00:01.52 archpodnet Welcome back to the archeo techch podcast episode 92 where we reintroduce Paul as a co-host to the show at least until the spring field season ah rights rights exactly. Ah so let's let's actually get into this paul let's just. 00:07.47 Paul Yeah, otherwise known as car talk I think. 00:19.37 archpodnet This wasn't ah a crm project or anything like that and you've done this project before. So let's just let's just first tell everybody where you were and and what kind of stuff you were working on for the last couple of months 00:32.49 Paul All right? Well um, longtime listeners will know that as of last year I switched out of my I t job and went back into field archeology and one of the first gigs I had was I went in November of 2021 to Iraq for a couple weeks. 00:43.90 archpodnet Ah. 00:50.60 Paul And I've stuck on that project since um, that was the logosh archaeological project and we had a spring season so I was there for five weeks I think in the spring and now we've had our third season this fall and I just got back. We're recording this in early december and I just got back about a week and a half ago ah this one was interesting though the ah the project is by the University Of Pennsylvania and Penn also has the permit to the site of ur so the ur project was also now getting off the ah off the ground so I went first to ur. 01:17.20 archpodnet Okay. 01:25.77 Paul And worked there for a month before just moving you know up the street a little bit to lagosh and working there for just over a month. So I got 2 projects under my belt in Iraq this last this last stint. 01:31.14 archpodnet Nice. 01:38.34 archpodnet That's really awesome. So we we've talked about Logosh quite a bit. What were they doing over in or. 01:45.89 Paul So in ur the ah the project in some ways is um, taking over from the old Suny Stony Brook project under Elizabeth Stone and Paul Zavansky we were working in 1 of their trenches. But deep trench that had been opened I think in 15 originally maybe 2017? Anyhow, it's been sitting there open and unfinished since 2019 which was last season and then you know everything went to hell with ah with covid so we dug in that until it was. Too deep to safely dig anymore. So we stop that one. We were hoping to get down to acadian levels. But I don't think we did I have to talk to the field director to find out if we actually you know how deep we got. But I think that we only got into or three levels. We also opened up a couple new trenches on a small tell. 02:33.76 archpodnet Ah, so. 02:37.91 Paul That sits a lowtel that sits a little bit to the east of the main mound of or and um so we're looking at at architecture in both those trenches and then in the trench that I was in we were also looking primarily for architecture. But because we're down so deep and by down so deep I mean. Were eight meters deep at the end of this project we had stepped it in so many times that it was a very small area. So the architecture we found was part of a wall. Ah, we couldn't tell anything about floor plan. There was also along under the same permit There's a german team that was working on. Um. 02:57.18 archpodnet Wow cheese. 03:05.76 archpodnet Yeah, yeah. 03:16.92 Paul For lack of a better term a villa a very large house out on the outskirts of the tell itself of the or 3 town but still within the city walls. Um and they found some very interesting things and they were doing an expansive excavation so they could actually see the entire floor plan of the building. 03:26.31 archpodnet Ah, so. 03:34.62 Paul Um, and see its various changes over over time of that house and you know so it was ah it was a variety of different things. It was mostly just to tie up some loose ends so from ah from the previous project and to get. This new permit this new project from Penn up and running. 03:56.30 archpodnet I'm curious in a place like Iraq and maybe you don't know the answer to this but these projects they're they're academic projects people are over there. You know doing research, but what happens when all that's done and the buildings are exposed if there if there are buildings or. Or something like that. It's not just artifact collection. You know that you can you know there's no danger or anything there. But if buildings are exposed and you're like got this whole thing opened up you see pictures like that all the time from Middle Eastern excavations but what happens after that is is some local municipality forced to essentially. 04:24.90 Paul E. 04:31.67 archpodnet Take care of that now or does it get reburied or does you know some national museum take care of it or do you have to have all that in place before you even decide to do that. You have to have who's going to be the Custodian at this once we're done. 04:45.48 Paul Now it's not formalized but there is a general sense of best practices and we're trying to adhere to them. So ah, we weren't able to adhere to them in the twenty nineteen project because there was the expectation that they'd be back the following year and be able to continue working in those trenches. Um. 05:00.19 archpodnet Aha. 05:02.66 Paul We decommissioned a number of trenches at the end of this season. So the one that I was working in that eight meter deep one we decommissioned as well as a couple others had been left open from the previous project. Um, and in even the one that I don't think they're finished with it I should talk to the excavators who are working on it. But even that villa. 05:23.72 Paul Um, ah was so covered at the end. So what we did is we put down some biofabric on top of the extant walls and then backfilled in order to protect what's available. What's remaining of the walls and that um. 05:27.99 archpodnet Um, okay, okay. 05:41.48 Paul That's what we need to do. We need to do that for preservation of the archeology especially when you're digging mud brick ah the elements will degrade the ah the material right? So you leave something out for a few years and it dissolves. 05:53.51 archpodnet Um, Brett. 05:55.99 Paul Ah, so we didn't want that to happen. It's a little different at ur where a lot of the architecture is baked brick and so but we still have to care for it and it's sitting on top. Sometimes it's pedestal sometimes it's built on top of pre-existing mud brick walls. So you know we wanted to shore it up and protect it in a way that would. Keep it from crumbling as much as possible but would also make it that if somebody were to re-excavate this um you know 50 years from now. They'd get down. They'd hit the plastic layer and they'd know exactly where we'd gotten to and this is a little different we um with Lagosh we had. 06:24.19 archpodnet Ah. 06:26.25 archpodnet Nice. Okay, yeah. 06:33.50 Paul Ah, similar set of issues but Lagosh we have no bake brick at all. It's all entirely mud brick and so we covered and with plastic and with soil and sandbags at the end of last season in the spring our trenches of wheat opened. 06:39.83 archpodnet Um. 06:51.82 Paul And the one that was covered the best was preserved very nicely a couple others that we didn't have enough soil on the ah the tarps it would put down. There were already shredded in just a few months you know between the sun and the wind and the elements it just. 07:05.27 archpodnet Well. 07:10.81 Paul Tore apart those tarps and you know so they'd had some moderate damage I wouldn't say significant but had it been a year between the projects it probably would have been significant. So at the end of the logosh project what we did is we went and put 2 layers of plastic down. Um, different kinds of plastic a clear plastic first and then ah then tarps on top of it and also use sandbags to short things up and soil on top of that and you know hopefully that'll preserve it because Lagosh this last year was a 2 wo-season year. 07:33.52 archpodnet So. 07:44.64 Paul But that was only because we couldn't work there because of covid it was the project was open at 2019 so we wanted to you know, make up for some lost time but going forward. It's going to be a 1 season a year project so we won't be back excavating those same trenches until. 07:53.44 archpodnet Term. 08:02.96 Paul October probably of 2023 and we want to make sure that we don't have too much damage to the architecture that we've left in place. 08:04.31 archpodnet Wow. 08:09.96 archpodnet Right? right? Okay, well let's talk a little bit about this field season. So did you I can't remember leading up to this but were any you know just focusing on the fact that this is the Archeo Tech podcast. We could go into all kinds of stuff. But. 08:26.43 Paul M. 08:26.62 archpodnet Trying to stay on Brand here were any new Technologies or devices or anything like that introduced in this fall field season. 08:38.37 Paul Ah, no new technologies and I'm going to be talking about loggosh almost exclusively from here on out even though ur is a phenomenal site. Um, Logosh is the one that I that that is a project that I'm more closely tied to um. 08:42.16 archpodnet Yeah, yeah. 08:53.55 Paul No new technologies but a new to me technology and that is magnetomery and we talked about that a little bit in the um in the summer early fall because I'd done some training in order to come up with a plan for how we're going to do the magnetomery no magnetomery was done on the project in 2019 um 08:55.75 archpodnet Oh yeah. 09:12.58 Paul But we have a new setup new gear and a new person doing it that person being me so we went out there into the field with this new equipment and and then I got to deploy it on a survey that designed. 09:20.52 archpodnet Um. 09:28.57 Paul And integrate it with the pre-existing Magnetiletry data. 09:33.19 archpodnet Okay, all right and I want to talk about that in the third segment and what what your you know how that worked out compared to the previous results in the previous magnetomemetry data. But um, so along those lines have you made any adjustments I'm just curious because people thinking about projects like this especially projects in. You know far off areas where you may not have the access to things like you would maybe say you know at your in your home state if you're in this country or even another country at ah at a bigger city. Maybe you don't have access to certain things but your photo management and all that stuff have you made any. Adjustments to those workflows that benefited you guys to in this project as far as just like overall data management goes. 10:17.75 Paul Yeah, we didn't actually have to do any major changes this time because you know it's only been a few months since the previous season so we had a good sense of what worked and what didn't um you know there were some tweaks to how we do things but but no major revampings. Um. 10:23.96 archpodnet Yeah. 10:32.30 archpodnet Um. 10:33.85 Paul But like I said I had the magnetomery that had to integrate with previous magnetomery which was done by somebody else using a different system and we completed the surface survey that I designed and had spoken about last time we got 60% of the site covered in the spring and we finished the remaining 40% this last season. So now I have to process the data but um, but from my point of view. It was very similar the um, the 1 thing since you're mentioning you know being stateside or not being stateside I had last time purchased a a fleer boson 10:57.49 archpodnet Ah. 11:12.80 Paul Thermal imaging camera to attach to our drone to get some drone aerial thermal photographs and I had a lot of trouble with it in the spring because the the gimbal assembly wasn't balanced properly for that tiny camera. 11:20.42 archpodnet Um. 11:29.50 Paul So I made this wonky sort of counterbalance with ah with some wire that I found and I glued it onto and and a double a battery that offset the weight properly and it was really ugly and it was twitching. It didn't work very well and the um and the. 11:31.22 archpodnet Um. 11:41.16 archpodnet Yeah. 11:48.39 Paul The gimbal assembly is controlled by a regular radio control like you might for radio control car or radio Controller airplane in order to make it look the direction that we wanted the direction that we wanted is straight down of course. Um the radio in that would interfere with the radio for controlling the drone. 11:55.34 archpodnet Ah. 12:06.80 Paul So it get up twenty thirty meters and then lose connection and the drone would force land. Um, so I redesigned the gimbal assembly three d printed some parts to make the balance better I had that all working I recalibrated everything. It was all set to go and. I got out in the field I did one flight still had the problem with the radio interference decided I was going to try a different ah different setup. Um got it so that it wouldn't interferes badly and then went to flight and like and the radio controller. 12:42.74 archpodnet Oh my God yeah. 12:42.99 Paul Wouldn't work anymore that the power on it had burnt out like googling googling googling I find that this is a common problem with this particular one that we'd purchase that it burns out and the solution is really simple. All you have to do is find a voltage controller and solder it in. 12:57.75 archpodnet Yeah, no problem. 13:02.26 Paul Um, and of course a voltage regulator is not something that I was going to find you know, stuck on a farm um with no permission to go anywhere except for the site. Ah you know? Um, yeah, it just wasn't going to happen so I ended up having to Forego that. 13:11.45 archpodnet Yeah, what Amazon doesn't deliver there. 13:20.42 Paul No no, It's a little surprising but their drones don't reach there yet. Yeah so I ended up having to reconfigure that so that I could basically fix that that camera facing straight down all the time without the use of the yeah of the remote controller. And I got that to work and I started to get some ah some results at the end by rent out of time so I was hoping to leave all that equipment in the field and it said it's all in my basement and I've got another round of soldering and programming and and 3 D printing and I'm going to pretend that I hate doing this. 13:40.38 archpodnet Um. 13:55.67 archpodnet Yep, rights exactly all right? Well I Really want to talk about the magnetomery stuff because that's just to be honest, It's not something you. Do very often, especially in COrM archeology and and stuff like that that I'm more familiar with so I want to talk about that a lot more. We'll do that on the other side of the break back in a minute. 14:14.80 Paul Um e.