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Microwear Analysis with APN Host Dr. Matilda Siebrecht - Ep 26
243 Plays2 months ago
Meet Tilly, the amazing host of Tea-Break Time Travel, and co-host of the And My Trowel podcasts. She is also the woman behind the @the_archaeologists_teacup Instagram account, and all the APN social media! Today we chat with her about her all podcasts, as well as her areas of expertise: microwear analysis and experimental archaeology. Finally, she lends her expert opinion on a recent news article that used some cutting edge microwear analysis techniques to draw some pretty big conclusions.
Links
- The Archaeology Show (Podcast Page)
- And My Trowel Podcast
- @the_archaeologists_teacup (Instagram)
- Microscopes and Magnifications (The Archaeologist’s Teacup Blog)
- The little things in life. Investigating the past one micrometre at a time
- 130,000-year-old Neanderthal-carved bear bone is symbolic art, study argues
- Burroni et al 2022: The Surface Alteration Features of Flint Artefacts as a Record of Environmental Processes
- Matilda's Academia page with all her published studies and theses
- https://linktr.ee/archaeobookclub
- https://www.instagram.com/scientistswhoread
ArchPodNet
- APN Website: https://www.archpodnet.com
- APN on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/archpodnet
- APN on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/archpodnet
- APN on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/archpodnet
- Tee Public Store: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/archaeology-podcast-network?ref_id=5724
Affiliates
Transcript
00:00:00
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. um You're listening to Tea Break Time Travel, where every month we look at a different archaeological object and take you on a journey into their past.
00:00:17
Speaker
Hello, you're listening to episode 26 of Tea Break Time Travel. I am your host, Matilda Ziebrecht, and today I'm not actually savouring a tea, I am savouring an ice cream. I wish I could say it was tea flavoured, but I haven't actually found a proper tea flavoured ice cream yet. Green tea, yes, but not normal tea. Anyway, the reason I'm savoring an ice cream is because I am actually currently on holiday on the island of Nordenai, on the north coast of Germany. Because of that, I haven't had time to record normal episode this month, but not to fear you will still be hearing from me because those of you who listen to the archaeology show may remember that I featured there as a guest a little while ago. And if you haven't heard that episode yet, well, you're in luck because here it comes now. Welcome to the
00:01:02
Speaker
Oh God, not that again. Archaeology show. I'm bringing it back. Could you please, I'm editing that out. I'm, I've had enough of the, we were at a sports ball bar last night. Not not really. We were at Red Robin, but but we sat in the bar because of, because kids and I saw that particular university up on the TV screen. It just came rushing back to me. So yeah, I had to, oh my god so annoy that's so annoying. Anyway, All right. <unk>re' this is going to be exciting because a lot of times I feel like we haven't moved much in the last few months. So we haven't had a lot to say as far as our travels go, but like for the next six weeks, we're going to be somewhere every week, somewhere different. Yeah. Like we're moving fast. We're going to be in a different time zone every single week until we get to the next three weeks time zone.
00:01:50
Speaker
Yeah, in like three weeks. so But we had a plan to get to New York state by July and we're in Washington right now, so we're going to make it happen. It's just going to be a lot of travel. Don't crucify us if we miss an episode here or there, but i ah hopefully we won't. I think we've got a plan to keep that from happening. Well, and for some of the diehard fans that that listen to everything in order, we are releasing these out of order of recordings. So don't freak out because this is being recorded in Washington state, but yeah being released after the one we're recording next. So yeah, yeah, there's going to be some weirdness going on there when you're talking when we're talking about our travels. Yeah, a little bit. yeah But anyway, let's introduce the second employee of the archaeology podcast network kind of.
00:02:39
Speaker
also Wait, am I the first employee? I think you are. Yeah. Okay. We have lots of volunteers. yeah i report Lots of volunteers. Yes. yeah There's, there's, there's many people that help to keep this ship going. Trust me. It is definitely not a one person job, but, but no, uh, Matilda Siebrecht is a podcaster. She's got two shows on the archeology podcast network, but we'll have her talk about all of that. But Matilda, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Very exciting to be on the guests side for once. i know god i know Yeah. And for context, Chris and I were just sitting around talking one day and we were like, we have so many amazing people creating amazing content for the APN and we were like,
00:03:26
Speaker
Why haven't we interviewed any of them? Why don't we have them come on the APN? We're always looking around for people that we we don't know to come on and and do an interview, but I'm like, we have all these amazing people right here at our fingertips. So this is hopefully going to be the first in a series where we are interviewing the other hosts on the APN network. and we wanted to start with Tilly because you're newer, your your shows are newer to the network than some of the others. And I just wanted to give the opportunity to introduce your shows to our listeners. Fantastic. Yeah. Excellent. ah ah Maybe I can get in, we'll get in on that big listenership. Well, they should listen to your shows because they're amazing. We'll get to that.
00:04:09
Speaker
Yeah. Why don't we start with your your background? What's your archaeological background? Well, so originally I was just a general archaeologist and I decided I wanted to specialize in material culture, so artifact analysis. So I did an undergrad, I did it at Aberdeen University up in Scotland. And the nice thing with doing a degree in Scotland, which you are probably aware of because Tristan is actually one of my co-classmates. He was the other founder of the Archaeology Podcast Network. So I was there when all of these ideas were running around in his head as well. So it was it's been fun to watch that develop. And then at some point I was like, wait a second, I want to start a podcast. But I know this guy who was talking about like some podcasting.
00:04:46
Speaker
So I did did that degree and that was in like cultures of the north, but it was a very, very broad degree. I don't know how it is in the US, but generally in the UK, if you do sort of an archaeology degree, degree you have like an introduction to everything. So you had like a zoo archaeology, a geo archaeology, a theory of archaeology, and you know all the field work, all of this kind of stuff. And i yeah, so I had a sort of general overview, but I decided I wanted to specialize. So I went and did a master's. I worked for a year first in commercial archaeology or um CRM, as it's known in the US, which was fun, but it did make me realize excavation is great, but it's just, you know, it's nice for like a summer or like a week. I can totally understand that. When it's not too long, it's warm enough. Yeah. So I enjoy it, but it's not, I'm not one of those archaeologists who's
00:05:34
Speaker
desperate to get back out in the field, which I know a lot of my colleagues are. So you know i'm I'm leaving more space for them on the fieldwork season. and So it made me realize that. And it made me realize i was I was definitely interested in the objects and the artifacts. So I went and specialized in archaeological science, specifically artifact analysis, and more specifically, microware analysis, which I think we'll talk about later. So I won't go too much into detail. but yeah so And then I enjoyed that so much, I decided to continue and do a PhD in that. So I did that. um And then, yeah, reach the inevitable quarter life crisis that most PhDs get to when they realize what life in academia means. So I'm taking a bit of a breakout from a life in academia at the moment and doing some other things. So currently working for for you guys. And also, actually, I'm back working for the same archaeological company that I worked with before um I did my master's, but I'm doing defines analysis and stuff and defines I'm the sort of finds officer and outreach sort of coordinator there. And I'm working for EXARC as well, the Experimental Archaeology and Open Air Museum Society. So yes, very different, lots of different things. Lots of with lots of pies. But yeah. So it sounds like you're kind of working for a CRM firm. Yeah, yeah. And you're in Germany, right? Yes, I'm in Germany. Yeah. So like, is that lab work, essentially? Is it like people are going out and excavating, they're finding things, and then they're bringing that back to you, and then you're doing the analysis in the lab, basically?
00:06:57
Speaker
Well, I mean, that's the dream. I'm hoping my boss listens to this so that she's like, oh. Because that is the idea. that's the That's the sort of aim. And they do have a microscope. And I saw it one day. Getting closer. I saw it. It was kind of hilarious. I think I can say this without a doubt. She'll listen. but My mother's lovely, but yeah, she's very busy. So she doesn't like the microscope, but she'd forgotten to put like the ocular lenses in, which is the bit that you look through to look through the microscope. Oh, kind of important. And I was like, something's weird. Why is it like it's really, really far away? And then I was like, wait a second. And then yeah she was too busy and she couldn't find the thing. So it was like a one five minute look at a microscope. And I was very excited. And then it hasn't happened again. So I mainly I mainly am sorting away all of the I mean, there's so many things that are found. So I maybe select them all. I sort them by material. I pack them away in boxes. They go to the sort of not state archaeologists, but the provincial archaeologists, I guess,
00:07:58
Speaker
it would be yeah so And I'm starting to do like animal bone identification, which is fun. I never did do archaeology, but hey. um Yeah, and it's what you gotta do, right? one of those i guess I don't know if it's the same in the US, s but it's assumed that you do a bit of everything at these kind of firms. So you even though i'm I am specialised at the firm, it's sort of everyone kind of chips in and then you'll have some tasks that you're more likely to do and you have kind of more knowledge about, so you'll be the one teaching others, if that makes sense. Totally. Okay. Well, let's, let's talk about your podcasts on the APN and let's talk about T break time travel, because that was your first one on here. And man, that's been going for a couple of years now, I think. yeah exciting yeah now Now that was based, I first saw that that was based on, was it just an Instagram channel or do you also have YouTube? I can't remember what that was originally based on.
00:08:52
Speaker
It started out with Instagram, yeah and which also started out weirdly. like That started out because I had, at some point, in between my Masters and my PhD, I ran a small business which sold jewelry, inspired by prehistory, which was fun. I used to do my market stalls and things. I had an Etsy shop. like it it it was It was fun, but it didn't go anywhere. I wasn't very i wasn't a very good businesswoman at selling things. Oh, man. I totally understand that. I'm so with you on that. I think I just, I like people to enjoy it so much that it's like, oh, buddy, oh, that's fine. Don't worry. yeah um yeah yeah oh Why am I not making rent? But yeah, so I started an Instagram channel because of that. And then at some point, it just kind of turned into a, oh, archaeology is cool channel. And then when I was in my PhD, actually, I discovered academic Instagram, which I never even knew was a thing. But it's this whole thing, like a whole community of like science communication and and sort of academic research is creating a network basically through Instagram. And so then I started doing more stuff about archaeological research and everything. And yeah, I started doing these T-day reels. So Tuesdays and Thursdays. The T-days. ah
00:09:58
Speaker
that And yeah, it was just one, at that point you could only do a reel for one minute. So I had one minute to talk about different objects. I have quite a lot of replicas. So I basically would just take one minute and I would introduce a replica, describe it and yeah, talk about it for a bit. And it's it's ridiculous. That was, I think I timed it well because that was the time when Instagram really liked reels. So then yeah my follow account went from like 600 to like 2,500 in like two months or something. It was ridiculous. like still not loads obviously I know there's people with like 25,000 and you know stuff but you know for me I was like what people like yeah and I really enjoyed it but I was thinking I mean one minute is quite sure and so I started trying to do YouTube videos as well so that's when the YouTube started and I wanted to do
00:10:43
Speaker
like longer ones where I would try to replicate the objects and then I would talk about the objects while I was replicating them, which I've done a couple of episodes and I really need to do more, but I just have no time. So ah that's kind of fallen by the wayside. But then, yeah, I thought I, I enjoy podcasting. I'd already been doing a podcast for EXARC for about a year, I think, and enjoyed it. I think they realized that I am the sort of person who, if you just give me a topic, I can just blabber on for a while. So which, you know, is okay, but with podcasting. So yeah, I decided, okay, this is something I enjoy doing. And I like this topic and other people seem to find it interesting too. And I have this old classmate of mine who has ah who's a producer at the archaeology podcast network. Maybe I can ask him. So yeah, so and that's that's how it all kind of came about. And yeah, asking guests on each time.
00:11:30
Speaker
So I try to find someone who is somehow related to, it's not always this one specific object. It could be like a type of object or it could be a material. We've also had materials and yeah, we, we just talk about the object itself. We answer the most asked questions on the internet. So sort of the Google auto-fill search thing, which is quite fun so but so fun. That's one of my favorite parts. like so yeah yeah I love that part. I'm glad, I'm glad. um but And some of them you're like, oh, for goodness sake, but you know, you have to answer them. And yeah, and and then we just sort of talk about stuff. And I also try to, so the guests have always been a bit of a mix. So we've had academics on, but we've also had professional craftspeople. We've had people who have sort of studied something, but then gone in a slightly different direction, but still stayed within that sphere, if that makes sense. So it's a really broad range of of people who come on as guests, which I think is really nice. And so I also try to introduce that a little bit as well to show that like, look,
00:12:29
Speaker
just because you're an archaeologist doesn't mean you have to be like a field archaeologist. Like you don't have to just go and dig all the time. yeah You can. There's so many other things you can do and still be involved in archaeology in some way. So yeah, totally. Sorry, very long answer. No, that's okay. I mean, I love your podcast, Tea Break. And I also love your other one, which we'll talk about in a second. but I think one of the things I like the most about Tea Break is that you you pick an artifact or an artifact class to focus on, but but then you bring context to it. Because I think one of the problems with archaeology in the media sometimes is that it's an it's an archaeology of things, right? And then people, it's it's like a collecting thing. Like people want to own these things and then you get the looting stuff that comes because people feel like they should own these special things. But when you bring context to it and you understand
00:13:19
Speaker
you know, why the people created it, what they were doing with it, what was important about it, then it it takes that, like, ownership and thing-ness away from it a little bit. And I feel like your show does a really good job of that, and i that's one of the reasons why I enjoy listening to it. Thanks! Well, it's good that you enjoy listening to it, because you edit them also. Oh yes, yeah. yeah I am kind of forced to listen to them, but that's okay, I do enjoy it. I that. And then on to your other show. So your most recent one that you started is called And My Trial. And you have a co-host for that one, Ash. So I'll let you tell about that one. Yeah, that one happened. on his like ah so well I started a book club.
00:14:06
Speaker
That was also like two years ago now because I was in a book club but called The Scientists Who Read. Quick shout out. They also have a podcast which talks about their books. They're very good. They they basically are a load of scientists, people and working in STEM who miss being able to read for fun. um So they started this book club and it's now got like a ridiculous amount of people. They're doing very well. They have Patreons. They're really cool. If you're interested, please do go check them out. thanks And I joined it and I really enjoyed it and it got me back into reading. I really love reading, but I just haven't been able to. I think a lot of people have the similar thing that when you go and study, you you find it very difficult to get back into reading for joy after you've had been forced to kind of read
00:14:43
Speaker
thousands of articles. So it got me back into reading, which I was really happy about, but I was noticing that even though I had done archaeological science, so that's why I thought, okay, I i qualify right as a person doing this, then i I wanted to talk more about archaeological science, not sort of other types of science. And I thought, there must be, there must be a book club about archaeology somewhere out there, but there's not. And, you know, the old saying goes, if you can't find something, you got to do it yourself. So I started a book club called the Archaeo Book Club. And yeah, we basically we look at a different book each month and we're trying to look at the sort of the representation of archaeology in popular fiction ah or nonfiction. We've also dealt with some nonfiction books as well.
00:15:20
Speaker
And yeah, from that I met, and well, I already knew Ash. She was actually the first ever episode I recorded of Tea Break Time Travel was with her. i Even though it's actually her episode is episode two, but like she was the first ever one. I love her candles. If you don't know it, I'm going to do another shout out. Go and check out Ashley candles because they're amazing. but And so she's one of those people that I've basically met through Instagram and now we leave each other about 20 hours worth of WhatsApp messages every day. like
00:15:52
Speaker
She's she's that ash i know she was that ash yeah for some reason i just never put that together their podcast every two weeks obviously So, know yeah, we knew each other from that. And so, and then I had her on my show and then she joined the book club and then she became a co admin of the book club along with another lovely lady Judith. And then we were just chatting at some point and about wouldn't it be really funny to write a book about an archaeologist being in a fantasy world and then you have to like deal with all the stuff, but it's real archaeology, but it's with fantasy subjects and you could kind of
00:16:30
Speaker
try to teach people about archaeological methods through that way. And then we were like, why don't we do a podcast about it? At that point, I think I was a bit podcast crazy. And she was up for it. So we decided to, yeah, again, I thought, hey, I know this great channel. They've already got me on one show. Maybe they wouldn't mind if I do a second one. And you guys, liked it, liked the ideas and gave us a shot and it seems to be doing quite well, which is nice. So yeah, it's good fun. Sometimes we have a guest on, sometimes it's just the two of us and we basically deal with, we try to deal with like a fantasy concept and an archaeological concept each time, which sometimes is more difficult than others. It's super great. And you guys have a great rapport. So it's a really fun, like back and forth chat, which is my favorite kind of podcast, which is probably why Chris and I are the same way on this show. We're just back and forth with each other. And so, yeah, that's my favorite. She's a great co-host as well. So yeah, it's really good fun. It's a great, it's a very fun podcast to do that one because yeah, for sure. Yeah. Also, if we had more members, arcpodnet.com forward slash members, then, uh,
00:17:46
Speaker
to Speaking of speaking of being podcast crazy, I think every single conversation Rachel and I have about anything either involves it involves one of two things, either starting a restaurant, which is really just crazy because it's like, man, I would never actually do that. But no, it I never actually do that because I have literally no expertise in that. That's whatsoever. But, you know, that that's kind of fun. Or the other one is starting a podcast because I would podcast about everything if I could. If I had the time, if I had the resources, yeah, podnet.com forward slash members. ah or if i had the you know
00:18:24
Speaker
So, which is just like, basically 10 minutes to 10 to 20 minutes a week, like every once. So it's like very tiny, but I was like, we should totally do a podcast for this too, guys. Are we up to four podcasts for you then? Is that what I'm hearing? Or Yes, but I do, if I have two co-hosts on the XR show, I had the, so I only have you know. to do one of the three months for that one, which is nice.
00:18:48
Speaker
All right. Well with that, I think we should take a break and we're going to come back on the other side and talk about your specialty micro wear analysis. So we'll do that on the other side back in a minute.
00:19:00
Speaker
Welcome back to the archaeology show episode 265. And we've got Tilly on here talking about her podcasting. And now we're going to talk about what you you know actually do as an archaeologist and what you're interested in. and And really, this kind of leads into the article we're going to discuss in segment three as well. So your interest, as we kind of discussed in the beginning, is micro-aware analysis. So let's just talk about that. What is micro-aware analysis? Why do you need microscopes? What does a microscope do? can we do with michael wow wow likecos we need micros goodpes i think exactly oh
00:19:35
Speaker
yeah Well, yeah, so micro analysis, there's also, there's multiple words for this, by the way, as well. So you have like traceology, you have use where analysis, you have microscopic analysis of use, where traces, like there's so many different ways to say it. I've just gone with like, where, because it's an easy way to say it. Sure. So it's basically yeah using microscopes to look at different kinds of microscopic traces. And you can look at sort of different things with that as well. So the the easiest way and that I usually explain it is you can look at how things were made and how things were used. And to do that, you need kind of different levels of microscopy as well. So for example, for my masters, I looked at amber beads from the Neolithic, late Neolithic, early Bronze Age in the Netherlands. And I was trying to determine whether I could work out what kind of material the drill bits
00:20:20
Speaker
was made from that had been used to create the hole in these beads. So which was good fun. So I had to yeah do a lot of experiments, had to drill a lot of beads. And then I basically created a ah kind of catalog of of traces, we call them traces, which are kind of the marks that you see from different activities being performed on an object in some way. And so by looking at this, these different traces, you can then make a little almost, it's called sort of a reference collection. And then you can compare that with similar traces on the archaeological objects. And what was quite nice is that I could indeed see some beautiful comparisons with that, which was amazing. So there was, for example, some some holes that have been made with the flint drill bits, and they created a very specific kind of trace compared to those that had been drilled using an antler drill bit. And then when you looked at the, you know, 5000 year old beads, you could see those same traces and those same two kinds of traces as well on different beads. So that was quite exciting.
00:21:13
Speaker
I should state, by the way, that doesn't necessarily mean that those beads were definitely made with Flint or with antler, but it's more you can sort of show what you know the possibility is in respect. Sure. Very cool. Yeah, that actually leads into one of the questions I had is, ah well, my basic question was, what is the relationship between micro-ware analysis and experimental archaeology? But I think you kind of just covered that. And it sounds like when you get into this sort of thing, you kind of have like two opposite sides of of a coin right like you've got this sitting over a microscope looking at tiny little detail and then you also have like playing with fake artifacts you know outside so it it's it's a cool like juxtaposition of two really different things is that one of the things that drew you to it i'm i'm Yeah, absolutely. And that's why I love, I mean, I said that I'm not a massive fan of fieldwork, but I really love practical research. And the practical research that I love is the experimental archaeology side of things in that respect. So yeah, and of course, for quite by the way, apologies, we can hear my daughter in the background. No worries. Very enthusiastic about her dinner. but arent we all ah Right. I mean, or more about the fact that her sister might be getting dinner and she's not that much anyway. Yeah, so the important thing as well though with experimental archaeology, especially when it comes to microanalysis, is because you're looking at such such fine detail. And also, by the way, if you look at how things are used, you're looking at even finer details. So you're using even higher levels of magnification to look at like really, really, really tiny traces. The sort of authenticity of the experiments
00:22:49
Speaker
i If I don't have experience with doing a particular activity or working with a particular material, if I then create traces with those and try to compare them with the archaeological record with people who probably were spending their entire lives doing this activity, that's obviously not going to be a very valid comparison. So right it's also very important when you're doing micro-analysis to understand your own limits so when it comes to experimental archaeology and be able to work with people who actually have experience in those things. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. You know, I'm wondering just with the term micro wear, cause you mentioned other terms for this. When I hear the term micro wear, I mean, wear implies use, right? yeah and And I think about this cause you know, I also produce and sometimes a co-host on the rock art podcast. And I always just struggle with the fact that it's still called the rock art podcast because
00:23:37
Speaker
you know, art and sometimes it's called rock drawings. I know so we we can't call it the petroglyph podcast because a lot of people who listen to it don't know what a petroglyph is when they're trying to find it. It's not a very searchable term if you don't know what you're looking for. So that's why we still call it that. So you don't want to imply that it's art. So can you imply that it's where, you know what I mean? That it that it's been used and and things like that is like, what would be a more generic term or what are some more, I guess what I'm trying to say is what are some more sources of the the thing that you're seeing besides use, you know what I mean? Yeah. So there are kind of tricks that you can do to get around that though, because of course, indeed, as ah so for example, some of the objects that I was looking at in my PhD, they were excavated in the 50s. And at some point, they had obviously been treated with something. And so you look at the first one I looked at, I was like, Oh, wow, these are really, really clear striations, like lines on the thing. And then I realized, wait a minute,
00:24:31
Speaker
that no that's brush strokes like from whatever they were like coating it with because i was looking at such a high level of magnification even though it was like a tiny teeny little pink brush probably that they were using i could see the brush strokes on the like the varnish or whatever it was that was on the top of the object, which was great. It meant that I had to get rid of like half of the collection because I couldn't see anything, but anyway. Right. But like, so at some point you have to indeed be careful and you have to think like, right, what has happened to this object? Like since it's been excavated, what could have happened to it during? So there's also been a lot of studies on like trampling traces and stuff like that to see if like, okay, and there was a great study done actually. and Unfortunately, I can't remember the name of the authors, but hopefully we can find that later and put it in put it in the show notes or something.
00:25:16
Speaker
there was a really great study done where they basically just left a bunch of different flint tools in different paddocks for a year or two and let cows trample on them. just have men one yeah And then just compared the traces that that he leaves with like other experimental traces to see like, well, okay, if we did this, would would it just would random activities also create the same traces? Or can you say, no, that's random? And most of the time, you can see if it's random or not. like you can see if it would have been environmentally done. You also have tricks, for example, you always want to try and look at part of the object which would have been the most hidden while it was in the ground sort of thing. So so areas like, for example, the inside of the whole of a bead are the sort of least likely to have anything happen to it, whereas anything that happens on the sort of very outside of a bead, that could have the most influence, if that makes sense. So so there there are kind of tricks to get around it as well. But of course, you also always do need to
00:26:11
Speaker
make sure to account for any potential. Yeah. Uh, what's the word? yeah Oh, I forgotten what the word is, but you know, when something influences it. Yeah. yeah yeah yeah You know, one of our colleagues actually did a trampling cattle trampling analysis out in Nevada on church artifacts. yeah Yeah. You remember that Rachel? It was out at, um, South of battle mountain. Oh, that's right. He did. jeff kuonner did yeah he Yeah. It was one season. Cause we did a couple of seasons out at this excavation and we were just seeing a lot of church artifacts, AKA Flint. We just don't call him Flint out here. Yeah. know
00:26:48
Speaker
ah But yeah, because we were getting a lot of artifacts and they were broken in interesting ways. So I think one season they just they just made a bunch of them from a source material and then just like kind of distribute them because there were cattle everywhere. And then just kind of came back to it one year. They plotted them all out with a total station and then went back and and looked at where they had been distributed to and what they had looked like. So it was ah it was an interesting analysis. I'm actually not, and I don't think I saw the paper they wrote up on that, but we discussed it. So yeah, it was it's fun doing stuff like that though to see what's going to happen with it. and Yeah, i I just I love experimental archaeology because it it takes you it takes you into the mindset of the person who created the artifact that you're studying, you know, it feels like a much more like visceral connection to the ancient people than when you're just yeah like even just excavating. I don't I feel like you don't get the same connection. But like for me, because I'm a knitter, right, like
00:27:40
Speaker
Sometimes when I sit there and I'm like knitting the sock, I'm like, I'm doing the exact same thing right now that a knitter 200 years ago did. yeah And that is like such a cool connection. And the fact that I learned from, you know, my grandmother too, like it's just, it's this family, family thing. And yeah, that connection to the past peoples you get through experimental archaeology is so cool. And well, and you can even see, so for example, with the the experiments I did in my master's with the beads, and so you have to drill them from both sides. All of the perforations were biconical. So they've been drilled from not just from one side, but from two sides. And you could see that was because it was a kind of like hourglass shape if you cut it through. So you could tell that like the drill had come from two sides.
00:28:21
Speaker
And when I was doing it, you know you you do it from one side and then you turn the bead over and you're trying your hardest to you know drill from the other side so that they meet in the middle. right But you're using a bow drill so it's not exactly the most you know efficient for for me personally. you know I'm not as good at that. so And occasionally there would be a bit of misalignment and it's like, oh man. But then when you look at the archaeological beads, You see exactly the same thing. You see a slight misalignment. You see where they've had to re-drill part of the bead because of something else. And I think that's my favorite part when you when you see the mistakes that were done in the past. And it's like, oh, good. It's fun.
00:28:57
Speaker
So did you have to become an expert at drilling beads then in order to complete your research? I became pretty good at drilling beads, yeah. That's awesome. And yeah then for my PhD, I was making a lot of needles. yeah And then during my PhD research, I became very good at making needles because I had to make like 50 needles for out of bone and ivory and antler and things. so Yeah. But I, again, I made sure to use some control needles as well that have been made by someone who actually knew that we're doing. And yeah, it's, it's always good to, uh, my tools that I use to make the needles, they had been made by someone else because I'm terrible at flip mapping. So I asked a colleague to make me some beer. Um, so, yeah I mean, does that give you just a little bit of a side note here? Does that give you an appreciation for
00:29:41
Speaker
you know, people of the past of of any age, because you got a a sense that modern people who are not archaeologists, of course, they're just like, oh, those primitives, right? But they were such skilled craftspeople. So much so. Right? Like, napping is to me the ultimate and the reason that I suck at it is because I can't picture the end result in the that lump. But you have to be able to do that in order to be able to create it. Because you have to know like how to hit all these different things. And because it's not it's not like you're just kind of shaping it, like scraping off the flint you know to make that nice final shape. like You have to hit it in such a way that you prepare for the next hit. And then that has to prepare for the next hit. You have to plan like 10 hits a ahead. And I can't do that personally. I'm just really impatient. But they would have
00:30:28
Speaker
done that. So e like, yeah, everyone, whenever you hear that people being like, Oh yeah, but they only had stone tools. It's like, do you know how hard it is to be like, is like I only tried Flint napping one time. And it was awful, but it had such an impact on me that like, it was 15 years ago, one time with a friend and I'm like, Oh yeah. Like that is the hardest thing I've ever tried to do. And these people who made these, these tools were geniuses. They were absolute geniuses at what they did. And you see some and they're beautiful. They're so like tiny and little like, Yeah, points coming off. They're pieces of art, really. Yeah. Well, there are some that people think they were art, and I don't use the term broadly. But like, what is art? But anyway, that's a whole lot of the discussion. That's like a whole podcast. That's a whole series we can go into that. Well, for the final, my final study of my PhD, actually, I basically, it could be summarized in the question, what is art? Which, you know, hey.
00:31:36
Speaker
yeah so yeah and But what's really interesting, you spoke earlier, Rachel, about like it's you get such and sort of a connection to it and the experience of it, and there's actually this whole kind of debate a little bit in experimental archaeology about experimental archaeology versus experiential archaeology. and ah like What is it, and how can one classify it, and if you're not actually getting like practical results out of it? Is it really experimental archaeology or is it just an experiential archaeology? But I would say the two go hand in hand so much. i mean I've had so many experiments where then so something new has come to me purely through doing it. And if I'd just been in ah and a lab doing it all with robots, so i don't know like it wouldn't have worked.
00:32:16
Speaker
You have to have that room for creativity so that you can see future questions or even help inform the the question that you're trying to answer in that moment. So yeah I feel like they should go together. But I also see wanting to distinguish between them too, because, you know, science. yeah well and yeah it is It's so subjective as well, of course. And yeah I don't know, to give an example, like one of the studies from my PhD was looking at these needles and we sort of worked out through it and I had read about it as well, but we went up to the Arctic. um I was lucky enough to be able to go up to the Arctic and work with some wonderful Inuit seamstresses
00:32:51
Speaker
Oh, cool. Obviously, they don't use bone needles anymore, they use metal needles, but they still work a lot with skins, like sealskins, caribou skins, etc. And that's what I was testing through my experiments. And so I had gone up there and I wanted to ask them what they thought of these replicas, what sort of was their experience with using them to sew. And we worked out the way that we sew in south is very different to the way the Inuk method is called of sewing. And so us doing our experiments had probably done it completely differently the to how an Inuk person would have used the experiments and all these kind of things. That is so fascinating. It was really interesting. And what was even more interesting was that the Dorset needles I was looking at, so the paleo-Inuit needles, seemed to have more similar traces to how the way we were using it compared to the way that Inuit were using it, which shows that the techniques had changed and developed over time as well.
00:33:37
Speaker
But anyway, mean that's like as I said, I wrote a whole paper on it, so please go. We'll have all kinds of links in the show notes, too, to your website and and everything. But that's an example as well, right? That your own experience biases you so much in experimental archaeology, so that's also something really important to keep in mind when you're doing it, especially if you're then creating microwave traces that you want to compare against archaeological pieces. like There's so much yeah so much you have to take into account with it. Well, it sounds like to me like we need to make an experimental archeology podcast, arcpodnet.com forward slash members. Oh, that would be so awesome. Let's do it.
00:34:13
Speaker
If there's anybody out there listening that is an experimental archaeologist that wants to start an experimental archaeology podcast, please reach out, chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com. So with that, we are going to talk about an article. So we're going to go back to the TAS style, but we're going to have Tilly join us on this breakdown of an article and we're going to talk about, well, art or is it art? Who knows? Probably not. It's not art. and We'll find out back in a minute.
00:34:42
Speaker
Welcome back to TAS episode 265. And we forgot to mention there is an experimental archeology podcast, which I host. <unk>t really remember ah Well, it's only once every three months, right? So yeah and to be fair, we don't always focus on experimental archeology. So it's from EXARC, but each episode is not necessarily just on experimental archeology. So there is probably still room out there for a podcast completely focused you know on experimental archeology. and So as someone who has taught classes on archae on podcasting and things like that, you know one of the things you first teach is focus on a topic. So for a quarterly podcast, I would probably suggest that you've you know like focus on experimental archaeology. I'm just saying.
00:35:26
Speaker
it It is monthly. I just only do every three months. oh you only do every three weeks ok so The podcast itself is monthly. We share shifts. okay gotcha got you okay got it okay so it's a monthly podcast and well The sort of aim of it, actually just very briefly, was because during COVID, we were supposed to have like a couple of meetups and things, obviously, and everyone was stuck up. So we were trying to do it as a way to keep that connection between our members. So the main aim of it is to kind of showcase what different EXARC members are doing and like the different things that everyone's up to. But then now it's kind of expanded out. And so now it's not just EXARC members who we have on and and things like that. So that's how it kind of grew, I guess.
00:36:01
Speaker
Gotcha. All right. Okay. Okay. Well, let me introduce the article. Rachel found this article. It happens to be something that is looking at micro wear and use wear and things like that. I know it's from live science and the title is 130,000 year old Neanderthal carved bare bone is symbolic art study argues. So Rachel, why don't you kick this off and tell us a little bit about it. Yeah, so the the sort of sub headline is, the carved bear bone is one of the earliest human-made artifacts with symbolic culture, unearth in Europe. And that's a big statement, but we'll get we'll get to why that might be a big statement in a minute I think, yes, we always have notes about sentences like that. ah Journalism. Anyway, so.
00:36:53
Speaker
The artifact itself though, let's just get that out of the way, the artifact itself is a roughly cylindrical bone. It's about four inches or a 10.6 centimeters long and it has, and this is the interesting part that they were doing the analysis on, it has 17 irregularly spaced parallel cuts on one of the sides of the bone. and it was first discovered in 1953. So this is, sounds like it's kind of similar to the stuff that you were working on yeah till yeah um for one of your degrees. Um, it was discovered a long time ago, but this is a reanalysis that is happening because probably we just have much better equipment these days. So that is the, that is, that is what we're working with here. So Tilly, I'm interested when you look at something like this, um, yeah, what is your initial thoughts when you see something like this?
00:37:39
Speaker
Well, so indeed, as you mentioned, it's from the 1950s. And as I said, like the way that they they were treating them was a bit different. And indeed, so one of the reasons as well, I actually also, I didn't look at freshly excavated stuff. I think the freshest, the freshest one I had looked at was still six years old. So I mean, it's fresh-ish, but not. super fresh. like It wasn't like I was going out and excavating my own objects. but and It's not even necessarily that the the equipment or or the analysis method is is improved, although I would say it was because microwave analysis became a bigger thing since 1950, but more the kind of the theory and the difference in how we perceive things as well. so What you were talking about in the last one about you know oh primitive cultures, they wouldn't have known that, whereas now we're like, maybe they could have, so we should maybe consider that as an option when we're doing this analysis.
00:38:22
Speaker
so yeah Looking at it in new ways, I think, is also a really nice way to... kind of that's That's why old materials should be re-examined and reassessed every so often, because there's such radical changes in how we think within within archaeological research, so it kind of is a new way of doing it. And it means that things should be preserved in a way that doesn't ruin that too, you know? yes and And our preservation techniques from 50 years ago are a lot different than they are now, or well, 70 years ago rather. So yeah, so you have to kind of hope that they didn't do anything crazy to it. Oh God. So many of the needle, and I was looking at needles and they're tiny, right? They're like two millimeters wide and they were pasting on like things and gluing stuff on and writing in marker. And I'm not going like, Oh, like It's still done in Canada. I don't know if it's the same as in the US, but for example, in Canada, it's still you still have to apparently put the object number on the object itself. It's still part of policy. and so you know As a microwave analyst, I'm like, oh my god.
00:39:21
Speaker
ah fine yeah one When I was working ah for the lab, I went to UNC Chapel Hill and when I was working for the archaeology lab there in college, so this is 20 years ago now, we we were putting numbers on the artifacts even at that point. So yeah. yeah so so chapin whole thing Oh hush. You know what? Chapel Hill is an amazing college. You be quiet. Yeah, indeed. I got a quick question. Doesn't this look like, I mean, 130,000 years ago, I would assume these are fossilized, but they kind of look fossilized, but I'm not really sure. They don't say it in the article. They don't say that in the article, I don't think, no. So it probably would have been treated too much if it was fossilized, I would assume. but
00:40:05
Speaker
It looks some pretty good Nick from the photo. I actually, I went to the original journal of archeological science article because I was intrigued and they had a lot more pictures in that one of the actual object. And it looks a really good Nick, um which if it's from, I mean, all of my, my PhD work was in the Arctic and that like the preservation is astounding. So this is also from fairly North, I think, which po yeah also, hol i yeah, you know, it could just be that it was beautifully preserved. And then, yeah was been looked after well enough since it's been in the museum. Yeah, from a cave in Poland. So that's probably really good. But I think I do agree with your statement that like, that's a big statement. I mean, what I've just been saying for the whole last bit of the podcast, right? It's like, there's so many things that you have to take into account and nothing is certain. And it's all, I mean, this is basically what I say in tea break time travel the entire time. Anyways, that we don't actually yeah know anything about the past because there's so many, there's so much influence and there's so many things. yes
00:41:02
Speaker
that also like in the article, I mean, I don't know, I just also like I said, I looked in the original one, and for example, they were they were comparing with traces that have been seen in other articles and identified it in other articles to be like, Oh, it's not this, which is fine. Like that's good to do. And by the way, this is a really good study. Like I'm not at all like the way that they the methodology that they use in this is fantastic. It's so cool to see yeah such like scientific application and to see that they're trying to be really objective about it. But at the same time, you have to understand, as I've been saying, that both experimental archaeology and microwave analysis is so subjective. So it's quite often, even if there's already previous experiments that have been done, sometimes it's good to just replicate the experiments to just double check and also to do experiments to kind of exclude things as well. like exclud Right.
00:41:51
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Well, speaking of the methodology, let's talk about that a little bit. So the researchers, they basically re-examined this bone using a 3D microscope and CT scans. And that's basically as far as the news article goes. So I was kind of hoping you would sort of fill in what that means exactly. Like they made this digital scan or digital model of it. But like, what exactly were they doing? how did Like, what yeah what was it what does that mean? Well, because usually, so also the way I do it, right? I mean, if you don't have access to these fantastic machinery that they had access to and these methods that you have that they had access to, you have to just, you know, you look through a microscope, you see the traces, you identify the traces based on what you have in your mind. And so therefore that's very dependent on your view, your experience and your kind of perception of what those traces look like. But what they did is
00:42:47
Speaker
do these all these scans and this microscopy and look at the graphs and and do all these statistics to try and be as kind of analytical as they could and to try and just show, look, this is literally what is there. It's not what we are seeing. It's not what we are perceiving. It's actually what's there. And therefore you, as an other person, can also look at this and make your own you know view of it and kind of see that what we're saying is true. which i like So that part, I think, is really is really cool. like it's a really amazing way to do it. But yeah, I mean, gosh, I can't even imagine what it would be like to try and do this on like hundreds of objects, because that would just be so much work. um So yeah, it's really cool if you have like one interesting object that you want to prove something about. But that's also not often the case, I guess it's sort of though those are very rare situations in that respect.
00:43:36
Speaker
Oh yeah, I suppose this is a very special artifact to get that kind of intense study. Yeah. Yeah. Well, do you see in your circles or your reading at all, any progress towards, I mean, that's the AI revolution right now, right? So do you see anybody going to the point where, cause I don't know how long it takes to do this like intensive CT scan of an object of this size, right? So. are we at the point where somebody can just like, you can get a, an intern or a, you know, a student or something like that to just start dropping articles or artifacts into a CT scanner and saying, bam, bam, bam, let's just get these done. And then it starts cranking out models. And then you get a, you get a, you know, you get something to just start analyzing this stuff based on, you know, predictive modeling and then start spitting out results. Are we even close to that yet? ah the The problem is there's so many
00:44:25
Speaker
and no I know I sound like a broken record, but like there's so many things that could create similar traces to some other things. So, for example, actually, in my and my Masters again, I don't know why I keep talking about my Masters rather than my PhD, which I've just done and took me four bloody years, but anyway. It was an additional piece of work. So my my husband actually, he's a he did image analysis of sort of CT scans and 3D models and things for his PhD research. My daughter, honestly. She's just shouting at me in the background going, daddy's going to come in soon. And I'm like, okay.
00:45:04
Speaker
yeah And so he actually tried to see whether he could identify the traces based purely on their directionality and see whether he could create graphs based on that. And you can, you can do that, for example. But then, for example, what does that mean? It's like, okay, well, there's traces that go that way. But what does that actually mean? So at some point, you do still need to have that understanding and that kind of analysis, I think, from a human perspective, because there's so many different things that can influence it. And there's so many possibilities that we aren't even aware of yet as well. Okay. Yeah. Right. I hope that answered your question. Sorry. sos yeah yeah Yeah. Well, let's just run through what their conclusions were for this article. They concluded that these parallel marks that are on this bone were repetitive and they have the same basic shape, despite the fact that there were some size differences. They were also confined to one area, even though they could have utilized other areas on the bone. They chose not to.
00:46:00
Speaker
And that having that choice is the interesting piece of that. And then finally, that these marks were organized with the cut marks placed in a systematic way. And here's where the experimental archaeology bit comes in. The researchers, they tried to replicate this on fresh cattle bones. So they used replica flint blades and knives and used seven different incision techniques to try and replicate this. So yeah. Which, again, i think that they could have I think that the experimental part was a slightly limited in this one. That would be the my only criticism. It seemed like it might have been, yeah.
00:46:37
Speaker
I like that they had the, and and I don't know how, how accurate this was given the limited nature of it, but they said they had the comma like curves to the right at the end of the rule. That was the little nip marks because the, and that determined that the person was probably right handed that did it, which I thought was really cool. I mean, lefties back in the Neanderthal area, I guess, whatever, you know. yes Well, you guys are the, you know, the slighted group in the world. So but Chris is left-handed for those that don't know. pick up on that yeah yeah ah And he likes to let everybody know.
00:47:16
Speaker
ands a new New podcast, left-handed archaeology. What is it, roughly like 10% of the world? I made that up completely. It's got to be 20 by now. Is it like 90% of all percentages are made up on the spot?
00:47:38
Speaker
ah Anyway, well, okay, the big conclusions of this article are that these markings on the bone, they seem to be purely for adornment and not tool making or some other utilitarian use. That's the conclusion that they're drawing. And that they also don't think that this is an object of ritual importance. and Which is shocking. wins But also the fact that they're so like specific about saying, oh, yeah, no, it's not for a utilitarian use. yeah And you're like, oh, OK. How do you know? Why do you say that? Because also then like Neanderthals aren't humans. They're different species. And I think a lot of people forget about that. So we're like, oh, well, if they did this, we would have done it that way. So that's how they did it as well. And I think that that's, I don't know, there something that is quite often forgotten too.
00:48:24
Speaker
I don't think in analysis we can say what something wasn't used for. yeah I think we could say what something probably probably was used for. yeah could yeah could experiment if we yeah If we can experimentally show what something could have been used for, I think that's the only statement we can probably make and still put quotes around it or maybe an asterisk on it, right? potentials and probably yeah we suggest yeah to Yeah. But to say something couldn't have been used for this or something like that, it's like, but there my God, yeah, that's, Yeah. And that, yeah, who knows? So, and to say an object wasn't of ritual importance, I mean, a stick could be of ritual importance. A mountain is of ritual importance. Yeah. Yeah. All of that was, that's what drew me to this article. Cause I'm like, wow, those are some, those are some things to say about 130,000 year old artifacts. So
00:49:15
Speaker
Oh yeah. I wonder what their contemporaries in San Diego 130,000 years ago were thinking about this. Oh my God. Can we please stop? No, we're not talking about, in fact, I'm editing all this out. The people of Cerruti would have something to say about this. I always have to edit you when you say dumb things. Hashtag elephant ruins, come back. i Well, that was all like deep tracks for people that listen to every single podcast on this network. So that's right. that's right yeah Caleb knows what I'm talking about. and Oh my gosh. All right. The fan shout out. All right. Well, Tilly, thanks for coming on the show. This was fun. This was our, this was our first. Yeah. We haven't interviewed another podcast host on the show yet. I don't think we have. so on it yeah Thank you so much for having me. It's been really fun. It was great.
00:50:06
Speaker
We appreciate it. Thank you. And I think next we've got a news episode coming up, so we'll catch back up with some news and we will see you guys next time. Bye. Bye. Thank you for listening in to this very special episode of Tea Break Time Travel. And thank you again to Chris and Rachel for having me on. If you enjoyed that, do listen to more of The Archaeology Show. They release every week, so a lot more often than me. um And they cover all kinds of topics. They look at different news articles. They feature different guests. They look at different time periods. So definitely a show to keep your eye on. And of course, if you want to support us here making these free, interesting, informative, imaginative podcasts, you can follow, like, subscribe us everywhere. Also do check out the other shows that on the Archaeology Podcast Network there's everything from CRM professional archaeological tools and tricks of the trade to fantastic D and&D style archaeological quests into various fictional universes. So a little bit of something for everyone.
00:51:10
Speaker
Next month, we'll be back to regularly scheduled expeditions back in time for Tea Break Time Travel, also starting our brand new little mini series of Tea Break Time Travel training in theory and methods of archaeological thinking. So look out for that in two weeks time. See you next time. I hope that you enjoyed our journey today. If you did, make sure to like, follow, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and I'll see you next month for another episode of Tea Break Time Travel.
00:51:38
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 ww www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.