00:01.95 archpodnet Welcome to the rock art podcast everybody this is Chris Webster and if you're hearing my voice that means it's just Allen and I today and we are actually going to talk about ah something that's been in the news recently and also kind of relate this back to North America Alllan how's it going. 00:17.62 alan Good. How are you Chris thanks so much for patching in. You're ah you're on your on your mobile Caravan as it's called a digital nomad you're ah traveling around the world and. 00:18.94 archpodnet Good. 00:30.53 archpodnet That's right. 00:33.76 alan Here We go through the through the world of magic and digital technology. We get to continue our ah ongoing conversation on all things rock guard and related manners. So I guess we're going to I Guess we're going to talk about ah they call it a map I'd never heard it. 00:45.43 archpodnet Um, yeah, absolutely. 00:52.58 alan Call the map per se but we're talking about this thing we might call game diversion fences and I guess they're characteristic both in the old world and the new is that correct. 01:04.58 archpodnet Um, yeah, that's right, it's been in the news if you're listening to this in real-time we're recording this in the last week of May Twenty Twenty three and there's been some. News articles that have come out and actually on the archeology show that I co-host with my wife. We talked about this a few months ago and I'll link to our episode in the show notes. But these desert kites they call them. Um, found out in Middle East Saudi Arabia in particular Jordan and Saudi Arabia I should say for these particular ones. But yeah, they're just big. Huge I mean many hundreds and hundreds of feet long rock walls used to corral um animals and then they would kill them. You know when they got to the when they got to the end. 01:46.21 alan Ah, yeah, so this this phenomenon is quite characteristic of the desert west have you ever seen them on the ground Chris or no. 01:58.87 archpodnet Yeah, yeah, we see him out Nevada Occasionally when you see just ah um, just a stone fence. Well they used them the confusing thing in Nevada too sometimes is that they used them historically as well to herd like cattle and stuff like that. So um, but yeah, we see him. 02:06.96 alan Sure. 02:14.17 archpodnet I've seen them occasionally in the in the west in Nevada and I know people find them all the time up in like the dakoas I think some places where they haven't been plowed. So yeah. 02:19.90 alan Yeah, yeah, so this caught my eye for a variety of reasons because there's a lot of parallels and issues relating to my own research that sort of overlap this first of all, there's a. The rock art researcher who believes that we have depictions of these game diversion fences in the rock art record itself in association with a bighorn cheap antelope and deer ah hunting sites. So. 02:43.77 archpodnet M. 02:55.22 archpodnet Okay. 02:57.60 alan And he's he's done that through documentation both in the great basin but also in the american southwest and he's he's convinced that they in fact, show that and and I think he's correct I've seen them also out in Utah where they actually show. Ah, depiction of the fence and the ah the drive and a ah particular leader of the drive. Perhaps ah a shaman who is ah who has a yeah bighorn cheap headdress on and he's leading this particular exercise to a hunt. 03:20.32 archpodnet Ah. 03:35.74 alan And slay the animals fascinating. Ah yeah. 03:35.98 archpodnet Right? Yeah and and the interesting thing about this article that's in the news now is that they they they saying it may be the world's oldest blueprints. That's the scientific American article that I'm looking at here because they have found some. 03:47.68 alan Yes. 03:51.46 archpodnet So basically large rock slabs that seem to basically have the idea of these things drawn out drawn to scale you know, carved out into the rock like here's how we're going to build this thing or here's how you do build one of these things and it's you know 7 8000 years old which I think is. 03:57.90 alan Right? right. 04:06.29 alan And and the age on that one that they estimated was was not 9 to ten nine to 10000 years old so that would be ah right? Yeah, so when we see such features. Well first of all on the landscape. 04:09.22 archpodnet Fantastic. 9010? Okay, yeah. 04:23.25 alan There's monographs that have been written lengthy ah treatises about these features all over the desert West and they and they claim that the Principal animal they were going after was antelope the pronghorn antelope and the reason being it's on the Valley floor. 04:33.12 archpodnet Um. 04:36.85 archpodnet Okay. 04:42.58 alan So if it's on the valley floor. They would be going after Pronghorn Antelope or deer because that's the way you could hunt them and that's the way you could get them. They would channel them into a restricted area and then they would have their archers or their you know their. 04:53.25 archpodnet Okay. 05:01.49 alan People that would be ready to go to kill these animals either with dart and not lotel or bows and arrows and they would probably be hiding behind either brush or rock structures like the um those those blinds those those those rock blinds. 05:19.31 archpodnet Yeah. 05:20.43 alan That they talk about and so but the the key is this is a piece of like like landscape archaeology because you have to find a particular place that you can constrict them. You have to engineer this elaborate exercise of an enclosure. And it's It's quite an ah elaborate enclosure does that make does that make sense. 05:42.40 archpodnet Yeah, it does it does and I I Really love this too because I just love seeing the I love seeing something that gives us a little. Impression of the way people thought back then because you know we can kind of infer that from artifacts and and from building materials and things like that. But the more that we see especially seeing this illustrated on you know as a carving and then seeing it played out on the landscape as ah as a teaching moment right? Yeah, it's. 06:06.75 alan On a rock. Yeah yeah, and and I think I think it's It's very cool now this this sort of connects back with this said. 06:15.41 archpodnet Pretty cool. 06:24.20 alan They call it game Intercept drive sites. That's one of the elaborate pieces of you know verbiage that they use to talk about these and these things were the heyday for these sorts of things at least in the far West was again the middle archaic. 06:27.91 archpodnet Huh. 06:43.16 alan From about 2000 bc to circa a d one and what what blew my mind about them was in doing the research for 1 of my articles on projectile points that I'm always obsessed with um is they found one of these. 06:45.38 archpodnet Okay. 07:02.60 alan Ah game Intercept drive site with hundreds of projectile points that had had those impact fractures where they were shot shot and then the then the the proximal end broke off of those points. 07:09.81 archpodnet Oh. 07:16.56 archpodnet Oh. 07:20.78 alan So they found hundreds of them 2 different kinds humboldt basil notch bifaces and and elcos but on top of that they found Twenty Five Thousand pieces of animal bone from the um those pronghorn antelopes. 07:37.58 archpodnet Wow. 07:39.72 alan And and this was a site in what's called the anchorite hills on the edge of California and Nevada and that's that's that's rather amazing. Don't you think. 07:48.69 archpodnet Okay, oh absolutely. Yeah, it's um, it's it really is and you know one thing that that just reminded me of too is we we always hear well I've heard in the past I don't know how many they've found. But. Have found some of these game drive ah fences in underneath the great lakes I think underneath lake superior and underneath like Michigan. Yeah because you know because back when the the ice age happened. Those lakes were. 08:10.68 alan Oh really, really. 08:18.83 archpodnet You know, not there if not way smaller right? at the end of the ice age when the when the glaciers have retreated over the top of them and carved out the basically the lakes and hadn't hadn't filled them back in yet. So people it was still just the plains you know. So it's pretty cool. Yeah, it's pretty neat. 08:32.54 alan Exactly. But I think I think this particular perspective on rock art on hunting features and the nature of sort of landscape archeology. Um is it is an interface. 08:44.99 archpodnet Ah. 08:50.43 alan That sort of brings up this this whole topic of of a new theme or or a relatively new theme called Landscape Archaeology and landscape archaeology is sort of commensurate with at equivalent with or interactive with the cutting edge. 08:58.68 archpodnet Yes. 09:10.16 alan Digital nature of the most you know I'd say the newest newest in technology and so what what someone does is work with the kinds of technology that you've taught us about using those um elaborate gis machines right. 09:16.90 archpodnet Um. 09:28.90 archpodnet Threat. 09:29.41 alan Out in the out in the field but also twinning them with a means of creating a 3 hree-dimensional model of the landscape and also using drone photography to do that same thing. So. 09:44.12 archpodnet Um. 09:47.43 alan 1 of the things I want to mention is I I was on the committee with one of my board members Ryan Gersner who's had 1 of the episodes on here for his work up in baha but his master's thesis work at the University Of Southern California 09:55.59 archpodnet Um. 10:01.86 archpodnet Brett. 10:05.56 alan Was on landscape archaeology doing this gis work. Um on the landscape trying to tie in or reconstruct the hunting behavior with the physical features on the landscape and the topography. 10:08.70 archpodnet Um, ah. 10:24.69 alan And the landforms. So it's a multi-layered phenomenon and I was ah very impressed and also it has to do with rock art as well because the rock art that is there in the ah association. 10:25.35 archpodnet Nice, yeah. 10:40.25 archpodnet Um. 10:42.44 alan With all of these features depicts projectile points. Huge dart points and the interaction of the Hunters hunting the sheep both with the ah lotels. 10:53.80 archpodnet Nice, nice, all right? Well that was a good setup for this show, especially talking about the article again look at the links in the show notes. Let's go ahead and take a break because I've got something I want to really get into on the other side of this and it's just been. It's just been in my head since I saw this article So Let's talk about this on the other side of the break. Back in a minute.