00:00.52 archpodnet And we're back to episode 1 3 five life froms podcast we're still here with Daniel so Daniel Wheat you have a mutual connection that ah to to us at life neurons podcast you happen to not only know but work with Dr Aaron Deiderwolf so how in the hell. Did you get hooked up with him and. 00:22.32 Daniel Riday Um, so Aaron's Instagram Account Archeology Inc which I think when I relisted to his episode with you guys? Um, David was pushing him to start something like that. Um. 00:39.49 Daniel Riday Archeology Inc is tattooing body modification and archaeology I think there's not really a reason why any of that wouldn't have been my favorite Instagram account to follow and when I found it I was instantly hooked on his post his content. The. Insights and and interest it was just ah, exciting. You know I love his his page so in the beginning when I found it I was you know engaging a little bit with the comments. Um. 01:17.47 Daniel Riday And asking little questions or or or supporting the the work that you done to portray that image or or speak about it. But when um, one morning he posted a specific um article. About his research into and Dean mummies and their tattoos I looked at all the pictures of this ah of this tattooed hand wrist forearm I read the whole article that you know the post that he had made. 01:52.97 Daniel Riday I looked at the picture again I read the whole post again and I thought os a bit strange. He didn't mention the the kind of layout of the tattoos because obviously this one came before this one and this is built up off of that and this one is a bit different from that one and even has a greater saturation of ink and a lot of little. Details that are obvious from a tattooing perspective but maybe they weren't important enough to be mentioned in the in the post he did but I figured I would just kind of reach out and say hey it's interesting that that part was done before that part because the rest is built up off of it. And I don't know if that is important to your research, but it's maybe worth noting and he happened to be online at the time instead like well what do you mean? I said well obviously if you're going to make this tattoo. You know you're going to sit with that person's wrist and your lap you're going to tattoo the wristband part first. And then this kind of stair step pattern that we see in these mummies. Um, which I think also is part of their textile history. Ah, the stair step pattern would be built off of the wristband. Ah that way the stair step pattern ends on a straight line that goes perpendicular to the ground. Just you know when the arm is hanging down by your side. It just makes more sense to tattoo that way you wouldn't start at the top and work your way down and hopefully end it on the right angle you start from the bottom and build up and he said whoa. Yeah, actually we never really thought about that. Okay, and let's look at those wristbands because the mummy has. 03:26.19 Daniel Riday And don't have the picture in front of me I think 2 wristbands maybe ah the lowest one is strikingly different from the other tattoos and the arm in that. Ah, the wristband itself was tattooed now that we've researched this a bit further I think we can safely say it's Tattooed. With an entirely different toolset from the rest of the arm because the lines there are short dashes little perpendicular lines that form a ah technique we're calling line stacking. Um and it just had never been noticed before because. 04:03.45 Daniel Riday Maybe people were were observing different aspects of the the art different things about the mummy but it just had never really been analyzed from a tattoo perspective before and over the course of I don't know 2 hours when I was just chatting with him that morning. We really. Not only observed this separate tattooing style but then found a way to um, identify it as separate from the other and ah after 2 hours he said okay hang on a second and he got back to me and he said. As sad as it is I think that was the first written conversation in any of the notes that he had regarding tattooing tools and techniques used on these mummies. It just had never really been discussed in detail before the tattoos had been discussed but not really how they had been made. if ah the if the tat tools varied at all anything like that and so he said it was a little depressing that it had happened on Instagram with with somebody who was not an archeologist and ah over breakfast. It's like um, a funny little insight. So. From there Aaron brought me on as sort of an outside consultant on some of his research so I got to to see the kind of visual data archive from the Oxford Oxford University Museum for the peruvian and nd and mummy remains and analyzed. 05:38.89 Daniel Riday A lot of those images and see if we notice anything that stands out but what? what we keep seeing now that we're now that we know what to look for is this this line stacking technique separate from the majority of the tattoos being hand-poked probably by cactus thorn. Needles. We don't know quite yet. Um, but we're also finally after about a year of emails I think getting permission to go observe some indian mummy remains in a museum in Berlin as well. Um, so I need to get back over there and try to. 06:14.91 Daniel Riday Try to do that. 06:17.49 archpodnet So just a ah ah random conversation you had on Instagram was able to like fundamentally shift Aaron's thinking towards his practice and that's I mean that's like phenomenal right? because like archaeologists. 06:22.78 Daniel Riday Shift. 06:33.84 archpodnet Ah, you know a lot of the things that we studied were not necessarily um, experts in the production of you know some of these ancient practices. You know, not all of us who study ceramics or potters ourselves like that's I think that's fundamentally a big you know truth. Or you know Aaron is not a tattoo artist and is made up really cool niche in archeology looking at the archeology of tattoos and like so on and so forth and it really goes to show having someone who's knowledgeable. In in the craft is critical in understanding how it's done in the past like it reminds me of it's like this story of um these italian archeologists found this? um cubes shaped. Ah. You know, artifact in in Northern Italy near the near the mountains and they had no idea what it was and just one of them happened to show it to his grandmother and his grandmother took it and knew exactly that it's ah a device used to help make mittens. To to knit mittens you know because like she's a knitter and like knew exactly what that was and it matches the place in time that like yeah of course, you'd find something to to help you make make Bittt ah Knit Mittens so that's just yeah that's I mean that's just such a phenomenall cool story and and just also goes to show. 07:53.80 Daniel Riday Wow. 08:00.74 archpodnet How important is for archeologists to engage with the public you know, especially on social media and Aaron's like killing it on on social media too. Yeah and I really have enjoyed my time with ah Aaron and when I participated when I gave a talk at the tattoo convention in Denver you know, just how. 08:07.40 Daniel Riday It really is. 08:20.71 archpodnet Ah, enthralled the tattoo artists were and how they came back the next day with practice stick Poke or hand poke tattoos from cactus needles that they went out. It was just like holy hell man. So dude that is just that's awesome and I do have to ask So you're talking about how like you'll. 08:28.20 Daniel Riday Um. 08:37.95 archpodnet Practice on yourself. Do you have like a dedicated leg of just tattoo doodles that you got going on or yeah. 08:41.93 Daniel Riday Um, yeah I think most tattoo artists do um, you need both hands right? You need 1 hand for tattooing one hand for stretching so mostly the only place you can do practice on yourself is on your leg. So yeah yeah I mean 08:49.88 archpodnet Yeah. 08:59.24 Daniel Riday There's a lot. There's a lot of practice that do because I Also do so much experimentation now you know I needed to do experimenting with Obsidian blades because now that's a part of my practice and I was not going to test it on somebody else and you know practice hand poking practice hand poking with bird bones practice hand poking I've got. 09:01.97 archpodnet Yeah. 09:19.14 Daniel Riday Cactus needles have got lemon tree Thorns of got all sorts. There's a lot of questions to answer. 09:25.84 archpodnet Ah I can imagine was like can you not just use like Pig skin. 09:29.41 Daniel Riday Um, um, it's been a common theme right in in testing so many things for science you know, ah even Aaron himself did a ah a research portion of identifying. 09:32.87 archpodnet White from and half. 09:48.33 Daniel Riday The microware patterns in potential tattooing needles so that they could be analyzed. Um, you know if you find let's say what might have been classified as a hairpin at an archeological site but you look at the very tip of it and the last two millimeters has this particular microware pattern. He did that in pig skin. He tattooed the big skin with these needles and and human skin with the needles and and analyzed it. Um, but what the difference is in the skin of a living human versus the skin of a dead pig is that the tattoo won't go through any healing process if it's dead skin. 10:21.40 archpodnet Oh. 10:25.40 Daniel Riday And the healing process is huge. It's about half the battle Really um and so with the pigs skin. You're probably going to get like a false positive. The ink will go in it will stay in and nothing will happen to it whereas when you tatoo a person I think you get you know different results. So. 10:31.99 archpodnet Have. 10:43.64 Daniel Riday When Aaron and I outlined an idea to put forth lay or sorry to put together a project. Um, we yeah we knew it had to be tested on human skin because this particular project was revolved around the idea of identifying. Tool signatures and how each different kind of tool tool shape needle arrangement leaves a particular mark in human skin and the tattoos I did during this experiment um on my leg had to be monitored for six months after the the tattooing was finished so that we could watch how they heal what the differences are if any of it falls out and so we spend about a year putting the project together just over email and Instagram we collaborated with indigenous tattoo artists. Um, Maya Siook Jacobson who is inuit tattoo revivalist and I think also anthropologist um and she she was brought on to help advise we we wanted to. Ah. Really thorough. So the outline of the project was to do 8 identical tattoos with 8 different tools and then compare the results so that when we find a mummy from this place or that place this culture that culture we can rule out. 12:17.89 Daniel Riday Certain materials as having been used for tattooing because let's say it matches one style but not another style. So now we have all this comparison data um to have a look at those mummy tattoos in greater detail. So when we wanted to think of the 8 different styles. We wanted to include Erin suggested including skin stitching and I thought well this is called subdermal tattooing. It's a practice of passing ah a needle and thread where the thread has been dipped in tattoo ink we passed through. Skin and pull it out the other side and the thread leaves tattoo ink under that stitch so skin stitch tattooing is ah a tattooing practice of the arctic circle and I was very hesitant to include it because I know that it's a very closely guarded practice and I didn't want to step on any toes or. Or make anybody feel like I was um yeah treading on their their tattoo revival. So I was a little reluctant to include that part until Aaron convinced me that bringing my onboard. Um um and making sure that she knew. This was the only time I'd be doing this technique and I wasn't going to just steal it and make it a part of my practice. Um, so we had then another six months of communication with her where she coached me through a bit of how to do the technical side of of that tattooing style which is so difficult. 13:47.46 Daniel Riday Um, for the women who who practiced that style I I think you'd have to spend a lifetime at it. It's really incredible. Um, so I I was under her guidance did a little bit of practice on my leg with that and then had to make a bunch of. Very small bone sewing needles find the right kind of bone to use um, spend a bunch of time figuring out how to make sewing needles out of bone small enough to pass through the skin and then ah we also brought on another traditional tattoo artist named mokul nuya Rani Smith he's a hand tapping tattoo artist based up in Auckland so he came down to do two of the tatttoos that day because I couldn't reach that part of my leg very well and his hand tapping experiences. Um at the at the very highest level. He's ah for the remarkable artist as well. And so ah, he came down to do the two tattoos I did the 6 other tattoos on my leg that day including skin stitching obsidian blade cuts and then ink rubbed in obsidian shard poking so hand poking with an obsidian spike. Dear bone ah tattoo needle copper tattoo needle modern tattoo needle the skin stitch with birdbone and handtapped with a comb style needle and handtapped with a single needle so we have a pretty broad range of. 15:19.66 Daniel Riday Tools and and needles and and material types to get ah to get a pretty broad. Um, so I'm going to clear my throat and do that part again. We have a pretty broad range of tattoo tools. 15:28.85 archpodnet No worries. 15:37.90 Daniel Riday Material types needle arrangements and everything to to get ah a fair idea of the different marks they leave and how to identify those marks at ah at a microscopic level because everything we did was documented under the under higher magnification. Even the healing process every couple weeks another set of pictures was taken so now a lot of that data is available in the article that Aaron published for the exxar journal experimental archeology. We had been given a small grant from then oh sorry, let me redo that. We had been given a generous grant from them ah to pursue this research and then only just a couple months ago. The article came out where you can read Aaron's findings and it's written up by somebody who has the the backing of ah. 16:34.44 Daniel Riday Archaeology degree and I'm really honored to have been a part of that It was really fun. 16:41.68 archpodnet I Mean so the list of of ah different techniques. You just list. You know, just talked about cutting yourself with Obsidian blade and then rubbing ink in it like how that must be like conceptually difficult. 16:59.63 archpodnet How do you do that properly without cutting to too deep. 17:04.39 Daniel Riday That's actually the main risk I had done 1 or 2 um little test trials like that on my leg before um, it comes down to how you break the obsidian and um. 17:20.24 Daniel Riday How that edge is at a microscopic level after this project and after analyzing those Obsidian flakes under magnification we see as well that sometimes tiny fragments break off the cutting edge. Those can get lost or even embedded in the skin. Making those tattoos a little slower to heal sometimes but it depends what the shape of the blade was how do I get into it I don't know I have questions that need answers and I don't care what the consequences are um, tattooing with Obsidian is a huge part of my practice now. I Just got back from a tattoo convention I think I did 4 Obsidian tattoos there another one just yesterday. Um I'm finding it immensely interesting. Um, and so the Obsidian I source it I break the flakes off I clean and then sterilize them in a. Medical autoclave and so they're ready to be used safely as tattooing tools as long as I don't cut too deeply Yeah, it hasn't happened yet. 18:28.35 archpodnet Um I I kind of want one now that sounds like that sounds awesome and this these are and yeah, that's true. Although the flight tickets I imagine are like what too grand just to get down there. Yeah, just to just a little bit but. 18:31.30 Daniel Riday You could use a holiday man just come down here. It's summer. 18:39.40 Daniel Riday Um, yeah, probably. 18:44.45 archpodnet Baby. Yeah, we'll talk in the interim. Yeah, we'll be right back with episode one thirty five I got questions. 18:47.45 Daniel Riday Um.