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Tephrochronology with Dr. Jamie Anderson - Ep 109
206 Plays6 years ago
New APN Volunteer producer, Dr. Jamie Anderson, joins Paul and Chris today to talk about her masters and PhD research that used some interesting dating methods. One of those was Tephrocronology, or, dating using ash layers. Combined with other methods, Tephrocronology is a powerful tool. We talk about that and other dating methods.
LinksOxCalHeritage Voices Ep31A Life in Ruins PodcastThe Dirt PodcastJamie Anderson on Twitter: @bix783App of the DayWebby: PheramorPaul: IFAB Laws of the GameContactChris WebsterTwitter: @archeowebbyEmail: chris@archaeologypodcastnetwork.comPaul ZimmermanTwitter: @lugalEmail: paul@lugal.com
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Transcript
Introduction and Sponsor Announcement
00:00:00
Speaker
We're excited to announce that our very own podcasting platform, Zencaster, has become a new sponsor to the show. Check out the podcast discount link in our show notes and stay tuned for why we love using Zen for the podcast.
Episode Introduction with Hosts and Guest
00:00:19
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Archaeotech Podcast, Episode 109. I'm your host, Chris Webster, with my co-host, Paul Zimmerman. Today, we talk to Dr. Jamie Anderson about her PhD work in landscape archaeology with a focus on radiocarbon dating. Let's get to it.
Dr. Jamie Anderson's Academic Background
00:00:35
Speaker
Dr. Jamie Anderson has a PhD in archaeological science from the University of Oxford. Her master's degree, also from Oxford, was in landscape archaeology with a focus on radiocarbon dates from Anglo-Saxon England.
00:00:46
Speaker
Her PhD was about linking archaeological environmental records in the North Atlantic from around 800 to 1800 CE using tephra chronology or volcanic ash dating, radiocarbon dates, optically stimulated luminescence, and Bayesian Monte Carlo modeling. While she was finishing the write-up of her PhD, she worked for the Bureau of Land Management in Western Colorado. Dr. Anderson has done fieldwork in the Four Corners region of the USA.
00:01:09
Speaker
Western Colorado, England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Iceland, and helped a friend record some rock art that was part of her PhD in Lesotho. All right, welcome to the show, everyone, and welcome Paul. How are you doing? Pretty good, Chris. How are you doing?
00:01:25
Speaker
Not too bad. Not too bad.
Hosts Discuss Recent Activities
00:01:26
Speaker
If you're listening to this in the future, you won't even know this, but if you're listening to this in real time, I think we took a couple of week break just because it's summertime and I had a vacation and the internet was not good there. And then I had some field work last week and it just was a complex string of unavailability. And Paul, I think you had the same thing going on, didn't you? Yeah, I was off at a conference for work. Sadly, nothing to do with archeology, but a lot to do with tech. There you go. There you go. Well, keep it in it. Keep it in it.
Dr. Anderson's Role and Journey in Archaeology
00:01:54
Speaker
All right. Well, as you may have heard, uh, the archeology podcast network is, uh, always looking for volunteers and people to help out. And we recently just took on a new volunteer and, uh, she's going to help us produce and, and find guests for this podcast and a couple others possibly. And when I found out what she did and what she does and what she did for her PhD, I was like, Hey, you should just book yourself as the first guest on archea tech. So welcome Jamie to the show.
00:02:19
Speaker
Thank you. So why don't you just start before we get into what your research was. Tell the audience, I read your bio, so they've already heard that. So tell the audience just a little bit about, I guess a little bit about your background. How'd you get into archaeology? You know, what brought you over to the UK?
00:02:34
Speaker
things like that. So we might have some questions based on that, but let's start with that. Well, I got into archaeology like a little bit differently than most people, which is that I was really obsessed with the movie Jurassic Park. And I really wanted to be a paleontologist. And then when I went to college, I got a full ride scholarship to a university that didn't offer anything related to paleontology.
00:02:58
Speaker
But they did offer anthropology. So I was like, all right, that seems legit and went into that instead. It's anology. You're not helping the case that archaeologists don't dig dinosaurs, Jamie. I know. Nice. Nice. I'm very vehement about correcting people when they're wrong, though.
00:03:22
Speaker
Nice, nice. Especially with that one. I think it's probably once or twice a week because of my interaction online and with the radio show and things like that, that I'm correcting people on. Like, oh, so you find dinosaurs? No, we actually don't. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway.
00:03:37
Speaker
Nice. So you are from the United States originally, but you went over to England for your graduate degree? Yes. Both of your graduate degrees or your undergrad as well? No, I did my undergrad at American in Washington, DC.
Challenges of Studying in the UK
00:03:52
Speaker
Okay. And then just kind of on a whim, I decided to apply to graduate school in the UK. I also applied to University of Colorado and University of Arizona.
00:04:03
Speaker
And I got into Oxford and my mom was like, you have to go there. So that's fair. Also, at least at least at the time, and I think it's still the case, though, the tuition fees have gone up a lot. But when I started, it was much, much cheaper to be a student in the UK. So. Wow.
00:04:26
Speaker
And stipends were much more commensurate with living costs and things like that than it was in the US. Yeah, I've heard too that if you get a degree over there, you get a little bit more time to live over there as well to possibly use that degree over there and work over there. Was that still the case when you got out?
00:04:44
Speaker
Unfortunately, I straddled the time period where when I started, that was the case. And by the time I finished, it was not really the case anymore. Which can be charted with like the Tory government, which has been in place since 2010. So they've like slowly made it harder and harder for student visa holders to have rights, basically. Yeah.
00:05:09
Speaker
want to go on a big political complaint about this, but yes. No, let's get into technology. So archaeology and technology.
Research on Anglo-Saxon Radiocarbon Dating
00:05:21
Speaker
So let's start with your master's degree, according to your bio, which I again read at the beginning, landscape archaeology with a focus on radiocarbon dating from some sites, apparently in Anglo-Saxon England, or at least dated to that time period. So why don't you tell us a little bit about that research?
00:05:39
Speaker
Yeah, so I made a database of all of the Anglo-Saxon radiocarbon dates that I could possibly find, anything that had ever been published. At the time, a lot of, or like, basically, since radiocarbon dating started, a lot of the bigger labs just published lists of dates. And you could just go through those and kind of mine them for information. And then I looked at site reports. And I even looked at some of the gray literature that my professors helped make available to me.
00:06:09
Speaker
And I got a database of about 1,000 radiocarbon dates, and it included information about what kind of material they were on, like was it on bone, was it on woods, things like that, and where they were found. And then I made a pretty simple GIS, especially looking at the bone samples to see if the reservoir effect
00:06:34
Speaker
was a problem because I had this hypothesis that people eating fish would have older radiocarbon dates, which is what is caused by the reservoir effect and that it might show up when mapped. But in reality, it seems like people were eating fish everywhere and diets were really varied. And Anglo-Saxon England actually had a really sophisticated trading network for getting food from the coast into the central part of the country.
00:07:00
Speaker
Is that what you hypothesized you'd find, or did it come as a surprise to you that there wasn't such a difference that you were expecting? It was a little bit surprising to me. I was hoping that my GIS would show people on the coast would be more affected by the reservoir effect and their radiocarbon dates, but that did not seem to be the case.
00:07:17
Speaker
Actually, could you explain for our listeners what the reservoir effect is? Not everybody might be familiar with it. Sure. In radiocarbon dating, you're basically looking at the age of the decaying carbon in organic remains.
00:07:34
Speaker
Generally, what we think of when we think of radiocarbon dating is terrestrial carbon. So it's taken in by animals and plants that live on land. But for things that live in the ocean,
00:07:48
Speaker
Like fish, for example, the carbon in the ocean is stored in the ocean for a longer period of time than it is
Complexities in Radiocarbon Dating Methods
00:07:56
Speaker
on land. And so it varies by location, but radiocarbon dates from fish that live in the ocean can appear like hundreds of years older than they would if they were dating something on the land.
00:08:09
Speaker
And so then if humans are eating those fish, then their bodies will also look older. And there's a way to figure out like the ratio of fish in a diet using carbon 13 to determine that ratio of reservoir effects. Interesting. Yeah, it's not as straightforward as people think, is it? I actually just had a friend of mine here in Reno, who's not an archaeologist, but listens to a few of our shows, asked me about radiocarbon dating and like why
00:08:39
Speaker
why things report back different dates. I can't remember exactly what the question she asked was, but she's basically like, why is there so much variability in radiocarbon dating and things like that? And I was like, well, you got to know a lot of stuff about the sample. How was it collected? Where was it collected? When was it collected? And what time frame are we kind of looking at here? And can we calibrate that with something else? So there's a lot of factors at play there.
00:09:02
Speaker
Also, radiocarbon dates are like, they have to be linked into like a calibrated curve. And so that's like how they're put into an absolute scale of dating, is looking at carbon in the atmosphere at different time periods.
00:09:19
Speaker
And so like one of the ways that that's done for Anglo-Saxon England is they use dendrochronology to have absolute calendar dates and then looked at the carbon in those slices of tree sample to match up the carbon cycle to the absolute carbon dates. And a big problem for the Anglo-Saxon medieval period is that the carbon cycle varies. And so you get these kind of like big
00:09:44
Speaker
sine wave looking things in the calibration curve. And it means that as you draw a line horizontally across that curve, the possibilities for the radiocarbon date hit several different places on these big curves. And so you wind up with really large possible errors in some places there.
00:10:05
Speaker
When you have a date that could hit at a couple of different places on that sine wave, what do you do to try to mitigate the effects of it? Do you try to bring in other kinds of dating? Or do you have any kind of models that you can use? Is there some usual technique that you use for trying to solve that? Or do you just say, here's a great big error range? Sorry.
00:10:27
Speaker
Usually, you try to use other dating methods like contextual information about the site and things like that. Also, taking a lot of radiocarbon dates is not just a scam by radiocarbon labs to charge you more. It also helps refine your results pretty well. It's not like a party line from a radiocarbon lab. Yeah, I know, right?
00:10:53
Speaker
It was like, no, really, we need all these samples. Yeah, yeah, definitely. They're also like 250 pounds each. It's fine. That's right. That's right. What can cause some of the variability? I think we're rabbit holing into radiocarbon dating right now, but I think that's okay. What can cause in your research have you found that can cause some of the variability in the amount of radiocarbon in a sample? Like why does this vary across landscapes and through time, aside from the reservoir effect?
00:11:21
Speaker
It has to do also with like the carbon cycle itself, which fluctuates and that is not my area of specialty. Like that's the best I can really tell you is that the carbon cycle fluctuates over time. So I think that it has to do with like climatic changes, but I'm not a hundred percent sure.
Introduction to Tephra Chronology
00:11:39
Speaker
Lots of environmental differences and things like that. Like, like I'm sure in some parts of England versus say some parts of Africa or something like that, you're going to have different amounts in the, in the, uh, you know, environment.
00:11:50
Speaker
If I recall correctly, the sun activity has something to do with it too. Yeah, I was about to say that. That carbon protein happens in the upper atmosphere. Yeah, so like fluctuations like sunspots is not the word I'm thinking of, but like, you know, solar storms or something like that can influence it. All right. Well, when you decided to continue on for your PhD, you continued some of this research, I know, but you also brought in a word that
00:12:18
Speaker
I guess totally makes sense, but I'm not sure I'd actually heard before. I probably read it, but tephra chronology, which is volcanic ash dating, which totally makes sense because volcanic deposits themselves are datable. I worked in Africa for a little while and I mean, that's how you date fossils is you date the volcanic layers.
00:12:36
Speaker
Tell us a little bit about Tephra chronology and how you used it. So Tephra chronology, I have kind of a good story that I used to explain it. In 2010, I was living in the UK and I flew to St. Louis in the US for the SAAs.
00:12:53
Speaker
And the day after I got to St. Louis, I was supposed to give a presentation about, I was just starting out my PhD and I was going to give a presentation about my preliminary results. And that was the day that the volcano in Iceland erupted to the point that it shut down all of the flights back to Europe. And so I actually got stuck at the SAA.
00:13:16
Speaker
But my presentation, because my field work was partly in Iceland, was about Icelandic volcanoes, and people just kept asking me about this particular eruption instead of anything to do with my research. So I was sitting frantically in front of the BBC News trying to understand what was going on.
00:13:33
Speaker
During that eruption, the reason why air travel was shut down all across Europe is because the ash cloud traveled so far. When I finally did get back to the UK, there was a car parked in front of where I lived that never moved, and it did have a fine layer of volcanic ash on it, which I took into the lab and liked to have with the microscope and stuff.
00:13:58
Speaker
Yeah, it was really cool. But that really illustrates why it's a powerful dating technique because it covered such a huge part of the landscape. But geochemically, we are able to link that ash back to a particular eruption. Because in theory, every volcanic eruption has a slightly different geochemistry in its ash.
00:14:26
Speaker
So then you could find that layer, you know, in England, you can find it, I think it went as far south as Italy, you can find it in Iceland. And so when you find that layer, you can say these things were all happening simultaneously or basically simultaneously. That signatures from individual eruptions or from individual volcanoes? Theoretically, it's from individual eruptions. In practice, some volcanoes, especially ones that erupt really frequently,
00:14:54
Speaker
it can be really difficult to tell eruptions apart. And so like, there's some particular ones from Iceland, there's a volcano called Hekla, which is one of the most frequently erupting volcanoes in the world right now. It's erupted something like, I don't know the exact number, but it's like 20 to 25 times since like 1000 AD. And none of these are like huge eruptions.
00:15:19
Speaker
But each time it lays down this geochemically distinct layer of ash, but a few of them are like too close to really be able to tell the difference. So it'll say like could be Hekla 1104 or Hekla 1357, for example. Are those numbers the years that they were? Yes. And Iceland is a really, it's like
00:15:41
Speaker
a really easy place to do Tefra chronology because they've had people writing down when eruptions happened for a long time. Nice. Yeah. So that's helpful. I always love archeology when we have like a written a record that says, yep, here's what it is. You're right. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You know, we're calling this Tefra chronology and chronology obviously means time.
00:16:06
Speaker
But we're talking really more so far about the chemical makeup of these eruptions and how you can isolate one from another and identify it across the landscape. But what kind of methods are being used to actually date these ash layers? Well, so there's documentary evidence for Iceland. Another big one is the Greenland ice cores.
00:16:26
Speaker
have ash layers because ash is getting picked up in winds and blowing around the globe and being deposited on the Greenland ice sheet, for example. Those are dated by the belt thaw cycle layers. Similarly, you can see them in things like lakes, which have varves, which are yearly layers of sediment movement.
00:16:53
Speaker
And I've seen some that were radiocarbon dated based on samples of organic matter and soil around the volcanic layer.
Using Zencastr for Podcasting
00:17:02
Speaker
All right. Well, I think that is actually a good point to take our first break for this episode. So let's do that. And we'll come back on the other side and continue this discussion with Dr. Jamie Anderson back in a second. Chris Webster here for the Archeology Podcast Network. We strive for high quality interviews and content so you can find information on any topic in archeology from around the world. One way we do that is by recording interviews with our hosts and guests located in many parts of the world
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Speaker
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00:17:56
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00:18:21
Speaker
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00:18:38
Speaker
Welcome back to episode one Oh nine of the archea tech podcast. And we are talking with Dr. Jamie Anderson, our new producer. Uh, so if you're interested in coming onto this show, you're going to talk to her at some point in time and we'll make that happen. That's right. That's right. My Twitter handle is not very professional sounding. It's my screen name I've had since
Global Applications of Tephra Chronology
00:18:58
Speaker
I was 13, but it's at Bix seven eight three. It's B I X seven eight three.
00:19:04
Speaker
Nice. I feel like it would take like several beers or a glass of bourbon to have you describe that, why that's your 13 year old glitter handle, but we'll save that for another day.
00:19:17
Speaker
All right, so back to Tefra chronology. When I was working in Africa, and again, talking about the dating of different volcanic layers. Now these are basalt volcanic layers typically. So they're long hardened. They're not ash anymore. They never were ash, they're basalt. And they use potassium argon dating. So the decay of, I think it's potassium into argon and that ratio, and that's how they date those layers. But we're talking about millions of years old at this point. Right.
00:19:44
Speaker
Is there a way that you're aware of to date that the ash that you're talking about, like existing ash layers? Cause I know we have ash layers over here in this country and I know they date them in various ways like you were describing, but do you know if there's a chemical way to do that or is it really just like the varves and other things?
00:19:59
Speaker
You know, I, aside from like radiometric dating, I honestly don't know. Sorry, I don't have a better answer for you. No, that's good. This is why we're in science. We just generate more questions. So if somebody does know that answer, uh, contact Jamie and come on the show and tell us. So there you go. Please do. Yeah, that's right. That's right. So, so where else, um, you have, uh, one of our questions here is where else is this applicable, um, the tougher chronology dating, um, in your, in your, in your research?
00:20:26
Speaker
some interesting ways that it's being used now is in Alaska, because Alaska, of course, has a lot of volcanism.
00:20:36
Speaker
I would say that in Iceland, that was kind of the first place in the North Atlantic, where you can find these microscopic layers of Icelandic ash. That was definitely where the technique first started. But right before I came on the show, I was kind of looking at the most recent papers, and there's some stuff going on in South America. I've seen it on archaeological sites from Alaska.
00:20:58
Speaker
I have also seen a lot of it from really old sites in India. There's a really famous large eruption layer there called the Tuba. I don't know how to pronounce it. I think it's Tuba. I think that's what I've heard.
00:21:15
Speaker
Yeah, so they've been looking at that ash layer. And then I've also seen it used in Japan. And I saw a really fascinating talk a few years ago by a Russian archaeologist who has been cataloging volcanoes from Kamchatka. But all of her papers are published in Russian. And so that's like a huge language barrier for a lot of Western
00:21:41
Speaker
researchers and archaeologists, we were all like, wow, this sounds really cool. And she's like, I'll translate it for you. Nice. Is there a practical limit to how thick that ash layer has to be for you to use it? There is, but it can be very small.
00:22:00
Speaker
like a lot of the stuff that I worked with was literally microscopic. But one of the issues that people find is that so volcanic ash is actually tiny shards of glass. And if it's in like a sandy soil environment, it will degrade really quickly, it'll get like rubbed and basically disintegrate.
00:22:26
Speaker
And so, if you're someplace with soil that is not favorable to preserving tiny pieces of glass, that can ruin it pretty quickly. But in like peat bogs and things like that, they've been able to find really small layers, like a couple, like five or six shards per like a gram.
00:22:46
Speaker
Yeah, we have a layer over here that a lot of Western archaeologists are probably familiar with. It's the Mazama ash layer, and it's Crater Lake organ. It's the mountain that used to be there before it basically exploded itself into bits, spread ash all over the Western United States. And it dates to, if I'm not mistaken, somewhere around 7,000
00:23:06
Speaker
some odd years ago, 7,500 or 700 years ago. And when you find that layer, and it can be really thin, but when you find that layer, you know where that layer dates to. And presumably they do what you're talking about is they find the layer and then somebody checks the chemical signature and says, yep, that's that eruption. Here's your 7,000 year line. Yeah, exactly. It's a great technique for linking huge swaths of landscape.
00:23:35
Speaker
It was also for a long time in Iceland, they believed that there was a layer that was below the first part of human settlement. Based on the Greenland ice cores, it's at 871 or 872 AD.
00:23:53
Speaker
or C, whichever we want to call it. And then in Reykjavik, about 15 years ago, they found a house beneath it, which is now an incredibly cool museum, you go, it's like in the main part of Reykjavik, and you go downstairs, and you're in the house, and you can see like the ash layers exposed on the wall above the house.
00:24:13
Speaker
Yeah, I was in Reykjavik just a few months ago and can vouch for anybody that gets a chance to go see that museum. They definitely have to do so. It's a really cool place. Yeah, it's a great museum. That's awesome. I think that Mazama layer you're talking about was dated by, they found trees that had been trapped in the volcanic flow and they radiocarbon dated those trees. Nice. Yeah.
00:24:39
Speaker
Yeah, that layer is all over the place. The dating of that has probably been nailed down to the exact day of the week. It was a cloudy Tuesday.
Linking Volcanic Records to Climate Change
00:24:49
Speaker
That's right. Nice, nice. All right, so where is the future of this particular science going? What are some of the things coming down the line that you're aware of?
00:24:59
Speaker
I know that a lot of the people who I worked with in the lab that I was at at Oxford, they were part of a big project that was trying to link environmental records of climate change like lake cores and peat cores and things like that using TEFRA. And right as I was leaving, they had just published a paper that was linking
00:25:25
Speaker
the Italian volcanic stratigraphy with the Icelandic volcanic stratigraphy via a lake in Switzerland. So they had taken a lake core and they've been able to find both Icelandic and Italian volcanic shards in there. And it's a really old one. So it's a good way to look at like early Holocene climate change.
00:25:52
Speaker
And then they could link up records across a very large part of the earth, basically. Wow, that's cool.
00:25:58
Speaker
I mean, this all really goes down to the concept of relative dating. We've used so many different techniques and things that are dated to learn more about really what's around us and how those things evolved around themselves. Back in the archaeological record, how different things interact with each other and dating these different things and placing them in the chronology, it's so fascinating the way we can do
Bayesian Modeling in Archaeological Dating
00:26:23
Speaker
that. Yeah.
00:26:24
Speaker
All right. So one of the other methods that you mentioned in our chat before this episode was Bayesian modeling. And can you first explain what Bayesian modeling is for our listeners? Sure. Let me try to think of a way to say that in like an easy, an easy to explain way. So it's basically a statistical model.
00:26:50
Speaker
where you're trying to predict uncertainty based on prior knowledge. That's one way to try to refine the error ranges of radiocarbon dates.
00:27:06
Speaker
When I was talking about the calibration curve and in the Anglo-Saxon and medieval periods, how it has all these kind of big loops in it, that when you draw a line across them to try to represent the date, you're crossing several loops. And so you get a huge error range. You can make a really simple Bayesian model by just putting in the stratigraphy of the site where you took the radiocarbon dates from.
00:27:30
Speaker
So you can start eliminating a lot of that uncertainty by having the prior information of like, I know this radiocarbon date has to be younger than this one because where it was found at the site. And so therefore, if it's younger than this one, then we can start eliminating a lot of that error range. Okay. Yeah, I don't, I don't know if this is a, there's several different, like academic websites where you can do this for free.
00:27:58
Speaker
Since I went to Oxford, the one that I've always used is called OxCal, which was developed there. And you can build a stratigraphic model of your site there and run through all your different kinds of dates and try to refine them that way.
00:28:13
Speaker
Sounds like a more, it's really kind of a more mathematical way of doing something like, I was never really into historic archeology, but when I moved out here to the West, I kind of had to be. And you know, because all the mining sites and things like that, but we kind of do that on a mine site to nail down the date. We say, okay, so I've got this one thing, usually like a bottle with a certain maker's mark or something like that. And oh wait, so that date range is 1935 to 1945, but I've got this other one that's 1925 to 1940.
00:28:41
Speaker
So now I'm looking at 1935 to 1940, and you just go from there, and you keep refining it with new information. Yeah, exactly. Or coins are another great way to do that. So yeah, it's a fancy name for basically using prior information to try to refine something, to try to predict an outcome.
00:29:05
Speaker
And it's definitely like a bit of a buzzword in all social sciences and sciences right now. Like I see, I follow a lot of people on Twitter who are biologists because that's like my shadow career I wish I had. And because I love career paths that are not financially lucrative.
00:29:24
Speaker
I would also like to be an ornithologist. Which reminds me, it takes me volunteering to work with us. Oh yeah, no problem. But I've been seeing them posting about making these Bayesian models, or they're also called Monte Carlo models.
00:29:40
Speaker
Yeah, I saw you write that. I actually, I mean, I'm not, I'm in CRM archaeology, so we don't do anything we're not paid to do. So I don't, I actually hadn't heard them called Monte Carlo models. That's the first time I'd seen that when you wrote that down. So that was interesting. I don't know if technically those terms can be used interchangeably, but I would say that in job listings they are. Good to know.
00:30:07
Speaker
All right, Paul remind me, we need to add another zero to her salary at the APN. Oh, thank you. She's doing a really good job. All the zeros. You guys are so nice. There you go. There you go.
00:30:20
Speaker
We've been talking a lot today about dating methods and such, and chemical analysis and such is definitely a big technological part of archaeology. On this podcast, we tend to focus really on the computer and digital technologies,
Tools and Techniques in Dr. Anderson's Research
00:30:34
Speaker
all the other tech that follows under, well, chemistry in particular.
00:30:40
Speaker
is a big blind spot for Chris and me. But I do know that you have to be using and you're definitely hinting at it with the Bayesian models here. You're using computer methods and computer modeling. You were talking about using GIS at the start. How do these different kinds of technologies are more in the wheelhouse of what we talk about here on Archeotech? How do they play into your work, either past or current or hopefully future?
00:31:06
Speaker
I did a lot of statistical modeling with R. I don't know if you guys have talked about R. Yeah. So that was probably the big one for me. Also use ArcGIS and QGIS.
00:31:22
Speaker
And then I also taught myself a little bit of Python just to do some kind of simple calculations about when I was talking about that reservoir effect ratio. I had like a huge table of radiocarbon dates and I wrote a Python script to just automatically give me that ratio. Also, I would say that using like Bayesian modeling and using oxcal and R were probably the big computer parts of my research.
00:31:51
Speaker
And one of the ways that I used our a lot was looking at the geochemical results. So I would use a microscope to look at my Tefra shards, which were very small. And then we'd use an electron micro probe to come back with the percentage oxides that was the makeup, the chemical makeup of these shards.
00:32:16
Speaker
And so then I had like a database of known eruptions and I would run various statistical analyses to figure out if my shards matched any of those known eruptions. And there's a database called TefraBase, which is fairly up to date, depending on what geographical region you're in, on the results of like known geochemistry of eruptions.
00:32:45
Speaker
So that was the big computer components for me. I didn't use any cool apps or anything. No, but props for using R and for writing your own Python program. R was a little bit of a struggle. I also wrote my thesis in LaTeX, which was much more of a struggle. That's what I've heard.
00:33:10
Speaker
Yeah, that was my greatest mistake. That's the PSA for this episode. Do not use latex. Oh, wait a sec. Wait a sec. Wait a sec. Don't fight in words. People tell you word can't handle it, but it can. Nice. Yeah. All right. Well, as we're wrapping up this interview, what's what's next for you? What are you doing these days? Well, I'm going to try to produce your show.
00:33:39
Speaker
Hopefully.
Independent Research and Podcast Recommendations
00:33:40
Speaker
And I, unfortunately, I'm not employed in archaeology right now, just needed kind of a stable income for a while. And trying to decide where to go from here, I still am really interested in doing research. I have some independent research projects I'm working on, just kind of for myself and to keep my skills up. I'm doing a little bit of a research project about decolonizing museums and looking at museum collections and just
00:34:07
Speaker
putting together some cool visual data about what I find. So yeah, that's what I'm doing. Well, now you're in the highly lucrative world of archaeology podcasting. So yeah, we'll make sure we'll make sure to get you your jet because once a month we all take our jets and we meet somewhere fun. Oh, that sounds awesome. Yeah, it's really great. So can I can I give a quick shout out to another podcast on your network? Absolutely. That talked about something we talked about today.
00:34:37
Speaker
I just listened to the most recent episode of Heritage Voices today. And there is a great interview about basically the limits of scientific dating for the peopling of the Americas. And I highly recommend listening to it. It's Dr. Paulette Steeves, who is an associate professor at Algoma University. There you go. Yeah.
00:35:03
Speaker
So thank you, Dr. Stu. Yeah. Do you have the episode number for that episode at hand? I do. It is episode 31. So check out episode 31 of the heritage voices podcast for some more great, uh, uh, great discussion. So yeah, that was really good episode. Okay. Well, Jamie, that's it for this interview and this segment. So thanks a lot for, um, all that information and for agreeing to be a producer on the archeology podcast network.
00:35:31
Speaker
Definitely. If anyone wants to come on, please contact me. I'm at BIX 783 on Twitter. Okay. And we'll have that in the show notes. And at some point here in the next 30 days or so, if you're listening to this in real time, we'll get Jamie an email address as well. But if you prefer email and you're not on Twitter, you can email me, chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com and I'll make sure to get it over to her. Basically what we need somebody to do, and this is what the role Jamie's going to be filling, is basically just have somebody
00:35:59
Speaker
find these people and interact with these people that want to come on the show to do an interview and make sure it's a good fit and let them know what they can expect, which is a really good reason why Jamie came on today. So now she knows what to expect and go from there. So again, if you're interested, check out the show notes for this podcast and we'll have all the links for contact info in there. So again, thank you, Jamie. Thank you. Thanks.
00:36:27
Speaker
You may have heard my pitch from membership. It's a great idea and really helps out. However, you can also support us by picking up a fun t-shirt, sticker, or something from a large selection of items from our tea public store. Head over to arcpodnet.com slash shop for a link. That's arcpodnet.com slash shop to pick up some fun swag and support the show.
00:36:47
Speaker
Hi, welcome back to The Architect podcast, episode 109. We just had a nice discussion with Jamie Anderson, and she ended it on a note talking up to the recent episode of Jessica Yekinto's podcast, Heritage Voices, and a recent episode of that. And actually, I wanted to plug two other podcasts that are new on the APN.
Podcast and App Recommendations
00:37:08
Speaker
I've been doing a lot of work, yard work, actually, lately, and I've had my headphones on listening to.
00:37:12
Speaker
a bunch of different podcasts. And two that are new on the APN that are fantastic are A Life in Ruins and The Dirt, which just came on this week. And The Dirt is actually, since they first started, they've been one of my favorite archaeology anthropology theme podcasts. So I'm thrilled to have them on board on our network. So for our listeners, get out there, listen to these two podcasts. You'll love them, I think. I certainly do.
00:37:37
Speaker
I've got two little app of the day things today. These are going to go by really quick. The first one is on our last episode 108, I recommended Castle Wreck as a stupid little game that you can just kill some time and destroy castles with a cannon and that it was really mindless fun, but somehow satisfying despite all the ads that were constantly popping up.
00:38:01
Speaker
This is going to be now an anti-recommendation. Please don't go out, get that app, or download it or anything. If you heard me recommend it before,
00:38:11
Speaker
Forget that I recommended it before because those ads after a little bit Of just being ads for other stupid games by the same company There were some games that are for lack of a better word pornographic Yeah, oh my I'm not prudish It doesn't offend me that this does but it does offend me that I recommended something That somebody might tell their kid to go download and then it's popping up ads for pornographic games I'm not sure how that got through the app store it it baffles me but
00:38:41
Speaker
If you downloaded Castlewreck on my advice and then you were shocked to see those, please accept my apologies because I did not have any of those ads until sometime after I downloaded and reviewed the game and played with it for a while.
00:38:57
Speaker
Or I guess you can just only play it in airplane mode because the ads are actually served up in real time, usually for games. So if you turn on airplane mode and you don't have any way to retrieve the ads, then you can play ad free. I never tested it, so I don't know if that's how these ones' ads work. They should. They clearly weren't through Apple's ads. I don't think that they were through some of the major ones like Google. I think that they must have been using their own built-in ad engine.
00:39:25
Speaker
Which is how they got that stuff in there right and so it may have been built baked into the game, you know Mm-hmm. So anyhow that that's an anti-recommendation Reversal from what I said last time and you know do with it what you will the other one recommendation Paul Yeah, I know I'm just getting good And the other one has
00:39:47
Speaker
Like I always say, nothing to do with archaeology. And this one's also late by about a month by the time you hear this because I've been watching, well, it's over now, the Women's World Cup and enjoying it immensely. I think I've mentioned before, I'm a soccer fan. I love going to soccer games and every time the World Cup or the Women's World Cup is going, I lose.
00:40:11
Speaker
hours and hours and hours of time glued to the TV or trying to do other things with the TV on and in the background so I can watch it. But one of the apps I learned about during the Women's World Cup is called the IFAB Laws of the Game. IFAB is the International Football Association Board. It's part of FIFA and they're the ones that actually put together the rules or the laws of the game.
00:40:37
Speaker
There's a simple app. It runs on iOS and Android. It's really nicely put together so you can quickly use it as a reference for what the laws are. It thinks about restarts, files, and so on and so forth. It's helpful for me. I ref games occasionally, so I can use it as a reference to keep myself fresh to try to remember what the different rules are for certain restarts. That's why I always seem to have troubles with.
00:41:02
Speaker
But if you're somebody like me who likes watching soccer games, or you're somebody that maybe is a little unclear about some of the rules, some of the more esoteric rules, it's a really simple, handy way to have the set of the rules right there on your phone. So you can take a quick look at, solve an argument, disagree with the call on the field, or
00:41:26
Speaker
expand your skills if you are planning to do like what I do and ref occasionally. So that's another entertainment, quality of life, other things that might appeal to you. If you were in the field as a, let's back up a month here, if you were in the field as a field archeologist and you had the evenings and you're watching some of those Women's World Cup games, you might have
00:41:49
Speaker
found this app useful to try to find out why they were having all these complaints about the goalkeepers jumping off the line too early during the free kicks, during the penalty kicks. That was a big point of discussion. And one of the parts in this app is new changes to the laws. So you could have looked in there and said, oh, it's a problem because this is a new change that they're going to enforce the rule differently. And it only came in place just
00:42:19
Speaker
few weeks before the start of the World Cup. I'm sure you can find all this information online too, but it's a slick little app that I've found quite useful. Well, great. All right.
Controversial Dating App Discussion
00:42:34
Speaker
I'm going to go to my app, and I'm not going to say that this has nothing to do with archaeology.
00:42:40
Speaker
It might have something to do with archaeologists, indeed. So knowing what today's topic was going to be about, I wasn't dumb enough to go on the App Store and type in dating apps because I wanted to find something related to scientific dating in some way. So I typed in scientific dating apps in Google just to see what I could find. But still, you're overrun by just dating apps.
00:43:04
Speaker
focuses on that one word dating and then forgets everything else. So while there might be apps out there that help you, uh, maybe tree ring chronologies or something like that, I don't really know. I did find one thing that I thought might be somewhat interesting to our audience and it's called Faramore P H E R a M O R. And it's combining the words pheromones and a more, which of course means love. Right. So
00:43:30
Speaker
It's a dating app where you actually go in, you set up an account, and then as far as I can tell, I can actually check this out because they took it off the Apple App Store. I know it used to be on there because in their fact, it says, why aren't you on the Apple App Store? While they don't even address their own question that they asked, they say,
00:43:48
Speaker
We're no longer on the Apple App Store, but you can find us on Google Play. And then they're right on their main page at ferromore.com is a gif of the app working on an iPhone. So something happened there and Apple said, nope, you're not going to be here any longer. I sure hope it had nothing to do with pornographic ads that they snuck into the game.
00:44:08
Speaker
I have no idea. So you're always going to ask a question too, is how's an app making money? And I think the only thing I can tell here is they're making money on doing the actual DNA testing and kit. So what this is, is from what I understand, again, I wasn't able to try it out, but from what I understand, reading the facts, you go in, you set up an account and then you click, you purchase your DNA testing kit and they send you this Q-tip swab kit and then you send it back in. And what they say,
00:44:34
Speaker
According to their fact is they send it off to a lab that basically just search searches for the quote genetic codes of attraction and
00:44:46
Speaker
Then they destroy the remaining sample, they destroy the Q-tip, they destroy all that stuff, and then they upload you to their database, basically, and they attach it to your profile. And there's a little video explanation here. I mean, it's actually a really well-done video, and if everything they were saying was 100% true, that does sound like there's actually some validity to it, but I just don't know.
00:45:05
Speaker
I mean, to be honest, basically what they say is through evolution, evolution's job is reproduction, right? I mean, that's what we try to do. Everything we do is so we can reproduce. And the theory is we have pheromones, which help attract you. You know, they're the things that don't really have a scent, but that everybody lets off. And when you're attracted to somebody else, you're getting a whiff of their pheromones through your chemical olfactory system. And this attraction sensor goes off.
00:45:33
Speaker
they're discounting literally everything else like, let's be honest, looks, career choice, things like that, other things that we've actually taken out of evolution and put into more cultural evolution. So they're not taking any of that, it's just the chemical attraction portion of it. And they're somehow isolating these pheromones in the genetic code, from what I can understand, and then matching you to people who
00:45:57
Speaker
I don't know how they decide what pheromones match to the other pheromones. That's a good question. Is it identical pheromones? I mean, I don't know how that works. Yeah, they match you to your cousins, right? Like, why does it say I only love my cousins? Oh, no. That's excellent. I love it. So anyway, that's what this is. And it's on the Google Play Store. Again, not the Apple App Store. And I thought, you know what? If I were in a dating mood and if I were not married and somebody who was out there dating,
00:46:25
Speaker
All those other apps out there, if I had to choose one, honestly, I'd probably give this one a shot because quite frankly, I don't care what my genetic information goes. If you can learn something from that about me, then fine, go ahead. But it's not really something that's bothered me. But if I could use a slightly more scientific method to find a proper partner, then great. The question I would have here is, is this gender biased?
00:46:50
Speaker
You know, I mean, will it match you up with a man? If you're a man, will it match you up with a woman if you're a woman? I mean, it shouldn't. I mean, it should. It should actually do that. That's what I'm saying. It shouldn't mind that it doesn't matter what gender it is. It'd be interesting to see if they filter that out just for political reasons. You know what I mean? Lots of questions about yourself.
00:47:12
Speaker
It doesn't say anywhere on the webpage how much that genetic testing kit costs. I know with things like 23andMe and stuff like that, I think it's upwards of $100, $50 to $100 to do that. They're not doing a full genetic workup on you. Well, they might be, but they're not giving you that information.
00:47:29
Speaker
So I don't think you should pay that much for it. If you pay more than say $25 for it, you probably paid too much. But it also doesn't look like the app has a cost to it, which again, maybe it's loaded with ads. I don't know. How are they making their money? And are they selling this genetic data to get that kind of money? They say they don't, but you know. So anyway, yeah, it's an interesting thing. It's not a dating app, but it's a dating app. So there you go.
00:47:57
Speaker
All right. A little weirded out right now. If you were single, Paul, wouldn't you want a more science minded way? Because I'm not even thinking about the science behind the application. I'm thinking about the type of person that would gravitate to this type of application. That's what I'm thinking of. And that's the kind of person I would be attracted to is, you know, just on the surface is somebody who is a little more
00:48:22
Speaker
science might and not just scrolling through pictures and swiping right because of a surface physical attraction. I wouldn't mind starting with something like this and seeing where that could go because really, what do you have to lose? Honestly, I think that if I was single, I'd probably go for the shotgun approach. You do live in New York City.
00:48:51
Speaker
Nice, nice. All right. Well, I'm going to say if the links for this and Paul's app and Paul's anti-recommendation, we won't put the links to that in there because it's in the last episode. So if you use this application and you find yourself a partner, invite us to the web. That's all I'm going to say. So we'll send you a gift.
00:49:16
Speaker
All right. Anything else, Paul? No, no. That pretty much exhausts everything I can think of today. There you go. All right. All right. Well, thanks, Paul. And hopefully Jamie can find us some more guests. Again, her contact info is in the show notes for this episode, and you can always contact me or Paul, and we will forward you on to Jamie and our contact info is also in the show notes. So with that, I think we'll say goodbye until next time.
00:49:48
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.
00:50:14
Speaker
This show is produced and recorded by the Archaeology Podcast Network, Chris Webster and Tristan Boyle in Reno, Nevada at the Reno Collective. 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 chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com.
00:50:35
Speaker
Thanks again for listening to this episode and for supporting the Archaeology Podcast Network. If you want these shows to keep going, consider becoming a member for just $7.99 US dollars a month. That's cheaper than a venti quad eggnog latte. Go to archpodnet.com slash members for more info.