00:00.00 archpodnet All right welcome to the show Buddy Paul is not joining me today because as we've been mentioning the last few shows. He's actually in Iraq during the time of this recording. So hopefully he's you know, safe and healthy and everything's going well and he's his survey methodology is working out I can't wait to see. How all that goes over there and and the plans that he made and how those go because we all we all know that plans change once you get in the field sometimes so it'll be interesting to see how all that shakes out but we'll talk to him when he gets back in a month or so in the meantime we've got a guest today and ah I first. Saw um our guests information I think on Youtube or somewhere I can't even remember where I saw it but I went there watched some videos and and said hey this sounds like ah like a good thing to talk about on the podcast. So I hooked up with him and now we have um Brian Fritz on the podcast Brian how's it going. 00:53.59 Brian Oh it's going. Great Glad to be here. 00:56.97 archpodnet Yeah, sounds good So we'll drop your bio in the in the show notes. But why don't you tell people a little bit about your your educational background and your archeological background. 01:06.30 Brian Well I I grew up on a farm in Somerset County Pennsylvania that's towards the western part of the state and you know during the years when we were farming when I was growing up. We found artifacts indian artifacts. Um. In the fields in our farm and also was interested in the historic sites with on the farm and we we also when we were farming we did a lot of our own repair work and we modified our own farm equipment and built a lot of our own farming equipment so we had a background in fabrication. 01:26.61 archpodnet Um. 01:42.63 Brian Which has been important to the things I've been doing later in life in archeology. Um, our family no longer farms. We still own the farm in Somerset County and but I I after we were done farming and did some other business. 01:44.92 archpodnet Um, okay. 02:02.52 Brian Enterprises I had enough money to go to school and get a degree in anthropology and a degree in and geology and I also have a minor in gis and then I got my master's in geology at the University Of Akron 02:10.47 archpodnet A. 02:17.46 archpodnet Nice, Nice yeah ah a geology degree is something I think every archeologist when they get into the field. They say a man I wish I took more geology. Ah. 02:27.43 Brian Yes I Like to say I bring geology into archeology. 02:30.72 archpodnet Nice, nice. Would you call yourself like if you were to label yourself. What'll be more archaeologist or like Geo Archeologist more interested in you know, soil sciences and things like that. 02:41.44 Brian Well because I run my own small consulting firm I kind of have to do everything So I'd bring the geoareology in and I but I do historic Archeology Prehistoreology archaeology and industrial archaeology. 02:46.62 archpodnet How you that. 02:58.36 archpodnet nice nice I was ah editing the life and ruins podcast and they had somebody on who did who does geo archeology and he was like 1 of the hosts was like and I never heard this term before and I love it. But he said I don't understand how some of the geoareologists can just like look at a so soil profile. 02:58.41 Brian And have to cover all the bases. 03:17.62 archpodnet And just like no stuff about it and he called you. He called you guys dirt wizards which I was like that's perfect I Love it. 03:23.46 Brian Yeah, that's one of the things we like to do is look at the soil profiles and and I use yeah gis in combination with the soil profiles and Auger tests to try to reconstruct the age of particularly alluvial land forms. 03:39.19 archpodnet Sure, Okay, well sounds good. So we're going to talk about some some tech that you've invented but what is your what is your technical background like you you use the number of um, you know, kind of off-the-shelf technologies and a little bit of programming to to make your your paleo digger. 03:40.95 Brian Longer streams and rivers. 03:58.50 archpodnet Machine and software and which we're going to talk about here in a little bit but I want to know like how what led you to that. Did you learn the skills to put that together because you saw a need you wanted to make that or did you learn these skills somewhere else and just apply them to this problem. 04:10.57 Brian Well when I was when I was on the farm. You know we did a lot of our own welding and fabrication and it's just when I look at the past look at back to the Wpa days when a lot of our roads were constructed and all that was done by hand. 04:16.32 archpodnet Um. 04:27.36 archpodnet Oh. 04:29.62 Brian And if you look at modern construction today. It's all moved to machinery hardly anything's done by hand yet archaeology is still using the same techniques that we used back in the 1930 s to a large extent and there's been really no other than computers and total stations in Gps there. 04:32.76 archpodnet Um, yeah. 04:40.56 archpodnet Um. 04:49.60 Brian Really haven't mechanized in any meaningful way other than maybe using a backhoe for trenching and I thought maybe how how could we mechanize at least part of archeology. Not all of it but just parts of it that make might make the archeology more efficient and and less. Ah costly. 04:53.27 archpodnet Right. 05:01.37 archpodnet Yeah. 05:08.33 archpodnet Okay, okay, so that pretty much leads us to ah paleo digger now when I was taking a look at a couple of your Youtube videos that I think you sent links over for. They seem to be focused more around the the. 05:08.52 Brian In labor. 05:26.22 archpodnet Computerized box for lack of better way to say that that actually tracked the depths and and holes and things that you were digging the augur test that you were doing but also there was a whole digging machine attached to like a bobcat backho type of thing and then into a screen did you invent all of that or or. 05:44.30 Brian Yep. 05:44.81 archpodnet Okay I was what I was actually curious about that. Yeah. 05:46.54 Brian Yeah, so I because I was ah doing geoareology I was familiar with the handog or the bucket agger and my thought was well what if we were to size that up and we actually yeah I used it on a french and indian war era site some years ago 05:51.74 archpodnet Um, yeah. Um, yeah. 06:03.50 archpodnet Yeah. 06:05.58 Brian And we dug every five meters we dug an auger hole and screened the soil from the auger hole and we were not only recording the soil structure but we were checking for artifacts and we were able to identify the location of the french fort using that method and I thought what if I scale it up to maybe yeah. 06:09.97 archpodnet Okay. 06:18.76 archpodnet Yeah. 06:23.35 Brian Eight Inch or a twelve inch auger and yeah once you realize how heavy that gets then you have to start thinking about how you're going to power it and how you're going to lift it. So that's how it kind of progressed into the larger machine. So I built the augur the drill mast and the screening mechanism. 06:32.14 archpodnet Yeah. 06:40.22 archpodnet Nice, nice. So the augur itself is attached to what is that attached to like a backo. 06:40.75 Brian All my design. 06:48.25 Brian It's It's ah what we call a skid loader or a track loader at a machine. It runs on tracks and it's used in construction in this case instead of a bucket the scoop dirt I disconnect the bucket and I my part of the machine attaches to that track loader. 06:49.55 archpodnet Okay. 07:02.11 archpodnet Okay. 07:04.36 Brian And and it has a drill mast with an auger head that can be extended up and down the lower the bucket in and out of out of the ground presently. It can go seven meters which is about twenty four feet yeah 07:09.79 archpodnet And how deep could you go with that Jesus wow that's crazy. Yeah I mean do you have much cause in the areas where you're working to go deeper than that. 07:22.73 Brian My wife is also an archeologist and she worked on a site in the higher river some years ago and they were down twenty four feet in the phase 3 07:30.60 archpodnet Oh man, she's and that's finding like paleo and in stuff back 10000 years plus I'm doing wow that's crazy. Okay, that's amazing. Um, so obviously too. 07:34.99 Brian They were in our early Arca. At that point they really weren't deep enough for the paleo for. 07:47.58 archpodnet This is appropriate for I'm thinking certain landscapes where you could of course get that equipment to that spot I would I would imagine you're going to do this in a ah grid of shovel testing scenarios kind of thing. Um, but you know. Ah, localized area because I think you were off the side of the road in 1 area doing this which um, a lot of cm archeology takes place off the side of roads. So that's appropriate. Um, yeah I mean how agile is that machinery. 08:09.00 Brian 4 Yes. 08:15.70 Brian Well I really didn't design it for upland settings. It's really designed for the alluvial landforms along the rivers and streams ah where your soils are going to be the deepest. So once you once you ecavate by hand Well with a with a standard shovel test Pit you know, just your round hole. 08:22.21 archpodnet Sure. 08:34.36 Brian It's hard to go much deeper than well our standards in Pennsylvania are a meter but it's really tough going much deeper than eighty centimeters and then you can dig one by ones by hand down to about five feet or one and a half meters then you start to run into osha requirements and wall shoreing and step back x week and it gets. 08:39.71 archpodnet Yeah. 08:45.40 archpodnet Yeah, for sure. 08:52.52 Brian Aggressively more expensive and usually those one by ones for the even down to a meter and a half are separated by a distance of thirty meters across the survey area where with my machine I can do the standard fifteen meter or fifty foot interval and go that depth or even deeper. 08:59.96 archpodnet Right. 09:06.99 archpodnet Nice. 09:09.89 Brian Plus b now that do radials you know if you have a positive stp you could step aside and do five meter increments to delineate the edges of sites. 09:17.00 archpodnet Okay, well that's that's pretty cool I I really like that I don't know it's really neat watching it operate and and watching it work now. It took you know, generally it looked like you had several people out there. Um, with this thing all completely dialed in. Um, what do you think like 2 people could probably do this somebody to run the machine and somebody else to you know, basically guide and and look at the screen and do that stuff. 09:42.56 Brian But the way I like to work it is I bring them machine out and I run the machine and I have the company I'm working for provide 2 of their archaeologists 2 or 3 of their archaeologists could probably get by with 2 depends on the soils and how much screening we have to do if it's really sandy soils it goes through. 09:52.88 archpodnet Okay, oh sure. 10:01.16 Brian My powered augur very quickly and there's not much screening but but if it were a little siier or if this if the test pits aren't real deep I can I can pull the soil pretty fast and it's it's tough for the crew to keep up with the screen and artifact collection. 10:17.00 archpodnet Nice, nice, all right? Well I don't want to bury the lead on some of this stuff. Let's go ahead and just take a break real quick because I want to come back and and spend some time talking about. Well first off the screen and then the software and the the box you put together to keep track of all this. So let's take a break. And come back in a minute and keep talking about the paleo digger machine with Brian Fritz back in a second.