00:00.41 archpodnet Welcome back to episode one Twenty nine of a life and ruins podcast. We're here with Matt Stern David Howe and we we ended the last segment talking about or at least teasing that we're going to talk more about pine nuts. Um, and people who have listened this podcast for 129 episodes we'll we'll know that I did part of my research. My master's research on modeling in the wind river range and lo and behold. This is the creator of that lovely model and the person who initially used it. Um, so Matt if you don't mind talking about kind of. What was the impetus to create the model and and how it ended up working out. 00:42.61 Matt Stirn Yeah, you bet? Um, so during um, actually even before we we really started working in the winds before I was invited. Um, rich Adams had been a ah big advocate for the importance of pine nuts to prehistored people and. Um, he did a few studies and determined that by weight white bar pine nuts which grow above basically at treeline and and along the continental divide were single handedly. The fatest food source available to any prehistoric people in North America like even more so than than the fattiest meat. 01:16.30 Matt Stirn And so when he when you found these villages amongst white park pine stands. He kind of had this idea. Well maybe um, mountain people. Um the late prehisor period were were going up specifically to to harvest them like building these whole villages just around pine nuts and obviously doing other things. But. Pie nuts were the big draw and so we kind of had this idea for a couple years and and as we were excavating high-rise usually we would spend a couple days working and then going out and seeing what else was out there because for the most part none of the other drainages surrounding high-rise village had ever been surveyed for archeology. And within the first couple of years we found 3 or 4 smaller. But but just as impressive villages and we noticed that they were basically the same site but on different mountains they were same elevation facing the same direction and lo and behold. They were all amongst really old white bar pine stands. And again one of the most common artifacts we founded all of them was Monos and meates the perfect implement for grinding pine nuts and so when I was at my undergrad Davidson College I took a class um on gis and remote sensing and my professor bill ringle he works in central america on myan sites. But he's done a lot of ah. Computer modeling and for archaeological prospection and we kind of came up with this idea that there seemed to be there was only 3 sites but there seemed to be a pattern in the winds amongst villages and we had this kind of underlying theory and so we wrote ah a gi yeah where we created a gis predictive model. 02:49.55 Matt Stirn That looked at the the terrain the the solar radiation. Um, the the landscape and also um, we we tried to create based on what we knew about climate data where ample white bar pine stands would have existed in the wind river range two thousand to five hundred years ago and so we um I created a predictive model that basically spat out ah a map of the wind river range with most likely areas rated from 0 to 9 and 9 being. Um, if we're right either where villages should be and so the the following year this was in 4011 I believe could have been 14010 maybe um, got funding from Davidson College and also the Explorer's Club to go out and look and so we did 3 one week trips deep into the winds to places we hadn't been before and we actually found 21 new villages and every single one of them was on. 1 of these kind of Xes that the predictive model had had generated and so I was joke that like x never ever marks a spot in archeology. But this was like the one and only time that it ever worked out that it did um and and sure like we we could have been It could be something else, but we um, we ran some statistical analyses on. Areas we found the villages on versus what else existed in the entire area we were serving and according to those models. There was less than like 0.0 1% chance that this was a random pattern. 04:23.57 Matt Stirn Um, but what the so we we had this great. Um, we had this great model. It worked. We were very surprised but it's interesting because we didn't know if it worked elsewhere and that's kind of where Connor's research came in and and what you found I guess was kind of a little bit of a different story. 04:39.63 archpodnet yeah yeah I think and I think there's a lot of and rich and I have talked about this and and Brian and I think we have discussed this too. It was just it feels like a much different environment in the southern winds and a more heavily trafficked area too. 04:57.48 Matt Stirn Um. 04:58.25 archpodnet But we really didn't find any any sort of indications of of villages or or Village sites in the Southern winds not meaning that the the model was incorrect it just they weren't there. Um, but. 05:09.62 Matt Stirn Yeah, yeah. 05:12.58 archpodnet There was sites that occurred in these flat areas. Um and and in the same sort of areas they were predicted but they didn't really have the same sort of signature that you were seeing almost like exclusively. Yeah. 05:21.33 Matt Stirn Seem it seemed to be like hyper local within in just a few drainages. Um, but it's really cool because the artifacts we found. There were pretty much diagnostic of the shoshone or the the sheepeas the mountain shishone and so fast. Forward. Five or six years when we were working in Jackson we got to collaborate with some shoshone bannock elders and actually go to the base like the parking lot where we hike up into the winds and and spend a couple days talking with them about the discovery of these villages and it's it's really cool because they they fall into. Um, oral histor is that the shoshone haven't really shared much outside of their and their own circles but it was really wild that they had memories of these village but no like actual proof they existed and so it's really cool to to be able to find these and have them mean a little bit more than just finding an incredible archeological site. 06:09.71 Jesus of Nayarit That Yeah, that's awesome. Um, Tussa just thinking the whole time too like ah the bone needle we found at Laprell somebody had commented like it's nuts that like something so small was like intergal or survival. 06:24.73 Matt Stirn Um, yeah. 06:27.40 Jesus of Nayarit But like I didn't even know pine nuts for a thing until I like Met Connor I he was like have you eaten pesto and I was like oh right? Yeah ah like just like that little nut was so like important to their culture up there and their food is like pretty pretty intense to me and. 06:41.64 Matt Stirn Yeah, it's incredible I Always thought to be fun I don't know if you would get anything with it but to look at like a pine nut index around the world to see if there's any not like similarities but to see if like early culture or different things evolved or or there's some kind of pattern where these fatty nuts exist around the world. Something for a rainy day. Maybe. 06:59.85 Jesus of Nayarit Yeah, yeah. 07:00.54 archpodnet Yeah, yeah for sure. Ah, and I know I've seen some pictures of like some of the I think it was like Julian so steward stuff in the great basin where you kind of see these implements whether using the harvests um white white park or it wasn't white park. It was some other pine. 07:15.71 Matt Stirn Yeah, probably pinion or or one of those other ones Limber Pine maybe 07:17.96 archpodnet But it's yeah, yeah, yeah, but it was really cool to see like the the industry they had created around it these super intricate like I think it was like a basket that they were using to ultimately like take all these pine cones down and then you have to like and it's a whole process. You. 07:34.96 Matt Stirn Yeah, we did a little bit but it got it's It's not easy I mean it. It takes a while to to do and so again, that's why we're wondering if to to do it to the extent that you needed to feed like a whole family or a whole population. Maybe that's a reason why these villages popped up is that you actually needed to spend like a solid amount of time there. 07:35.37 archpodnet Right? And you guys did a little bit of like. 07:51.52 archpodnet Vision life. 07:54.35 Matt Stirn To to really process the nuts to the extent that you could take them with you or turn them into something to eat. 08:01.76 archpodnet And you also had the you and you and Rebecca also are studying um these soapstone bowls for evidence of of white art kind used as well. 08:09.26 Matt Stirn We are yeah um because we actually found ah where we worked with ah a canadian scientist who does lipid residues and in an old 1950 s medical journal of all things she found a way to extract. Ah, fatty acids from artifacts without destroying them because typically it's a highly destructive process you have to powder whatever artifact you're doing and and we didn't want to do that, especially with things like pottery which is very rare in Wyoming. Um, and so we we both developed a technique together to. Extract lipids which can be traced to individual species of animals and the cool part two is it not only worked on buried artifacts but we we got incredible results from surface artifacts. Um, which which is really neat to do and yeah, we found ah all kinds of food but again on all the groundstone. 08:51.81 Jesus of Nayarit Really. 09:00.71 Matt Stirn We found 2 things. It was either entirely used for white buck pine or it was used for tubers like biscuit root and marmot um, and it was really wild that they were. They were just bashing up um marmot and and beavers to to. Um. 09:14.90 Jesus of Nayarit Happy. 09:18.47 Matt Stirn Meet their soup but I mean those things are incredibly hard to butcher. So maybe it's better just to to mush them all together with ah a large stone but 1 of the coolest things we found was ah was freshwater fish. So either trout or ling or maybe even salmon but in a soapstone bowl from a site near high risee and the other ingredients we found in that matched. Ingredient for ingredient the recipe for a shoshone fish ste that ethnographers recorded on the fort hall reservation in the early eighteen hundreds I think that finding that and like seeing it match a known ethnographic recipe was probably one of the coolest things of my career. 09:52.20 archpodnet Yeah, absolutely I mean that really connects to like the the upper mountain range to lower and and and the people who were there before which is not something very off. 09:52.27 Jesus of Nayarit And again. 10:01.43 Matt Stirn Yeah, kind of it brings it brings it in the modern day too which is something that is always with really neat when you can accomplish it or when you get lucky and not not accomplish it. But lucky enough to see that connection made. 10:15.32 archpodnet Um, touching go ahead. 10:16.81 Jesus of Nayarit It's ah oh I was just thinking. It's so interesting of the grinding of the small animals I've never heard of that being done but it makes sense because you could just pick out the bones at that point and. 10:24.52 archpodnet And. 10:28.93 Matt Stirn Yeah I think yeah and you would get nutrients from ground up bones as well. I think maybe if you cooked it long enough in ah in a soup or stew. You might not notice them another another project for a rainy day What we're researching the history of Pine nuts. 10:36.38 Jesus of Nayarit Yeah, right? Yeah yeah. 10:45.70 archpodnet Um, so and as you've mentioned before you have this kind of really interesting breadth of knowledge which you use today I think we're what we'll talk about in the last segment. What do you do for your actual job. Um, but you did continue on. 10:59.26 Matt Stirn Um. 11:01.84 archpodnet And academia and get a master's degree at the University Of Sheffield um what did you kind of study there. 11:06.90 Matt Stirn yeah um yeah and I guess talking about the the lipid residues as a great interlude to that. Um, and so when I was figuring I knew I wanted to go to grad school I I really want this was the time where we were really working heavily in the winds and I was finishing my undergrad I was like Hush I want to continue doing this. It. Um, and and continue my education and at the time I was getting not frustrated but just kind of feeling weird about archeological or anthropological theory. Um, that was that really surrounded a lot of our research in the winds as to why people were building. These massive villages and a landscape that is is really quite difficult for those who aren't familiar with it and there was all these these theoretical perspectives getting wrapped up in it and in my mind I was like well we're spending so much time centered on these questions of why. We still don't know what and when they were even doing and at that time I'd had some friends who had gone to the University Of Sheffield in Northern England and um when when we applied to go there. It was the largest archaeological program actually in the world I mean they had 75 professors on faculty. And their their main focus was archaeological science and and they called it environmental archeology but it was essentially using scientific proxies like biomolecular studies or residues environmental data to rather than asking. 12:33.96 Matt Stirn Why things happen to actually answer how when and what people were doing first I was like well that that's the answer to my question. Um, and so actually my my wife and I got she's a fellow archaeologist we got in the same program and and we went for a couple years over to England and it was really really eye openingening to me. Um. Because I had this background in anthropological theory from the us but then getting um the the masters in science over there was just a ah, really cool compliment to it. Um and just getting to see how how people did things in the old world and so kind of coming back with that that. Arsenal and excitement of throwing science at archaeological sites kind of led us to doing this this big residue study in the mountains but it also showed me which was I'll talk maybe at the the end if we have time one of the biggest warnings I got from professors. This is for all the students out there going to school at the university a cheffield they said well you want to work in the Us. But if you go to school in England you're going to lose all your contacts. You're going to turn into an old world archeologist and and one of the greatest things about going to school. There was. Seeing a that's not true, but b it's it's totally possible to to build a ah career that includes both work in the Mediterranean and in Wyoming in the United States um and kind of getting to pass that that knowledge on like proof that he can actually do it. Um was was really. 13:59.34 Matt Stirn Really, really neat. 14:00.17 Jesus of Nayarit Yeah I have heard and seen a lot of people that do get a degree overseas really struggle getting a job back here, especially academic because yeah, it's just a different system. 14:11.55 Matt Stirn Um, yeah, ed totally and I think so the career we went with was was a little unorthodox as well. Um, but I kind of had this thought as I don't I didn't necessarily want to get pigeonholed with a specific culture or geographical region. Because I had interests and in doing archeology all over the place and so by specializing in in scientific techniques I hoped at the time that this could be a skill set that could be applied anywhere and actually might be more valuable for hirers rather than just saying like. I'm a hunter gatherther archaeologist or I'm a um Greek maritime archaeologist rather I can I can actually analyze any type of artifact to learn about um or or look at a suite of artifacts and come up with with specific analytical techniques to look at them might be something that. Would allow us to work anywhere in the world and and so far it has. 15:07.15 archpodnet Yeah I remember I remember you see it showing pictures or or I don't think it was Instagram at the time seeing you might have been all right? but I've seen pictures of you you know with like Greek and Roman vasive or pottery and and things like that and it's cool that you have a transferable skill. 15:21.79 Matt Stirn Um, and. 15:26.39 archpodnet That is cross-c culturalural I mean I don't think that's something that's mentioned much in archeology. Yeah, we we pigeonhole ourselves into I mean David's different obviously because he does dogs all over. But I think having that broad skill set or like that broad research interest is. 15:39.53 Matt Stirn Um. 15:42.12 Jesus of Nayarit And marketable. 15:45.80 archpodnet Like you said, a great a great tool. Yeah, absolutely. 15:46.55 Matt Stirn Yeah I've come to the fact that I'll probably never be an expert in anything but I'm happy being mediocre in a lot of things. 15:53.50 Jesus of Nayarit That is a really good way to put it and like rich tries to explain that to me in terms of like getting a master's versus a ph d it's like you can have an interest in everything but a ph d is like you have an interest in 1 thing and everything excites me. So. 16:08.40 Matt Stirn Um. 16:11.16 Jesus of Nayarit And be hard to just pick one for 6 years that 16:13.85 Matt Stirn Yeah I always say my biggest obstacle as I'm just interested in too many things. But there's there's ways to work around it. Um, but yeah, we actually gotsh we might we just got back from working in Greece. Um. 16:16.88 Jesus of Nayarit Yeah, oh I get that. 16:24.14 archpodnet Yeah, um, yeah. 16:31.49 Matt Stirn Six weeks ago we were excavating a trojan war palace over there. Yeah, it was pretty wild. Yeah crazy going from like transitioning from ° in the Mediterranean to negative ° and freezing snowstorms in the mountains. 16:35.85 Jesus of Nayarit That's just casual. 16:47.96 Jesus of Nayarit Yeah. 16:49.94 Matt Stirn But maybe that's the beauty of it I don't know. 16:52.53 archpodnet Yeah I think on on that note um, will ah talk more in the the next segment about your current ah studies and all that fun stuff. So ah, this is episode one Twenty nine of a life and ruins podcast. We will be right back. 16:59.96 Matt Stirn Um, yes, let's see.