00:00.00 Paul Welcome back to the architect podcast episode 195 Chris and I are discussing surveying an archeology. Well not serving like the total station kind of surveying which I'm always happy to talk about but the doing archaeological survey finding sites looking within sites. Whatever without necessarily digging and how it's changed. And Chris you pointed out something really good that you start to outline the changes not just in survey writ large like I was thinking about it. But between the planning and the doing and I think that's a really good ah, a good way of breaking it down. So let's let's. 00:30.98 archpodnet Um, yeah. 00:38.73 Paul Dive right into these in that order and and talk about the planning what ways has planning so archeological survey for you as the owner of a CRm company changed since you've been doing this. 00:53.34 archpodnet Yeah I think it really comes down to you know budgets you try to do things as cost effective as possible which is a nice way of saying as cheap as possible and you want to I mean realistically I mean if we could employ everybody and pay them. Ah a great wage then we would do that. But honestly. 01:00.80 Paul And you want to. 01:10.33 archpodnet You you have to find the best way to figure out what your survey is going to be how you're going to do it what all that you know all that's going to happen. You know, along the way there and then put the people out on the ground if you put people out on the ground too soon. And they've got to figure some stuff out. Well now you've got people burn in time at one hundred and fifty dollars an hour you know trying to figure out where they're supposed to go and and what they're supposed to do so and and that's a lot how I was directed when I first got into this. 01:35.50 Paul Wait a sec wait a sec I got to stop you right there a hundred and fifty a hundred and fifty dollars an hour. Wow I got to talk to the people that employ me. 01:40.88 archpodnet Um, okay now this is a good time to direct people to the Crm Archeology podcast where we often talk about the difference between billable rates and your actual pay rate. Ah. 01:55.13 Paul Ah, ah. 01:58.19 archpodnet Good good plug there for the for the Searamark Podcast ball so I mean honestly, though, mine mine isn't even 150 I think my billable rates. There's usually like a multiplier. So if I'm paying somebody I don't know pull out a route number like $30 an hour. My multiplier is about two point four I think so. 02:04.33 Paul Ah I Don mind. 02:17.56 archpodnet That means my billable rate for them is somewhere around $70 an hour give or take um and that just means you know I'm able to cover obviously my insurance my expenses all that stuff. That's not covered in your ali plus your taxes right? So whatever taxes you pay I'm also paying so yes. 02:19.72 Paul Somewhere around 70 hours an hour and I just. 02:27.93 Paul Right? Yep yep. 02:35.29 archpodnet As a business owner you have to figure out all those things and when it comes down to it like the survey that we did with a couple other companies out in Nevada a couple years ago, you know we spent a lot of time me and the other two company owners. 1 of them was working on the gis side. 1 of them was working on the report and ah. 02:46.27 Paul That ah. 02:53.94 archpodnet My company was focusing mainly on the survey itself but those 2 companies you know one of them. She's collecting all this data from the forester was saying okay, what are we recording? What is the you know what is the what makes a site you know where are all the previously recorded sites getting those into a gis and then the other guy looking at the yeah gis is doing like um. 03:06.56 Paul Yeah, the other. 03:13.44 archpodnet You know slope analysis because we're not recording over certain um over certain slopes. We're identifying all the roads and we're putting all that on the maps before we even go out into the field and do any Surveys. So Realistically we should just be able to walk up to an area and we know we have to survey here. We know about what we're going to find if there's previously recorded sites. And we get on it and we do it and that saves time so from ah from a very limited standpoint. Um, that is how we how we make things a little bit more efficient now if we had a lot more money we may have incorporated a lot more like maybe satellite Imagery or like I said even drone flights and things like that. But. You know, oftentimes there just isn't the time for that at scales that I work at. 03:56.70 Paul Yeah, well, that's snope so snope that slope analysis that that you just mentioned was was actually one of the things I was thinking of because that I could really imagine that as a yeah as a business owner that that's huge right? If you can. 04:01.64 archpodnet Ah, yeah. 04:05.47 archpodnet Oh. 04:15.34 Paul Pre-write off a certain amount of of territory that has to be covered because it's hazardous. You know you cannot physically safely go and and survey it that gives you the the opportunity to give the client a much better estimate of of how long it's going to take and how much money is going to take. 04:31.55 archpodnet Yes. 04:35.70 Paul Ah, so that's a big one and that wouldn't always have been possible but now with the rise of Gis tools. Um, it's fairly easy I mean the big gotcha in it is of course the quality of the ah of the base imagery that you've got that that. You know those dtms that tell you what that you're going to extract what the slope is from you know and but what we found and to the credit of the guy that was doing the yeah gis was that it was pretty good. You know there weren't many places that he marked that we shouldn't go that that we could have gone and conversely there weren't many places that we didn't want to go that he didn't already flag. 04:54.26 archpodnet Um, well and that's. 05:11.50 archpodnet Yeah, and that's that that I think is another thing has changed which is the quality of information coming from the client, especially a big one like the one we were working with you know they're they're managing a lot of land across both Blm and forest service leased properties and they already had. 05:11.50 Paul So you know yeah. 05:24.78 Paul Um. 05:28.87 archpodnet Really high resolution um detailed imagery and digital elevation models of their entire property and they let us they gave us access to all of that if we didn't have that with these highly sloped areas and these mountainous terrains. We'd been in a world of hurt trying to get to some places that ultimately we didn't even have to survey you know what? I mean just to get there to find that out. So. 05:32.12 Paul 3 individual can they let us. 05:43.87 Paul Yeah, get there. 05:48.30 archpodnet Yeah, we took the total acreage that we had to survey which was in the tens of thousands and dropped probably 70% of it out because of slope because of cliff sides and things like that and man just the I mean this this project would have been several million dollars instead of you know a fraction of that. So yeah. 05:54.67 Paul Out. Yeah website. Yeah yeah. 06:05.50 Paul Yeah, and having been on that survey team I'm thankful that we didn't have to climb up and down every slope because on those were really really were treacherous but that's one of the great things. 06:14.88 archpodnet Ah, yeah, and you're already starting a high altitude too. 06:20.50 Paul Yeah, yeah, the availability of that imagery you know whether it's ah you know a lidar imagery that's provided by a private company most of the states I believe in the in the Us now have lidar imagery that you can download I've used that myself actually um without throwing anybody under the bus here. Ah. 06:26.39 archpodnet Good. 06:38.79 Paul I did a project I was working on a small project and we were asked to find a building that we knew existed in an area and the person had asked us to do a couple test trenches and he located where we were supposed to work and we looked and decided that what we were told was not actually the correct location after the um. After the project wrapped up I found New York state had some lidar data freely available downloaded it looked at it and could see the footprint of the building where we had figured that it was as opposed to where we were told it was going to be even though that building was long gone. Yeah. 07:13.41 archpodnet Um, yeah. 07:16.40 Paul Ah, so the planning with available imagery. That's a huge thing because when I was doing my dissertation the available imagery that I had when I started in 97 versus when I finished the fieldwork data collection in 2004 across those 13 years ah Was tremendous The amount of things that became available and not just new higher resolution things. But other things that the model for the accessing them had changed so I used to have to like get permission and pay money to. 07:39.44 archpodnet Um. 07:46.14 archpodnet Right. 07:54.12 Paul Maybe the government body that collected it I can't remember who at this point in order just to access it to determine if it was going to be useful for me or not and by the end of it. It was like yeah, just sign up for our free account on our website and download it at your leisure. You know. 08:02.25 archpodnet Yeah. 08:11.50 archpodnet That you're totally right? that has changed so much in in just the past few years I remember that even when I first started doing my own projects for my own company in Nevada just like ten years ago and you know just even getting. Ah. Usgs Topo Maps was a pain in the ass. You know what I mean just trying to trying to find those and and and pick them up. But now they're they're almost available just about anywhere and they're they're updated and really good and you know all the other imagery and different things you might need. That's usually accessible somewhere you may still have to pay for it in some cases depending on who collected it. But. 08:25.18 Paul Usda Mobile just trying that trying to mind those. 08:43.90 archpodnet In general if it's a government resource and you don't need a paper copy of something you can take a digital one. You can almost always get it for free. You know if it's like a map or something like that. So um, yeah, you're still going to pay for paper copies if you need those. But if you just need the files you mean more often than not, you could just get those So that's really good. 08:59.33 Paul Yeah, and then you know parallel to that is know which we've already mentioned is the use of gis and how it went from being kind of you know when I started in the 90 s it went from being a niche thing to being something that's expected and it's expected that every company above but a certain size has gis specialists on. Every academic project has a gis component and every archeologist is at least conversant with yeah Gis if not you know facile with it. So um, that that has been really cool to me as somebody who's always liked it. It's just it's a set of tools or a way of looking at the world. 09:19.64 archpodnet Ah. 09:24.27 archpodnet Um, yeah. 09:38.58 Paul That that always just intuitively resonated with me. 09:40.66 archpodnet You know I'm really curious about the availability of this kind of data in other countries and I have no doubt that we're going to have a spirited conversation with our Belgian friend who's a member of the archeology Podcast Network You always frequently comments with really insightful things to say on a number of our shows, especially the arche architect. 09:52.23 Paul Um, the are no podcast network. 09:59.59 archpodnet Episodes so looking forward to that if you want to join in in that conversation. arcpodnet.comforward/membersand you can join our slack team and and continue the conversation but otherwise Paul you know I don't know how much you've been involved in the planning stages aside from say Lagosh um, and some of those things over there but and some of the other projects you've done. 10:17.36 Paul Um, some of the other projects. 10:19.10 archpodnet In other parts of the world. Um, you know do you have any sense of the availability of this kind of data in those places. 10:26.20 Paul It's ah it's variable I mean a lot of places that I've worked still the best topo data unless you have access to you know something that was done by say a a geological firm a an oil company or a military and those are all you know, usually held pretty close to the vest. Ah, some of the best imagery we've got for elevations is is still srtm which is not nearly detailed enough for really anything that I would ever do which is a shame. You know it's good on landscape scales but not on landscape with the detail. 10:54.15 archpodnet Right. 11:01.19 Paul That archaeologists like to look at the landscape. So my my my impression thus far has been that it's pretty hard now that said a lot of aerial imagery like Spy Satellite Imagery has become readily accessible and so people that I work with. 11:02.37 archpodnet Right? okay. 11:19.60 Paul Have gotten access to that and that's also interesting because most of it dates to the 80 s and earlier and it gives us a a view of the landscape and the landscape changing at a fairly high resolution resolution that you know requires. 11:19.67 archpodnet Ah. 11:39.30 Paul Ah, us to yeah mean the the tools that we currently have available say you you know Google earth through Google maps or whatever but it requires that over a period of time. So if you're looking at in the logo case we're looking at the logosh the site of loggoche in the 80 s when it was being excavated. Ah, in the 70 s when it's been excavated. We scout themselves from the 60 s or the 50 s and you know and you can tie those then in with other historical documents and try to understand the landscape in ah in a different way. Maybe not strictly an archeological way but it does give us a perspective that we didn't have prior and that again that's nothing new. Other than the new availability of these things because in the height of the cold war nobody was going to divulge any of that. But now some of these these images sets are available. Um. 12:21.80 archpodnet Yeah. 12:27.76 Paul Which is again a long-winded way of me is saying that. Yeah, it's It's extremely variable from country to country and not just country to country but where you are in country to country where you are and what it is that you want to see. But if you want something very current, very accurate. It may not exist or may not exist where you have access to it. 12:34.36 archpodnet Yeah. 12:46.48 Paul But overall the access to these things has gotten better and more comprehensive over time. 12:51.56 archpodnet Okay, well let's take our final break and come back on the other side in the meantime you can really help us out by looking down at the device and seeing what you're listening to this podcast on and if it's Apple Podcast go leave a review or at least a rating. Let us know how we're doing or what you hate and and you know. Call us a bunch of frauds that's okay, we can take it and we take reviews on Spotify as well and and you know what if you want to let us know that you did that because those services don't let us know you know, hit us up on. Um you know you can send me an email Chris at archaeologyponetwork.compaul's contact information is also in the show notes you can just look down and you can see that. 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