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The Cowboys of Science II: Dr. Spencer Pelton Returns - Ruins 54
284 Plays4 years ago
In this episode, Dr. Spencer Pelton returns to the show to chat with the hosts about becoming the Wyoming State Archaeologist. Dr. Pelton first appeared on the show as the featured guest for Episode 1, almost two years ago! We dive into the responsibilities of being the Wyoming State Archaeologist and how it differs from most other State Archaeology Offices. Following up on that conversation, we discuss Spencer's current research projects as the State Archaeologist, and some of the more interesting calls he receives from the Wyoming public. The episode concludes with a dialogue about the late Dr. George Frison. We talk about why he was so significant to the field of archaeology and his legacy at the University of Wyoming and Plains Archaeology.
Dr. Pelton's media recommendations:
Contact For Guest: (Twitter, email, etc.):
- Google Dr. Spencer Pelton, Wyoming State Archaeologist
Contact
- Email: alifeinruinspodcast@gmail.com
- Instagram: @alifeinruinspodcast
- Facebook: @alifeinruinspodcast
- Twitter: @alifeinruinspod
- Website: www.alifeinruins.com
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Transcript
Introduction and Welcome
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.
00:00:14
Speaker
Welcome to episode 54 of a life in ruins podcast. Re-investigate the careers of those living life in ruins. I am your host Carlton Gover. And I am joined by my co-host Connor, John and
Guest Introduction: Dr. Spencer Pelton
00:00:24
Speaker
David. How in this episode, we are chatting with Dr. Spencer Pelton, the Wyoming state archeologist and friend of the podcast. He was the first guest we ever interviewed on the show. And we were very excited to catch up with him today. How are you doing this evening? Dr. Pelton. I'm doing great. Thanks Carlton for having me back. It's real pleasure.
00:00:41
Speaker
Absolutely. So is it scary to know that so far your episode has been downloaded 2,206 times as of this morning? Oh, that's more than I thought. That's great.
00:00:51
Speaker
Yeah, it's consistently downloaded every month. What's the demographic? Do you like age, region, or is it just a bunch of undergrads that are forced to watch it for some reason? Mostly forced, will you imagine? I know Dr. Kelly's episode has been a frequent class assignment for several of our colleagues at this point. I think you were definitely in the lead for a long time and Dr. Kelly has eclipsed basically everyone on the podcast.
00:01:14
Speaker
That's true, to no surprise at this point. But with that, you know, since we last had you on, you're working, was for the BLM, correct? No, I was working for the private sector last I was on here. So I was working for a transcon environmental. Transcon, yeah. And now you're the Wyoming archeologist.
Dream Job and Role
00:01:33
Speaker
How does that feel? I love it, man. It's my dream job. It was a thrill to get it. I didn't think it would come up, but it did. And so I figured I had to, had to pounce on it and it worked out.
00:01:44
Speaker
Yeah, I love it. I saw you had in USA Today, it was like news for Wyoming and the most news Wyoming had was that it named another state archaeologist.
00:01:55
Speaker
Yeah, USA Today has that feature where they have like, you know, like someone wrestled a bear in Idaho last week. And like, you know, somebody like noodle the biggest catfish in Georgia. And that was, I was the news blurb from Wyoming that week. So yeah, it was a pretty slow, slow week, I'm imagining. But yeah, it was a good throw. I got, you know, all the old ladies from the church I grew up in, like saw it there, you know, it's kind of neat.
00:02:21
Speaker
Nice. I was getting like physical newspaper clippings in the mail. Dope. It's probably exciting not to hear like about budget crises and that they're actually hiring people in Wyoming. So that was probably a good change of pace there. Yeah, it was good. I mean, they, you know, they have to have a state archeologist. So
00:02:44
Speaker
That's the good thing about it. They can't just cut it, but you know, they could just like, you know, make me walk myself in an office, I guess, and never go anywhere. And your office is, is, is it at the University of Wyoming, like with the Anthem department? Yeah. The cool thing about this job is it's, you know, it's set out in statute that you're a faculty member in the department.
00:03:05
Speaker
It's kind of unique in that way. I don't think a ton of, I don't think a ton of state archaeologist positions are like that. So yeah, my office is actually in the anthropology department on campus. So it's kind of this dual, you know, academic and government kind of position that's not a little unlike a lot of the positions, state archaeologist positions around the country.
00:03:25
Speaker
I always liked that about Wyoming because you got Chippo upstairs and then you got, you know, all of, uh, the department there. And then you also have that little museum in the same building and curation. So it was like, I had a curation problem that was like a mess up from the eighties. I could go upstairs and be like, Hey Ross, what is this? And he was like, Oh, I remember that. And like took me on a.
00:03:45
Speaker
hour-long talk. But no, it's awesome. I mean, compare that to say like, well, the only reason why we can do that is because we have whatever 600,000
Centralization of Archaeological Resources
00:03:53
Speaker
people, right? So it doesn't make a whole lot of sense for that stuff to be spread out all over the state. But compared to like California, for instance, I don't remember how many, they have like nine Chippos or something like that spread out throughout the state. And it's just kind of madness. And yeah, you
00:04:07
Speaker
Wyoming, it just breeds a really nice, tight community for that reason. Cause everybody's literally in the same building. Not everybody, of course, there's people doing archeology all over the state, but where all the data is stored and all the artifacts are stored, it's all in one place. It really works out in convenient ways for a lot of reasons that I don't think you'd necessarily get in many other settings around the country.
00:04:30
Speaker
Yeah. So how was that process like when, I don't know what happened to the former state archeologist, but there was a call for it. How many people applied for that position? Do you know?
Hiring Process for State Archaeologist
00:04:40
Speaker
I don't know how many, there were a total, there's a lot. I think there was several, several dozen because it's a,
00:04:46
Speaker
I mean, it's a pretty high paid position. It's a pretty sought after position for that reason. I didn't really realize that until it was advertised. I was like, oh, that's okay. That's why people want this job. But yeah, a lot of people applied for it from all over the country because you have to have a PhD to have the job. And so it was a pretty rigorous process. I mean, they announced it in March and then I didn't start the job until November of 2019.
00:05:13
Speaker
And so it was, you know, a long process of like vetting resumes, I guess I was a part of it, obviously. And then there was one round of interviews. I made it through. There's a second round of interviews that had like a public talk component. And then that was finally off of the job. It was, yeah, it was the most rigorous job process I've ever been through. It was a lot like the academic hiring process. I know I haven't, I haven't really, I didn't really apply for too many academic jobs. So I didn't really make it, make it down the line that very far, but it seemed a lot like that with multiple rounds of interviews and like campus visit and all that stuff.
00:05:43
Speaker
I very much enjoy the job. I'm extremely grateful that I have it. Really happy it worked out. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don't think there's anyone more qualified for that position. And as part of that, are you lecturing? Are you required to teach a class or anything like that? Yeah. Our whole office teaches. So we got
00:06:07
Speaker
You know, the office managers, we have an assistant state archeologist, Marsha Peterson, we got a curation manager, and then we have a survey section manager. So we teach three classes in total, curation, CRM, and then my position traditionally taught a class called public archeology.
Educational Contributions
00:06:22
Speaker
I switched it over to a new class called Wyoming Archeology. Me and Rich Adams actually developed this together. And so it's just intended to be a big general education class intended to fulfill like a humanities credit or something for undergrads. It's called Wyoming Archeology.
00:06:42
Speaker
because it's awesome catchy and sounds interesting but I mean my hope is that it's like a backdoor into like every ranch across the state so to like do archaeology on private lands on ranches I guess so we get these like ranch kids coming into the university and you get them psyched about it and like uh yeah that that's kind of like the one intention of putting together a class like that I guess
00:07:05
Speaker
That's a real power move. I respect that. So you're denying the next level of grad students the ability to make their own cover songs like Clovis Paradise. Cause I, that's what that class was for. I made a whole album of parody songs for Greg. It was just like, thanks. I guess I'll never listen to these ever again.
00:07:25
Speaker
No, I, uh, so I guess in my mind, I think that public class was a really great thing, but to some extent, like every archeologist is a public archeologist now. Like I don't know any archeologists. It's like, no, I wholeheartedly refuse to talk to the public. I think they're awful. I just want to put myself in my office, do my thing and not talk to anybody.
00:07:47
Speaker
You know, I'm sure there's a few of those people left, but like, for the most part, like every archaeologist is a public archaeologist now, especially, you know, people our age and younger, you are younger than they, but you know what I mean, that are engaged with social media and all that. So I figured we could just take like, roll the public thing into kind of a more traditional, like curriculum based class. So those same messages will definitely be in that class of like,
00:08:17
Speaker
you know, how we should treat the archaeological record, how we should preserve it, how we should, all the traditional messages you'd have in a public archaeology class, how to counter like pseudoscience and that kind of thing, except be more focused on Wyoming archaeology specifically.
00:08:33
Speaker
Do you teach it from like Clovis to cowboys, like whatever that poster is and like go through the eras or is it more like here's what's in Doug? Rich's idea was to do it actually from like the present back and like finish with Paleo Indian stuff.
00:08:49
Speaker
Which is like, I mean, so his, his rationale is like, you know, Oregon trail stuff and like historic military stuff, all that stuff's a lot more relatable to people. Initially, because you're familiar with the artifacts, you're familiar with the history to some extent. And so it's a better entry point than
00:09:07
Speaker
jumping into, hey, did you know like 13,000 years ago, there were like sloths and camels and stuff around? And, and like, just making that somebody's entry point to archaeology is oftentimes a little disorienting, probably. It's cool. But it's also like, you don't have anything to kind of relate to. So yeah, we'll start starting the historic era and kind of work our way back.
00:09:29
Speaker
Well, Rich is a little biased too. He likes the prehistoric contact stuff anyway. So, you know, you get to the really good stuff and anything past that is just like a joke. You know, it's the archaic, you know, it's Clovis or whatever. Yeah. You know, you get, you get hit soapstone really
Role and Responsibilities of a State Archaeologist
00:09:43
Speaker
early. So I guess my, our next like big question and probably the audience listening is like, what's a state archeologist and like, could you explain that a bit? Yeah, I'm kind of still trying to figure it out myself, but, um, I can, I can figure that out.
00:09:58
Speaker
I'm figuring it out and nothing I can explain what I figured out so far. So not every state has one, but most of them do. And to my understanding, like most of them were established in the early seventies towards the early eighties, like alongside the National Historic Preservation Act and that like kind of.
00:10:18
Speaker
basically forming a new field that's called cultural resource management. So in a lot of states, the state archaeologist is actually also the state's historic preservation officer. They do a lot of the compliance stuff, like when a pipeline gets built, the state archaeologist is the one that reviews the report for it. And so they're super compliance-centric. I actually think that Colorado even is a lot more like that than we are.
00:10:42
Speaker
Other state archaeologists are attached to museums, so the state museum of Iowa or something will have state archaeologists attached to it. I don't know if that's actually true, but just as an example. I think Colorado does. Colorado's state archaeologist is at History Colorado, which is the state historic museum at this point.
00:11:01
Speaker
Yeah, they're the museum and like also basically SHPO, I think. So they kind of do everything out of that. This position, which is awesome, is very much like a research public outreach education position. So it's specifically in-state statute says that you have to do research on Wyoming prehistory on significant sites in Wyoming. It also says like,
00:11:26
Speaker
If somebody finds something cool on their ranch, you got to go look at it. It says that like in the law, the other, the, the final component of it that it's a pretty recent addition is I recover human remains from private and state lands in Wyoming when those pop up. So now there's a law in Wyoming that.
00:11:42
Speaker
If burials pop up on private lands, the state archeologist goes and deals with that. So that's kind of the next big component of it. And it's actually a really big component of it. It took up like probably a third of my year last year responding to those calls. And then, so in addition to that, we do run the curation facility as well. That's another big, and we have a survey section that does work for like WIDA. So we wear a lot of hats, but my position specifically is like education, research, public outreach, and human.
00:12:12
Speaker
human remains recoveries. Do you think that the reason that this position is the way it is, is largely because of the first state archeologist and kind of his legacy? I mean, that was George Frison's goal is to, you know, be friends with every rancher and find all this archeology and really
00:12:33
Speaker
and also be just connected with the public. So do you think this is kind of a product of that? To some extent, except, you know, George didn't write the statute that formed this position. William Malloy did. Okay. And so basically William Malloy, who was
00:12:48
Speaker
the anthropology professor at UW in the 60s, like Frisin, Frisin was an undergrad under Malloy, that's what's Dennis Stanford, some other folks. When Malloy wrote that position, I suspect that he had someone like Frisin in mind for it, but he didn't really want to, but Malloy himself didn't want to take on the position because he had started doing stuff in Easter Island, and he really wasn't around Wyoming much anymore.
00:13:14
Speaker
And so he, when he wrote it, I think he was really had somebody like prison in mind and really, you know, prison did come to kind of define the position in a lot of ways. He held it for 19 years or something like that. So he had a, he had it for a really long time. And then, and then Mark Miller after him and Greg after, after him. So I'm number four now, but there's just two people, Mark, Mark and George, Mark Miller and George prison really had the position for the majority of its existence. And Mark very much also kind of like,
00:13:42
Speaker
lived up to that legacy as well. He was all of it. Mark had a lot more focused on like in the historic era and working on American trail stuff and military stuff, but he was all over the state as well talking to people about that stuff. I think I had talked to you about it, but I'd applied to be state archeologist of Tennessee.
00:13:58
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I remember that. Yeah. And I got all those interview questions and it was very like, just seemed like I'd be sitting in, you know, the Nashville Capitol listening to budget stuff and like defending archeology, which I was a no for me, but does there are a lot of that at Wyoming or do you more get to just do what you want to do? There's definitely some, some.
00:14:21
Speaker
politicking involved, especially budget stuff, of course, because Wyoming's always broke, it seems like. And also there's all the stuff that can do with hiring. We hire a lot of people. You all probably worked for this office before. I don't remember if you have or not working in curation. So there's all that stuff to do with.
00:14:38
Speaker
But for the most part, I get a lot of freedom to do whatever I want with this job and to really direct the office in whatever way we want, as long as we're fiscally responsible and not doing crazy stuff. We're not doing anything super controversial. I don't know what that would be, but as long as we kind of just
00:14:58
Speaker
keep our head down and make Wyoming archaeology look as awesome as possible. I think we're good. And that's really, I mean, in a nutshell, what our job is, is to just make sure that people around the state respect archaeology and are interested in it and have opportunities to engage with it directly so that Wyoming's cultural resources are kind of brushed aside or treated frivolously in the end.
00:15:23
Speaker
That's awesome. It seems like you enjoy it though too, so I guess that's the main part. Yeah, it's great. It'd be hard not to enjoy it, honestly. I love it. I guess if I'm really hated Wyoming, that'd probably be a really bad job for you, but I really like Wyoming so much. So how many calls during the year do you get from ranchers or people who are reaching out?
00:15:47
Speaker
be like, I found this on my land.
Engagement with Local Community
00:15:49
Speaker
Can you come look at it kind of thing? Every couple of weeks, I get something at least, but I don't look at every single one of them. Like, for instance, I don't look at the ones that claim like the medicine wheel is in an astrological alignment with Chaco Canyon and, uh, like, uh, so, oh, oh, the, uh, temple of the moon, the moon at Teotihuacan
00:16:16
Speaker
I don't really respond to that, believe it or not. And I'm sorry if that pisses off your Graham Hancock contention or whatever. But I get more of those than you think. Every six months or so, I get something like that. But sometimes truly phenomenal stuff comes in. Just last week, somebody reached out. Their father passed away. He had 60 frames of artifacts from the Southern Bighorns.
00:16:42
Speaker
Yeah, locations for all of them, specific sites. And so this is like a massive donation of stuff that at least has some semblance of a, of provenience data attached to it that we're going to end up dealing with. So stuff like that pops up, like extraordinary stuff like that, maybe every several months or something like that. Chris Rowe has entered the chat.
00:17:05
Speaker
And on that note, um, this first segment was sponsored by, uh, Graham Hancock, go read all his books, except for don't. Um, and we'll catch you in the second segment. Welcome back to episode 54. I have a life on his podcast is the second segment. We have Spencer. He was the first episode. So you probably listened to that one. I lost track of what I'm saying already.
Research Projects and Discoveries
00:17:28
Speaker
So I'm going to go right into it. Spencer.
00:17:31
Speaker
You already said that you do a lot of research for your position. What are you currently working on? I'm finishing up a couple projects I've been working on for years. The biggest one, I guess, is the Powers II hematite quarry. It's a paleoindian hematite quarry near the Hell Gap National Historic Landmark. Used between about 12,800 and 12,100 years ago, at least.
00:17:52
Speaker
That's been a really amazing experience. That was something that George Frison brought me in on like five, six years ago. And then we just finished up excavations there last summer and are writing it up right now. We're almost done. We're just waiting for some radiocarbonates to come in and then that'll be out there as the.
00:18:08
Speaker
the, officially the oldest hematite Corey in the Americas. That's so cool. So pretty excited about that. The other big site that we've been working on the last several years is the sister seal paleo minion site. It's a STEM point site. So it's got a hell gap component for, you know, something that's about 11,000 years old. And then a Cody component, a little younger, like 10, 10 eight or something like that.
00:18:28
Speaker
And we finished that up last summer as well. That felt really good and writing that up as well. So going forward, I guess, big research projects we got coming out of our office have to do with ceramics. So kind of leaving the paleoindian period a little bit and getting into late prehistoric period. And we're putting together a guidebook for ceramics in Wyoming. It kind of summarizes all the major traditions so that when you find ceramics in Wyoming, hopefully you don't just call it.
00:18:55
Speaker
intermountain grayware like everybody does everybody just calls everything intermountain grayware because nobody really knows ceramics in the mountains or in the high plains all that well and understandably so they don't mean they're not like they're not
00:19:09
Speaker
beautifully painted, they don't have like super diagnostic attributes a lot of times. Watch it now. You gotta have like a really good eye for how they were made and what their distinctive attributes are. If I can paraphrase you, all ceramics in Wyoming are crap and anything that Carlton studies is also crap, so. I'm just, you know, I think reading into what you're saying, so go, sorry, sorry to interrupt. Now the Central Plains tradition stuff's like some of the more like elaborate stuff in Wyoming as far as I can tell.
00:19:39
Speaker
Most of it's just like grayware is a good way to describe it, I guess. I'm kind of dirtin' out on this now, but yeah, it's just very, if you don't have a good eye for it and like the nuances of how it was made, what the surface treatments were, all, you know, the rim shapes and stuff, and it kind of just all looks the same. So we're trying to pull together all that into some meaningful.
00:19:58
Speaker
Simplants of order so that we people can actually understand what these things are and and and deal with them accordingly the other big thing so George prison had another kind of big unfinished project in an area called the chain lakes, which is like in Probably one of the more remote places in the entire state northwest of Rollins and the Great Divide Basin and a guy named Bill Scoggin found I don't know 150 160 paleo India points around these lakes out there and
00:20:27
Speaker
And it's been written up as like just the assemblage, his collection, but nobody's actually documented the sites like done a surface survey or tested or anything. So we're going out to start that this summer. Me and Chase Mahan are working on that together. And he's also doing some raw material sourcing as part of that.
00:20:46
Speaker
Sick. Those are the two big things we're doing this summer. We're doing a couple of public excavations as well, but these are kind of more public education initiatives as opposed to like long-term research projects. Nice. Well, I don't know if you know, but I got this. The cave in the background, you can't see it now. It's all powers to ochre on like a lot of it because I got a big bag of it. Oh, nice. Did you actually just put the ochre directly on the wall or do you mix it in with anything? Like how do you do it?
00:21:15
Speaker
So yeah, there's a lot of like, it's conjecture on how all that was done really. So I tried to like figure out different ways to do it. So I ended up using coconut oil. That didn't work. Then I used butter and that didn't work. Uh, and then I used, um, something that was fat to bind it, you know, and then Chris gave me some like,
00:21:41
Speaker
I forget what it's called, but that worked, but I ended up just chewing it up and then spitting it onto the wall. And that worked, but it also, the Powers 2 Ochre comes out of a quarry and there were a lot of fine little granules in there and I swallowed a lot of rocks. So we made a video about making paint last summer. Yeah, it was after I did that and I was mad. I think she used like Crisco or something. I can't remember what she used, but
00:22:09
Speaker
Crisco, that's just animal fat, right? But it makes sense. It's like coconut oil, it's like vegan paint.
00:22:18
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, I guess so. Didn't work, but maybe I just didn't do it right. And then also to like blow the handspray, I assume they use like shells or a turtle shell because they didn't have pottery yet. So I got a turtle shell and then use like a little straw. That didn't work either. So I'll get back to you guys when I, when I get the experimental archeology down.
00:22:40
Speaker
Yeah, the painting is an interesting topic. So now we got four hematite quarries now in the Americas. There had to have been more of them, though. But a lot of these quarries are probably associated with iron mines and copper mines. And so they probably all got destroyed. It'd be really, really easy to destroy every hematite, every prehistoric hematite quarry in the entirety of the Americas, because iron was such a sought-after mineral. But luckily, we have
00:23:07
Speaker
four preserved, one of which is underwater. So that's the only reason it probably survived the Yucatan Peninsula. And the other ones are also, I mean, they're associated with modern minds as well. So have you guys found out or like studied any, like how they actually processed the hematite at Powers II or at any of these other sites? No, I mean, the cool thing with that ochre
00:23:33
Speaker
So if you're painting yourself, you don't really have to process it at all. I mean, all you have to do is chunk it out of the ground and rub it on yourself. I mean, you don't really have to do anything more to it than that.
00:23:47
Speaker
And when we actually, you know, this last summer we actually finished the block and got down to bedrock and found the quarry pit, like the actual mine. And it's this low spot that you could see at the surface. Have you all been out there? I can't remember if you've all been out there. But you remember how there's like that, there's kind of like a ditch at the surface that we were digging through. So that ditch is the quarry.
00:24:13
Speaker
And in the bottom of that ditch, there's actually depressions that have been excavated into the bedrock, into this soft silver hematite where people were chipping that stuff out of bedrock using antlers and ribs primarily. So once you actually chip it out of the bedrock, it's this like silver, kind of greasy silver material. It's wild stuff. And so it's silver, but it paints red.
00:24:38
Speaker
So, it's like literally magic. It's like definition of magic. It's literally magic. It really is. I remember when I visited, the first thing I thought was, wow, these guys should be wearing masks or respirators because these guys are all getting the lung cancer 20 years from now. The second thing was, can you source hematite?
00:24:58
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, we think we can. We source the laparral mammoths kill hematite to there. Basically, laparral mammoths kill is like 80 kilometers from this site. And it's a Clovis site that has a ton of ochre in it.
00:25:12
Speaker
And we used inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry to source that. That was really headed up by Sandra Szychka. And so the way you do it, you take a sample from the source, you take a sample from another source, ideally another source and another source, and then you compare those sources to what's at your site.
00:25:31
Speaker
We only did two natural sources, but of those two, the ochre from the La Prose site was much more similar to the stuff from PowerSue on the basis of trace element signatures. And trace elements are tiny, tiny amounts. So you can't use XRF. You can't use X-ray fluorescence because it doesn't really get the trace elements. It gets the minor elements, but not those tiny, tiny parts per billion quantities that you're looking for.
00:26:00
Speaker
between different hematites. I think I should say those hematite from iron sources is like much different than hematite you might find like in oxidized sandstones or like in a very very old soil where it's become like like a redoxified soil and so in general
00:26:19
Speaker
Hematite from iron mines just has a very different qualitative attributes, but also very different chemical attributes than other sources of hematite, because it forms in a fundamentally different environment. It's forming in pre-Cambrian geologic environments, which are a billion years old, as opposed to stuff that formed during the Mesozoic or Cenozoic there.
00:26:43
Speaker
only a couple hundred million years old. So for that reason, the trace elements are super distinct and all that pre-Cambrian stuff.
00:26:51
Speaker
Yeah. The reason why I ask is that we find in CPT, lower loop and like historic Pawnee sites, like we find a lot of hematite, but we also get a lot of the raw material in central Nebraska is Hartville uplift that is coming in from like Western Nebraska, Eastern Wyoming. So I've always been curious, the ochre that we find in a lot of these contexts, is it also coming from powers because that's in the Hartville uplift. And that's where I know a lot of these folks were going to get the raw material.
00:27:16
Speaker
No, that's super interesting. I didn't know that. You should totally source it. I mean, I would guess, yes, it probably is. So there's a great anecdote actually from a newspaper. I think it's from the Guernsey newspaper in like 1910.
00:27:32
Speaker
And it describes opening up one of these other mines in the area, another iron mine. And it describes this cavern that they found full of Native American artifacts, like pots and digging tools. And you can see scratches on the walls from mining. And it was totally a late prehistoric, probably being used up to contact like hematite quarry that was destroyed by this iron mine.
00:28:00
Speaker
But there was a pretty good detailed account about it. And it was actually like a depression in the ground that had been chipped out from from quarry hematite out of it. So we should expect to find this stuff everywhere. I mean, there was probably hematite quarries all through that iron mining district, all throughout prehistory. We just locked into the oldest one there. It really probably the only one that's that's preserved. As far as we know, you should totally source it. That'd be a fun project.
Historical Misconceptions and Site Names
00:28:30
Speaker
I have enough money to spend on radiocarbon dates, but when I get my PhD, I'll get back in contact. I'll swap some paint and some coconut oil. Don't knock it.
00:28:41
Speaker
It's nature's, uh, you know, nature's oil. Carlton had a question about Spanish diggings. Yeah. How'd it get its name? I was out in central Nebraska last week and I was hanging out with a bunch of ranchers on the property and they were like talking about Spanish diggings and ochre. And they actually mentioned George Frison and I had to tell them the unfortunate news, but they were asked me like, how'd they get the name Spanish diggings? And I was like, that's an excellent question. I'll get back to you with an answer next week. Cause I know a guy I'm talking to pretty soon who knows why it was named that.
00:29:08
Speaker
Yeah, my understanding was, you know, the first people that were in that region came upon these massive pits and places where like entire cliff sides had been broken down and collapsed into these big, big piles of shipping debris, as well as thousands of by-faces and all this kind of crazy stuff. And they assumed that the Spanish had done that, that the Spanish had, like Spanish explorers when, when that was still, you know, very close to Mexico, basically.
00:29:38
Speaker
had come up to that region and created those pits looking for gold or minerals. So they didn't think that quarrying of the scale that you see of Spanish diggings would have been possible by Native Americans digging with antlers and rocks and stuff. So they assumed it was the Spanish in there with
00:29:58
Speaker
whatever explosives and stuff. That's my understanding. European colonialists underestimating the ability of indigenous Americans. Get out of here. That never happens. Yeah. And also underestimating like 12,000 years of, you know, digging holes and how that might look on a landscape because that, that stuff is, I feel like she could, she contextualize this a little bit.
00:30:22
Speaker
Nobody knew how long people had been living in North America, like in 1850 or whatever. Nobody even knew, like they had probably never seen a Native American, you know, like the first ranches in there and maybe the 18, that would have been probably the 1870s, 1880s.
00:30:43
Speaker
They were probably pretty clueless about like, about what all that was. So we got the name of Spanish, they were like, that must've been the Spanish. I mean, that's a, that's a big hole. It must've been in Spanish. Cause ain't nobody been here before us. Maybe that was probably the attitude. Yeah. So took the time to have 13,000 years of people digging holes. Um, yeah, you can dig a lot of holes, even with antlers and everything. And you can move a lot of rock. And yeah, I've actually never been out there with you.
00:31:13
Speaker
No. I've recently got a connection to get out there, which I'm going to pursue aggressively because I hear it's amazing. There's also crazy stuff out there. There's that big 150 foot long effigy of the dude with the arms up like this. It's out there, just really wild stuff. It's truly unique to Wyoming.
00:31:35
Speaker
Yeah. And I've, I've, I've worked on the periphery of like what you would call Spanish diggings or like, you know, generally on the Hartville uplift, but it's just, it's an insane landscape and to try to like process it data-wise is, it's just insane. It's just like everywhere you, everywhere you step, every outcrop or anything like that, people are digging and looking for stuff. Yeah, it hurts my brain. So I'd be really interesting to see.
00:32:02
Speaker
How you feel? I mean, I certainly don't want to excavate a courtside quarry myself. I don't think my strategy and excavations going forward is basically like accumulate as few artifacts as possible and still get good information out of it because dealing with artifacts is a huge issue, just curating them and writing them up. So the fewer artifacts you can pull out of the ground.
00:32:29
Speaker
and get an answer your questions the better and really your queries and courtside queries. It's like the exact opposite of what I really want to be excavating at this point.
00:32:42
Speaker
a ton of artifacts to answer the question. Yeah, they were quarrying quartzite and chert here. So I dug quite a bit of quartzite out of test pits for two summers. And it's very hard material. And it's like weirdly like a dull, but not also jagged at the same time. Like whatever that Hartville chert is.
00:33:04
Speaker
I think it's Spanish digging quartzite or like the quartzite that's out there. It's like yellow brownish kind of like a tan color There's lots of it and it Guernsey too. There's just like
00:33:14
Speaker
five faces everywhere. It's, it's like a Jurassic park of archeology out there. He was pretty cool. Well, I think it's interesting that like of all the places they could have had like chose to like have an army base, like archeologically, that was probably like the worst decision they could have made because there's so much actual archeology out there. And you know, they're put under a lot of pressure because of that. It's insane.
00:33:39
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I'm not sure if the Harvard Law Club is like magical and that a lot of people live there. I think a lot of people do live there. Like I suspect that.
00:33:50
Speaker
the heart of a lot. It's really like very, like a very attractive place throughout history, but also there's just tons and tons of rock to, to nap. And you can't ask for like a worse, like CRM situation. Honestly, it's like putting, putting like a heavily traffic place right on top of, you know, really good raw material outcrops. It's crazy. They should have done it like, like
00:34:15
Speaker
It's a good place without raw material, Wyoming. It's probably like the middle of the Great Divide Basin. Actually, there's not much rock out there. They should have done it there. But I don't think that they were really prioritizing their CRM burden. It's that Army National Guard base. Yeah, they're not the most coordinated group of people you'd think they would be, but sorry, government, if you're listening. Anyway, on that note, let's end this segment and Connor will bring us into segment three.
00:34:44
Speaker
Welcome back to episode 54 of a life in ruins podcast. We're talking with Dr. Spencer Pelton, who was our first guest and has had enough time to recover from the initial shock of being interviewed by us because it's a wild time.
Legacy of George Frison
00:34:59
Speaker
And it's decided to grace us again here right now. And we wanted to at least like bring in this last segment to talk.
00:35:08
Speaker
a little bit about Dr. George Frison. So he passed away late last year, kind of, I don't remember the exact date. We have a message that came out on September 12th about what he meant to Wyoming archeology and kind of memorializing him as a really important figure in Wyoming and in at least my life in terms of like,
00:35:34
Speaker
I've always idolized him and things like that. And at the same point, two days later, we dropped an announcement saying that we weren't going to say any cuss words. So, you know, take that for what it is. I think George Frison might have made us like sober up and realize that we shouldn't cuss as much.
00:35:51
Speaker
You know, he did a lot of good in this world and he, he made us, he got us to cuss a lot less, but we wanted to talk about kind of his career and what he really means to Wyoming archeology. So Spencer, how does it feel to like kind of sit in the same kind of seat that George was in at some point? Oh, it's a huge honor. Yeah. I guess let me, I'll address that from a couple angles. The first from like a professional significance and then.
00:36:18
Speaker
And then also his personal significance to the people in Wyoming. So professionally, his influence extended well beyond Wyoming, although he was very much associated almost solely with Wyoming. I mean, he didn't really do much work outside of the state. He did a little bit of stuff in Montana, had some commentary on some stuff in Colorado.
00:36:40
Speaker
went and jabbed a few elephants in Africa, but really like his corpus was all about Wyoming, but he took this state and made it relevant to a global archaeological audience in a super impactful and real way. I mean, he's known
00:36:59
Speaker
all over the world for really a couple main things. I think mainly his lasting legacy has been his work on bones. He really is underappreciated as a pioneer of zoarchaeology and of techniques that we use to to excavate and analyze bone beds. So when you read like, you know, a vaccunia bone bed paper from Argentina,
00:37:22
Speaker
it's like full of george frisson citations same with like a horse bone bed from the upper paleolithic of the central russian plane full of george frisson citations because he really pioneered how you dig these things and what you can can get out of them so i in my mind like his his primary kind of empirical contribution the thing
00:37:42
Speaker
the way in which he took Wyoming archaeology, which is in a lot of ways defined by these bone beds, and made them globally relevant. It's sitting around that, around zoarcheology, taphonomy, that kind of thing. Obviously, he made a lot more contributions other than that, that are more kind of local in scale. He really
00:38:01
Speaker
wrote the prehistory of this state in the northern plains in general. Had a lot of really interesting insights about paleoindians and how they lived. He excavated, of course, the agate basin site, the Colby site, things that are also nationally, if not globally, famous. But in terms of his methodological theoretical contributions, I see zoarchaeology and taphonomy as his big contribution.
00:38:26
Speaker
He did all this while maintaining a super maffable, great personality. And he was just a really good person and a really good leader of students. And it's something that's not common among anybody to be able to take a revolving door of students and people that work for them and really bring out their best qualities to have them produce really great products.
00:38:54
Speaker
You always hear people talk about so-called great leaders and what it takes to be a great leader, whatever. And it seemed to really come naturally to George Frison, whereas everybody that I've ever talked to that worked under him left with a good impression of him and thought that he made a positive impact on their life and on their career. And I can say the same. I mean, even at the age of 90, really, when I started working with him, he made a big impact on my life and my career still at that age.
00:39:22
Speaker
for the short time I got to work with him. So, yeah, I guess those are the two big things I'll say about him. And as far as stepping into those shoes, I really, I don't think about it like that. I mean, I can't really let it get to my head too much. In the end, this is a state job that I love. We're all gonna do it a little bit differently. I certainly taken some cues from the way George did the job, especially with his, like,
00:39:47
Speaker
super engagement with with avocationals and with collectors and ranchers and stuff across the state. I think that was a really important thing to do and I have no hang-ups about doing that for that reason because I see how positive it was for his career and for Wyoming archaeology in general but in the grand scheme of things like everybody will do this job differently and I try not to think about it too much. I just I just want to do
00:40:12
Speaker
do what I do and try to do it as best as I can. Not really worry about or not have too much self-awareness about like the legacy that I'm either stepping into or leaving behind. I know when I was there one of the many nuggets of wisdom that you bespoke bestowed upon me.
00:40:28
Speaker
I remember one of our coffee hours, cause you, you were close with, with Doc Frizz and even as a PhD candidate, like you were one of the students that actually sat in like chatted with, with Doc and you had told the rest of us do the same. They're like, you know, he's not that scary. Just go chat with Doc. He's just happy for the company. And I did that and really it was through Marcel. I asked, I asked a question about Waldo Waitel, who's a, was an archeologist in Nebraska. And he's like, come meet me at, it was like that hotel north of campus.
00:40:54
Speaker
for happy hour. So I went, it's like him, Mary Lou Rich was there and George just chilling for this happy hour. And I got to sit down with George for like two hours, just asking questions. And it was a daunting moment for me to realize kind of George is a connection to like the past of archeology, like all the past figures that he knew all of them personally, like Walter Waddell and some of the more famous like sixties and seventies archeologists, like knew them first name basis. And to sit there knowing that a lot of these people had passed
00:41:22
Speaker
and George still remembers them like yesterday, and to be able to talk to me how they were personally, including some of the more unsavory aspects of their personalities, was just fascinating.
00:41:34
Speaker
I remember that when I heard George had passed, that we had lost that connection to a previous generation of archaeologists, and it was like a really solemn moment. Yeah, for sure. He had that direct, and also to the leakies, to huge figures in anthropology. The cool thing about it is, when he became an archaeologist in the 60s, ranch kids from Tinsleep did not get PhDs in archaeology.
00:42:00
Speaker
at that time like anthropology in general was such a it was what you know really wealthy people from the east coast did like people people that were like bored bored with their lives and wanted wanted to have a thinking man's job they would go into that like ranch kids from densely just didn't do that and out of that 60s class at uw we had both dennis stanford and
00:42:26
Speaker
and George, both of which kind of came from these backgrounds. And on top of that, Douglas Owsley as well. I would throw him in there. He's from Lusk, Wyoming as well. I forgot about that. Yeah. It was just this something was happening in the department. And I really think it was William Molloy that really made the difference. He just inspired these people to be like, look, it doesn't matter where you come from. You can do whatever you want with your life. Go get a PhD in this if you want and do great things. That message to like a rural
00:42:55
Speaker
Any rural individual in the world now is such a powerful message to just be given that confidence to go out and do what you want and bring your perspective into the world in a unique way that really kind of upsets things and brings something new into the picture.
00:43:11
Speaker
I really respect him for that as well. And talking about how George ended up meeting all the most significant people in archaeology and anthropology in general, it's just such an amazing story. It's truly like a rags to riches kind of story. He went from
00:43:27
Speaker
you know, living in a house with no water or electricity to be basically becoming one of the most significant intellectual figures in American anthropology, which is just awesome. And also being like a war vet, you know, on top of that as well and, you know, serving his country and then coming back and deciding that, you know, archaeology and Wyoming was his passion. To put it there, you know, it's just fantastic, like you said,
00:43:57
Speaker
Yeah. He had some fun stories from that too. It was great talking to him about that stuff. He was in Hawaii for most of World War II, which sounded pretty sweet to me, but I think they did get attacked by it. He told me once, and this is kind of a funny anecdote, this was in like maybe April of last year, like kind of shortly after COVID had started. And like he was the only one coming into the building at that time.
00:44:24
Speaker
Like that the entire anthropology building was empty except for George present. And so I came in to like, get some field supplies and check in on things. And I went and talked to him. I was like, you know, they say you're not supposed to be around George. Like these things are, seems to be pretty serious, kind of taking out old people. And he's like, Oh, I figured I survived a kamikaze attack. I can probably take on a virus.
00:44:50
Speaker
Well, yeah, it doesn't make a lot of sense, but whatever. You're 95, so do what you want to do. There's a funny, I mean, there's not, there's just not a whole lot of people left thinking like throw kamikaze attack in your face about like COVID restrictions. But yeah, he was probably way to one of maybe 10.
00:45:13
Speaker
Oh, good night. Yeah. So kind of moving beyond and looking towards the future of Wyoming archeology, what do you think is what's coming next for
Future of Wyoming Archaeology
00:45:23
Speaker
Wyoming archeology? Is it going to change much or what's the future direction? So as with the rest of the country, Wyoming's become a more cosmopolitan place, especially our department. We got people doing research in Croatia,
00:45:36
Speaker
Mexico, Peru, Alaska, kind of all over the place. We got folks doing stuff all over the world and really drawing like a pretty interesting pool of graduate students to work with those folks. So in my mind, the future of Wyoming archaeology really has to be
00:45:53
Speaker
we really have to start thinking about it in a global scale. It's not just Wyoming, it's everything. So as I alluded to earlier, the thing that Wyoming does best I think is kind of dirt archaeology, digging up bones, doing stratigraphy, doing geoarch, really doing foundational kind of field methods that have gone on to be used in a lot of places. So I really see the future of what we call Wyoming archaeology being tied up in that. It's really embracing this legacy of
00:46:22
Speaker
of having an excellent field program, building foundational skills with our students, and taking students that are working in other places in the world and instilling that in them so they can export some of these things to other places in the world and start really building up foundational skills of young archaeologists all over the place, all over the world so that we all do a better job of what we do, basically, in the end. And that's the way out. That's how I see it, at least.
00:46:50
Speaker
You had mentioned earlier today that, you know, everyone's kind of a public archaeologist now. And I agree, like we all do stuff in some regard like that. But with Frisen and, you know, instead of Stanford, it's like everyone going through there, like there's something. Either it's like the demeanor of Wyoming or it's just like the attitude everyone's like so friendly, I guess, is like.
00:47:12
Speaker
It teaches you to like cooperate with people well. And I definitely learned at Wyoming, like how to communicate with people. Like before that, I wasn't great about it. And like, especially like, you know, take a notes on how Bob presents and Todd presents and stuff. Like I learned a lot from that. And I think that probably comes from prison as well. So like to, to wrap that into like the future of archeology, I think Wyoming is a great school for that. And it's like probably due to the state, I would think.
00:47:38
Speaker
or at least my army in some way. Yeah. And I just want to add like that, that communication with just regular, regular folks, ranch folks who, you know, have encountered archeology may have collected archeology and things like that is something I really got out of Wyoming. And I think, you know, needs to be acknowledged more in the future. I know Jason LaBelle is doing
00:47:58
Speaker
You know, a fantastic job of this right now and just really engaging with people who are collecting artifacts. And, you know, I think that's that's one of the things I really got out of Wyoming is that you need to really engage and talk to these folks who are collecting artifacts. And that's how we move forward. So, you know, we're losing sites every single day. Yeah, I think what it comes down to is just like maintaining
00:48:26
Speaker
maintaining the absence of pretension about all this stuff. In the end, people are interested in this stuff simply because it's cool and they're curious. Nobody goes out and picks up an arrowhead illegally because they want to inflict harm on empirical knowledge. They do it because arrowheads are really cool and they're interested in it.
00:48:53
Speaker
And really the important thing in all this and the thing I think Doc Frison inspired in a lot of people was like,
00:49:02
Speaker
Don't discount these people's ideas about this stuff and don't look down on them about those ideas. Don't shame them for some of the actions they've taken. That really doesn't get you anywhere. If you develop this kind of pretension about your knowledge and your ethics or whatever surrounding anthropology in general, this is probably a good lesson for the field of anthropology right now, actually, but I won't go into that.
00:49:30
Speaker
then you're just gonna piss everybody off and you're gonna become irrelevant. And nobody's gonna like you. Nobody was gonna wanna give you money. Nobody's gonna wanna have anything to do with you because you're acting like an asshole. So the best way to really promote anything that you love is to maintain a lack of retention about it, engage people earnestly and honestly. Don't cheat anybody. Listen when people talk to you.
00:50:00
Speaker
Just all these like just basic decency that maybe, maybe Wyoming promotes it because he really can't afford to burn that many bridges because it's such a small state. It's going to inevitably come back to bite you in the ass. Whatever it is, I, Doc certainly had it. And, and I think a lot of us have benefited from, from seeing that in action. That's a really astute point. I like that.
00:50:21
Speaker
It's a good way to end this. Before we end the show, Dr. Pelton, what are a couple sources, you know, books, articles, videos, whatever that you would recommend for anyone interested in Wyoming archeology or becoming a state archeologist? So yeah, we started doing some public, more public stuff last year during COVID. Cause we usually do an archeology fair in person. We did this virtual archeology fair and we still have all that stuff posted on our YouTube page. So if you just Google Wyoming state archeologists on YouTube, we got a bunch of videos about, you know, how excavations are done.
00:50:51
Speaker
about rock art, about making paint, about making cordage, some kind of a combination of educational and hands-on stuff. That's a good resource that our office put together if you want an entry point into this stuff. Follow us on social media. We actually have a lot of educational content on that. We usually put up something at least once a week. Right now, for instance, we're working on a Buffalo Jump collection called the Four Buffalo Jump, and every week we're putting together a small educational post about some of the bison bones from that site.
00:51:21
Speaker
Yeah, those are the two big things. If you Google Wyoming State Archaeologist, a lot of stuff comes up. Just do that. Everybody knows how to do this by this point. I don't actually know our handles for any of this stuff, but it's easy enough to find. UWIO anthropology, I think is one of them, right? And then AUSA, is that still the one?
00:51:40
Speaker
Yeah. And then we also have the university of Wyoming archeological repository maintains a pretty active presence as well. So we run that facility and that's on Facebook. We also have an Instagram, but I never use it. I might use it this summer more, but I should probably do better about that. Need to hire one of you young millennials to do it for me. Hire David. He's the magician with that stuff. You're only like three years older than me. I'm an elder millennial. Elder. Well,
00:52:10
Speaker
Yeah, let us know. Or anyone listening, if you want a job, hit up Spencer. Or don't. He might not want that. I'm offering a job, but that doesn't exist yet. On other news though, we now have a store on Redbubble. If you go to redbubble.com slash people slash a life in ruins, you can get stickers. You can get shirts.
00:52:31
Speaker
you can get Carlton on a sticker and Connor on your shirt. We all know everyone's going to buy Connor's sticker anyway. So just go on there, check it out. And yeah, you can follow us on social media. Please again, give us a review because that's how Apple recognizes you as a legitimate podcast. And we have like four reviews. So give us some more of those. Yeah. Thanks. Once again, Spencer, Dr. Pelton, as future Dr. Gover would say, because this is a life in ruins, we have to ask the question. You probably answered this before, but.
00:53:00
Speaker
would you still choose to live a life in ruins and become a state archaeologist and just be good at pretty much everything? Oh, for sure. I love this job. This is my dream job. Like I, I wake up every day, I love my job. I don't think, yeah, yeah, that's unambiguous. I'm going to be one of those people that they're going to have to kick out.
00:53:23
Speaker
That's good, man. I think that's pretty rare. So we're happy for you. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. And with that, we just interviewed Dr. Spencer Pelton. You can find him at apparently Google since he doesn't know his own handles. Just Google Dr. Spencer Pelton University of Wyoming, a Wyoming state archeologist. That's where you'll find him. So he's the only one. So with that, yeah, with that, we're out.
00:53:56
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. So gents, what's an astronauts favorite part of the computer? The spacebar.
00:54:27
Speaker
I didn't get that
00:54:43
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 Rodin. 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.