00:00.00 archpodnet Welcome to episode none of a life ruins podcast reinvestigate the careers of those living a life in ruins im your host carlton shield chief goover and I am joined by my co-host Connor Johnn for this week's episode. We are joined by a familiar guest. Dr David S Anderson who is an assistant professor of anthropology at Radford University um you guys should all be aware at this point that Dr Anderson is a longtime guest of the show none appearing way back in episode None and then again for episode None as part of our ancient siv series Dr. Anderson thank you so much for joining us on the show again. How are you doing this evening. 00:31.58 David Anderson I am doing great I am pleased to be back and I am particularly thrilled to refer to you as Dr Gover at this point I know you were saying you've got a couple of hoops to jump through let still but you are almost there and. 01:20.64 archpodnet Yes. 00:59.32 David Anderson Ah, you are officially as far as I'm aware the None the first student I had as an undergrad who has gone all the way through to finish the ph d and that's pretty amazing thing. 01:44.84 archpodnet Awesome! yeah. 00:52.50 connor I think ah I think you you're going to be even more proud when Carlton tells you what happened today. So this is um, may sixteenth twenty twenty two and carlton may or may not have gotten some insane news that we are announcing live. But's ah it's live on this podcast now and you'll be the none one to hear it here. So Carlton will explain to us what sort of email you received today and you know what? what things look like in the future for you right. 02:42.44 archpodnet So it was a phone call from Indiana University offering me an assistant professorship of anthropology and curator of Public archeology at Indiana University Um, so I will get the contract tomorrow. So. 02:35.22 David Anderson Um, yes. 03:14.34 archpodnet As of August I'm going to be on the tenure track at indiana university as long as I get to those last couple hoops. Thank you? Yeah I was blown away when they called thank you? Yeah um. 02:55.62 David Anderson Congratulations that is astounding that is really fantastic news. Many many congratulations. 03:49.46 archpodnet I'm super stoked I can't I can't believe I've able to do it only 2 interviews only 2 job apps that I'm in. So yeah. 03:31.68 David Anderson But that is yeah that was not my record but. 03:14.24 connor Yes, but but just say and just for the rest of the people who are in ph d world and that your record is not like that that he is. You know we're very proud of him and we're um, you know this isn't the normal route that people get and we're very excited for Carlton for his next step? Um, yeah. 03:54.52 David Anderson Help. 04:38.10 archpodnet No well. Yeah, thank you I'll make I'm excited. But yeah I figured it would be fun to to tell you live Dr Anderson because like yeah, you're one of my None professors at Radford. We've known each other now for like almost. 03:53.66 connor We won't get to sob story here but we are very proud of you. 04:22.16 David Anderson Ah, absolutely. 05:14.68 archpodnet Almost a decade I think I showed up at Radford in 2013 so do's yeah. 04:47.30 David Anderson It's yeah yeah, you weren't in my None class that year. So yeah, it's 9 years so we're almost there. Yeah and I dropped through Indiana pretty regularly so we'll have to like bomb your class at some point. 05:38.92 archpodnet Absolutely yeah, no I'd be looking forward to it I'm I'm really excited to start the next part of my journey going to miss the west but um I think Indian is a really good. 05:23.68 David Anderson Yeah, look you can look forward to some corn I grew up in Illinois I can tell you like flat and corn. That's what you get. 06:06.68 archpodnet Yes, a lot of corn. A lot of corn but ah s. 05:21.42 connor You will excuse me if I don't want immediately jump to visit you as indian has not not the not the top of my destinations to travel to at this moment in time but we still want to go see I want to see you in action I want to see that professor Carlton you know how? how. 06:31.40 archpodnet But yeah. 06:42.40 archpodnet Yeah, we will. We'll definitely have that but ah, enough of that. So for tonight we really wanted to bring Dr Anderson back on to really talk about his knowledge and research into mine archeology and really have that. This conversation to kind of just ask him a lot of questions regarding you know Ah, who are the maya where they go and and kind of everything that surrounds such a highly investigated culture and in world history that it's one of the ones that everyone knows about and so we're ah. Thrilled to have him on and I'm sure you're thrilled not to be talking about pseudo archeology for the none time. So yeah, let's. 07:15.86 connor Um, call to do on it. 07:37.60 David Anderson It It is always is very strange when people want to talk to me about regular archeology I'm like what? oh yeah I can do that? Yeah, like why? what? like I don't have to explain to you that people can carve rock what? like yeah. 07:29.76 connor Way we could talk about the truth and the real things. Ah. 08:30.48 archpodnet Now. Absolutely. 07:49.64 connor Ah, and ah Carlton so you are as demonstrated on 2 podcasts ago was that 2 or 3 with you're talking about your experience you you went down to Mexico so a lot of this kind of stems the context of this starting this conversation is that. 09:06.64 archpodnet Yes. 08:26.90 connor Carlton was just in Mexico and visited what sites did you visit and could you kind of give us like a brief recount of your experience. 09:33.40 archpodnet Yeah, so I during that spring break trip to Ply Del Carmen as part of that I got to visit cchiita in Talloom and I was kind of left wanting to know more um than what I got and that's partly because I picked. Like tour packages was like None things in one day and not necessarily like reached out to my archeologist in their context to like get a personal tour of the museum and everything I just kind of went as part of every other yuppie that was visiting cancun on a tour bus to do like. Chie Chini ah swim in a sinnoe eat some tacos and then go to ah a maya craft workshop with obsidian and then that was my day you know so it wasn't necessarily that immersive experience into the data into the culture and into the archeology. And so that's why we have Dr Anderson on today to fulfill that hole that was left gaping. Um, upon my upon my return. 10:56.28 David Anderson As Qi Chen is it's one of like the the none most visited archeological sites in Mexico as I understand and it's as in tuoom I think is the none you said you went to tuoom as well. You were saying before. And as a result it's it's highly touristy and in particular tuluum and chiannita you get a lot of the Cancun beach tourists that come out and it's it's very interesting because it's great to see people wanting to take a step away from the beach and want to engage with cultural heritage. Ah. But it's there's some problems and some of how these tours end up running kind of I put a pause my like audio is like I hearing you guys find but when I talk the volume on the. 12:42.66 archpodnet Yeah, absolutely So I guess like just to. 12:37.84 David Anderson Like there's nothing going up and down on the little like bars. Okay, okay, all right? So as long as this is actually recording. Okay. 13:13.60 archpodnet Oh we see it on I see it on my end I can see your wavelengths. Yeah yes, it is all right in 3 2 1 yeah so just to kind of get us started. Um Dr Anderson so who who are the maya exactly how how are they described and kind of just what what are we talking about here when it comes to my archeology and. 13:31.24 David Anderson And this is a great archeological question because it especially kicks back to my interest in the pre-classic period in the maya and so we're largely talking about an ethnic group that lives in the Yucatan Peninsula down into the guatemalan highlands to the south. This is often referred to as the Maya world. They are part of mesoamerica in that they have a lot of cultural similarities to the rest of Mesoamerica throughout Mexico but there's something different. There's something special about the Maya. You know the most famous things that we see are things like the art. Architecture and the hieroglyphic writing the maya are the only cultural group in Mesoamerica that had a true writing system every once in a while people argue like the the aztec and teo two wacon have some symbol systems and the aztec so system gets pretty complex at some points. Ah, but the may are the only ones with a true writing system and so with this and with the uniqueness of their art with the differences in their architecture. We can really start to see that they are a different ethnic group or a different cultural group from the rest of Mesoamerica and then if you further go further into central America that you'll. See something different again. But it's a great like classic archeological conundrum because we leave ah as outsiders none learned about the maya culture with the european colonization. And of course they got to speak to maya people and interact with maya people at the time and became aware that there was a separate language group and everything going on. But how you push that ethnic identity onto the archeological record is always hard. Like it's really easy in the post-classic period because it's a lot of the same archeological sites that were occupied when the spanish showed up. Ah, the classic period is pretty obvious as well because you have again that writing system. Then as you start to drift back into the pre-classic. Ah, you have cultural similarities you have material cultural similarities. But there's ah you know they they get different and different and so one of my favorite questions is sort of say like when do we have our none maya people. We absolutely have farmers. Living in the maya lowlands by as early as None bc they're building houses just like maya people do later on. They're using pottery that's relatively similar to other periods of time in the maya. History. Ah, but did they speak a maya language. Maybe. 18:31.80 David Anderson Ah, did they think of themselves as Maya or think of themselves as different from other neighboring groups probably probably thought of themselves as different from other groups. But it's it's that fun moment where you get to start to push back and say like what is ethnic identity and how do we establish it with material culture and it really is that that. Pattern pottery that pattern. What I love I love Mya Mya people or at least people anyway, haveve been building Abl-s shapeped houses in the yucaten peninsula which is sort of ah, an oval with flat sides abs- shaped houses that being been built in this part of the world for. Over 2000 years they are still built to buy maya people to this day. Ah so you see this like great material cultural continuity and that builds into some confidence of like okay we can say like my you know my ah civilization starts at None bc more or less. 20:44.58 archpodnet We gotcha and so when we talk about the maya. Are we talking about something similar to Egypt where there's None capital controlling like a vast disanse and they're all Egyptian or are they more analogous to. Greek city-states where there's an overall hellenistic culture with individual cities that are greek that have their own territories within a greater cultural boundary. 21:02.90 David Anderson The the Greek City -state analogy is is far better. It's it's not perfect of course but we absolutely do not have one single maya capital. There's been some arguments over in recent years about the cotton kingdom and how much territory they might have taken over but broadly speaking. We are looking at a culture area where people are doing similar things but absolutely of the vast majority of the time. Each individual city is ruled by 1 ruler known as an a how sometimes a kohula how or other grand more grand titles that they adopt over time. Ah. It's really cool though. There's a lot of identity strapped up into each one of these individual cities where people live and I should say too especially because there's some old pop culture old sort of ideas that still float around out there in general information. These are cities. Back in like the 60 s and the seventy s there was this empty ceremonial center model was this idea that the maya cities were places where people came to worship and then they would go back home and in the jungle somewhere. Ah, but what we truly know with these cities now is that some of them most of them are home to none people a couple of them were probably karaol and belize was probably home to a 0 people or more these were big places and there were a lot of them. There are. I've never seen a list which is one of the interesting things but there are literally dozens of maya cities that get going during the classic period. 23:46.74 connor And that's really interesting to me. Um, is and this is just speculation. But do you think part of that city-state model and and it existing like that is because you're living in Jungle area and it is hard to say. Maybe harder to interact with folks and you know be a part of larger government if you're in a rainforest like how do you control or you know like really ah you know, dictate over people who live in these kind of areas. 25:12.70 David Anderson Ah I think it's far more something that's unique to the culture itself that there's not an interesting conquest. There's not an interest in taking over by and large there's no sort of reason people think that they would want to take over their neighbor. That's a very western idea. Basically. 25:27.42 connor Okay. 25:52.24 David Anderson And we see this at play in particularly when the spanish 2 show up where the spanish you know, try to conquer the maya and they have a very hard time doing it because the maya have like have no concept of conquering basically going on or it's just like there's and there's so many different groups in the spanish don't know how to see the difference. I love the jungle I love the the month day. The scrub forest that we find in the Yucatan Peninsula today and it's I think of this to your question of like is it just harder to move through. It's harder to move through when you're a weird kringo foreigner like me I I will never like. I have been like outpaced by so many maya men when we're doing field work over the years where it's like they dog dodge and weave through this forest and I get caught on every thorn every sharp poker and every stick in my eye as I'm trying to move forward and they can walk a mile and the time it takes me to walk like one hundred feet sometimes and we truly see this again with this and this spanish show up where the spanish are just so utterly confused by this landscape because there are no hills there are no rivers at least in the northern part of the Yucaon Peninsula and they they don't know their way around and the maya are running circles around them quite literally because. The spanishard is lost and I have been that lost foreigner in this forest before and when you grow up in it. It's it's not strange. It's not hard to move through. 28:13.82 connor Okay, yeah, because I I visited ah when I was very young just drove up through there and that the density of Forest is really intense. You know it's it's just you know. But yeah, that's that's obviously me being outside of my comfort zone. You know I grew up in. Colorado of all places. So it's like okay I can walk through these trees and forests and whatnot but not not the the density that you see in ah out there for sure. 29:56.88 archpodnet And then it just opens up to giant holes in the ground filled with water that you can't escape from it's just like Jungle Jungle Jungle Giant Sinote Jungle Jungle jungle. 29:25.56 David Anderson It is extraordinarily dense. 29:38.30 David Anderson Ah, and and truly my favorite None of my favorite stories from one of my old directors Tony Andrews had told this story and I had a very similar experience myself but he was looking for an archeological site in the Maya world that like. He had ah coordinates this was back in the 60 s or seventy s ah he knew roughly where it was but it's yeah, it's not like he had a Gps but he knew he was close to where it should be and he was literally hacking hacking hacking with his machete until he hit a fifteen meter tall pyramid with the machete and it's like. Oh I found where I'm looking and what I was looking for and like I've not hit um, a pyramid with my machetty but I have quite literally walked a couple of meters past you know a ten twelve meter tall pyramid. And like I I walked past it and I was like ah I guess I guess I'm in the wrong spot I don't know where this site is and I turned around and walk started walking where I come from. It's like oh wait that that thing that giant thing that I just walked past this jungle or this forest this jungle forest as we call it is um, it's incredibly dense and it's incredibly. Hard to move through and it's you know it's go old school anthropology here where you know Boaz discovered that people on Baffin Island had a bunch of different words for snow like it's when you grow up in these environments. You know them and understand them. But when you are foreign to them. They are utterly bewildering. 32:59.16 archpodnet And well that's like a callback to some of the research you did as a graduate student when you went to go survey the Yucatan thinking it was only going to be like 1 field season and then you'd like didn't leave the province because you just kept running into more and more and more and more sites right. 32:52.32 David Anderson Oh yeah, now there's been some really cool lidar work. That's come out of the maya region recently where that it has shown how densely inhabited this this forest was and and it's gotten some hyperbolic coverage and in the news media which is great but. I've been sitting here like saying like yes we knew we knew like there. There are houses through every square inch of this forest. 34:15.88 archpodnet That fair enough and so what what time frame are we looking for from. There's like 3 ways we divvy up maya time. Yeah pre-classic classic and post- classic. Um, what's the time frame. We're looking at. 34:05.13 David Anderson Yeah, yeah, so I've been starting to use in these terms and not even to find them. Ah the the pre-classic period begins you know for Mesoerica we generally say it start. It's about 2000 bc is when you start getting farming villages. Those farming villages come to the Maya world. A little bit later about None bc and then continue on and we get some pretty amazing that when that term pre-classic was defined. It was like okay, there's just farming villages during this period of time but by the time we get to None ad in the Maya World we get some of our none big maya cities. Ah the classic periods. Well excuse me when we get to like 3 400 bc we get some big cities in the maya area that classic period starts about one two hundred there's ah our first maya collapse if you will. Happens around None a d where a lot of the pre-classic sites are abandoned or and ah correct we have a couple hundred years where there's there is stuff happening but there is it's smaller There's not as much happening until we. Sort of tumble into around none a d what's called the late classic period. The early classic is like yeah I don't know what's going on the late classic period for the listeners if you have seen a maya temple if you have seen maya art if you have seen hieroglyphs. It is from the late classic period which lasts for. About 60900 a d and this is truly the sort of height of of effervescence in art architecture and writing traditions that the maya went through the the second maya collapse happens. You know, sort of starting as early as 800 a d and lasting as late as a thousand a d where we have those big cities abandoned again and we move into a post-classic period in that post-classic period. We see some rebuilding. We see some new Maya cities crop up, but. Again, there's kind of a couple hundred year period where things aren't quite are pretty quiet. Ah, by the time we get to about None a d they start to heat up again and we have a lot of large maya cities throughout the peninsula and down into Guatemala all the way up until the fifteen hundreds when the conquistadors show up. And the maya like many ah like virtually all indigenous american populations go through a drastic population loss as a result of epidemic disease and ah the the violence that the conquest brought but None of the most important things ah to highlight I feel like when we're talking Maya is that? ah. 39:23.70 David Anderson This this sort of pop culture notion that the maya disappeared developed ah back in the 60 s and seventy s and I still hear it a lot. What happened to the maya where did they go. They're still there. They survived the conquest. We still have four none mayan language speakers living in the world to this day. And they live all throughout the Yucatan Insula all the way down into Guatemala every virtually everyone I've worked with in the field and Yuretan was an indigenous maya person whos grew up speaking you couldte mayan there is still a large prominent indigenous population of Maya people in this part of the world. 40:59.66 archpodnet And excellent and for our listeners who might be more familiar with some north american sites like chackco and cahokia start ah being ah, they're abandoned by the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. So like right as the um post-classic maya kind of kick things back off, there's some. Ah, population movements up in North America and so you know just because on the opposite side of the imaginary border with this other colonial state does it mean that there's not interactions between what's going on in Central America and in North America so it's all. 41:24.74 David Anderson Oh yeah, and there's there's trade going all the way up all the way up into North America it was just a couple years ago that they finally did some residue analysis on some pottery from Chaco showing that there were they were drinking chocolate all the way up in Chaco. And that chocolate has to come from central America and maybe not necessarily from the Maya. Ah, but absolutely from there. The chocolate only grows in tropical climates and so there was there was some cool trade going on all the way up. 42:54.20 archpodnet Absolutely connor. 42:06.48 connor Yeah, and I think on that note I was going to make some joke about collapsing and how those podcast hasn't collapsed after a None episodes but I will not and yeah, this episode 1 42:44.68 David Anderson That this this could be the 1 42:37.90 connor Episode None this is segment one we will catch you back in a None