Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
10,000-year-old Rock Art in the Desert: A Conversation with Dr. Marissa Molinar - Ep 33
372 Plays5 years ago
On this episode of A Life in Ruins podcast, we interview Dr. Marissa Molinar. She studies the practices, and products of prehistoric art, through an evolutionary, social, and aesthetic lens. She gave an excellent talk at the APN Educational Expo (APN AEX 2020) about her work and she also had a pretty sweet zoom background. We get deep into her research on rock art and her methods of comparing different rock art panels. She details the complicated process of getting permission to survey on military lands and also how she got into anthropology and archaeology. We also have a discussion about representation in archaeology and the effects of colonialism in public education.
Contact
- Marissa's Instagram: @MaybeLikeWater
- Email: alifeinruinspodcast@gmail.com
- Instagram: @alifeinruinspodcast
- Facebook: @alifeinruinspodcast
- Twitter: @alifeinruinspod
- Website: www.alifeinruins.com
Support
Affiliates
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to the Episode
00:00:00
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.
00:00:13
Speaker
Welcome to episode 33 of A Life in Ruins podcast, where we investigate the careers of those living a life in ruins. I'm your host Carlton Gover, and I am joined by my co-host Connor Jahnen and David Howe. In this episode, we are interviewing Dr. Marisa Molinaert. She studies the practices and products of prehistoric art through an evolutionary, social, and aesthetic lens. She gave an excellent talk at the APN educational expo about her work, and she also had a pretty sweet Zoom background.
00:00:41
Speaker
We have yet to talk about the American Southwest here on the podcast, so we are really excited to have her on the show this evening. Dr. Molinar, how are you
Adjusting to New Roles and Lifestyle
00:00:49
Speaker
doing? I'm doing well. I'm doing well. I am slowly no longer living the irony of your title of your show. When I got invited, I'm like, yeah, I get it. That's so cute. Life ruins. I'm an archeologist. I'm like, oh my God, my life might be in neurons.
00:01:09
Speaker
Yeah, I know. I'm doing well. I'm doing well. Getting used to that doctor thing, though. Yeah, how's it feel? Still doesn't really kind of, you know, feel right. I just accepted a new job, you know, in this sort of post COVID, but at least for me, post dissertation world.
Inspiration and Early Fascination with Archaeology
00:01:27
Speaker
I just needed to chill for a minute, you know, before running back to like academia, you know, whether it be faculty, you know, a museum gig, like a suite one probably would have lured me for sure. But I just was like, I just need break. So looked in and I accepted a teaching position and they teach science again, as I did that in between masters and PhDs to my sixth graders now and hang out by the beach with my kids.
00:01:57
Speaker
for
00:01:58
Speaker
That honestly sounds like a wonderful life and I'm kind of jealous of that, but. Well, thank you. Thank you. You know, it definitely, you know, it's not the highest paid, but you get summers off. And so I can go do field work or research or do guest lecturing or professor at, you know, universities during the summers. Someone, when
Terminology in Archaeology: Paleohistory vs. Prehistory
00:02:15
Speaker
I was an undergraduate, I had a classic minor and it's also, I'm a super nerd. So I also did a minor honors thesis as well as the major, but Dr. Maverly, man, she, she was a specialist in ancient Greek.
00:02:22
Speaker
a little bit.
00:02:28
Speaker
But she taught in spring semester, two classes, Monday, Wednesday, Friday. She went in at nine. She had office hours at 11 and her day was done by 12. And she went every summer to the Greek university to teach. And I'm like, how can I be you?
00:02:52
Speaker
Yes. Yes. Sign me up for that gig. Absolutely. Right. You know, I mean, I already wanted to be an archaeologist, but I was just like, you know, it's still it's still kind of vague when you're like a junior. Like, how will that work? How will that be? And then just watching her, I was like, yeah. And then the classes she taught, it was the grandeur that was Greece and the other one was the glory that was Rome. I'm like, epic.
00:03:21
Speaker
It was, yeah, very, very cool. I'd suggest it to anybody, take the classic, because I just didn't want anthropology as the four-field discipline to take away all the romance I had for archaeology. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I could definitely, we at least like the Colorado program I went through and the Wyoming program, we didn't have like strong classics or anything like that. So you kind of
00:03:45
Speaker
Prehistory in Colorado isn't that interesting when you're talking about like the Romans and the Greeks and everything like that. I find it because, all right, I didn't even take a note to say this. So let's all agree as archaeologists to use the term and not just because I coined it myself, paleohistory rather than prehistory.
00:04:08
Speaker
I get down with that. It's also my dissertation because that word, that term has always bothered me. Makes no sense. There's no time before history. History is basically the zero point.
00:04:19
Speaker
everything going forward, we've already got history. Yeah, I use mostly pre-contact when in time I'm talking about. We're specifically talking about like art, like the new world. Yeah,
Researching Rock Art at a Military Base
00:04:31
Speaker
that's usually what I refer to because I dropped the whole prehistoric and all those connotations. Well, we were to say paleo-historic and that way you can see you have the globe.
00:04:40
Speaker
Because, I mean, you think about the other disciplines, paleobotany, paleoclimatology. Did they say pre-climatology or pre-botany? No, because it makes no sense. So, why say prehistory? We're like, we can evolve and stop basing it on the written word. Absolutely. I totally agree with that. I'm going to have to start adopting it. What paper do I cite for that? Marissa's forthcoming citation, I'll send you actually a few citations.
00:05:07
Speaker
Ooh, I'm excited. That brings me to my next question. I noticed you had said that in your presentation I saw for the APN Expo, which was about, I guess you were comparing two rock art panels that were in two different parts of the, do you want to talk about that real quick? Sure, sure, sure. Okay. So my dissertation, which at many points, according to my chair, Ken Sussman. Oh, you can't, was your chair? Cool.
00:05:31
Speaker
Yes, yes. And Alan was my area expert because no one at the University of Florida did anything close to what I was doing. You know, I mean, the fact that I got a McKnight fellowship and they only like fund STEM people, that was, you know, a miracle in itself. I think I swear to this day, they only picked me because they were like, oh, that sounds cool. That's it.
00:05:57
Speaker
You know, but anyway, yes. So in research in COSO, because basically there was only one book prior to that and a lot of articles written by David Whitley and then Alan Garfin Gold kind of started reinvestigating and re-looking at it. But it's closed off because it's located in the
00:06:18
Speaker
Southeastern part of California on China Lake, which is China Lake NAS, Navy Air Weapon Development. Top secret. It was always kind of crazy for me to go there because, you know, I had to go through all sorts of security clearances prior.
00:06:34
Speaker
but the fact that I was going to a top sacred weapons base to study upwards to 15,000 year old rock art. Yeah, that's a cool archeology story. Yeah, that's a kind of weird juxtaposition, isn't it? Absolutely. Right?
Significance of COSO Rock Art
00:06:49
Speaker
You know? Super cool. And then, you know, I had to go through all kinds of, you know, range courses to go into restricted zones. Oh, and there's these beautiful canyons.
00:07:01
Speaker
So yeah, and it's also considered probably the largest concentration of petroglyphs, definitely in the northern hemisphere. Some people might argue the western.
00:07:11
Speaker
Oh yeah, it's pretty crazy. It's also the first time ever that I had to do solo archaeology because as you guys know, it's a team sport. Absolutely. It's like, okay, so I'm doing this by myself in this largest concentration on this top secret base. What in the world? I was a sport at the whole time by a UXO that's called an unexploded ordnance officer because it is a testing ground. Oh, that's so metal.
00:07:36
Speaker
I know, right. I am metal, though. That's true. I'm getting I'm getting the sense already. We're like eight minutes in. I'm like, all right. So yeah, Jake was awesome. I called him Hurt Locker. Yeah, he called me Foxy Indiana Jones. I called him Kurt Locker. You know, so I was like, oh, I mean, I even had a call signal. Oh, yeah. Like because so the base archaeologist, the one who like granted all this like cool stuff
00:08:06
Speaker
I mean, he had me send in like pretty much anything I'd ever written, not even just about COSO or prior, it's just everything that I'd ever done. And after we put all that together and then I had to write a proposal and... So you got like insanely vetted.
00:08:21
Speaker
Yeah, and it came back when they told me or Alan, he's like, you got 30 days that's unheard of and access to all seven Canyons. I even talked him into letting me shoot at night and little pet. It was great. It was my first time as a photographer too, as well as an illustrator. And even when I was doing my archaeology, I was always doing the photos, doing the, you know, mapping, drawing.
00:08:44
Speaker
So, yeah, that was just another amazing experience just to see the canyons in that kind of light. Prior into that research and then even going there, but literally prior to it, I was looking at another Campbell Grant book and it's The Rock Art of Canyon Deshais. And that's near the Grand Canyon, Arizona. I don't know if you guys are familiar with Canyon Deshais.
00:09:05
Speaker
Nope. Not a rock art guy. Well, I mean, but it's also it has a lot of some of the earliest archaic for the Southwest, like burials. It's not just rock. There's habitation and everything. That's what makes it such an interesting site and place. Yeah. I mean, goodness, it's in my dissertation. They found like a gorgeously intact burial with shoes and clothing. I mean, you just name it. It was crazy. Wow. Wow. Yes. Exactly. Right.
00:09:36
Speaker
Just beautiful, which also served a lot of my rock art dissertation because, you know, I was looking at hairstyles.
00:09:43
Speaker
and seeing how they were depicted across, you know, the southwest and the far west, you know, Coso. So just knowing that no one knew anything about Coso and how old Coso was, it's so old, that's what we call it. And that's just the Coso range of mountains, you know. They're so old, they don't have a cultural name. They are the ancestor to everything. There's no other culture we know that's older than the people that produce this.
00:10:09
Speaker
The oldest piece of rock art, Big Mama, is, well the oldest one dated so far, is about 15,000, maybe 14 to 15,000 years old. Whoa. Yeah. Art. That's early. Art. Art. Yeah. Okay, not lithics, not postal, you know what I'm saying? Art. Since they're so, again, so old, I knew it was going to kind of be a, a to and fro. All you really have from
00:10:37
Speaker
the people, the Koso people, the Koso culture is this amazing body of rock art. 200,000 images across about maybe eight to nine canyons in this one little area here in the Koso range. And I mean, everything is just covered and there's only
00:10:55
Speaker
Only one canyon, big petroglyph canyon has like a lot of examples of what we call superposition. So you guys know that archeologically, but it's the same thing for rock art, one over on top of the other, but not in a sort of defaced kind of way either. More of like an accretion, like making comprehensive, you know, adding to that. So, but that's the only artifact, you know, cultural product we have. Everything else just kind of falls into line with your typical
00:11:25
Speaker
archaic, paleoindian, you know, sort of time sequence that we've already set out as far as like tools, habitat, what kind of food they would have grabbed. But as far as who they were, nothing except the rock art. So with that being said, I knew that I had to go
00:11:44
Speaker
of course, to adjacent
Major Discoveries in Rock Art and Cultural Continuity
00:11:46
Speaker
both in time and region to the COSO and start there. Start looking at the rock art there. We're just saying, OK, that certain models, testable models come out of it. And then you start doing more research, cultural research, known, vetted cultural research. And then the more connections you find, the more you can say with increasing certainty, your hypotheses,
00:12:14
Speaker
that there's definitely, you know, because one of my major hypotheses was, does the rock art of COSO range demonstrate a point of visual cultural continuity across, you know, from the far west to the southwest four corners region?
00:12:33
Speaker
And yeah, it did in the craziest ways ever. I mean, I found example after example after example, so much so that I would find examples from a different authors very well vetted who had said, okay, this is the first example of this image that we've seen in the Southwest is none older. Yet I would have a COSO version that was exactly the same. That's interesting.
00:13:01
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, you know, I mean, exactly the same, you know, where I could just overlay it. And then there was just that what Grant called in his first book and the main book written on the COSO range, 1968, I think, rock drawings of the COSO, he had towards the end and it's at a minor site, he called it enigmatic image. And it really was because, I mean, the way it just kind of stands up
00:13:28
Speaker
And it's got the hunchback, so it kind of has the early, you know, hunchback coca-pelly action. Some antlers, it's got this huge concentric circle next to it, an adolatal, a bighorn sheep coming out of the crack. There's even the little sort of misty seeds and the fringe on the backpack. And it's unlike anything in the co-so. And that's saying a lot, considering there's like 100,000 images, you know, of anthropomorphs. And there's nothing like it
00:13:56
Speaker
anywhere at all and then and I mean it's a full-on panel it's stocked it's got like everything this is like well you know what we would call you know a masterpiece if you know modern canonical art you know the last supper kind of level you know oh boy fully done fully executed I don't think I've ever heard anyone compare North American rock art to like
00:14:20
Speaker
the Last Supper, and I'm here for it. Yeah, you know, I mean, I'm an artist, or as well as an archaeologist, like I went to London for grad school, because I got to get my MA in comparative art and archaeology. And I'm like, damn it, that's right. You know, just why should it be spot, you know, we've got to look at art making from an archaeological perspective. So anyway, so I,
00:14:43
Speaker
and like doing, you know, research, whatever. And so I, of course, I get that Canyon to Shave book that I mentioned before. This one, 10 years later, published 1978 by Campbell Grant. And when he's getting a little bit further to like maybe Pueblo to, if not even later, in his discussion of rock art for that region, he shows this image from New Mexico. It's in the, I don't think it's, what is the name of the,
00:15:13
Speaker
The name escapes me, but anyway, it's in New Mexico. It's a pretty famous area in New Mexico for rock art, and this panel is well known for Southwest people over there. It is the exact same composition, but just basically executed in the imagery and style of the time it was done. So...
00:15:40
Speaker
In the Coso, you have the horned, but this tall figure, elongated body. It's got the backpack and all that. The one in New Mexico, which is thousands of years later and maybe about thousands of miles away, you have it done in that shorter squat style that you guys may have seen before, if you've ever seen sort of kachina.
00:16:03
Speaker
Style dolls. That's where I'm kind of waxy kind of wave drawing. All right. So you have that. And then behind it, the cloud terrace. It also has antlers, you know, the horned headdress. It also has the hump. They're both holding the staff. But the difference in the staffs, the one that's in New Mexico, by this point, they have agriculture. So it's got more of the beating stick for seeds. Where's the COSO one?
00:16:31
Speaker
Their paleo, their hunter and gatherers, his is the atlatl. Oh, interesting. Yeah. And they both write in the exact same spot, have the same concentric circle, same number of rings with the same emergence point in the exact same area. They both have a sort of a symbol that is associated with, with the female spirit in the Koso.
00:16:59
Speaker
It is the bird foot, so you have like this disembodied bird foot, three little things, three toes, a little bit of a chin, I guess. Is that what you call it on the bird? Just a little bit there. And in the same spot, corresponding spot with the New Mexico one is the vulva or the hooved image.
00:17:25
Speaker
You might have seen that before too. It just kind of looks like a hoof, but it's also the vulva form. Then they have, okay, so the bighorn sheep is coming out of the crack in the COSO one. And then in the New Mexico one, there's a crack too, but now we have some corn growing. So there's their subsistence bases right there. You know, same exact thing, same location, but the difference is
00:17:53
Speaker
what they're, you know, sustaining. So we have our paleo hunter and gatherers eating some sheep in action. And then, you know, and don't forget, like the sheep is not just literally pure food. It is taken on. It is the supernatural. And then and just as much with the groups in New Mexico at that time, corn took on that same sacredness, which I'm sure you also familiar with, you know, corn gods or maidens.
00:18:19
Speaker
And so the same thing would be true for the big, bighorn sheep. You know, okay, I got it. The relational ontology. There it is. Heck yeah. So, so we'll talk a little bit more about this on the next segment and kind of like talk about, you know, these big conclusions, which you've obviously mentioned, you know, some of those already, but yeah, so we're interviewing Dr. Maurice Molinar. We will catch you at the next segment.
00:18:44
Speaker
Welcome back to episode 33 of A Life in Ruins. We are back here with Dr. Marissa Molinar. And Dr. Molinar, you were just talking to us about some of these cross-regional comparisons in rock arts, even though they were part of the same style, but you were talking to us about different temporal objects and changes between this. Clearly, if we're talking about Pueblo II period, 14,000 years of artistic
00:19:08
Speaker
continuation between what's going on near the Grand Canyon and New Mexico. So, yeah, we're pretty excited to hear more about it. And not near the Grand Canyon either. Oh, where was it? California. California. There we go. Yeah. So it was in looking at rock art that began that from Canyon to Shea, but extended further into the Four Corners region and Southwest from Grant Campbell's second book that I was able to
00:19:38
Speaker
see these two images, it's all, at first I kind of was like, how the hell? Cause then I realized he doesn't comment on it. And I'm like, holy, he didn't notice. And it's his books. Those were, I saw,
Oral Traditions and Myths in Archaeology
00:19:54
Speaker
you know, it's where I saw one image and I saw the other image in his other book. Wow.
00:19:59
Speaker
And yeah, yeah. And I was like, you know, and I went and I looked and I looked because I just wanted, you know, you got to make sure of these things, you know, because somebody could have seen it already and it's buried into some things, you know, the gray litter, some something like that. No, no, no, no, not at all. So once, OK, so once I verified all of that and even remembered what my
00:20:27
Speaker
hypothesis for my dissertation was the Kosovo rock card represent a visual cultural continuity that spread across. I was like, yeah, I guess it did. Yeah, no joke. Yeah. Like, can I can just can I finish now? I'm not gonna write anymore. That's it, right?
00:20:49
Speaker
But those are the kind of discoveries that I was making in just trying to, by going back and forth, first I just, I mean, immediately I established what I call the expanded study area. I'm like, there's no way I'm going to get what I need from COSO just from COSO. You know, I can probably read all, maybe 200 top articles by various and
00:21:13
Speaker
though I'd be highly specialized and, you know, experimental. I don't know. But as far as meat embedded and like deep with like ideas and examples, it was going to have to be the Four Corners region and Southwest. And of course, they're adjacent to each other. And once I saw that the rock art itself was so obviously connected, ergo, the cultural histories are going to be just as influential.
00:21:42
Speaker
So to try to
Impact of Political Boundaries on Archaeology
00:21:44
Speaker
look at that and kind of substantiate that more, I turned my research to oral traditions and creation myths. And then bananas again, found so many examples.
00:22:02
Speaker
you know, literally like the exact same sort of creation myth. David Myers writes a great paper on him. He has a great name for him. So he calls it key variant myth one, you know, and when he calls it that it's a
00:22:16
Speaker
a creation myth or some particular story, but it's like the, I don't know, the mold of the myth. And then you can see all the cultural variations, but they have to hit like all these or do some sort of variation of these very particular things that happened in this myth. And when they do, then he calls that a key variant. And Koso has one of the key variants.
00:22:42
Speaker
in it, which is a coyote and how he populates the world. So basically you have like these two lines of evidence, at least two lines of evidence suggesting that there is, there's not cultures dying out, you know, between 15,000 years and almost, you know, a thousand to 500 years ago, there's these exchange of knowledge, exchange of stories between those times. And there's not really a disconnect between the two.
00:23:12
Speaker
Exactly. I mean, you know, there's the only thing that's disconnected just would be how it varies, how meaning might change or metaphor, but like the greater metaphors kind of stay there, but how people understand
00:23:30
Speaker
that metaphor may change, you know, but that's all the variation, but the structure remains, you know, and that's what we know about myth, like, you know, Levi Strauss said, all is myth. And you can learn everything from it. And so when you can, and so I tend to look at these three things here, you know,
00:23:55
Speaker
It's something I saw, I think, when my hero's Julian Stewart would have approved of. And funny enough, I think it was kind of a blessing when I got my first copy of The Coso. I was already a Julian Stewart fangirl by this point. But when I opened up my first copy of that book,
00:24:14
Speaker
And the foreword was written by Julian, the man steward. I nearly lost my mind. I was like, no way. You know, this one off book that no one, I mean, yeah, he did California, but like still it was. And this is nearly almost at towards the end of his life. And his quote, I mean, he's at my dissertation, it's one of his last lines. He goes much that will not be found in the ground will be found on these walls. Wow.
00:24:48
Speaker
Boaz and Boaz's students had a lot of prophetic stuff to say.
00:24:53
Speaker
If we could do, you know, the archaeology or the anthropology that Julian Stewart was talking about, you know, with kind of... Hello? Yeah, I mean, I mean, like, like his original, like living with, you know, tribes. I guess you could still do that today. What Julian does is even more so. Here's what their issue is. OK, so we're going to get a little controversial. And listen, for my MA thesis, I was floored. The way they do it in England, you get blind readers, so it's not anyone in your department.
00:25:23
Speaker
You know, of course someone there reads it, of course, you know, but you have like four readers and only one comes from the department and that's like your supervisor or whatever. And the other three are blind. I told somehow Jose Oliver, who's a huge anthropologist big time. And he actually was the one that wrote my critique that you actually get a full critique. And he compared it to like, he's like, this is like,
00:25:53
Speaker
neo-functionalist at its highest, he goes, it's a more sophisticated version of croat. I'm like, what? Because people used to give me they're like, how can you be so artsy, but also so like hyper-functionalist at the same time. And I'm just like, because it's form and function, you know, I don't want to trade one trade one for the other, you know, I can
00:26:18
Speaker
get so, you know, specific and so like that, I guess that also helped me.
00:26:24
Speaker
with COSO because I'm used to looking for structures and being able to assume. And that was Julian Stewart's thing. He wanted to find what he called the cultural types. I mean, that's why he's, you know, cultural ecology, you know, he's credited with, you know, forming and I believe it. But he set out some truths that a culture in a particular environment and a particular time
00:26:51
Speaker
are going to have similar products of culture because the environment influences them. How they interpret or the variations of those products, yes, it could be infinite, but you should be able to recognize desert cultures from mountain cultures. And I think we can. At that time, I just think his ideas, of course,
00:27:20
Speaker
to me both, duh, obvious, but also at the same time, I guess ahead of his time for those people. I think he also had a bit of Asperger's because he didn't really care about, they always thought he was being offensive. I just thought he was just being blunt, you know? And they're like, how did you say that? You know, I'm like, I think it was just a, when he came up, when he came about, we were still as anthropology as a discipline overall.
00:27:47
Speaker
We were just coming out of our, you know, really dark past of
00:27:55
Speaker
anthropometry, Victorian racism and protonazism, you know, using anthropology to, like, basically further race agendas. You know, you go back to the earliest models we did. What was it? You know, savagery, barbarism, civilization.
00:28:21
Speaker
Yeah, the Morgan or whatever. And so any time any and then, you know, you would have the grand sweeping cultural histories. But so like, you know, we had so much shame for that. It's like rather than going, yeah, we screwed up, take it on the chin. They just decided to throw the baby out with the bathwater, especially in American archaeology or, you know, Northern Hemisphere. Everything became so highly specialized. Every culture was a unique snowflake onto its own.
00:28:51
Speaker
you know, couldn't make any real generalities. They were all frowned upon. And basically, you know, he, you know, just that hyper individualism, then, you know, combine that with, you know, the red scare and what we were doing in the United States, you know, in the fifties, too. Marx was not even allowed to be taught here. And professors lost their jobs and tenured and got snitched on for, you know,
00:29:18
Speaker
forever, you know, until, you know, I guess the madness, but it, but it had a whole generation of Americans still up until his day. You know,
Dr. Molinaert's Journey into Archaeology
00:29:26
Speaker
now we're just starting to talk about Marx again, but like 50 years, you know, 40 years where you just weren't allowed to talk about commonality, you know? And, you know, and it gave us also this kind of fake
00:29:46
Speaker
sort of archaeological lens that as if all these cultures lived in isolation. I mean, you think about today. I mean,
00:29:57
Speaker
You know, yeah, maybe they don't have the numbers that we have today, but everything's relative, you know what I mean? And given the fact that when we look at remains of cultures and we can see the inter overlaps of spirit, they just, you know, you just can't imagine, you know, the Hopi not knowing the youth live north of them. You know what I mean?
00:30:21
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. But we tend to discuss archaeology in that way in the States. Rarely do you come across a paper that's discussing one group or whatever that ever even mentions possible interactions or influences with others. Do you think modern state or political boundaries influence that a lot?
00:30:48
Speaker
Oh, hell yeah. Hell yeah. I don't, oh God, to me, it's like, it's one of the dumbest things ever. But I'm like, how can you put your contemporary nationalistic arbitrary beefs on the past? You're like, sorry, you know, that wasn't Georgia 15,000 years ago.
00:31:13
Speaker
You know, so why are you fighting about it now? Yeah, you know, it's the same way with Clovis. I'll be hung on to that for so freaking long. We ignored Montverde in Chile, even though the international community, they invited all the American, a lot of American archeologists to come test their material in their caves.
00:31:36
Speaker
And some went, but then they weren't listened to really. International community went, verified so many times. 30,000 years old. 30,000 in Chile.
00:31:50
Speaker
Clovis Folsom, 13 to 14. And then they got all excited when we found, what was it, Meadowbrook? Meadowcroft. Yeah. And that brought it up to 16 or something? Yeah. But I know the guy that used to teach that got me into archaeology, he was out of Ozio's grad student when they opened up Meadowcroft. And so you got to work there. And I know some of the radiocarbon dates from Meadowcroft are getting wonky. And every time they read data, it gets a little bit closer to us in time.
00:32:18
Speaker
Yeah, you know, and the thing is, it's like, so still there's like this excitement, but yet no one wants to address the humongous Chilean-sized elephant in the room. That the oldest occupations occurred at the southernmost point
00:32:41
Speaker
of our hemisphere, I mean, immediately it destroys the barren landing. Yeah, 100%. In one fell swoop, you know, clothes falls, and it's like, okay, not why, you know? And I just don't think we could, why we keep clinging. It just, it, to me, it just, it stunts knowledge. We know, I mean, I don't know if it's common knowledge, but there are two migrations out of Africa, two human migrations.
00:33:08
Speaker
Right? There's so much evidence.
00:33:15
Speaker
to suggest that there were multiple migrations to the New World at multiple times from multiple points of departure. You know, the Bering Landing, that idea, because, you know, just, I guess, using reason alone, why would the first pioneers, immigrants coming over this bridge, why would they wait till going all the way down to Chile
00:33:45
Speaker
before setting up camp, a stationary enough camp, and then I'll even go one further. When we look at complex SIV and high population densities and what we consider a complex SIV, they're all in South and Central America. They're not in the North. How could they aggregate? So just hugely, not just like a couple of, you know, thatched huts and stuff, or even a big midden,
00:34:17
Speaker
massive cities, you know, super old, but they're all South. I think you're, you're bringing up these really interesting points. And I think, you know, David asked me that question is that it's, that's gotta be like a, a North American archeology, you know, bias. Absolutely. Absolutely. Unnecessary bias.
00:34:41
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And on that note, there are still any North American archeologists listening, please hope. We will catch you in segment three. And we are back with segment three of episode 33 of a Life in Ruins podcast. So Dr. Mullenar, what got you into archeology to begin with?
00:35:04
Speaker
Okay, let's see. So, I mean, I've always, I was always that kid that was into everything. I'm coming to realize, you know, I'm kind of saying it without hubris or even conceit. I was also really good at everything, which made it hard to choose anything, you know? But what did I keep coming back to or just
00:35:27
Speaker
wondering, big ideas, what ifs, things that I knew that I couldn't just immediately kind of just find out about, or conundrums. One of my first, I guess, daydream jobs. God, it had to be like an elementary school. I wanted to be an archaeologist, but an astronaut that studied ruins on other planets.
00:35:49
Speaker
That'd be awesome. I wish that was the thing. I remember one of my first archaeology teachers like, when our artifacts weren't good enough, I'm like, I guess so.
00:35:59
Speaker
I don't want to use Earth ruins. I want alien ruins. Yeah. And so, but then you kind of would go in and out as you do as a kid, you know, all these different ideas. But again, I would always come back to the ideas of mystery and travel and the unknown. So it's, I mean, it's even to this day, it's a love affair between space and the past.
00:36:26
Speaker
which I learned recently from a beautiful documentary from Chile called Nostalgia de la Luz, which means nostalgia for the light, where they actually say that astronomers and archeologists are very similar, not only in the fact that what they're looking at is the past. Because if you look at the night sky, remember those are the stars from millions of years, that's the light from millions of years ago.
00:36:55
Speaker
So every time you look at the night sky, you're looking into the past. So astronomers and archeologists, you know, we definitely share that. What else did he say? That was kind of sad, but also meaningful. He's like, oh, we also have to deal with the sorrow of what we study. We'll never be able to really experience, which is true. You know? Absolutely. We'll never really be there.
00:37:23
Speaker
You know, and it will always be from that that distance. But even with that being said, I just, you know, I learned that sadness long ago. I mean, much later. But
Educational Influences on Archaeological Interest
00:37:34
Speaker
I was always interested in both the night sky and stars, but also like in the ancient mysteries. Then you kind of get a little. Hmm. I start getting a little thoughtful in middle school and I, you know, it dawned on me because I am first generation.
00:37:53
Speaker
of African descent, my family's from Panama, Central America, and me and my brother and sister and my first, actually my second cousin, all of us all first generation, like family in mass immigrated, you know? And so when we talk about the other in social theory or whatever, I mean, I've been the other my entire life, but I'm the other,
00:38:20
Speaker
that I'm both the other and the one, you know, because I was born in the United States. I was raised in America. I was raised in American culture, but at the same time, I come from this other place. Yet, you know, when we're sitting in a classroom and when you're kind of first introduced to any kind of history as a student, it's an elementary school. And what always stuck with me was
00:38:50
Speaker
The Hispanic or Native American history begins with conquest and genocide. The African American experience begins with slavery and genocide.
00:39:08
Speaker
And the American, the white American experience starts off with revolution and heroism and, you know, you know, manifest destiny. And I knew, I needed to know that that wasn't all there is, that what happened before that?
00:39:33
Speaker
You know, we are all conquered or enslaved or just outright murdered. And so you think about these fourth graders or even third graders, nine year olds, you know, reading these books, looking around the classroom at each other.
00:39:52
Speaker
as the teacher and the book is telling them, you know, when they're looking at anything about white Americans, it's the, you know, the revolution and Paul Revere and George Washington and freedom and then slavery, Indian genocide and the conquest of the Southern and Mesoamericans. And yeah, so, and being one of those conquered people,
00:40:19
Speaker
you know, that also being a female and black, you know, there's all sorts of kinds of, you always feel like we're always pressure to, uh, speak for everybody. Like as if, you know, what we say, it's always this consequence. Well, you know, you fuck up. We're never going to get another black person in here again. We're never gonna let another girl in here again. So it's like, you're always got the pressure on you to
00:40:45
Speaker
Whatever you do, everyone's going to assume of everybody else. You know, cliche in the reverse, right? You create the cliche. So if I was going to be under that pressure anyway, I wanted to know something different. You
Comparative Archaeology and Challenges
00:40:59
Speaker
know, I need to know something before that story. If I was going to have to carry that story the rest of my life, I want to know something else. When it became refined for me that I definitely was going to be heading into anthro.
00:41:14
Speaker
And I remember this so specifically, it was eighth grade, advanced world history. And it sat down, our teacher had put the books on the desk already. And I always read everything first, if it's in front of me. And I remember opening the book, turning to the first page, getting through all that, whatever. And the first words I saw was, Australapithecine, affarensis.
00:41:39
Speaker
And I had never even seen this word, heard this word any time before. So I continue reading and I go and my teacher's name, you know, because this moment was so like, how to appoint it for me, you know, Ms. Silverstein. I'm like, Mrs. Silverstein. So we're going to study
00:42:03
Speaker
history of early humans before actual humans. She said yes. And I was like, so there was the world. There was that unknown world all of a sudden that I'd always been looking for that. I'm like, Oh my goodness, I'm going to literally learn something.
00:42:20
Speaker
knew. This was in middle school? Yeah, 8th grade. 8th grade? Wow. That's awesome. Yeah, it was honors advanced. It was advanced world history. The only few of us in there. And I'll always thank her because I've talked to peers who had that and they're like, that wasn't in our book. And I credit Miss Silverstein with choosing that text.
00:42:42
Speaker
but she's like, you know, she goes, I've never had a student go jump in it like that before, but it blew my mind that we were literally going to start history in proto human history. Yeah. I think that was my freshman year of high school was that I had that same experience that we started with Australia pit the scenes and that's where world history once started. And I think it ended near Renaissance. Yeah, that sounds about right.
00:43:07
Speaker
But I remember that I had that same experience. I remember my teacher too, because I was like so involved, especially with Neanderthals. This is the first time we ever learned about Neanderthals. And I was just fascinated. Right. It's like someone just peeling back the curtain, you know, you're like, wow, there's all of this to, you know, we're connected to it and just, you know, what in the world can we, you know, but, you know, you go back and forth, you know, I did
00:43:36
Speaker
I went to performing arts high school where my art teacher was gutted because, well, my track coach was the most gutted. She cried because the performing arts school did not have a sports program. I'm really good at track and soccer. That's it. Even though I have the height for basketball, I just can't take people being that close to me.
00:43:57
Speaker
So when you're running, yeah, run faster. No one will get you. So it was a good fit. And then my art professor, I applied for the school. I did drama and I applied for art. I got into both. I decided to go for theater. And by the, I guess, beginning even of my 11th grade year, I was so disenchanted. I was like, you know what sucks about theater? And I wish I would have went with art. I'm like, theater?
00:44:24
Speaker
is the only one of these disciplines that you need an audience for. And I did not want to have a life at all that demanded an audience for it to actually exist. You know, you can dance for yourself, you can draw for yourself, you can play an instrument for yourself, but you just really can't act for yourself, can you? No, 100%.
00:44:46
Speaker
can't, you can't do it. So kind of got, you know, just kind of trudged my way on through. And when I decided back to college, I was like waiting tables, saw this woman that came in.
00:44:59
Speaker
older woman, like a hippie, you should have, you know, now I know, like, she had read Professor of Anthropology all over her. But at the time, I was just tripped out with a lady, you know, and she but yeah, and she was with this man who was just very obviously Mexican in traditional dress and everything. So they made the oddest couple. And they were seated in my section.
00:45:21
Speaker
And I mean, I just was fascinated, serious. I just couldn't help myself. I'm like, can you please like, tell me, I don't even know how I said it, but I just asked. I'm like, who are you? What do you all do? Like, you know, explain to me this, you know? She goes, well, you know, I'm at University of Miami. I'm a professor of anthropology. He's a professor of anthropology from the University of Mexico. He's here visiting.
00:45:44
Speaker
And I was like, that's so freaking cool. I was so stoked. And so I told her, I was like, yeah, I thought about studying it on and off. And she goes, well, I'm going to ask you one question. And I'm like, OK, go for it. She goes, what do you love more, the living or the dead? I was like, it's the dead easily. She goes, you're an archaeologist.
00:46:10
Speaker
And she was right, I believed her ever since. I mean, I've tried anthropology several times. As an undergrad, my advisor, in the good old days of UF, is I'm a UF alumni twice now, which is kind of weird. Did my undergraduate there and did my PhD, but master's in London. But the time goal between it was that. And it was a whole, if I may make a,
00:46:38
Speaker
you know, obvious joke, whatever, different culture in the Department of Culture. You know, it was like, I was, I was like, I was actually really good. I was saddened. I was also, I was disturbed. It was nothing.
00:46:57
Speaker
like it was when Dr. Alan Burns was the chair there. So he started off as a linguist and he got into visual anthropology, which is something I share, we both share love for, both practice. And then he took that even further and became one of the most revered applied anthropologists. He just started fighting for the rights of the people that he used to study linguistically and film, you know, in documentary style. He started fighting for their legal rights using anthropology.
00:47:27
Speaker
And he's like, he's a fricking superhero, you know? He's a superhero. And he was my advisor, my undergraduate advisor. Like that, yet I was, you know, archeologist bound. And it was that kind of, we really would intersect in a four discipline kind of way, not just kind of go hide off in our own little subcuggies or something, you know? But when I came back,
00:47:53
Speaker
I mean, it was just basically the opposite. It kind of reminded me of the United States. It's like whatever sub discipline was in power, you know, AKA the chair of the department. That's where everything went to and that's all they cared about.
00:48:08
Speaker
So you like, you had to like hope like, all right, let's get an archeologist this year. Come on, please, please. You know, or like the discipline department or the bio people are like, no bio, we need bio. Come on. It's been a long time. Linguistics is like, ever since Allen Byrne, we're not even trying anymore. We give up. You don't care. Maybe the real linguistics department will take us. But yeah, that's just how it came, you know, it came in to be. I mean, I was.
00:48:36
Speaker
set after because they're like, you're super theoretical and then you want to do comparative. And, you know, and we just find that to be, you know, how are you going to be able to demonstrate like, how are you, you know, it was just so weird. Like it was just, I'm like, well, the first thing I felt was like, um, didn't you guys request a copy of my MA as part of my application?
00:49:03
Speaker
Can anybody actually like read what my degree is in comparative art and archeology? And then when they were like, wow, you're a little wild, you're a little raw, you're a little forgetful all over the place. And I'm like, well, then I definitely know you guys did not read my recommendation letters because then you would have seen Dr. Jeremy Tanner from England say, Marissa benefits the most from close supervision.
00:49:35
Speaker
No lie, it's in there. No, we had a good laugh. He's like, it's true though. I'm like, I know it's true. I'm not one of those people that deny that I need management. I'm not a good self-manager. It's just the anthropology always has something. As long as humans have interacted with it in any way, shape or form,
00:50:03
Speaker
there is a question there that is suitable to anthropology. And so that's why I'm stuck with her, you know? You know, we could do a price or selection of, you know, commercial car tires by men ages 20 to 45 in Detroit, 1955 to 67. That's a PhD in anthropology. Absolutely. You know?
00:50:30
Speaker
And so, I mean, to me, I'm like, if that kind of discipline, yeah, that's definitely for me, you know, whatever I can ever think of. And I can think
Reflections and Career Joy in Archaeology
00:50:40
Speaker
of a lot of things. And yet I could, you know, kind of sort of justify study for it.
00:50:48
Speaker
You know, I mean, yeah, you know, I think I've got to pay and slinging the bull and doodling. I love that. I love that description of anthropology is something that it'll always be relevant, always around and always always have questions. Yes, it will always produce questions. You can always find something to think about.
00:51:10
Speaker
under that in anthropology. Yeah, absolutely. And I'm going to, I think I know the answer to this question already because you are, you seem to love what you do and love what you study. But because this is the show a life in ruins, I have to ask you this question. So Marissa, if given the chance again, would you still choose to live a life in ruins?
00:51:36
Speaker
Man, I've been thinking about that a lot lately. You know why? My buddy Scotty, who I used to be my archeology with. He got married recently. But while we were in our PhD program at UF, she was about 10 years younger than us. She wrote her name with little hearts for the I part.
00:51:58
Speaker
And she had just graduated from dental surgery school that was faking like half of a million dollars. And we're like, and she signs her name with heart eyes. You're like, she didn't write a dissertation. No. Oh my goodness. So yeah, in those moments, I do sometimes question, but you know what?
00:52:28
Speaker
No, no, you know, the only thing I could say is I would have I would have continued. I would have established a good side hustle earlier. All right. You know, all right. You know, but I would never have changed it. You know, I filled my first passport when I was 27.
00:52:46
Speaker
I'm Indiana Jones type archaeologist. All right.
Episode Conclusion
00:52:52
Speaker
Earlier today, I said Boaz and his students always had a lot to say. I was implying that Julian Stewart was one of the students. He was not. I don't know why I said that. Sounds wrong.
00:53:03
Speaker
No, no, no. I was wondering where you were going with Boas. I was like, what's I talking about, Stuart? But hey, you know what? I've got some good Boasian quotes too, you know? I mean, for a while there, I was drinking the Kool-Aid where people were kind of like, Boasian's just a little too like crunchy granola flaky flaky. But then he kind of reading some short sections of him kind of bringing a little bit of my bringing back some humanity to my practice of archaeology.
00:53:33
Speaker
Like it made me actually care about living people for a change for a minute. Cause I mean, that's why I stopped doing the Maya is because I, the Maya started seeming like Tuesday in America, the elite crushing the poor and the middle class, uh, natural resource depletion because of monumentality, inner warfare.
00:53:55
Speaker
I mean, nothing's changed by cell, you know? And so I had to go back to my original love, which was early as humans. Well, sounds good. Well, everyone, we just interviewed Dr. Marissa Molinar. You can find her on Instagram at maybe like water and Facebook by searching your name, Dr. Marissa Molinar. And with that, we are out.
00:54:58
Speaker
Thanks for listening to a life in ruins podcast. You can follow us on Instagram and Facebook at a life in ruins podcast. And you can also email us at a life in ruins podcast at gmail.com. And remember, make sure to bring your archeologists in from the cold and feed them beer. All right. So this is Connor's crappy joke time. So this is a simple question. What did the archeologist find?
00:55:31
Speaker
Not a well-paying career. Himself? No on both accounts, but those are both hilarious. He won't tell me, but he said it's groundbreaking.
00:56:01
Speaker
This show is produced by the Archaeology Podcast Network, Chris Webster and Tristan Boyle, in Reno, Nevada at the Reno Collective. 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 chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com.