00:00.00 archpodnet Welcome to episode one thirty three of a life ruins podcast rein investigatse the careers of those living life in ruins I'm your host Carlton Gover and today I am joined by my co-host Connor John and David is unable to join us because he is currently out taking out 2 birds with 1 stickck for this week's episode. We are joined by Josh wolfert Josh. Thank you so much for being on the show. How are you doing today. Man. 00:22.80 Josh Wolford I'm doing great to stand warm here in a very snowy West Michigan 00:29.90 archpodnet I heard mission got a lot of snow so we got introduced to Josh ah couple like half a year ago at this point so we've been emailing back and forth trying to get him on the show for quite some time. Um and we were really interested by his research. Um. That he's doing now and then more mo when we do that we were really introduced fuck let me redo that again. Sorry Rachel we were really intrigued by his current research as well as his master's thesis. So that's what he's on to talk about. Today. So once again man thank you so much for being so understanding with our ridiculous summer schedule and then us getting back on tracks. We can get you get you out. Ah for the December so welcome to the show man. 01:09.45 Josh Wolford Of. 01:16.30 Josh Wolford Oh Thank you? Yeah work. No worries Man Yeah I Understand how busy it is and you you guys are old in archeology this summer. It's not like you can bring this out to the field I Imagine. I Can yeah. 01:30.76 archpodnet We've tried this is the most diplomatic way to put that we've we've tried but. 01:32.80 connor This. 01:38.20 connor Ah, that's yeah, that's that's where David was all this summer it's like trying to get him you have via starlink to do this was was a wild ah wild ride. 01:42.32 Josh Wolford Digging holes Oh cheese. Yeah I can imagine yeah because they were out in the middle of nowhere wyoming weren't they yeah. 01:48.13 archpodnet Yes. 01:53.30 connor Oh my God yeah. 01:54.94 archpodnet Yes, or he was trying to siphon the free wi-fi off of a library from the parking lot. It was you know we we tried he put his heart into it. We're like David just we'll just record without you man. This is this is too much. Um, so yeah, but anyways about you not about David. 02:00.94 connor It was it was wild. Um. 02:05.50 Josh Wolford Um, yeah, it's all good. 02:12.67 archpodnet Um, can you just for our audience. Ah you know introduce yourself who you are where you at academically and what you're doing man. Yeah. 02:17.67 Josh Wolford My name is Josh Wolfford I have a master's degree in anthropology from Wayne State University in Detroit Michigan or should I see detroit Michigan I got my bachelor's at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo and actually a double-mined in biology in geology hence why my thesis is quite interdisciplinary. Um I've pretty much been interested in not just archeology but all of that all that stuff since I was like a little kid and I grew up on and Lake Huron and there was. Rocks you know everywhere from every time period in geologic history and you know I remember growing up watching I think it was Jurassic Park was what it did for me. They're like hitting hitting rocks with hammers and there's fossils of dinosaurs and like whoa I want to do that so I was like 2 3 hitting rocks on the beach but I would be disappointed because I would find like coral and not a dinosaur so I was like that's not cool, but when I got older I realized that hey that is super cool because this is coral and this is not tropical where I live now Michigan is not tropical. But it was and that kind of like threw me down this whole rabbit hole of love in geology and and everything. 03:38.44 archpodnet And I think you know that's the thing we always find like like shells fossilized shells as a kid and they're like well this is boring and then you like realize like I found fossilized shells in the appalachian mountains in West Virginia where there is not notion like wait a moment that was cool as hell. 03:54.19 Josh Wolford Yeah, yeah, yeah, and then you realize whole old. They are like that coral like the potasky stone which actually was in a poossky this is this is a rugo's coral. That's four hundred million years old that's one hundred and yes, why. 03:57.91 archpodnet Ah, you know if. 04:07.56 archpodnet And it's on your desk. Ah. 04:10.10 Josh Wolford A lot more on my desk but I have that's I told you I have lots of rocks. Ah I love it. Looks like an ammonite. Yeah yeah, yeah, definitely. 04:14.20 archpodnet I Love our field so much I Love what we do. 04:15.76 connor I I got a I got a little shell I got a little ammonite. Yeah, that's what you know? That's what happens when you're an archaeologist nerd something like that. 04:26.80 archpodnet I have nothing nearly that old on and on my desk at all I have I have a lot. Yeah damn it I need to go get shells. 04:29.98 Josh Wolford And. 04:35.16 Josh Wolford Yeah I mean like that's the just thinking about I'm finding geology so fascinating. You know, like talking about finding shells in appalachian mountains or like even like Mount Everest is a great example where literally at the summit. There's limestone. That's I think 30000000 years old and it has shell fossils Twenty Nine Thousand feet above sea level. Yeah, there are they're frozen. They're still there. They can't get them off. 04:57.81 connor That's wild. There's also a bunch of dead bodies. 05:05.29 connor It's that's that boggles my mind. Okay, sorry as a detour. So so you obviously were you mentioned that you're interested in the ah the the hard sciences where where does like the the anthropology come into that. 05:08.74 Josh Wolford The child. 05:20.80 Josh Wolford So that that came in ah because I'm also super interested in like history and mythology. Um I just love studying all sorts of different mythologies I'd find myself like hyper focussing into like. Norse mythology for some time then Greek mythology for some time and so on and then I think there was always this like thing I was thinking about where scratch that last part. Ah I've always been into like studying different mythologies. 05:53.52 Josh Wolford Just learning about each one like first like maybe norse mythology and Greek mythology and so on and then I was like I wonder what's what are the stories of like where I live in the great lakes. Do we have like you know gods and all these epic stories like the odyssey and stuff like that and we do. And that's you know that's what kind of like made me dive into studying an anaic culture and just because that's like that's where I live is in the great lakes and we have you know to quote James Red Skye who is an elder from Cunora Ontario which is like up near the border of Minnesota. Um, in Blake the woods region he was interviewed byullomon dudeney for his book sacred scrolls of the southern ojibwe. He basically said he pointed on the shelf in the bible and he said you see that bible. There's that much and much more in mid able win and that to me is just like whoa There's all this like knowledge. That's just not written down. It's it's in like their ancestral memory and they did recount these things like birch bark scrolls and on rock art. But that's like shorthand it's like pre hieroglyphics kind of deal. It's like. Where one image will represent a whole story which is so cool to me. 07:17.14 archpodnet So yeah man, no, that's that's really cool and I also like picked up on how you caught how you refer to it as ah, we have those histories with that recognition of like tying yourself to the land in a way of like recognizing like you're not othering yourself. 07:34.64 Josh Wolford Um, yeah, well I mean I have a tiny little bit of anishinave because I have ah my dad's Mom's side. Her. 07:34.70 archpodnet I Thought that was really I caught onto that. Really appreciate that. 07:47.37 Josh Wolford Her side of the family is French Canadian and so it was very common during the in fact, it was encouraged in the colonial period for the voyage ah to Intermarry with native women because they got by marrying into that clan. 07:48.51 archpodnet Oh gotcha. 08:05.48 Josh Wolford Would have access to that hunting territory and having access to the all the furs and if you know I'm sure you guys know that the fur trade during like the colonial period is pretty much what built America essentially yeah. 08:19.16 archpodnet And yes it did that is that? Yes, just yes, um, solid man. So how did you end up. Um, where'd you go to undergrad I guess so you what you get went to. You're at Wayne State now okay so you're. 08:32.53 Josh Wolford West ah one I graduated from Wayne State yeah I thought about getting my ph d I almost decided to get it and then I like actually I listened to 1 of your guys's episodes. Um I can remember who you head on. She had like a dual ph d issue. 08:35.56 archpodnet Done from Wayne that's repeated your thesis. 08:46.64 archpodnet Oh lana. 08:49.79 Josh Wolford Yeah, it's like in psychology and in she was like something about left handedness in rock art or something that was great but she was talking about how hard it was for her to find a job with two Ph Ds I'm like Wow her resume is way better than mine. Ah maybe I shouldn't go for this So I kind of decided against it. But. 08:52.89 archpodnet And yeah, paleo and yeah. 09:09.10 Josh Wolford Um, my undergrad I originally started going to a place called Saginaw Valley because I was pre-med at first and I was just kind of studying anthropology archaeology for fun like between class and homework I would go up into the fourth floor of the library there and. Just pick out different books about ojibwe peoples and and itsnabe peoples and read about them and then I think it was after I took genkem chemistry I was like wows fucking hard. Ah I'm gonna have to do you know chem 2 you know orgo 1 and 2 physics one and 2 calcoin and two I'm like ah I'm not that good at math. So maybe I should stop trying to be a doctor and follow this archeology thing. 09:58.36 connor Well, it's weird because I think ah you want to like initially in a lot of cases you want to get into something that you can see a career in and I don't think we as a discipline to advertise archaeology or anthropology is something that you can get a career in. 10:15.13 Josh Wolford No, no, no, certainly not. 10:15.34 connor It's going to make you money I mean it's not going to make you a ton of money. It's not going to make you med money but it will yeah but there there are places for folks in anthropology and and and archeology. So it's it's I feel like that's that's a very common thing that we see is that you. 10:27.55 Josh Wolford Um, oh yeah, absolutely. 10:34.90 connor People are like yeah I'm going to go for like a real job and then I'll study this like on the side but you can you can like pursue this as a career. 10:36.83 Josh Wolford Really. 10:43.57 Josh Wolford Oh yeah, definitely and like there's so many different avenues that you could take anthro. Um like I was a tour guide I'm Mac an island for 5 seasons and I really looked at that as like kind of like my fieldwork. And I looked at that. Even though I worked 70 hours a week giving tours to people. Um I kind of was enveloped in this place that was like it's sacred like that's maeninaw island is the spot I mean to talk about in my paper where the spot of recreation of the world. After the destruction by the flood and the in initialnabi up there still believe that. 11:27.89 archpodnet Yeah, those those flood stories pretty ubiquitous across North America yeah everyone everyone has one which is always fascinating just as ah as an aside, but all right. 11:30.20 Josh Wolford Oh yeah, oh yeah. 11:40.43 connor Yeah, it's usually a crazy arc you know arc in the story. 11:42.70 Josh Wolford Yeah, it's a well. It's almost like there was like this time period where there was a lot more ice and then it started to melt with yeah. 11:44.81 archpodnet Yeah, yeah, usually. 11:51.88 archpodnet Yeah, which is that would be like all this fresh water all the sudden and back when the rivers were not as deep they were all you know, fairly shallow and wide and very susceptible to flooding these large landscapes if they got over. 12:00.44 Josh Wolford From here. 12:07.76 archpodnet Oversaturated who who would have who would have guessed right. 12:08.58 Josh Wolford Well, yeah, and that's the interesting thing is that you know in I so many different sources from so many different you know whether it was a historic literature or an an ethnologist or an anthropologist or it was a native themselves that wrote it. Talking about the flood different versions of who what characters were you know it's kind of like fill in the mad lib of who is the the one that inspired the muskrat to swim down to the bottom and grab the piece of soil to create the land. It could be an anebogia could be nocomes could be the animals themselves could have been get you mad to could have been all sorts of different people or. Manitus. But there was 1 story from James Red Skye who I mentioned a little earlier who I've never found this anywhere else. Ah where he mentioned that the creator tried to create the world 3 times or 4 4 Times the first 3 times he failed. Because there's too much water and there's too much ice and each time it took to recreate was between two thousand and four thousand years it's like well that's exactly like the length of time that these pro pro glacial lake periods were around where there was the water was. There was a lot of ice. They couldn't go further north you know because the ice was there and then all that water and seasonal flooding. Yeah I thought when I read them like who no way it like literally fits right into my because I found that while I was doing. 13:33.17 connor That's fascinating. 13:41.45 Josh Wolford Some heavy research into my thesis because I kind of developed this idea giving tours because there was mackeninaw island is um I mean as it says in the story. It is on the back of the great turtle it grows out of the water. But for geologists that island is one of the best places you can go in the great lakes. To see paleo shorelines there's over 25 on the island all over it and there was one spot where I would stop with my buggy and my passengers into it's called rifle range and in my geology and Michigan Book. you specifically mentioned rifle range as a great place to see ancient shorelines. And you can see 11 that roll down a hill from what road as a carriage road down to fort mcinaw a lot of people usually tell the story about the attack at fortmacandinaw from the british there. But then I started to talk about well actually look at these ancient shorelines and I would talk about isostatic rebound. Which is the it's like the earth the crust of the earth is solid obviously because we're all on top of all our buildings and we drive around on it and everything but in the mass scale. It behaves more like a plastic and when you put something really heavy on top of it. It'll sink kind of like. The foam of a mattress or the chairs we're sitting in right now. It's depressed under the weight of our butts. But then when we stand the foam will return to its original shape and that tendency for returning to its original shape is called itastay and so yeah, the itastasy of end the i. 15:13.70 Josh Wolford The active at rebounding is called isostatic rebound and that happened it's still happening to this day in michigan very very like almost unmeasurable but up in Hudson Bay it still is rebounding I think something like 1 or two inches a year 15:29.58 connor That's wild, especially and that's like based on like from the glaciers right? because you have like like I don't I don't remember how high the glaciers are but that's like a big chunk of ice that you just like sitting on top of this like like insane amount look good. 15:31.43 Josh Wolford With him. 15:41.10 Josh Wolford Oh yeah, yeah it over Michigan oh sorry, um, Michigan like over I'll use my hand I don't know if you ever seen anyone do this. The the ice was basically this from here to here was what they call something a hinge line which is where. There was the most where were were they're actually rather able to measure isostatic rebound um in the crust of like the lower peninsula and over that point is about a mile mile and a half thick up near Hudson Bay it was like two miles thick just and immense. You know the the place to seem is 2000000 years long almost. Like two point one million years ago I think is when it technically started and that's exhibited through ice course where we can see eight hundred thousand years back but you know the the peaking and troughing of co 2 concentrations and it's in those interglacial periods rather the troughs of co 2 That's ah, glacial period and then when we get a peak There is higher amounts of co 2 in the atmosphere so that indicates that it was warmer because it's a greenhouse gas you know climate change all that sort of thing. 16:49.10 connor It'd be wild for you Just like for like a human to walk up and be like oh there's this big old Pi like a mile high pile of ice like I guess I shouldn't keep going on here. Yeah. 16:59.95 Josh Wolford Oh yeah yeah I guess I think though with the continental glaciers. It would just like be like a gradual thing and you wouldn't even realize if you're walking on top of it that you would probably be like a mile above the actual rock because that just would be the ground basically. But. There was probably lots of fissures and crevasses in there that you know you can fall into in a book talking rocks. Um Carl godboy earth walks is what he his his native name is is he he said they called the old man. Is what they called the the ice and in 1 of their stories. It's like the dueling of 2 shamans where it's like there's an old man winter and then there's like the youthful spring in it they would battle every year and the spring would win every year obviously and that he he thinks that was a metaphor for like the ultimate um I guess victory of spring taking over the land because there's no more ice really like there once was. 18:11.40 archpodnet And huh dude that's fascinating and on that note, we're going to go ahead and ah close out this segment. We'll be right back with episode one thirty three of life ruins here with Josh Wolfford