Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology, with tech stuff from stuff.
Speaker 1: Say that everyone, and welcome to tech stuff. I'm Jonathan
Speaker 1: Strickland and I and today we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: arc archie, archie LOGI. Oh, come on, you've seen you've
Speaker 1: seen Indiana Jones. You know what archaeology is. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: that's Xbox the Spot. Yeah, okay, that's Pirates. That well,
Speaker 1: I will XP okay, never mind, last crusade, Last crusade,
Speaker 1: I remember it now. Um so yeah, archaeology, of course.
Speaker 1: And we're gonna be talking about not just the technology
Speaker 1: using archaeology. We're going to talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: an overview of what it is and how it evolved
Speaker 1: over time, because that's kind of hand in hand with
Speaker 1: what is going on now in the field of archaeology. Right.
Speaker 1: The technology being used today is some really vance stuff,
Speaker 1: but for a long time that was not the case,
Speaker 1: because archaeology is actually a fairly young field. So I
Speaker 1: guess first we should explain what it is. I suppose sure, Yes,
Speaker 1: it's it's the study of human activity, um, in the past.
Speaker 1: In the past, yeah, not now right, So essentially it's
Speaker 1: it's related to history, it's related to anthropology. Uh, it's
Speaker 1: got some similarities with other disciplines, but this is mainly
Speaker 1: all about studying what human life was like in the past,
Speaker 1: based mostly on the stuff that our ancestors left behind. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of necessarily because what they didn't leave
Speaker 1: behind we have very little record of. Yeah, exactly, we
Speaker 1: can't study what wasn't left behind. That's actually very true,
Speaker 1: not profound, but true. Um. But yeah, So so it's
Speaker 1: a crossover with a lot of other disciplines, and lots
Speaker 1: of other scientists will kind of work hand in hand
Speaker 1: with archaeologists to to promote research for for both of
Speaker 1: their fields. Oh sure, Yeah, it's interdisciplinary, so you can
Speaker 1: have people from multiple disciplines and expertise is coming in
Speaker 1: on a on a single project for multiple reasons, including
Speaker 1: people who might not technically be considered scientists by everyone,
Speaker 1: like a historians or um or artists. Right, yeah, you've
Speaker 1: got you've got a lot of art historians and other
Speaker 1: types of historians as well. In fact, archaeology as a
Speaker 1: discipline kind of straddles the line between science and uh
Speaker 1: a humanity. Uh. And it's sort of because the techniques
Speaker 1: have been evolving over time as well. We're getting to
Speaker 1: a point now where there are some archaeologists are using
Speaker 1: some very high tech, sophisticated techniques, whereas in the past
Speaker 1: it was a lot more well Indiana Jones ish in
Speaker 1: the sense that you were getting down and dirty with it,
Speaker 1: although you were rarely chased by a giant rolling ball
Speaker 1: or uh, you know, things of that nature that that
Speaker 1: we've heard of personally. I mean, I'm sure that someone
Speaker 1: out there, actually I'm not sure at all. Maybe if
Speaker 1: they were lost in a giant game of mouse trap, right,
Speaker 1: that's that's about as close as we can get. Um.
Speaker 1: But okay, So, so the thing is is that Indiana
Speaker 1: Jones was a terrible archaeologist, but it's not his fault.
Speaker 1: He did not have access to all of the tools
Speaker 1: that we have today, as dashing as he was and
Speaker 1: as good as he was with a whip, which sounds
Speaker 1: weird when I say it out loud, that he you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's not his fault. Although a lot of the
Speaker 1: things that you know that we kind of see him
Speaker 1: doing in those films are things that archaeologists, archaeologists have
Speaker 1: done and still do today, especially the predecessors of today's archaeologists. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, there's still a certain amount of
Speaker 1: digging and brushing a little gently of things a little less. Uh.
Speaker 1: There are fewer examples of um unauthorized tomb rating in
Speaker 1: in established archaeology, which is really, when you get down
Speaker 1: to it, what Indiana Jones was doing. Like if you
Speaker 1: watch that first movie where he's trying to get the
Speaker 1: idol and they being chased off by the indigenous people
Speaker 1: of that jungle that he's in, it's pretty clear he
Speaker 1: did not have full permission to go in there. Well,
Speaker 1: and the entire kind of terrible notion of like it
Speaker 1: this belongs in a museum as opposed to with the
Speaker 1: people who created it is a little bit weird. But um,
Speaker 1: but but that's actually stealing stuff from ancient cultures is
Speaker 1: how archaeology began. Wow, well, I mean shouldn't be a surprise.
Speaker 1: You could argue that chemistry kind of started off with
Speaker 1: people trying to figure out how to make worthless stuff
Speaker 1: into very valuable stuff. Okay, So, so archaeology really originated
Speaker 1: in Europe our circle than fourteen hundreds is when wealthy
Speaker 1: Renaissance collectors started acquiring antiquities from from Greece and Rome
Speaker 1: as art rather than artifacts. They weren't really interested in
Speaker 1: the history of these items. They were like, this is
Speaker 1: pretty I wanted in my house. Yeah, this is very
Speaker 1: typical of the Renaissance, I mean Renaissance. Of course, the
Speaker 1: whole Rebirth it was mostly about how Europe kind of
Speaker 1: rediscovered this amazing civilization that existed a thousand years earlier.
Speaker 1: But for between the time of the Fall of Rome
Speaker 1: and uh and the Renaissance, there was a whole lot
Speaker 1: of We're gonna just concentrate on not getting killed by
Speaker 1: all those other people out there. And this is to
Speaker 1: the point where they're finally saying, hey, look, we're smart,
Speaker 1: but there were smart people a long time ago to
Speaker 1: their stuff, and let's stop burning books, read them instead.
Speaker 1: Crazy um and and so some of these wealthy collectors
Speaker 1: even even wrote really expansive travelogs and guides to ruins
Speaker 1: to you know, tell their fellow rich people how to
Speaker 1: go rob right. So again it still was not a
Speaker 1: way of documenting something for a historical record. It was
Speaker 1: more of guys, I found the best antique small. Uh,
Speaker 1: you just have to break in there and take whatever
Speaker 1: you want, and it's all old and awesome. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: eventually even bigger patrons of the arts as as much
Speaker 1: as they were got into us, have been this and
Speaker 1: drove really large excavations, um like the initial digs at
Speaker 1: Pompeii Um, which was both victimized and preserved by Vesuvius's
Speaker 1: explosion and what like circle like seventy nine CE. I've
Speaker 1: been there, by the way. Yeah, fascinating place, absolutely, and
Speaker 1: you can see where things have been perfectly preserved after
Speaker 1: there were excavations where things have been buried with ash
Speaker 1: and things of that nature. And it is amazing. All
Speaker 1: those early excavations were due to basically the Queen of
Speaker 1: Naples saying I want some statues, go get some from
Speaker 1: that place. And I hear that the famous not actually
Speaker 1: short Napoleon Bonaparte was interested in this kind of thing too.
Speaker 1: He was of average height for his time, in fact,
Speaker 1: not just for his time. I think it was like
Speaker 1: five ft seven or five ft eight, so it was
Speaker 1: actually six or five seven. Yeah, so a little bit
Speaker 1: short for now, but totally average for the time. It's
Speaker 1: a whole inconsistency in uh in English, Yeah, exact leads.
Speaker 1: It's uh. That's another podcast and stuff you missed in
Speaker 1: history class I'm sure has covered it, but at any rate, right, No,
Speaker 1: So when he invaded Egypt in seventeen, he brought a
Speaker 1: group of a hundred and seventy five scholars that we're
Speaker 1: calling themselves the Institute of Egypt UM. And they came
Speaker 1: with like a traveling library, scientific tools, measuring instruments, and
Speaker 1: they published this huge illustrated tome called Description of Egypt.
Speaker 1: I'm assuming the title was originally in French UM, but uh.
Speaker 1: And and that helped launch kind of the first wave
Speaker 1: of egypt Mania in the in the West. And we're
Speaker 1: starting to see here actual scholarly work being applied to this,
Speaker 1: as opposed to just I like this, I like the
Speaker 1: stuff that these people made, get it for me. So
Speaker 1: now we're starting to see this develop, at least informally,
Speaker 1: into more of a scholarly discipline as opposed to to
Speaker 1: tomb robbing. Right. Meanwhile, lots of other scholarly disciplines were advancing.
Speaker 1: Geology and biology were both coming into their own. UM.
Speaker 1: Charles L. Really helps spread UM this this modern geologic
Speaker 1: system of uniformitarian stratigraphy UM. And this gave archaeologists a
Speaker 1: kind of time scale on which date items based on sediment,
Speaker 1: and that along with Charles Darwin's Origin of Species um
Speaker 1: popularized evolution and and allowed prehistoric archaeology to actually become
Speaker 1: a thing where people could actually look for uh, for
Speaker 1: examples of prehistoric civilizations by the stuff they left behind.
Speaker 1: And because of this other these other disciplines, they could
Speaker 1: start to at least give a range of dates for
Speaker 1: when those civilizations may have been active. Now, in these
Speaker 1: early days, that range was not very precise, right, you
Speaker 1: could coute not like when you're talking about geologic ages. Obviously,
Speaker 1: mankind has only been around for a very tiny fraction
Speaker 1: of a geologic age, so your your precision is pretty
Speaker 1: touch and go. But it could still at least give
Speaker 1: some indication as to how old any particular finding would be.
Speaker 1: And that was sort of the footholds of modern archaeology. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and we'll get a little bit into some of
Speaker 1: those some of those geologic methods in just a minute.
Speaker 1: But um uh Meanwhile, I think the real founding of
Speaker 1: archaeology as a science was when Flinders Petrie published Methods
Speaker 1: and Aims in Archaeology in nineteen o four, and that
Speaker 1: described a systematic method for excavation that was that was
Speaker 1: the basis I mean, it's kind of sort of a
Speaker 1: little bit still the basis of how people go about
Speaker 1: go about a dig and making sure that everything is
Speaker 1: well documented and laid out in a way that you
Speaker 1: can take enough notes and gather enough data. Because okay,
Speaker 1: archaeology is a destructive science. Necessarily, as you're taking apart
Speaker 1: a site, you are you are taking it apart. It's
Speaker 1: not going to be the way that it was ever again.
Speaker 1: It's it's the same thing for for crime scene forensics.
Speaker 1: You know, it's and in the investigation of where everything
Speaker 1: was and how it is laid out, you have to
Speaker 1: move it around right, So you have to you have
Speaker 1: to take a lot of really exhaustive initial measurements without
Speaker 1: without disturbing as much as you possibly can, and then
Speaker 1: you progressively get more and more involved. That's why those
Speaker 1: notes are so important, because three or four steps down
Speaker 1: the line is not going to resemble what it did
Speaker 1: when you first got there. And uh in the United
Speaker 1: States again early in the nineteen hundreds realized this and
Speaker 1: passed the Antiquities Act, which prohibits the excavation or destruction
Speaker 1: of archaeological materials on any kind of government land. And
Speaker 1: I think that that's the point at which we have
Speaker 1: like legal documentation that archaeology was a science. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: this is that they're saying, there are people who will
Speaker 1: be uh certified and ratified and allowed to do this
Speaker 1: sort of stuff. Everyone else, keep your grubby myths off it, right,
Speaker 1: That's essentially the message. And then just a little bit
Speaker 1: further on, in the nineteen hundreds, archaeology became really popularized
Speaker 1: through some huge discoveries like King Tut's tomb um, the
Speaker 1: Sumerian royal tombs that are you know, these are huge
Speaker 1: newspaper headline inducing kind of digs and and that's kind
Speaker 1: of where we get the sort of pulp novels that
Speaker 1: led to Indiana Jones right exactly. This this kind of
Speaker 1: led to this sort of exotic you know, the heroic
Speaker 1: explorer who is uncovering uh, you know, history itself and
Speaker 1: discovering stuff that was long thought to have been gone forever.
Speaker 1: And that that's a very romanticized version of what an
Speaker 1: archaeologist really does. I think any archaeologist who has done
Speaker 1: a lot of field work would be like, look, I
Speaker 1: obviously love what I do and I am passionate about it. However,
Speaker 1: most of the time, I'm not running around fighting bad
Speaker 1: guys for access to precious historical artifacts. There's very few
Speaker 1: saving hot babes involved. I mean, I would imagine probably
Speaker 1: not as much whipping at least. I'm gonna leave the
Speaker 1: rest of that alone. So at any rate, um, at
Speaker 1: any rate, do we have time for something about Nazis?
Speaker 1: We have to talk about this, okay, okay, So speaking
Speaker 1: of Indiana Jones, the Nazis totally had a thing for archaeology.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is a super legit story. I mean,
Speaker 1: Indiana Jones is not a super legit story, but except
Speaker 1: behind it, Yeah, the idea that Indiana Jones was competing
Speaker 1: against Nazis to get access to certain things has a
Speaker 1: basis and historical fact. Yes, um, Chuck wrote a really
Speaker 1: good chuck of course of stuff you should know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a little show. You might, Yeah you might. You
Speaker 1: might have listened to it once or twice. Has a
Speaker 1: great article on how stuff works called what did the
Speaker 1: Nazis have to do with Archaeology? And uh and and
Speaker 1: plumbed directly from that. So part of Hitler's entire plan um,
Speaker 1: you know, as of his swearing in in ninety three,
Speaker 1: was aligning the curriculum of German universities with the interests
Speaker 1: of the Nazi Party, which we kind of touched on
Speaker 1: in our Heisenberg episode where off about physics. Yeah yeah, um.
Speaker 1: And this was including the idea that their Germanic people
Speaker 1: were descendants of this original Aryan master race. So he
Speaker 1: sent teams of archaeologists excavate sites around the world that
Speaker 1: he believed would help back up this theory. So in
Speaker 1: other words, he's searching for evidence to prove the philosophy
Speaker 1: that he was he was writing at the time. Yes,
Speaker 1: uh it failed, yeah a lot, basically, um, I mean.
Speaker 1: And and they put they put a huge budget into this,
Speaker 1: uh Himmler himself led a group called the Ancestral Heritage
Speaker 1: Research and Teaching Society that went everywhere looking for this history.
Speaker 1: Um that They also you know, dug up part of Poland,
Speaker 1: hoping to prove that the Germans had lived there first
Speaker 1: and had legit claim to the land after, you know,
Speaker 1: after they invaded again, trying to search for evidence to
Speaker 1: justify their actions. So not a not a bright chapter
Speaker 1: in human history, obviously, but another example of how archaeology
Speaker 1: was becoming a really important field of study. So let's
Speaker 1: talk about some of the tools that are important for archaeologists,
Speaker 1: things that that they rely on, and we should go
Speaker 1: ahead and say maybe I should have said this earlier.
Speaker 1: This is gonna be a two part episode. This first
Speaker 1: part we're looking at some of the basic tools and
Speaker 1: just the basic philosophies that guide archaeology and in um.
Speaker 1: In our next episode, we're going to dive into more
Speaker 1: detail about some of the more high tech tools that
Speaker 1: have become more available recently. We'll get a little bit
Speaker 1: into some of the high tech sort of science that
Speaker 1: has that that from mid century has started to to
Speaker 1: really develop how we can evaluate archaeological digs. Right, So
Speaker 1: starting with the hand tools, the basic hand tools. Now,
Speaker 1: keep in mind, archaeology is something where often we're looking
Speaker 1: for evidence that has been at least partially, if not entirely,
Speaker 1: covered up by soil and rocks and often sand, Like
Speaker 1: when we're talking about the the Egyptian digs, they are
Speaker 1: usually it's things that after hundreds of years, have been
Speaker 1: covered up by by sand. So a lot of the
Speaker 1: tools are basic hand tools meant to remove that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. Like, you don't want to get too many big,
Speaker 1: heavy right, because you could just inadvertently damage very stuff
Speaker 1: that you're looking for. So, but you do get some
Speaker 1: stuff that is pretty heavy duty for hand tools. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's not all like a very light brush where you
Speaker 1: can gently brush the dirt away. Right. Well, that's by
Speaker 1: the time you get down to something that you that
Speaker 1: you suspect might be an artifact, you're going to use
Speaker 1: a very gentle brush. But until then, it's time to
Speaker 1: put your back into it. So you've got some pick axes,
Speaker 1: some shovels, hose, yeah, maddox. Maddox are tools that are
Speaker 1: used to break up hard ground. So any of my
Speaker 1: fellow farmer folks out there, I say fellow farmer folk
Speaker 1: because as a kid, I used to have to do
Speaker 1: this kind of stuff. I had no idea what that
Speaker 1: thing is. Yeah, it's no, it's a hand tool. Use
Speaker 1: it to break up hard ground. It's you know, if
Speaker 1: if the shovel is not going to do it because
Speaker 1: the ground is too hard, you bring in a mannequin,
Speaker 1: you break it up, and then you use the shovel.
Speaker 1: It just means making more work for yourself down the line.
Speaker 1: Of course, you know, you have to have something to
Speaker 1: move that stuff all the all the spoil away, right,
Speaker 1: buckets and wheelbarrows, getting I mean, we're talking about lots
Speaker 1: of physical labor here. Eventually you might get down to
Speaker 1: a point where you're using something along the lines of
Speaker 1: a trowel instead of a shovel, because you want to
Speaker 1: be a little more precise. Perhaps you're starting to see
Speaker 1: what could be the outline of perhaps like a wall
Speaker 1: of a settlement, Sure, or even maybe encounter fragments of
Speaker 1: pottery or something like that that you want to kind
Speaker 1: of scoop up in preserve. Sure, and uh, of course
Speaker 1: we'll talk about it more in the second half of
Speaker 1: this episode. You want to be really careful about what
Speaker 1: kind of contact you make with this stuff, right, because
Speaker 1: some of the processes that you can use to identify
Speaker 1: or to date these objects can be thrown off by
Speaker 1: by human touch. Yeah, you could actually corrupt your own
Speaker 1: data just by picking something up, So it's really important
Speaker 1: to try and maintain that distance. On top of that,
Speaker 1: of course, you do have the brushes to brush away
Speaker 1: extra dirt. Other things that you might use to get
Speaker 1: some dirt and and and sentiment off of an artifact
Speaker 1: include dental tools, So you can use these little like
Speaker 1: like dental picks to get to get dirt out of
Speaker 1: grooves and things like that. Uh So, so you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of the reason why these early tools were
Speaker 1: very general purpose or were repurposed from other disciplines was
Speaker 1: because again archaeology was a young science and so not
Speaker 1: a lot of work had been had gone into developing
Speaker 1: tools specifically for archaeology. Early on, they were essentially using
Speaker 1: whatever else would do the job they needed done and
Speaker 1: repurposing it. And and and I mean that still happens.
Speaker 1: I've heard about people using you know, like pen knives
Speaker 1: and chopsticks in the field, whatever happens to be lying
Speaker 1: around it tends to be one of those things where
Speaker 1: you know, there are tools out there that do the
Speaker 1: ub really well. So there's not a whole demand to
Speaker 1: start developing things specifically for archaeology. Doesn't mean that there
Speaker 1: aren't companies that do it. There are, But you know,
Speaker 1: if you're like, well, this is a relatively inexpensive tool
Speaker 1: I can get that will do what I needed to do,
Speaker 1: let's go with that. On top of that, you have things,
Speaker 1: you know, like basic tools like line levels and plumbobs,
Speaker 1: which you use to try and make sure that if
Speaker 1: you're using other types of equipment that require level ground
Speaker 1: that you're you've got that straight and we'll talk about
Speaker 1: in the second episode. I'm so excited. Also for for
Speaker 1: surveying purposes, are important tape measures obviously if you need
Speaker 1: to start determining things like the size of a particular
Speaker 1: artifact area or maybe it's even a house or a wall. Again,
Speaker 1: these are things where you know you're gonna take these measurements,
Speaker 1: that you can write all this stuff down as early
Speaker 1: as you possibly can, so you can you can start
Speaker 1: to form that image of what this site looked like originally,
Speaker 1: you know, hundreds or perhaps even thousands of years ago. So, uh,
Speaker 1: interesting little tidbit I did not know until we started
Speaker 1: to research this podcast. It turns out there are two
Speaker 1: different styles of measuring depending upon the nature of the
Speaker 1: site you're looking at. If you're looking at a prehistoric site,
Speaker 1: you measure using the metric system, because that's what science does. Yeah,
Speaker 1: metric system is easy, right, I mean, it makes sense,
Speaker 1: everything's in tens or hundreds, easy to deal with. Here
Speaker 1: in America, that's not necessarily good enough. You know, we
Speaker 1: don't like our you don't like our measurements to be easy. No,
Speaker 1: that's ridiculous, would be silly. So here's the thing. Anything
Speaker 1: that's of a historical time period, so prehistory versus history,
Speaker 1: historical time period stuff tends to be measured using English
Speaker 1: standard measure units like inches and feet because that's what
Speaker 1: the people of the time we're using when they were
Speaker 1: building their stuff. Yeah, yeah, I mean especially here here
Speaker 1: in the West, I I would imagine, and for most
Speaker 1: ranges of history. Yeah, certain ranges of history, right, and
Speaker 1: in other parts of the world where the English measuring
Speaker 1: system would not have been introduced, then it's a little different.
Speaker 1: But yeah, if you're if you're researching let's say you're
Speaker 1: researching a an ancient Roman establishment in in in Britain
Speaker 1: because the Romans had had Britain and you wanted to
Speaker 1: measure that, then uh, you know, that might be one
Speaker 1: set of standards. And then let's say that you're looking
Speaker 1: at maybe it's something from the Middle Ages in Britain,
Speaker 1: that would be a different set. So you know, it
Speaker 1: all depends. But it's it's interesting to me that in general,
Speaker 1: the prehistoric is in metric and the historic sites are
Speaker 1: in English standard. So yeah, I didn't know that either.
Speaker 1: That's some complicated and fascinating. Yeah, I wonder if there are.
Speaker 1: I'm sure there are. I mean, there have to be
Speaker 1: archaeologists who specialize in in certain types, but it makes
Speaker 1: me wonder what their dinner parties are like. Um. There
Speaker 1: are other tools that are often used, things like calipers,
Speaker 1: obviously to be able to pick things up without actually
Speaker 1: touching them yourself. But also there's a tool called a
Speaker 1: soil core, which is fairly unique to archaeology. I mean,
Speaker 1: you can use it in geology too, but a soil
Speaker 1: core is essentially a imagine a metal tube And what
Speaker 1: you do with the smell tube is you shove it
Speaker 1: into the ground and then you yank it back out
Speaker 1: again and it pulls out a soil sample. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: And then you look at the stuff what you pulled out,
Speaker 1: and you look to see if there's any evidence for artifacts,
Speaker 1: organic matter, that kind of thing that could indicate the
Speaker 1: presence of human settlement or whatever. And if you find it,
Speaker 1: then that gives you an idea of all right, well,
Speaker 1: this is definitely an area we need to look at
Speaker 1: when we're doing our excavation. If you're you know, you
Speaker 1: might be doing a few you would do lots of
Speaker 1: soil samples obviously, but it might help you determine all right,
Speaker 1: I think we're beyond the border now because none of
Speaker 1: these core samples are coming back with anything, or maybe
Speaker 1: that you're in a different area and you're thinking, oh,
Speaker 1: settlement is actually larger than we first anticipated, because we're
Speaker 1: actually finding quite a bit of stuff over here. It's
Speaker 1: just that everything has overgrown to the point where we
Speaker 1: never would have suspected it otherwise. So it's really cool stuff.
Speaker 1: So those are your basic hand tools, right, the stuff
Speaker 1: that that archaeologists have been using in one form or
Speaker 1: another for decades. You know, some some of these, some
Speaker 1: of these are as old as as people going into
Speaker 1: tombs to rob them. But so that kind of covers
Speaker 1: the basic hand tools, you know, the stuff that in
Speaker 1: some form or another has been around for like decades
Speaker 1: or hundreds of years. And yeah, if you've been tomb
Speaker 1: robbing this whole time, you probably used to shovel at
Speaker 1: some point. And and technically shovels and brushes are technology,
Speaker 1: Yeah they are. I mean we talk about how you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of tech stuff is all about the higher
Speaker 1: text things, but electron that we we do tend to
Speaker 1: like every now and then revisit stuff that's older technology.
Speaker 1: And while you know, on the face of it we
Speaker 1: might dismiss it as it's just a tool, at one
Speaker 1: time that was a world altering technology. So yeah, I
Speaker 1: can imagine that for early farmers, shovels were pretty pretty big.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, Okay, so we've got those basic tools out
Speaker 1: of the way, and before we move on, let's just
Speaker 1: take a really quick break to thank our sponsor. All right,
Speaker 1: and we're back. So now we've talked about the basic tools,
Speaker 1: all right, Lauren, let me let me give you a
Speaker 1: little scenario. All right, Let's say that I have joined
Speaker 1: an archaeological dig. Perhaps I've got one of those sort
Speaker 1: of eco tourism type things going on, or maybe I've
Speaker 1: taken a class or something, or I don't know, maybe
Speaker 1: my brain has been swapped with someone way smarter than
Speaker 1: I am, and I've gone out and I've done this
Speaker 1: archaeological dig and I found something and it looks really neat.
Speaker 1: How do I tell how old it is? Well, okay,
Speaker 1: Historically we relied on things like self dating, you know,
Speaker 1: like like some items like coins will be stamped with
Speaker 1: a date, which is that's handy more or less reliable
Speaker 1: as soon as assuming you know what the indigenous people's
Speaker 1: dating system was, yes, and assuming that you can read
Speaker 1: it clearly, and that they weren't lying right right, you know,
Speaker 1: that could have been backdating their coins. I know, I
Speaker 1: hate it when that happens. Um. And and also relative dating,
Speaker 1: which is extrapolating the date of unknown items from the
Speaker 1: known dates of self dated items. Right. So in other words,
Speaker 1: you might be like you might think along the lines of, well,
Speaker 1: this this settlement existed as far as we can tell
Speaker 1: two hundreds something years before this other one did, and
Speaker 1: we know the dates of this other one, so from
Speaker 1: that we're going to extrapolate a lot of information, all right,
Speaker 1: But that's also not always reliable because I mean, because
Speaker 1: sediment patterns can change over the years. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: looting and other explorations of the site could have moved
Speaker 1: stuff around or left more more recent things with older things.
Speaker 1: And it really only works for for items about five
Speaker 1: thousand years back for for you know, recorded history, right,
Speaker 1: So if you're wanting to look at stuff all the
Speaker 1: way from the Stone Age, then that's not gonna cut it. No. However,
Speaker 1: around the eighteen hundreds or so, um, if if you
Speaker 1: were finding old stuff, you could start using things like
Speaker 1: like clave arf, counting clave ARFs being an annual layer
Speaker 1: of sedimentary rock that's created during wet and dry seasons
Speaker 1: each year. Wow. So this is almost like a geological
Speaker 1: version of tree rings, but it's just depending upon those
Speaker 1: wet dry seasons, right, interesting exactly. I mean you can
Speaker 1: also use tree rings. Um. There you go. That's another
Speaker 1: thing you could do. That's dender chronology. Um. And that's
Speaker 1: you can use it to date pieces of wood pretty specifically.
Speaker 1: I did, dude, I did date a few pieces of
Speaker 1: wood in my college. Yes, yeah, me too. It was
Speaker 1: a yeah, you know, eventually you find the personalities out there,
Speaker 1: so stick with it people. We good luck, yeah, good luck.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. This This entire section, by the way, is
Speaker 1: titled how dating works, um, which cracked me up. And
Speaker 1: but I'm sparing you the majority of the jokes that
Speaker 1: I made. Oh wait for it. So all of these
Speaker 1: kind of kind of geological sort of things helped us
Speaker 1: determine um lots of prehistorical artifacts timeline. Sure, but it
Speaker 1: wasn't until we we didn't get any kind of specificity
Speaker 1: about stuff like this until the nineteen forties. Um, that's
Speaker 1: when one Willard Libby developed the carbon dating process. All right,
Speaker 1: and I know a little bit about carbon dating. I
Speaker 1: understand that it actually requires that you compare two different
Speaker 1: types of carbon against each other, and the differences between
Speaker 1: those two give you an indication of how old something is.
Speaker 1: Is that right? That is exactly how it works, yes, um,
Speaker 1: specifically Okay. So, so there's a radioactive isotope of carbon
Speaker 1: called carbon fourteen. It has a half life of about
Speaker 1: five thousand, seven hundred years, and it's really plentiful around earth. Um,
Speaker 1: living things absorb it, Plants take it in as as
Speaker 1: part of carbon dioxide. Other living exeat plants, circle of life,
Speaker 1: so on and so forth. Exactly. But so you've got
Speaker 1: this radioactive isotope, and then you've got, um, the stable
Speaker 1: normal carbon, which is carbon twelve, two different types of carbon.
Speaker 1: You have carbon fourteen in carbon twelve, right, And the
Speaker 1: ratio of these two in the air and in living
Speaker 1: things is pretty much constant, even though the fourteen keeps
Speaker 1: decaying into carbon twelve. Okay, So if that ratio is constant,
Speaker 1: then that suggests to me that in fact, these living
Speaker 1: things are getting new sources of carbon fourteen because otherwise
Speaker 1: the ratio would get out of whack after a while. Right, right, Well,
Speaker 1: we we get carbon fourteen because of cosmic rays hitting
Speaker 1: particles in the atmosphere and and creating it and stuff
Speaker 1: and things, um so, But so we breathe it in constantly.
Speaker 1: It's in our bodies, and it decays slowly over time
Speaker 1: into carbon twelve. Okay, So as long as we're alive,
Speaker 1: we keep getting carbon fourteen, correct, and we maintain that ratio.
Speaker 1: But after we die, we stopped taking in carbon fourteen.
Speaker 1: So therefore, if you compare the amount of carbon fourteen
Speaker 1: to carbon twelve in an artifact, in an organic artifact, anyway,
Speaker 1: you can get a pretty good idea of how old
Speaker 1: it is. I see. So because you know that carbon
Speaker 1: fourteen decays over time into carbon twelve in a study
Speaker 1: in constant right, and you know what the ratio is
Speaker 1: in general between carbon twelve and carbon fourteen for a
Speaker 1: living object. By checking that new ratio, you can kind
Speaker 1: of extrapolate how old, or at least how long this
Speaker 1: thing has been dead more or less. Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: not a really I mean, it's more precise than previous
Speaker 1: methods were, but it's still giving you a range, it's
Speaker 1: still giving you a range, and there's some downfalls um.
Speaker 1: For example, like we kind of mentioned earlier, UM, if
Speaker 1: you touch organic material um to the object in question,
Speaker 1: you know, like like your hand being organic material um,
Speaker 1: then you can contaminate that sample. So in other words,
Speaker 1: you could get a false reading from it because you've
Speaker 1: actually some of your carbon may have actually corrupted it.
Speaker 1: Now what I think one of the things I think
Speaker 1: is interesting here is how, once again, anyone anyone listening
Speaker 1: to this podcast who has watched any kind of movies
Speaker 1: that are about uh, not just archaeology, but anytime you're
Speaker 1: having characters who are digging up an old side or something.
Speaker 1: Carbon dating was like the the the blanket statement to
Speaker 1: find out how old anything was, whether it was organic
Speaker 1: or not. I'm thinking specifically of there was some horrible
Speaker 1: science fiction film. It was one of the ones that
Speaker 1: m ST three k riffed on, where their solution to
Speaker 1: figuring out how old this clearly non organic thing was
Speaker 1: was through carbon dating, and I thought, I don't think
Speaker 1: that works the way you think it works. It Maybe
Speaker 1: spaceships are made from carbon, and I don't, yeah, from alive.
Speaker 1: So that's something true. UM and and also I mean okay,
Speaker 1: so so you can't really do it with with very
Speaker 1: small samples, although improved techniques are helping to change that,
Speaker 1: UM and the data can be a little bit off
Speaker 1: for for newer samples. UM And they can also be
Speaker 1: off for anything over fifty years old because the too
Speaker 1: much of the carbon has degraded to really accurate. Idea,
Speaker 1: so basically more than years old, right, so anything that's
Speaker 1: younger than fifty years old, but not so young as
Speaker 1: to have happened like within the recent past. So that's
Speaker 1: what it's good for. So let me ask you this, Uh,
Speaker 1: large samples obviously something that you need to do. I
Speaker 1: imagine that this also requires that you have to move stuff,
Speaker 1: because I don't I can't imagine there being like a
Speaker 1: carbon dating kit that you drag out with you to
Speaker 1: the archaeological site that you just pick up an artifact
Speaker 1: and you scan it and everything's cool. Another thing you
Speaker 1: have to watch out for. UM there have been periodic
Speaker 1: fluctuations in the ratio of carbon twelve carbon fourteen over
Speaker 1: the millennia um and and we're gathering more data about
Speaker 1: that all the time. UM. But you know it's it's
Speaker 1: something that has to be taken into consideration. Right, So
Speaker 1: that could mean that something that you had previously or
Speaker 1: at least you thought you had previously previously established to
Speaker 1: a particular time might in fact be from a different
Speaker 1: time because of one of those fluctuations be nudged earlier later. Um,
Speaker 1: Robert and Julie over a stuff to blow your mind
Speaker 1: did a whole episode on this back in April April
Speaker 1: to be precise, called how old is that artifact in
Speaker 1: the window? Um? And it talks a little bit more
Speaker 1: about the process if you're if you're curious to learn more,
Speaker 1: and also about some of the controversies that have come
Speaker 1: up with specific artifacts due to all of these kind
Speaker 1: of weird behavior exceptions to the rule type of thing. Absolutely. Now,
Speaker 1: I understand there are some other techniques that are similar
Speaker 1: to carbon dating, but they're not using carbon, which would
Speaker 1: allow archaeologists to actually date non organic stuff like rocks
Speaker 1: and minerals, right or spaceships, um. Right, because it clearly
Speaker 1: Indian Jones four taught us, Oh no, it's here, um. Yeah. No.
Speaker 1: Other radioactive isotopes can be used for basically the same job,
Speaker 1: Like a potassium forty is pretty good uh, you can.
Speaker 1: You can compare the the argon in minerals and rocks
Speaker 1: to to the amount of potassium forty and that will
Speaker 1: give you a similar effect. And that chronology can can
Speaker 1: date things back to like two million years. So so
Speaker 1: that's how we've gotten done a lot of um paleo archaeology, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: because paleontology and archaeology are similar disciplines but not exactly
Speaker 1: the same thing. So okay, so that makes sense, all right.
Speaker 1: So Unfortunately that the the thing about all of this,
Speaker 1: All of this always got toring me down, I know, right,
Speaker 1: science bringing us down. Unfortunately, all of these methods have
Speaker 1: been basically screwed over forever by the fact that we
Speaker 1: have nuclear weapons and reactors. Oh right, I guess those
Speaker 1: could kind of influence the amounts of radiation that you
Speaker 1: would find in any given sample. And you know, so
Speaker 1: I'm sure that future you know, aliens or human populations
Speaker 1: or whatever could find a way around it. They're probably
Speaker 1: going to be pretty clever, right, Yeah, they'll have a
Speaker 1: holidayck and they'll the person will just appear and say, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I was around at this time, but until then, man,
Speaker 1: science shucks, always bringing us down. Now, I gotta ask
Speaker 1: you about this because I see it in the notes.
Speaker 1: I don't know what this is. It's um thermoluminescence. So
Speaker 1: if I have to guess, I would say it's got
Speaker 1: something to do with heat and light. That is entirely correct,
Speaker 1: all right. So basically, some pottery includes crystaline materials like
Speaker 1: quartz um that when heated, release electrons that were trapped
Speaker 1: in defects in the crystal structure. And that means that
Speaker 1: during the initial firing of a piece of pottery um,
Speaker 1: it kind of sets this quartz clock to zero. UM
Speaker 1: be cause the the electrons got into those defects and
Speaker 1: in the crystals through um, through cosmic rays, through the
Speaker 1: absorption of electromagnetic radiation, or or through the the the
Speaker 1: effects that probably the piezo electric effects of electromatic magnetic
Speaker 1: radiation on the crystals. We'll have a lot more to
Speaker 1: say about piezo electric effects in part two of this show.
Speaker 1: We will um and also in another episode that we're
Speaker 1: according to. That's right, it's we're all about the piezo
Speaker 1: electric effect up here. They're everywhere. So so over the years,
Speaker 1: defects absorb electrons at a pretty constant rate, and so
Speaker 1: if you find a bit of pottery that has that
Speaker 1: has previously been fired in the ground, dig it up
Speaker 1: and reheat it, and then measure the amount of electrons
Speaker 1: that you get off of it. You can date kind
Speaker 1: of sort of where like like how long it has
Speaker 1: existed since it's been originally fired. That's pretty incredible. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's you know, it's an interesting, very novel approach to
Speaker 1: trying to go around finding how old something is. Uh.
Speaker 1: And this is just an example of the ingenuity that
Speaker 1: people have applied to this discipline to be able to
Speaker 1: learn more about where we come from and the ancestors
Speaker 1: that came before us who didn't leave any written records,
Speaker 1: and you know, how do we know more about them?
Speaker 1: This is exactly how we have to go about it,
Speaker 1: which is why I find it so fascinating. Anytime you
Speaker 1: you're talking about unraveling a mystery, obviously that that arouses curiosity, right,
Speaker 1: So not a big surprise that we had a bunch
Speaker 1: of pulp action heroes kind of come out of this,
Speaker 1: including the beloved Indiana Jones. Let's not let's not even
Speaker 1: you know acknowledge the fourth movie. Yeah no, No, Chyltte
Speaker 1: Booth was never a part never a part of Indiana Jones.
Speaker 1: Uh bad dates. All right? So um, anyway, that wraps
Speaker 1: up our first episode about archaeology, but we're going to
Speaker 1: do another episode where we're talking about some of the
Speaker 1: newer technology that's being used in the field and how
Speaker 1: it's really making this a truly exciting discipline for the
Speaker 1: twenty one century. Not that it wasn't exciting before, but
Speaker 1: now we're actually gonna have chances to, at least in
Speaker 1: a virtual way, see what these places look like. It's
Speaker 1: exciting in a much nerdier way, which is why I
Speaker 1: get all excited at the end of the episode. So guys,
Speaker 1: if you have any suggestions for future topics that we
Speaker 1: can cover here on tech Stuff, I recommend you let
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