00:00.22 archpodnet Welcome back to archeo tech one eight seven and we're wrapping up the discussion with Paul in his trip over to Saudi Arabia so so Paul we've talked about a little bit of the data collection I am curious because I don't think we've mentioned it before was there any sort of like like just non. Standard site recording stuff and I love the fact that like recording with a tablet and software is essentially standard but did you guys bring any other um technology out there any drone work any gpr anything like that on this phase of the project. 00:33.27 Paul No, there's nothing like that on this phase my understanding that there's going to be a fair amount of drone work in a future phase. Um, it's all going to be conducted by Saudis I looked into the rules of um of bringing my own drone. Um. 00:40.80 archpodnet Um, okay. 00:49.29 Paul To Saudi before I went there but and I pretty sure I could have done it but it was just enough paperwork and tests and such that I didn't have the time to do it I Really wish I did have a drone because like I said very very mountainous, Um, very craggy my boots which are only a year old are. 00:51.80 archpodnet Um. 00:58.74 archpodnet Ah, red. 01:02.27 archpodnet Yeah. 01:08.80 Paul Utterly that they'd look like I've just put them in a blender. Yeah that somehow they felt together but they just they look like I've gotten in a big fight and lost. Um, but so many times where. 01:09.73 archpodnet Just destroyed. Yeah oh Jez yeah. 01:24.33 Paul You know we're up on a ridge or in a saddle or you know God forbid on a peak of something and we want to see down around the edge and the way that we had to do it was you know, hoof it and it would have been much better for me if I could just. 01:31.89 archpodnet Ah. 01:36.40 archpodnet Yeah. 01:41.95 Paul Pop that drone out and and fly it around just take a quick look. Oh yes, we do need to go two hundred meters this direction because there's more stuff that way as opposed to you know sending somebody scouting it. Um, you know fortunately, nobody got hurt. Um I'm really you know that was a great thing is that. 01:46.14 archpodnet Um, yeah. 01:48.76 archpodnet Red. 01:59.20 Paul It was kind of like an academic project but everybody's staffing is an experienced C R M Um, professional and so a lot of the kind of silliness that you'd get from having somebody too green in the field did not happen right? You just people knew their physical limitations. 02:02.77 archpodnet Um. 02:04.93 archpodnet Nice. 02:13.18 archpodnet Okay, that's awesome. 02:18.43 Paul They knew how to get around. They knew how to negotiate rough terrain so on and so forth and so ah so things worked really really professionally and and efficiently that way. Um, and that was that was fun that was um. You know when I got into field archqology I wanted to combine the crm and the academic archeology and yeah pick and choose and so this one was ah was a very refreshing balance. Partially I think because some of the principles on the project themselves. Um, you know came from academic backgrounds and. 02:41.38 archpodnet You know. 02:51.36 Paul Specifically academic backgrounds with experience in Arabia so when I got to hang out with them and we could geek out on arabian archeology that was a lot of fun. but um but yeah all the crm people I worked with were just no nonsense. They knew what to do. 02:53.44 archpodnet Red. 03:00.19 archpodnet Nice. 03:05.85 archpodnet And that actually does kind of speak towards some of the things like Rachel and I recorded an episode the last episode of archeech about field like technology that can help you not only keep you efficient, but keep you safe in the field as well in some cases and. 03:17.28 Paul Um. 03:19.29 Paul Um, yeah. 03:21.81 archpodnet When you combine that kind of stuff with professionalism and just an understanding and not not only professionalism but experience you know things like things like the the tragedy that happened with the young lady in in Louisiana a couple of months ago um you know it's just you know, underlying health conditions notwithstanding it. 03:26.72 Paul Is it. 03:40.22 archpodnet You can really work in any environment if you're well prepared for it. You know what? I mean like if you know what you're getting into you've hopefully been there before and you understand all the things that you need to do to actually be successful and you do those things. More importantly, you stick to it then I feel like you can really just Work. You really could work anywhere in any environment you just have to be prepared for it. You know so and you guys I think prove that. 04:01.94 Paul Yeah, and I think another thing that's interesting too to me is that so many of the tools we use you know I told you about these 3 particular programs but a lot of the work that we did was you know trying to find how to get into places so we're using aveza. 04:16.64 archpodnet Read on. 04:18.97 Paul Which we've talked about before we're using Google maps we were using Google earth ah tools that weren't specific to working in saudi tools that we've all gotten comfortable using you know in the us and other parts of the world as well. Just because that's what you use? yeah. 04:36.60 archpodnet Did you have online online access. Sorry did you have online access in the field or was everything downloaded. 04:38.13 Paul Um, you don't have to reinvent the Wheel. So our internet. Yeah no our internet access is weird. Um, where we were living was in a small town. It was a big Cruise. So some lived in a bigger City I lived with. The other half of the crew in a much smaller town and kind of in the middle of Nowhere. We didn't have regular internet Access. We all had sim cards and would tether our equipment to that most of where I went I had yeah maybe a bar or 2 of 4 g most of where I went. 04:59.81 archpodnet Um. 05:05.52 archpodnet Brett. 05:12.16 archpodnet And. 05:16.10 Paul Which was good enough to like kind of download the latest whatever from Google earth um, but it wasn't guaranteed and so there were plenty of times that we had to you know rely on whatever we'd preloaded in a venza in order to find our way out to a site and yeah. 05:24.22 archpodnet Red. 05:34.47 archpodnet You know. 05:34.89 Paul That worked again a lot of it just comes down to you know, having a suite of different tools that you can use and pick and choose what's going to be best at the moment and also like I said about the ah the archeologists being experienced having that experience so we didn't have to like agonize. 05:51.19 archpodnet Yeah, yeah. 05:53.25 Paul Over what tools should I use to find out how to get to my site here are 3 tools I'm going to use the ones going to work right now because I've used them all before. Thank you very much you know? Um, yeah, so ah so that that was good the ah but the internet access was um was. 06:00.99 archpodnet Right? right? exactly. 06:12.67 Paul An issue ah particularly like the pdf reader that we had for that site registry updated itself. Well needed to be updated twice when I was in the field and couldn't actually take the update because I was out of out of cell coverage I used up huge insane amounts of data. 06:22.21 archpodnet Then. Wow. 06:32.48 Paul Um, my cell plan I kept on having to reup it and yeah so that that that also wasn't perfect, but you know again, they nothing's ever perfect in the field you know, just long as it works well enough. Um, yeah, that's where we got to. 06:35.25 archpodnet Um, yeah. 06:41.39 archpodnet Um, yeah. 06:47.96 archpodnet Okay, what about offloading data at the end of the day with those internet issues or did you guys send all the set all the tablets back with the guys who were going into the city. 06:58.96 Paul No, um, well we definitely did the the latter on occasion but we weren't going into the city frequently enough so we would offload the data and so we had a workflow um and servers set up so that we could get ah the backup file from codeify. 07:00.63 archpodnet Boom. 07:14.89 Paul Um, shapefiles out of the Gis. Um, uploaded to the site. The ah the photographs that we took were backed up locally and you know onto hard drives and then and some of the photos were imported into codify and so became part of that that codify export. But um, but you know there was ah established workflow established naming conventions where we had to put things and the only trick that we had was that those codify files if they had photographs in them could be pretty large. 07:34.41 archpodnet Ah. 07:49.75 archpodnet Sure. 07:50.97 Paul So we couldn't upload them from our living room where we preferred working but but the guy on the project on my team who who is in charge of that would have to go back to his bedroom to upload from there where he had a slightly stronger signal and it was a matter of you know taking. 08:03.27 archpodnet Nice. 08:08.19 Paul Ten or fifteen minutes to upload from his bedroom versus a couple you know hour or so from ah from the living room so that we just had to work around that. Um again, not a killer the other thing actually and I hadn't mentioned this. Um I my ticket. 08:10.97 archpodnet Sure. 08:16.63 archpodnet Nice. 08:25.82 Paul Plane ticket got messed up so I ended up working into the next phase of the project. Um, and the next phase I only got to work on it a week but it was really interesting because those gis files in particular were then being taken into a Gis a big computer that they had in the big city. 08:28.54 archpodnet Yeah, yeah. 08:43.20 archpodnet No. 08:44.47 Paul Ah, and being processed there with some machine learning in order to I don't think I'm giving up any secrets there in order to help identify sites. So the last few things that we were doing was kind of like the pre-registered sites the pre-recorded sites and visiting them except for this was going to places that had high likelihood of being sites. 08:56.10 archpodnet You know. 09:01.50 archpodnet Um, okay. 09:04.20 Paul And so we would go there and record either the the presence or the absence of sites that the computer had spat out at us. So that was exciting to be part of that project and that's part of the whole thing that had been sold to the client. Um the development of this system. 09:11.21 archpodnet Nice. 09:21.51 Paul And you know so I got to work on it on the the data collection. The initial data collection but then also some of the ground proofing afterwards. So that that was a lot of fun for me just because I do think that this is an important way forward. You know, allowing. 09:22.27 archpodnet Ah. 09:33.27 archpodnet Yeah. 09:37.21 Paul As we have better and better access to to satellite and aerial imagery of various kinds allowing the computers to do some of the predictive work that before it would be done by you know by Archaeologists poring over photographs Now you let the computer chug away and do that and then spit back. 09:54.80 archpodnet Um. 09:56.71 Paul Yeah, here are some likely sites for you? yeah. 09:59.10 archpodnet Nice that is kind of the dream isn't it. That's awesome I Love it all right? So anything else that wouldn't really get to that You think you should mention about this project. 10:11.60 Paul Ah, no, there're going to be more phases of it. Um, provided that the client continues to be happy with the work that was done I'm hoping that I don't get anybody in trouble especially myself for sad right now. But but I think it's vague enough. Um, but it also it um. 10:11.20 archpodnet Um, yeah. 10:27.59 Paul In some ways I feel like I've got a little bit of a glimpse of the future of how a big project like this will be carried out. You know it was born digital. It was digital processing. It was a collaborative effort between a lot of different field specialists right? Not just. 10:33.35 archpodnet Nice. 10:45.92 archpodnet Um. 10:47.34 Paul Not shovel bums not not field text but people who even if their their official title was field tech ah were so experienced that they were excellent at it. Um, and you know an academic component and ah. 10:56.15 archpodnet Um, yeah. 11:05.12 Paul Tourism component and you know a preservation component all these different things converging. Yeah, it was good project I was really glad to be part of it and I'm hoping that I continue to be part of it. 11:15.21 archpodnet Awesome! Nice, nice. Well, that's great. So it was awesome hearing about those experiences and I don't know what we're talking about next time but I'm sure it will be fascinating so it's good to have you back Paul? Ah, before we close out this. Episode I need to mention that over on our member slack channel for archae techch and if you're not a member of the apn go to arcpodnet.com/membersand you can check it out. We've had a few new members just today and ah Walter Youberman who was on this show talking about archeology in flanders. Um. 11:42.35 Paul So. 11:48.47 Paul Me. 11:50.68 archpodnet Which I always forget is like a region of Belgium right? Yeah, he ah he liked our episode that Rachel and I did on different applications and things like that for field archeology and gear and stuff like that and he has his own list of things that we didn't mention. That are over in the in the slack channel so I'll have you if you're a member. Go check that out because he's got some good stuff over there if you're not a member then please artpodnet.com/members and you help us out. It's only seven ninety nine a month or you can get 25% off by going through for the whole year. Just like Jordan and a few others did today they got the the annual membership. So we really appreciate that I know right? So we we love it when we can bring more people in and and you know honestly, not only does that keep the lights on but I mean I just love having and seeing these conversations take place amongst members in the slack channel. 12:30.13 Paul Yay. 12:34.11 Paul Move. 12:41.89 Paul Yeah. 12:44.60 archpodnet Right? And that's just that's kind of why I wanted to start this whole network was to generate conversation and and get people talking about this stuff. So I'm glad to see it's happening over there all right. Well with that I think we will ah sign off this week and we'll be back like I said in two weeks with ah another great episode. Thanks again. Paul. 13:03.22 Paul Yeah, thanks Chris I glad to be back I'm glad to talk to you again. And yeah, we're going to have some involved I've seen a few articles while I was await and get to read them because you know that internet issue. But. 13:17.68 archpodnet Ah, right. 13:18.50 Paul But but yeah I think that's going to be some ah some good content coming up. 13:21.52 archpodnet Nice all right? Well thanks everybody and we'll see you next time. 13:24.63 Paul Take care.