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Zooarchaeology with Alex Fitzpatrick - Episode 45
299 Plays6 years ago
Do they have squirrels in Scotland? Maybe you enjoy in depth discussions about ancient ceramics. In today's episode we discuss one of the myriad of sub-fields within archaeology, with zooarchaeologist Alex Fitzpatrick. We cover what is zooarchaeology (in short animal bones), how it has been used to learn about humans and the world in the the past, and some of the projects she works on. We also discuss some of Alex's work on various science communication projects.
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Transcript
Introduction to Women's Contributions in Archaeology
00:00:00
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. I just tweet and Instagram pictures of my dead bones for people who want to see. Hi, and welcome to the Women in Archaeology podcast, a podcast about, for, and by women in the fields.
Exploring Zooarchaeology with Emily Long and Alex Fitzpatrick
00:00:18
Speaker
On today's episodes, we will be discussing all things zoo archaeology.
00:00:26
Speaker
Joining me for this discussion are Emily Long and Alex Fitzpatrick. Thanks for joining me today, ladies. It's amazing to have you. Happy to be here. Hey. So Alex, since this is your first time on the podcast,
Who is Alex Fitzpatrick?
00:00:43
Speaker
Can you just give a real brief introduction about who you are and what you do? Yeah, so I'm Alex Fitzpatrick. I'm a PhD student in Bradford, the University of Bradford in England. As you can tell by my accent, I'm American. My specialty is the archaeology. I mostly work in Scotland. And yeah, that's basically me.
00:01:08
Speaker
Awesome. So, for those people who are listening who may not be familiar with zoo archaeology, just do a real brief intro. Like, what is zoo archaeology? It's important. Right. One minute elevator pitch. I'll give you 10 seconds. Study of dead animals. There you go. Wow. Two seconds. Impressive.
00:01:33
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, yeah, that's it. Like, is there a specific timeframe for zookeology in terms of like, is there a different set of zookeology for like, really early, I don't know, like,
00:01:49
Speaker
iosine type animals to what we see in more prehistoric context. Like, is there a larger range for zoo archaeology or is it very specific?
Zooarchaeology vs. Paleontology
00:01:59
Speaker
Well, I think once you get to like, you know, stuff like that, like, especially like dinosaur stuff, that's paleontology more, there's probably like a midsection between paleontologists and zoo archaeologists that I can't even, I don't even know about.
00:02:15
Speaker
But we do kind of cross over a little bit, like specifically my field right now, I'm working with animals from the Neolithic. So long time ago, but not necessarily that long ago in the grand scheme of things. And I would imagine that there's some regional knowledge that's required. I can't imagine that someone who works in
00:02:41
Speaker
a warm swampy place who has alligators and crocodiles and all the things that hang out in swamps that I prefer not to think about would necessarily be able to transplant to Scotland or vice versa because they're not animals that you're familiar with.
Challenges of Identifying Local Wildlife
00:02:59
Speaker
Oh, yeah, like that's actually like a really big problem as an American doing as your archaeological studies here is every so often I'll kind of if like I'm ID'ing some bones and I'm like, I think it's this and then off to ask everyone to be like, is this actually local to Scotland? Because I don't know. Like we had this very long conversation the other day where I wasn't sure if wolves actually were in Scotland.
00:03:28
Speaker
I think that's a legitimate question. Well, it turns out they went extinct in like the 18th century, I think, so it wasn't a dumb question. Right, depending on what time period you're working in.
00:03:41
Speaker
The answer is yes or no. Yeah. And there's like definitely like obviously there's different animals that you work with. Like I have in my assemblage right now, I have some great auk bones, which is extinct, like kind of like a puffin type bird, which obviously I wouldn't find necessarily, you know, working in like the Southwest America or something.
00:04:02
Speaker
So it's definitely like a learning curve, especially for someone who isn't really familiar with what kind of animals. Like I think the other day I asked my boyfriend if they had squirrels here, which is really silly. No, but I don't know either. So it's like, is there a different kind? He looked at me and he was like, yeah, haven't you seen them? They're everywhere.
00:04:28
Speaker
Right, but that doesn't mean that they were around in the Neolithic. Yeah, I mean, I didn't find these crow bones. I was just asking a genuine question because I was wondering if they were squirrels. And I've lived here like two and a half years now, so you'd think I know. But you don't always pay attention to it, you know? Yeah, you know, I'm paying attention to what's on my phone, you know, millennials, am I right?
00:04:52
Speaker
Yes. Are there any major animal types that you see that you've been working with that are also in the United States around the same timeframe? Or is it just so totally different because of just two completely separate areas? Or is there some similarities that you're seeing from the timeframe you're looking at?
Understanding Regional Fish Variations
00:05:11
Speaker
Well, fish-wise, there's some similarities because Scotland and I also work sometimes in the Ork, New Islands, which is an island that's right up north of Scotland and between Scotland and Norway, more or less, since it's all part of the Atlantic.
00:05:31
Speaker
be a very similar fish that you'll see in like parts of Canada and northern parts of the Americas. So, like cod. It's always cod. Cod everywhere. I'm so sick of cod. Tangent number one, you don't happen to know Ruth Ann Marr, do you? Who also works in the Orkneys? Yeah. I know Ruth. Yeah.
00:05:55
Speaker
Okay, I've met her at a conference and I was trying to do some work in some papers in Iceland and she did her dissertation on bioarchaeology in Iceland. Yeah, it's a whole, it's a whole NABO, the North Atlantic Bio, was it North Atlantic Bio cultural organization, I think is what it stands for. Yeah, it's Tom McGovern. Oh my God. Yeah, Tom McGovern. I went to Hunter College for my undergrad. So I know Tom.
00:06:23
Speaker
Yeah, he's just everywhere. There's like five people who all work in that group, so we all know each other. I don't know if they'll ever remember me, but I know all them.
00:06:34
Speaker
Right. I mean, that's kind of how it always is for people who are starting out, right? Yeah, definitely. Like, it's just, you know, ping ponging between names. I mean, that's how I actually got to University of Bradford because at Hunter College, there's a study abroad where you go with a bunch of other community students to the Orkneys to dig. And that was my first excavation. And that's how I met people from the University of Bradford, realized I really liked it and decided to move here for my master's, now my PhD.
00:07:04
Speaker
Nice. Yeah, I also did my master's in the UK, and it's definitely an amazing place. Yeah, especially because it's cheaper to do your master's here. So much. Unfortunately, at least my experience was they don't fund people for PhDs. Oh, no. This is a self-funded, student loan-based PhD, man.
00:07:27
Speaker
Right? Anyways, that's like entirely off the topic. No, because I mean, if listeners you're interested in getting a master's, UK is a good way to go. It is. And a lot of times they're shorter. Oh, yeah. People who get them done in a year.
00:07:43
Speaker
Yeah, mine was a year program, which is super intense, especially because I was going from the humanities because my undergrad degree was in classical archaeology and anthropology to archaeological sciences masters. So it was really intense, but honestly, it was so worth it.
00:08:02
Speaker
Nice. But to get back on track, that tangents aren't fun. So you're mentioning codfish bones and that kind of thing. When people think of archaeology, it seems they tend to think more of sexy artifacts.
00:08:19
Speaker
Ooh, Spirit Point. Ooh, pottery. Why are animal bones, do you think they're as just as important as these, you know, the artifacts that are the stereotypical things that people think of archaeology?
Why are Animal Bones Important?
00:08:32
Speaker
Is it as important, more important? Like, what is that makes zoo archaeology so important in archaeology?
00:08:41
Speaker
Oh, I'll throw down the gauntlet right now. I think it's more important than all the artifact stuff. Anyone, any other ceramics people, y'all can come at me. I think pottery is boring. You know what? I hated my classics degree. I hated pottery. Don't come to me with all that typology stuff. Oh my god, it's so boring. If that's to hear about geometric pottery one more time, I'm going to explode.
00:09:26
Speaker
But what is it that makes it so important? Like, what does it – and I'm not – it's not a challenge by any stretch. I'm not like, what makes it important? It's like, seriously, like, what can – for our listeners, what does zoo archaeology tell us about the past?
00:09:31
Speaker
I feel you. I really, really do. I'm a bioarchaeologist. Same page. So much cooler.
00:09:41
Speaker
Well, the thing that I really like about archaeology is that I feel like animal bones actually touch so much of the past realistically because you can use animal bones to look at the environment. You can look at animal bones and see what you can extrapolate from human activity, that relationship between humans and animals.
00:10:01
Speaker
I don't know. I feel like the thing about zoology that really drew me to it is that it kind of touched a lot of interests I had growing up. So biology studies, cultural studies, things like that. Great. Well, and I think a lot of people forget and do it easily. I mean, self included. I'm a pescatarian, so I don't interact with meat.
00:10:25
Speaker
ever. But if you get in the past that acquiring food wasn't, hey, you know, went to the grocery store down the street and picked up something that, you know, sitting on a piece of styrofoam covered in plastic wrap that, you know, you were going and hunting what was local and what was around. And because, you know, sustainability, like a subsistence people,
00:10:54
Speaker
don't have that same kind of, not like, do I have money to go to the grocery store, but will there be animals that I can hunt that I could find? That connection is a little bit broken and a little bit harder to make from modern Western society.
Meat Use: Past vs. Present
00:11:08
Speaker
because it's not something that most of us are ever exposed to? Yeah, I mean, I would even go as far as to say that even past that, you know, as someone who does eat meat, sometimes I have to remember that, you know, the way we use meat and the way people in the past use meat are totally different because I mean, they would use everything. So like, you know, I have a lot of bones that have these, you know,
00:11:30
Speaker
percussion notches which are basically impact marks from when they were hit by tools because people were trying to get the marrow out of the bone because they want everything that they can get from the animal. So it's kind of like just like realigning your thinking as well. I mean that's like all of archaeology is realigning the way you think so that you can be as close as possible with your interpretations but
00:11:56
Speaker
That's fascinating. So not just the bones themselves. You're saying how you've seen the percussion marks. Do you look at the processing factors as well, like how the animal would have been processed based on the cut marks, breakage, and so forth?
00:12:13
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, we'll probably talk about this later because this is like the big bulk of my PhD research. But yeah, I mean, it's it is this is like the little nitty gritty stuff that I think some people who may not, you know, be familiar with archaeology realize that this is the kind of information you can extrapolate from animal bones, looking at butchery marks.
00:12:32
Speaker
What else am I looking at? Charring to see if they were cooked, if they were put in your fire. I mean, you can go as far as, I think with scanning electron microscopy sometimes, you can even look at the burning and see just what temperature it was at by the color and by some of the micro characteristics.
00:12:54
Speaker
You can go pretty intense with it. That's really cool. There have been some other really interesting studies. There's a guy, Will Taylor, he just got his PhD.
00:13:06
Speaker
So in the last year, a year and a half, he's actually, I believe, doing a postdoc at Max Planck right now. And he worked in Mongolia on domestication of horses. And at what point we can say, not only have we domesticated horses so that we could herd them, but what were the cranial or skull modifications that came along with
00:13:30
Speaker
putting a bridle in a bit in a horse's mouth for driving, for plowing, for riding. Oh, I know. That's cool. I have not read his hundreds of pages dissertation, Bad Chelsea. But so you can also learn about the origins of human relationship with certain animals and certainly
00:13:55
Speaker
when humans domesticated horses and started using them for transport and mobility. The amount of distance you can cover on a horse in one day is so much greater than the amount of distance that a human can cover on foot in one day.
00:14:11
Speaker
looking at some of those major shifts. And then in that point, seeing, you can also use animal remains to kind of get a feel for the belief systems of people, like around where I'm working in, so like the later prehistoric in Britain.
00:14:27
Speaker
you know, horses were, what we think is horses were seen as high status because of basically what you just said, the fact that they can get you from one place to another so quickly, you know, things like that. So you get to, you see, I think there's a PhD student actually at our university right now who's doing her research on horse burials, because you get horse burials and horse and chariot burials a lot, especially in the Yorkshire area where I live. So, you know, there's a lot you can extrapolate from animal bones.
00:14:57
Speaker
And is it fun, too, when you can connect it with other types of artifacts?
Telling Stories with Animal Remains
00:15:01
Speaker
Why not, like, sorry, just a quick, quick example. That's my favorite example. There's this site at Navajo National Monument, Puebloan, ancestral Puebloan site.
00:15:12
Speaker
And there's rock art images of turkeys. And right below it, there are turkey pens that are still coming out of the ground. So you can see where the pens would have been. And then sometimes you'll find the little stones that they would have eaten.
00:15:30
Speaker
little stomach stones and just like it's full circle. It's like here you have the literal structures. You've got like pictures and art and then you have parts of the turkey still there. It's like, oh man, full circle.
00:15:44
Speaker
That's something that's disappointing with my site is because my site is like a cave like I don't necessarily have that kind of like connections to really make I know there's some artifacts that they found but mostly just iron work and bronze work and stuff but nothing as cool as what that sounds like
00:16:04
Speaker
Well it's not, I mean, and I'm sure too with it being such a, I'm guessing a much wetter environment, it'd be hard for like art, like for paint to be sticking on the cave walls probably, maybe? Yeah, well there's one cave that I'm working in that has like carvings, which are pretty famous. Oh, that would be so cool! Yeah, it's a very...
00:16:26
Speaker
a weird site, let me tell you. Well, and I do know they've also used this archaeology going back to Tom McGovern and kind of the Arctic because that's my wheelhouse. They were doing some analysis of important sites. I believe it was in Iceland, although I haven't read the paper in like a year and a half.
00:16:50
Speaker
where they found there were issues in Iceland where any cattle that you have in Iceland were brought over because Iceland had, I think it was like the Arctic fox or the Arctic hare was the only mammal on Iceland when the Vikings arrived. You know that any skulls from cattle are cattle that were brought over and that
00:17:19
Speaker
as they destroyed the environment there, there were fewer and fewer cattle. Their skulls became more and more high status items. The skulls themselves? The skulls themselves transcend being just part of an animal that was butchered, and they become objects and artifacts in and of themselves. They used the placement of several skulls around a particular settlement to
00:17:48
Speaker
talk about why that was likely a high status settlement and which buildings were more important by the presence of these status items, essentially.
00:18:01
Speaker
Yeah, and that reusing of animal remains, I think, is something really important to do archaeology, not just with belief systems, which is actually something that I deal with in my site, but also just utilizing them just for everyday work things. You see worked bone, things like that, antler combs, all that kind of cool stuff.
00:18:25
Speaker
There's just so much. It's almost like, I hate to use a metaphor from Shrek, but it's like an onion and it has all these layers.
00:18:36
Speaker
I hate myself. That was bad. No, don't. Don't at all. I love it. I'm loving it. One of our previous podcasts, we definitely spent a good solid 10 minutes talking about Moana. So, you know. The movie was so good. It was such a good movie. It was. It was a very good movie. It really was. Yeah. Yeah, they just translated into the Maori language. And I was like, oh, that's pretty good. Oh, yeah, they did. I saw that. That's awesome.
00:19:05
Speaker
Oh yeah. I hadn't heard that. That's amazing. And it sounds really cool. Yeah, I believe that. Yeah. Oh, that's amazing. And Shrek. Good movies. I love being on the Moana and Shrek podcast. Thank you for having me. You're welcome. And if Pixar and Disney would like to give a sponsorship, we'd be very happy.
00:19:32
Speaker
We're available. Also, there was a podcast where we produced a bunch of shark facts. So Discovery, wink, wink, nudge, nudge, shark week. We can get in on that. Some good ideas. Right? Future episodes. Anyways, speaking of the future, we are about at the end of our first 20 minute segments. We'll go away for a quick break. And when we come back, Alex, I'd love to hear more about some of the specific research that you're doing.
00:20:04
Speaker
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00:20:18
Speaker
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00:20:40
Speaker
Hi, and welcome back to the Women in Archaeology podcast. On today's episode, we have been discussing zoo archaeology with guest Alex Fitzpatrick. Last segment, we talked a little bit about what zoo archaeology is, what it's used for. We bashed on pottery a lot. Don't worry, we don't hate you.
00:21:01
Speaker
Right? I went to some fascinating pottery sessions at the Las Shas. It has its place. It's just not on this episode. I told the head of my department in my undergraduate that I hated pottery after he told me he wrote a book about pottery. So I'm very steadfast in my beliefs.
00:21:19
Speaker
Fair enough. We also talked a little bit about Shrek and Milana's live analysis films. Good times. So my PhD project is about putting an archeological framework on Shrek.
Ritual Caves in Scotland: A Study
00:21:35
Speaker
Wait, can we? Yeah, right? You know, that just sounds fascinating. We've actually talked about doing an archaeology of the movie's episodes before, and I really hope we should. I'm sure we can throw in, like, look at the cranial structure of Shrek.
00:21:51
Speaker
Well, I mean, if you look at narrative as its own type of archaeological excavation in terms of narratively digging through the plot and things like that, I don't know. I just hurt my head. Done. Sold. You're on the show. Next week. You made it, Mom. No, next week we will not.
00:22:15
Speaker
Maybe in the future. Five movies between now. That gently hurt my head trying to say like... Right. Anyways, Alex, your PhD project is not on Shrek as awesome as that would be. So what is it on? It is on something that's not as cool as Shrek and I'm talking about ritual caves. I think that sounds cool. Yeah.
00:22:45
Speaker
So, yeah, I'm going to try to do as much non-disservice to the project as I can. It's not like the supervisors are listening to this. They have other things to do, like actually excavate. So, the sites that we're talking about, our podcast is the most important.
00:23:05
Speaker
My supervisors are like working on five different projects right now. I have no idea how they have time to do anything Yeah, so my project I'm currently working on two cave sites that make up part of the Cowsie caves, which is up in Scotland so It's they're really like I mean, there's no other way to say it. They're really weird sites like and if I like the
00:23:31
Speaker
I mean, if you think juvenile decapitation is fun, then, like, yeah. So yeah. So we think it's part of a week, you know, the people who are working on it. We think it's a mortuary complex. So there's a lot of human remains there, which is not necessarily the focus of my research, but it's cool to talk about. So the Bronze Age remains in Sculptor's Cave, which is the more famous cave.
00:24:01
Speaker
They are just juvenile heads. There's just a lot of juvenile heads that have been placed near the entrances. And then in the Roman Iron Age, apparently, there's a lot of instances of decapitations. So kind of weird. But I'm looking at the animal bone, which is not necessarily as flashy as that, but still kind of weird.
00:24:25
Speaker
Yeah, so we actually just opened up as part of my pilot study for the PhD project, we opened up a new chamber in the back of the cave. So they had all these unstratified animal bones and they gave them to me to look at. And we're just finding such like the way I keep telling people about it. It's like it's a really crappy petting zoo.
00:24:46
Speaker
Like that's the only way I can describe it. Cause we've got, so like, you know, it's kind of on the coast of Scotland. So, you know, if I say we're finding a bit of fish, you know, that doesn't sound that weird. We're finding some seabird remains. That's not weird. We're finding a seal kind of weird, I think, especially all the way back in this cave. We're finding a lot of young sheep bones. That's a little weird too. We think we might have a wolf, huh?
00:25:17
Speaker
We have some extinct birds and we have an eel, I believe. We have a cat and a bunch of pears, so it's kind of weird. And there's no way the animals could have gotten back there themselves.
00:25:34
Speaker
Well, some of them like, you know, the wolf, well, the possible wolf. I can't actually say it's a wolf because we're not entirely sure. And I'm probably going to get it tested for, you know, to see what it is. But stuff like the possible wolf and the cat, I can understand, you know, this could be like kind of a den. But like, there's so many young sheep. And you might surprise me at a point of saying like, they wouldn't just wander all into as deep of the cave.
00:26:04
Speaker
So there's a lot going on. There's some butchery as well, which means that there's human activity going on in this cave. I mean, one of my supervisors, Julie Bond, who's an amazing zoo archaeologist, an environmental archaeologist, who also works up in the North Atlantic a lot, she was even like, I don't really know what to tell you.
00:26:26
Speaker
Yeah, so there's a lot of strange stuff happening. And just to wrap my brain around, so you're saying it's mostly for you seeing mortuary practices.
Mortuary Practices in Caves
00:26:36
Speaker
So people weren't living in the cave itself as its own little habitation. They were living away from the caves, and so it wouldn't be just everyday butchery. You're like, I'm going to butcher a lamb for dinner type of thing. It's kind of a weird spot to be doing that.
00:26:51
Speaker
Yeah, like, I haven't looked at the human remains, and from what I understand, I think there's also issues with the human remains, at least from Sculpture's Cave, because I believe earlier excavations might have just kind of lost the bodies. Oh no.
00:27:06
Speaker
So, yeah, so there's a lot of me just looking at archival information to extrapolate from my project. But, I mean, all the human remains look like mortuary type remains, you know? And I don't think there's much by way of any domestic looking artifacts. Like I said, I think there's some iron work, but that's about it. So, yeah.
00:27:31
Speaker
Again, there is like from what I've seen so far, this is very preliminary research. For what I see so far, there's a bit of butchery looking things, definitely signs about human activity. There's a lot of burnt bone. But otherwise, it just seems like a really random collection of animals. Huh, it does. It does sound weird. It's like, what what are they doing there? What were they? Why were they butchering them? Huh?
00:27:58
Speaker
Right, would it be possible, because you said you're finding a lot of really young sheep, and granted not a zoo archaeologist, but my understanding is that butchering really young animals isn't necessarily the most efficient use of them, because if sheep can give wool, you're basically saying that this animal is not going to be useful for wool for the rest of its life.
00:28:23
Speaker
Has any research been done? Are you thinking at all that the use of the sheep that have been placed there may be related to the use of the human skeletons? Yeah, I mean, it's kind of a good – in zoarchaeology, it's kind of a good rule of thumb, although obviously not the case for everything, that there's a bit of a flag going up if you're starting to find young animals being butchered. Actually, a lot of the young animals also have signs of gnawing.
00:28:53
Speaker
So the way the gnawing kind of looks is that I've been finding evidence of a canine gnawing, which might be like that wolf slash dog thing that we have, and some evidence of a cat gnawing. So my pitch is that a cat and a wolf are living as friends in this cave and are bringing food and having a really good time. And apparently this is not a good thesis.
00:29:24
Speaker
I don't know. I don't really understand why people would like to hear it, but I don't know. I think I think it sounds like, I mean, some possibilities for a kids program to like the wolf and the cat or best friends are like they're stealing sheep from the community. And they're just like, hey, we're hungry. You want to share a leg bone? The other idea I have is the idea that like
00:29:44
Speaker
these people there's something living in the back of this cave these people don't know what it is and they're just like giving it sheep as a way to like just don't eat us so again not apparently not like the greatest uh theory i've posted out there for my supervisors but you know i'm just gonna keep slaying them
00:30:02
Speaker
until they agree to something. Me too. I mean, who doesn't love the YouTube videos with like, you know, it's like an elephant and a puppy and, you know, a lion. I spend so much time in the office not writing and instead on Instagram, looking at animal accounts.
00:30:21
Speaker
because they're the absolute best and I just love it. Like, how can I read about, you know, taphonomic indicators when I could be staring at a really cute dog for like an hour? Yeah, it's like I could be working on lectures or watching videos of Fiona the baby hippo. Oh my god, I love Fiona the baby hippo. We're the same person. She's the best.
00:30:55
Speaker
You would face like, that's like the greatest thing about going to zookeology is sometimes you just see animals, what they look like as skeletons and you're just like that doesn't make sense. I believe that. So I have to ask, um, have you ever for the work you've been doing, um, had to actually like process then like modern collections so that you have some like a type collection. I had to do that when I was at I just
00:31:15
Speaker
I also just saw a hippo skull for the first time and it was nuts.
00:31:19
Speaker
like one day and it was the grossest thing ever when I was an intern and like we had to like boil like deer bones in like this like laundry detergent or something and I had to like scrape off.
00:31:33
Speaker
squishy bits and stuff, like, that seems like the worst part of zoology possible, it's like creating type collections. I do it for fun. I don't have to do it, but I've started my own because, you know, a lot of my zoology friends have amazing, like, collect their own amazing reference collections and I really wanted to start my own, so I've started doing that. I mean, most of my stuff is birds,
00:32:01
Speaker
But I have what happened there. I think I have some mice, maybe. Some of them are gifted from other friends who have big collections. But one of my favorite things is, so when I met through Twitter, her name's Allison. I think she just handed in her PhD. And she's been working on the chicken project over here in the UK. And she sent me a DM one day and was like, hey, I'm cleaning out my fridge. Do you want a chicken?
00:32:29
Speaker
And I was like, yeah, just, yeah, send me a chicken. So she mailed me a dead, like a whole dead chicken that I processed myself. Like feathers and everything. I can't do it again. I had to like deep, I had to like deep clock it or whatever the word is for that. It's fun. I can't use my crock pot anymore, but you know.
00:32:57
Speaker
Oh my god. Have you found with the creation of your type collection applicable to the stuff you're working on now? Have you been able to get a wolf skeleton? I don't know how many bones are in an eel.
00:33:14
Speaker
Are there lots of bones in these? Stuff like that that you're working on that you can have like a comparative analysis or does the university have a pretty big type collection? So the university does have a reference collection. It's not like the biggest one, so actually it's one of the best things about being on Twitter and just being connected to all these other zoarchaeologists is that occasionally if I don't
00:33:36
Speaker
have a bone, I can just tweet out and be like, hey, does anyone have like, we have one of the other assemblages I'm working on. We have this really big mandible that at first glance I was like, okay, that's a cow. And then looked at it again, realized it was like a deer shaped mandible. So it's a real, it's either a really big red deer or an elk or something. So I just tweeted out like, hey, does anyone have like elk or reindeer mandibles? And then I had people just sending me pictures.
00:34:06
Speaker
which is like really nice. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, the zoo archaeology community is great. That's amazing. I am not a zoo archaeologist, but I do think as a bioarchaeologist, it's good to like have some sort of reference collection so that I can say this is not human. And I'm pretty good at like, oh, this is fish. This definitely swims. Weird wavy bones.
00:34:29
Speaker
But being able to say beyond that, because sometimes I can be on a crew and I'm the only person with osteological training. So yes, I'm a bioarchaeologist. I work with human remains. But having some sort of knowledge
00:34:44
Speaker
of Animal Remains is great. I used to work in Louisiana. I can tell you, I'll get her crocodile and sheep and goat and cow and horse and kind of sometimes. That's about it. But I have a friend who does a lot of hunting and processes his own meat and uses it all and uses antlers for knife handles and things. He's great. But I saw him recently and I was like, the next time you have bones that you
00:35:11
Speaker
don't know what to do with. You have my address, right? And then I don't have to clean them or anything because he's butchered and cleaned and taken the meat off. And, you know, I just get presented with the mostly clean skeleton. That's the thing is like, I really want to have a nice reference collection, but like, I live in a studio flat right now, so I do not have room for like a lot of bones.
00:35:37
Speaker
It's very unfortunate. Like I'm thinking about moving at the end of this year and my boyfriend already said he's like, if you're going to process stuff, you're going to have to do it outside or get a specific room
Processing Bones for Reference Collections
00:35:48
Speaker
for it. You're not doing it in our kitchen. It really does stink. Like I've never smelled anything like that in my life and had gotten under like my fingernails and I would like fall asleep with like, you know, my head on my hand or I'd move my hand and be like, Oh God, you know, it's just,
00:36:03
Speaker
Never. Never again. It's not the nicest smell. Really, the best way to do this kind of stuff is either to have those beetles to do it, which I don't process enough to have those beetles, or to just have some space outside and bury it for a bit.
00:36:21
Speaker
That's probably the less smelly way to do it, but I'll live, of course, on top of a donut store, so I don't necessarily think I have the space to bury a bunch of dead animals. Sounds delicious, though. Oh, I've never been to the donut store, so I don't know.
00:36:42
Speaker
Oh no, I'm just scared of them because I've been using their dumpster for the past two years and I don't think they like that, so I'm just scared. They yelled at me once and then I just kept doing it. Shh. Fair enough. Yeah, seriously. Hey, gotta do what you gotta do. The things we do for our trade. But I know it's actually also really
00:37:06
Speaker
Really important. I remember one of our early episodes where we talked about things you can do in archaeology besides dig with April B. Saw. Yeah, I love April. Also does some Zuark, I believe. But she talked about the importance that if you're going to do Zuark to have your own reference collection, because if you want to do consulting work, not necessarily be a professor. I don't know what your goals for your career track are. But if you want to do consultancy work, you kind of have to have your own reference collection and to start putting it together early and often whenever you can.
00:37:36
Speaker
Oh, yeah. And at CRM firms, I mean, there are so many that have final analysts and paleoethnobotanists and so forth. So, yeah, it's a great skill. Definitely. Well, you can also use it to teach students. I had a professor who had a backyard and whenever he barbecued or cooked a T-bone or had a chicken or whatever,
00:38:00
Speaker
he would just kind of throw them in his backyard. And granted, it wasn't very nice backyard. It didn't have flowers or anything. But when he had an archaeology class, if they didn't have a field school or an excavation, he would have people come over to his backyard. And he would dump everything in one quadrant for six months. And then the next six months would be in the next quadrant. So he just had this rotating
00:38:28
Speaker
backyard of I have thrown animal bones from things that I ate in my backyard. Now come excavate it and tell me what you found. Have fun. That's such a good way to teach, though. That's awesome. It was amazing. I wish I had them. My undergrad studies were so devoid of any practical training, which is why I ended up moving here. I just really wish I had stuff like that. But I was in the classics, which was classical archaeology. At least the way I was taught was basically art history.
00:38:58
Speaker
Yeah. A lot of it tends to be. Yeah, again, I'm just sick of those pottery. I hate to bring it up again, but I really just can't. Just hate it so much. Pottery's cool, man. Pottery's cool. Listen, I will not change my anti-pottery stans, okay? To each their own bun. Don't like anti-potteryists. I'm not a fan of it. We're all entitled to our opinion. Just some of us have correct opinions, so it's fine.
00:39:42
Speaker
Are you interested in hosting your own show on the Archaeology Podcast Network? If you're passionate about a topic and can come up with at least 10 episodes right now, I'll wait. Then contact me at chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com. We'll go over your options and what we can do for you. That's chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com. Don't let your passions sit in a file cabinet or on a dusty bookshelf. Broadcast them to the world with a podcast today. Back to the show.
00:40:00
Speaker
I'm gonna cry, bye guys.
00:40:05
Speaker
Hi, and welcome back to the Women in Archaeology podcast. So far on today's episode, we have been discussing zoo archaeology, what it is, what it's used for, and some of the projects that Alex Fitzpatrick is associated with in which she uses zoo archaeology to investigate the past.
00:40:23
Speaker
We've talked a lot about positives and why we like zoo archeology so far, but as with everything archeological, there are limitations.
The Frustrations of Working with Fish Bones
00:40:33
Speaker
Are there particular limitations or particular drawbacks to doing zoo archeology, Alex?
00:40:39
Speaker
So fish bones were put here by the devil, and they are here as a punishment for anyone who goes into archaeology. I did my master's dissertation on fish bones, which sounded like a good idea at the time. I should have realized the warning signs when even my supervisor was like, I don't know that much about fish bones, so there'll be a point where you're kind of on your own.
00:41:03
Speaker
No joke, people in my department used to stop by the lab just to see what I was doing because they'd be like, oh, I heard you're walking on fish bones. Why?
00:41:12
Speaker
So it was me and like 3,000 fish bones for three months in the summer of 2016. At one point, they're from the Orkneys and they were so small, some of the vertebrae. At one point I had tweezers and I was using them to look at each individual vertebrae and I like breathed a little bit too hard and they just went flying across the lab table. It was great. I loved it.
00:41:42
Speaker
At that point, I was just like, Nemo, just stop. Terrible. And also, no one uses the fist collection at the university, apparently, because I went to open up one of the fish bones that we have to compare them. And the smell was so fresh. It was like a very fresh fish.
00:42:03
Speaker
It smelled great. Definitely didn't get a lot. Didn't eat fish for a while after that. It was not pleasant. I know a lot of fish bones, but man, I don't like them so much. Yeah. What made you want to study them for your masters?
00:42:23
Speaker
It was just because at that time, when I did my master's, which I think is the case for a lot of people, that's when I realized that I wanted zoo archaeology to be my specialization. So I was asking around what kind of zoo art projects do you have, and the only thing they really had, they were like, well, no one's really looked at the fish bones. And now I know why no one looked at the fish bones, because it's terrible and they shouldn't look at fish bones.
00:42:46
Speaker
Like, it was very difficult not to write my thesis about, like, you can find a lot of stuff out from fish bones, but everyone should just throw them in the bin because this is just awful. Like, I did isotopic analysis on these fish bones, I did scanning electron microscopy on these fish bones. These fish bones were paid way more, too much attention to, like, for sure. So no startling discoveries from them.
00:43:13
Speaker
I mean, it was interesting in terms of... So the reason why I did this project was because there's this weird thing in Britain, in the Iron Age, where fishing kind of just stops. But there's not as much archaeological evidence for fishing, but places up north, like the Orkneys.
00:43:34
Speaker
we keep finding large amounts of fish bones still in the assemblages. I was just looking at it to see exactly what these fish were doing. Unsurprisingly, they were just fished from the sea by people. I wrote a very long dissertation just saying people fished sometimes in the Iron Age. Not all the time, but sometimes.
00:44:01
Speaker
And never again. I got my master's degree. Yeah, but I got my master's degree, so it's fine. That's all I'm mad at, really, at that point. So I hate fish, and I hate pottery. Is there anything else I can talk about?
00:44:15
Speaker
So it sounds like even if you really hated fish bones, and I don't blame you because when I think about eating fish and the tiny bones that you find, that does not sound like a fun afternoon to me. But it sounds like you at least got some good training on isotopes.
00:44:34
Speaker
Scanning microscopy, is that what you said you were using? Yeah. Just really good training that fortunately is the last step that I'm going to be using my PhD research as well. So it worked out to begin with. But as much as I don't like fish bones, the project was really good because it just showed the kind of analytical methods you can use on faunal bones. And you can just get so much information out of that, even if they're annoying little fish bones.
00:45:10
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know how my friends who do pollen like deal with it. So Alex, it sounds like you also do some really interesting archaeology related things outside of your PhD.
Science Communication and Social Media
00:45:20
Speaker
Do you want to talk a little bit more about those?
00:45:23
Speaker
Yeah, so last year, around this time, okay, just to get slightly dark for a second, I had a really bad mental breakdown and was in a really bad place around this time last year. Once I got myself sorted and got medicated and was seeing therapists and things like that.
00:45:44
Speaker
I kind of like decided to revamp all my work ethic. So I began creating social media accounts. I was on Twitter. I started my blog and all these other things. And just since then, I've just been like writing for different websites and I run social media for Crestina, which is a Swedish based science website. I've been doing a lot of Sycom related things. I guess that's like,
00:46:13
Speaker
I've been probably spending like 50% of my time now doing that and then the rest of my time doing my PhD work. What is SciComm? So it's like science communication. It's hashtag SciComm really. It's like really big on like platforms like Twitter nowadays, just like being really good at, you know, kind of like using your social media presence to showcase more of your science, like your science side. I mean, I don't really know the history of it.
00:46:42
Speaker
From what I can see it seems like it came out of a lot of scientists just trying to like break down those barriers of like science Isn't this weird like high and mighty mysterious thing? You know, we're all just normal people doing these kind of things and we just want to like showcase it to like the general public Mm-hmm
00:47:01
Speaker
And I mean, that's how I use it. Like, I just tweet and Instagram pictures of my dead bones for people who want to see. I think that's wonderful. Seriously, I think that's wonderful because I do. You're totally right. There is that barrier there that we're somehow like this mysterious field like, oh, archaeology, I could never be a part of that. And so, yeah, I mean, heck, this is why we had the podcast and everything. And I think Chelsea wants to jump in on that too. Yeah, I do. So I actually recently found out
00:47:30
Speaker
There's a group that was just created that's called request a woman scientist maybe that is all about science communication coming from women because most experts who are interviewed in
00:47:46
Speaker
newspaper articles, journals, that sort of thing are men. So there's a group of women who decided that they wanted to see more representation of the fact that women could be scientists. So they put together a website called Request a Woman Scientist. And if you're a female and a scientist, you can go and sign up and tell them what your area of expertise is. And then it's a resource for people who are blogging or journalists
00:48:14
Speaker
you know, TV commentators, whoever, to go and talk to the people who are actually doing the work. So that's a sci-com initiative that I'm super, super into.
00:48:25
Speaker
That sounds like a wonderful program. Yeah, I actually just signed up for that. And there's also, I think it's called Diverse. It's like called Diverse Opinions or something like that. There's another source, maybe Diverse Sources. It's a website where they're looking for people who are, you know, female identifying, LGBTQ, you know,
00:48:52
Speaker
people who are not white to like put their name and their information down so that people can, instead of turning to, you know, assist white male scientists, there's all these other scientists that they can reach out to. And that's another initiative that's doing similar kind of work.
00:49:12
Speaker
That's really cool that there are all these opportunities to try to showcase what there, there's more to archaeology than, yeah, your stereotypical old white guy. Yeah, and there's definitely like, there's definitely a lot of like, there's a Twitter account that's minority in STEM, that's also doing a lot of work in terms of amplifying these kind of voices. And I think that's like, probably one of the
00:49:37
Speaker
best things about PSYCOM these days, especially through social media, is that we can amplify these voices. And just like everyone, and just like people in general, I mean, people who are just in like small fields like mine, like so many people know zoology is like, it's a field of itself. So it's kind of nice to like showcase that.
00:49:58
Speaker
Like, I have a bunch of followers on Twitter who kind of join and have told me, like, I didn't know what zoo archeology was and I just started following you. So that's always like a really nice compliment to get from people. That's awesome. And so would you say to other archeologists, other zoo archeologists that this is a trend that we should all kind of be, I don't know, trying out, trying to get our field out there more? Is there any?
00:50:22
Speaker
Advice you would give into doing that? Um, I feel like like I was just having this talk actually with a friend earlier today Because there's this big debate in psych-com of you know, whether it should scientists be communicators Should we have people specifically hired to do science communication and that's more on a you know Formal level but like informally I think there's nothing
00:50:48
Speaker
There's no downside really to just being social and out there. I think it's a good way to showcase your work, to show your human side to people, and also just to be an inspiration to other people. There's plenty of teens and kids out there on social media who might come across your posts and become inspired to go into that STEM field.
00:51:16
Speaker
Excellent. Well, I think we could probably go into closing thoughts. Alex, I love having you on here. Do you have any closing thoughts about zoo archaeology? Anything else you want to share with us today?
00:51:34
Speaker
Uh, yeah, um, I just want to, you know, push out there that I, zoo archeology is really important. Um, animal bones are super important. There's so much you can do zoo archeology. Um, and also pottery is the worst and I hate it.
00:51:54
Speaker
Well, Alex, thank you so much for joining Chelsea and I on this podcast. We absolutely loved having you and we hope you can join us again. Yeah, definitely. This was so much fun. And for our listeners, we will be putting up Alex's Twitter information and
00:52:15
Speaker
blog and whatnot, so you can check out her work. You can check us out at Women Arkeys on Twitter. We also have our blog, Women in Archaeology. I think it's at WordPress or it's the other way around, womeninarchaeology.wordpress.com. And you can also email us at womeninarchaeology at gmail.com. And we'd love to hear from you. Well, that's it for today. Bye!
00:52:48
Speaker
Thanks for listening to the Women in Archaeology podcast. Links to the items mentioned on the show are in the show notes. You can contact us at womeninarchaeologyatgmail.com or at womenarchies on Twitter. Please like, share, and subscribe to the show. You can find us on iTunes, Stitcher, and Google Play. Support the show in the APN at www.arcpodnet.com slash members. Thanks for listening and see you next time.
00:53:17
Speaker
This show is produced by Chris Webster and Tristan Boyle, and was edited by Chris Webster. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.