Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with text Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey everyone, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm Jonathan Strickland, and we are going to take another
Speaker 1: look at archaeology. This is our part two on archaeology
Speaker 1: and the tools used in the trade. Yes, in the
Speaker 1: first episode we talked a lot about the history and
Speaker 1: about carbon dating and some of the other dating methods
Speaker 1: that exist for um, for you know, when you've got
Speaker 1: something that you have dug up from the ground, figuring
Speaker 1: out how old it is, and also some of the
Speaker 1: hand tools used for digging stuff up out of the ground. Now,
Speaker 1: that turns out that as technology has advanced, archaeologists have
Speaker 1: figured out ways of applying that technology in their own field.
Speaker 1: And we're starting to see some technologies that are developed
Speaker 1: specifically for archaeological pursuit. There's also a lot of new
Speaker 1: ways of figuring out where in the ground you want
Speaker 1: to dig stuff up. Right, So let's go ahead and
Speaker 1: look at some of the higher text stuff. Now, some
Speaker 1: of it is again basic equipment that has proved itself
Speaker 1: to be really useful in lots of disciplines, so why
Speaker 1: not archaeology. One of those obviously would be cameras. Right,
Speaker 1: as we talked about in the first episode, you do
Speaker 1: a lot of documenting the site when you're doing archaeology
Speaker 1: because it is, by its nature a destructive science. Once
Speaker 1: you have dug up a site and it's never going
Speaker 1: to be the same again, So documenting exactly how you
Speaker 1: found everything is very helpful for the future. Yep, going
Speaker 1: through every single step of the way. Just like as
Speaker 1: you were saying before, Lauren, with a with a crime
Speaker 1: scene where forensics have to come in and document everything.
Speaker 1: It's very much the same sort of principle here, except
Speaker 1: of course we're not looking at a crime. We're looking
Speaker 1: at the evidence of a human settlement at some point
Speaker 1: in the past, and maybe an ancient crime, but not
Speaker 1: really in the same way. Right, it could be some
Speaker 1: fashion crimes. I'm sure there were several of those. It
Speaker 1: would be the ancient version of me pretty much. So. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Cameras would be things like you know, film cameras, digital cameras,
Speaker 1: and not just cameras that take the kind of images
Speaker 1: that we usually take. There's also cameras that might take
Speaker 1: images that are infrared. Now, obviously the version that we
Speaker 1: see would not be an infrared because we wouldn't be
Speaker 1: able to see it, but it would be using infred
Speaker 1: spectrum scaled into into visible spectrum, which that could pick
Speaker 1: up stuff that otherwise we might not see, you know,
Speaker 1: just with the way that our eyes work, you know,
Speaker 1: within the visible spectrum, which is why you would use it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's going to be an important part of one of
Speaker 1: our later notes. Um. But also in the kind of
Speaker 1: relatively basic technology section, we've got robots. Yeah. In fact,
Speaker 1: the robots thing is really getting exciting because we've got
Speaker 1: a couple of different options here. You know, you've got
Speaker 1: your your robots that obviously you want to send a
Speaker 1: robot in whenever it's going to be really difficult to
Speaker 1: get people there, or really dangerous to get people there
Speaker 1: if you aren't really sure if the environment is a
Speaker 1: safe one. Obviously, losing a hundred thous and dollar robot
Speaker 1: is a small price to pay compared to putting someone's
Speaker 1: life in danger. Oh sure, or in the kind of
Speaker 1: tight spaces that humans literally cannot get into. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: so if it could, it might be that perhaps there
Speaker 1: was a natural disaster that has uh sealed off something
Speaker 1: that once was open, and then you know, we can't
Speaker 1: get in there easily now, But a robot could also
Speaker 1: if it's in an area that we can't access because
Speaker 1: there are no more roads that lead up there. Perhaps
Speaker 1: there were roads once upon a time, but they have
Speaker 1: been overgrown and they're they're gone now. Other types of
Speaker 1: robots that people might use are are the actual like
Speaker 1: quad copter, six rotor eight rod, you know, things with
Speaker 1: cameras on them. So yeah, and and all of these
Speaker 1: also have the benefit of being i mean, you know,
Speaker 1: humans are you know, a hundred to three hundred pounds
Speaker 1: or so, and robots canna have a much smaller footprint
Speaker 1: and cause a lot less damage to a to a
Speaker 1: surrounding area. So both of those devices are used pretty
Speaker 1: pretty extensively. Obviously, one of the most import and pieces
Speaker 1: of equipment in an archaeological dig today would be a
Speaker 1: computer because, as it turns out now that as our
Speaker 1: tools have become more sophisticated, we've been able to extract
Speaker 1: a lot more information about the archaeological digs we do. Right,
Speaker 1: So with that information comes a need to be able
Speaker 1: to analyze it and synthesize it and store it and
Speaker 1: and cross reference and i mean, even for the basic
Speaker 1: kinds of information that we were coming up with a
Speaker 1: few hundred years ago. A computer in order to crunch
Speaker 1: those numbers and kind of compare things and try to
Speaker 1: pull similarities and patterns out of the data would have
Speaker 1: been very useful. Sure. And if you want to do
Speaker 1: something even along the lines of using a computer to
Speaker 1: perhaps construct a virtual representation of the site that you're
Speaker 1: looking at, something so that you can kind of see
Speaker 1: what it may have looked like back when it was,
Speaker 1: you know, an actual existing human settlement, obviously a computer
Speaker 1: be really important. So if you if you have you know,
Speaker 1: basic uh information and like the layout of the settlement,
Speaker 1: you know, you've determined where the structures were and what
Speaker 1: the perimeter was of this place, you might be able
Speaker 1: to reconstruct that virtually, which would be an invaluable tool,
Speaker 1: and not just for the purposes of that dig but
Speaker 1: for scholarship further down the line. And we've already seen
Speaker 1: some people kind of play with this in different ways.
Speaker 1: Some ways it's it's a little bit uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I hesitate to use the word easier, but a little
Speaker 1: less there's less work required on an archaeological side of things.
Speaker 1: For example, there have been people who have created the
Speaker 1: Google Earth models of ancient Rome. So a lot of those, uh,
Speaker 1: those examples of ancient architecture are still in Rome. Uh
Speaker 1: in ruins forms of ruins. But but you can still
Speaker 1: see some of it, and so that makes it a
Speaker 1: little bit easier than say a settlement that is currently
Speaker 1: you know, three ft under sand in Egypt. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: but um, but with with both of the those examples.
Speaker 1: Aren't there some virtual reality kind of applications that are
Speaker 1: coming into use these Yeah, there actually are. There's a
Speaker 1: project specifically called Virtual Environments for Research in Archaeology. This
Speaker 1: was one that I saw on a British journal website
Speaker 1: which is all about using virtual reality to build on
Speaker 1: our understanding of archaeological finds. So again, uh, it's it's
Speaker 1: really to create that full picture literally in this case,
Speaker 1: a virtual picture of an environment, so that we can
Speaker 1: have a closer connection to our ancestors and really understand
Speaker 1: the progress that that humanity has gone through. To walk
Speaker 1: through one of these towns, yeah, you could, you could
Speaker 1: in theory, assuming that your data is good enough, you
Speaker 1: could in theory have a pretty immersive experience. I mean,
Speaker 1: I can even imagine a world where some educational organization
Speaker 1: takes it upon themselves to make a truly kind of
Speaker 1: immersive experience where it's like a virtual tour of these
Speaker 1: ancient landscapes, and then using something like the Oculus rift
Speaker 1: so that you can get sort of a first person
Speaker 1: perspective of what it would have been like to move
Speaker 1: around in such an environment. Now, if you think of
Speaker 1: that as an educational tool that you put in high
Speaker 1: schools where you're no longer just reading about these ancient civilizations,
Speaker 1: but you can actually look around and see what it
Speaker 1: would have looked like. Like I remember reading in art
Speaker 1: history and in other history courses about the ancient Roman structures,
Speaker 1: but until I visited Rome, I really had no concept
Speaker 1: of the scale of these sort of things. Sure, and
Speaker 1: you know, and I mean even those those little kind
Speaker 1: of kind of probably slightly terrible water color drawings in
Speaker 1: my early history books were always my favorite parts, just
Speaker 1: getting to see like, oh, that's what that was like,
Speaker 1: but of course that's not what that was really like.
Speaker 1: So Yeah, these computers obviously very important, not just I mean,
Speaker 1: the virtual environment stuff is really cool. That's a kind
Speaker 1: of the sexy side of the computers. The ones that
Speaker 1: are actually used in the field might not be nearly
Speaker 1: that sophisticated. They're probably a lot more like Excel spreadsheet
Speaker 1: kind of. Yeah, it's about dat collection and storage and
Speaker 1: then eventually analysis. But they are obviously very important tools.
Speaker 1: Some other important tools. Let's get to some surveying equipment.
Speaker 1: And this is probably my favorite device on the whole
Speaker 1: list because it, uh it made me think like it
Speaker 1: it slipped out of a Terry Pratchett Discworld novel or something.
Speaker 1: But the audolite, that's how you say it. I was
Speaker 1: going to wait and let you had to watch a
Speaker 1: video first. In fact, here's the secret here. Originally I
Speaker 1: watched the video just so I can figure out how
Speaker 1: to say the autolite properly instead of saying it like
Speaker 1: theo delight or something. Uh. So I it was. It
Speaker 1: was an English video, as in British English, uh. And
Speaker 1: it was actually describing how to set up a theodolite
Speaker 1: for students, so students of archaeology and uh, not just archaeology.
Speaker 1: It's actually used in a few different disciplines, but how
Speaker 1: students could set one up properly so that they could
Speaker 1: learn how to take the right kind of measurements. And
Speaker 1: these measurements, by the way, which we have not said
Speaker 1: yet are our angles in both horizontal in vertical planes
Speaker 1: as I understand it, but I've got a very poor
Speaker 1: concept how this is laid out. What does it do?
Speaker 1: All right? So let's say that you you establish your
Speaker 1: base point. This is the point where you're setting up
Speaker 1: the theodolite. You actually have to be really really precise
Speaker 1: with this. In other words, the best thing to do
Speaker 1: is to set up something directly underneath the theodolite, which
Speaker 1: is on a tripod. Okay, so it's the theodolite itself
Speaker 1: is kind of like a telescope. It's suspended above this
Speaker 1: point that you have established. Um. It actually has a
Speaker 1: lens that points straight down so that you can, uh,
Speaker 1: you can maneuver it so that it's directly above your
Speaker 1: point of reference. Now, this point of reference is a
Speaker 1: is a a point that you know all the stuff about,
Speaker 1: Like you know exactly where this is in the grand
Speaker 1: scheme of things. Perhaps you have the global positioning units
Speaker 1: for it, so you know exactly where this place is.
Speaker 1: Now you've got at least two other points that you
Speaker 1: want to compare to each other that are off in
Speaker 1: the distance. All right, So the way this would work
Speaker 1: is you would focus in on one of those two points,
Speaker 1: take some measure your mints, focus on the second of
Speaker 1: the two points, take some measurements, compare the two and
Speaker 1: then you know more about the relationship of those two
Speaker 1: points in the distance to each other as well as
Speaker 1: to you. So theodolite is really important to do things
Speaker 1: like measure. Well, mostly it's the angles, but a lot
Speaker 1: of theodolites now also have range finders on them, which
Speaker 1: we'll talk about in a second. But the idea is
Speaker 1: to really establish where things are in relation to each
Speaker 1: other when you're trying to figure out a full excavation site.
Speaker 1: So you might say, let's say that the main temple
Speaker 1: of an ancient city was in this one part and
Speaker 1: the house of the the ruler is in this other part,
Speaker 1: and by that you're starting to establish relationships culturally, not
Speaker 1: just archaeologically, not just you know, architecturally or anything like that,
Speaker 1: but you're you're starting to draw some other social and
Speaker 1: cultural implications from this information. This is what the theodolite
Speaker 1: helps you do. It gets that quantifiable data that you
Speaker 1: can use to start building on this other stuff that
Speaker 1: might be more humanity related as opposed to scientifically related. So, uh,
Speaker 1: it allows you to look at the horizontal or vertical plane,
Speaker 1: meaning that you can tell angles from left to right
Speaker 1: or up and down. So not everything is built on
Speaker 1: a perfectly flat level surface, right, and archaeological digs are
Speaker 1: frequently you know, on on various steps and levels down
Speaker 1: into the ground. Yeah, yeah, you might have. You might
Speaker 1: have houses that were on hills that are on the
Speaker 1: sides of areas that you know, or or that the
Speaker 1: ground has shifted in the intervening years. And so the
Speaker 1: theodolite allows you to have very precise measurements of where
Speaker 1: these different points of reference are in relation to each other.
Speaker 1: And uh, the I'll try and link. I'll make sure
Speaker 1: I link a video when we maybe a little after
Speaker 1: this podcast goes out, because I think I'm gonna be
Speaker 1: gone while it does come out. I'll be at c
Speaker 1: E S. But I'll link some videos that show a
Speaker 1: theodolite being used and explaining why it's being used the
Speaker 1: way it is now. The older theodolites had these glass
Speaker 1: plates on them that actually had the markings on them.
Speaker 1: So one glass plate, for example, would have markings from
Speaker 1: zero to three sixty marking the degrees of the circle right,
Speaker 1: and a second glass plate would essentially just have an
Speaker 1: arrow on it, and since they're both clear, you can
Speaker 1: see where the arrow is in relation to the diet. Well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you just had to align them and then manually
Speaker 1: take down measurements. I assume that the new models are digital,
Speaker 1: and we'll do that for you exactly. So people who
Speaker 1: are using a very modern theodolite might not have to
Speaker 1: be quite as I mean, you still have to be
Speaker 1: very careful the way you set it up, but you
Speaker 1: might not have to be quite as careful in the
Speaker 1: use of it in these older ones. I was watching
Speaker 1: this and it was interesting. It was so intricate. I mean,
Speaker 1: it looks like a telescope that simply can pivot up
Speaker 1: and down and left and right. That's all it looked
Speaker 1: like just at first glance. But then when you see
Speaker 1: all the individual parts that turn relative to each other
Speaker 1: so that you can actually take down these measurements, it's
Speaker 1: pretty phenomenal how complex it is at any rate. And
Speaker 1: eventually it's just so that you can figure out angles,
Speaker 1: Like it's like, wow, this is a really complicated thing
Speaker 1: just to figure out the angles. But it is very
Speaker 1: important to establish the relationship of these different structures within
Speaker 1: an excavation site. Moving on, we I mentioned range finders
Speaker 1: and electronic distance meter as an example, which uses some
Speaker 1: form of electromagnetic signal to establish how far away a
Speaker 1: reference point is from the device itself. So you can
Speaker 1: even have handheld versions of this where this is something
Speaker 1: that sends out a signal and then UH counts. It
Speaker 1: counts the time that it takes for a signal bounds
Speaker 1: back right, and because we know how fast the signal travels,
Speaker 1: that means you can determine how far away that object is.
Speaker 1: Another very similar piece of technology of this is the
Speaker 1: light are sometimes called a laser range finder YEP. Light
Speaker 1: detection and ranging UH usually is using pulses of laser light.
Speaker 1: It's not always laser, but more frequently than not it is,
Speaker 1: and so it's using these very short pulses of laser
Speaker 1: light to shoot out at whatever the reference area is,
Speaker 1: you know, whatever you're aiming at. It hits, that bounces back,
Speaker 1: comes back. Same sort of thing as the electronic distance meter.
Speaker 1: It finds the distance based upon the time it took
Speaker 1: for the light to leave the device and reflect off
Speaker 1: of the object and hit the receiver return senor so
Speaker 1: once you've done that, then you can actually say, oh,
Speaker 1: so this is that far away. And obviously again to
Speaker 1: establish what the parameters are for any site, this sort
Speaker 1: of stuff is really important. Yeah, and then those those uh, infrared,
Speaker 1: microwave or or ultrasound devices could possibly be used for
Speaker 1: stuff that's that's underground it's filled in, like in the
Speaker 1: case of vesuvious. Sure, yeah, you can actually have electromagnetic
Speaker 1: radiation that will penetrate the ground and reflect off of stuff,
Speaker 1: and it really works well if you have a uniform
Speaker 1: type of soil, like if there's a lot of different
Speaker 1: stuff in the soil, then you can get some corrupted readings.
Speaker 1: You know, you might too much static. Yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: it's like if you went into a um, you know,
Speaker 1: a beach, and you're using a metal detector and you're
Speaker 1: looking for some sort of coins there, but someone has
Speaker 1: thoughtfully gone in there and dropped a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: just worthless chunks. Yeah, yeah, something that the mel detector
Speaker 1: would pick up but would be totally worthless. And yeah,
Speaker 1: you'd be detecting lots of stuff, but none of it
Speaker 1: would be valuable. Same sort of thing with this stuff.
Speaker 1: If the ground is not in uniform uh kind of consistency,
Speaker 1: thank you, then you could have some real problems. And
Speaker 1: of course ledar won't penetrate the ground at all. It's
Speaker 1: it's light based, so it'll just reflect right back off.
Speaker 1: But these other ones like you mentioned totally would work
Speaker 1: and in fact do work. But still all of these
Speaker 1: are very useful for um, for collecting that precise data
Speaker 1: that is going to help out research down the line.
Speaker 1: As you are systematically destroying your excavation site right now.
Speaker 1: These approaches right here are a little less uh destructive
Speaker 1: than saying too. But obviously it would be really important
Speaker 1: when you want to do something like build that virtual
Speaker 1: environment we talked about earlier. You have to have all
Speaker 1: these facts and figures to do that. Yeah, and and
Speaker 1: before I mean, once you've got this this data set down,
Speaker 1: you can feel a little bit more comfortable going in
Speaker 1: and kind of must mucking stuff up knowing that you've
Speaker 1: already got the original locations of everything laid out. It's
Speaker 1: never gonna be the way it was back in the day, folks,
Speaker 1: we just have to resolve ourselves to that. Um. I think,
Speaker 1: isn't that the good thing about technology? Well, I'm just
Speaker 1: saying the archaeological site itself is never going to be perceived.
Speaker 1: So once we've established what what what what it was
Speaker 1: before we started getting really down and dirty, I think
Speaker 1: we're all right. You know, there's there's this one part
Speaker 1: of me who's like, we shouldn't disturb that because that's
Speaker 1: historically important. But I think, well, then if we don't
Speaker 1: disturb it, we don't learn any We don't learn anything.
Speaker 1: And I think as long as you're you're not running
Speaker 1: around chatting it belongs in a museum, then you know, basically,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to really think on this, Lauren, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna have to really take this into consideration. So I
Speaker 1: think in order for me to really have the time
Speaker 1: to think about this deeply, we need to take a
Speaker 1: quick break to thank our sponsor. Okay, we're back, and uh,
Speaker 1: for those of you who are wondering what my conclusion was,
Speaker 1: uh yeah, let's just rip it all up. Let's just
Speaker 1: rip it all up. Okay, So moving on. Now, we've
Speaker 1: talked about surveying equipment, Let's talk about geophysical equipment, which
Speaker 1: in some ways is similar, but there are other means
Speaker 1: of making sure that the place that you're you're exploring
Speaker 1: does in fact have some sort of archaeological significance. And
Speaker 1: one of the first things that we can talk about
Speaker 1: our resistivity meters, checking the resistance, the electrical resistance of
Speaker 1: an area, and you might first thing like, wow, that's
Speaker 1: kind of weird. You're checking to see you know, isn't
Speaker 1: the ground ground like, isn't it non conductive? And therefore
Speaker 1: you don't it doesn't help at all. No, Well, I
Speaker 1: mean that that sounds kind of like a really fancy
Speaker 1: metal detector. It kind of is, it kind of is.
Speaker 1: So the idea is that you're you're measuring for the
Speaker 1: electrical potential between an inner pair and an outer pair
Speaker 1: of electrodes or multiple electrodes that are across a region. Okay,
Speaker 1: so they're all kind of um testing to see what
Speaker 1: the conductivity of that particular area happens to be. So,
Speaker 1: if there is conductive material, then by measuring that resistance,
Speaker 1: you can determine, oh, there's something organic here, or perhaps
Speaker 1: there's something metal here that could indicate a human settlement
Speaker 1: was once here. If you start to detect less or
Speaker 1: more resistance and less conductivity, that's an indication that there
Speaker 1: could be something that's blocking the signal. That could be
Speaker 1: like a stone wall. So if now, if it's exactly
Speaker 1: what it should be based upon your knowledge of the
Speaker 1: soil in the area, that's an indication that there's nothing
Speaker 1: there and that maybe you don't need to waste your
Speaker 1: time dagging down there, that maybe you need to move
Speaker 1: a hundred feet off to the right or something. So there,
Speaker 1: you know, it's really to kind of establish what is
Speaker 1: a good place to to actually say this is where
Speaker 1: the excavation site is going to be. So uh, it
Speaker 1: is sort of like a male detector. There's another one
Speaker 1: called the electro magnetic conductivity instrument, which is essentially creating
Speaker 1: an electric current in ascending coil. So we've talked about
Speaker 1: this so many times, Lauren. The idea of an electric
Speaker 1: current running through uh, like especially an alternating electric current,
Speaker 1: creates a magnetic field, like a fluctuating magnetic field, and
Speaker 1: magnetic fields when uh fluctuating, if they're near a conductor,
Speaker 1: will induce electricity to flow. So that's the general idea.
Speaker 1: You've got this this probe that starts an electric current
Speaker 1: that allows this magnetic field to affect anything that's conductive
Speaker 1: in the area. So if there's something conductive in the soil,
Speaker 1: it'll start to have an electric charge run through it.
Speaker 1: And so by trying to by using an instrument the
Speaker 1: detects an electric charge. You can therefore determine whether or
Speaker 1: not there's something of interest down the soil. Right, So
Speaker 1: that's why this thing is has got a sending coil
Speaker 1: and a receiving coil. The receiving coil is to detect
Speaker 1: any of that other electric charge that might be happening
Speaker 1: in the regions. So it's an interesting approach. It's not
Speaker 1: as precise as the resistivity meters, but it is another
Speaker 1: kind of approach to similar to that of a metal
Speaker 1: detector um. In fact, I'll go ahead and mention mele detectors.
Speaker 1: We've talked about those before. I think we did a
Speaker 1: full episode of mele detectors, if I'm not mistaken. I
Speaker 1: don't think that we did personally, but perhaps you encristed
Speaker 1: could have been. It might be. It might be you know,
Speaker 1: you look like a librarian law and I'm sorry, it's
Speaker 1: just you know. Anyway, So male detectors use electromagnetic induction.
Speaker 1: So that's again a way of detecting con the materials.
Speaker 1: In fact, there are male detectors. They're so sensitive they
Speaker 1: can distinguish between different types of conductive metals. So you
Speaker 1: would be able to tell right away using a male detector,
Speaker 1: assuming it's the right type. I mean, not all male
Speaker 1: detectors are created equally, but assuming it's the right type,
Speaker 1: you would be able to tell very quickly what type
Speaker 1: of metal you are detecting. And if it's a type
Speaker 1: that you weren't expecting to find, that could mean lots
Speaker 1: of different things. It could mean that the site has
Speaker 1: been corrupted, it could mean that there's some other geological
Speaker 1: thing going on that is giving you false readings, all right,
Speaker 1: because any of these um electromagnetic devices could probably be
Speaker 1: thrown off by by wiggins in the area. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: if you've got something that's really magnetic in the area,
Speaker 1: that could definitely throw things off, you know. Or if
Speaker 1: you've got a lot of just natural um metal deposits
Speaker 1: like ores or whatever, that could also throw things off. So, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, knowing knowing geological facts about the area you're
Speaker 1: excavating would be really important because you would know the
Speaker 1: odds of running into that type of stuff, So that
Speaker 1: would at least reduce the chance of a false positive
Speaker 1: if you already know what does and doesn't exist in
Speaker 1: that area. Typically, I mean they're always weird cases where
Speaker 1: you're like, wow, no one knew that the world's giant
Speaker 1: natural magnet was directly underneath where we thought there was
Speaker 1: gonna be a lost city, but it could just be
Speaker 1: a copper deposit. I mean, you know. So, Um okay.
Speaker 1: And the last, the last electro magnetic device on our list,
Speaker 1: um is one, the pronunciation of which you have proclaimed
Speaker 1: to be very excited about. Yeah. I proclaimed it because
Speaker 1: I realized that I didn't know what it was. It's magnetometer,
Speaker 1: so not a magnetometer. No, I wanted it to be
Speaker 1: magnetometer so badly. This is where I'm sad that I was.
Speaker 1: I was determined not to show my ignorance. So it's
Speaker 1: a magnetometer. I wanted it to be a magnetometer, and
Speaker 1: I wanted it to be a magnetometer in your heart. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's the leader of the brotherhood of this was that
Speaker 1: the evil brotherhood of mutants meter? No, it's the magnetometer,
Speaker 1: and it's a sensor that measures magnetic fields. So again,
Speaker 1: very similar. We're talking about a lot of electronic electromagnetic
Speaker 1: forces here, but they're all basically looking for similar things,
Speaker 1: just in different ways, right, So electrical resistance versus electrical
Speaker 1: current versus a magnetic field. Again, you're looking to see
Speaker 1: if there's anything that's creating small fluctuations. Now, the Earth's
Speaker 1: magnetic field is pretty predictable, but there's stuff that makes
Speaker 1: the earth magnetic field in very small regions fluctuate in
Speaker 1: subtle ways. So these meters are actually able to detect
Speaker 1: those subtle fluctuations and be able to tell you, hey,
Speaker 1: there's something here that is interrupting what would normally be
Speaker 1: the reading you would expect to find here, which again
Speaker 1: could indicate that there's something that was made by humans
Speaker 1: that's present there. Again, natural deposits could throw that off,
Speaker 1: so it may it's possible that the readings you get
Speaker 1: are actually you know, maybe you're gonna strike it rich
Speaker 1: because you just realized you found a vein of ore
Speaker 1: that's incredibly valuable, but it's not. You might be crying
Speaker 1: ing all the way to the bank, but no, it's
Speaker 1: it's generally used to try and find stuff that that
Speaker 1: humans have made, artifacts that would disrupt that magnetic field
Speaker 1: one way or the other. And even stuff that you
Speaker 1: don't think typically as being magnetic can affect a magnetic field.
Speaker 1: So that's why it's important. And then you have to
Speaker 1: have a really sensitive one to detect those small fluctuations. Right,
Speaker 1: it's not just like Ferris iron ore or anything like that.
Speaker 1: It's not just a needle that goes from zero to
Speaker 1: something's magnetic. You know it's gonna it's gonna be really precise. Uh.
Speaker 1: Then you've got a couple of other things. Ground penetrating
Speaker 1: radar GPR. This is an electromagnetic pulse, once again getting
Speaker 1: into the electromagnets, it gets sent into the ground. Stuff
Speaker 1: in the ground reflects the pulse back to the device,
Speaker 1: which the receiver will pick up on once it comes
Speaker 1: back to the device. And so the amount of time
Speaker 1: it took for a pulse to return to the receiver
Speaker 1: indicates the depth of the artifacts and for it to
Speaker 1: work best, you definitely don't want to have a lot
Speaker 1: of conductive material in it, or you're gonna get some
Speaker 1: corrupted data coming back. Okay, So so I missed that
Speaker 1: one on our on our list of electromagnetic devices, But
Speaker 1: that's okay, yeah, because in this case, it's more about
Speaker 1: it's like echolocation. It's more like that than as opposed
Speaker 1: to detecting a charge or detecting a magnetic field. This
Speaker 1: is more like specifically for for for metals. So yeah,
Speaker 1: you're just looking to see is there something that you
Speaker 1: wouldn't expect to be down there? And again this works
Speaker 1: really well on uniform soil because if there are a
Speaker 1: lot of big rocks in the area, that's going to
Speaker 1: reflect those signals back and give you false readings and
Speaker 1: then you might dig and you're like, wow, this rock
Speaker 1: I'm sure has incredible historical significance in some context, just
Speaker 1: not in archaeology. Uh. And then the other big one
Speaker 1: of course being Global Positioning Systems GPS, so that you
Speaker 1: can determine specific coordinates for the excavation site. This is
Speaker 1: obviously really useful so that you can have a planned visit.
Speaker 1: You know, it's not Archaeologists aren't the kind of people
Speaker 1: who just pack up in a suit, you know, a
Speaker 1: backpack and just wander out into the wilderness and then
Speaker 1: hope they find something and then stay and then stay
Speaker 1: there forever until it's done. Like they'll they'll do surveys
Speaker 1: and they'll do uh, they'll do some exploratory searches, and
Speaker 1: they'll they'll look at some other data we're gonna talk
Speaker 1: about in just a second. But they don't necessarily just
Speaker 1: you know, throw a dart at a map and say
Speaker 1: let's go there and then stay there. They usually will
Speaker 1: visit a site, establish some camp. Perhaps they'll just write
Speaker 1: down what the coordinates are, then return to get more
Speaker 1: material so they can do a full excavation. Sure also
Speaker 1: once they're there, measurements can be taken throughout the process
Speaker 1: of a dig to help to help figure out or
Speaker 1: to help note for the record for for future research
Speaker 1: exactly where objects were positioned from from above and from
Speaker 1: the sides. Right, This has definitely become more useful ever
Speaker 1: since UH GPS has has been well, the precision of
Speaker 1: GPS has increased over years. Part of that was an
Speaker 1: artificial leap, right because the the military. Originally the GPS
Speaker 1: was kind of um pioneered by the U. S. Navy,
Speaker 1: I believe, and UH and and they originally put kind
Speaker 1: of a cap on how precise it was going to
Speaker 1: be for for consumer end users, right, because they didn't
Speaker 1: want consumers to be able Specifically, they didn't want other states,
Speaker 1: other states being able to determine where things like military
Speaker 1: installations were with precision. I mean that would be terrible
Speaker 1: to give us potential enemies a direct line of of
Speaker 1: you know, site essentially from a satellite point of view
Speaker 1: of where your stuff was. But now that's all been lifted.
Speaker 1: So that's why you are able to use a GPS
Speaker 1: device in your car and be able to get precise
Speaker 1: directions as opposed to somewhere in the next three feet
Speaker 1: there will be a turn either to the left or
Speaker 1: the right. Take it less useful, Yeah, not as useful,
Speaker 1: more philosophical. So yeah, that brings us into satellites. So
Speaker 1: beyond just GPS, satellites have become really important in archaeology
Speaker 1: because they have unveiled potential excavation sites that people had
Speaker 1: just not ever been able to see in the in
Speaker 1: the you know, honestly, we've got we've got stuff. In
Speaker 1: Egypt is a great example right there. There are sites
Speaker 1: in Egypt that are covered in sand that have been
Speaker 1: for thousands upon thousands of years, and they're they're really remote,
Speaker 1: so it's not like it's a place that someone could
Speaker 1: have accidentally fallen upon it just because they have to
Speaker 1: be going from point A to point B, which totally happens.
Speaker 1: You know, kids playing under trees, for example, have led
Speaker 1: to major archeological finds. Yeah yeah, but in some cases
Speaker 1: they're just miles away from anything else of modern society,
Speaker 1: and so satellites started to pick up on things that
Speaker 1: archaeologists have found very useful. They will go back and
Speaker 1: review satellite imagery, especially if they have a general idea
Speaker 1: of where a site might be, like within let's say,
Speaker 1: given a hundred square mile range, that's a huge range
Speaker 1: to cover on foot, but on satellite that's pretty simple
Speaker 1: to take a look at then, so you might pour over.
Speaker 1: You could spend hundreds of hours looking at this stuff
Speaker 1: trying to find any sort of patterns or examples of
Speaker 1: something that could indicate an old settlement is there. Um
Speaker 1: and and also non visible spectrum ranges at the thermal
Speaker 1: infrared in in particular, I think can be really instrumental
Speaker 1: in determining where wear sites like this might be. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: There have been lots of examples of using infrared imaging
Speaker 1: to see the different densities of sand in an area,
Speaker 1: or even soil. I mean it's not I say sand
Speaker 1: because it's easy to imagine when you think of Egypt,
Speaker 1: but this this applies to spaces all of of the world.
Speaker 1: But if you are able to see that there are
Speaker 1: different densities, that suggests that there could be something that's
Speaker 1: buried underneath the surface which could require a closer look.
Speaker 1: And in some cases, I've seen pictures of archaeologists who
Speaker 1: are able to take UH an infrared image and then
Speaker 1: map out what looks to be a full human settlement,
Speaker 1: like a city. In fact, that an old capital of
Speaker 1: Egypt called Tennis was discovered this way, Yeah, well it was.
Speaker 1: It was further explored UM and Tannis is one of
Speaker 1: the ones that was made famous by Indiana Jones and
Speaker 1: The Raiders of the Lost Dark UM. But UH. In
Speaker 1: two thousand eleven, a University of Alabama archaeologist named Sarah
Speaker 1: Parrock and her team used used this imaging UM from
Speaker 1: NASA and commercial satellites to discover like seventeen pyramids, over
Speaker 1: a thousand tombs, and over three thousand ancient settlements in Egypt.
Speaker 1: That's pretty incredible, I mean, being able to discover this stuff.
Speaker 1: And as I understand, you saw a video of her
Speaker 1: talking about this, right, Yeah, she has a really cool
Speaker 1: ted talk about it. Really short one actually a good
Speaker 1: five minutes sort of thing, so we'll try to remember
Speaker 1: to link that out on social in this episode. Airs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I read a great article that had some quotes from
Speaker 1: her and and her work. I think she actually I
Speaker 1: think the direct quote she had in the article was
Speaker 1: Indiana Jones eat your heart out, got some great attitude
Speaker 1: in it, and and yeah, the the technique has been
Speaker 1: used all over the place. Um. You know, it was
Speaker 1: also used in check O Canyon in New Mexico to
Speaker 1: discover a whole roadway system that was linear and built
Speaker 1: through topographic obstructions and twenty ft wide and ranged over
Speaker 1: two hundred miles UM, all by a people that were
Speaker 1: pretty sure didn't use animals for manual labor. Yes, so
Speaker 1: this was all human made. Like human humans dragged the
Speaker 1: equipment needed to construct this stuff for the entire length
Speaker 1: and breadth of it. That's pretty incredible, And there's possibility
Speaker 1: that we never would have known about any of that
Speaker 1: without this technique. And also, satellites are being used to
Speaker 1: help protect archaeological sites, so one of the big problems
Speaker 1: this brings us back to the top of our lap
Speaker 1: of our first episode in archaeology, you know, we talked
Speaker 1: about how archaeology essentially started out as tomb rating. Uh, well,
Speaker 1: tomb rating is still a thing. I mean you still
Speaker 1: you know, the market for antiquities is just as as
Speaker 1: alive today as it was back in the day when
Speaker 1: all the rich people in Europe said, hey, I want
Speaker 1: that stuff. It's more of a black market now because
Speaker 1: most of these are are preserved historical sites. But right, so,
Speaker 1: you you do have some people who in some eyes
Speaker 1: what you could call enterprising, and others you could call uh,
Speaker 1: you know, destructive because they are going into these historical
Speaker 1: sites and removing stuff. Um, but how do you protect everything?
Speaker 1: I mean, it turns out there are a lot of
Speaker 1: archaeological sites out there and you can't be everywhere at once. Well,
Speaker 1: archaeologists are starting to use satellites to try and gather data.
Speaker 1: Some of these satellites are gathering data on a daily basis,
Speaker 1: and they can review it and see if there are
Speaker 1: any new pits that are opening up that indicate that
Speaker 1: someone's rating something, and then they can alert the respect
Speaker 1: of countries authorities, and most of these countries have very
Speaker 1: strict rules about who can and can't go into these sites,
Speaker 1: so they can send security out to to check in
Speaker 1: on those places and cut down on looting. That this
Speaker 1: can even be you know, well meaning explorers who don't
Speaker 1: understand that that you know, you know, they're they're thinking, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm an amateur archaeologist and don't realize that by being
Speaker 1: an amateur, what they might be doing is is destroying
Speaker 1: important artifacts or even best case scenario, contaminating them because
Speaker 1: they're getting their grubby carbon all over everything. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: keeping carbon hands off me, you darn carbon ape. Also
Speaker 1: a sad note about about infrared spectrum kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: Um okay, so, so have you ever heard of the
Speaker 1: pigment Egyptian blue. I have heard it before, but I
Speaker 1: didn't know anything about it until you had done this research.
Speaker 1: It is, in fact the oldest known artificial pigment in
Speaker 1: the world, and it happens to reflect infrared light when
Speaker 1: a red light is shown on it. Okay, um so,
Speaker 1: And and that's even when over the course of like
Speaker 1: you know, some four thousand, five hundred years have passed,
Speaker 1: um and the paint has been reduced to like nano sheets.
Speaker 1: So the layer of paint is a billionth of a
Speaker 1: meter thick. Yes, it is. It is practically not there anymore,
Speaker 1: but just there enough to to like like a single
Speaker 1: layer of paint molecules. Okay, um, And and this this
Speaker 1: property UM, which is technically the property of calcium copper
Speaker 1: tetra silicate, which gives the pigment its color. UM has
Speaker 1: been used to both identify artifacts in the in the
Speaker 1: field and is being investigated by u g A Chemists,
Speaker 1: University of Georgia's shout out, hey that's my alma mater.
Speaker 1: Yeah dogs Um. It's being investigated for use in other
Speaker 1: applications like like medical imaging or security inc or l
Speaker 1: eds and optical fibers. I can see this being really
Speaker 1: useful for identifying a real artifact versus a fake one.
Speaker 1: If you were to shine the red light and and
Speaker 1: you've got no in for red back, then that's an
Speaker 1: indication that, no, this is not the real real You
Speaker 1: could argue that perhaps whatever the paint is has worn
Speaker 1: off to the point where there's nothing left except for
Speaker 1: that nanometer thing. Yeah, that would require you to actually
Speaker 1: scrub down to the point where you're losing artifact anyway,
Speaker 1: And I don't think that the color would be there
Speaker 1: for you to see if you I mean I think
Speaker 1: would essentially not be there anymore. So interesting. Yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: well we have wrapped up our discussion about archaeology and technology.
Speaker 1: There are other tools that we didn't really touch on
Speaker 1: that get much more niche oriented depending upon what the
Speaker 1: field is. Absolutely in, archaeology is a completely huge field.
Speaker 1: I honestly, every time we start researching for an episode,
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, this will be a really fun episode.
Speaker 1: It will be so neat and tidy, and oh this
Speaker 1: is huge. Um. I mean this was not originally a
Speaker 1: two parter when we first envisioned it. Uh No, we could.
Speaker 1: We could probably plea go on for many episodes about
Speaker 1: many of the very specific technologies that different fields of
Speaker 1: archaeology are using. Sure, and and in fact, we have
Speaker 1: done some episodes about either specific technology we've mentioned already
Speaker 1: or related technologies. Obviously, the electromagnetic effect is one of
Speaker 1: those things we've talked about multiple times. So if you're
Speaker 1: interested in this kind of stuff, definitely look into it.
Speaker 1: I mean, especially if you're like a student and you
Speaker 1: have never really considered archaeology. That might be an interesting
Speaker 1: class to take when you're a freshman and you're just
Speaker 1: wanting to kind of explore and find out what really
Speaker 1: does spark your interests, because personally, I find the stuff
Speaker 1: to be cool, even if it means I'm not wearing
Speaker 1: a fedora and carrying a whip. I'm pretty sure you
Speaker 1: would allow be allowed to at least wear fedora in
Speaker 1: the field if you really wanted to. Yeah, probably be
Speaker 1: mocked relentlessly, but how is that any different from podcasting.
Speaker 1: So also, if you maybe if you would like us
Speaker 1: to do a little bit of that homework for you, um,
Speaker 1: write us in and let us know if if there's
Speaker 1: a specific topic that you want to hear more about.
Speaker 1: There was something we mentioned where you thought, you know,
Speaker 1: that was really interesting, but I really wanted you to
Speaker 1: go in more depth into that thing. Let us know,
Speaker 1: because we're more than happy to look into it and
Speaker 1: really dive in. If that's what you guys are interested in,
Speaker 1: or if there's just something else you want to say.
Speaker 1: Maybe you just want to say, hey, Lauren Jonathan, good job.
Speaker 1: You know you respond well to praise, So write us,
Speaker 1: send us an email. Our address is tech Stuff at
Speaker 1: Discovery dot com, or drop us a line on social media.
Speaker 1: We are on Twitter, Tumbler, and Facebook. Our handle is
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