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What Got You Into Archaeology - Episode 1
337 Plays8 years ago
Welcome to Trowel Tales! What is Trowel Tales? It’s a story-based podcast with tales told about the exciting, strange, dangerous, and silly things that can happen in the field of archaeology. In this first episode, we’ll explore the wonderful world of archaeology and hear how some of us got into this fantastic field.
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Transcript
Introduction to Archaeology Podcast Network
00:00:01
Speaker
You are listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.
00:00:11
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to the first episode of Trowel Tales, Stories from the Field. So you might be asking yourself, what is Trowel Tales? It's an archaeology podcast created by an archaeologist with stories told by archaeologists about all of the crazy things that can happen in the field of archaeology.
00:00:32
Speaker
Hopefully you like archaeology. In the following episodes, stories will be told about what happens on surveys and excavations, the risks, the dangers, romance, the silly things, paperwork, spooky and creepy encounters, a little of this and that.
Common Misconceptions about Archaeology
00:00:52
Speaker
This episode is all about introducing you to the wonderful world of archaeology.
00:01:02
Speaker
As an archaeologist, I'm used to getting bombarded with questions or comments about dinosaurs, finding gold, how someone took an arrowhead or a piece of pottery that they found at a national park, or of course, stuff about Indiana Jones. While I can't say that I've ever found a dinosaur bone or have much an interest in dinosaurs outside of Jurassic Park,
00:01:24
Speaker
Paleontology is all about the dinosaurs. And no matter who you are, you can't keep anything you found at a park or from any public lands. That's illegal. As for Indiana Jones and recovering gold and other artifacts, listen to the stories in the podcast and decide for yourself if it can, at least sometimes be as exciting as Jones makes it out to be.
Defining Archaeology through Colleagues' Insights
00:01:50
Speaker
I like to think so, but I'm biased.
00:01:53
Speaker
But first things first, what is archaeology? I asked a couple of colleagues how they would describe archaeology. To me, archaeology is the study of humans in the past by examining the materials that they left behind.
00:02:14
Speaker
Archaeology is the study of past human cultures. It's who came before us. It's understanding our past to help with our future. Archaeology is tedious and awesome all at the same time. It's a means to go out and learn about what's on the landscape.
00:02:39
Speaker
and what individuals have done there before, you know, be it Native Americans, you know, stopping at camping or a cowboy like sitting down and smoking a cigarette and drinking a bottle of wine, you know, you never know what you're gonna find. So it's a, it can be a new adventure every day. Archaeology is digging through dead people's trash.
00:03:07
Speaker
And there you have it! As you can see, more than anything else, archaeology is about people.
Personal Journeys into Archaeology
00:03:15
Speaker
It's all about learning how people lived in the past through what they leave behind. It can be a prehistoric basket found in a cave, an Egyptian mummy, or a historic tin can. Learning about the past in this way is what really drew me into this field in the first place. For better or worse.
00:03:40
Speaker
I completely blame my eighth grade science teacher for getting me interested in archaeology in the first place. Now, I've always loved history. Going to museums, reading about it and reading about history in books, learning about history through my American Girl dolls. You know, they had the historical clothes and the books that went with them.
00:04:04
Speaker
Of course, just general things going to the Smithsonian museums and just learning about history in that way. And so I thought you only learned about history through books or thought of it as something that you only saw in museum cases.
00:04:19
Speaker
But my teacher, my eighth grade science teacher, changed all of that. We were learning about Utsi the Iceman, a guy who lived around 3300 BCE, died in the Alps, and then was naturally mummified. And he had the most amazing array of personal artifacts like clothes and shoes and tools. He even had tattoos on his body.
00:04:47
Speaker
And the amazing thing about all of that is that we didn't just study these things, we actually recreated those personal artifacts. And oh gosh, I'm sure the classroom looked like a complete disaster zone with straw, leather, paint, all kinds of materials all over the place. And I bet anybody who walked by also could see how much fun we were having that we were really engaged
00:05:16
Speaker
in what we were learning, more so than I think if we were only watching a documentary or getting just a very simple lesson about this person.
00:05:30
Speaker
So I'm guessing a lot of the other classes were also really jealous. So during this project I did the facial reconstruction, granted a very very simplified one, and recreated the straw cape. And through all of that I could see, I learned that
00:05:50
Speaker
You can learn about the past by studying the things, those artifacts, the personal items that people leave behind. And from all of that, I learned that I wanted to be the person finding and handling and studying those amazing, tangible aspects of the past. It's a fun story.
00:06:19
Speaker
Now, initially, I remember going to Mesa Verde as a kid with my family. And I remember looking at the ruins and the cliff dwellings and thinking, holy cow, this is such a neat thing and a neat concept to look at. It really made an impression on me. Had no idea what to do with that. I just remember thinking that's really cool.
00:06:47
Speaker
But I'm not gonna lie, Indiana Jones really got me into archaeology. I remember thinking, watching those movies, going, hey, this is pretty cool. If I could fight Nazis and discover stuff, that'd be awesome. So then as I continued going through my high school years, I always wanted to look into doing archaeology, but I had no idea where to actually find it. And so it was just always this kind of,
00:07:14
Speaker
thing out there that somebody did. And my perception of it was definitely that adventure that you see in the movies and Howard Carter and King Tut's tomb and all these kinds of just fantastical explorations and discoveries. And so when I finally got to college,
00:07:35
Speaker
i had no idea and so i went into to history and started taking a lot of history classes thought i was going to be a history teacher um took one teaching class and said nope can't do this have no desire to stay indoors inside as much as that sitting behind a desk which is funny because now i look back and i sit behind a desk for a lot of my time
00:08:00
Speaker
but it still kind of drew drove me to figure out what else to do and at that time I had taken so many history classes that had to start filling it with and so I started taking anthropology classes and one of the first ones that I took was entitled something like prehistoric
00:08:22
Speaker
peoples or something along those lines, and it was
Non-Traditional Paths to Archaeology Careers
00:08:25
Speaker
introduction to archaeology. And so at that point, I was like, so that's where they've been hiding this. And at that point, I really started focusing in my undergrad a lot on the anthropology and the archaeology aspect. And yeah, the rest then is history.
00:08:49
Speaker
I've always wanted to be an archaeologist. I don't remember a time when I didn't want to be an archaeologist. In fact, one of my earliest memories is being at a museum in Minneapolis, where they had one of the, like, old-timey, you know, early settler houses set up, and they had, you could, like, grind corn, and they had the solid
00:09:18
Speaker
brown sugar that you could like you know shave off and I just thought that was the neatest thing and then we moved to Massachusetts and you know you live in Massachusetts you go to Boston you do the red line tours you know all of that stuff and I would be that kid like right up front and always like listening to the guide and paying attention and so I guess like archaeology grew out of a love of
00:09:46
Speaker
history and just this innate desire to do it. I have no idea where it came from, but it's what I've always wanted to do and it's what I'm doing, which is really cool. It sounds like a lot of us got into history and archaeology as kids, but not all archaeologists got into the field in the same way. Some took a different route. So I came in.
00:10:15
Speaker
into archaeology a different way than most folks. So I started my career as doing GIS, which stands for Geographic Information Systems. I worked for a county government in Indiana doing parcel data. So let's see, when I started in college, I had a bad college relationship. And then my buddy graduated, so we decided to get out of town and go for a road trip and made it up out in Wyoming, went to Yellowstone.
00:10:46
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Well, I figured out I want to live in the mountains. So I got back and I started applying for, or just put my resume out for GIS stuff out in the West someplace. And I got contacted by a company in Wyoming for an archeological GIS position. So I did an interview in Michigan. I thought I blew it.
00:11:11
Speaker
Um, I remember I went, I took the day off and I did the interview and I came back. I remember I went fishing with my dad that night and, uh, was talking with him about it's like, yeah, that interview went terribly. I'm not going to give up. I'll keep trying. They ended up hiring me some for some reason.
00:11:29
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And I went, I moved out there and I worked out there for four years before I moved down to Colorado here. But that's what started me in archeology. So I started doing the mapping stuff and then transitioned over and picked up field time here and there. And now I'll plan on finishing my anthropology degree in fall of this year. Hopefully I don't crack out first. I'm being a full-time student and full-time working.
Learning through Experience and Mentorship
00:11:57
Speaker
It's kind of hard.
00:11:59
Speaker
That's an honor.
00:12:05
Speaker
Well, I guess I was kind of a non-traditional way of getting into it as a kid. I was always interested in the Egyptians, you know, all school kids were interested in the pyramids and all of that. And one day my dad and I were out building a horse crawl for my horse and out of the hole came a petrified shell. And I know that shells were not archaeology, it was paleontology, but that sort of started my interest. And so went on, went to school,
00:12:34
Speaker
This kind of floated around in college, got married, had kids, and was not really very happy. And one day my husband said to me, you know what? You should find something you're interested in and figure out how to make a living out of it. And so I thought, OK, so what am I interested in? I have been reading Tony Hillerman, every single thing he ever wrote. And I was very interested in Indian cultures and the archaeology that he had. And then came Indiana Jones.
00:13:02
Speaker
And I knew I was either going to loot or I was going to do it legit. And so I decided the legit way was the best way to go. So slowly but surely, as my kids were growing up, I went back to college and we'd all sit around the table and do our homework together. And I volunteered a lot. I volunteered for this really interesting man.
00:13:24
Speaker
The liaison between the southern ute and the Forest Service on the White River. And he taught me, or he just sort of took me under his wing and started to teach me archaeology. He said, I'm going to teach you stuff that you're not going to learn in a book. And the best thing that he taught me was he took me out to this archaeological site or where there was supposedly an archaeological site. And he said, OK, I want you to find this site. There's a site right here. I want you to find the site. And he sat down on a rock.
00:13:54
Speaker
And I was just, I must have spent an hour looking around, trying to find it, and I didn't want to be disappointed. I could not find, to everything that I knew in archaeology, for what I had learned in school, I could not find a site. So finally I just said to him, I said, you know, I just can't, I just don't know where the site is. And he says, this is his backwards, you whites, you don't know how
00:14:21
Speaker
to find archaeological sites because all you ever do is look at the ground. You have to look to the sky. And I looked up and we had been sitting under burial platforms in the trees the whole time. And I did not once look up. And that was my most valuable lesson in archaeology. And ever since then, I always, when I'm looking for a site or trying to figure out where sites are, I first of all, I always try to think, OK, so if I was
00:14:50
Speaker
living at that time period? Where would I put my camp? What would I want? Because I don't think that the human condition and what humans want is that different back then as it is today. So I always looked to the sky, and that was my most valuable lesson. Went back to school, used what Kenny had taught me, kind of
00:15:14
Speaker
upset a few professors because it was not the traditional way to look at things and managed to get through school as a non-traditional student. And here I am at Alpine and doing what I love. And it's amazing to me as an older student and coming into this kind of latent light just because my husband said, find something you love to do and learn how to make a living out of it. And here I am. And I don't even think I'm ever going to retire.
Episode Conclusion and Next Episode Teaser
00:15:44
Speaker
Because I just love it. I've had a lot of luck. I've had a lot of experience and a lot of opportunities and I've not really, I've not found to be, you know, any sexism in my particular case or any roadblocks. You just go around them. That's what I do.
00:16:12
Speaker
That's it for today's podcast. I hope you enjoyed learning a little bit about archaeology and how some of us got into this field. Don't worry, tales of archaeological entry and adventure are on their way. On the next episode... Next thing I know, I see this guy coming up a slope towards the alcove. He had a gun on him and the belt was
00:16:47
Speaker
We'll explore what archaeologists actually do and dive into the world of survey. Stay tuned!
00:16:59
Speaker
Special thanks to Aaron, Barb, Mike, Sarah, and Seth who contributed their stories to the podcast, as well as Alpine Archaeological Consultants for providing the space to record those stories. Check us out on Facebook to learn more about the podcast and let us know what kind of stories you'd like to hear. Also, if you're an archaeologist and would like to contribute a tale or two, send a message. Until next time,
00:17:29
Speaker
This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archaeopodcastnetwork.com Contact us at chrisatarchaeopodcastnetwork.com