does that, so it's, it means that Todd's your advisor, but Bob's also your advisor. Yeah. It's like the one A one B scenario, but I mean, there were times where Bob, like, I think at least once Bob was like, am I your advisor? He was like, okay.
00:13:05
Speaker
thesis again, David. I don't know. It's okay. Dr. Servile asked me if I pass my thesis like a month ago, so that was cool. Was he on the committee? Yeah. He was there when he defended and signed off on it. Did you graduate yet? Yes, yes, I did. Four years ago, dude.
00:13:32
Speaker
Laventine's Excellent Adventure is always an original. Speaking of Laprel, we'll get to that later. It's a mammoth site that Maddie helps co-run this year. I don't remember exactly. Strider just walked in the room. Do you recall when he peed in your backpack? I do. On your favorite final? I do. It was just impressive that it was like my backpack was left open next to the trailer and Strider just peed straight into
00:14:03
Speaker
He was already getting on my nerves cause he was just, he wouldn't eat his food. So he was just hungry and being a jerk to everybody. And then I was like, all right, I'm going to take you home. And then he just, you were like, Hey David, striders pee to my back. And I was like, all right. And I took him back to Larry. Can you spray like simple green all over the outside of my backpack and then attempt to make it look like to clean it or something too? I don't recall that, but it is not out of the realm of possibility of ridiculous things that I would have done in the moment.
00:14:32
Speaker
So I felt, you felt, I mean, I knew you felt awful and I was like, it's fine. Like stuff happens. I mean, it was like, I guess I'll just go wash it in the creek. And I was like, oh, yeah, it was a good time. Right, bud? He's licking his foot right now. I don't care. That's a, that's an interesting aspect of that site is there's always a pack of dogs, like no matter what.
00:14:57
Speaker
And I guess we'll talk more about it later. Yeah. So we talked about why you went to grad school. I guess here's the thing. We always talk about Laramie on the podcast. What was it like going from California to, to Wyoming for you?
00:15:14
Speaker
You know, I really loved it. So when I worked for the Forest Service right after undergrad, I lived in Tonopah, Nevada for six months, which the archaeology was wonderful. My coworkers were great. I really loved the job. But Tonopah is like a town of a few thousand people that doesn't have a stoplight. And it's halfway between Reno and Vegas.
00:15:36
Speaker
And Laramie was like way easier to live in than to live off. It was like more than one grocery store and like a Walmart and it was, you know, an hour from Colorado. Yeah, there's next to food. So I really loved Laramie and the longer I lived in Laramie, the more I loved it. So it's been really weird. So I've been in Utah now for like 10 or 12 days and it's very odd to like be in a larger city again.
00:16:04
Speaker
Right. It's not bad. It's just weird after being in Miami for
Advice for Academic Careers
00:16:09
Speaker
nine years. Does it Chipotle here? What Chipotle in and out.
00:16:15
Speaker
Oh yeah. Every time I drive through there, every time I drive through there. We have three in and outs in Denver now. And I had no idea. Yeah. I went to one for lunch yesterday. On that note, we got two tickets to paradise. So we're going to end this segment. We'll be right back.
00:16:36
Speaker
Welcome back to Episode 71 of Life from its podcast. We are still here with Dr. Maddy Mackey, talking about her thesis and dissertation work that she conducted over at a good old university in Wyoming. Go cowboys. For those of you who have been listening to the show, we've had a number of people and they've talked about their masters, and especially at Wyoming, the whole goal is get the hell out in two years, and especially Maddy. You were a master's PhD track, so there was that firm. You got 24 months.
00:17:04
Speaker
This needs to be done. How did you get introduced into the topic of hand sprays? What was your research question? I will say this, and I think this is a nice thing to note. When I applied for UW, I wrote some research idea in my cover letter. I could not tell you what that was today. I think I dropped it within the first week.
00:17:25
Speaker
So all you grad students and prospective grad students know that stuff can change once you start a program and that's, if not normal, it's pretty common. So don't freak out. Read what the professors do on their research page on the website and then make a research question that is very catering to that and get yourself in the program, then change.
00:17:50
Speaker
So, but how I ended up with my master's thesis was one thing that I became interested in really early on when I was at UW was how children or, you know, children tended to be under-recognized or not discussed in the archaeological record.
00:18:06
Speaker
So I was kind of trying to find a way to approach that. And I remember I was having a conversation with my eventual advisor, Todd Cerebell, and was saying, I was really interested in kids and archaeology. You know, and I at the time had been doing some projects on
00:18:21
Speaker
Well, I'd been doing a term paper for a class on toy points, but one of the shortfalls of that approach is you just essentially make a line and you're like, tiny artifact equals child, which is not necessarily true a lot of the time. He mentioned, he said, I'm supposed to be working on a site that has a bunch of handsprays on it. Maybe that's a way you could directly identify kids. So essentially,
00:18:43
Speaker
The idea behind this was that, you know, kids hands are smaller, but it's biologically related. So we could maybe use this rock art site to look and see what portions of the populations were making it. And that was how I really started the project. And it was inspired by some of the work that, you know, Guthrie had done in Europe in the Paleolithic, where he kind of came to the conclusion that a lot of the hand imagery that was made over there was done by like adolescent boys adventuring in caves. So it was kind of
00:19:12
Speaker
bringing that over to North America. And I will note there's children in archaeology is like a way bigger topic even now than it even was then. And there were a lot of people who were starting a lot of really cool research then. And I know you guys have talked about Mackenzie Corey actually. That's his dissertation bill, some of that. So how are we, like what age group were we defining as kids? Cause like when I was 10 years old, I already had larger hands and feet and taller than my poor mother.
00:19:36
Speaker
Yeah, so that was one of the challenges was like, what, at what point, how close can we get on age? And the way, the way I worked on this, so a handspray, I'm sure many of you guys have seen hand prints in rock art where essentially you put paint on your hand and then put it on a wall and you have a print and a spray is kind of the negative of that. So you put your hand on the wall and then you spit or spray paint around it and it creates like a negative hand image. Yeah, David has some tattoos of them that are really cool now.
00:20:03
Speaker
And, uh, to mention the cave wall right behind him, which has a bunch of hands raised in those two. And so did his house in Laramie. Yeah, it did.
00:20:14
Speaker
So the way I approached this was I actually created my own experimental handspray set. So I went and got finger paint from Walmart and watered it down and put it in spray bottles and essentially recruited a bunch of college students and then also went to one of the elementary schools in Laramie and made this set of like 250 handsprays that covered
00:20:34
Speaker
a range of different ages and then had both males and females as well and tracked how old everybody was when they gave their handspray and use that to take measurements on everything and then figure out where that line was that we could identify using those measurements. I didn't know that was that involved. That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. It was, I remember I like put out flyers and convinced everybody in the intro classes to give extra credit and would just have like students come by and would spray their hands. So an integral part of my master's thesis was finger paint.
00:21:11
Speaker
And what I figured out is you can essentially pretty confidently and with a certain degree of confidence, you can figure out if a handspray is from a kid under the age of 12 or over the age of 12.
00:21:22
Speaker
So what I did for the actual thesis was figure out if everybody was under the age of 12 or was an adolescent adult, so 12 or older, which, you know, if you think about like how gross birds during adolescence that makes sense that that would be the cutoff for age. So you just measured like the metrics of the, or did you measure their hands when they came to you or you just know what their age was and just get a good idea with the dysfunction analysis or something?
00:21:45
Speaker
Yeah, I took everybody's age down exactly to the day when they came in. And then essentially I created, there was about 18 different measurements that I tried that include like figure widths and lengths, column area, all of these different measurements, and then put them in a discriminant function analysis to come up with equations to figure out what these were. Let's write a post on that. That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah.
00:22:13
Speaker
Absolutely. Cool. And then moving off from there, you used an archeology site as like a test case to kind of connect them. You didn't go and measure every single hand on this site. How did you end up measuring? And if you don't mind mentioning where the site is in general? Yeah. So the site is a whole new record site and it's located right outside. Well, it's a series of sites.
00:22:38
Speaker
Located right outside Casey, Wyoming, which is a little town north of Casper in Johnson County in Wyoming, and the landowners are generous enough to let us come out there. What we actually use to measure all the hand, what I actually use to measure all the handsprays would help some
00:22:54
Speaker
really well-known BLM, archaeologists of photogrammetry was photogrammetry. So essentially this idea that you take a bunch of photos and you can then stitch them together into a 3D model that's accurate, well below a sub-centimeter if you do it right. You could actually measure the hands, the hand scrays off of that, get exact measurements on them. And it was really useful because a lot of this site has, it's three different sites that actually just got
00:23:19
Speaker
where are up for the national register of historic places. It just had a nomination written for them by Amanda Castaneda of the Wyoming SHPO office. And it's a pretty spectacular site because handsprays are pretty unusual in Wyoming and in themselves and there's about there's over 70 handsprays of the site and some of them are on surfaces that aren't accessible anymore.
00:23:39
Speaker
you know rocks balls have come off or you know they could have been creased or pieces of ladders or the sediment that made them more accessible has gone away. Yeah so we took them all and measured the photogrammetry and then kind of applied the equation for age I come up with. I also made a second equation to try to figure out if the handsprays were made by males or females looking at kind of hand shape
00:24:02
Speaker
So essentially the idea is that women have smaller hands and also have more slender hands in general, like they have less fat fingers than males. And there's also some research out there about digit ratios. So essentially the ratio between your index and your ring finger trends different between the different biological sexes, although that didn't end up being the vast indicator in a lot of this stuff.
00:24:30
Speaker
That's super cool. Excellent. And so I think we're going to transition here to talk more about La Pral and mammoths. But if you are interested in Maddie's research, you can look up her article, Estimating Agent Sex, Paleo Demographic Identification Using Rock Art Hand Sprays and Application in Johnson County, Wyoming in the Journal of Archaeological Sciences, on your 2015 pages, 33 to 341. So that will be in the description below on the episode wherever you're listening to it. So David, over to you. Let's talk mammoths.
00:25:04
Speaker
So when I found out about Wyoming as a program, my professor, Dr. Anderson at UT Knoxville was like, Hey, you should check out. Well, we had to read Bob's book as our hunter gatherer textbook. And then he like showed us like these different field schools we could take.
00:25:19
Speaker
And there was this one in Wyoming where there was like a mammoth in some riverbed. And I was like, okay, so we'll go there. And then, uh, ended up wanting to go to Wyoming for that reason and for Bob. And I went and I finally got to go to Lapprell. Was it in 2015, 2016? I think it was 2015 or 2016. I can't remember. Was it Oker senior? Yes. 16.
00:25:41
Speaker
16. Okay. Right. Cause we listened to like a lot of political speeches on the radio that year. Yeah. So that site is awesome. I can kind of describe it, but I'll let you describe it. Cause this is like what I guess Wyoming is known for right now. And like it's Nat Geo funded and her was. Yeah. Well, it was, it was Nat Geo funded and we currently are funded by the national science foundation. And we've also been funded in the past by the Wyoming cultural trust fund and quest and prison Institute and you know, et cetera.
00:26:10
Speaker
I guess, let me ask first, what happened to the mammoth and like, how old is this? So Lopral is 12,950 is our current age estimate years old. So we're talking just under 13,000 years old. And what the site includes is there is the remains of the partial remains of a Colombian mammoth. It was a subadult, but it was like a nearly full grown mammoth. You know, mammoths grow for a long time because they have pretty long life spans.
00:26:34
Speaker
And what we found since we started working on the site in 2014 is the camp that's kind of associated with this mammoth. So we actually have these mammoth remains that were mostly excavated in the 1980s when the site was originally discovered. And then it was tested by George Risen and a crew from University of Wyoming. And they thought that it might be a mammoth kill or butchery site at that time. And we were able to return in 2014 and kind of answer those questions on if the site was culturally associated or not.
00:27:04
Speaker
in the last six or seven seasons, we've definitely confirmed that it's culturally associated and that we actually have the camp that was occupied for probably a pretty short time span, you know, a few weeks, maybe a month or two on the high end, where people lived while they were butchering the mammoth, you know, preserving meat or eating meat or whatever activities they were doing.
00:27:28
Speaker
And it's pretty amazing, particularly for that one, because the camp is really close. It's within about 10 to 12 meters of the actual mammoth remains, which is much closer than a lot of us were imagining it would be. Because, you know, it's a giant dead animal, and the assumption is it would be kind of camp away from that for smell or predators for a variety of reasons. But in this case,
00:27:54
Speaker
They're camped much closer. We do have some ethnographic accounts of modern hunter-gatherer groups hunting elephants that they also camp quite close. And the only other camp that's ever been definitely excavated and found associated with Clovis
00:28:09
Speaker
Okovis Mammoth is the Murray Springs site in Arizona. We know that camp was occupied when they were hunting bison on that site because there's a refit to the bison kill area on that site because that site also has bison kills at it. But the assumption is it was probably used multiple times because the kill portion of that site was used multiple times as well. So what I was told when I got there by Dr. Rich Adams was, I think it was the year before I got there, they were building steps I think, right? And he found like that. Do you want to tell that story and the chopper? Yeah. So
00:28:39
Speaker
Basically when we showed up on site for the first time in 2014, by the way I should say I am not the only person involved on this site. There's a big group of coke eyes on it. It's myself.
00:28:47
Speaker
and Todd Saruvall, and Bob Kelly at UW. Spencer Pelton also, who was at UW when he started there and is now the Wyoming State Archaeologist. You guys have talked to him multiple times on here. And then Matt O'Brien, who's at Cal State Chico, are all kind of, we're all copious on the site. So when we went out in 2014, and nobody had been on site since 1987, we found the original 1987 excavation block, we actually found their quarter nails. And we're just kind of planning on excavating around that, you know, archaeologists dig where the big stuff is.
00:29:16
Speaker
And we were like, well, they found a manna, so they must be born. And all of us were like, we're going to find the famous heads and tusks. And we found, like, not that.
00:29:25
Speaker
We found a couple pieces of ameth and a few flakes and that was it. But we were building a... Rich Adams, who's a lovely Wyoming archaeologist who worked through the office of the Wyoming State Archaeologist for many years, was building a path to the water screens and hit this big chopper cobble tool. Just by chance, it immediately recognized that it was out of place in a potential artifact, but it was like 10 meters from the ameth, in a place we never imagined the site extended.
00:29:50
Speaker
And the next year we came back and tested it and we found a bunch of artifacts over there and a bunch, you know, the beginning of an Ocrusan. And then we went back the next year and started realizing that we needed to test much further from anywhere we had found artifacts. And that trend is absolutely continuing. We have yet to find where the artifacts stop in those portions of this site, because it's just every time you put in a test unit, it comes up with few artifacts. Most of the time just little flakes, but sometimes nothing else.
00:30:20
Speaker
That's going to be like non flashbacks to when Chris Rowe found that damn point at Hell Gap and then me and Spencer dug that really cruddy shovel test and over 800 artifacts popped out of that thing and never forget. I think something's here and then just walked away. And I guess along the lines of points, you guys had an American Antiquity article come out this past year.
00:30:46
Speaker
Talking about the point you found there, or like the cultural association there, and you want to know about the point? Yeah, so we, you know, our first primary question when we went out to the site was, is this culturally associated? Is this a case where humans killed or at least butchered a mammoth? And when we found that first activity area, which we call the chopper block, which we think had a heart, so, you know, a small fire in the center of it.
00:31:09
Speaker
and we started testing out around, we realized we had the opportunity to do a lot more, so we continued our testing. And I think, David, you were there the day we found the point, right?
00:31:17
Speaker
Yeah, and Connor was as well. Connor just left in like 20 minutes. So basically what happened was we found this like big ogerson and chopper and there was bone needles and a bone beetle as one area so we were putting test units in at like five meter pacing away from that area and to put in tests at the site you have to dig a trench
00:31:42
Speaker
because the archaeological deposit is like nine feet below moderate ground surface. So it's not just as simple as just like popping in a unit. You have to like, so we had put in this trench and we could be had could fit like, fit a 50 by one beater. So I have testing it in it. And I'll be darned if that wasn't worth the project. I remember it distinctly to 20 feet away from the Bama and
00:32:10
Speaker
David was there and Connor had been digging in the test unit the day previously and what was it was like 230 and you know like very close to closing time and he was like I'll just do a water screen instead of digging this last quad and that quad had a close point.
00:32:28
Speaker
I remember calling you too and I was like, I walked up to where I could get signal and I was like, Hey dude, heads up. The coolest thing, and I guess we can end after this, but like when people ask like, what's your favorite thing, like you found an archeology or like not what I found, but like, you know, coolest experience, I guess.
00:32:46
Speaker
Like I'll always talk about that day when like we were digging and it's like really hot in the sun. And I think I was wearing like a turban or something. And I like, no, it wasn't that day, but I was wearing the American flag pants. Doesn't matter. You like screamed Clovis point. And like all of us in the main units were like, what is it? It's like someone's like in the background. And then we're like, what is that? And then I think Ken was like, she just said Clovis point ran off to go see and it was awesome. And there's like, yeah, it was cool.
00:33:16
Speaker
It was a fun day on site. And I will say, and I should say this before we buzz out, you know, this site, Dr. Church prison was the one who tested the site in 1987. He was always thought that it was a kill or a butchery site. And it was an awesome experience when we found that point, like 30 years later, almost 30 years later, after and you know, we knew it was culturally associated at that time, but it was just a nice confirmation and getting to like,
00:33:46
Speaker
You know, I think Rich called him and he showed up on site and got to see it and he was even ear to ear and it was a wonderful experience. And he was always great about letting us onto that site and wanted us working on the site. And it was really amazing. Awesome. And on that note, rest in peace, George Frison. Thank you for all you did for White Mountain Archaeology. We will catch you. Rest in peace, the juvenile mammoth too. We forgot about it. Yeah, you got rocked. Anyway, sorry. Rest in peace, my dignity, because I was so close to a Clovis point.
00:34:17
Speaker
We'll catch you in the third segment of episode 71.
00:34:41
Speaker
I'll never forget that one. Then I think one of my favorite excavation seasons of all time was the first pre-field school excavation at Om Rock Shelter. I missed that place so much. I specifically missed that summer because
00:35:01
Speaker
I mentioned this before when you had Spencer on, I was the dumbest person in terms of education there because I was the one that didn't have a master's degree. I don't think anybody dumb was there. I disagree.
00:35:13
Speaker
Yeah, it was interesting. I don't know. That was just a cool experience and you did an amazing job there. And through my entire tenure at Wyoming, you were definitely someone that I looked up to and for someone I can get advice from in a meaningful way to help guide where I should go. And like we said in the interim, you are the reason
00:35:33
Speaker
the person that pushed me to work with Marcel and Mary Lou at Helgop and really gave me some straight advice as to how, not only to conduct myself, but how to be a successful academic that I think. And that's not as common as I think it should be. And there's only a few people I can point to from Wyoming that can say that person definitely made my career better.
00:36:00
Speaker
and made me a better archaeologist. You're easily one of those people. I'd agree with that as well. Absolutely. It's really great to see how successful you've become and really excited for your new beginnings at Weber State. We know you're going to do absolutely phenomenal there.
00:36:20
Speaker
And so, yeah, like I said, we're very excited for you. I'm really happy that you decided to be on the podcast. And now begins the roast, so. Buckle up, yeah. Oh, I can roast that. Do you have dirt on all of us? It's the truth. Yeah, and kind of even going back, I remember one of the first talks I saw as being in the essays as a grad student was in Vancouver in your auditorium when you were talking about LaPrelle. Oh, really? Yeah.
00:36:50
Speaker
Yeah. So yeah, it's just been phenomenal. And so upon graduation, because your dissertation was on LaPrel, what was that process like of going from finishing your dissertation to now being on the job market, also in a pretty bad time before COVID, and then like absolutely horrendous because of COVID? So would you mind kind of going into that whole experience of, all right,
00:37:16
Speaker
Now, how do I make the past 10 years of my life worth all the debt?
00:37:26
Speaker
It's quite often terrifying on the job market. It's hard. I will say I was very lucky in the fact that I had a lot of colleagues at University of Wyoming and close friends who I watched go through the job market starting pretty early in my time there, particularly Heather Rockwell, but also includes other graduates like Nathaniel Kitchl and Kevin Molloy. And so I kind of knew what I was in for and had had a lot of conversations with them about what they wish they had done when they were
00:37:58
Speaker
I can try to set myself up well because the job market particularly the academic job market is really like it's terrible to say this it's kind of a crash like there's a there's a little bit of luck to it the right position has to come up with the right time and you have to position yourself well enough to be noticed but everybody by the time you get to any.
00:38:16
Speaker
long or particularly short list in an academic job, everybody is qualified, everybody is a good fit, and it comes down to intangibles that you can't control, but it still feels very bad.
00:38:29
Speaker
interview somewhere in person and you'll get a job. It sucks. I thought that happened. So for myself, I think one thing that I did that was really beneficial for me was I started applying for jobs in my last year of my PhD. So I graduated in spring of 2019 and I started applying really early in the fall of 2018.
00:38:48
Speaker
And mostly I did it, like, A, GDS trying to get a job, but B, like, the job documents that you turn in when you apply for an academic job, like, takes some practice. And no matter how many, like, times you write them, it takes a lot of times before you start feeling confident in what you're writing. And like, I look back at some of my previous applications and cringe.
00:39:08
Speaker
So I'm like, oh, this is not what I was going for. And I gave them to a lot of people to look at, which helped a lot as well. So I applied for jobs the year that I defended and then the two years through my postdoc. And the market was never good, but definitely when the pandemic hit, the pandemic hit
00:39:28
Speaker
spring of 2020. I was in some job searches that got canceled, including a search that I was on a shortlist for and had done an eight-person interview and the decision got halted. And then a number of other jobs I had done like longlist interviews for and got halted. And then fall of 2020, the market was bad. There were not many jobs advertised in fall of 2020. And I just
00:39:52
Speaker
Weber happened to be filling for retirement and the right place, right time. And I fulfilled what their advertising said they were looking for and they stuck to what that advertisement said, which also just comes out in these scenarios. Yeah. It's like, it's a sea of like complications, like to do all this stuff. Yeah. And I, the other thing that really helped me was I had a lot of contingency plans. I was starting to run out of them.
00:40:18
Speaker
But I had plans and I had backups and I always, you know, six months to a year ahead, I'd be like, okay, if I don't get something this round, like this time, this is what I'm gonna do. This is option one, this is what I really want. This is option two, you know, and I would have like a list of stuff. And one thing I do wish I had done during my PhD is diversified some of my training a little bit. I kind of wish I had gotten a lot more, or done more curatorial experience because that is definitely
00:40:45
Speaker
a job market that seems to be on the rise and are very important positions. So something to consider. And then I also was looking at some alt academic options as well. I mean, as an archaeologist, CRM is always an option, which is something I was looking at. But I also was playing around with data visualization and data science and some other kind of lesser gone avenues as well. Yeah, the market's tough.
00:41:09
Speaker
I was so stoked you got into Weber because I know I text you this, my dad played football for him back when they were still using leather helmets because he's old as hell. Not that old. Yeah, I think they had plastic ones at that point. But anyways, like a lot of my family goes there and you've met him, my cousin's kid, we just call him my nephew, you know, for brevity's sake, but he's in a, in a,
00:41:29
Speaker
isn't it an advanced high school program? Anyways, his senior year, which will be next year, he'll be able to take classes at Weber. And since working at Hell Gap and working at Lynch, he's dead sediment coming an archeologist. And so when I told him, you met him briefly, that you were there. And then I was like, you should definitely take classes under Dr. Mackey. And he's like on it. So that's a next year thing. So it was really cool because that was like,
00:41:54
Speaker
seeing... I just knew Weber, and I was really stoked to have a colleague and a friend teach there, and a part of that state that's really close to me. Yeah. It's a great location. I will say, obviously, I haven't even started teaching my first class yet, but I will in the next couple of weeks. But the community has been incredibly welcoming at Weber. I'm really excited to start there.
00:42:18
Speaker
There's been a lot of really good work done in, it's a sociology and anthropology department and also there's been a lot of good archaeological work that's been done here as well. And I'm like, I'm excited to continue on, hopefully continue and carry on that legacy. And they do see, they have a lot of programs like that for bringing in high school students to get early college credit and some early experiences.
00:42:41
Speaker
That's a really nice thing. They also kind of function as a community college for the greater augment area. In addition, there's a lot of associate's degrees that are offered, which is really kind of, that's awesome to see because it allows people to come back to school who may not would have in the first place or go into school when they may not, that may not have been something they were willing to do at full four-year institution as well. So it's nice to see
00:43:06
Speaker
them trying to engage with community. And they are definitely like, that is one of the priorities of the campus itself is to engage with the community more and more as years go on. You're going to try, uh, trade in all that Wyoming gold for wildcat purple. Yeah. There's a lot of purple on that campus. I guess the gold didn't, they don't purple. They don't fully clash. So you could do both. I'm pretty sure purple, brown and gold are not great.
00:43:37
Speaker
Yeah, I'm a colorblind, so don't listen to me. Cool. And kind of wrap rolling it back in. So you did have a postdoc, you managed to stay at the University of Wyoming, working under Bob Kelly for his NSF funded radiocarbon database card. What is the full title of that NSF thing?
00:44:04
Speaker
Or it's like creating a radiocarbon database for North America, populating a radiocarbon database for North America. So basically what happened, I worked on the project on and off for a lot of my PhD as just an hourly fine radiocarbon dates employee.
00:44:22
Speaker
And it came to the end of my PhD studies. And Eric Robinson, many people who listen to this podcast should be familiar with that name, was stepping away as the postdoc who had been there for many years to take a different position at different postdocs. And so they had an opening and thought they needed to fill it quickly. And I had the skill set that he was looking for and I had experience on the project. And so he talked to me about coming in and I was lucky enough to be able to do that. And we
00:44:50
Speaker
finagled some funding to make it last a little bit longer. I did some teaching and things for the department as well to kind of boost the funds a little bit. And we were able to finish it out. So we're hopefully going to announce it soon. And it is going up on CART, the Canadian Archaeological Radiocarbon Dataset. So that's where it will be available. But it was fully funded by NSF. Awesome. Awesome. And for folks who aren't super aware of this,
00:45:19
Speaker
postdocs are essentially jobs that are created for people who just graduated as like a transitional phase kind of thing. Yeah. So postdocs are definitely one of Bob's goals with
00:45:31
Speaker
But including a postdoc on this project was to try to more normalize having postdocs in the US because they're very common in Europe, but they're pretty uncommon for archaeology. It's very common for archaeology in Europe and in the US, they're pretty uncommon, although they're very common in many other fields of studies. And essentially, a postdoc, it's
00:45:51
Speaker
the job that you take right after you finish your PhD, post-PhD, post-doctoral. Normally, they last one to a few years, and they're normally research-specific. Somebody will actually write a research design and write a grant and say, I want funding specifically for a post-doc, and this is the portion of that project that the post-doc will complete.
00:46:14
Speaker
So it allows students who are newly graduated to a kind of have some sort of transitional job and it's also a great way to build extra skills. So a lot of times you'll see people take postdocs that are things that they are familiar with that almost slightly stretch kind of their methodological range and it lets you get a little more training. We'll having some job security even though it's you know they're not current positions and it allows you
00:46:38
Speaker
a little more breathing room to continue on the job market. For me, the way Bob had this postdoc set up, he said, part of this is also you doing some of your own research and you continuing to apply for jobs, et cetera. This is what I want from you. This is what I want it. But don't neglect your publications and your research during this time as well. We had a breakdown. Hopefully, that's how postdocs should work. It's obviously advisor-dependent.
00:47:09
Speaker
that was a nice kind of like a professional assistant to like the professor you're working with too. I always thought was kind of interesting about it. Yeah, it's like, yeah, you're somewhere between like,
00:47:23
Speaker
You're like in a weird, it is kind of like a weird, liminal zone because you're not quite full faculty and you're still under the person who's advising you, but you definitely are not being treated necessarily. I mean, you shouldn't really be treated like a PhD student. There's a lot more independence in it. And normally they hire someone who has some portion of the skills that they want. So it can kind of be a mutually beneficial relationship between the postdoc and the professor who has that postdoc.
00:47:48
Speaker
I definitely had applied for some other postdocs. I was actively applying for some other postdocs even when I ended up getting a faculty position for projects that were particularly for some radiocarbonate projects that were going around because it was like, look, I can read these skill sets. I've already done some of this. I know how to work this type of data, et cetera.
00:48:10
Speaker
So it's not just immediate graduates. It can be a certain amount of years out. You can have more than one postdoc. Eric had multiple postdocs. And there also are programs out there for write your own postdoc. So you can approach professors and say, hey, I want to write my own postdoc.
00:48:29
Speaker
Using funds from you know, the National Science Foundation SVE postdoc program. I'd like to come to your institution. This is what I'm thinking This is why I like you to advise me and those programs are out there So there definitely are options to also write your own postdoc. This is something you're interested in doing
00:48:45
Speaker
In some institutions have standing postdoc programs where, you know, they have fellows programs that are basically postdocs that you can apply to them and go to those institutions. They essentially house you for X amount of time when you do your research and support you in that institutional way they can. And in return, you put their institution on your research.
00:49:04
Speaker
Excellent. Well, Dr. Mackey, before we end the show, what are a couple sources, these could be books, articles, sapiens posts, who cares, that you would recommend for anyone interested in the breadth of... It doesn't have to be the breadth of everything, but especially big game hunting, hand sprays, or even just tools that helps you write your dissertation or develop skills to apply to a full-time
00:49:30
Speaker
Big girl job. I'm pretty sure you're obligated to say the fifth beginning or. Great introduction is either the fifth beginning or forging spectrum. They are very useful. They're very approachable. I definitely use them in my classes. We want our royalties because this is like the 30th time. It's so hard not to. As far as big game hunting, we can also plug some, some George Risen as well. He has some great texts out there on big game hunting. As far as the job market, et cetera.
00:50:00
Speaker
the professor is in is a commonly used book and it does have some harsh truths, but it does have a lot of good advice and I would also say make sure you use your peers. Talk to people in your program who are about to enter the job market, talk to, see if there's any alumni who would be interested in talking with you, send your cover letter to people, etc. That can help a ton.
00:50:22
Speaker
Excellent. Awesome. Yeah. And you'll be able to find those down below in our episode description. Where can our listeners find you on social media? Or I guess now we have an active invitation for pumping your LinkedIn. So on social media, probably the best place is my Instagram, which I believe is Mad Mac. You can tell that I am broken social media. It's like Mad Mac nine.
00:50:52
Speaker
Yep. Mad back nine. Instagram is probably the best place to see me, although I will fully admit it's mostly full of archeological crafts. That leads me to a segue I wanted to say before, I guess before we end it in, in the regards of like Carlton saying like you were like obviously a mentor to us, like I would always see Maddie as like.
00:51:15
Speaker
I am distracted. I'm at VDVU camping and I'm drunk at the bar yesterday. Like what would Maddie be doing right now? And like Maddie would be working. And then I'd be like, I'd ask you for your advice. And you're like, Oh dude, I'm knitting, watching forensic files. Like your phone. Good balance. You know?
00:51:35
Speaker
Oh no, no, no, I craft look a lot. That's how I keep my sanity. Or procrastinate, or whatever else. Never heard that one. You're crafty AF. So yeah, thank you so much for joining us today. Because this is a life in ruins, we have to ask the corny question. If you had a chance to do it all over, would you dig in that crappy calcium carbonate, laprel dirt again? Love to say I hate the dirt, yes.
00:52:05
Speaker
Excellent. Well, everyone, we just interviewed Dr. Maddie Mackie, now, assistant associate professor at, associate professor at Weber State University. Assistant, sorry. A words. You can find her on Instagram at badmacknight. Check out some great cross stitching.
00:52:23
Speaker
Please be sure to rate and review the podcast and provide us feedback. That'd be awesome. We got a couple of emails this week. Thank you for that. Send us a DM on Instagram, comment on the Instagram, just let us know you're alive. Thanks. And we know that we have a lot of bro talk on here. You don't need to tell us. It's part of our term. Definitely buy merch. We still have that store up. You can find on our website, buy our stuff.
00:52:45
Speaker
It's awesome. To be fair, as I'm doing now, I went on a very long tangent about Axe body spray. On that note, let's end it. Yep. And with that, we are out. 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.
00:53:15
Speaker
And remember, make sure to bring your archeologists in from the cold and feed them beer. So what would you give to a mammoth that is having an anxiety attack? Oh, no. I don't know. Trunk coalizers. That's good. Oh, boy. Okay. Thanks for listening, everybody.
00:53:56
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.