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Commercial Systematic Mechanical Auger Sampling with Chelsea Colwell-Pasch - Ep 197
823 Plays1 year ago
Chelsea Colwell-Pasch has developed an awesome, powerful, and quick digging machine for archaeological prospection - aka, automated shovel testing! Well, not automated. You still need to run it. But, it’s fast and gentle on the artifacts. We talk to her about how she came up with the idea, using the device over the last few years, and the patenting process across multiple borders.
Transcripts
For rough transcripts of this episode go to https://www.archpodnet.com/archaeotech/197
Links
- Chelsea Colwell-Pasch’s business contact: [email protected]
- Episode 194 Update
- Balkan Heritage Field Schools
https://www.bhfieldschool.org/program/first-civilization-in-europe-tell-yunatsite-excavations
https://www.bhfieldschool.org/program/neolithic-site-holy-land - Episode 172 - Interview with Cora Woolsey about her Stratum software
- Episode 175 - Brian Fritz’s Paleo Digger
Contact
- Chris Webster
Twitter: @archeowebby
Email: [email protected] - Paul Zimmerman
Twitter: @lugal
Email: [email protected]
ArchPodNet
- APN Website: https://www.archpodnet.com
- APN on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/archpodnet
- APN on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/archpodnet
- APN on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/archpodnet
- Tee Public Store
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Transcript
Introduction of Podcast and Guest
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. Hello and welcome to the Archaeotech Podcast, episode 197. I'm your host, Chris Webster, with my co-host, Paul Zimmerman.
Introduction to Mechanical Auger Technology
00:00:15
Speaker
Today we talk to Chelsea Colwell-Posh about a mechanical auger for archaeological perspective that she invented. Let's get to it.
Paul's Upcoming Assignments and Potential Co-hosts
00:00:25
Speaker
Okay, welcome to the show everyone. Paul, how are you doing today? I'm doing pretty good. Just kind of waiting around to find out what my next assignment is. There's a good chance I'm going to be going back to Saudi for a couple months in a week or maybe two or maybe two days. It's a little unclear, but we'll figure it out. And I hope that we can get, you know, like we had last summer when I was away that we can get some good interviews and or a temporary co-host for you while I'm off. Cause I don't think I'm going to be able to co-host at that time.
00:00:54
Speaker
Yeah. Maybe our guests we have today, we didn't ask her this, but later on in the afternoon, maybe she'll have a couple episodes. We'll just hijack her time. All right. Yeah, no, I'm doing great. It's 74 degrees Fahrenheit down here in sunny Mexico. And we're having a good time. Just for all those tech nerds out there, our solar is working amazing. We've got the generator on actually right now, but that's only because our washer and dryer doesn't work on the inverter we currently have.
00:01:23
Speaker
So that's another upgrade we got to do, but you know, being totally off grid for this whole month, sitting a couple hundred feet from the beach in Mexico has been pretty awesome because as far south as we are, our nearly 1200 watts of solar is plenty to keep us fully charged during the day. We have started shutting our inverter off at night just because we lose like 25% sleeping. And the only thing that's really running is like the refrigerator and Starlink, neither of which need to be on when it's getting down to the upper forties at night.
00:01:52
Speaker
It's super efficient, so we just kill it and then turn it back on in the morning and we only lose like 3%. It's pretty cool for all you, again, off-grid nerds out there.
3D Modeling Methodologies in Archaeology
00:02:03
Speaker
We have a little bit of an update to episode 194. Paul, why don't you hit us with that?
00:02:09
Speaker
Yeah, so we got a really lovely email about a week ago from Brent Whitford, who was the primary author and the lead author on the article that we discussed in episode 194. And one of the things that I brought up was I wasn't quite sure how they got the kind of organic 3D modeling of the various strata that they were excavating when they also talked about in that same article about using shape outlines to cut out basically the term they use was cookie cutters. And so amongst other things in the email he sent me,
00:02:39
Speaker
He explained their methodology and I got permission from him to quote directly out of the email he sent that I think would be useful to anybody listening to this that wants to go back and understand a little more detail how they do such really cool work. Here's the quote. He says, because we excavate each deposit, that is each context stratigraphically as suggested by Harris, the true top and bottom of each individual deposit is captured in one or more models.
00:03:05
Speaker
We also then have their organic sides modeled, such as when we cut them out from the unit model, it captures their actual shape. To provide a basic example, say we make a model in which the top outline of the pit are visible, we then excavate the pit and make another model to capture its sides and bottom. Then by minusing the model below from the model above, we're left with only the excavated volume of the pit.
00:03:27
Speaker
So it really was, I think I questioned, I said, I think that it's the way that they're digging and basically it's confirmed me that it is the way they're digging and gave me much more detail about it. And we've had a number of emails back and forth really, really exciting to have that kind of interaction with somebody to a listener and an author of one of the articles that we were so proud, so happy to discuss. And then also.
00:03:53
Speaker
because I'm pretty well convinced that these guys dig great. I wanted to point out that they also run a couple of field schools through the Balkan heritage, and we'll put the links in the show notes, but one of them is at that same site in Bulgaria, and the other one is a site in Shar-Hagalah in Israel. We'll put those links in, and I think that if you're at the phase of your career where you want to learn how to dig stratigraphically really well, I would
00:04:20
Speaker
This is a very good program to get into. Nice. Well, that's pretty cool. Yeah, it's really awesome when we don't even reach out to the author, like we probably should have, but we just talked about the paper and turns out they're either a listener or it was pointed to it because somebody they know is a listener. And that's really cool that people are hearing it like that. So that's awesome. We really appreciate that.
00:04:43
Speaker
All right, so we've got a great interview coming up and we're going to get to that right now. But first, here's a short bio of our guest, Chelsea Coldwell Posh.
Usage and Benefits of Mechanical Auger in Archaeology
00:04:51
Speaker
Chelsea Coldwell Posh is president and senior archeologist of Colbert Consulting Incorporated, a CRM firm in Atlantic Canada that specializes in all types of archeological surveying, underwater archeology, but uniquely mechanical auger testing and mechanical screening for archeological perspective.
00:05:07
Speaker
Chelsea has international and domestic patents on her tech and has been commercially using this technology since 2016 for projects in her province that are too deep, too wet, too large, too large a scale, time sensitive or too contaminated to test traditionally with a shovel.
00:05:23
Speaker
While she has had great success with her tech, she is currently planning to pivot her business and try to get other firms and jurisdictions involved with using her tech for the benefit of the discipline and progression of archaeological field methodology. Chelsea likes to say, quote, just because we study the past doesn't mean we have to stay stuck in it, end quote. All right, Chelsea, welcome to the show. Thank you so much, Chris and Paul. I am so excited to be here. We're happy to have you.
00:05:49
Speaker
I expect you to say long time listener, first time interviewee, just because you know. Absolutely. I am just fangirling here and really just really excited to be here. I listen to you guys all the time.
00:06:03
Speaker
Yeah, all right. Well, we're happy to have you on and excited to talk to you about this thing that you've been a part of creating and using. And we're going to talk about that a lot. But the reason that we actually started talking about having you on the show is because you reached out to us because we interviewed somebody who's doing something very similar. His name is Brian Fritz. And his episode link is in the show notes. So go take a look at that.
00:06:29
Speaker
you were like, Hey, this is great. Here's what I'm doing. And let's talk about it. And so that's what we're going to do. So why don't you just give us a, just tell us what we're talking about. What is this machine that you've, you've invented then? And what does it do? Let's just get it right out of the way. Sure. And I, I love what Brian is doing down in Pennsylvania and, uh,
00:06:50
Speaker
So essentially, I have a commercialized apparatus that uses a encased auger using our committee screw that I apply for archaeological prospection for probabilistic sampling or test pinning on a grid. So essentially, this came about, I'm in New Brunswick, Atlantic, Canada. We are not short of
00:07:14
Speaker
you know, deep alluvial sediments, deep podsolize soils of our wonderful boreal forest environment. And what we've been finding is, you know, if we can't get through, say, wetland environments, if we hit water table, if the sediments are deeper than 1.2 meters, I can't convert that for you. I am so sorry. I am metric all the way. But if we can't,
00:07:42
Speaker
That's 11 feet. If we can't, I don't think it's 11 feet. Right, it's not 11 feet. I didn't read the whole thing. Yeah.
00:07:55
Speaker
It's almost four feet. So if we can't find what we call a sterile cultural bottom or archaeological bottom or whatever you want to call it, we have to stop because of occupational health and safety, right? You can't dig deeper safely by shovel. So we're finding a lot of sites just were not reaching that bottom to the point where we could actually say that test pit was cleared or not for presence absence.
00:08:25
Speaker
We have this machine. Currently we go to 2.92 meters deep. We do have another version that's going to be able to go as deep as Brian has been able to go. I think he goes seven meters or had gone seven meters.
00:08:42
Speaker
But the version that I have, I've been using since 2016 commercially, it has surprising additional applications rather than just deep testing. For instance, I can excavate and process a test pit in just about seven minutes.
00:09:01
Speaker
The most we've ever done in a day is about 413. And we can do peat bogs, salt marshes. We can test in the water column or in the seabed or riverbed. We can dig through concrete for the most part, asphalt.
00:09:22
Speaker
gravel. Yeah, so we've kind of found also like great application for contaminated sediments. So if you're working on say, a decommissioned lead smelter or something like that, where you definitely don't want to be handling
00:09:37
Speaker
the contaminated soils, this removes the people from the actual hole and you can set up processes. But we've just found all of these applications that weren't necessarily what we originally had created this for, but just like a kismet of, oh yeah, we can totally do that project. Because the alternative guys is just watching an excavator dig through stuff.
00:10:05
Speaker
Yeah, right. That's monitoring. That's what we're all used to. No one's going to tell you that monitoring is the best way to find an archaeological site. It's just not. So I'm saying, hey, let's test it. Let's test it all too deep, too big. You know, you got to do it. You have a tight timeline rescue archaeology. Like we can we can get it done. And we've shown that we we definitely have.
00:10:29
Speaker
That's awesome and impressive, the volume you can do and the number of basically shovel tests that you can do. Well, auger tests, I guess, that you can do or testing units. So in this first segment, I really want to paint a picture as we talk about the rest of it for the rest of the show.
00:10:44
Speaker
I want to paint a picture of what this thing looks like. How can you move it so quickly? What is this thing? Is it mounted on something and you move it around? Tell us what it kind of looks like. And of course, if you got some links, of course, we will link to all this in the show notes so people can click on those and go see what you have. But for the show here, what does it look like?
00:11:02
Speaker
Sure. I'll paint the picture as best I can. I'll channel my inner author here. So lean back, close your eyes, picture a beautiful CAT 279D skid loader or skid steer track loader, whatever you call it, where you're from.
00:11:22
Speaker
They're all I think about really. Yes, exactly. I mean, and picture the tracks being landscape tracks. What that means is they have a larger footprint, which minimizes how much weight is distributed on any one point. So my skid steer can actually drive across a golf course without rutting it or tearing up sod. So
00:11:44
Speaker
That's important because there's always this misconception that equipment plus archaeology equals not not a great look. And for the most part, that's true. But there are ways to to mitigate that that damage. So we have our skid steer skid loader on that you're going to have a cradle and that cradle has what we call the pumpkin or the planetary driver.
00:12:10
Speaker
It's a high flow system and then there's two arms that hold a tube, a cylindrical tube and inside that tube is a specialized auger bit that has flights that are angled just so that
00:12:28
Speaker
The actual only impact you have on the ground is the edge of the auger that is at an extreme angle that slices initially into the dirt and then it actually pushes the soil
00:12:43
Speaker
up the auger flights like an escalator so it's not like a screw where you're actually like displacing material or it's not a blender you're not mixing material you know we've had you know essentially peak cores come out of this encased auger system
00:13:01
Speaker
completely intact. The auger itself, the case has water jet cut holes that are to our regulatory standard size screen of one quarter inch. That's the only time you'll hear me use imperial measurements. And yeah, so essentially what it does, it's 60 centimeter diameter, that's almost two feet.
00:13:28
Speaker
So in New Brunswick, we actually have very, very strict, or I guess we would say rigorous regulatory requirements for archaeology. Some would argue we're probably the most regulated in the country, perhaps even the continent. You know, our test pits are 50 by 50 centimeter, they must go to archaeological bottom or
00:13:53
Speaker
water table or that 1.2 meter cut off and for the most part our grids are on 5 meter or 10 meter grids. We have a predictive modeling system that we essentially have to prove we don't need to test as opposed to
00:14:10
Speaker
be subjective in saying why we think testing is required. The default is always to test. So this gets a lot of use. The 60 centimeters is slightly larger than our regulatory requirements. So over-testing is never bad, especially when it doesn't mean more work.
00:14:28
Speaker
Jesse, did I get this right then? Your description of the machinery, it sounds to me like even though you're using an auger bit as the cutting blade, it sounds like you're basically using it for coring, right? So that you're not mixing up the materials inside. Is that a fair description of what you're doing with it?
00:14:45
Speaker
I think that's a pleasant side effect that because we do presence absence testing, so not necessarily getting the core perfectly intact because we don't have the system at this point where we can say open up the encased auger and see that core intact because what goes in must come out. So as we as we bring this material up into this encased auger, there is quite a lovely selection, a buffet, if you will, of different
00:15:15
Speaker
screening methodologies that must apply to the
00:15:20
Speaker
the test pit. So, you know, we do wet screening, we do mechanical screening, we do hand screening. And we even just this year, we purchased what we call a drum screener. And it's really about trying to mitigate the problems you create when you dig just really deep, consistent. That's another wonderful thing about this is every test pit is literally the same size, every test pit.
00:15:46
Speaker
There's not going to be a variation between Jimmy and Bob who dig 50 centimeter test pits, but Bob's is 55 and Jimmy's is 37. But we're going to get a really consistent probabilistic sampling grid. Or the shapes where one's a bathtub and one's a point, right? Some people can take good holes and some people can't.
00:16:10
Speaker
That's right. And you always have that one tech that just takes so much pride in the work that you could literally put their test pit on the cover of your report. And then there's the other guys who are just like, you don't know if they were trying to bury a body over the weekend.
00:16:26
Speaker
Right. Right. All right. Well, with that, I think we've got a good idea what this thing looks like and what it does. Let's continue this discussion on the other side of the break. Back in a minute. Hi. Welcome back to the Architect Podcast, Episode 197. Today, we're talking with Chelsea Caldwell-Posh about an as-yet-unnamed augurine device that she has invented and patented and is telling us about right now. Chelsea, I want to just kind of curious there. We ended the last segment.
00:16:55
Speaker
You two were joking about all the crazy shovel test pits we've seen over the years. I will admit to having made some of those myself. We all have. I was wondering, your device, is it intended to be a one-for-one replacement of STPs? Is it trying to meet some slightly different need in CRM work?
00:17:21
Speaker
Sure, that's a great question. The impetus for this machine was essentially to address the deep testing that we've been encountering more and more here in New Brunswick. We are the province of rivers and wetlands, and it's heartbreaking just to dig a lot of holes just to know that you're going to have to stand there and watch an excavator dig through it anyway.
Unique Applications and Safety of the Auger
00:17:49
Speaker
organically grew into other applications. So say there's a project that has a very tight timeline, and there's maybe six or seven archaeologists in my province. So when something really big needs to happen, it's not like there's
00:18:07
Speaker
massive amounts of options to get things done on the scale that they sometimes need to get done on. So, you know, those were kind of what I thought were going to be one offs, you know, because I do shovel testing, I do underwater surveys, I do monitoring and pedestrian surveys, you know, and the mechanical was a very small portion of our offering of services. But it kind of
00:18:36
Speaker
It kind of grew into, you know, we had a project that was 10,000 test pits that was completed in 73 days. Jeez.
00:18:46
Speaker
So it's a lot. And that's kind of a, you know, I have a great team. I have a very ambitious competitive streak with myself. Like, okay, guys, we did this many yesterday. How many can we do today? And that's probably like my team are probably, oh my God, like she's going to literally try to kill us. And
00:19:09
Speaker
You know, that's the thing is I'm right there with them. I'm with everyone. I'll be the one with the shovel trying to egg people on see if I can do one more than, you know, the 20 something rugby player, but it's definitely grew into these different applications because
00:19:27
Speaker
The option that's left on the table is just watching an excavator dig through things. So the regulator has been very open to this technology. Essentially, we got a pilot project with them.
00:19:42
Speaker
And pretty much for the first three years of using this equipment, everything we've pulled out of our auger and our screens has gone directly to the regulator to ensure that we're not out there just mangling artifacts and destroying context and all of that stuff. So, you know, we had a very, very nice review of all of the artifacts we've ever taken out of the machine. Our breakage rate is less than 1%.
00:20:12
Speaker
which, you know, shovel testing can be upwards of 26% artifact breakage, you know, because there's no, there's no gentle way, you know, there's no gentle way to dig a hole, whether it be by hand or machine. It's just this machine, we're just using our committee screw, it's just sucking up, but also pushing using the soil to push the material up the flights. So there's only really one point of impact where as a shovel, you're just
00:20:40
Speaker
You know, if you're anything like me, you're going at it like, you know, nacho dip at a party. I'm just wondering with with that.
00:20:52
Speaker
description of the screw and just pushing the dirt up. I'm obviously thinking of some areas where I've dug before where it was just a heavy amount of roots and things like that. Would this handle that kind of environment or is it really well suited for the PD environment you've got up there? You mentioned the ancient boreal forest, but what remains and how does it handle that kind of thing if you've tested in those environments?
00:21:16
Speaker
So just for root cutting alone, this is worth using. Honestly, if you've ever had to buy a mini pocket chainsaw to cut the roots out of your test pit, this thing essentially just gives them a nice little snap and they're gone. Nice. Yeah. Like I said, we were Cindy Lauper. That would be a really good name.
00:21:45
Speaker
I love it. That's what I actually call my, my hand loppers on site is good old. We all do.
00:21:53
Speaker
Yeah, girls just want to have fun. But yeah, these, this machine essentially just cuts the roots. We dug through asphalt, like driveways and things like that. And all we do is we kind of just take the cap off. So if you can imagine us digging down until we get, you know, either the side cap or the gravel, the fill, the asphalt, then we take the auger to the side and we reverse the rotation, it falls out the bottom.
00:22:21
Speaker
And then we try to keep all of the cultural sentiments kind of in one go. But a normal logger, if you can picture like a post hole digger or something, you know, it creates this ant hill mound kind of at the top. That's the whole point is you dig down and you bounce it up and down and all the material kind of ant hills the top. You look like you got a little
00:22:44
Speaker
volcano there. And all this this encasement does is that it keeps it in the auger. It allows you to transfer it to however you are going to be screening it. Like I said, we have a bevy of ways we can do that. I'm not ashamed to say like this is really a simplistic innovation. It's a really simple model. There's nothing here that's
00:23:07
Speaker
that's super out of this world. It's not going to take anyone to the moon. It's not complex. And there's something to be said. If you've ever worked on old trucks or old motorcycles, there's something to be said about not having to worry about computer systems.
00:23:27
Speaker
and getting a little grease on your hands and a quick weld to do a simple repair is a lot easier than a laptop and an ethernet cable. Although there are people out there I hear that really enjoy computers and coding and things like that. So I mean, I won't judge them on it. I'm not judging to each their own, but
00:23:52
Speaker
tell you, I'm handier with the electronics than with a weld. I'll do a field weld if I have to, but it's going to be the ugliest thing ever.
00:24:01
Speaker
Hey, once you get that first stack of dimes well, I tell you, you'll be walking around. I don't think I've gotten a single dime yet, but that's a different conversation. I wanted to ask you, you'd mentioned this extremely low breakage, but you're also talking about how good the tool is for cutting through roots. How do you get something that can cut well without breaking the artifacts that you find? I'm curious how that works mechanically.
00:24:29
Speaker
Sure. And it's just about the rotation and the pressure. Um, it's essentially just pulling the root until it snaps at the point where the encasement hits it. If that makes sense. If you're like me and you've ever been guilty of pulling those little, what I call angel hair roots, uh, out of the side of your test pit with just a quick snap of your thumb and index finger. It's essentially that on a, on a high flow skid steer scale.
00:24:59
Speaker
So essentially the auger rotates, it grabs the root end and it pulls it until it breaks. So that being said, this is a great segue into the limitations because I'll tell you this technology is amazing and we've seen so many applications and we've used it.
00:25:20
Speaker
on sites that had five test pits that were three meters deep or 10,000 test pits that were 70 centimeters deep. But this is not an innovation that's going to replace test pitting. This is really for those sites that you would traditionally see monitoring. I'm just saying, let's replace monitoring. There's a better methodology.
00:25:47
Speaker
If you're going out looking for, say, burial sites, that type of thing, absolutely should not be using any sort of machinery to do delicate work. Same as if you're working on, say, a known site that has a lot of significance. Maybe delineate that by hand. Of course, there's always caveats. So let's say it's a rescue archaeology effort. Something's eroding into the sea. You have literally two or three days to do as much as you can.
00:26:16
Speaker
you know, then we would see this technology really being utilized for those instances. It's more of replacing one piece of equipment that is not for archaeology with something that is for archaeology, if that makes sense.
00:26:33
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's something that we talk about as archaeologists all the time, how we borrow from every other field. I mean, the typical thing is that the only scientific development that's for archaeology is radiocarbon dating, and everything else is something that we've adopted from
00:26:51
Speaker
any of a wide range of other fields and made work for ourselves. So it's interesting that you've got an invention here that is specifically made for archaeology as opposed to being borrowed from geology or petrochemical drilling or something like that.
00:27:09
Speaker
Yeah, and it's actually interesting. I've had geotechnical surveyors ask me about it because they do test pits as well, right? They need to look at stratigraphy if they're trying to do, say, the plans for a foundation or that type of thing. And they're like, you know what? If you can get down deeper, you call us. You let us know because right now they get an excavator and they dig the equivalent of an Olympic-sized swimming pool just to get a safe
00:27:36
Speaker
deep stratigraphic analysis. So this can be one of those rare archaeological innovations that might be able to be applied elsewhere. Well, I have another follow-up question there. You just said stratigraphic analysis, and that's something that we haven't discussed here. Are you able to dig by strata with the agar, or are you digging in arbitrary depths and then infer in the strata later?
00:28:03
Speaker
I tell ya, if I could somehow know what the stratigraphy was before I dug, I would be, you know...
00:28:11
Speaker
I, well, I actually don't think I would be anywhere else, uh, any different than where I am now, because not a lot of people would necessarily care about that except maybe the people on this call and, you know, a couple thousand archeologists around the world. But you can definitely arbitrarily dig a test pit 10 centimeters at a time, five centimeters at a time, 20 centimeters at a time, however you need to do it.
00:28:34
Speaker
The one thing I will say is you get the most beautiful profiles from test pits with this machine. I was trying to toy around with going to the SAAs and making a life-size 3-meter deep test pit profile and print it out and kind of put it next to like my exhibitor's booth and just to show people
00:28:57
Speaker
just how beautiful it is, but also the size, the scale, right? Because I'm doing 60 centimeter diameter test pits in other places. They only might need 20 centimeters, 30 centimeters, 40. So I'm just showing like how much material can be removed, which thus increases the confidence interval of your sampling strategy.
00:29:22
Speaker
ensures that you're covering more area that if something is there, the likelihood of hitting it is, is I believe 12.63% higher. Don't quote me on that. I don't have the paper in front of me, but it's over-testing. It's, it's consistent.
00:29:39
Speaker
we can go deep, we can go wet, we can go fast, and we can also run it lean, which means I can do test pitting by myself, which is never recommended, never do anything by yourself. But you can definitely run a very lean crew, if need be, and do a heck of a lot of work. Well, that leads me to kind of one and a half of my questions, which was,
00:30:06
Speaker
how many people does it take to run this thing? So you can run it with one, but optimally, how many people do you have here? And then once you answer that, what's the training curve on this thing? Like you've got field texts you've just hired that are used to shovel in a portable screen. What is the learning curve to get them into this system?
00:30:25
Speaker
Sure. So the first part of your question, so really as many people as you throw at it, it means the more efficient you can do. When we did 413 in one day, we had 12 technicians.
00:30:40
Speaker
Yeah. So that, you know, keep in mind we're in New Brunswick. There's, you know, we're, we're not the, you know, developers capital of the world, nor the archeological professional capital of the world. So if you had say,
00:30:57
Speaker
a hundred people and five machines going, I wouldn't even venture a guess, depending on the conditions, of course, and the depth and, you know, how accessible the grid is, et cetera, et cetera. You know, you could really do a lot of damage to, uh, and buy a lot of damage. That's a really bad colloquial term to use. Uh, see, I am not a business woman. Not damage.
00:31:25
Speaker
You could make a lot of headway on a very long, large linear project that had 50,000 test pits because there's always that risk of archaeology taking too long.
00:31:41
Speaker
and just being cut or reduced triaged because they're running out of time. And I'm saying, no, you can do the testing. You can do it all. All we need is people and a couple more machines. And that being said, the trading, it's all about safety, right? So what we've done is the operator, it's a single operator,
00:32:04
Speaker
No one needs to be around the grid system that's being tested at that time. No one needs to be around the machine. The operator only has a one side limited access to wherever the screen methodology is being used. And there's always the screen between the people and the equipment. And we've kind of intuitively come up with systems over time that just make things better. Like no one's allowed to go say record
00:32:34
Speaker
the test pit stratigraphy and stuff when the machine is working. The assumption is the person in the machine cannot see you, so you have to be the person taking care of your situational awareness at all times. But we've come up with systems where
00:32:52
Speaker
all people have to do essentially is screen the material for the most part, 99% of all the crew, all they do is they wait for the next test pit to come, and they screen through the material. And what that has done, you know, I'm
00:33:07
Speaker
I'm coming up on 40. Hard to believe. I know this is a podcast and you can't see my wonderful skin tone and, you know, beautiful highlighted blonde hair and, you know, definitely not any wrinkles around my eyes or anything like that. I'm painting a picture again here, but it's really helped with attrition. You know, archaeology is a, it's a hard physical job.
00:33:34
Speaker
But the value we have from people is, you know, how fast they did a test pit, how long they can last and how good they are at looking at materials for artifacts. So what we're essentially doing is saying, you know, you could technically, you could be in a wheelchair, you could be 70. And if you can still push through the screen and identify material, you know, you've found maybe a second wind in this industry. Yeah.
00:34:02
Speaker
Okay. Well, we're going to take a break so we can take our third wind in this podcast on the other side of this segment. That was terrible. I'm going to own it though and leave it in the wind after this. Oh my God. So, and then we'll really do some damage to your favorite archeological sites to use the tagline of the equipment here. Back in a minute.
00:34:26
Speaker
Welcome back to the architect podcast episode 197 and this is the final segment. And so Chelsea, I just want to know, I mean, you've, you've, you've said throughout the show that this is a commercialized product and we know because you told us that you've patented this product.
Patent Process for Auger Technology
00:34:41
Speaker
What was the process around patenting it like? And as you're getting into that, what actually are you patenting? Because obviously, if somebody wants one of these things, they'd have to buy a skid steer as well. I don't think you would include that. You didn't patent the skid steer. That's a thing that you can just buy. And I think that Archimedes has the patent on the screw too, right? So what are we doing here, actually?
00:35:05
Speaker
So the patent is actually on the apparatus. So it's essentially an attachment for a skid steer the same way you could buy, you know, a regular auger attachment or a jackhammer attachment or, you know, even a dump bucket attachment for your skid steer. Sure.
00:35:23
Speaker
It's just the attachment portion and the patent is actually on the design and the methodology.
00:35:33
Speaker
And that took about three and a half, four years in some cases to actually work my way through the patent process and a lot of money to lawyers and a lot of re-wording different sentences or half of a sentence or spelling in a American versus British way or vice versa.
00:35:58
Speaker
So a lot of hair pulling and maybe some hard seltzers helped get through the process. But it was actually really great. I'm actually a really, really huge nerd. I know it's a shock, right? And I'm a huge fan of Nikola Tesla. And for me, it was I always wanted to have
00:36:24
Speaker
an invention so it it wasn't necessarily like i'm gonna do this and i'm gonna make a ton of money and i'm gonna do blah blah blah it was i'm gonna try to make something that's really hard easier i'm gonna try to make something that's really hard better i'm gonna try to get a patent on this so i can have you know i have two daughters that are six and four i want them to be like my mom has you know
00:36:52
Speaker
five patents on this piece of equipment. And that's just something I always imagine what my, my obituary will say, you know, and I wanted inventor to be a part of that. It was just, you know, the moment I get enough money, I'm going to space guys. That's, that's the goal. That's the end game here. Wait, your, your, your tombstone is not going to say augured her way into the history books. It's not going to say that.
00:37:20
Speaker
But I won't charge you for the sound effects there. But yeah, now I know it's a little bit silly, but it was something. Yeah, it's just kind of a line that way. And, you know, as I said, probably before and.
00:37:36
Speaker
You know, my, my business lawyer is probably kicking me under the table somewhere, but it would say stop saying you're not a business person. You know, you're, you're kind of cutting your own feet out from under you, but I'm not. If I were a business person, this would probably be commercialized and franchised and licensed and out there already with, uh, what's that guy's name? Billy, Billy May yelling at you at an infomercial. Yeah.
00:38:04
Speaker
Nice, nice. I mean, it really does behoove people to stay in their lane, to be honest. We talk about that from a scientific standpoint on the show all the time. It's like, why hire an archaeologist to do your, I mean, insert weird technology here when you can hire somebody who really knows what they're doing with that thing and the archaeologist should probably understand it from their project standpoint. But it goes the same way with business. I mean, I run a small business and do I do my own bookkeeping? Not if I want to stay out of jail, I don't.
00:38:32
Speaker
You know, I have two fantastic ladies. One's my bookkeeper and one's my accountant, and they keep me honest, and keep my books honest. Because I don't know how to file all that paperwork, and I don't want to know. It's just something I don't need. I totally understand being the inventor side of it. Did you patent it in the US and in Canada?
00:38:51
Speaker
I did. I have US, Canada, international, UK, Europe, and Australia. Wow. That's awesome. I wanted to cover all the bases. Yeah. That's fantastic. That's fantastic. What are the next steps towards the commercialization process of this device?
00:39:09
Speaker
Number one is probably stop degrading myself in public. Number two, I'm working on a white paper right now to essentially just use all of the amazing and crazy case studies just from my tiny little corner of the world to really show the vast utilization that this technology can bring to the field of archeology because I honestly
00:39:36
Speaker
cannot be the only person that would benefit from this, especially when I know, I just know that the industry down in the US is just massive.
CRM Archaeologist Shortage and Solutions
00:39:47
Speaker
And we're coming up on a huge restriction of archaeologists who can hold permits in CRM.
00:39:57
Speaker
how are we going to deal with this increase of cultural resource management work coming in, but a decrease in archeologists who can do it? This could be a perfect time. Indeed. There have been a lot of discussions lately about the difficulty of finding field techs and getting people to work on projects or long-term viability of individual field techs is staying in the field. So I suppose if you
00:40:26
Speaker
find some way of mitigating that from the business end, that's useful to the field, especially if you do so without reducing quality, right? Because that's always a fear. As you get rid of people, you reduce quality. If you can do it while maintaining quality, and I'm thinking of quality because I'm in the middle of writing a paper right now about field surveys, and a lot of the literature
00:40:48
Speaker
that I'm reviewing has to do with visibility and obtrusiveness and what percentage of things are seen by different people depending on the ground cover and whatnot. So anyhow, if you can at least regularize and standardize that and say mathematically that yes, we can get this guaranteed, that's an interesting step forward. Now, I know of this because we had a little bit of a pre-recording discussion, but you said earlier, you said six or seven,
00:41:16
Speaker
archaeologists in the province. I don't know if you're being a little hyperbolic there, or if there really are that few. I mean, I know there are only like 16 or 17 people in Canada anyhow, so I might be right. I know that's where it comes. And I wanted to mention that we know one that you've worked with, that you've worked quite closely with, who is Carol Woolsey, who was on this podcast just about a year ago on episode 172, discussing the company Archaeosoft and the Stratum software. And
00:41:46
Speaker
Cora was talking about increasing efficiencies in the field, and that's something that you're talking about. But just to be clear, even though you two work together in some respect, your auger is addressing the same concerns, but not part of the same company, right?
00:42:03
Speaker
Correct. Yeah. So I'm actually involved with Cora and her archaeo soft and stratum software as a investor. Because to be honest, her solution, it's important for me that it be solved because the problem with being able to
00:42:23
Speaker
say, dig a lot of holes more efficiently and faster, it means that you're creating more data that needs to be recorded. And we have not come up with a way yet to meet the amount of 413 test pits in one day. I don't know about you guys. Have you ever recorded 413 test pits in one day?
00:42:46
Speaker
I've written 413 words in a day. You can't see it, but my thighs are the size of tree trunks because of the amount of squats you have to do. It's actually creating a backlog of data and what Quora and ArchioSoft and the Stratum software are looking to do is just
00:43:09
Speaker
make everything more efficient. And, you know, we're really there, guys. We're there in archaeology. I see you guys talk about it all the time on this podcast. We're there where we need to be, you know, we can study the past. We don't have to be stuck in it. We can create software and innovative technologies specifically for archaeology. We are no longer relegated to the sidelines.
00:43:34
Speaker
If you've read that paper on the forecast for the CRM industry, a couple billion dollar industry, that's no small potatoes, as we say. Yeah. And I've always said from a business standpoint, developers are never going to pay us more money to do this. We're always struggling just for contracts and trying not to script the bottom of the barrel just to win projects, especially down here in the United States.
00:44:00
Speaker
So in order to make ourselves, you know, make these projects a little more lucrative, we have to get better. We have to get more efficient and we have to find ways to not cut costs in an unethical way by paying people less and, you know, tripling up in a hotel room or something. We just need to become more efficient and use better tools for our job that, you know, may have an initial upfront cost, but looking at the follow on savings that you could make
00:44:27
Speaker
because of the increased efficiency is something that is really difficult for a lot of archaeologists to do. I mean, I've been involved with software before and different software programs in the past. The math is there, but it's almost impossible to convince some people that are running companies that you can actually save money in the long run by doing this. And it's a real tough sell.
00:44:49
Speaker
Absolutely. And I really believe so once or if or when this technology that that I use ever becomes available for others to to use archaeo soft stratum software will
Promoting Auger Efficiency and Online Presence
00:45:04
Speaker
be part and parcel of the process, you know, if you want to be able to
00:45:08
Speaker
to work as efficiently. And I've been using this since 2016. I'm the operator of Doug, probably more test pits in the province of New Brunswick than anyone. And I can say, you know, wholeheartedly, like, here's the process, here's the best way to do it. And here's the software that'll help you maximize that efficiency.
00:45:28
Speaker
You were talking about 400 plus test pits in a day. I was just thinking the most I can ever think of digging. And I only know this because I was talking to some of the other people on the crew. This was over 10 years ago down in North Carolina. And I dug, I think, 80-something in a day. But that's only because they were only about 80 centimeters deep.
00:45:50
Speaker
and they were all sand, one strat. Like you can literally put the entire shovel test pit in your screen, lift it up and left with a pile of ceramics or something like that. So that's the only reason though. And most of the time, I mean, shit, when I dug up in Vermont, forget that we were lucky to get two done in a day. It was just that clay soil was garbage and there were 50 by 50 centimeter holes. It was just so hard to dig.
00:46:13
Speaker
So that's very, that's very synonymous with New Brunswick, right? It's a very kind of clay, loamy soil, podsolized, lots of roots, you know, glacial ablation till, you know, it's just miserable. The most I've ever done is 20. And that, that I'm telling you was, you know, that was the toughest.
00:46:36
Speaker
Yeah, that's tough. So we're doing the end of this show, Chelsea, and we'd definitely love to have you on again in the future. But if somebody is thinking, man, I'd really like to get my hands on one of these things. How far do you think you're away from doing that? So I already, I already know it works.
00:46:54
Speaker
I'm in this very strange limbo of kind of reaction versus pro-action, which means I'm booked, guys, for the next two years, specifically just with this technology, specifically just in New Brunswick. So my life is a series of field season to writing season to field season, the writing season, and then somewhere in there see my children and my husband and all of that stuff.
00:47:25
Speaker
I am making an effort this year as part of my, you can't see it, but I'm doing those horrible finger quotations strategy for Colburn, my company, to get it out there. Get this white paper out so people can see the case studies we've used in New Brunswick.
00:47:41
Speaker
talk to more people like I'm doing right now because I'm actually just one of those horrible hermit introverts that doesn't really like people and so out of my shell right now.
00:47:57
Speaker
talk to people and if someone has a project that they think the excavator that they would watch going through a site could actually be replaced by doing the systematic sampling or or prospection of their area with this equipment, reach out to me. I would absolutely be tickled pink to see this on any other project anywhere else in North America
00:48:25
Speaker
because the name of the game is just bringing the entire discipline into the future. We've put people on the moon, guys. We're rucking up with shovels and screens and being like, hey guys, give us, you know, three months and we'll get it done. And the bird surveyors have heat seeking drones and they're done in 20 minutes. So we have to catch up. Yeah.
00:48:51
Speaker
That's great. Let's just wind this up then with a quick question. If somebody does want to reach out to you, how best should they do so? And definitely we'll put this link or whatever in the show notes, but what's your best way to be reached?
00:49:05
Speaker
Sure. You can email me. It's chelsea.posh at colber.ca. That'll be down in the description below. I'm on LinkedIn. I've got a hefty followership of 1000 people. So, you know, feel free to jump on that train of, you know, just my thought vomit going on to that.
00:49:30
Speaker
And yeah, i have a website it's arguably horrible i am going to update it here shortly and by me i mean i'm gonna pay someone much smarter than i to update it and put some more of this stuff out there because guys a lot of.
00:49:47
Speaker
What I do comes with a lot of imposter syndrome. What right do I have to think that I'm doing something special or that type of thing? I'm trying to get out of that rut and just really say, you know, we benefited from it here in New Brunswick.
00:50:05
Speaker
you know, we're a small corner of the world. This really needs to be on those very large scale projects, you know, pipelines and long linear, you know, highways, those types of things, those deep alluvial sediments that I know that Texas is very fond of having, you know, we need to we need to start solving the problems that, you know, our brothers and sisters and in cultural resource management have been
00:50:32
Speaker
kind of button their heads up against and it's out there. So we just need it to start getting used. So please reach out. Any questions? You know, I'm hoping to be at the SAAs in Oregon. I should have an exhibitor booth there. Colber Consulting, booth 308. Come and come and say hi. I'll have a little model.
00:50:52
Speaker
of the skid steer and the auger attachment. I'll have some handouts and some of our old posters and all of that stuff. And I'll even sign something for you if you want. Like I said, I have a thousand followers on LinkedIn, guys. I mean, I'm kind of a big deal. Some of them are bound to be there. So just be prepared for that. One will be there.
00:51:17
Speaker
Nice, nice. All right. Well, we're wrapping up this show. So I just would like to say to all of our listeners, definitely look down at your show notes, open up your phone and check out her contact information and contact Chelsea if you want to get more info on this and convince her to actually get this to where she can sell this to you because it needs to be out there. I mean, I've worked in
00:51:37
Speaker
18 different states in the United States. I haven't worked in Canada yet. And there are lots of environments where this would have been a really handy thing to have. And I'll never forget talking to the person whose name is escaping me right now who did the... I'll never forget that I'm forgetting his name, apparently.
00:51:57
Speaker
The guy who published the paper on the 135,000 year old deposits in San Diego of the mastodon finds that they're saying were created by humans. Now that part is in question, right? That part is definitely in question. But his whole point was, you know, we tell archaeologists to dig to a certain depth and they dig to that depth because they hit some sort of barrier like the end of their shovel.
00:52:21
Speaker
or something like that. And then they just stop. And he's like, there could be layers and layers and layers of nothing because environmentally something happened. And then you get back down into cultural layers. And it's physically impossible to dig down that deep in some places. And having something like this that's a mechanical auger like this that could gently pull all the material up for you and
00:52:46
Speaker
and help you find these lower layers would be really great. And then even if it's not low, just the speed of the thing sounds amazing. So definitely lots of environments I've worked in where this would be beneficial.
00:52:57
Speaker
All right. Well, Chelsea, thank you so much for coming on the show, and I hope we can have you on again soon. Good luck at the SAAs. That is a wild, wild event. I'm not going to be there this year, but it sounds like it's going to be, you know, people are gearing up for it. So it sounds like it's going to be a good one, and I hope you get a lot of contacts and people interested. Awesome. Thanks so much, guys. I wish you all the best of luck. Well, with that, thanks a lot, guys, and we'll see you in a couple of weeks. Bye.
00:53:27
Speaker
Thanks for listening to the Archaeotech Podcast. Links to items mentioned on the show are in the show notes at www.archpodnet.com slash archaeotech. Contact us at chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com and paulatlugol.com. Support the show by becoming a member at archpodnet.com slash members. The music is a song called Off Road and is licensed free from Apple. Thanks for listening.
00:53:53
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his RV traveling the United States, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, Dig Tech LLC, Culturo Media, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Chris Webster. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archapodnet.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.