00:00.00 archpodnet Welcome to episode one thirty four of a life ruins podcast reinvestigate the careers of those living a life in ruins I'm re hosts Carlton Gover and I'm joined by I'm not joined by my co-host Connor John and and David Howe but for this week's episode I am really pleased to be joined by Dr Jane Lee Thomas Jane Lee how are you doing this evening I am doing fantastic. Really excited to have you here so real quick for our audience. Could you just introduce yourself a brief background. Um. 00:19.57 Jayne_Leigh Thomas I'm good. How are you? Thank you. 00:30.20 archpodnet You know your current occupation. How long you've been working there. 00:31.48 Jayne_Leigh Thomas Yeah, so I am the director of Indiana University's office of the native american graves protection and repatriation act I just started my tenth year at Indiana. Um, having come here actually from Edinburgh Scotland where I was finishing up my ph d. 00:51.11 archpodnet I excellent excellent I think you're the first guest we've had from Edinburgh how do I pronounce Edinburg Edinburgh Edinburgh I will not get that r but yeah, we've we've had. 01:00.41 Jayne_Leigh Thomas Edinburgh yeah, that's okay. 01:05.81 archpodnet We've had a number of like Oxford and like Cambridge folks but like never someone from from Scotland so that's like really exciting. What was that like being at Edin but. 01:11.72 Jayne_Leigh Thomas Remember Yeah, it was amazing. Um, yeah, it was kind of a a big jump for me I'm very close with my family and that's a pretty long way to go I had never been to Europe before didn't know anything about the culture Or. Um, especially Scottish traditions and it was kind of like jumping the deep end but it was wonderful. 01:32.84 archpodnet Excellent. Oh we definitely have a lot to talk to about tonight but just just for the background. You know what first got you into anthropology just just to begin with and. 01:44.76 Jayne_Leigh Thomas Um, yeah, so during my undergraduate when I went to Eastern Oregon University I Went there to play softball I was ah played softball in college so that was my main reason for going there. Um. It took me forever to decide my major because I liked everything geology and anthropology history spanish I was learned take it all of the classes. Um, and then I went to my first field school after I graduated from my undergraduate and I knew at that point I was really interested in archeology. Um. So I went to central washington university where I received my master's degree in resource management focusing on nagbra and bio archeology and then I left and went to Europe for 7 years and did 5 years my study is at the University Of Edinburgh and then did a little bit at the University Of Lubiana and Slovenia some extra research after I'd graduated. 02:42.85 archpodnet So excellent. So where was your field school at in undergrad. 02:48.70 Jayne_Leigh Thomas Um, it was close to it was about a half far north of twin lakes Idaho um, it was a paleo-indian lava tube near near twin lakes and kind of a unique site. It had been excavated in 1989 by a gentleman named Gene Tipmuss who was a stone tool specialist and they had found a lot of ple to say megafauna when they had done the excavations in in 1989 and then in 2004 is when I had been. Opened up again and the initial start of the field school is kind of interesting because they just shoved the entire cave full of hay and so we had to take 20 years of hay or you know out of the cave first and there was porking pine quills in it. Porcupines have been nesting in there and 1 guy got stuck with one of them and um, kind of a wild way to spend the summer with you know rattlesnakes and very hot weather and but it was a lot of fun. 03:53.98 archpodnet Yeah I can imagine so like what time of year were you were you guys like there in like June July because the great basin. Oh good night. 03:59.19 Jayne_Leigh Thomas Yes, yes, yeah, it was um, eight weeks I think six weeks eight weeks in end of June July in the beginning of August and there were no trees. It was just. Really large sage brush a lot of dust and if we had ah a resident rattlesnake that we had to build a rock carn for because he would go into the unit so we didn't want to kill it. So. We built it and he would go in there and get out of the the sun and hang out so we knew if he was in there that was fine. Um, but it was a lot of as a field school goes I mean I haven't been to too many, but it was very remote. It was a lot of like trucking in one hundred and fifty gallons of water. 04:48.48 archpodnet Yeah, 4 04:50.56 Jayne_Leigh Thomas Kind of thing if yeah, it was kind of like that. So but it was fun. It was you know quite the experience and of course we felt started really finding stuff on the last week and so I don't believe anybody ever went back out I don't think there's been another field school out there but it was. It was really neat for the for the first experience out in the field. 05:08.66 archpodnet Oh I can imagine that sounds Amazing. So What? what an undergrad pushed you to to think about graduate school and and specifically going from like a general anthropology with like that archeology field school. Why Bio Arc and then why why nagpra at at your master's program at um ah at Central. Yeah. 05:29.48 Jayne_Leigh Thomas Yeah, yeah, at central. Yeah, so the program is is resource management and so in my undergrad I wasn't really sure what kind of. Job I was going to get with just a bachelor's degree and so I thought okay I will go get a master's um I live about a half hour from some troll so it was kind of close to home and resource management as the degree was ah a 2 wo-year degree and there was either. You could go the natural side or the cultural side so you could study cultural side. It made people study rock art archaeological sites biowork and the natural side is more ecosystems and habitats and um things like that and when I started there. Um I felt a little. Out of place because a lot of the classes were not. It was like a economics law and policy never think it I would really get it too much into law and I really had a hard time paying a thesis project because I didn't like pottery. And I tried stone tools I was doing some paleloado indian stuff I tried flit napping that was a disaster but I originally was interested in people and I started looking at secondary data so I was not looking at any collections I was looking at ah. 06:59.89 Jayne_Leigh Thomas Secondary data that had been collected and doing a statistical analysis on that data to determine if that secondary data could be utilized also working on nagbra and learning about the law but I was also doing forensics at the same time. Was really interested in studying osteology. It was the time period for me I wasn't quite sure I was doing both doing a forensics field school and a couple other things. But then I was accepted to the University Of Edinburgh I got a scholarship together and that kind of sealed the deal for me. So. 07:37.23 archpodnet And and what was going to edinburghra like like you know, essentially going from that going from that american especially like pacific northwest area then traveling you know across the us across the Atlantic um to Scotland and in a. 07:40.41 Jayne_Leigh Thomas Hey. 07:49.58 Jayne_Leigh Thomas Yeah, ah. 07:53.94 archpodnet Completely different academic paradigm and. 07:58.89 Jayne_Leigh Thomas Yeah, and and I learned actually when coming back to Indiana just how different it is because the doctoral programs over. There are not set up the way they are here. Um, and when I got there. Of course there was a lot of learning to do about you know. Just words for to start with um because the prince and pronunciation. For example, we would say skeletal they say skeletal and so it was really hard for me to understand First of all, we were talking about certain things like a torch or torches a flashlight. So just simple things for me just trying to learn First of all that okay nobody knows what you're talking about when you save flashlight because then nobody says that there and and so that was a ah bit also the weather because it's very rainy and very cold all the time. Um. And about a month after I went there I decided on my dissertation project which was going to be in Slovenia and that kind of came about because my advisor had said at the university of lubliana there there's a project and. I said we're Slovenia and they said well you're going to study cremations and I said isn't that just ash how can I study that and they said we have a lot to learn. So after one month of being in edinburgrah flew out to lubiana slovenia for my first visit and. 09:25.18 Jayne_Leigh Thomas Needed a translator because nobody was speaking english to me at the time which was get into that later but that was a little bit interesting because I found out much later several years later that some folks did speak english um, but my research. Was not really considered at the time to be worth much because osteological studies were not being done in the country. Um, and it's been really cool because that has completely turned around in the last decade or so. 09:56.30 archpodnet And so how how do you study skeletal remains through through cremation and. 10:04.79 Jayne_Leigh Thomas Yeah, and that's a ah, really good question. So everyone thinks it's ash which for the most part it isn't obviously there might be burnt bone dust. But for the most part. It's not ash and it never was today at a modern crematorium what is used is called a cremulator and this is basically like a large coffee grinder. So once the body is burned in the coffin. The body is then dropped down and they run a large magnet through it. And that will take out dental fillings, hip replacements anything like that then after the body is cooled the body goes through the cremulator the coffee grinder or whatever and and then you get the ash. It's just pulverized bone. Well archeologically you didn't have that so you still get very large fragments of. Boom you can still tell age sex pathologies depending on what's there. You can tell the temperature the body was burned the placement on the pyre. Sometimes you can tell if there's animal included and. That gets a little tricky because usually it's not the whole animal. So then whether or not, you're dealing with ritual feastestine if you're dealing with just you know food refuse if you're dealing with something else. Um, and in Slovenia my focus was on the late bronze age which is roughly um. 11:32.36 Jayne_Leigh Thomas Ah, thousand to ah seven fifty bc or and bp and as soon it's obviously not this easy. But as soon as the early iron age hit you start getting horse in the cremations and you don't see that in the late bronch age and so. Were animal in the cremations. So it's it's a lot different and even within bioarcheology there's a very small population of us that are are really trained to properly analyze cremated remains. So. 12:06.39 archpodnet So what did what was the research question like what was going on set the stage because like I'm like really enthralled now. 12:13.78 Jayne_Leigh Thomas Yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, so um, so to back up a little bit so they said you know there's this project the university of luiana but you're going to have to go there. You're not going to be able to bring the collection back. But they had had some issues in the past with researchers taking collections out of the country and not bringing them back and then losing the collections and so they said if you're going to do this. You have to go to Slovenia but as I mentioned at the time they were kind of like we don't need you to tell us the the sex of the individual because we know what it is based on the grave goods. If. It's a pot. It's a woman and if it's a weapon It's a man and it was like ok ah yeah, so it was like ok and and people were kind of very dismissive I would say um I was a foreigner I didn't speak any english or excuse me I didn't speak any sloveian and. 12:47.70 archpodnet I Ooh the classic mistake the classic mistake. Yeah. 13:04.60 Jayne_Leigh Thomas Not a lot of spoke spoke English to me and so they were kind of like you know we'll make a space for you in the basement a couple of my colleagues. There were amazings from day one. They were super supportive and you know absolutely help me out there and still are are very close friends of mine. Um, so I. 13:24.92 Jayne_Leigh Thomas Analyzed three sites in the styrian region which is the eastern region of Slovenia and those remains were pretty unusual because they had been kept in the past. So that time period is called the ernfield culture in Europe and just like it sounds a lot of the farmers at 18 hundreds when they were plow in their fields. They would just hit funerary earn after funery ern over and over and over and during that time period all across all across in Europe. Um, everybody was being cremated put into an urn. The urns were then buried in fields ernfield culture so they in the past had really only been interested in the ceramics talking the 50 s and sixty s and so the bones were thrown away. They were just dumped out. And never kept and so the collection that existed from my dissertation was kind of unusual in the fact that it had been kept. Um, so yeah, so I went down there and you know had to you know, clean the cremations and obviously you. There's certain ways to do that. There's you need to pass them through ten Millimeter Five Millimeter and two mill meter saves for size and then needs to be weighed and that'll tell you percentage of the body. So a human individual that has been burned is roughly. Let's say two Thousand grams 14:54.80 Jayne_Leigh Thomas Um, that's that's it and most of the body being you know, water and flesh when that's gone. It's about but two Thousand grams so I can tell kind of what percentage of the body was collected for burial based on the weight then after you have the cuminative weight. Then you separate out by skeletal element long bones skull everything and then you weigh those and that'll give you a rough percentage as well of what percentage of the body itself and different skeletal elements is being collected and the really unique thing about the cremations from Slovenia. Is that they are very lightly burned most cremations need to be about 645 hundred and forty five degrees celsius to be considered cremated or calcined otherwise it's just burnt. Um, but there are exceptions to that rule and in Slovenia. Absolutely the body is burnt. Ah, very low temperatures for a long long period of time and so the the degree of burning is very thorough but very low and when you think from I haven't ever done this I had a professor suggest that I go to the this is a little. Grotesque but I had a professor suggest that I go to the hospital and ask for an amputated limb build a funerary pyre in the University Of Edinburgh Car park or parking lot and burn it and see what happened um to see if we could get the low burning and I thought we're absolutely not doing that. But um. 16:29.51 Jayne_Leigh Thomas The low burning is really unusual. There. The other thing that was pretty exceptional is that less than 10 percent of the body was being collected for burial. Um, and no idea they don't know we don't have no idea the soil is very acidic in a lot of Slovenia. And so whether or not the other parts of the body are being consumed which is actually something in communities in the Amazon have done whether or not the cremated remains are being put into like an amulet and worn. Being placed into the river all of those things are things that I learned about through ethnographic research and and different communities around the world and what had been done but very very small amounts of the body are being put into those very large funery urns and then buried. When you build a cremation pyre. You have to build it to allow enough oxygen flow and the first forty five minutes or so of burning is just the flesh the hair and the skin and a lot of the water evaporation after that you still need to keep the pyre going. So. You're going to have to have enough fuel you're going to have to prepare for too much wind. Um rain somebody's going to have to stay there and keep it going keeping the whole pyre burning and then once it has finished burning sometimes. 17:57.00 Jayne_Leigh Thomas In the past things such as milk perfume sand water those were placed on the pyre to extinguish it and then people would go through and pick out the pieces that would be put in to the earth. And that did include animals as well. The really strange one we found was it was a stone martinten which is kind of like a rock weasel and why that's in there I don't know the only part was the mandible part of the mandible so 1 explanation could have been if it had been. Um. Fur or something and and the the mask where the the skull was still but other than that yeah we had no idea why there was there was cow there was sheep. There was red deer there was pig kind of all of that stuff. We kind of anticipated very low numbers percentage wise but it was still there. No horse. 18:34.22 archpodnet Oh gotcha. Yeah. 18:51.60 Jayne_Leigh Thomas Um, but yeah, and so so once I got through all of the the calculations in terms of weight and coloration. It was then to do the actual osteological analysis. Best ice could um based on age and sex if there was any sort of diseases present. Um, all that will still preserve even though it is well depends if if the temperature is right? it'll it'll stay there if it starts getting to five hundred six hundred Celsius it becomes black and then it becomes white and calci. Um, one thing we actually were able to do though I worked with. Oxford and at the time they had kind of invented a new radiocarbon dating technique based on dating the hydroxy appetite um and not the collagen because when you have a cremation There's no collagen left. It's just the the hydroxy appetite and. You need that 645 hundred and forty five degree celsius to basically lock in that date I don't know how it works but we applied to Oxford to partner with them for a grant to see if we could send small samples of calcined bone to Oxford. To see if the radiocarbon dating would come back and match what the slovenians had already determined over the span of twenty thirty years based on other studies and it did so that was pretty pretty cool. 20:17.58 Jayne_Leigh Thomas All of the work that I do there in Slovenia is is supported by the department and and this is something we might get into a little bit later but the attitude towards skeletal remains and archeology where there is quite different than it is here and and how those how remains are treated how they're. Used or not used for study. It's it's quite different and so I feel like I've kind of gotten to see both sides the United States way of doing things in the european way of doing things and I think that has definitely helped me and my career navigate certain things. 20:37.96 archpodnet Down. 20:49.46 archpodnet Yeah I have a very vivid memory of when I walked into the director of this museum in Ukraine and he just had like shelves of human skulls that is excavated and it it wigged me out. He's like why it's just you know it's work I'm like dude this is not how we do things in the states. This is so weird. 20:59.90 Jayne_Leigh Thomas Um, yeah. 21:06.27 Jayne_Leigh Thomas Yeah, yeah, and there was there would have been an experience for sure with Edinburgh that don't know it will ever leave me and I think some of that is you know we had a there was a teaching lab and a teaching collection and the teaching collection was from a known medieval scottish cemetery and the collection was. 21:08.64 archpodnet But. 21:26.10 Jayne_Leigh Thomas Really in bad shape and um this is a little bit graphic but you know the vertebra headstrong on a string and. You know it was kind of just really fallen apart and when people the you know students would drop a piece of bone on the floor. The bo dusts would be just put into the garbage and I and I was it really bothered me and I said you know what's going to happen to this collection. Is it going to be reburied I mean you you know where it came from you know which cemetery you know there could be tombstones and I think the comet was. I don't remember who said it to me but it was like oh no, we'll just throw it out and I was like how would you would throw it out. You can't throw it out. It's it's what are you talking about? So I mean that there was so much of that you know for example in the national museum of Scotland and Eden but there are you know human remains on display. 21:58.27 archpodnet Oh. 22:13.44 Jayne_Leigh Thomas Um, there used to be a viking burial under glass that you could like almost walk over and I mean and that was such a drastic change from the very strict training and I received for my masters with learning about nagpra and it. I had a hard time in the beginning trying to figure out in my mind how to reconcile with the differences because yes I suppose that medieval population is their ancestors in Scotland but. I still saw the the humanities side of it and the fact that these people had a proper burial and they were dug up and they I mean if they needed to go back. They needed to go back into the ground and it really really bothered me for a long time and um, yeah, so it was just It was hard to get used to at first. 23:02.39 archpodnet Absolutely well. On that note, we'll be right back with episode one thirty four with Dr Janele Thomas and next time we're gonna get into nacra so stay tuned.