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Did someone leave the oven on? - Ep 15
575 Plays1 year ago
Make sure your seatbelt is securely tightened, because this month we're travelling back in time our furthest yet! Matilda is joined by fire expert Femke Reidsma, to talk all about how this essential tool was made and used by our ancient human ancestors. How can you recognise an ancient hearth? Why is it so important to study the first use of fire? When was the first portable lighter? And what exactly is matcha? Tune in to hear the answer to all these questions and more!
Transcripts
For rough transcripts of this episode go to https://www.archpodnet.com/teabreak/15
Links
- ResearchGate (where PDFs of all my Femke’s papers can be requested):
- Hearths Paper
- Neanderthal fire making evidence paper
- Fire hawks paper
- Paper on the calming effect of fire
- Fire chronology in Europe
Guest Contact
- Name: Femke Reidsma
- twitter: @fhreidsma
Contact the Host
- Email: [email protected]
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- twitter: @ArchaeoTeacup
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast and 'Tea Break Time Travel'
00:00:00
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. You're listening to Tea Break Time Travel, where every month we look at a different archaeological object and take you on a journey into their past. Hello and welcome to episode 15 of Tea Break Time Travel. I'm your host, Matilda Ziebrecht, and today I'm savoring a strawberry tea. Very seasonally appropriate, at least here. We're nearly out of the strawberry season.
Tea Preferences of Hosts and Guests
00:00:29
Speaker
Joining me on my tea break today is archaeologist Femke Reizma. Are you also drinking a seasonally appropriate tea, or have you gone the more traditional route? I don't know about that, but I'm drinking an iced matcha. I love that in the summer.
00:00:45
Speaker
Yeah, that sounds very exotic. I tried a matcha latte once, and I just couldn't. Oh, yeah, you need to source that this is going to sound extremely pretentious. You need to source really high quality matcha. Otherwise, it just tastes like chalk, which is awful. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. But once you
00:01:06
Speaker
if that doesn't give you the jitters. Well, to be fair, now I'm thinking about it. The only time I've tried it, I think was when we were having a long drive and we stopped at a gas station thing. Oh, no. Not the match latte because I didn't want to have a coffee. And I thought, that sounds nice. Everyone always goes on and on about how nice much it is. And then it was disgusting, but that probably explains why. Yeah. I mean, that happened to me a few times before I found the nice stuff.
00:01:33
Speaker
Okay. Oh, okay. Oh no. Oh dear. Does that mean I have to go shopping for some nice matcha tea? What a shame.
The Art and Science of Matcha Tea
00:01:40
Speaker
I can share the website that I order it from now. And is it like a powder thing that you add or is it like a tea?
00:01:49
Speaker
So it is ground green tea leaves that I think are grown in the shades in Japan in very specific conditions. And then you mix it in with the right temperature water. It's very sensitive. And then you whisk it with one of those bamboo whisks so it becomes a bit frothy. It's a fun process also.
00:02:11
Speaker
Well, that's the nice thing, right? And that's also, that's why I use loose tea pretty much all the time now, because it's just such a nice little kind of, you know, ritual. They're allowed to use the word ritual as an archaeologist. It's a nice little morning ritual. Yeah, have the tea and set it up and do the kettles. Start your day. Yeah, so I can imagine.
00:02:29
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Good to know, good to know. Okay, well, there you go. We've learned something new already.
Femke's Journey into Archaeology
00:02:35
Speaker
I had no idea about what Matcha was supposed to taste like or what it really was. But even though we both love tea, we are not here to talk about tea. We're here to talk about your speciality, shall we say, in archaeology, which we'll get to in a moment. But first of all,
00:02:51
Speaker
I always like to ask my guests how they first became involved with archaeology because so far we have had no two similar answers. Everyone has a very different path, so I think it's nice to show the diversity. So what was your entrance into the field of archaeology? So I think my journey with archaeology started when I was quite young. So I always knew I wanted to be a scientist because I wanted to understand the world around me. And then I remember going on holiday with my parents to France as a kid.
00:03:21
Speaker
And we visited an archaeology museum and I loved it. And then in the area surrounding the museum, there was an ongoing excavation of some Roman stuff. And then I just realized, wait, these people do this for a living. If this is a thing you can do, then that's what I want to become when I grow up.
00:03:40
Speaker
So then in the years following that I looked into what archaeology was and I got super excited because it mixes the humanities and the natural sciences and I always had an interest in both and I kind of didn't want to choose. And then I thought that I would get into late prehistory because that seemed super fun and that's what I saw most at museums.
00:04:03
Speaker
And then as soon as I arrived at university, I absolutely fell in love with human evolution. So that's the route I took. And the rest is history. Or prehistory. And see, if you're listening in and you also immediately thought of that horrible joke, then you are in the right place.
00:04:23
Speaker
Yeah, only downhill from here in terms of puns. Exactly.
The Interdisciplinary Nature of Archaeology
00:04:28
Speaker
And I find that really fascinating indeed, that you mentioned already that archaeology is the mix between humanities and natural sciences, because I feel like most people don't really think of it like that. They think of it more as kind of an extension of history. But so you were also always interested in the scientific aspect from the start, or did you kind of try to find the science, if that makes sense?
00:04:49
Speaker
So I was interested as a kid, I was interested in biology and physics and that sort of stuff. But yeah, it took me a bit of diving into archaeology to find where I could satisfy that interests, so to say.
00:05:03
Speaker
But luckily, there's lots of scientific techniques that are being used. And those disciplines like biology and geology also play an important role, especially in human evolution studies. And I think it depends so much as well on which, for example, when you're starting out and you're studying which uni you go to. Because I was at Aberdeen Uni for my undergrad, and there the archaeology courses and the archaeology department was in with the geology department, for example. That's how they classified them as the geosciences.
00:05:32
Speaker
whereas I feel like in a lot of other ones there with like in Groningen there with the humanities department you know so yeah and then in Leiden we're a separate faculty where there's a bit of an identity crisis because it's incredible I mean it is yeah it's amazing I think it's also the only archaeology faculty in I think in Europe something like that yeah
00:05:54
Speaker
But yeah, so we have more theoretical archaeologists, we have the sort of hardcore sciences part, and basically everything in between, which is really nice. And I love as well, because I also, for those of us again, I met Femke at Leiden University indeed, that is how I got to know her research. And I love that indeed, you could sort of sit down in the cafeteria and then have a chat with
00:06:17
Speaker
people who were doing the same stuff as you, but they were doing completely different stuff. So, you know, everyone was doing their master's thesis, but everyone was doing it in a completely different topic. Like one person was doing teeth dating techniques, and I was doing amber bead making, and Femka's burning things up. So it was a very interesting mixture of... Yeah, I find that super inspiring, because you get to interact with people who do something that is way outside
00:06:47
Speaker
specialisation. Yeah, definitely. And it also just proves the whole thing that when people ask, oh, you're an archaeologist, so where do you like digging? And you're going, it's not all about digging. I spend lots of time in labs, which is also fun, but sometimes you have to get outside. Yeah, true. I do that with my experimental archaeology. So then I get, I get both without, without needing to dig a hole. I must admit I've spoken on this before about this. I think probably people listening will hate me because I,
00:07:15
Speaker
I'm not the... I like fieldwork in its place occasionally in the sun on a nice cool day. That's the benefit of academic fieldwork mostly, I guess you also went to the Arctic. But we tend to do this in the summer when the weather is nicer. It's nicer, yeah. But anyway, good, okay. Sorry, I've got a bit carried away. I just think that it's very important to highlight that archaeology has so many different facets and different topics within it. And we will talk about this more in the third section as well.
00:07:45
Speaker
But of course, this is a time travel tea break. So if you could travel back anywhere in time, where would you go and why? So this is always a bit of a difficult question for me because human evolution covers such a vast time span.
00:08:01
Speaker
But I'm currently working on a paper where we explore different hypotheses about the earliest active use of fire. So I think right now I would want to travel back about one and a half million years ago to see how Homo erectus might have interacted with fire. I think that would be really fun. And we'll, okay, well, hang on, I'll save that. We'll talk about that again in a minute.
Imagining Early Human Interaction with Fire
00:08:24
Speaker
Because I think that relates a lot to some of the discussion points that I have for section two.
00:08:30
Speaker
But thank you very much for joining me on this tea break today, and we are going to do some time travelling indeed before we sort of talk a little bit more about Femke's specialisation. We're journeying back not quite that far. We're going back around 50,000 years. Night is falling. The sound of cicadas fills the air accompanied by the occasional rumble and roar of various wild animals in the distance.
00:08:52
Speaker
Nearby there's a group of figures huddled around a spot on the ground. It's unsure exactly what kind of figures they are. Crouching low to watch one of the group in his activities. We creep lower to see what's happening and catch sight of a spark leaping from a piece of flint that is struck down with a loud ringing ping. Another strike, another spark, a grunt of frustration from the individual who adjusts the small bundle of dry grass piled carefully below his hands. A few more strikes and suddenly a spark hits true and a tiny plume of smoke rises into the air.
00:09:22
Speaker
The group makes noises of excited encouragement as the finger lifts the smoking bundle of grass and caresses it in his hands, blowing it until a bright orange flame flickers into life, piercing the ever-darkening sky.
00:09:35
Speaker
So today we are looking at fire which is a bit of a contentious one for this podcast because technically I suppose it's not really an artifact but that is something that we will also be discussing further in the next section. So we will get to that soon but first let's have a look as always at the most asked questions on the internet courtesy of Google search and this was particularly difficult this time because
00:09:58
Speaker
trying to put in fire, what fire, where fire, our fire into Google set, comes up with very random results that are completely unrelated to this podcast. But I thought that these might be slightly relevant. So maybe you can still help with these. So the first question, yeah, was what is fire? Which I guess, fair enough, what actually is fire? Yeah, I think that's a good question to start with.
00:10:24
Speaker
So fire is a chemical reaction between heat and organic fuel and oxygen. It requires an input of sufficient heat to reach the ignition temperature of the fuel. And once ignited, the organic components of the fuel are transformed into carbon rich char. So think of charcoal that you put on your barbecue. And during this process, CO2 and other gases are released.
00:10:50
Speaker
And when enough oxygen is available, the char and those gases will oxidize, creating the characteristic glowing embers and the flames.
00:11:00
Speaker
Yeah, so that's, that's what fire is. So the sort of colour that you see is the basically the chemicals, the thing one turning into thing two kind of thing. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Okay. Nice. Excellent. Perfect. And then the the next question kind of relates to this because it's well, both of the next questions relate to this actually. And they are why is fire blue and what fire is the hottest and because indeed you have
00:11:25
Speaker
depending on the heat of the fire, it seems to change color all the time. So what's the deal with that piece? Yeah, exactly. So the main thing relating to fire color is indeed temperature, which then relates to the completeness of the combustion process and the efficiency of the fuel. And as people might know, there's different fire colors. With increasing temperature, you have red, orange, yellow, white, and blue.
00:11:53
Speaker
But the color also relates to the composition of the fuel. So for example, if you add some copper into the process, then you get green flames. So by adding different chemicals, you can also create different colors. And this is what happens in fireworks, for example. Oh, I see.
00:12:11
Speaker
temperature and different chemicals. Which I mean, and that's also all very scientific. There's no way around it. But indeed, it's nice that almost the different colours are a nice visual aid as well, I suppose, for people in the past, for example, who have needed fire to be able to tell how hot something
00:12:33
Speaker
Yeah. And I mean, of course they didn't put a temperature label on it, but I think they knew that if we want to do this task, we need the fire to look like this. And then they knew how to achieve that. Yeah. Which, yeah, because it's, so for fire, you basically need then organic component, oxygen, heat, I assume, of some sort. Yeah. It's called the fire triangle. So those are the three essential components. Okay. Perfect.
00:13:01
Speaker
How would the heat have been created? In the time travel, you had a piece of flint, for example. I've also heard of the drills being? Is that something that could have been used? This is what I see on lots of YouTube videos, but I'm not sure myself. If you want to use flint, you also need a piece of pyrite or marcassite.
00:13:27
Speaker
which is an iron oxide that creates the spark so you strike that material with the flint and then you kind of detach really small pieces and in the sort of the heat that is involved in the strike you produce sparks that then you need to aim at the tinder to actually get that to ignite which is more difficult than you think.
00:13:49
Speaker
And if you want to go a different route, then there's fire drills, which is indeed a piece of wood that you try and drill into as fast as possible into a wooden board, sort of a baseboard, where you then create with the friction, you create sort of a bit of a small ember that you then put on your tinder material. Ah, I see. So you've already kind of created a little bit of fluttering.
00:14:16
Speaker
Yeah, so there's increasing complexity in the type of fire drill, you have a fire bow and there's some other things. Fire production is not necessarily my specialization, so I'm sure there's more tools out there that you could use that are used in bushcraft or used by extent.
00:14:36
Speaker
undergathers. But yeah, this is sort of the basic, the basic options. Yeah, which is just so fascinating, because indeed, it's, it's one of those things that then, yes, you need the triangle, the, you know, what was it, oxygen, organic matter, heat, but then to create the heat, you also need
00:14:53
Speaker
the perfect tools or the perfect combination. And I imagine when things are wet, it also doesn't really work. So the benefit of using flint and pyrite is that at least your tools don't get so wet. You can easily dry them because the moisture doesn't go into the tools, right? But if you use wood, then you're in some trouble.
00:15:16
Speaker
And would, I mean, you've literally just told me that this is a new area of specialisation, so I apologise. No worries. Would the pyrite, for example, I mean, is that commonly found everywhere? Or would there of them be in locations where it was just not environmentally possible to make fire? Or, yeah, do we know about that?
00:15:37
Speaker
I know that there's particular areas where it's found in abundance and then there's other areas where it's more scarce so people would have would have had to look for the material and then assess the quality.
00:15:51
Speaker
So it might have been more difficult to produce fire in certain areas, but what you can also do if you have the fire either created by production or because you took it from a natural source. If you make sure that you keep it going, you can transport those little embers and then just start a new fire in a different location.
00:16:12
Speaker
I've heard about this because wasn't this something with Ötzi, the Iceman that was found in Austria or something? Yeah, but he also had a fire-starting kit on him. Oh, okay, okay.
00:16:24
Speaker
But because I mean the embers, but how? I'm asking you these random questions because surely I'm just thinking of it. I mean, nearly all material that they would have used back then, unless they've made like a stone or I guess a pottery thing to carry them in. But surely the embers would just burn through anything that they carry it in.
00:16:43
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I don't fully understand how this would have worked either. But I mean, there are hunter-gatherers who do this, and there are even groups that knew how to produce fire that then lost the ability to do that, but still are using fire. Okay, interesting. Oh, see, yeah, that's where I think that's where I need to go back in time to, to just see what the first people worked out how to do that. They were like, let's just take this way as well. It burns through that. Oh, what about this? Oh, it burns through that as well. Okay, well, this works.
00:17:12
Speaker
Okay, well... Maybe they just needed the time it writes. This is wrapping up in lots of organic materials and then... By the time it starts to burn through your pouch, this is where you have to set up camp. Yeah, there you go. Once the fire starts, then you didn't stop. The fire dictates where you go. Yeah, it has even more agency than we think. Dictating the lives of people.
00:17:38
Speaker
So, okay, well, so we're getting into section two territory now, so I think we'll have a very quick break, but we will be back soon.
00:17:46
Speaker
So welcome back everybody. So we know a little bit more about fire itself, but Femke, as you are here as our fire human evolution expert, maybe you could tell us even more about it in relation to that. So when I was researching this to try and make the little time travel segment, I did find it very hard to discover exactly when the earliest evidence for fire actually is. So I think even in the original one, it sort of said 1.5 million years, but then we were chatting and you said,
00:18:16
Speaker
not so sure because somewhere else said 50,000 years indeed and that's what I put in but so when is the earliest evidence that we have for fire use or you know what's the discussion around that because it sounds like quite a complicated topic.
00:18:29
Speaker
Yeah, it is. And there is still a lot of discussion about the, um, the earliest use of fire and also about what that then looked like. So if you, if you take a certain definition, then maybe it goes back in time to date X, but then if you take a different definition, it becomes younger or even much older. So the earliest
00:18:51
Speaker
traces with human behavior, so to say. Those date to 1.5, 1.6 million years ago and they're found in Africa, but a few different sites. There's still a bit of discussion about whether that's natural fire, whether these hominins, so in this case mostly Homo erectus, were actually using the fire.
00:19:15
Speaker
or maybe not. So it's important to make sure that the evidence you find is actually heated materials. Then you have to figure out if it's anthropogenic fire use or natural fire. So that makes the earliest evidence a bit complicated. Then when you go to slightly younger periods, but still super old, I guess, for every other type of archaeology, the evidence becomes a bit more easy to interpret.
00:19:46
Speaker
and a bit more solid. So in Europe, good evidence for fire use, like regular widespread fire use goes back at least to 400,000 years ago. There is also some earlier stuff in Europe, but that is more contentious.
00:20:02
Speaker
And then fire production, which we talked about earlier, is very difficult to trace in the archaeological records. And the earliest evidence for that dates to around 50,000 years ago. Okay, so we see the fire in the archaeological record at the 400,000 years ago, even before, but it's unsure whether they were actually creating it at that point.
00:20:23
Speaker
Yeah. And there's different earliest evidence for also in different regions. Okay. But we know that, for example, 400,000 years ago, they were using the fire. What are the signs that can tell us that? So you trace fire in the archaeological record by looking for what we call fire proxies. So that's anything that's affected by heat left behind by the use of fire.
00:20:50
Speaker
If we're lucky, then that preserves in the shape of a hearth, which then makes it very easy to recognize and also to identify that it's human made and used.
Understanding Hearths in the Archaeological Record
00:21:02
Speaker
Preservation is less favorable than we have to work with scattered ash, charcoal, heated bones, some heated lithics, biomolecules in the soil, and then the puzzle becomes a bit more complicated because you have to put those things together and make sure, again, that they're actually heated and that they relate to human behavior.
00:21:23
Speaker
Okay. And so what else could cause those, if it wasn't heated, what else could have happened there kind of thing? So there's certain soil processes that could also stain, for example, bones. So then they would look black, but they're not actually heated. And for organic, other organic materials like plant material, humidification, which is a part of a process in soil formation.
00:21:48
Speaker
What you want if you want to grow plants that sort of thing also creates the the look of. Early charring but then it's again it's not actually heated and there's oxidation processes in sediments that make make it look red which has to do with iron instead of heating so there's there's quite a bit of processes that.
00:22:10
Speaker
result in the same visual characteristics, but then if you take a more closer chemistry look at it, then you'll find that it's not actually heated. Do you then find that there's quite a lot of evidence, shall we say, in inverted covers from kind of previous years of research where they didn't maybe use these scientific methods that now have been disproven? Well, obviously you can't disprove anything in archaeology, but as in
00:22:38
Speaker
The evidence, at least, has been shown to not actually be evidence for fire because it looked like it, but it wasn't chemically viable. Does that make sense? Yes. That's especially the case for material that was excavated in, let's say, the 50s and the 60s, because those techniques, they were available but not as widely used. Some of that, especially the more contentious, very early sites,
00:23:05
Speaker
have been found to not actually involve heating and a more famous
00:23:13
Speaker
I guess maybe only in my field example is the site of Schöningen in Germany where they also found those famous spears and a bunch of butchered animal remains and also what originally was presumed hearth features. There they were round, they were red, there was material sticking out of it, it looked like it had charcoal and the original excavators sort of preserved
00:23:43
Speaker
for more elaborate techniques to become available to really check if they were heated. And then someone did about 10 years ago, and she actually found that they were not hearths. They were the formation of other soil processes like oxidation, iron content, and some humidification of materials. And so there were some bones in there as well, and they were just not heated at all.
00:24:10
Speaker
Oh, okay. So, oh, that's so disappointing. Yeah. Yeah. Cause that would have, yeah, it would have been really cool to have something that old really be, and also something that really looked like a hearth. So even with those, you sometimes have to be careful. Indeed, because so a hearth is generally like a, like a pit in the ground or I mean, what, what's the sort of general identifying features would you say? They can also be, so a fireplace can be built on a flat surface. So then in that case, you'll see
00:24:42
Speaker
spherical signature in the sediment of red and soil. And then there's a layer of char, which is the char plant material that was in or on the surface of what the fire was built on. Then a layer of ash.
00:25:00
Speaker
which relates to either the fuel or burning of the topsoil. And then there might be some some charcoal and stuff in there. Maybe there's some stones around it. Sometimes people indeed dug shallow pits or deeper
00:25:16
Speaker
pits that then are filled with heated material. Which I guess is the same as you'd see on a campsite nowadays, if people have tidied away their fire. So I suppose it's one of those things that just hasn't really changed. There's only so many ways to build a house, I suppose. Yeah, and not to get too technical again. But if you think about fire as the application of heat energy,
00:25:39
Speaker
then there's different types to contain that heat and also different types to spread heat. And one type of fire is not necessarily more efficient, or I should say one type of campfire is not necessarily more efficient at radiating that heat than
00:25:58
Speaker
a different type. So that might actually indicate cultural choices rather than functional ones. Interesting. So there's typologies, fire typologies, which relates a little bit to another question I had, because indeed, some people might be listening in and thinking, why are they talking about fire? I thought that this podcast was about archaeological objects.
00:26:20
Speaker
in the past. But the reason that we are having this particular episode is because, as I say, I know Femke from Leiden, and we were having a chat about my podcast, and she was saying, well, fire is an object. And I was going, is it? She said, yes, of course it is. So I thought we could unpack that a little bit on here. And I thought, indeed, it's an interesting concept. I mean, what defines an archaeological artifact? So to you, fire is indeed an artifact.
00:26:45
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's both a chemical, it's definitely a chemical process, right? But I also think it's an artifact. And for the purpose of this question, I Googled the definition of an artifact. So according to dictionary.com, which to be fair is not an archeological source, but this is, I guess, the generally accepted definition of an artifact. It said.
00:27:09
Speaker
something made or given shape by a human being, such as a tool or a work of art, I like that they mentioned that, especially an object of archaeological interest. And then it also says anything manmade. And I think this already supports my argument that fire is an artifact, because it's not like it's not an object per se, or at all. Well, although you can carry it around with you, apparently. Yeah, that might be the definition of an object. Yeah.
00:27:39
Speaker
But it is definitely a tool that is used for lots of different things. And when it's actively used, it's shaped by humans. It's eventually also produced by humans. When it preserves as a recognizable feature, like a hearth, it can be classified in terms of typology, like other artifacts. Exactly, as we were just saying. And then as with other artifacts, we want to know how it was made and what it was used for.
00:28:08
Speaker
that makes it an artifact. Yeah, I mean, we've persuaded me. I think it's, yeah, and like you say, it's a tool, right? In a way. Yeah. Sort of something. Although that does then, there's a couple of things. Okay, so, okay, maybe first of all, because you just mentioned it, so we've already talked quite a bit about how it was made, but how indeed would it have been used, do you think by, for example, those earliest, I think you mentioned Homo erectus, I guess, also,
00:28:36
Speaker
how many other stylists would have been using it, and then of course homo sapiens. Can we identify what it was used for, basically? Yes, this is a great question, and also one that's still very hotly not intended.
00:28:53
Speaker
Oh, it's hotly debated. No, there's endless puns. It's terrible. My apologies to all listeners. Anyway. They're loving it. So based on ethnographic studies,
Fire's Multifaceted Roles in Human History
00:29:12
Speaker
and also modern use of fire. We know that it can be used for lots of different things, right? So it can be used for cooking, it can be used to provide light, it can be used to provide heat, it can be used to ward off insects or predators, it's used in ritualistic settings.
00:29:33
Speaker
It's used as a tool to shape and produce other materials. Most of those things also apply to the past. There's also sociological evidence or evidence studies that show that sitting around a campfire has a calming effect on people, so it lowers your blood pressure.
00:29:54
Speaker
And then it makes people more social. I have no idea how that works, but this is what those studies show. And then not a sociologist. And then there's also, it's been suggested that it played a role in the development of language.
00:30:12
Speaker
Some of those functions are easier to identify in the archaeological record than others, because the development of language obviously does not leave physical traces. No, not until history. And we assume that they were speaking, I guess, a lot earlier than they started. But some of these other things you might be able to directly trace. So step one is finding evidence for fire.
00:30:38
Speaker
And then from there, you would want to, if we go back to fire use being the application of heat energy to a specific task,
00:30:48
Speaker
you'd want to know what the characteristics of that fire were, because cooking requires a different temperature than, let's say, iron smelting. You wouldn't want to cook your chicken at the temperature. No, definitely not. There would be no chicken left. And then a fire that needs to provide light, needs flames, whereas again, a cooking fire is more glowing embers.
00:31:14
Speaker
And then if you want to produce tar as an adhesive, then you need a reducing environment. So an environment that is almost depleted of oxygen. So if you are able to reconstruct the characteristics of a fire, so the temperature and the oxygen availability, then that might give you clues as to what it was used for.
00:31:36
Speaker
Yeah. And then the other thing you could do is look, obviously look at the context because there's other evidence for human behavior around this evidence of fire, hopefully. Bring that in. And then also maybe look for biomolecules in the soil because they might be related to processing of plants rather than animals. And I worked on a, on material from a site in France where they had preserved hearths that dated back to the
00:32:06
Speaker
our nation and the Gretin, so that is 40,000 years ago to, let's say, 25,000 years ago. And then we saw that in certain periods, there were more biomolecules related to animal material. And then in other periods, all of a sudden that changed, or all of a sudden it changed overnight, 10,000s of years.
00:32:32
Speaker
It's changed to a signature that was much more dominated by plant material. Now, that you can speculate what this means, but something changed and that might have to do with the way they used those hearths.
00:32:48
Speaker
Which makes sense, I mean that's sort of like so many things that you have I guess or well I suppose with us it's sort of different I'm trying to think of a modern comparison in terms of like what's in the kitchen like you know the oven but I guess the ovens have changed as well but
00:33:02
Speaker
Well, but then, I guess if it's like a gas oven or an electric oven or an induction, say, you know, at the stovetop, I mean, then maybe you'd approach things in different ways, or you'd make things in different ways. I don't think I'm making sense. And as with an oven, which I think is, I mean, it is again, the application of heat to a specific task, it's used for different things.
00:33:25
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, we tend to only put food in it, but it's different types of food. You might bake a cake and then the next day you might roast a chicken. Right. Yeah. My daughter has one of those little heat animal things, you know, that you can put like, usually we put it in the microwave, but technically it says on the label, you could put it in the oven at like a very, very, very low temperature and it will like be nice and warm. Yeah. Or like, like I remember as a kid, I had these,
00:33:53
Speaker
cast like gypsum into a mold and then that had to somehow be low temperature baked. And then you could like paint those or paint those figurines. The other point I was going to make is, no worries, is that like ovens,
00:34:17
Speaker
fire in the past or a hearth in the past would have also been used for all of those tasks in sort of the same location for an extended period of time. Yeah. So that makes it a bit more difficult.
00:34:30
Speaker
Right. It's a really pinpoint one type of behavior. So it's not like they had a chicken cooking oven and, I don't know, copper working up well, I guess they would have had different ovens for copper working, but like a salad cooking oven or something. Why do you do cook up a salad and oven? You know what I mean. Stir fries and courgettes and put it in your salad. So yeah, in later periods, younger periods,
00:34:57
Speaker
Eventually, technology became a bit more specialized, so then you would have cooking
00:35:07
Speaker
aren't smelting. I guess they're also called kilns. See, this is where I get confused because it's outside of my human evolution. Fairness, that's the word I was looking for. Yes, there we go. It's also probably different in every language. Which again relates to it relates to temperature. But yeah, if you if all you have is a hearth,
00:35:31
Speaker
Yeah, then you'd use that for all these different applications and use it for the entire duration of your occupation of a certain area. And maybe when you're on the hunt or when you're foraging, you might quickly start a fire to cook your lunch, which they do have ethnographic evidence for. It's very quick.
00:35:53
Speaker
or modern, I think it's aboriginals that just like quickly start a fire to light a cigarette and then move on. So that's maybe something to consider for the archaeological record as well, right? So we tend to focus on sites that have a lot of
00:36:10
Speaker
evidence for occupation, but there might be evidence for human behavior scattered throughout the landscape that we're missing. That's the case in so many aspects of occupation. There's so many things out there potentially. I did have one other question related a bit to what we were saying before. When we were originally talking about it being potentially 1.5 million years ago, and you mentioned that was with Homo erectus. Since then, there's been quite a few different
00:36:39
Speaker
human species. I can't remember off the top of my head what they all are, but hopefully you can enlighten us. So do we know that they would have been, or do we imagine that they would have been using it for different purposes as well? Because for example, when I picture Homo erectus, I remember they were the tool makers, right? They were the first tool makers.
00:37:01
Speaker
Originally, that's Homo habilis. But then now the first accepted, I guess, maybe not by everyone, tools date back to, I think, 3 million years ago. Wow. Okay. So that's like, that's way, way, way earlier. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which is like twice as. And then it's a bit unclear what species that is actually associated with because
00:37:27
Speaker
Yeah, you need, if there's multiple species around at a specific time, you really need human remains associated with the tools to be absolutely sure. And even then, it's cause for discussion. But anyway, can we see that, because I think, I don't know, I can imagine it also for many people listening in, maybe you sort of have this assumption of, for example, Homo erectus, and yes, maybe they were using tools, but it was sort of,
00:37:56
Speaker
they're still walking around naked and they're eating raw meat and all of this is the classic stereotype of the caveman look or whatever. Is that the case or do we know that they were, for example, using fire to cook? Because the evidence for Homo erectus is quite contentious, there's not a lot of agreement on even if they use fire, let alone what they would be using fire for.
Fire's Influence on Human Evolution
00:38:27
Speaker
However, a bunch of theories, and the main and most well-known one, it's also been in popular science books, so maybe some of the listeners will recognize this, is linking Homo erectus values to cooking foods that then would have
00:38:46
Speaker
facilitate it, the brain growth that we see in that species, because there's a leap in that does sound familiar. Yeah. Okay. But then you need, so this is sort of a more evolutionary anthropology take on the, on the subjects, but then you need the archeological evidence to support that, which is the bed. That's where it gets a bit more difficult, but we could think of the earliest fire use as
00:39:14
Speaker
probably related to food because if you think about other animals using or let's say making use of fire, there's a bush fire and then there's certain birds that pick up burning branches and drop them somewhere else so they can chase out prey animals and they become easier to catch. Yeah. Interesting. There are reports of
00:39:44
Speaker
other primates going to the location of a natural fire after it's extinguished and foraging basically for toasted nuts and maybe some, this is going to sound a bit harsh, some toasted animals. I mean, why not we would? So if we imagined this happening around the time of Homo erectus, they would have observed maybe that same behavior, but they would have
00:40:13
Speaker
I think the first thing they would have observed is the benefits in terms of food that it gives you. So that might mean that they would take the fire and then try to cook their food or maybe they would burn the landscape like these birds because then they would have access to the toasted nuts and the toasted animals whenever they wanted.
00:40:42
Speaker
Oh, fascinating. Yeah, but I mean, all of that is quite hard to prove, especially landscape fire use, which we also have ethnographic evidence for. Yeah. Because of course, it looks the same as natural fires. Yeah. So you need a really good context to be able to say, it's probably manmade landscape fire and not
00:41:07
Speaker
just a natural fire. You want a little note written being like, Zog made this fire or something. This reminds me of now this might be a bit of a dated theory. It reminds me of a theory that I read about recently where they were talking about Neanderthals specifically and how they were
00:41:28
Speaker
doing almost seasonal fire use, because indeed, during the winter months, there wasn't as much naturally occurring fire, and they weren't as able to produce fire themselves, so they had to use the naturally created stuff. So actually, the hearths that they see are only in summer and spring months. Is this still a sort of theory that is rife within the kind of pale archaeology community? Or is that a bit dated now?
00:41:54
Speaker
It's definitely still promoted by the people who originally suggested it, but it's a massive point of discussion, at least within the group of people that I work with. There's some things that we need to consider for this evidence. It's based on two sites where they indeed found
00:42:22
Speaker
abundant fire evidence in the warmer layers, so where the climate was a bit nicer, and then much less or even no fire evidence for the layers that relate to a glacial period. However, this might also be an artifact of preservation.
00:42:41
Speaker
because the circumstances in the sedimentation and all of that and the processes in the soil might have varied depending on the climate that the material was deposited in. That's one thing. Then there might be a factor of
00:43:09
Speaker
could be all sorts of things. Yeah. Had the scattered throughout the landscape fires that we discussed on the earth? Yeah. Or because the animals are also cold adapted, maybe they decided not to use the fire to keep warm, because that is also an assumption, right? That you would need the fire to stay warm in these glacial periods. But what if they were using it for something else? And keeping warm wasn't the main focus of their fires. And maybe they, I don't know, there was some sort of task that they did in
00:43:39
Speaker
Warmer periods that required the fire and there was less of a need for that in colder periods who knows The thing about the fire production is that we then have to look for evidence for it, right? So we want to find the tools
00:43:54
Speaker
And one of my colleagues actually found those tools, and lots of them, associated with Neanderthals at various sites in France, dating to 50,000 years ago.
Neanderthals and Fire-Making Abilities
00:44:04
Speaker
So we know that at least some Neanderthals in the same region were regularly producing fire. And so the fun thing about this evidence is that they used hand axes.
00:44:18
Speaker
I guess was their preferred multipurpose tool anyway. Instead of what you'd think about as like a strike light where you have like a flake or a blade that you then used to strike it. So the evidence looks different than it looks in more recent periods, which is potentially why it was up until that paper quite difficult to trace it back in time. If you're not looking for the right evidence, you won't find it.
00:44:45
Speaker
Absolutely, yeah. Which I mean, could again be the case with so many things, right? In archaeology, it's just that we don't know what it's supposed to look like or what it would look like in the past.
00:44:55
Speaker
And in terms of fire use, therefore I think it's super important to keep that chemistry in mind because if you understand the chemistry, you will have a better understanding of what types of materials are left behind by specific types of fire and how well those different materials might preserve.
00:45:16
Speaker
And then from that, we can start to make, to build hypotheses about the fire news instead of the other way around. Yeah. Amazing. Well, which leads us nicely to our next section, actually. So we will have a very quick break now so that our listeners can have an opportunity to top up their tea, but we will be back soon.
00:45:35
Speaker
So, welcome back everyone. I hope that the teacups are now full and the biscuit jar emptier. So, Famke, we did already introduce you a bit in the first section and how you got into archaeology, but I thought it might be interesting, especially with all this talk of science and the importance of looking for scientific evidence in archaeological research. We could go into a bit more detail about that aspect and also looking at kind of human evolution and that sort of deep history, shall we say.
00:46:01
Speaker
I mean, first of all, if we just go right, right back to the beginning, I mentioned already that, you know, a lot of people associate archaeology with digging and excavation, but you mentioned that you do a lot of lab work. Did you still start out as the kind of classic field archaeologist student, shall we say in that respect? Yeah, I definitely did a lot of, I got a lot of excavation experience throughout my studies and I've done some excavations as well after graduating, which is nice to not fully lose touch with the actual
00:46:35
Speaker
And I love excavating. I think it's amazing to really have your hands on the context that the materials come from and to be so close to the past, I guess. And indeed, that's a good point you mentioned in the context. And by context, perhaps you could sort of explain very briefly what you mean by that.
00:46:58
Speaker
in terms of archaeological. So it's sort of the direct association of physical objects? Or how would you describe context? Yeah, I think that's a good starting point. So to me, context is the combination of the tools and the materials that people in the past have left behind, and the natural environment that it then gets deposited in. So the
00:47:29
Speaker
getting, if you will. Which indeed we were talking, I just realised that we've talked a lot about context in this episode, but it hasn't actually been defined anywhere. So it was probably good to mention it now. Yeah, sorry, everyone. But I think most people by now, if they've listened to this podcast for long enough, they sort of know the general terminology.
00:47:48
Speaker
I can imagine it's very important that you've mentioned a couple of examples where it's like, okay, we have this evidence, but if you look at the context, it means this, or we don't have evidence. But if you look at the context, it does mean this. So would you say that it's still very important, even if you're doing lab based scientific work to, like you say, keep your hand in with excavation? Or do you think that it's not necessary?
00:48:09
Speaker
I guess technically you don't have to do the excavating yourself if you do this type of research, but I do think it helps at least to visit those sites, to see where the evidence was found, how it spatially relates to other things, because it does help you not get stuck in the chemistry and related to the
00:48:33
Speaker
material. Yeah, definitely. And as you say, the environment, especially in the theme of fire, for example, the environment is such an important aspect as well, it seems. And do you think so? You're now kind of more involved in the archaeological science aspect. You mentioned that you always sort of wanted to get more involved with that in the beginning. This is something that I have
00:48:57
Speaker
never felt personally, but that might be because I'm a lab person as well. So I never had the feeling that people who work in the lab are seen as less archaeological, if that makes sense, than people in the field by the rest of the archaeological community. But as someone who had experience with both,
00:49:17
Speaker
Have you had that experience? Would you say that there's a little bit of an almost a stigma for archaeological scientists or lab work or post excavation or whatever you want to call it? Not in my field I would say because with human evolution studies
00:49:32
Speaker
Because so little in the grand scheme of things, evidence preserves. Applying those techniques to get the most information out, the limited amount of evidence that we have, has always been a thing. And the context is important. Geological context is important. It's important for those dating techniques are important. The processes that alter the context
00:50:01
Speaker
become very important for the back in time you go. So I think for human evolutions, all of those
00:50:09
Speaker
humanities questions and natural sciences techniques in very broad spectrum have always gone hand in hand. So I don't feel any stigma towards that at all. I mean, like I said, I've never had it either. It was just I think I was chatting to some people, or some people were introducing themselves and saying, Oh, I'm a lab archaeologist, don't hate me. You know, I know it's not proper archaeology. And I was going, wait, what? Yes, it is. What are you talking about? It's, yeah.
00:50:36
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it's a very important part of making sense of the fieldwork side. And we wouldn't be able to do the lab work if the fieldwork didn't exist, but we wouldn't be able to interpret the field if we don't have all those lab techniques. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, very complimentary indeed. I think that's a nice way to put it. You can't have one without the other in a lot of cases, I think. Exactly. And yeah, you mentioned especially with then kind of looking at human evolution. So we've already talked a bit about how it's
00:51:05
Speaker
can be different from other regions in terms of it's just so far. I mean, it boggles the mind really. If I try to think about it, it's wow. I don't think I can really grasp exactly. I think I read somewhere it was like Neanderthals have been around, had already been around for longer than we have been around so far before we came along or something like that.
00:51:30
Speaker
like that, which you're like, wait, that just doesn't make sense. But what do you find is particularly different about that field of research compared to your experience in other kinds of archaeology?
Connecting with Ancient Hominins
00:51:41
Speaker
So I think what characterizes human evolution studies is that we ask really big questions about really big themes in human evolution, with very little evidence.
00:51:51
Speaker
I mean, if you compare that to later periods, and this is a discussion that I've had with artic archaeology where they were like, well, I don't know how this works. Is this reliable? Are you even able to say anything because you don't have any evidence as compared to, let's say, the Roman period or late prehistory?
00:52:13
Speaker
material, which sometimes also makes it a lot more confusing. But this is me sort of poking to the other side. But if you have a limited amount of evidence, you have to get really creative with how you tackle that. And I think this is why most of the application of natural sciences techniques start out in my field and then sort of gradually work their way into other sides of archaeology.
00:52:44
Speaker
Yeah, because indeed they can really make a difference. I mean, they can make a difference everywhere, but they could really make a difference in looking at human evolution.
00:52:53
Speaker
But also, like you said, those time spans, they're difficult to comprehend. It's millions of years. I mean, yeah. We get comfortable with it because that's all we do. But you also have to realize that then the margin of error and the resolution you have, it's not great. Or at least it's very different compared to later periods. So there are certain questions you won't be able to answer because you simply do not have the resolution for it.
00:53:23
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. So there's a lot of, it could be, it could be this, but it could not be. Like we don't even know if certain hearths are contemporaneous to the tools that we find in the same layer. Right. Because those layers might be tens of thousands of years. Yeah. Which makes hearths a very interesting snapshot.
00:53:46
Speaker
because they might have been used for a long period of time, but not thousands of years. Yeah. Yeah. So it's, yeah. Well, although you never know, maybe, maybe there is the ultimate often that, you know, it's just perfect and people just kept using it for thousands of years. They are still using it. Yes, exactly.
00:54:06
Speaker
Yeah, you never know. And I can imagine that that also makes it even more difficult. I mean, I find it bad enough. And I do sort of prehistory, kind of latest prehistory, I suppose, is that whole idea that, you know, yes, they were still people, but at the same time, they lived in a completely different
00:54:26
Speaker
world that we do now both kind of culturally and environmentally and all this kind of stuff. And so you have to, you know, remove yourself a little bit and any interpretations you make, you have to try and remove your modern bias, so to speak. And that's just looking at late prehistory humans like homo sapiens. But I can imagine if you're looking at other species of humans and things like that, it gets, is it
00:54:50
Speaker
more difficult to sort of feel that connection? Do you feel like you're more, how to say, more removed, kind of emotionally, shall we say, from the people you're looking at? Or would you say that's still an important factor, if that makes sense? That's a very good point.
00:55:11
Speaker
I, so personally, I feel very connected to the hominins we study because I love them and I love learning about them. And I think it's so cool that we can go so far back in time and really trace our, our origins. That being said, they are not, they're not us. Yeah. Yeah. So we don't know if the, if things worked the same way that those are all assumptions, but you
00:55:40
Speaker
to keep this in mind, but not let it limit your ability to study the past too much, because otherwise we just won't get anywhere. Which is also just a problem in archaeology in general, right? That whole thing of, I remember chatting to someone and they sort of said, Oh, what do you love most about archaeology? And I said, Oh, what I actually love most is that we can never really know, you know, what exactly happened.
00:56:02
Speaker
they were going, well, but how can you get any satisfaction then? Because surely if you can never know, then you never get that sort of sense of release, you know, of being sure about something. And I mean, that's, again, just for late prehistory. But again, for human evolution, and that kind of, yeah, Pleistocene archaeology, I guess, it's even more the case. So my trick to balance it out,
00:56:31
Speaker
And people might be able to guess this is focusing on the natural processes. Because those are universal and you can measure them and you can understand them. And then from there you can
00:56:44
Speaker
trying and approach the archaeology and indeed we'll never be sure but we can get close maybe. We could say maybe things that might potentially also perhaps. I mean and science in general is aimed at finding the best
00:57:05
Speaker
explanation for something with the available evidence and then changing those explanations if new evidence comes available. So that's no different for archaeology. The only problem we have is that we cannot go back to check if it's actually true or ask anyone.
00:57:22
Speaker
which is such a shame. It would be so useful. If time travel was real, that would be great. But then we might also all loser jobs. Exactly. I mean, archaeology would be a bit obsolete then. We don't want that either. No, exactly. Well, I think we can be safe in the knowledge that probably time travel will never be invented because surely we would have met someone by now.
00:57:45
Speaker
Yeah, oh, that's yeah, you would have timed your whole paradox, right? You would think it was that's that's the whole thing. No. If you know if anyone invents time travel, come back to this moment and say something.
00:57:57
Speaker
Yeah. OK, cool. That's fine. But I did have one kind of sort of final question on this topic, because indeed, it's sort of a very specialized area that you're in now. It's human evolution, but it's looking at fire and human evolution, and it's looking at the chemical processes of fire and human evolution. What would you say are kind of the advantages and the disadvantages of such a specialization? Like, for example, do you think that you are now very much in that niche? Do you think that you could
00:58:27
Speaker
also then change to Roman archaeology tomorrow if you needed to.
The Value of Niche Research in Archaeology
00:58:31
Speaker
What's the kind of range of specialization that you get to at this stage? I think it's helpful to have a specialization because it gives you something to really sink your teeth in and to focus on and to build your academic profile around. People will also know if we have questions about this topic, we go to this person. That's why you're here today as well.
00:58:55
Speaker
Or some other people who are specializing in the same thing. That being said, if you choose something that is very niche and that not a lot of other people do, then you run the risk of your colleagues not knowing where to put you. Which is a problem I run into because not a lot of people approach fire from a chemical perspective. So I'm really trying to promote this way of thinking.
00:59:24
Speaker
I mean, I guess most specializations probably started out like that. So there's a lot of research going on about fire, but people tend to take different approaches. Then for what I do, because I study fundamental processes, so just natural things that are, they're always, they always work fundamentally in the same way. Fire is always a fire that follows certain rules. And so is, so the other aspect of my research is preservation,
00:59:54
Speaker
There are certain rules that
01:00:00
Speaker
you understand those processes, that those data and techniques can then be applied to any other period. So I could indeed decide tomorrow that I want to research Roman fires and then all of my stuff can just be transferred. I don't want to do that, but I could give my data and tools to other people who would then be able to do that. And I think that's the strength of fundamental research.
01:00:30
Speaker
And you mentioned a little bit of, you know, that indeed not many people now are doing chemical analysis of fire or however you would like to say it, but because I can imagine that a lot of people might think that, oh, but someone's already doing that, you know, or, oh, that's a very niche, you know, say there's an archaeology student listening in going, oh, I'd love to do fire and in human evolution, but Femke is already doing that. So that's already being done. Do you think that's,
01:00:57
Speaker
a valid supposition? Or would you encourage people even if other people are already doing it to do the same topic, do something slightly different? What would your advice be to that potential archaeology student? If you're excited about a topic, go for it. And then you'll find the thing, the question, the technique, the combination of those things that hasn't been done yet and that you can focus on. I also think there's a certain threshold
01:01:24
Speaker
If the specialization is extremely niche, there might be five people doing it, and then it does feel a little bit like, oh, but they're already doing it. Why should I go in the same direction? If the specialization is a bit broader and there's lots of people are doing it in lots of different countries, then that also, I think, makes you feel that there's more space for everyone. Because there's also so much archaeology that we cannot possibly have one person do all of it.
01:01:50
Speaker
So it's helpful if we have more of the same specialists, so that we can divide the workload and also find different questions to answer because everyone has their own, I think, perspective on the past and preferences and different methods. So yes, because you were talking about imagination being so vital. So I can imagine that also has a would be very beneficial. Yeah, exactly.
01:02:14
Speaker
developing techniques, coming up with different questions, building on existing work. Those of you listening in who want to do this but with feeling, oh no, people are already doing it, that's fine. Just have your own take on it. What I would also like to add is don't be afraid of the chemistry. If you're interested in it, I had no background in chemistry. I took it for
01:02:37
Speaker
a little bit in high school, then I dropped it, ironically, should not have done that. But then I just decided this is what I want to do. I'll work towards understanding the parts that I need to be able to do this. And yeah, it takes some extra work and sometimes I run into
01:02:59
Speaker
Is this very complex or am I just missing some of the basics that would have made this an easy solution? But you can always work through that. There's literature, there's other specialists that you can talk to.
01:03:12
Speaker
Yeah, if you want to do something, just go for it.
Femke's Future Research Plans and Conclusion
01:03:15
Speaker
No, I think that's a very nice thing to potentially end the podcast on, although I did also want to ask, because I understand you're continuing your research into fire with Postdoc. Are there any hints that you have on exciting discoveries or research questions that you're going to be discussing or researching further? So my PhD work focused a lot on method development. So I was in the lab a lot working with modern materials.
01:03:42
Speaker
So i'm very excited to start and applying that knowledge in those data and techniques to more archaeology and also to explore other methods and other proxies to answer this yeah other questions about fire so i'd like to explore.
01:04:02
Speaker
landscape fire use and see if we can use biomarkers, so molecules in sediments to get some extra information about this very difficult to trace behavior.
01:04:17
Speaker
So there's lots of exciting ideas on the horizon. And then now I need to figure out which ones I'm going to do and where and how. Yes, it's exciting. Yeah, very exciting. Well, good luck with all of those things. That marks the end of our tea break. It sounds like you've got a lot to do. So I should let you get back to it. But thank you so, so much for joining me today. I really appreciate it. You're very welcome.
01:04:42
Speaker
Thank you very much. And if anyone wants to find out more about Femka's work or research into fire or anything that we've chatted about today, do check the show notes on the podcast homepage. I will be putting up some links there. So yes, I hope that everyone enjoyed our journey today very lot. I think this is the deepest we've ever gone back in time. Oh, wow. I'm sorry. No, it was good. It was great. So yeah, enjoy and see you next month for another episode of Tea Break Time Travel.
01:05:11
Speaker
I hope that you enjoyed our journey today. If you did, make sure to like, follow, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and I'll see you next month for another episode of Tea Break Time Travel.
01:05:22
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his RV traveling the United States, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, DigTech LLC, Cultural 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.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.