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Geophysics in the Middle East with Marco Wolf - Ep 192
824 Plays2 years ago
Paul worked with Marco Wolf on his travels to Ur this past fall of 2022. Marco is interested in all things digital and they talked a lot about some of the techniques they were both using on their projects. On this episode they discuss Marco’s data management methods, magnetometry work, and more.
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For rough transcripts of this episode go to https://www.archpodnet.com/archaeotech/192
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Transcript
Introduction
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.
00:00:08
Speaker
Hi, welcome to the Archeotech Podcast, Episode 192.
Guest Introduction: Marco Wolf
00:00:12
Speaker
Today, we're talking with Marco Wolf, an archaeologist, a student archaeologist from Germany, who I know personally from the project that I was just on in Ur. Marco, within about a week of leaving Ur to go to Lagash, my wife sent me along a blog post. I'm not sure how it ended up on her newsfeed, but it was from one of the editors of the Advances in Archaeological Practice.
00:00:36
Speaker
which is a journal that listeners of this podcast know Chris and I mine constantly for ideas and content.
Relevance of Digital Archaeology
00:00:43
Speaker
The blog post is called Looking Forward to the End of Digital Archaeology. Basically, his premise is that digital archaeology, the word digital doesn't add a whole lot to archaeology because everybody's doing something digitally nowadays.
00:00:57
Speaker
And that's something that we've said on the podcast, but we can't really let go of it either because Chris and I are both geeks and we both like a lot of computer and scientific and technical aspects of archaeology. But we have said the digital archaeology is maybe not the – it doesn't have the cachet that it used to.
00:01:16
Speaker
However, there are some people that do a lot of digital, so much so that the title probably still fits. You, Marco, are somebody who is definitely a digital archaeologist, or at least an archaeologist who foregrounds the different kinds of digital work that you do.
00:01:36
Speaker
I was wondering, and this is maybe an unfair question to lead off with, but I'll go for it anyhow, is do you consider yourself a digital archaeologist?
Digital Methods in Archaeology
00:01:44
Speaker
And if so, why or why not? A difficult question. Yeah. To be honest, I would have said no in advance. For me, all the digital methods I use in the field
00:01:59
Speaker
for me, we're always part of field archaeology. When starting excavating in Germany, there was already lots of stuff where we had lots of digital methods. And when I was on my first abroad excavation in Kurdistan, we had a very, very digital workflow already with different kinds of GPS, total station 3d modeling,
00:02:24
Speaker
And for me, that was from the get go, okay, that's how you do field archaeology. So it was never something different from the norm. So I would have said, I'm just a normal field archaeologist.
00:02:39
Speaker
No, that's totally fair. The point, I think, of this post is that everybody uses digital tools now. When I was your age as an archaeologist, the fact that we were using total stations was pretty cutting edge. Now it's just expected that most projects are going to use them, even though I still love them.
00:03:00
Speaker
A few years ago, we had discussions on the podcast about photogrammetry, and now photogrammetry is just being done casually by pretty much everybody in the field. I definitely agree that how do you separate the digital from the archeology with modern field workflows? But again, I am going to go back to the point that
00:03:21
Speaker
What I saw from you in the field at Ur was somebody who definitely foregrounds those digital tools over, or maybe not necessarily over, but definitely brings them up at least to a level of other less digital, more analog kinds of tools and the digging and the drawing and the kinds of things that we've done for a hundred plus years as archaeologists.
00:03:44
Speaker
So, before I go down this rabbit hole too deep, can you tell us on, or the kinds of digital tools that you were using to help us with the excavation?
Digital Documentation Techniques
00:03:54
Speaker
Yeah. Of course, we started with the total station, since it's, I think, the backbone of every modern archaeology, you have the setup of your measurements, your GIS system, and everything you find must be located at some point.
00:04:13
Speaker
So that for me always the backbone and there it starts other than that methods I use there's lots of photogrammetry in the field since I'm big fan of the option to look back at stuff you may have not seen while excavating but now when you have the model, you have still the option to get some information
00:04:35
Speaker
not all information, but looking back on it, you may see some stuff in color grading, getting contrast and stuff like that. So for that use photogrammetry with normal mirrorless camera or or with a drone to get the whole trench in one model. Other than that, we also use the photogrammetry back at the off back in the house when 3d modeling
00:05:02
Speaker
Small finds we thought were interesting enough to have them as 3D objects, which then can later be processed in many ways for drawings, getting sections of it, comparing them in size with other objects, or just trying to get a better understanding on the technique, how it was made.
00:05:25
Speaker
Right. So the photogrammetry definitely, that was one of the things that impressed me that you were using photogrammetry quite a bit. And again, a lot of people are using photogrammetry on different projects, but you're using it in both of the major ways that people are using it. You're using it for documentation of the trench of the excavation and for documentation of the objects that were coming out.
Photogrammetry in Archaeology
00:05:45
Speaker
With different setups, do you mind describing a little bit the different setups that you personally were using?
00:05:51
Speaker
In the field, there is no real setup. It's just taking pictures, making sure, and with now some years of experience, having an idea how to take pictures and what to be careful of when taking pictures. How is the shadow cast that always making sure that all the stuff gone from the place or that not how you say.
00:06:16
Speaker
when you're taking a model of your trench, and then you see, Oh, God, I forgot that there's a brush lying on top of the wall. And now that brushes in the 3d model that looks not professional, stuff like that. And that's for the field. And but what I think you want to talk about is my my setup in the house for this small finds, where I had like a photo box cube with LED lights inside, where I put a turntable, just a
00:06:42
Speaker
rather cheap one you can find everywhere. They use it normally for advertisement when they put it up in their, in their windows and put their, their stuff they want to sell on top of it. So it turns a little bit.
Balancing Digital and Manual Methods
00:06:54
Speaker
It looks very nice. And I use that turntable to put on the objects. And then while they turn in a very slow pace, I just press my camera and just take lots of pictures from different angles, which then get meshed together for a dance cloud and 3d model.
00:07:11
Speaker
the process afterwards. You said that the ones in the field you're using for documentation and that oftentimes you see things post facto in the models you've made, soil colors, various kinds of things that are highlighted that might not always show up immediately in the field while you're covered in dirt and sweat and digging.
00:07:33
Speaker
but that you can catch them later when you have a little more time. Do you notice the same sort of thing happen with the artifacts that you do photogram metric models of? For me, I realized when you're already while taking the pictures of objects or of structures in the field,
00:07:53
Speaker
I'm getting trying to get all the details. So I'm getting more focused on the details. So already while taking the pictures, I realized stuff and see stuff and like, Oh, that's interesting. Or that's something I just now realized. And then later, especially when taking the big models for the trench and you have the top few and can see the whole trench from from above, you can see lots, lots of stuff you cannot see in the field since you're already standing right on top of it.
00:08:24
Speaker
And on the small finds also, you get especially the very, very, very small ones where you can see with the blank eye. But when it's in 3D, you can zoom in to millimeters, nanometers. So you can get all the details. You can never see with only the eye.
00:08:46
Speaker
For example, cylinder seals, which can be like two centimeters tall, and then you have this model on your computer, and you can zoom in so it fills the whole screen. So of course, you see all the different stuff and the detail they put into creating those small objects. That's very interesting to me. Chris and I go back and forth, because Chris would always like some kind of a scanner that you could just boop and have an object or soil or site or whatever.
00:09:15
Speaker
photographed, essentially, documented in extreme detail. And I always like the human element, especially of drawing, because that forces you to stop and look and evaluate what's important, what's salient about something, whether it's a section drawing or an object drawing, pottery profile, whatever. And what you're saying here, and I hadn't considered it, though I should have, is that
00:09:41
Speaker
the very careful photogrammetric work is bridging that gap. It's not relying on the automation of the machine, but you are stopping and thinking, what's important about this? How am I going to make it show up in the photogram tree? You're actually
00:09:59
Speaker
balancing those two kinds of approaches, the automation of the machines with the more manual approach of traditional drawing. I'm going to actually think about that one for a while because that's a benefit that I hadn't considered before. Actually, that's why I wanted you on because the fact that you are such a
00:10:23
Speaker
digitally focused in terms of the methods that you approach in archaeology without separating them out as their own special thing means that you've come at these tools in a slightly different perspective than I have. I mean, it's an age thing, right? I remember when we got our first flatbed scanner. That was pretty cool.
00:10:46
Speaker
It's born digital or not born digital, but I guess for cohorts of archaeologists. Anyhow, that ability to slow down to do the work as opposed to speed up to do the digital work, which is what people tend to focus on, is an interesting
Favorite Tools in Archaeology
00:11:02
Speaker
perspective. I hadn't thought about that before.
00:11:04
Speaker
Are there, given that, are there a particular set of tools that you like best? Are there certain ones that you gravitate to? You mean it's in specifically with photogrammetry or? No, no, not in general, just archaeology. And it could even be analog tools. It could be the trowel for all I care. I'm just kind of curious that you managed to squeeze something out of the photogrammetric work that I hadn't considered. So I'm wondering if there's a general approach that you have, a general set of tools that
00:11:38
Speaker
The difficult one. For me, what I found for myself is the camera, to be completely honest, which I take not only the photogrammetry, but also the excavation photography. And I realized for myself when comparing myself with colleagues or even on projects with other colleagues on the same trend, how much more pictures I take.
00:11:53
Speaker
You know, just tickle your fancy to use.
00:12:08
Speaker
than anyone else. Because I, I always have to fear that later when I try to present what I did in the feed, I have not a perfect image. And I was like, I'm sitting down, so why did I not take any picture of that? And not from this perspective? Why is that wall only photographed from the north and not from the south? So I'm a huge, huge, huge fan of cameras, always
00:12:32
Speaker
trying to get on the being up to date what is now the best setup to use where you have to be careful which data data type for images is long most long lived and stuff like that. And I was checking to set up my own setup, I was better getting newer lenses checking if there's maybe a possibility to update my case to our higher resolution stuff like that.
00:13:01
Speaker
So if you ask me like that, I would say the camera. This is my favorite digital tool. Well, I think that a lot of archaeologists would agree with you. And again, the born digital thing.
00:13:14
Speaker
I started my photography journey with film, and so it's hard for me to get over the idea of, oh, well, I can only take the one perfect photo. No, I can take the 100 photos and three of them are going to be perfect if I use digital, a digital camera as opposed to the film camera. But anyhow, let's take a break right here because what you just mentioned about taking all those photos, I've got a few follow up questions for you.
00:13:42
Speaker
Hi, welcome back to The Architect podcast, episode 192, segment two. Marco,
00:13:48
Speaker
Just before we went to break there, you were talking about photography and taking way more pictures than anybody else takes, just as out of a fear of missing data, which makes a lot of sense. But it does bring up to me another aspect of digital archaeology that a lot of people don't have a very good grasp on. So I'm kind of curious what you do. How do you manage your data? What do you do with all those photographs you take and with all the other different kinds of digital
Managing Digital Data in Archaeology
00:14:16
Speaker
data?
00:14:16
Speaker
that you generate, the photogrammetric models, the magnetograms, whatever else? Very good question because that's always the main issue during excavation. For example, where I started now to have an external SSD hard drive with me with two terabytes thunderbolt connection so I can work in
00:14:39
Speaker
as fast as possible with the data and can upload all my data onto that hard drive and having all the information on one drive and not having the issue of loading it onto my computer, uploading it on a backup drive and then not always being sure is everything on the backup or have I forgot something because at some point the hard drive on my laptop, at least for the moment, is limited.
00:15:07
Speaker
and has lots of stuff in it. So I cannot put all the information of a project on there. So I'm always trying to make always looking on ways for organizing data. What I try to do is, for example, for the photogrammetry, I start for the photogrammetry, it's always
00:15:31
Speaker
best to use raw data which is then transverse into a TIFF or a DNG, which I use in my workflow. There's different workflows and everyone has their own opinion about it. But for me, I personally like to use DNG images for photogrammetry. And after I
00:15:52
Speaker
did that, I try to, yeah, I delete JPEGs, I do not take for photogrammetry, because I don't need it. So I just skipped over those, when taking them to check if the model does work, if I have no time to fully render it. And when I know, okay, it works, I will delete the JPEGs to get more space. From the point of view, how to manage, it's always how an order
00:16:19
Speaker
them and always making sure that only the data I need is in the same file corresponding accounting of obvious ways as to compress the data, of course, to make it more manageable. And what I also do is to rename
00:16:38
Speaker
the different data files with a bridge and stuff to make always sure when I find like a single find that is kind of lost, I'm always knowing, okay, it's originally belongs there. And do you have a rigid naming scheme or file structure that you use for saving all your various kinds of data? Depending on the project, the way the project wants me to
00:17:00
Speaker
to digitize the data, the way how they use the date system year, month, day or stuff like that. And yeah, where I am, but normally it's always like I put the date first, the place where I am. And I always for each picture when I'm working when, for example, in or
00:17:21
Speaker
each individual picture got an own number. I've had a list Excel sheet, where each photography was listed when was taken what was what was seen in the image.
00:17:36
Speaker
What was the original file name when it was transferred from the SD card and what is its name now? Wow. That's pretty extensive. To always be sure that when something comes up or when I'm searching for something, I always have a list of seeing where is it? When did I take it?
00:17:56
Speaker
The Excel sheet is then there's the possibility to upload the CSV data up to a database if that is needed and I also have my own data system where I can upload all those data sheets.
00:18:12
Speaker
And then how do you transfer all this data and the Excel sheet metadata to the DIG director or whoever needs to assemble it? That depends on how the DIG director wants it to have in the world. For example, I just gave him the Excel sheet so he has the information
00:18:32
Speaker
just an Excel and he can use it how he needs it. Some cases we were talking in advance when the database was fully set up at some excavations, I optimized my list, my Excel sheet the way so I can upload it perfectly to this database so that they have all the information I've seen necessary for the documentation in the setup they prepared in advance.
00:18:57
Speaker
and the photographs themselves. I mean, if they have the Excel sheet, but they don't have access to the photographs, how do you get the photographs to them? That's also something in my workflow. Each day, there's a backup. Everything I do, every report I write, every image I take, every model I work on is uploaded on a backup drive, which will then be brought on the same day to the feed director, which then
00:19:20
Speaker
does a back up for himself.
00:19:37
Speaker
trying to reinvent how they're going to store files for every project is a non-starter. It's a way of losing data. How much time do you end up spending just managing your data at the end of the day when you're in the field? And how much of that spills over to after the field work? Or do you get everything done day by day? Normally, when in the field, after coming back from excavation, most of the day is then set up in managing the data.
00:20:03
Speaker
It always depends on how much produced during the day you know it as well. There are some days where it's kind of boring. There's some pottery collections brought in and maybe one or two pictures. So there's not much to work afterwards. But in some days, especially on the last week where you want to finish everything and be sure that you documented everything, there's lots of stuff coming. And I remember on my work, for example, the last example,
00:20:32
Speaker
on my last day where I finished the documentation, I took 120 images, excavation photographs, document the situation at the end of the season. And all those have to be renamed, put into my Excel sheet, have to be described and giving all the information I need, I believe was necessary.
00:20:58
Speaker
So on those days took me a long time, but normally I always finish on the very day itself as I was writing reports and stuff. Normally I'm always on day can always finish the whole documentation that needs to be done on the day on the same day and having nothing have to work afterwards, except for photogrammetry.
00:21:22
Speaker
especially the small finds photogrammetry sometimes takes a little more work since sometimes there's issues with noise in the dense cloud, which have to be deleted and stuff like that. And the nearer you get to the end of the excavation, you have no time for such detailed work. So you say you keep you take the images, you make sure that you can render a model with those images, but you bring them back home and then work with them back at home.
00:21:50
Speaker
But the feed reports and the images and my descriptions of small finds will always be done on the same day. In some cases, maybe shift on to the next day, but then try to never carry work longer than two days, and it normally gets even. That's good. That takes a lot of discipline to do it like that. But I think that, again, I think that's the appropriate way to work with
00:22:13
Speaker
one's data as much as one can. I mean, illness and other unexpected things always crop up
Project Transitions and Magnetometry
00:22:21
Speaker
in the field. But if you have a system like that in place, that really, I think, helps in the long run. I'm going to switch gears here because after I left Ur, I went up to Lagash and did
00:22:33
Speaker
a number of different projects there that I was working on. But the new one that I was working on was magnetometry. Listeners to the podcast would have heard me talking about that on the last episode. After Uru, you went down to Uruk to do magnetometry. And you're much more experienced in magnetometry than I am. I want our listeners to know. But can you tell them a little bit what you're doing there, how much you've worked with magnetometry in the past? Just give us a little overview of what you're doing when you went to Uruk. Yeah, experience wise, maybe in
00:23:01
Speaker
taken when when I started compared to you. But I'm also just still at learning stuff. For when I learned back in 2017, my second year of studying, there was a class where they showed us pretty much every geophysical prospection method from magnetometry to GPR.
00:23:28
Speaker
ERT, and stuff like that, which we can use in the field, how does that work technically, as much as we could understand it with no further background of the physics. And what are the problems with that. And there I met Professor Jörg Fassbender from Munich, who is professor here at the university.
00:23:51
Speaker
are still in the still giving classes. And he is a professor for geophysics. And he is in the he's working with archaeologists since, I believe, the 1980s, doing magnetometry X, where prospection pretty much everywhere. And he's always in search of students, especially from the archaeologists that he can take in the field to teach them and to have assistance.
00:24:16
Speaker
And yeah, I was lucky enough that he brought me with him. And since 2018, I regularly with him at least once a year on an perspective. Everywhere we went to Russia, when that was still an option, to Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, lots of times we were in Iraq and Georgia, stuff like that, always working with total feed magnetometers. And this year we went in the
00:24:46
Speaker
second half of November, we went to Uruk as part of a project with the German Archaeological Institute, where we tried to add to the magnetometry data Jörg already put up in the years since 2001. So he already started this project back in the early 2000s, which then had to stop and is now back since 2016.
00:25:12
Speaker
And every year, he tries to be now down there to add up and trying to get the whole amount respected, which is 500. Hector, I don't know what's nakers. It's enormous. And now after, I don't know, now seven years or seven prospecting campaigns,
00:25:37
Speaker
we're at one third, maybe less so it takes a lot of time. And yeah, this year, we came back to get more data about the lower city and the north west of work. Since from the city itself, we know lots about the holy buildings at the center of the city, which were excavated since the early 1900s by mostly German archaeologists,
00:26:06
Speaker
But we do not know anything about the structure of the canals or the houses of the normal people, when you want to say it like that, that build all those huge temples. And that was what we are interested in to understand the layout of the city, if there's roads that are set up in advance, or is it a city that was kind of grew with time?
00:26:29
Speaker
And the channels in itself, we are very interested in waterway systems of the ancient Near East. And that's what we are mostly focused right now. So we wanted to get much of this main channel that comes from the north and goes down on the west side of the city. Oh, fascinating. I have some follow up questions for you, but why don't we take a little break here and I'll ask you them on the other side. Welcome back to The Architect podcast episode 192 final segment for today.
00:26:57
Speaker
Marco, right at the end there you were talking about doing magnetometry at Uruk, and I can't recall. Did you also do the magnetometry with Dr. Fassbinder at Uruk as well? No, unfortunately not. That project was still with other colleagues. At that time I was at a different project. I know the data, but I was not part of collecting it.
00:27:22
Speaker
Right. No, I was just curious because as you well know, there are stakes, wooden stakes from that project all over the site. And Dr. Adil Haidato, the project that she was working on in conjunction with ours was excavating a large house kind of on the outer part of the city, not a lower tell, just the outer edge of the main tell. And that I believe, and correct me if I'm wrong, I believe that that was found in that magnetometry
00:27:50
Speaker
or initially identified in that magnetometry and then they've been excavating it since. Yes, Dr. Otto is a huge fan of the prospective method to first get an understanding or more information and then charging with that data and other data like satellite images.
00:28:11
Speaker
drone images where to start excavating. Yeah, we've been doing the same at Lagash. And I think that a lot of people are bringing these same kind of suite of tools for Iraq magnetometry, drone imagery, satellite imagery, old aerial imagery, spy photos, and the like. It seems to be a really rich vein to tap. Yes, exactly. And especially in the world, there was
00:28:35
Speaker
For example, the trench I was supervising at the east mound of Ur was also chosen because of the magnetometry, which was done there in 2019. And how closely did the magnetometry cue to what you found when you were actually digging? It was rather good. I was really surprised because the yard we could see in the magnetometry
00:28:55
Speaker
was exactly where we found it in the end. But what was interesting, because the difference from the magnetometry, you could see, okay, there's walls that make us pretty much rectangular, or square unit, which is pretty large, five meters in each direction, five by four and a half meters. And you had the huge, you could see perfectly, okay, that's the wall, and that's the inside.
00:29:23
Speaker
But when we were excavating it, we realized that the floor of the yard was laying out with baked bricks as well. So technically, we should have not seen the difference because it's the same material. But since it was so deep, it did not show up in the magnetic image. How deep was that? Because I'm actually asking you this professionally, not for the podcast.
00:29:48
Speaker
At Lagash, we're dealing with very, very little baked brick. It's almost entirely just unbaked mud brick as opposed to ore where there's such a quantity of baked brick. How much deeper was that floor than the walls? There was. Compared to the highest level of bricks we could find, we had 70 centimeters difference
00:30:11
Speaker
Oh, wow. So we had like seven to eight layers of bricks before we hit the floor, which was linked with big bricks as well. And no indication then that that courtyard was paved in the magnetograms. No, in the magnetometry, we could see each room individually since the walls in comparison. So from my point of view, I was like, okay, this is a mud
Geophysical Methods and Challenges
00:30:36
Speaker
floor. I have to be careful not to dig right through it.
00:30:40
Speaker
But then we suddenly hit the big bricks. Well, that's fortunate because I dig through mud floors all the time. I see them in section. I'm like, oh yeah, that was the floor that I missed. There's the other floor that I missed and there's the floor I missed before that.
00:30:57
Speaker
Yeah, and I was trying to be very careful and then we hit the floor. I was like, I did not have to be that careful, but well. Well, that's fortunate. That's interesting though that it showed up differently with that 70 centimeters. I'm not surprised, but I am surprised.
00:31:13
Speaker
I wanted to actually switch gears again here a little bit. Early on in the project, where you were working was on what we're calling the East Tell, which is a smaller outlying tell of the main mound of Ur. We were having some troubles with the total stations and with the registration of our survey stations.
00:31:33
Speaker
So there was a day there that we were working, you and I were working, shooting between two of our survey stations, one on that east tail and one up on the main mound, back and forth, about 400 meters. And after about the third time you had to go there, back and forth between these two mounds, I offered to go instead of you. I said, you're walking too much. And you said, oh, no, I'm used to walking. I do geophysics.
00:32:00
Speaker
And I'm like, okay, also you're young, but sure, you do geophysics, therefore you're used to walking. It makes a lot of sense. So you don't just do magnetometry when you do geophysics. You'd mentioned ERT. Is there a particular kind of geophysical perspective that you personally enjoy doing most? That kind of would have to say the magnetometry, because that's what I mostly do, mainly. The ERT, I used only
00:32:29
Speaker
three to four times, we're now going to use it again in February when we're back in the field. But mostly magnetometry because for me, it's always fun to work to be in the field the whole day walking and sweating and then come back at the end of the day, processing the data and having an image at the end of the day, you can see and you can see what you did and what you found.
00:32:53
Speaker
And that's always so yeah, you can see so much more comparable to archaeological dig was sitting in a 10 by 10 meter trench for five weeks. And then you have parts of an house excavated in geophysics and magnetometry. You have one day and you have a whole 50, 60 houses that lay out. Right, right.
00:33:17
Speaker
No, I get that. I was definitely getting that same sense when I was doing the magnetometry at Lagash where I spend an hour and I do my 45 by 45 and afterwards I process it and I look at it and it's like, oh my goodness, that's what I was just walking over. Look at this. I kind of sensed this. One of the things that I found fascinating was trying to correlate things that we saw on the surface
00:33:39
Speaker
with things that we'd pick up in the magnetometry. And then, of course, a step removed to things that we'd find in the excavation. Do you find a lot of correlation between soil stains or any other kind of surface visible feature? And your magnetometry, is that common? Yes, of course. When you're walking and you're on the feet, you're always checking what can I see. In the most stuff, you only have the soil. So you're checking, can I see differences in the color? And I remember in Georgia, we had
00:34:10
Speaker
a huge acre and you could see okay, there's multiple starts with very bright brown color. We were sure there must be the mud bricks and when we were walking above them and then check back and say, Oh, yeah, that's the big houses like two to three meter big walls and I get that's we could see on the when we're walking on top of it.
00:34:31
Speaker
But I can also give the opposite example for a cause in the, you know, it as well in Southern Iraq, where the these ancient cities, where there are some cases where you can even see the old houses while walking on top of them, because the bricks are showing on the surface. And when we were walking with the magnetometry above them, there are some cases where the layers of the bricks, it's where it's like only one or two layers of bricks left of that wall.
00:34:58
Speaker
which is so near to the surface that you cannot see it in the magnetometry, or only a small shadow of it. And you were like, but I was walking on obvious houses, houses, why did it did not show up in the magnetometry.
Contract Archaeology in Germany
00:35:12
Speaker
So there's, there's other cases like that. But those are very, very, yeah, they're not not, they're very rare. In most cases, if you see something while walking, it always correlates with the data you collect
00:35:25
Speaker
We, for example, also have a workflow where when we come back, we make sketches and the squares we walked, we make notes about not only what we could see on the surface from the structures, but also from pottery and tools. Yeah. If we could see, okay, there's pottery from this period or from this period, we can see that there is lots of flint tools and stuff like that. We always note that.
00:35:51
Speaker
since that is also very, very important in related steps of the interpretation. To round this out, in addition to being, well, not a digital archaeologist, because you already said no, but a student archaeologist who does geophysics and uses a lot of digital methods, I know that from discussions with you, I know that during the off seasons, back home in Germany, you work as a contract archaeologist.
00:36:18
Speaker
Can you give us a sense of what that is? Do you get to use a lot of these same tools or is the regulatory structure in Germany such that you have to use different methods, maybe older methods, because that's a problem that we bump into sometimes in the US? Yes. Back in Germany, I'm contracted as a student worker for an archaeological company that is excavating mostly in the area around Munich. We have no real
00:36:47
Speaker
scientific excavations where we apply for for money and start working but we are getting called by people that are building their houses or construction sites that want to build a supermarket and stuff and for them to check if there is any archaeology where they're building their stuff and which we are as excavating
00:37:09
Speaker
so that they can continue with the work. And the way how we do that work is supervised and set in stone by the Bavarian Department for Cultural Heritage, which give in irregular terms, they give us a book where the way how we have to excavate what kind of data we have to collect, which we have to present them. And
00:37:36
Speaker
That is how you say a little bit behind what is now kind of normal or it's already in use in field archaeology from universities, museums and institutes.
00:37:49
Speaker
I remembered until 2000 2017, we still had to use non digital cameras with film to document the features in addition to the digital ones. And they only changed that in 2017, because they realized that in the long run, there will be no more film. It's a form of the only company Fujifilm said that they will
00:38:15
Speaker
rapidly shorten their production of those. And then it was clear, okay, in the long run, those analog cameras without digital and formats will just be, yeah, will be gone forever. So they kind of like, okay, then we should
00:38:33
Speaker
Right. So the choice in their case was forced by external factors. Do you get a sense that there's an ability, maybe not as a student archaeologist, but is there an ability to change, to adopt more new methods from within or is everything after be forced from externally like the abandonment of film?
00:38:53
Speaker
No, no, the department is always in search of new methods trying to optimize their workflow. But the main issue about it is the way how who has to pay for that, because everything the department says that has to be done has to be paid by the people building.
00:39:13
Speaker
the houses, which in some cases, if they get way overboard and say every millimeter has to be in 3d and stuff like that, and it takes lots of work hours, lots of people, all the private people have to pay for that. So they try to get a perfect balance between how much do we actually need data
00:39:36
Speaker
to later, because to have later the option to really analyze that and how much can we ask the people to pay for that. Yeah, that makes sense. Marco, it's been a pleasure talking to you again.
Conclusion and Acknowledgements
00:39:51
Speaker
I really enjoyed working with you and I hope I get the chance to again. And for our listeners, it's what? It's approaching, no, it's after one in the morning for you now.
00:40:02
Speaker
I really appreciate you taking the time to come on here and talk with us and I hope that some of our listeners find what you had to say interesting and I hope that other students find what you say interesting because I thought that the way that you're negotiating the contract archaeology, the academic archaeology, the digital archaeology, the geophysics and all these again was a very interesting and well-rounded approach and that's why I wanted you on here. So I really appreciate it. Thanks for coming on.
00:40:30
Speaker
Thank you for having me. It was already so nice to speak with you again. And if, yeah, if there's an option to come back, I'm glad to be back. Wonderful. Well, take care. Good night. Good night.
00:40:49
Speaker
Thanks for listening to the Archaeotech Podcast. Links to items mentioned on the show are in the show notes at www.archpodnet.com slash archaeotech. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com and paul at lugall.com. Support the show by becoming a member at archpodnet.com slash members. The music is a song called Off Road and is licensed free from Apple. Thanks for listening.
00:41:15
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his RV traveling the United States, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, DigTech LLC, Culturo Media, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Chris Webster. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.