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Encore - Staying in Archaeology without Staying in Archaeology - Ep 259
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Most people listening to this podcast are CRM archaeologists. However, sometimes you just have to get out of archaeology for a while but want to stay involved on a smaller scale. Maybe you’re NOT an archaeologist but still want to participate locally or online. In this episode we talk about a few ways that you can do that. Thanks to Kate in California for emailing in the suggestion!
Links
- Passport in Time
- Core of Engineers volunteer
- BLM volunteer
- Master Class
- Earthwatch
- Second Life
- Oculus Quest 2
- Blue Planet VR
- Lithodomos VR
- Metal Detecting Groups
- Archaeological Institute of America
- Cave Paintings of Lascaux Online
Follow Our Panelists On Twitter
Bill @succinctbill; Doug @openaccessarch; Stephen @processarch; Andrew @AndrewKinkella, Chris W @Archeowebby, @DIGTECHLLC, and @ArchPodNet
Blogs and Resources:
- Bill White: Succinct Research
- Doug Rocks-MacQueen: Doug’s Archaeology
- Stephen Wagner: Process - Opinions on Doing Archaeology
- Chris Webster: Random Acts of Science
- Andrew Kinkella
Kinkella Teaches Archaeology (Youtube)
Blog: Kinkella Teaches Archaeology
ArchPodNet
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Transcript
Introduction to CRM Archaeology Podcast
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. This is the Serum Archaeology Podcast. It's the show where we pull back the veil of cultural resources management archaeology and discuss the issues that everyone is concerned about. Welcome to the podcast.
Staying Connected to Archaeology without a Professional Role
00:00:23
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the CRM Archaeology Podcast, Episode 259 for March 8th, 2023. I'm your host, Chris Webster. On today's show, we talk about keeping a toe in the archaeology world without actually working professionally. So get ready to volunteer because the CRM Archaeology Podcast starts right now.
Co-host Introductions and Weather Chat
00:00:49
Speaker
Welcome to the show, everyone. and Joining me today is Andrew in snowy Southern California. so' stop It's a winter wonderland. Not not using the surfboard today, I bet. Yeah. And then Doug over in, I don't know if it's snowy Scotland or not, but I i imagine it's cold.
00:01:07
Speaker
Yeah, we're like right on the ocean. We rarely get snow, but it's kind of miserable. And it's like we don't get like puns like winter. We get like gray overcast and then like the sun's down at like 330 and doesn't pop up till nine, sort of like miserable winter.
00:01:24
Speaker
Hey, I've seen Star Wars. Luke Skywalker lives in Scotland. So you know I know and know exactly what you're talking about.
Listener Email: Advice on Archaeology Engagement
00:01:32
Speaker
All right. so So we are going to spend the first part of the show talking about a listener email that we got. And I do encourage you guys to send us emails. You can use the contact form at arcpodnet.com. It's all over the place, but like right there on the main page.
00:01:45
Speaker
You can email me directly, chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com, or if you want to contact one of the other hosts, we've got some Twitter information and some other stuff, whatever they've given us at archpodnet.com forward slash CRM archaeology. So you can go right to the show page or look down at your device right now. Their contact info is in the show notes.
00:02:04
Speaker
but this email and the listener did give me permission to use her name and where she's from. So
Impact of Listener Feedback
00:02:09
Speaker
I will do that. I'm just going to read the most of the email. I'm not going to read the first part where she loves the ah podcast network, but here I'm going to say the, say the rest of it you should read the first part. that sounds great Yeah, I know. She says thank you. We love the podcast and I really appreciate that. Trust me. You guys have no idea. like you don't see yeah We don't receive a lot of negative email, which is which is great, but we also don't receive a lot of positive email. and it's you know it It is really nice to when people reach out sometimes because it does seem like you're you're just talking into an empty void sometimes. so I know people are listening and they don't have time to respond because I listen to podcasts and I've literally never responded. So, you know, I'm just as guilty, but, you know, we do appreciate it when when people come in, because I assume that's like less than 1% of the listeners that would send something in, which tells me statistically, there's more that appreciate what we do. They're just not writing in. So, yeah. All right. So the main part of her question here. Yeah. The please love us plea there. me We should do that for all episodes from now on. and Guys, please, please.
00:03:15
Speaker
send me emails. um I'm desperate. All right. Here we
Passion for Archaeology without a Degree
00:03:18
Speaker
go. All right. So she says, here's the situation. I love archeology, but not as much as I would love to stay home and raise my children. That sounds familiar even to lots of archeologists. I don't know about the raise children part, but definitely stay home. I have known this for a long time. And for that reason, I do not have my bachelor's degree. I knew I would never use it. So I didn't see the point in spending so much money. Sounds smart so far. My spouse has a successful career. He and I are extremely fortunate to be financially stable and own a home. So staying home is an option for me, but traveling all the time is not. My question is this, can you think of any ways for me to stay active in my local archeological community without a career or even a real degree in archeology? I'm running out of classes at my local community college and ah she says, thanks so much for your time. Kate in California. Now,
00:04:06
Speaker
First off, I love that she's taking classes at her local community college just because she can.
Enthusiasts in Community College Classes
00:04:10
Speaker
Andrew, Andrew, I'm curious, do you have people in your classes that are like, I have no interest in a career in this. I'm just interested to be here. Are those the kind of classes? Do you teach those kinds of classes that people could do that for? Or, yes you know, how does that work? Yes, all the time. Even when you got Kate in California, I thought you were going to ask, Andrew, do you have Kate in classes? And the answer is, the answer is quite possibly. So.
00:04:35
Speaker
This question where is forty she is so the answer to that is is totally. And I think I think it's it's actually a huge untapped or very awkwardly tapped like group of people that archaeologists should should really listen to because not only are they filling your classes. That's awesome. You know, right away, they're taking the classes. They're sitting there. They're paying their fees, which is great. They also tend to be people who are really, really interested.
00:05:05
Speaker
in the archaeology world. And just like this person, I love this question, actually, because I get it all the time, and and they want to
Joining Local Archaeology Societies
00:05:12
Speaker
contribute. So what I tell my students is there's a couple different ways. First, beyond taking the classes to become a part of your local archaeology organization, right, you know, for us locally, we have the Ventura County Archaeological Society, but most places do, you know, and that's a great way to sort of be a part of it, but still keep your day job kind of thing, you know, and it kind of keeps you in the mix. Those little groups, you get these really great connections to the local archaeology world. There'll be like little day trips and stuff that come up all the time that you can be a part of. You can go see these lectures that are really cutting edge research, you know, that you could actually
00:05:53
Speaker
be making choices that most grad students don't, you know, where, where you can be, you can be a more active member in these local societies. There's people who volunteer on
Volunteering with Archaeology Societies
00:06:03
Speaker
weekends. A lot of these societies need people to help them with their collections, right? They'll have some sort of lab set up. So you can come like every second Saturday and, you know, work on the, on the lab. And there, there are these people who get, again, they get a really vast amount of knowledge as they do this over the years. And the last thing I tell them is ah that depending on time, and this person maybe has young children and maybe can't do this, but as they get older, that they can go on a trip, maybe to Belize or something like that. As a volunteer, there are certain projects
00:06:36
Speaker
that are very open to volunteers who have that idea of, man, I've always wanted to do
Volunteer Trips and Opportunities
00:06:43
Speaker
this. you know And so that is like a fertile ground that so many archeology projects don't take advantage of. And it's great because those people are like committed.
00:06:51
Speaker
Oh yeah, yeah, for sure. And man, I got some stuff to say on that and then I've written down some other things too. We're going to try to have a list in the show notes here. Just, I don't know if we'll have links, but maybe just a list of ideas that we'll put in the show notes that I'm collecting. But Doug may have to leave us
Volunteering at Museums and Heritage Sites
00:07:05
Speaker
early today. So Doug, I want to know over in Scotland or in your experience, even in like New Mexico, what are some ideas that you can think of or be able to stay engaged in archaeology and heritage? Yeah. and Unfortunately in the UK, well, mainly England, Wales,
00:07:21
Speaker
other places, they basically obliterated what they call lifelong learning here, which is, you know, continuing education in the States. um Yeah, it used to be actually massive. Like there mo there used to be, um now I'm misquoted because I probably, now that like I'm on the spot, but I won't actually say there was more people doing lifelong learning yeah at one point than there were actually people doing archaeology degrees.
00:07:49
Speaker
I'm pretty sure, I mean, it was it was in the several thousands and it peaked about 2007, six, and then they cut all the funding and charge people a fortune. And yeah, you know, normal, healthy government, uh, destroying your your entire, uh, long-term future of your, uh, country, but that aside, there still are really strong. So again, local societies, and when we say local, there could be state, but also, so Albuquerque had its own, and New Mexico had its own, the Albuquerque Archaeology Society, or something along those lines. I mean, it might've been like the society, I think it was Albuquerque Archaeology Society, but you know if your town is big enough,
00:08:36
Speaker
there's likely to be one or even a county one. So I know like when you start to get to like the east coast, like Pennsylvania has a bunch of county or local regional um archaeological societies as well. So it's not just you know your state one. You can have also some local ones. Museums and heritage sites love volunteers.
00:08:59
Speaker
ah My one recommendation is possibly to it might be tougher if you go to like the more famous sort of museums so like Smithsonian, I don't think takes volunteers or like the British Museum really does just because they get like 5,000 people like a week or something coming and asking if they can volunteer at these at these very popular museums. But man, your local museum or you know just the next town over, the county museum or you know a state, especially like state monuments and stuff, they would always love to have volunteers and they're usually not thought of. so like
00:09:40
Speaker
So she's based in California. You guys will have to sell this in Andrew and well, Chris, you you, you seem to like go through California every couple of months, but like, I don't know if there's like a face famous, uh, I don't know, the tar pit museum or something like that. They they probably aren't going to look for volunteers, actually but so some of my students have worked at La Brea tar pits. Like, okay. It will take them all of them.
00:10:06
Speaker
Excellent. yeah yeah i'm I'm sorry, I'm trying to think of like a California big museum. like i just I'm b blanking on it. but like ah Smaller museums and then also sometimes like a lot of universities will have a anthropology museum or a small museum there. It doesn't even have to be local. You could just go to your local universities, I think, because you she's based in California. There's going to be like Uh, it's not like 50 some in the state or something like that, uh, Andrew, there's there's between the California stay the cal states and all that. There's, there's, there's one for every taste in pocketbook. You know what I mean? Yeah. So there's there's a lot of places you can go for that. And then also possibly, I think this is general for everyone is you could also think about online as well.
Digital Archaeological Projects
00:10:54
Speaker
I wouldn't recommend like.
00:10:57
Speaker
Facebook groups and Twitter or anything like that because a lot of those didn't always start well and have gone downhill a lot recently. But there are a lot of projects that you can get involved with that you can do and sort of have a sense of community and talk to people and learn a lot.
00:11:19
Speaker
their digital based volunteering. So what I'm thinking of is Micropass, which is like a platform. um And they do sort of crowdsourcing for archaeological projects. um And things will be like transcribing notes or like looking at a hundred really cool photographs and just categorizing them and saying like, yeah, that's an arrowhead. That's a yeah whatever And they'll train you up and stuff like that. So I think there are different digital ways to go too, in case you're, you may be, I don't know, for any of the listeners who are or not Kate in California. actually I actually don't know where in California she is. She might be in a pretty remote area, but yeah who knows if you don't have yeah if you don't have that option of local sort of museums, heritage sites, or societies, there are projects that do cater to people who can do it digitally and they're pretty awesome.
00:12:10
Speaker
Okay. All right. Well, let's take a quick break and then come back on the other side and keep talking about this. We'll be back in just a minute. Welcome back to life advice for Kate in California, uh, same archeology episode two 59. And I love this stuff too. I love getting questions like this where we can just talk about stuff and maybe even help somebody and And maybe a lot more people as well, just just get into this a little bit more. you know This is great. And there probably are some CRM archaeology professionals that may have gotten out of the field because logistically, it just wasn't working for their lifestyle. And they're wondering, man, they've got that archaeology itch. They're still listening to this show, which means they've got some kind of an itch they need to scratch. And they want to keep their toe in it. So I think this would be good for for a lot of people to listen to. Or maybe you're just
00:12:56
Speaker
you want to do something over the winter and you can't work over the winter wherever you wherever you live, right? and And you have nothing to do, but you want to keep your toe in the in the field. So this is good stuff. Doug, you've got a comment on that.
Volunteering vs Professional Work
00:13:08
Speaker
Yeah. I'd also say like it might be something for people to consider. I know you've mentioned people who can't do it, but also like a lot of people who do have careers in archeology, I think they should consider something like this because there's a lot of people who like archaeology, but don't necessarily like all the aspects of the job. And they can end up being quite miserable doing archaeology because they like certain parts, but don't like others. And actually, this should probably be much more of a consideration where you're thinking about you'd like archaeology, you could still be involved, but maybe do a different job that better meets your needs for your family or yourself or you know your life in general.
00:13:51
Speaker
Yeah. You know, I just wanted to bounce off some stuff that Doug said just now. And also in the previous segment, I thought there was a lot of good stuff there. First, the idea of the quote unquote lifelong learner, the funding is Doug brought up. it it It kind of ebbs and flows right now. It's at a bit of an.
00:14:09
Speaker
e And it just has to do with the politics of, you know, administrative education, but it will be back and we're always on your side. So I want people out there who are interested in archaeology to really just reach out, reach out, man. Don't be shy to cold email, like a local college professor, local museum or that kind of stuff. Just cold email. I get these all the time.
00:14:34
Speaker
Dear Professor Kinkella, I'm just really curious about archaeology, right? And we love those. Like, that's totally cool. And I will try to shoot you a quick quick email back and and guide you as best I can. Right. The other thing that Doug talked about in terms of museums and heritage places, yeah, the local ones, they're dying for people, you know, so any local heritage site,
00:14:57
Speaker
cold email them. Hey, I'm really interested in working. Beware what you wish for. They'll be like, can you start Monday? You know, because that's the world. So many of these local places, they're running on tiny shoestring budgets. So they are beyond happy to see your smiling face at their front door. Just to follow on from Andrew, there is also like some museums just don't even have a shoestring budget. They're literally volunteer led museums. So I have one in my town.
00:15:27
Speaker
Which is tiny, I was, okay, so we're a suburb of Edinburgh, so it's, you know, there's a bigger city next to us. But but ours, our town is 12, 16,000 people as a suburb, and it has a tiny museum that's open seasonally, and it's all run by volunteers. nice And so there are a lot of those museums as well that, it's it's not even that they they're looking for volunteers, they are nothing but volunteers. So there's there's a lot of opportunities out there.
00:15:53
Speaker
I also just expanded a little bit. You can maybe look at some less off-the-beat ones. so There'll be like a lot of local history places, but sometimes like art galleries also end up and sort of moving into that sort of cultural area. yeah and just you know there's There's a lot out there. I guess what I'd say is don't just Google like archaeology museum, be a bit more broad in like local history or just anthropology or yeah, use a bunch of different terms because there'll be some museums that cover a lot and they'll definitely have like an archaeology section. They'd be very interested to have someone work on or volunteer on.
00:16:31
Speaker
Yeah, that's a that's a great, great idea. Actually, my mom is a docent at ah a local museum in San Francisco. So this is a pretty heavy hitter kind of museum. And she's retired. She was just into art. And she just now she goes, I believe, twice a week. Right. So it can become almost a part time job. Again, they'll take you you for as little or as much as you can give.
00:16:53
Speaker
I do want to touch on one tiny thing that Doug talked about a bit before in terms of going to the local colleges. A lot of times the college professors can give you guidance, but they might not necessarily allow you to work on campus because of insurance reasons. It just depends. So don't be sure. Don't be bummed out if they're like, Oh, actually, by the way, you know, you can't come into my lab because you're not a currently enrolled student. It just depends though. It's yeah it's always fine to ask.
00:17:18
Speaker
Yeah.
Categorizing Archaeology Involvement
00:17:19
Speaker
You know, I would be remiss in not mentioning this, even though it was the very last episode that we released. But the site stewardship program in Utah, Heather mentioned that there was one in California, maybe in certain areas, and other states may have site stewardship programs. so But along those lines, I mean, that that requires you to not only learn about the site that you're stewarding and and probably archeology in the area, but also to actually go out there and do that. and Now, Kate specifically mentioned not wanting to travel, but maybe like weekend travel every couple of months is not that big a deal. right But I feel like in having this conversation with you guys, I've come to realize that there's probably about three different categories of how you can and get involved. right You can work and actually possibly even get paid. you know like Some of the bigger museums and stuff, if you manage to get a position in there, it might actually have some sort of compensation to it.
00:18:10
Speaker
you can learn like do you want to just learn about stuff? Do you want to just increase your knowledge? you're not and You're not interested in necessarily helping or volunteering or doing anything like that. You just want to learn about archaeology. That's a different thing entirely, right? And then it's also help, volunteering. Do you want to actually work at an archaeological site, help out at a museum, you know do something like that? So I think you've You've probably got to decide what do you want to do along those lines and then decide how you best want to do that. You know what I mean? Because all these options that we're giving you like community college classes, that's going to give you knowledge, which may help you actually volunteer and or become a better volunteer in certain circumstances, depending on where you're going to do it.
00:18:48
Speaker
Or maybe you just want to take you know community college classes and be educated and just do something with your free time. And then maybe join your archaeological your local archaeological society and and listen to a talk once a month and you know maybe do site tours or something if they're doing that with other people who are interested and and just be more knowledgeable about that stuff when you do it. So you really got to decide what you want your involvement to be and what you want to get out of it. It's the same thing with any career, right? like Do you want to be a college professor or do you want to dig holes for the rest of your life? like Maybe you can do both. But like, what do you want to do? We'll determine the path to get there. You know what I mean? Can you think of any other involvement categories, so to speak, that that we could be talking about here? I have a couple of things to throw in there.
Volunteering with Parks for Archaeology
00:19:29
Speaker
One is when we haven't mentioned, if you're looking for involvement, there's the passport and time.
00:19:34
Speaker
project for the forest service, I believe. So there's national ones that actually, they do accept volunteers as well, like to have people go through archives or, or help out at national parks and stuff like that. And they tend to be pretty good. So national parks, state parks, even and looking at some of the less, so its I don't know how familiar this person is with.
00:19:59
Speaker
archaeology, but like you know BLM is something that we all know in archaeology as the Bureau of Land Management, but like most people have no idea that they do. ah They're probably the biggest but archaeological client, I would say, out of out of all the apartments. yeah Yeah, easily in the West. yeah and and like So it's it's looking at those Army Corps of Engineers as well as another one that like people are not going to think of when they think of archaeology, but they're another big one where they might have volunteering opportunities, depends on the ah how close you are to maybe one of their archives. And um and then back to, like Chris, what you're saying, how different involvement, if people just want to learn stuff,
00:20:42
Speaker
There's actually a lot of organizations that now, especially after COVID, still do Zoom lectures, or at least put their lectures online.
Online Archaeology Content
00:20:50
Speaker
So there's a ton of stuff like that. I mean, so I run a small charity, we do that.
00:20:54
Speaker
YouTube channels recording archaeology. But I would say is like, we do the archaeology conferences. So sometimes the audience is aimed at other archaeologists, so it can be very jargon heavy. But there are a lot of organizations out there who do put their lectures online, or, you know, you can see them live or just see the recordings that are much more accessible. Actually, I prefer them as well, because like jargon heavy, if it's not my area of archaeology, I'm Sounds like they're speaking Latin. And sometimes they are. and sometimes they are yeah But that's there's other ones. So one that comes off top of my head is the Oriental Institute of Chicago. They actually have a pretty nice YouTube channel lecture series where it's actually aimed at just general
00:21:40
Speaker
you know, archaeology. And so they focus, you know, Middle East and stuff like that. But there are a lot of people now who've put their lectures online, just to say that like, there is a lot like there's this, you could probably spend the next like 10 years of your life just looking at YouTube videos, ah people have put their lectures up. So there's a lot out there that if you want to learn that doesn't have to be Formally, you don't need to ask anyone's permission. You literally just go online and start searching and looking around. Right. You know, I would just add a couple of little bits for those of you who are in the Zoom archaeology lectures or whatever, make sure to put them on your calendar, because what happens is you'll see these cool events and be like, man, yeah, I want to go to that. And then you just will totally forget. So for me, I like doing those, too. But I have to consciously go put this on your calendar right now, you know, because you will forget.
00:22:31
Speaker
And then the other thing where Doug was listing places, the AIA, the American, was it the American Institute of Archaeology? It's the one that that publishes Archaeology magazine. They have lectures like that too. Nice.
00:22:43
Speaker
that's That's actually another option too is like Archaeology Magazine. There's mean there's a couple of magazines in the UK. There's Archaeology Magazine in North America. There's there's actually quite a few like outlets that if you just sort of want to have a fun read, I'm not sure how the quality of National Geographic's gone since they sold it, but you know there's there's also those sort of options.
00:23:08
Speaker
yeah as well. I mean, we've been talking digital, but you can go old school with like newsletters and magazines and all that sort of fun stuff.
00:23:18
Speaker
Well, before we end this segment, I'll mention one more that's more of a physical and attend
Metal Detecting Groups and Cautions
00:23:23
Speaker
that thing. And it's a little bit controversial probably, but you if you find the right ones, then they're educational, but but metal detector in groups, right? There are definitely some metal detectorists out there that are just interested in in you know finding cans and pot hunting and and looting archeological sites. But I would say the majority of metal detectorists are really just legitimately interested in history. And they have a lot of self-gained knowledge. there There could even be archaeologists as part of these groups that are they're helping them out and and and also interested in metal detecting. But you'd have to buy the equipment, of course, or they may have equipment for you to use or borrow or something like that. But it could be a way to you know just find other people that are interested in this sort of thing and history and and just learning and and and going out and doing these things where it's you know safe and legal. And you're you're able to actually you know do it in a good way. so
00:24:10
Speaker
Yeah, I was also going to add, again, it's a bit fraught, but there's a lot of people who do sort of arrowhead collecting, and there's some moral issues around that, but sure some of those people are, again, very knowledge knowledgeable, are very interested into the archaeology, and they've you know they they do it legal. you know Legal is not necessarily the same thing as moral, but they're also very nice people and are good there. I'd also want to say, as I've just mentioned, there's a lot of stuff on YouTube I'd say at places we've mentioned, so like the AIA and various other sort of archeological organizations are the best places to go because obviously anything can be put on the internet and you could accidentally quite quickly go down a rabbit hole on YouTube where you're ending up with weird conspiracy theory like
00:25:03
Speaker
aliens built the pyramids sort of stuff. And sometimes it's hard to tell because you get what you sort of are like socially acceptable conspiracy people who they they say a lot of stuff. It sounds very scientific. yeah They have a very good pitch, ah but it's complete bunk. But you got to be very careful about that as well. So yeah, I'd say yeah definitely be careful and and aim for places that are archaeology organizations, um they're putting it out as opposed to just sort of that more random for sure because you do get end up with some weird people. I say this not just as like weird non archaeologists, but you also end up with some weird archaeologists on YouTube as well who are a bit. um Yeah.
00:25:47
Speaker
Well, what are you trying to say? I saw that. I saw that one guy that did that Graham Hancock video. What a crackpot. so he is All right.
00:25:58
Speaker
All right. So let's take a break and we'll come back on the other side and wrap this up because I've got some more fun stuff to talk about related to staying in archeology without staying in archeology. A little bit more outside the box too. So we'll do that on the other side of the break back in a minute.
00:26:11
Speaker
All right. Welcome back to the CRM archaeology podcast episode 259. And Doug had to leave at the end of the second segment where we got two segments out of him. So that's good. And Andrew and I are going to talk about just, uh, I've got some, some last things down here that I wanted to mention. And honestly, they're more into the learning and sort of volunteering, but may include travel or buying equipment. So one of the ones I did want to mention that is another online thing that I don't think was mentioned was the masterclass series, right?
Masterclass in Archaeology
00:26:39
Speaker
There are a lot of good like archeology related stuff on masterclass. I don't have a subscription to that. It's like really expensive, but yeah you, you can, I don't know if you can get like one off courses on there either, if you have to buy a membership, but either way, it's worth looking into if you've got the means and the time, because there's really high level, you know, quality stuff on there that I've seen. So.
00:26:58
Speaker
No, yeah, that's a good one. And I think I've had a student or two or three over the over time who were members of that. the this The same kind of people we're talking about, people who are the lifelong learner crowd or that kind of thing, who are really into it. But I think I noticed the same thing, the expense. I think it was pretty expensive.
00:27:14
Speaker
Yeah, it's not cheap, but but they're all like highly qualified professionals on there. like If you're going to learn astronomy, I'm pretty sure it's from like Neil deGrasse Tyson. You know what I mean? Oh, totally. yeah you know Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like Richard Dawkins teaching you about evolution, right? mean like It's a whole bunch of ...
00:27:30
Speaker
Yeah, it is that good. Yeah. Yeah. And then some other stuff in the realm of the real is ah ecotourism. And I've talked about Earthwatch before and my field school was technically an Earthwatch program because I couldn't get to Olduvai Gorge in Africa where I absolutely wanted to be any other way. There was nobody else doing programs over there. I looked from university programs and all kinds of stuff and I ended up paying paying the money to be an ecotourist basically.
00:27:57
Speaker
on an Earthwatch program, digging almost 2 million year old hominid fossils and our our hominid deposits anyway. We never found any hominids. We found extinct alligator and hippo, which is kind of cool. but And I don't know far if our our stuff, we were only there for three weeks. We got to do lab work. We got to do excavation. We got to go visit the Serengeti, some Maasai camps, just living at the Leakey camp in the tent was amazing.
00:28:21
Speaker
opening the zip flap on your tent and seeing giraffe and zebra outside the the the briar fence outside the camp was just I mean ah indescribable it was amazing yeah like like learning how to sleep while hearing lions and hyenas in the distance was ah a little disconcerting but as you get used to it It was just an amazing experience. It wasn't cheap. You had to get to Africa and it was like $5,000 for this particular one. But you look at the Earthwatch website and they got stuff all over this country that might be four or five days. It might be two or three weeks. It might cost $800. It might cost $6,000. The variety is huge. And it's mostly not archaeology, right? They have stuff all over the map, but there is archaeology on there. So if you're interested, it's worth checking out.
00:29:07
Speaker
Yeah, I will say that in my career, there's been several different projects in completely different places, like I think one in Germany, one in Belize, where they had Earthwatch volunteers over the years. So Earthwatch is a kind of it's an organization with a lot of tendrils all over the place.
00:29:24
Speaker
yeah and i mean Do you know anybody that's used it as ah as a professor doing research? Because I know if you're struggling to find some some funding, that's mostly what it's for, is having volunteers help pay for some of the funding for some of your work. But I don't know the logistics of it and and how that actually works. Do you even get enough to do an entire like project? Or is that just one of the sources of funding?
00:29:43
Speaker
Yeah, I think my guess is it's just one of the sources of funding. Again, the the projects I worked on where there were Earthwatch volunteers, I only saw that as a student. So I didn't know behind the scenes, you know what I mean? Like the money percentage or whatever. But to my feeling, it's just it's as it always is. It's just, hey, you get funding wherever you can and Earthwatch is one of them. I don't know if you could go out with an only Earthwatch funded project that feels a little akin to me.
00:30:11
Speaker
Sure. Okay. Well, some of the other stuff I've got on here is more virtual. And I don't know, do you have any other eco tourism type ideas or things you could go out and say that are, you know, maybe you have to pay for, but you still learn and possibly work and volunteer and help on
University Involvement Limitations
00:30:26
Speaker
that. I can't think of any others besides Earthwatch.
00:30:29
Speaker
Yeah, no, not not off the top of top of my head. Like there sometimes ah I was trying to think like local universities and stuff will sort of have things like this. But but it almost every time it it boils down to you have to actually sign up for the unit somehow. Like they have to en enroll you because of the again because of the insurance and that kind of stuff. So that's not that I would not say is your first stop. So.
00:30:53
Speaker
after that i i don't have too too much more i would say that on the last segment there when when we were talking about metal metal detectors and arrow collection groups i would i would be very very like i would you're playing with fire on that one so like Some of those groups, man, for me personally, I would not recommend those just because I've had very bad experiences, especially with the arrowhead collecting groups. Like I would say, oh, yeah, miles away from that. ah Just so note note to all like coming to any of this with a, you know, with the grain of salt ready ready to roll, even even local archeology groups, just make sure they're on the level. You won't know at first, but just kind of keep your eyes open.
00:31:40
Speaker
Nice. Yeah, that's good advice. The airhead collecting ones definitely are usually not stay on the up and up. yeah yeah But the metal detecting ones, there could be some that are endorsed by and even possibly run by your local archaeological societies, right? Because there's a lot of lot of valid things you can do around that and a lot of people that aren't interested in necessarily breaking the law or reinterpreting the law.
00:32:01
Speaker
and going that route. So yeah, definitely take it with a grain of salt. Right. I hear you. Just my personal experience with some of that world was very yeah not on the up and up. You know, so and when I heard that, I was sort of like, ooh, you are yellow, light yellow light.
00:32:18
Speaker
I know. I know. I feel like I had to mention it, but yeah, definitely be cautious ah as far as all the other things go. So so the rest of this can be done. the the other I've got three more things down here. I might think of a few more, but these can be done from your couch, right?
Virtual Archaeological Tours
00:32:31
Speaker
From the comfort of your own home. The easiest one that you could do right now without any other equipment possibly ah an accelerated graphics card, but otherwise is Second Life. Second Life has, if you've never heard of it, it's like a virtual thing. It's been around like 20 years and it's this virtual world that you join. You have to come up with your own name and your avatar and all that stuff. But once you get past all that, there are people who have built replicas accurate replicas of entire archaeological sites in Second Life that you can like virtually walk around, fly around, meet somebody else in there and and and look at stuff. And there's like there's there's often like informational displays that might have audio or video that you can actually sit and watch, almost like you're in a museum at the site, right at this virtual site. And it's just
00:33:19
Speaker
but work some people have put into this stuff. Even if the actual visual representation isn't like super great or accurate, maybe you don't have an awesome graphics processor, maybe they didn't do a very good job. There's often other information attached to it and you can kind of visualize what the information is talking about. When you're listening or watching something, you can look around the structure or area or town and say, Oh yeah, I get it. This is really cool. You know, it's just a really neat low cost cause it's free. So you can, you can get into it for nothing. Yeah, and I like it. I've been in there a long time, but i've I've never heard of that, but I've I've experienced sort of a similar thing. I'm sure it's not through Second Life, but I used to assign my students to go online and tour Lascaux. So you can you can look at the cave paintings of Lascaux, like online. And it's pretty cool. And it's actually pretty funky. I highly recommend putting headphones on because you click on it and it cruises you through and it plays this like funky mood music and definitely turn the lights down. as you're going through. And it's kind of a, it's kind of a trip. So I recommend that the only thing, if you go on the Alaska website, half the time, it'll click you straight into French. So sure try if you're English speaking, kind of make sure you're on the English side of things. That's it.
00:34:46
Speaker
Yeah. Nice. That's really cool. Another one that doesn't necessarily require equipment, although you can get a... It's called Google Cardboard if they're still doing it, but it's like a little... It's literally cardboard. It's flat. They'll send it to you for $10. If you're in California and at some Google event, this is how I got mine. They're just handing them out for free. But you basically... You basically fold it into this view master type thing that you can put your phone in and then you open up the special app. Some apps are virtual reality apps. its It really is a stereoscopic view master type of thing where you've got two different images on the on the display. and When you look at it through something that's that's separating those but your eyes are putting it together, it looks three-dimensional.
00:35:27
Speaker
and There's other ways to interact this one too, but Lithodomos VR, they have been a previous interviewees on the Archeology Podcast Network, but also advertisers on the Archeology Podcast Network site. I need to mention that. It hasn't been for a little while, a couple of years, but they have gone to Major archaeological sites around the world done high, high, high-resolution photogrammetry and other imaging techniques to bring these sites into virtual reality space right through their applications. and yeah and I haven't been on this website in a little while, so they've been evolving and expanding. I don't know what to expect when you go there now and how you interact with it. but
00:36:04
Speaker
At one point, you paid like you got some stuff for free, but at one point, you paid like a fee and you got access to everything. and Then I think at another point when they really expanded these out, it was almost like an in-app purchase for for each individual site that you want to look at. so I don't know what their payment model is now, but it is extremely high quality and there's There's, again, information points. You can just click on them as you're looking at them, and there's a little dot on the screen. It's hard to explain, but you click on these things, and it will move you around the thing. You can't like walk around it. At least you couldn't a couple of years ago. But it would move you around the area, and then you could click on these little displays to get like sounds that would have been in the area at the time that they've replicated, and audio explanations of stuff, and things like that. But it's a really cool way to experience some some of the the big World Heritage sites out there.
00:36:52
Speaker
and and other stuff that they've done. So I should look into it again because they've been on a rapid expansion track when they got like a massive amount of funding a couple of years ago. And it'd be interesting to see where they're at these days. Yeah. That one sounds really cool, man. Yeah. i discuss It's like I learned, you know what I mean? When I talk to you guys about this guy's stuff, I'm like, Oh, I should check out. oh Check that out. Sounds pretty cool. I know. Well, I also host the Archaeotech Podcast, and sometimes we talk about some of the stuff on that show. And then sometimes on other shows, like the Rockart Podcast, ah Alan Gold is the host of that show. And he is a long-time California rock art researcher, runs the California Rockart Foundation. He started it.
00:37:30
Speaker
so If you're interested, that's another thing that you could join is the California Rock Art Foundation. They do you know site tours and and all kinds of stuff, usually in the Eastern Mojave where Alan is actually the one taking you around and and showing you stuff. and They've got a newsletter and they've got you know other cool information that they do.
00:37:46
Speaker
But one of the guests he had on was Eric Hanson, who's a friend of his. Eric Hanson, interestingly enough, started out as a like ah special effects guy in movies. like He's got a lot of high-end movies to his name as far as special effects goes. And then a few years ago, he started this thing called Blue Planet VR. And they've gone around to, again, archaeological sites and other like natural wonders type sites and done high resolution imagery, but for Oculus Quest.
00:38:15
Speaker
right? So you don't need your phone and it's, you literally can walk around these places and just experience them. Now you can't, like well, you can't like move your feet slash walk around because you'll walk into a wall in your bedroom, but I i guess if you're in like gymnasium or something, you really could walk around. It's always up it's always something with these. I know. It's always something. But you can like push the buttons and and move yourself around these things in a free ranging kind of way. And then there's informational stuff that pops up as well. And I've played around with it a little bit and there are some really, really cool stuff in there. I think it was like a $25 app, which is about average for like a non-gaming app on the Oculus Quest 2.
00:38:55
Speaker
and it's totally worth it. It's really cool. And it's the kind of thing where it's not static either. They're constantly putting new stuff in there. I'm friends with him on Facebook now and I'm always seeing him going out on trips and you know they're doing shooting trips, picking up some some new site and putting it into Blue Planet VR. It's just really cool way to use some of that technology that you may already have or can pick up on the cheap. You can get the the lower memory Oculus Quest 2 for like 250 bucks nowadays. If you want the higher memory capacity one,
00:39:22
Speaker
I think it's 400 or something like that, which personally as an owner of one of those, I would say get the higher memory capacity one because you're going to be sad having to offload stuff when you run out of space. Because it's a big difference. It's like it's something like 50 or 60 gigabytes to 256 gigabytes. That's the jump and it's a lot. right So anyway, good stuff. Can you think of anything else, Andrew? I am completely tapped out. I have nothing left. Nice. nice Well, I honestly didn't know if we'd go a whole show on this, so this is pretty great. yeah yeah I think a lot of this stuff could be useful for archaeologists if they just want to learn something about something new or interact with something in a different way, explore a new technology for maybe
00:40:07
Speaker
you know, displaying your own archeological information insights that you have. Maybe you could hook up with one of these virtual components and and put something together like that from an outreach standpoint. Or just like I said, stay, stay tapped in when you're, when you're out for a little while. Cause we all know it sometimes in CRM, you just get tired of the shovel bomb life and you know, you want to Uber for a little while or something like that. And, but you want to stay plugged in, you know, so these can be some good resources for doing that.
00:40:30
Speaker
I think so. It can kind of recharge your batteries in a funny way. you know If you're working CRM all the time, it's like, oh, look at Let's Go a little bit. It's something completely different. It's interesting. Yeah.
Inspiration from Archaeology Podcast Network
00:40:40
Speaker
And you know the the final thing we could also mention is, well and you already know it, if you're listening to the show, is the archaeology podcast network. you know I get so many people over the years when you when you accumulated all that have written in and said, oh, you know I was either you know I took archaeology in college, but I never did anything with it. And your show inspired me to you know go get some more you know education and and go into work. we've We've had people write in and tell us that they got out of CRM because they just got out of CRM for whatever reason. And they got back into it after listening to the CRM archaeology podcast. right And they they just re-energized their brains and and and gave them the motivation to get back in. so
00:41:19
Speaker
And I'm not saying you should get back in, but you know if it if it fits for what you're doing, I hope we can inspire you to do that or inspire you to even get out and do something else you really want to do. you know whatever Whatever keeps you happy. so All right. so Well, that's all I've got with that. We will see you guys in a couple of weeks with another show.
00:41:41
Speaker
That's it for another episode of the CRM Archaeology Podcast. Links to some of the items mentioned on the show are in the show notes for this podcast, which can be found at www.arcpodnet dot.com slash CRMARC Podcast. Please comment and share anywhere you see the show. If you'd like us to answer a question on a future episode, email us. Use the contact form on the website or just email chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com. Support the show and the network at arcpodnet.com slash members. Get some swag and extra content while you're there. Send us show suggestions and interview suggestions.
00:42:11
Speaker
We want this to be a resource for field technicians everywhere, and we want to know what you want to know about. Thanks everyone for joining me this week. Thanks also to the listeners for tuning in, and we'll see you in the field. Goodbye. See you guys next time.
00:42:29
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his ah RV traveling the United States, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, DigTech LLC, Cultural Media, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Chris Webster. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.