Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Our Ruined Lives with Simon Radchenko - Ep 34
326 Plays5 years ago
For this episode of Our Ruined Lives, we are interviewing Mr. Simon Radchenko. Simon is a Ukrainian archaeologist pursuing his Ph.D in Archaeology at the University of Turin in Italy. Most importantly, Simon is the reason that Carlton had such a wonderful experience in Ukraine, during the pre-covid summer of 2019. We chat with him about his first interaction with Carlton and then delve into post-communism archaeology in Ukraine. We finish up talking about the New Archaeological School.
Link
- Instagram for New Archaeological School: @new_archaeological_school
- Website for New Archaeological School
Contact
- Email: alifeinruinspodcast@gmail.com
- Instagram: @alifeinruinspodcast
- Facebook: @alifeinruinspodcast
- Twitter: @alifeinruinspod
- Website: www.alifeinruins.com
Support
Affiliates
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Guest Background
00:00:00
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.
00:00:15
Speaker
Welcome to episode 34 of A Life in Ruins podcast, where we investigate the careers of those living in life in ruins. I'm your host Carlton Gover, and I am joined by my co-host Connor Johnin and David Ian Howe. So for this episode of Our Ruin Lives, we are interviewing Mr. Simon Radchenko. Simon is a Ukrainian archaeologist pursuing his PhD in archaeology at the University of Turin in Italy.
00:00:36
Speaker
And most importantly, Simone is the reason that I had such a wonderful experience in Ukraine during the pre-COVID summer of 2019. Simone, how are you doing this glorious Saturday morning for us and afternoon for
First Impressions and Cultural Similarities
00:00:49
Speaker
you in Italy? Well, I'm great. Thank you. And thanks for having me, gentlemen. Yeah, dude. Been very excited to have you on for a while now. And I'm glad we finally had the opportunity. Yeah, that's great. I really appreciate it. And I really wanted to be a part of Life in Ruined podcast as a guest for a while.
00:01:06
Speaker
Well, we're super excited to have you on. If you don't mind starting off, could you explain your first response to Carlton, like the first meeting him? What was your first reaction? I would love to know that. Well, what I can recall that we all at this Ukrainian site and so on, we thought that it will be much more complicated to find the, I don't know, mutual understanding because we thought that it is
00:01:32
Speaker
more or less different kind of tradition. And then when Carlton arrived, we asked him, like, what's your habitation during the excavation procedure? How, I don't know, what drinks do you drink? What's the evening in archaeological expedition in the USA looks like? And then it's just all the same. It's all the same, except we did the neolithic archaeology with Shaolin and Carlton asked, where are my troubles? That's it.
00:02:03
Speaker
Yeah, it was. I remember the first time I met you was at that cafe after I got off the bus and I was with Kudra and Anton. And you sat down with us and Kudra was like, oh, he speaks English. I was like, oh, you do. And you're like, yeah, not very well. And he kind of like waved me off and he kept talking. I was like, OK, sweet. And it turned out you're the one of the people at the site that do English the most. And I think that first night people were asking like, yeah, well, you know, it might be different here in Ukraine. But, you know, after work, we like we like to drink a lot and we like to go hang out by the campfire. And I'm like,
00:02:32
Speaker
Yeah, sweet. That's what we do in the U.S. too. And that's obviously the best option to, yeah, from visual deliberation, we should understand it. It's drinking and camping. You don't need to mess more. Exactly. Exactly.
Early Archaeology Journey and GIS Expertise
00:02:45
Speaker
So, yeah, just real quick, Simon, could you give us a brief background about yourself, where you've gone to school, and what got you into archaeology in the first place?
00:02:56
Speaker
I remember that my first archaeological season was, I guess, 2006. So I was 11. And that was because my parents decided that they want to get rid of me during summer. So they found the organization Ukraine that provides the kids with the possibility to excavate and to have an archaeological experience. So I go there for a week or two and it was early medieval site.
00:03:27
Speaker
I was too young, so I was allowed just to throw a soil out of excavation trench and then check if there's something little in the soil. That sounds awesome. Yeah, it was so exciting. However, I really liked it and I wanted to go the next year and the year after that. And it was like the tradition that every year I'm coming there
00:03:51
Speaker
for more and more time. And well, that's how I more or less grew up in these situations, though I switched off to prehistory quite soon after that. And I never graduated as an archaeologist. When I finished the high school, I thought about that, but my boss, Oleg, he advised me to avoid archaeology as a profession.
00:04:22
Speaker
which is not really a bad advice if we're talking about Ukraine. So yeah, I started to work to study as a JS expert, and then just discovered that JS is quite needed in Ukrainian archaeology and in archaeology in general. So I just started to apply this geinformatics system for the provisional archaeology and master it like this. That's the story. And then more in archaeology.
00:04:51
Speaker
Very cool. Yeah. And I got advised very early on as well to, if you want to make money, don't go into archaeology. Yeah. But having a skill like GIS is a way to make things work. And how did you apply GIS to some of the sites you were working on?
Challenges and Innovations in Ukrainian Archaeology
00:05:13
Speaker
Well, when I worked on my master, I sort of created a 3D database for all that had been excavated on the Elitik site on Kamnezavania, this OBK one, and then provided the boss with
00:05:28
Speaker
kind of extrapolation of shapes and contours and sedimentation history of the site. And then we started to create some kind of concept of stratigraphic units for this site. So moved from the observation in the field to some extrapolation procedures from the computer. Then I sort of discovered the stratigraphic
00:05:57
Speaker
points and stratigraphic interrelations between different objects on numerous size, for Ukrainian prehistory as one, two, three, maybe five of them already. And there's every time something new, that's it. And in Ukraine, it's quite easy to be a GFX specialist in archaeology, because I don't think we even have five of them, at least for prehistory archaeology. So the field is quite empty.
00:06:29
Speaker
That's something I picked up while I was there was that like Ukrainian archeology, I want to consider it the wild, wild West, but in terms of like, it's just a really open field for people that if you have a specialization to really carve a niche for yourself. And I think you've, you've have found that Simona with, with GIS especially.
00:06:49
Speaker
Our college has suggested Ukraine is an open field and you have really prospects here if you have some fresh ideas. And yeah, I feel it because there's no G.S. in Ukrainian ecology. Well, now it's much better than I guess seven or eight years ago, but still. And there's no photogrammetry for Ukrainian ecology except three, four cases. So yeah, the field is so clear. I can do whatever I want and it will be unique. Do you have space for a Westerner with questionable morals?
00:07:23
Speaker
I was making fun of myself and offering myself as a GIS specialist out here with questionable moral compass. I guess you can try to join us and we'll see what we can do with that. Awesome. So I guess it kind of blows my mind that you were
00:07:45
Speaker
I think Carlton had mentioned this before, that archaeology and history is kind of a community activity, right? So you started very, very young in archaeology. Is that pretty common? Well, in Ukraine, it's much more common than all around the world, because it's Ukraine. Because every archaeologist, I mean research fellow, he needs to
00:08:08
Speaker
invent something cool to produce the resource to excavate. So usually we don't have financial support, we don't have any team, we have nothing. And that's the idea my chief Oleg decided to create. He just opened the NGO and invited kids to excavate. That's the way to create a team. And there's a lot of teams like that in Ukraine,
00:08:41
Speaker
It's a lot for Ukraine. That just works because they have kids. So, yeah, it's common. Yeah. So, NGO, that stands for non-government organization, right? So, it's like a public organization? Yeah. That's the kind of public body that focuses on archaeological excavation. That's it.
00:08:59
Speaker
And the one that Oleg that we brought up several times, that's he works at in Kordica. He has his PhD. And is he in charge of the new archaeological school? Yeah, since 2002. So since the very beginning of the archaeological school. OK. And we'll circle back to that towards our final segment about Nash. So, you know, there's there's a couple of differences that I picked up. I love the fact that you guys talk about archaeological excavations. You call them expeditions like we're going on expedition.
00:09:25
Speaker
I think that's just a fun way to think about it. But also in Ukraine, is archaeology a subfield of anthropology or is it housed within history?
Education and Methodological Differences
00:09:35
Speaker
Well, there is a common phrase in Ukraine that archaeology, and not in Ukraine, is in post-soya space in general, that archaeology is a history armed with a shovel. So archaeology is neither anthropology. History for us is just a method to discover things.
00:09:56
Speaker
And that's it. And yeah, it's much more historical than anthropological. If you want to be an archaeologist in Ukraine, you need to know the history of more or less ever since. So you're in this high school frame. And there is just a couple of anthropological disciplines. And when we are talking about anthropology in post-Soviet Union, we mean just physical anthropology. Cultural anthropology is something that barely exists for archaeology in Ukraine, in fact.
00:10:26
Speaker
So when you go to school for archaeology, like you specifically enroll in archaeology as your major, there's no other, like you don't go for history. No. When you want to be an archaeologist, you enroll in as a historian. And then after one or two years, you choose a division, that kind of faculty.
00:10:50
Speaker
to become an archaeologist. That's it. We don't have a special program for archaeologists. So you just use archaeology as the data mining tool or like the way to remove information from the ground, essentially? Well, no, it's still a discipline, but it works rather like a toolkit of methods and toolkit of methods we are approaching from the historical side.
00:11:18
Speaker
like this. That's not an anthropological discipline yet. However, there is some shift in this direction for now. It's a little bit better than it was before. Gotcha. And is it true that if you are an undergraduate or at university in history, part of your degree is you have to take part in an archaeological expedition? Yeah. After your first year, every student obliged to participate in archaeological excavation.
00:11:48
Speaker
And usually, those who want to become an archaeologist, they use some tricks to participate after the second or third year, though they are officially obliged to also participate in the museum. They work in the museum. They work on some ethnographical expeditions. Yeah, that's it. So I mean, I like that. I feel like that's similar to what we do in, at least at the University of Wyoming, where you're forced to interact with all these different
00:12:17
Speaker
subfields, right? I think we're all, we're not like instructed to do museum stuff, but we're encouraged to do. So I like that you guys are encouraged to do a bunch of different types of history, as you would call it there.
00:12:32
Speaker
because archaeology is so vast really and we constantly see that when we are interacting with students that our kids, high school students, they are much better in field archaeology than students from universities because they just don't have this experience and you need to obtain a lot of different experiences to be a good archaeologist.
00:12:55
Speaker
And there's just not enough time for that. So it's quite complicated. At least it's good we have the possibility to obtain this experience. Yeah. So how did you end up at the University of Turin in Italy pursuing your PhD?
00:13:10
Speaker
They have a project founded by Maria Kri Koffond and that's the place for me to thank the Tech for Culture PhD School for letting me introduce my study. I won a project as an archaeologist from Ukraine for a photogrammatical study of portable rock art instances from one of Ukrainian sites.
00:13:35
Speaker
And that's it. I have three years to provide a kind of PhD series and photogrammetical study for this stuff. So that's not really an archaeology, it's rather a rock art research through the photogrammetical methods. Very cool. Are you trying to learn Italian as part of this as well?
00:13:58
Speaker
Well, I started, but then Covid just ruined that because I spent more than half of last year in Kiev.
00:14:08
Speaker
And I just wasn't uniquely long enough to do. Yeah, because you just started your PhD program, right? And then COVID hit pretty soon after. Yeah, I started November and at February, it was already closed and locked. So I spent the spring, summer and part autumn in Ukraine. At least they had an excretion season. I think it's interesting that you don't consider like rock art research as part of archaeology, because here in the States, like rock art research is firmly cemented.
00:14:37
Speaker
in the archaeological discipline, and especially with photogrammetry. Well, that's not like I consider it like this, but there's definitely a bunch of organizations that are focused on rock art, not on archaeology. And I have an experience of Ukrainian archaeologists who have tried to interpret rock art in Ukraine, and usually this is a mess.
00:15:04
Speaker
considered so tremendously, it's easier to think that Ricardo has something quite special and much more complicated in terms of not screwing up. It's much easier to mistake to be mistaken than in regular ecology, in fact.
00:15:20
Speaker
There's a lot of interpretation that's going on, and you can definitely mess that up. Yeah, and as soon as you get closer to the semantic of rock art instances, it's horrible. It's like you're on the battlefield, and you are ready that every single rock art researcher will tell you, you're an idiot. That's quite horrible.
00:15:46
Speaker
And on that note, we're going to rock ourselves right out of this first segment and we'll catch you on the next one.
Influence of Soviet Ideology and Current Trends
00:15:54
Speaker
Welcome back to segment two of this episode of Life Nerds podcast. We're back with Simone who's in the Ukraine. And I am curious to know, you know, with the, the history of the Soviet union in Eastern Europe, like what's the history of archeology in the Ukraine and in regards to the Soviet union and like how that currently stands in Ukraine right now? Well,
00:16:16
Speaker
The beginning is pretty much as everywhere. So there's collections and we started to investigate the data from archaeological point of view just recently, even more recently than in Europe. It's like the end of 18th century. And then
00:16:37
Speaker
While there were huge discussions concerning processional and post-processional archaeology all around the world, we just stuck with cultural historical approach and that's it. That's the first, I guess,
00:16:55
Speaker
branch of my speech here. And the second one that obviously, an archaeology was really obsessed with ideological questions, just because you need to do something that Soviet Union asks you to do. So it was quite important to show that, for example, the political peoples were close to socialism, and to the ideas of Marxism.
00:17:21
Speaker
And it is really necessary to end up any political paper with this message. That's it. And so we did not have really opportunity to develop an archaeological knowledge in the same frame as all around the world. And we're still pretty much cultural historical in this case.
00:17:44
Speaker
in the first place, there were even the trend at the very end of last century, even at the beginning of this one, that if you're applying to be a PhD, applying for thesis, you need to discover an archaeological culture.
00:18:02
Speaker
It's more or less obligatory, compulsory. And if you're failed, you're not a PhD. That's a lot of pressure. So I can imagine there's a lot of conflation of the archaeological record with a lot of these cultures that PhDs have found through time. Yeah, there's a guy, Valentin Danilenko, who died, I guess, in the 80s of last century. So he discovered more than 20 archaeological cultures.
00:18:31
Speaker
And some of them were closed after his death. After a long research, guys decided that this culture actually did not exist. And this is just a mess. And one more thing about post-soil archaeology that it's really, I'm not sure if in USA it's like that or not, but here in Ukraine, we are really obsessed with our hierarchy.
00:18:56
Speaker
And obviously those guys who were colleges before and then died, they are much better than we are now. So.
00:19:06
Speaker
it is really hard to argue with them because they are classics and we are not. So you have the results of this is that you have basically these little boxes that are drawn around in time and space of cultures, as you've are calling them. And then you can't break through and criticize these cultures because there's this hierarchy out there that doesn't seem like there's a lot of room for change in the archaeology of Ukraine at this point.
00:19:36
Speaker
Well, once more, it becomes better and better. And now it's more or less okay, because we have an opportunity to publish everything we want. And we have an opportunity to publish abroad. It is quite important. And this is what matters. But if Soviet Union existed now, yeah, it was actually what you say it would be.
00:19:59
Speaker
Okay, good. That's exciting to hear that it's moving towards something that can produce really good information, good data, good studies.
Opportunities in Ukraine's Archaeological Landscape
00:20:08
Speaker
Yeah, I guess I sound like everything is horrible in Ukraine, but that's not true. We are really getting better and better. Yeah, man. That's good to hear. Something that I was shocked to learn out in Ukraine, Ukraine is either the largest or second largest country in Europe by landmass. How many professional archaeologists are there in Ukraine?
00:20:30
Speaker
Yeah, it's the largest in Europe, so we have 6,000 hundred of square kilometers. And officially, we have 300 arcologists. Yeah, so Ukraine is the largest in European country. It's like 600,000 square kilometers, and we have just 300 arcologists for that space. Oh my gosh.
00:20:51
Speaker
That's just the official stats. I'm not sure it's true. The point is a lot of archaeologists who would like to perform an archaeology in Ukraine just don't have an opportunity because we don't have financial resources. We have nothing for that. And the government usually does not provide any support for archaeological excavations.
00:21:11
Speaker
And we don't have really strict law concerning the archaeology. So even if we had thousands and thousands of archaeologists, we still would have maybe 200 of excavation permits per year. So if my math is correct, I think that is one archaeologist per 2,000 square kilometers.
00:21:36
Speaker
Yeah, for our American listeners, Ukraine is the same size as Nebraska, Kansas, and Missouri combined. So 300 archaeological permits for that area of the central United States. Wow, that's amazing. But I guess, like we've mentioned earlier, it's an opportunity for folks to study then, right? There's a lot of potential in Ukraine right
00:21:59
Speaker
still have an exciting sight because there's a lot of exciting sights and you just can go and pick up any. Nobody is interested. When we were in Zavalia, someone found, I mean, we just call them Venus figurines. That's just what we refer to anything with that female body. And I've never seen one in person that was really exciting. I was like, Oh, it's a Venus figurine. And you guys are like, no, Carlton, you idiot. It's not a Venus figurine.
00:22:23
Speaker
a specific form of this. I was like, oh, but in terms of just that first site in Zavalia, working at that LBK site, some of the coolest stuff I've ever seen, and then going to Cordica Island and working on that Bronze Age site, that was just ... That archaeological record out there is just so fascinating to me. It's just so rich. That LBK site in Zavalia was like 5,000, 6,000 BC, so like 8,000 years old, 9,000 years old.
00:22:53
Speaker
Yeah, that's it. Yeah. Just so cool. Yeah. And we did it in strange way. And I really think that if we'll continue with Zavada, there'll be much more interesting stuff. In fact, even that part of what you saw there in Zavada, it was not the most exciting part because what we excavated previously, to be honest, is much more intensive and much richer.
00:23:23
Speaker
than what we have here. So I hear what you're saying is that Carlton is a bad omen? Well, no. No way. Because Everson was perfect on Curtis Island, so Carlton is definitely a good omen. First time hearing that.
00:23:47
Speaker
Well, yeah, and I'm excited to return. Maybe I can bring my good omeness, omeness back. Doubt it. I know, probably. I'm just, you know. No, it's the good omeness. It's not the traveling thing.
00:23:58
Speaker
So what other sites have you worked on, Simone, in Ukraine? Well, that's two you visited. The one is Sivale, is Neolithic one, and then the early Bronze Age and Hortice Island. I'm quite excited to work on Kambinamo Gila. This is a rock art site. I have this. And there's a huge
00:24:18
Speaker
multilateral settlement nearby. It's like at least five or six stratigraphic layers on the place we have excavated since the early Mesolithic, two Neolithic ones, and another part nearby with Neolithic and then Iron Age. So it's like 8,000 years of living history.
00:24:40
Speaker
nearby the rock art site. It's so exciting. And then, yeah, I tried to create some kind of archaeological diversity to my team.
00:24:51
Speaker
So we are participating in constantly some Iron Age Scythian hill forts and burial sites and then participate in other places and even do some photogrammetry for architecture, not just for archaeology to see more of Ukrainian archaeology.
00:25:11
Speaker
So I definitely have read that there's a lot of mammoth kill sites in Ukraine. I mean, there's just a lot of mammoths that get found there too. Like, have you, have you got to work on any of those or do you know much about those?
00:25:24
Speaker
Well, yeah, indeed we have a lot of upper polylytic size and mammoth bone build dwellings. And you probably know the bone drum set from mammoth bones from Ukraine from upper polylytic size. We have the one that has been found in the mammoth bone build dwellings.
00:25:46
Speaker
And it is kind of drum set covered with red ochre. And there's a lot of something that has been used probably as a musical instruments. But I never worked there. The only polylic site I visited was in the depths of Carpathian mountains. And there were no bones at all. It's just a few stones that can presumably be processed. And I'm even not sure that they was processed.
00:26:19
Speaker
Okay. Are there a lot of Paleolithic archaeologists in Ukraine? I know there's like a short amount of archaeologists in Ukraine, but is the majority of them Paleolithic or are they more Neolithic focused or is it more historic?
00:26:34
Speaker
I guess it's more or less equal, but now theolithic part is really good because we are rich of interesting political materials and current head of Institute of Ecology of Ukraine is Polylithic guy and yeah, he's great. So he focuses on polylithic and every polylithic archaeologist in Ukraine is in a good condition. Okay. Excellent. She lets Stefan know that.
00:27:04
Speaker
Absolutely. I also want to make a comment that they recently found that Keith Richards was the person who was playing with that drum set.
Excavation Techniques and International Collaboration
00:27:13
Speaker
We spent a lot talking about Ukraine here, but as you know, we talked briefly in the first segment about some of my differences or American differences to Ukraine. But how is Ukrainian archaeology different, if at all, from other European schools of archaeology?
00:27:30
Speaker
Well, that's not a point of schools. In fact, that's the point of sedimentation process. Because in Ukraine, we have a really intensive sedimentation process. And that's the archaeological problem. Because, for example, for LBK, which is 5,000 years BC, in Europe, in Poland, or in Germany, you can use IRL data to search for the pits of LBK. You can really find LBK objects by non-destructive means.
00:28:00
Speaker
In Ukraine, even if you created perfect profile or perfect cleaning, you can't be sure that you really see the object because a lot of sediment and the color of the sediment is pretty much the same as the filling of the pit. So you can just go and say, well, I know what's happening. And
00:28:25
Speaker
That means that we need to excavate much deeper and much slower and much more accurate. So when an elliptic archaeologist from Europe performed shoveling for 500 square meters, we spent in the five years for traveling 30 meters. That's it.
00:28:46
Speaker
And we still can't be sure that we know the right contrast. That's why this JS I perform is effective, because that's usually the only option to understand what the objects really are. So you have to take that next step and really do the analyzing of where these artifacts, things come from in space to really understand. Whereas in other places in Europe, you're just
00:29:13
Speaker
looking at the surface manifestations and you get enough information. So Ukraine, you just have to dig almost exclusively. Yeah, that's it. It's better to provide the total 3D fixation for every single pot shirt. In this case, we can do Thompson. And in Europe, yeah, it's enough just to excavate. So it's really a problem to submit a paper in European Journal because when we are speaking of, okay,
00:29:43
Speaker
It's been five years and we excavated a part of a pit. They asked us, so where's the rest of the house? I got a quarter of it. That's, that's, that's who we're going off of. Yeah. And it was five years guys. You need to send us for that. That's the mess we can do.
00:30:04
Speaker
Oh, boy. You know, thinking about that LBK site. So that's that's run by Maciej, who is a PhD from Poland. So he's like the site supervisor, but it's a Ukrainian team. Is that common in Ukrainian archaeology for archaeologists from other nationalities to fund projects and use Ukrainian teams? Yeah, that's the kind of, I don't know, colonial international collaboration, because they know that our materials are good.
00:30:31
Speaker
And so, European archaeologists can win the project and apply for an excavation in Ukraine. But to excavate in Ukraine, you need to be Ukrainian. Officially, I mean to get the excavation permit. So, these archaeologists from Poland or any other country can just arrive, find the guy in Ukraine that interested in the same scene,
00:30:56
Speaker
and share the project money. However, obviously, this is usually more the use of a Ukrainian team than the full-scale international collaboration. It's like Civ 5. Yeah, and before we break, I remember when I did show up, people were very confused that I was just there to work, not to run a project or anything. I was there just to be a shovel bomb and people were kind of
00:31:23
Speaker
I want to see weirded out by that, but definitely skeptical. They're probably happy too. Yeah, I hope so. Yeah, that's true. We were like, okay, we just here because we like it, but what this guy to want to do it, we don't know. And then it appears that Carlton get up early to go work. And even in this strongest heat, he still stays to work with us.
00:31:52
Speaker
and even pays money for that. That was so strange, but that was great. Yeah, I forgot. I actually paid to work there. Americans spend money on weird shit.
00:32:05
Speaker
All right. Well, on that note, we're going to close out the segment. We'll be back with segment three with Simone and we're going to talk about some international collaboration in Ukraine. So stand by and enjoy these messages by our sponsors and overlords. Welcome back to episode 34 of a life in ruins podcast. We're talking with Simone and we finished the last section of the conversation, kind of talking about different methods and how you excavate in different areas. And
00:32:33
Speaker
We wanted to talk, at least in this section, about collaboration and who you work for in general. So do you see Ukraine as a place where you need or you would prefer to have international collaboration? Yeah, I definitely am because, well, it's impossible to work now without it, I guess. And again, archaeology is a great example because you need to know so much of everything.
00:33:01
Speaker
And we don't have enough resources and capacities and labs. We have nothing to provide the high level of archeological research. So we really need an international collaboration. Besides, well, I'm not sure that we really feel this collaboration like international now, because before COVID summer, we didn't really feel the border lines.
00:33:28
Speaker
And so there's just a collaboration of different specialists with different opportunities. And that's great. We don't need to think that this is something international. This is just the human beings that can perform better together.
00:33:44
Speaker
That's awesome. That's cool to think of it like that, especially with everything in Europe being monumentally closer than that. I hope in the future we can think of that in the US, but there's definitely a hard line between Canada, Mexico, and the US here where you feel like it's international collaboration, even though we're sharing borders at this point.
00:34:08
Speaker
Yeah, that's true. And it's so strange now with this situation. So yeah, we will see what Fisher brings us.
00:34:15
Speaker
That's cool. Yeah. You used a term earlier, you called it colonial collaboration that where other archeologists, one or two come to Ukraine, use Ukrainian archeologists and pay Ukrainian archeologists. Is that typical form of collaboration? Yeah, but well, it all depends on the European partner. If he is a great guy and he is cool and he wants to provide the equal research, then it works great.
00:34:44
Speaker
But if he just wants to take an advantage from the process, that's different scene. And unfortunately in Ukraine, we rarely have archeologists in Ukraine. I rarely have enough reputation to want the project by themselves. I guess I can name all of them. Again, I can use my finners and I'll have few more. Very small amount. Yep.
00:35:11
Speaker
I remember speaking to one of those international archaeologists and just talking with him about what he was doing in Ukraine and he was like, well, why would I bring archaeologists from my country? I can pay a Ukrainian archaeologist for a day what students from my country would want an hour. I picked up on that financial background. You get more bang for your buck hiring Ukrainian archaeologists.
00:35:36
Speaker
Well, you know, it's even more ridiculous because, yeah, if you're asking German students to help you, for example, you really need to pay them as much as we've been paid for a working day, like eight or nine hours of constant Shaolin. But me and my team who worked in Zewalia, we get this salary and then spend it all to provide an excavation on Hortense Island.
Unique Challenges in Conflict Zones
00:36:04
Speaker
So we just worked there to work more on our side and that's it. You hope that these folks who get this money and they use it to, you know, eventually, you know, give back to the community or something like that. But it seems like there's the opportunity to take advantage of folks in different countries. And I feel like this is not uncommon for the rest of the world as well.
00:36:31
Speaker
Yeah, I guess that's true, because there's a bunch of, I guess, archeologically developed countries, yeah, and bunch of
00:36:40
Speaker
And obviously, Ukraine is in the group of satellites. I like that. Archaeologically developed groups, that's painfully accurate. So there's been civil unrest in Ukraine for the past couple of years with Russian-backed nationalists. How has that affected Ukrainian archaeologists' ability to excavate in the eastern portions of Ukraine?
00:37:06
Speaker
have a possibility to excavate there. There's, again, two branches of my answer. The first one, we just lost a part of control under our territories, and so the archaeological sites there has been excavated by Russian archaeologists, like in Crimea, or destroyed by the civilians and just population of eastern regions of Crimea.
00:37:31
Speaker
However, there's a huge collaboration between the army of Ukraine and the archaeologists, because every battle trench that the army needs to excavate can possibly find some archaeological site. And there are cases when archaeologists just excavated burial sites on the front line, because the battle trench just crossed the burials of early medieval age, for example.
00:38:01
Speaker
So these Ukrainian soldiers are digging these trenches, World War I style, and they come across burials and they just called archaeologists to excavate them? Yep. These cases I talked about is about the guys who ended up with historical faculty. So they knew that this is something and they just called their familiars.
00:38:25
Speaker
And you can go there and take the site because it will be destroyed otherwise. And so archaeologists just came there to save the rescue site.
00:38:36
Speaker
Were they getting shot at? I imagine it was dangerous. Well, yeah, I'm sure it was pretty dangerous. That's some real Indiana Jones-level archaeology. Yeah.
Engagement through NASH and Social Media
00:38:47
Speaker
And I guess moving a little bit further away from this, earlier in the first segment, you talked about an NGO that you're a part of that Oleg started in the early 2000s, and it's called the New Archaeological School. You guys call it NASH, which is the abbreviation of that in Russian. And so what is the New Archaeological School, Simon?
00:39:06
Speaker
Well, yeah, this is an NGO. Actually, this is a team of people who are interested in dissemination of cultural heritage and archaeological excavation. This means that our head, Oleg Tobolsev, and the guys who already grew up in this movement, just work on archaeological sites together with kids from the team. And for now,
00:39:34
Speaker
18 years we have more than few hundred of kids who eager or were eager to work with us and an active team of like 50 people who are just interested to excavate anything everywhere and are happy to pay for that because they want to do an archaeology and every man from 11 years old can join us on the site.
00:40:00
Speaker
That's super cool. So they're just volunteering because they want to preserve the past in any form. Well, mainly they volunteering because they want to hang out with their friends, but yeah. There's nothing wrong with that. Yeah, that's great. And that's great. So we, we created the team and this team really eager to work and really eager
00:40:24
Speaker
to work together on this great topic of cultural heritage. And then we decided that we wanted to provide some social media actions to New York logical school to show our work better. But Oleg don't have time for that. And I don't really have also. So we just thought that kids can do this and
00:40:50
Speaker
That's it. We just ask them if they will do it. So now we have website and Instagram and Facebook running totally on the efforts of our kids. And that's awesome. That's excellent. And you guys invited me to be a part of Nash and you guys had me, you drafted it. You had me read out a document that you prepared
00:41:14
Speaker
Do you do you remember what I'm talking about? Yeah, I know that moment before the record just Looked a story in life and read podcast profile and there's stories from that day When you read in the document, yeah. Oh, yeah, that's right. Is this one that person got stabbed? No, no, oh No, but that was a different that was something that you did it that was Simon who?
00:41:43
Speaker
Yeah, I'm responsible for sacrificial actions in the archeological school. That was pretty funny. Just the look of shock on my face because I had no clue what was going on. Yeah. I think I saw that from like Instagram or something and it was like, what is going on? There's like no context from Carlton. Oh, that's fantastic.
00:42:07
Speaker
Yeah, that's another tradition, like from the end of the 19th century, I guess, in Ukraine, that every archaeologist, every archaeological student should be initiated to become part of the archaeological community. So we have a stone of different traditions for this initiation.
00:42:25
Speaker
Actually, each excavation team has its own tradition. And of course, as we excavate in prehistory, early Bronze Age site mainly, we do it in early Bronze Age manner with initiation, with challenges, and then with sacrificial actions.
00:42:44
Speaker
I remember once we excavated on Kamina Bahila, this rock art site, and this is a place where weddings come to make images on the first day. And then the wedding just married guys made a photo, and on the second stone, 10 meters away from them,
00:43:08
Speaker
I'm just stabbing another guy into stomach to produce new archeological initiation. So these guys are taking wedding day photos and there's just Simon just stabbing somebody on the background. Like, all right, I bet that was a day they definitely didn't forget. Yeah. I guess it wasn't for them because there's something special. It should be special.
00:43:35
Speaker
I have a couple wedding photos. I just got married that Carlton and David doing the same thing. I got stabbed. I look like one of the trolls from, from the hobbit sitting in the background. A nice stacy squirrel.
00:43:54
Speaker
Yep. So as we were talking about and running this back to the new archeological school, right? That you guys have started this and you have a presence on Instagram and social media in general. And it's not only just in Russian or Ukrainian, but you also have English in
00:44:09
Speaker
in your text that you've divided up, which is admirable, right? Because you only have so many characters on Instagram. So the fact you guys are doing content in two or three languages, really, you know, two languages, I think that's just phenomenal. So how come you guys decided to add English to your posts? Well, basically, that was your advice. You weren't supposed to say that.
Traditional Practices and Dedication to Archaeology
00:44:34
Speaker
Yeah. And the reason behind that was like you remember that reason, right?
00:44:39
Speaker
Yeah, well, I just knew that we have some foreign audience and we will never grow up more than 200 or 300 of people in Ukraine who want to follow archaeological news. So we just focused on more diverse audience. That's it. Yeah. And now we create the short explanation to more or less everything we do in English as well as in Russian and trying to keep it up to standard. Well,
00:45:10
Speaker
I think that we are successful in that in fact, I agree. And that's, that's all really, my advice is really just an extension of David's advice on, on social media practices in etiquette. Take out the grain of salt.
00:45:27
Speaker
Right. And, you know, part, part of those totally forgot about, I don't know how I did those archeological initiation ceremonies. Right. Is that you get like an archeology name as part of that. And what, what name did they give you Simon? Well,
00:45:43
Speaker
I did it for several times. I mean, I have been initiated several, several times because kids usually want to re-initiate me to participate the procedure because I'm kind of more experienced. So they want to do something to challenge me. And the last one was Baffus am Clavier, which in German means barefoot through the keyboard. Cause usually, yeah, I neglect the tradition to wear boots during an ecological excavation.
00:46:14
Speaker
And then I try to perform as keyboard player. That's it. Okay. Well, all right, man. So yeah, Simone, thank you so much for being on and taking time out of your Saturday to come join us here on a life and runs podcast. Is there anything you'd like for our audience to know about yourself or the new archeological school?
00:46:34
Speaker
I guess I already told that New York College School is the best place in the world. And please join us or at least follow us in Instagram at New York College School because we are trying to be great. Awesome. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much. And we'll have that link to their Instagram on the show notes for this. And you can see them periodically on our stories and everything like that.
00:46:58
Speaker
You know, like we said, thank you for joining us, Simone. And because this is the Life in Ruins podcast, I'm going to ask a question. So if you, if you were given the chance again, would you choose to live life in ruins? Would you choose to be an archeologist? There's no way I can imagine another way of living. That's an excellent answer. Yeah, that is.
00:47:18
Speaker
We just interviewed Timon Redchenko. You can find him on Instagram at new underscore archaeological underscore school and Facebook as new archaeological school, although that is in Russian. So we will have that on the show notes. So, yeah, Simon, thank you very much for being with us today. And with that, we are out.
00:47:43
Speaker
Thanks for listening to a life in ruins podcast. You can follow us on Instagram and Facebook at a life in ruins podcast. And you can also email us at a life in ruins podcast at gmail.com. And remember, make sure to bring your archeologists in from the cold and feed them beer. I want to start the crappy joke segment by shouting out to my father, the Dean.
00:48:03
Speaker
who sent me a list of 78 favorite dad jokes. So these are dad jokes from my father. But these are actual dad jokes. After an unsuccessful harvest, why did the farmer decide to try a career in music? I don't know.
00:48:21
Speaker
because he had a ton of sick beats. Oh, God, that hurt. That hurt. All right. All right, everybody. We'll see you next time.
00:48:44
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his RV Traveling America, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Rachel Robyn. 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.