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The Denver Museum of Nature and Science with Dr. Michele Koons - Ep 71
271 Plays5 years ago
The Denver Museum of Nature and Science is a massive organization that strives to teach the public about the world around us. Dr. Michelle Koons is the Curator of Archaeology at the DMNS and brings us a report on what they're doing these days and what you can see and participate in if you visit. We talk about one such project in detail: The Magic Mountain Community Archaeology Project.
LinksDenver Museum of Nature and ScienceDr. Michele Koons Profile at DMNSContactChris [email protected]
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Transcript
Introduction and Sponsorship Announcement
00:00:00
Speaker
We're excited to announce that our very own podcasting platform, Zencaster, has become a new sponsor to the show. Check out the podcast discount link in our show notes and stay tuned for why we love using Zen for the podcast.
Archaeology Podcast Network Overview
00:00:11
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. You're listening to the Archaeology Show. TAS goes behind the headlines to bring you the real stories about archaeology and the history around us. Welcome to the podcast.
Guest Introduction: Dr. Michelle Koons
00:00:27
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to the Archaeology Podcast, Episode 71. I'm Chris Webster. And I'm April Campwittaker. On today's show, we talked to Dr. Michelle Koons from the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. Let's dig a little deeper.
Research Focus: Ancient Societies and Methods
00:00:45
Speaker
Dr. Michelle Koons is the curator of archaeology at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. She studies ancient complex societies and is especially interested in ancient political dynamics, social networks, and how people of the past interacted with their environment. In her research, Dr. Koons uses different geophysical methods and remote sensing tools, as well as traditional archaeological techniques like excavation and pedestrian survey. She also specializes in ceramic analysis and radiocarbon dating.
Role and Projects at the Denver Museum
00:01:10
Speaker
Michelle has conducted archaeological research throughout the United States, Peru, Bolivia, Chile,
00:01:15
Speaker
and China. Michelle curates the archaeological collections at the DMNS from Latin America, North America, and Egypt. All right, everyone. Well, welcome to the show. Today, we are going to be talking with Michelle Koons, and we are just going to have a fun talk today about how you become a curator of archaeology and what you do and some of the really neat public outreach and public archaeology projects that Michelle has been doing and the museum has been working on.
00:01:42
Speaker
Welcome to the show, Michelle. It's really great to have you here. Thank you so much. I'm excited to be here. Yeah. Well, Michelle and I have worked kind of adjacent and on similar projects and run into each other a bunch since I've done all this work with the University of Denver and the Denver Amache project. So it's really exciting for me to finally get a chance to sit down and interview her and talk to you on the show. So yeah, definitely. We're really happy to
Curatorial Responsibilities
00:02:06
Speaker
have you here.
00:02:06
Speaker
excited too because, yeah, we've sort of been sort of ships passing in the night many ways. Yeah, no, we really have. And I was thinking about it today and I realized I think you might be the first kind of museum affiliated person that we've had on the show. Great. Well, I'm excited to to participate in that capacity. Yeah. So I realized that one of the things that I kind of wanted to talk to you about just to start this off is, you know, as a curator of archaeology,
00:02:36
Speaker
And as an archaeologist who works in a museum, can you tell us a little bit about what that job really encompasses in the roles? Because when people visit museums, you know, they see what, a couple percentage of the collection on display, and you don't really get a sense of all of the logistics and things that go on in the back rooms behind all those closed doors.
00:02:58
Speaker
Sure.
Collections and Relocation Efforts
00:02:59
Speaker
Yeah. So it's, I believe on average, and it's about 1% of the collection is actually out on display. And we at the DM&S and most museums have all kinds of things happening behind closed doors. And so it is pretty exciting to get to see what that's like and to make
00:03:20
Speaker
you know, make it, make it, make it happen, so to speak. Yeah. So as a curator of archaeology, are you just sort of supervising people watching the collections? Are you, what, what does it kind of encompass?
00:03:34
Speaker
What do I do? Yeah, it's a good question. What don't you do? Maybe the better question is what don't you do? That is probably a more accurate question or appropriate question, I should say. But yeah, so a curator is really, you know, so many different museums have curators and there's really no one definition. And from institution to institution, that role is going to vary and it can vary very significantly.
00:03:59
Speaker
here at the Denver Museum, which is a major natural history museum. So we're kind of similar to a museum. We're actually the fourth largest in the country. So we're similar to like the Field Museum, the Smithsonian, and have that sort of curator structure.
00:04:15
Speaker
My job is to do original research, so I have various research projects that I'm working on, just like any academic would. I also curate specific collections, and so I'm in charge of the Latin American collection, a good portion of our North American collection, and also our Egyptian collection. And so that means that I do research on parts of those collections, or I
00:04:43
Speaker
facilitate research. So I get people and like experts in different subjects to come in and see what we have so that we can make it more accessible. We are currently moving our archaeology collection from one place in the building and we built a new facility
00:04:58
Speaker
a couple years ago and so we're moving into that right now and everything's getting a new box and a new house and it's going to be really beautiful when it's all there and so just facilitating that work is something I'm involved in and another big part of my job is the outreach and just getting people excited about archaeology and what that means in the museum.
Magic Mountain Public Archaeology Project
00:05:21
Speaker
Yeah, so that's actually part of the reason I invited Michelle to be on the show is I she gave a phenomenal talk at our annual conference about some of the work that you've been doing at Magic Mountain, which is a prehistoric site outside of the Denver region and kind of the logistics of that. And it was absolutely wonderful. And so I kind of we wanted to have you on to talk about that and talk about
00:05:44
Speaker
this idea of engaging people with archaeological research and how you went about it. And yeah, so can you tell us a little bit about why the museum does this public outrage?
00:05:57
Speaker
Sure, so actually when I started here at the museum about, even in my job talk about six years ago now, I can't believe that, I said that one of my goals was to have a public archaeology project because this institution in particularly is really, we're really well known for our dinosaur work and our
00:06:17
Speaker
all the work that we do in paleontology and it's pretty ingrained into the culture of this place as well as Denver too. Everybody knows about the dinosaur footprints that are just down the road and
00:06:33
Speaker
I was like, wow, there's such an opportunity for people to get engaged with archaeology and what's right in our backyard. So many people were just unfamiliar that that even exists. When you say archaeology in Colorado, most people are thinking, oh, Mesa Verde, there's nothing right here in Denver. And so I was really passionate about doing this and just bringing that passion. Because we love archaeology, and we know that the public loves archaeology, but they don't necessarily have
00:07:02
Speaker
as many avenues to get engaged in it as I think us as professionals would like for them to have to be exposed to it. And being in a public museum or a museum that is so public facing, it was just a really great opportunity to
00:07:17
Speaker
be able to engage a lot of people in various kinds of ways because we just have that capacity of with our media relations and also with our programming department where they could get involved and help us to really craft something that would be successful.
Significance of Magic Mountain Site
00:07:36
Speaker
So I was really excited to be able to get this project off the ground at the site of Magic Mountain, which is a
00:07:44
Speaker
hunter-gatherer site that was occupied, we've now in our research pushed the years back to about 9,000 years ago, up to about 1000 years ago and really get people of all different walks of life out there to experience what life would have been like back in the past, but also just the whole science and process of archaeology.
00:08:08
Speaker
So can you just tell us a little bit about what the site of Magic Mountain is? So it's obviously a prehistoric site. It's 9,000 years old. But what's a little bit about the history of it? I mean, why did you choose Magic Mountain as a site? I mean, there's all of these hidden sites when you're walking around Colorado. So why this one? What's so special or interesting?
00:08:31
Speaker
Sure. Well, there's a couple of different reasons we chose this particular site. And it kind of is this perfect storm of reasons why.
00:08:40
Speaker
The site was originally, so it's a hunter-gatherer campground, and in our excavations and in previous excavations that happened at the site, we've found fire pits and evidence of people living on this. It's on the edge of a creek bed right at the base of one of the major access points that goes up into the mountains. It was used as a, this canyon or, you know, it's a Gulch was used as a major
00:09:07
Speaker
road for wagon trains or wagons going up to the central city Black Hawk area, which is where a lot of the gold rush was happening in Colorado. And so it's a really prominent route that would have been used in the past, as well as even today, people are always biking and hiking right there. And so the site itself is in a really great location for it to where people could have lived for a really long time. But it's also a really great location for today because it's
00:09:37
Speaker
right at this trailhead there are bathrooms, there's a very large parking lot, and it's very easy to get a lot of people in and to construct a tour of the area that's like 45 minutes and it just had the logistics were perfect for
00:09:56
Speaker
just getting people to see it and to be exposed to it. But there's also been a very long history of the Denver Museum, which used to be the Colorado Museum of Natural History, their involvement with the archaeology of the site. And we have many collections from there that have been collected going back into the 1930s. And so just that continuity of that
00:10:20
Speaker
history made it, it just was kind of the perfect storm of places to bring the public and to explore. Not only is it, it's also one of the biggest and most important sites in this region as well.
00:10:32
Speaker
So can you explain a little bit why it's one of these big important sites? Sure. I think a lot of it has to do with that access. I was talking about the ability to get into the mountains really easily. You also have fantastic views of the plains. It's located right on the bank of a stream, but there's also a natural spring right there. So people could have lived there really for long, long periods of time. Some of our research questions are questioning if people were using this only seasonally or if they were there.
00:11:02
Speaker
more continuously. There's this idea that people were mobile hunter-gatherers in this region and they would just go to certain areas for, for example, like the winter. But we're questioning that and saying, well, maybe they were here for a couple years in a row rather than just over winter months.
00:11:24
Speaker
Another reason it's in such a great location has to do a lot with the topography of this area. It's right up against the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, so directly at the base of the foothills, but it's also in what is called the Hogback Valley.
00:11:44
Speaker
there's this geological formation where it creates sort of this little valley in the golden area that is climatically warmer than anything to the east on the plains or also up in the mountains. And so you find really the majority of archaeological sites in the region in this hot hogback valley because of that protect, it has that protection.
00:12:07
Speaker
And so this site is located right in this hog pack valley. It has water and it was just a very, very large site. There's been thousands and thousands, hundreds of thousands of objects that have been found there going back into the 30s when they were first recorded.
00:12:23
Speaker
Wow, I suppose that would lead into a conversation about the curation problem in museums, but that might be a conversation for another episode.
Community Engagement and Partnerships
00:12:32
Speaker
I'm wondering, you know, this is called the Community Archaeology Project. What sorts of things can the community really get into with this project? I mean, you mentioned tours, but are there excavations or surveys or things like that that volunteers can get on and learn a little bit about the archaeological process?
00:12:48
Speaker
Yeah, so the way that we've run it is that we had tours while we were out there excavating. We had tours every half an hour. So we had volunteers who actually were our tour guides and gave those tours. We also, the entire site was excavated by volunteers. So we had about 70 volunteers.
00:13:09
Speaker
doing the excavations and these are everything everybody from undergrads who had never had any experience who were excited about archaeology to retired professionals and kind of just ran the whole gamut and we would train them and have a schedule so that more experienced people could help train some of the less experienced people
00:13:28
Speaker
We also did youth programming at the site and so we had Boys and Girls Club out there and other youth groups from the Denver area that we bust in and we provided them with lunches and just tried to give them a taste of what archaeology was like.
00:13:46
Speaker
And we had a program here at the museum called Teen Science Scholars, and we had 14 teenagers, high school students out there with us the entire time. So it was very, very busy over the two years that we were out there, 2017 and 2018.
00:14:03
Speaker
So we had to, we really ran for the project. We partnered, the museum partnered with paleocultural research group, which is a nonprofit that is located in Colorado and they do a lot of volunteer based archaeology projects. And so they really helped us with the, it was a true partnership where they really helped us with the
00:14:23
Speaker
training of the volunteers, but also conducting the science of the archaeology. And then the museum was able to really contribute with our, like I was saying earlier, with our program staff and our project management to be able to kind of make it all, pull it off the ground. And so it was just a lot of orchestration involved.
00:14:45
Speaker
Nice. I'm a huge proponent of digital archaeology, as people who listen to my archaeotech podcast know, with such a massive amount of material coming in. This can be a short answer, too. It's you hitting the end of the segment. I'm just curious, what sorts of recording methods are you guys using
00:15:03
Speaker
to really catalog all this stuff and hopefully not get overwhelmed. Yeah. Well, so fortunately within our excavations in the last few years, we haven't had incredible amounts of material. I would say probably about a total of maybe 13,000 objects, but this is also lots and lots of debitage.
00:15:25
Speaker
hundreds of thousands of things have been found there, but we were not necessarily bringing in that much. We actually do mostly because of the sheer amount of volunteers, and I'm a big fan of using digital methods for recording, but because of just the sheer amount of volunteers and the inability to have
00:15:44
Speaker
tablets for everybody. We do pretty much paper recording. What's been pretty nice though is that we were able to devise cataloging systems that work with the museum curation system which is so often not the case because most archaeologists are not necessarily working directly with museums and then numbers get all changed and it gets a little messy but we're able to kind of go right from the field right into the museum because we have
00:16:09
Speaker
this compatible system and are able to work with, we have volunteers and I have a few interns right now working with me, just getting cataloging and working through the photography of all that so we can just like immediately get it up online. So we're trying to just, you know, make it as fast as possible with that, getting into the curation, which is a bonus of working at a museum, I suppose.
00:16:36
Speaker
Nice, nice. All right. Well, I think on that note, we'll take it to our first break and come back and continue this conversation with Dr. Michelle Koons back in a second. Chris Webster here for the Archaeology Podcast Network. We strive for high quality interviews and content so you can find information on any topic in archaeology from around the world. One way we do that is by recording interviews with our hosts and guests located in many parts of the world all at once. We do that through the use of Zencaster. That's Z-E-N-C-A-S-T-R.
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Speaker
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Career Path of Dr. Michelle Koons
00:17:58
Speaker
That's P-A-L-E-O, imaging.com. And look for the link in the show notes to this episode.
00:18:06
Speaker
All right, welcome back to episode 71 with Dr. Michelle Coons. And we are talking about museums and sites in the Magic Mountain Community Archaeology Project. I want to step back for a second, Michelle, and ask you about getting the job at the museum. You said you'd been there for six years. I know in archaeology, a lot of times we just kind of take jobs that come up because, you know, work. Did you always want to work in a museum or did this just kind of fall in your lap and now you've been here for so long and you like it? I mean, how'd that come about?
00:18:36
Speaker
it's um it's actually a little bit of both um i was fortunate i love museums i always have i've always been just a passion of mine and so while i was at grad school both at um when i was doing my masters at the university of denver and even before that i was always volunteering in museums or working in various jobs in museums like everything from
00:19:00
Speaker
museum education to helping catalog different objects. When I got to grad school for my PhD, I was working in the Peabody Museum throughout a lot of the time I was there. And while I was writing my dissertation, I got really bored of just being by myself. So I volunteered at the Boston Museum of Science and was like an on the floor volunteer just for something
00:19:25
Speaker
fun to do and this job came up was actually I started as a postdoc here and I was when I was interviewing for that postdoc not only did I have you know was just finishing my PhD in archaeology I had had all of this museum experience throughout the throughout my um career so it just kind of was like oh this it made sense and I had no I
00:19:51
Speaker
It was my dream job and I just didn't really know that it existed. And so when I got here, I just absolutely loved it. And while I was here, fortunately for me, one of the curators left and they had to hire another curator. And so I felt like I was on a year-long interview because I was like, oh my gosh, I really, really want this job. I really can't mess up. And so I was very lucky.
00:20:19
Speaker
I'm fortunate to get the permanent job about a year later. Nice. Is this the kind of thing you could see yourself just doing as continuing the rest of your career, or do you have other ambitions and things you want to do?
00:20:30
Speaker
I love this job. I just think it's a dream job. It's almost seven years I've been here, including the postdoc position. There's constantly new and exciting things and new challenges and opportunities. I get to do things that I never thought in a million years I would do. For example, I have a book coming out.
00:20:52
Speaker
in the spring on Egyptian mummies, which is totally not my background research. So it's just been just so fun to be able to do exactly what I love in a way that, in a place that I really, really love. So yeah, I don't plan on going anywhere as long as they'll keep me.
00:21:15
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Nice, nice. Well, maybe let's get back to Magic Mountain a little bit. How did this affiliation between Magic Mountain and the museum start? It might be a little before your time, I'm assuming, but do you know the history of how that got going?
00:21:30
Speaker
I do. So there's actually the first mention of the site of Magic Mountain, which was not called that at the time, it was called the Apex site, came from actually the Smithsonian Magazine in the 1870s. There was some entry on how this was just a treasure trove of artifacts like in this one particular area. And people knew about the site because it was right near this mining supply town for where the
00:21:58
Speaker
the wagons would go up into the mountains to supply the camps. But it was in the 1930s when actually volunteers and museum affiliated folks were out there in the area and they picked up some artifacts and they brought them to Colorado Natural History Museum at the time.
00:22:17
Speaker
That's when they first entered into the collection. It was right when the archaeology department was formed at this institution. That really sparked the interest of two museum-affiliated archaeologists in the 1940s to go out there.
00:22:33
Speaker
and do some excavations. And it wasn't really up to what our snuff would be today, up to par, but we have those artifacts here from the 1940s. But that research then
00:22:50
Speaker
it prompted Cynthia Irwin Williams, who, you know, went on to have quite a career in archaeology. But she was a she was locally from Denver and was hanging out at the museum all the time. And she has like, when she was it was a kid, and she eventually went on to Harvard to do her dissertation and do and did her dissertation on the site of Magic Mountain and really defined archaeology of the in the
00:23:16
Speaker
On the front range with this site and still even terms we use of like projectile point typology comes from her work there and and what she did in the her work was published through the museum, although the collections on her collections are at Harvard.
00:23:33
Speaker
But then there was another gap in time in the 1990s. There was another excavation at the site trying to just recheck and see how her work was holding up over those 30 years and advances in technology. Those collections are here at DMNS.
00:23:52
Speaker
We have quite a bit of materials and just long-term association with working at Magic Mountain. I should say it got its name in the 1950s when Erwin Williams was out there because at the time there was an amusement park that owned the property. It failed miserably, amusement park. It was in operation for like a season. The vice president of Disney World actually started it.
00:24:16
Speaker
And it was called Magic Mountain at the time. And that's how the site ended up with the kind of fun name. Yeah. Wow. I never would have put that together. For some reason, that totally makes sense though. Yeah.
Community Outreach and Educational Programs
00:24:31
Speaker
Nice. What other outreach projects does the museum have? I mean, museums are kind of all about outreach, right? It's the total bag of the museum to
00:24:40
Speaker
to put things out there in the public for people to learn from. So what are the types of outreach programs do you guys have, and what's your focus on that? Oh, man. We're just constantly doing outreach in all of our different departments. Like I was saying, our paleontology is incredibly active, and they have ... I mean, just a couple weeks ago, another dinosaur was discovered in construction in someone's backyard, and so all hands on deck type stuff.
00:25:05
Speaker
I mean, we're constantly doing just programs with kids. Right now, I can't even walk outside in the museum because it's summer camp season. So, I mean, tons and tons of children, but we do, you know, tons of behind the scenes tours, lots of, which is really fun because people have no idea oftentimes that we have so many things back there.
00:25:29
Speaker
We do lots and lots of lectures and I'll be given a topic and be like, hey, learn about this and do a planetarium show on like Aztec cosmology. And I'm like, okay, so we just do all kinds of, you know, it really is. If you can dream it, we'll pull something together. Nice, nice. So, Michelle, how did you get so interested in museum outreach? I mean, you've said you just love museums and you've done dosing education work, but
00:25:58
Speaker
What kind of drew you to this part of it? Well, I think it is my passion for archaeology. I love it. I was that kid that just couldn't get enough of learning about the past and these just ancient cultures. And I also recognize that there are not that many real
00:26:21
Speaker
opportunities for kids to to get to be engaged kids but even even lifelong learners to be engaged with archaeology because we are so academic or in you know in CRM industry and there's just not we just don't have the that
00:26:36
Speaker
We don't, as a discipline, I feel like we're getting much, much, much better, I think, through over the years. But I just would love to be able to share this passion more and in ways that are easily accessible for people, that they don't have to really search it out. It's like a big museum that's right there. It's like, hey, we want to give this to you.
00:26:58
Speaker
Yeah, I think it just came from, I guess, many years of sort of being also frustrated with my own little tiny project that I know nobody, maybe three people read my dissertation. It's like, how would you do better than that? We could do a lot better. It's really cool stuff, right? So yeah.
00:27:20
Speaker
I feel like every archeologist who does public outreach ends up doing it because we are so fascinated and excited that we need this outlet for sort of all of our excess enthusiasm about our own research. And the next thing we know we've got like, yeah.
00:27:41
Speaker
It's true, but you know, I think the proof is in the pudding that people, they do like it. They are hungry for it. And so yes, it does definitely fulfill a selfish need. And I totally agree with you. But it is this, I don't think that, it's not like just yelling at a wall. People do want to hear about it. They are excited and they're hungry for it. And so it's like, it is a definitely if you build it, they will come kind of phenomena.
00:28:09
Speaker
I'm curious as a researcher, somebody who's done dissertation work like you mentioned and things like that, do you get much of a chance working in the museum setting to really ask your own questions, maybe do your own research, find funding for it and do it under the auspices of the museum like you would a university or something
Current and Future Research Projects
00:28:27
Speaker
like that? Or is it more processing and dealing with things that are coming into the museum and existing collections?
00:28:32
Speaker
It's both, actually. One of the big parts of my job is this original research component. I have a project in the Hilo National Forest. I just got back about two weeks ago. We're excavating a great kiva. I've been working there for about six years doing survey and trying to understand the
00:28:53
Speaker
landscapes of the Mogu and Highlands. I also, starting a new project, I'll leave in a week and I go to Peru for a couple weeks and starting a new project there. That's where I did my dissertation research. And so again, I did my dissertation on Moche. And so we're looking at looking at Moche on the North Coast. And so
00:29:14
Speaker
in many ways is actually great because I get to I have three major research projects going right now that I get to do fieldwork for. But then I also do these opportunistic research projects like the Egyptian mummies project that I just we just CT scanned and did a whole bunch of scientific analysis on those mummies. And, you know, working with certain collections that we have that, you know, that I'm like very excited about negative
00:29:41
Speaker
investigate those and publish those. So it really is definitely a jack of all trades kind of a position because you kind of have to get into everything. But yeah, so it is, it is a little bit of both of those things. Nice. All right. Well, we've got a little bit shorter episode today for various technical reasons. So we're going to take our second break right now and come back and wrap up this discussion with Michelle in just a minute. Back in a second.
00:30:11
Speaker
You may have heard my pitch from membership. It's a great idea and really helps out. However, you can also support us by picking up a fun t-shirt, sticker, or something from a large selection of items from our tea public store. Head over to arcpodnet.com slash shop for a link. That's arcpodnet.com slash shop to pick up some fun swag and support the show.
00:30:31
Speaker
All right, welcome back to The Archaeology Show, Episode 71 with Dr. Michelle Coons. And Michelle, we talked a lot about museums, obviously, and what's going on and how you got into your job. But if somebody right now listening to this is either, I don't know, not an archaeologist at all, or in some phase of their educational training, and they want to go the museum route, what is some advice you can give them on getting into that job? Maybe some classes, focus some studies, or just knowing the right people? I don't know.
00:30:59
Speaker
It's a great question. I actually get asked this all the time. My biggest advice is to volunteer as much as possible at any kind of institution that will take you big, small, and in all capacities.
00:31:15
Speaker
just getting to learn the museum world inside and out because every museum is different, but there's so many different kinds of jobs in museums, too, that it's just volunteering. It gets you into that. It gets your foot in the door, even if it's a different institution. And that's what I look for all the time when I'm reviewing job applications.
00:31:35
Speaker
And what about the future of the museum setting? We've talked about this over on the Archiotech podcast quite a bit. With virtual reality and augmented reality and all these high-tech things coming out, I'm sure you guys are at least having those discussions. I know that's a big technological shift and probably an expensive one for a museum to undertake to do these sorts of things.
Technological Innovations in Museums
00:31:55
Speaker
But in your conversations about this, are you looking at other types of jobs that you might need to hire for? You might have to hire developers and
00:32:04
Speaker
and people without archaeology degrees, things like that, to help along with these things. So how are those conversations going at your museum? It's actually a really exciting time to be in the museum. I would say we have a very large museum. There are 450 staff members here. So it's a very large institution. And as you can imagine, we have a massive IT department and digital media departments and people that are really thinking about all these things.
00:32:31
Speaker
We're in the process, which is super cool. We are gutting our entire first floor and we're doing this whole new thing. We don't even know exactly what it's going to be. You're calling it future first. They're going out and they're interviewing all kinds of community members to see what people are interested in. We're going to take it from there and really just use all these tools that are available now to enhance experiences. Right now in one of those spaces, which is a temporary space,
00:32:59
Speaker
they have a whole VR arcade set up as an experience that you can come and do in the museum. And so I think that we're just going to see things get more and more exciting as this technology progresses. We're doing a lot more stuff outside in the communities, like no walls, stuff like Magic Mountain. So beyond the institutional walls and just trying to be relevant for people in whatever ways we possibly can. And so I'm really excited with technology
00:33:30
Speaker
where we'll take us. You know, someone you should probably talk to, we just interviewed him yesterday for the second time. The last time was about a year and a half ago, but they got, it's called Lithodomo's VR. And yeah, the gentleman who runs it, he's got a PhD in, I think, classical archeology somehow, and they're based out of Australia.
00:33:51
Speaker
But they're doing basically virtual reality reconstructions. Initially, they're starting with a lot of big famous classical Roman type stuff and things like that in that part of the world. But they're also contracting with places like museums such as yours to maybe highlight specific sites, come over, do photogrammetry, and then create these applications.
00:34:12
Speaker
where people can just, I mean, I use the practically free Google Cardboard and my iPhone, download one of their apps, and I was standing on this Roman amphitheater in Croatia with a voiceover narration and sound and things like that. And it just really puts you into the spot. And it's just a really cool way to
00:34:30
Speaker
experience things like that. So just maybe I'll send you Simon's email and you guys can get in contact and he can see how you guys can help each other. That'd be cool. Yeah. That's fantastic. Yeah. These are some of the things I would love to see in the future. I mean, of course it's such a large institution. There's so many different things going on, but yeah, that'd be amazing. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I think it's really interesting. Museums, it seems to me, are
00:34:54
Speaker
We have this mindset that they can be very stodgy with these displays and research, but at the same time, they've really begun adopting technology in a way that I think academia and other archeological research is still catching up on. I mean, you were just talking about the research and work you've been doing with the mummies and doing all the CT scanning and
00:35:17
Speaker
The way that museums have started approaching the analysis of collections is really interesting.
00:35:25
Speaker
Yeah, I think it really is. And I mean, I think it's interesting not being in an academic institution because you have to be a little bit more creative in how you form some of your partnerships too. And so, for example, with the CT scanning, we were able to partner with the Children's Hospital and take the mummies there. And they got to go through the fun like jungle themed scanner.
00:35:51
Speaker
where the kids go through. And just, you know, it's just, we have these different ways of getting to the same way, getting to the same like results as you would necessarily as an academic, but we're just a little, we're a little bit more, we can be more creative, not like we are more creative, we can be more creative in maybe where our funding comes from and where, and who helps us with different things. And so I'm constantly learning and being like, I never even thought about doing it that way. And so,
00:36:20
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's an exciting place to be able to experiment with pushing the envelope in certain ways. Very nice, very nice. All right, well, I'm curious, we've talked about some of the field work you've got coming up, some of the other things you're doing, but what's next for the Magic Mountain Community Archaeology Project, for the museum, for you? I mean, what are some of the big things coming down the line here that you're allowed to talk about right now?
Future of Magic Mountain Project and Closing
00:36:46
Speaker
Sure. So we're taking this year off from Magic Mountain Project, just because we are still doing all of our analysis, you know, we're even this is a community project, we are very, very, very keen to have great science come out of it and really great publications. And so we need we need to we need some time to process all that. And so we're definitely taking this year off. And we're going to evaluate what what comes of it next, you know, because PCRG, who we're partnered with, it was
00:37:14
Speaker
we're both very committed to continuing to do these community archaeology projects. We're just not sure what that's going to look like. And so it's exciting. We're figuring it out. Yeah, so I yeah, there's just lots of things coming down the pike and he just kind of I don't know. Yeah, just I'm not even sure yet. Get back from Peru and I'll figure some stuff out.
00:37:39
Speaker
Well, is there anything else you want our listeners to know about the Denver Museum of Nature and Science? The DMNS, so to speak? Yeah, is there anything else you want our listeners to know before we sign off today?
00:37:57
Speaker
Well, definitely come visit us. Not only do we have tons of permanent exhibits, we also have two temporary exhibits at any given time, and we bring in blockbuster shows that come from all over. What's actually really cool I should add, in my job, we assign curators to those shows.
00:38:17
Speaker
the curators are responsible for having to learn and teach the content to our volunteers so that we're making sure we're doing the best we possibly can and so right now we have a show on Leonardo da Vinci and one on senses and so it's just constantly like fun new things are here so if you're in the area come visit.
00:38:38
Speaker
Awesome. Thank you. Well, we really appreciate you coming on the show, Michelle, and I hope to get you on to talk about some of your other research and maybe some new exhibits and things like that that are coming down the line for the DMNS. And I hope everything goes well, and we'll talk to you again in the future. Great. Well, thank you so much. This was a lot of fun.
00:39:04
Speaker
Thanks for listening to the Archaeology Podcast. We hope you enjoyed it. You can provide feedback using the contact button on the right side of the website at www.archaeologypodcastnetwork.com or you can email chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.
00:39:20
Speaker
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00:39:46
Speaker
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00:39:58
Speaker
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00:40:20
Speaker
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