Believe it or not, Richard Rothaus and I still have things to talk about even after an (almost) complete first season of the Caraheard podcast. So, today, we’re premiering Caraheard: Season 2.

Like Season 1, we’ll continue our conversational style of podcasting, our unofficial (un)sponsors, and our slightly affected irreverence, but we’re both committed to bringing in more “very special guests.” In fact, we’ve recorded the second episode already with a very special guest and despite some little technical issues, it went really well.

On this week’s Caraheard podcast, we start with the idea that we should have a basic structure to our season (or at least a minimum number of episodes). I floated the idea of 12 episodes; Richard was more optimistic, but agreed that 12 episodes was a fine goal.

We then proceeded, as per usual, to banter about trucks. Richard’s truck is bigger, carries more archaeology stuff, and has more miles, but my truck has almost as many miles and a yellow dog. 

We then talked about what we did this summer.

It’s not a Caraheard podcast until someone talks about gravel and gravel pits. Brown gold. 

Richard got to spend some time in The Magin City: Minot, North Dakota. Minot has a deceptively charming downtown and I’ve enjoyed every visit I’ve made to the banks of the Souris, or, as they say in French, Mouse River. Despite what Richard says, it doesn’t really flow south, it flows north too. We both appreciated the Souris River Brewing Company, although I think I’m the only one who has tasted their fine wares.

Richard also continues the French lesson with a brief chat about his work around Mille Lacs in Minnesota. Before talking about his actual vacation which involved projectile vomit and the Vore Buffalo jump. Not to be intimidated by Richard’s smooth banter en francais, I mangled the pronunciation of the word ennui in my discussion of the existential angst experienced by buffalos on the Northern plains. 

We deftly avoid the neat segue between Richard’s summer and my summer in my brief and painfully uninformed pseudo-discussion of kites (neither the birds nor the flying machines) in the Middle East. I also know less about micromorphology than I should, but I was right in claiming they did some interesting work with it at Nemea. 

We then included a few words about our un-sponsors, the North Dakota Humanities Council‘s Game Changer Series. More information can be found here (you can tell that it’s serious because the voice over has an English accent). The event will include the guy who wrote, Men Who Stare at Goats. I will personally buy a beer from the Souris River Brewery to the first person who asks about telekinesis at the Game Changer. While I smart alecked around, Richard sung the praises the NDHC’s magazine On Second Thought which is not available online here.  

I then regale our listeners with my summer’s field work at Polis-Chrysochous on Cyprus and with the Western Argolid Regional Project. Richard asks about field work efficiency and refers to a blog post on efficiency and field team size that I floated at the end of exhausting, but tremendously rewarding WARP season. We also talked a bit about slow archaeology.

We finally talked a bit about our work on the North Dakota Man Camp Project, and we talked about our outreach work with the North Dakota Humanities Council funded, Man Camp Dialogues. 

In this week’s episode, Bill asks Richard “what’s in your pack”, and we discuss equipment, and then we transition to “what’s in your truck.”  We transition to stories of the legendary Ohio State University at Isthmia Van, and discuss the archaeology of stuff field archaeologists leave behind.

We have two inspirations for this week’s podcast.  ASOR series has a fun series: “What’s in your dig bag.”  And Bristol carried out the most amazing archaeology of a van project:  The Van/InTransit.   Be sure to watch the van movie.  And some van blogging.

A Special Request to Isthmia Alumni:  Please send us your white van stories!  Seriously –  we want to write this history and we need your input.  Fire drills in the village of damned!  Squirting Bill and Dave with the windshield wipers!  Fire!  Mountain road turn arounds!  Trips to Epidavros!   richard.rothaus at gmail.com.

[It’s a busy week in ND, with Bill prepping for a field season and Richard doing suit-wearing type activities at the State Capital, so consider this a keyword list, not prose].

High points include:

Bill prompting Richard to keep the episode moving along.

Richard explains his “dig bag” and backpack contents.

Bill refers to Richard’s bag as a “stable entity”

Whirl-pak bags (Richard lied – he doesn’t use 5 mil).

Richard explains his technique to label photos with a white board, and Bill asks a critical question.

Bill discusses the importance of tags and how to get them right.

Richard mocks North American archaeologists

Bill and Richard discuss why notebooks and pencils.

Soil Knife, and the less useful obnoxious Ka-Bar.

Richard shares a grave desecration anecdote.  Bonus:  “A Local Mecca For Research” tells about those crazy days of Mille Lacs research.

Bill discusses why Richard really should carry pin flags.

Panty wipes, horsey tape, super glue, aspirin, steroids and first aid kits for real archaeologists.

Umbrellas!

Compass clinometers.

Bill points out the “black turtleneck” principle (no, not that “black turtleneck”).

We discuss that archaeology of field vehicles and what archaeologists leave behind.

Richard and Bill tell the secret tales of abusing the generosity of the OSU Isthmia excavation vehicles, and learning how to be self-sufficient archaeological grownups.

Bill explains how city design impacts the location of bus stations and hotels through amusing stories.

Bill and Richard talk about how travel difficulties and how they make partnerships strained.

Driving through fires!

Secrets of owning a vehicle as a foreigner immersed in a Byzantine bureaucracy.With actual lead seals!

Bribes?

Toward the end we tell THE CARBURETOR STORY and THE STOLEN BACKPACK stories.  They are epic.

Dimitri Nakassis on wandering and why he likes archaeology.

We conclude discussing why real archaeologists drive manly trucks.

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Episode Postscript:  Richard had an on-air epiphany when he realizes he did something terrible to Bill, and that event hardly registered in his memory.  Listen to get the story, but here is some additional information Paige Rothaus provides: The event occurred the year the Gypsies asked us how to use a passport to get to America.  That means this was the year Richard was doing a great deal of work at Lechaion and he befriended the young men at the Gypsy camp so that he could leave his equipment around and not have it “disappear.”  By the way, Romani is a better term than “Gypsies”, but no one understands what you are saying if you use “Romani”.)

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The opening track on the podcast is 80-R’s Pacific Rim.You can listen to it in its entirely here.

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Richard’s Equipment List

The front of the OSU Isthmia van, with a very young Bill Caraher and backpack (which probably he doesn’t have anymore [Bill note: actually that’s the replacement backpack, which I do still use!]), and David Pettegrew with backpack (and very handy belly pouch) and, um, a fine staff member.

The back of the OSU Isthmia Van, with Richard Rothaus and Carol Stein planning some awesome discovery.  Also – notice the tool belt.  For many years I was a tool belt and canteen guy.  That works when you have minions to carry things for you. Richard once left his pack on the wrong side of a mountain and everyone got an extra 2 hrs in the van to remedy the error.  After that, a minion was assigned to “always know where Richard’s bag is.”

The OSU Van with Sam Fee, Nathan Meyer, Dan Pullen, and, um, a fine staff member.  This is after the van caught on fire.  Again.  A “Call for help if this van bursts into flame” sticker has just been attached.

The OSU Van slumming.

The Grey Escort!  With Tom Tartaron, who apparently just spray painted Συν[ασπισμός] on a rock.  Συνασπισμός is one the many Greek political parties.

The OSU van with Ed Reinhardt, um, a fine McMaster Student, Amber Demorett, Lee Anderson, Ben Rothaus and Richard Rothaus.  We are tieing metal tubes onto the van so Dr. Reinhardt can do vibracoring in one of the Korinthian marshes.

Oh no!  Greece is on fire and Richard needs to get to the airport, or ice cream, or something.

Richard ‘s Truck

Bill’s Truck

This week, Richard and Bill welcomed their first guest into the studio: Andrew Reinhard. We convinced Andrew to talk to us about his research on Archaeogaming which is the archaeology in and of video games. We became particularly interested in his assertion that “meatspace” is no different than the virtual space of games. This, as you might guess, triggered some vigorous discussion that eventually devolved into Bill citing Pierre Bourdieu and railing against capitalism, Richard interviewing his 8-year-old son and comparing capitalism and video games to religion, and the homunculus who operates Andrew’s flesh robot almost leaping out of his head. Needless to say, a good time was had by all.

The opening and closing track on the podcast is 80-R’s Pacific Rim. You can listen to it in its entirely here.

Over 19 million people have bought the PC version of Minecraft.

There are only three characters you need to know about in Minecraft:

Steve– your default character

Herobrine– your nightmare:

Notch – the Creator:

Read a bit about Herobrine.  Then read a bit more.   This seems to be the ur-CreepyPasta.

Good lord, do you live in a box?  Learn about CreepyPasta.

And, well, we only briefly touch on him, but Slender Man is mixed up in the this a bit – he is the inspiration for the Endermen.  You should probably be aware of the tragic, bizarre and sad, Slender Man stabbing perpetrated by two 12 year old girls in Wisconsin.

A super-brief explanation of why Minecraft is so popular at Kotaku

Richard’s son Matt reminded him that his prattle about Minecraft needs to be informed by an appreciation of DWARF FORTRESS. Fair enough.  Richard, a historian, responds ZORK – a version of which he played on the mainframe at CampVandyland a million years ago.  But Richard also concedes that Zork is not the same.

We don’t recommend going down this rabbit hole, but here are approximately 2,880,000 videos about Herobrine on YouTube.  (For perspective, Richard’s count is 19, Bill’s is 18, and Dionysus’s is 41,800).

Links:

Meatspace.

Minecraft: Savior of Education and Marginalized Kids, according to the Fargo Forum.

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Mancamp Moment of the Week:  ManCamps in Grand Forks, North Dakota!  It won’t be different in the sense that every type of workforce housing that exists in the world exists in Williston.

This weeks podcast is early and short, because we are super-excited about some audio and podcasting we will be doing from the 7th Annual Cyprus Lecture and North Dakota Premiere of Atari: Game Over.  If you can’t make the premiere in Grand Forks on 9 April, you can watch the documentary on XBox Video, or Netflix.    Atari: Game Over  has an IMDB rating of 7.2 from 368 (!) users, and you can watch a video review of the video by two dudes here.   

Listen to the Cyprus Research Fund Lecture Live HERE. And be sure to celebrate our sponsors: The Cyprus Research Fund, The College of Arts and Sciences, and The North Dakota Humanities Council.

But, first, Bill and Richard discuss historians who have become concerned that they have lost their public, and how public activities and outreach, like a crazed dig in Alamogordo, NM might address that issue.  We also discuss whether the Archaeology of the Recent Past is an outreach gimmick, or whether it is something that is helping the science of archaeology grow.  For our jumping off point, we discuss/attack/mock a recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education: Thomas Bender, How Historians Lost Their Public.

Bill makes the case that specialized studies full of technical language are appropriate, and that calls to be less-specialized can be condescending, and lead to dumbing down the discipline. He points out that specialization is good in cancer doctors, but somehow bad in historians, and that makes no sense. Being accessible doesn’t produce new knowledge, Bill notes, technical and specialized writing does. Richard sort of agrees, but argues that there is plenty of room and opportunity for historians to break out of their uber-specialized cubbyholes if they want, and if they don’t want, they shouldn’t complain. The public aren’t crying out for more historians to engage them, as they have so much to watch and read from other sources, says Richard. Rather an insecurity within historical communities generates these cries. Bill notes that there is also real push back from funding agencies about outreach, and that is cause for concern. We seem to end up agreeing that there is a need and room for general practitioners of history and specialists in history, and perhaps there is no crisis at all.  Bill, however, suggests that he sometimes expects people to pay attention to him, while Richard is resigned to never being heard.

Richard admits that he started working on the archaeology of the contemporary world because he thought it would be easy (for outreach and students), but he has since been converted to thinking that it actual has significant contributions to the field. Bill discusses ways archaeology of the recent past has been done and applied to actually make the world a better place right now, especially studies of trash. Bill questions whether outreach via the recent past is useful, or is it so bizarre, like digging up Atari cartridges, that it is just a novelty and actually diminishing rather than enhancing dialogue with the public. Richard and Bill discuss how such projects can wind up with other professionals not taking the work seriously.  Richard talks about some work that has been done on the archaeology of fraternities, and how the The Lost Boys of Zeta Psi is so very relevant right now. Richard claims that winners try to solve problems through outreach rather than trying to be a policy wonk. Bill talks about how non-exotic archaeology can be effective help produce responsible citizens. We digress into a brief discussion of the potential iconography and archaeology of UND Fighting S___x Ice Dragons (?) logos and paraphernalia.  We close by referencing Andrew Reinhard’s bleeding-edge venture into Archaeogaming.

The Links to things we talk about:

That obscure website where you can buy HISTORY books – Amazon.com.

Charles Beard, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States.

Stacy Camp’s Teaching With Trash: Archaeological Insights on University Waste Management.

Rathje and Murray, Rubbish!: The Archaeology of Garbage.

Here is some coverage of the director of the NEH calling for that agency to become more focused on humanities for the public good. 

Laurie Wilkie, The Lost Boys of Zeta Psi: A Historical Archæology of Masculinity at a University Fraternity.(Be sure to enjoy the hilariously nitpicky Amazon review, from (surprise!) a member of the fraternity from 50 years ago).

National Science Foundation grants being questioned, as covered by scientists and a non-scientist.

Get your no longer Fighting S____x, not yet Ice Dragons (?) UND wear and paraphenalia at the Sioux Shop.

A handy bibliography of Contemporary Archaeology.

Black-Haired Irishmen – quit being racist.

Big Canine Teeth –  really, quit being racist.

Andrew Reinhard’s IMDB Page.

We’re rolling out Episode 6 in our first season of Caraheard a bit early this week because our unofficial, non-sponsor The University of North Dakota Writers’ Conference, begins tomorrow at 10 am.  

Richard’s show notes have been putting mine to shame so I need to step it up today. In this week’s episode we discuss the storage crisis in archaeology prompted by a recent forum in the Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology and Heritage Studies. I start with the observation that everything is getting bigger and expanding (as Woody Allen once observed, the universe is expanding) except archaeological storage. In fact, companies like Amazon have multiple warehouses ranked among the largest buildings in the world and they’re patrolled by ROBOTS. Richard returns us to archaeology and contextualizes the storage crisis within larger issues of archaeological method (including storing artifacts in plastic bags purchased from a guy who sells pomegranate seeds). Richard and, then Bill, finally, get to the point that storage crisis is a proxy (war?) for larger issues within the discipline, before returning the discussion to the reality that modern consumer culture is rapidly becoming part of that archaeological record. So maybe, the archaeological universe is expanding. 

Enjoy this week’s podcast, check us out on iTunes, and feel free to drop us a line in the comments here, over at Caraheard.com, or via email. Let us know how wrong we are, what would make listening to our podcast better, or anything else!  

Some things we mention during the podcast:

First, the Morag Kersell et al. forum in the JEMAHS is here, and my blogged response is here.

The famous (and let’s hope ironic or at very least post-ironic) Lansing Community College job ad is here.

The Tragedy of the Commons.

I could not find a link to Richard’s flocks of hypersexualized rabbits, but I’m sort of fine with that.

Richard’s dissertation.

R. Scott Moore’s dissertation on the pottery dump at Isthmia.

Here’s a brief biography of Paul Clement who was the director of the UCLA excavations at Isthmia.

Here’s a discussion of the Fountain of the Lamps. 

Here’s an example of what can be done with material in storerooms excavated many years ago at Polis-Chrysochous.

I think we’ve linked to Corinth excavations before, but here is a link again.

Here’s David Yoder’s article in Advances in Archaeological Practice titled “Interpreing the 50 Year Rule: How a Simple Phrase Leads to a Complex Problem.”

Finally, if you want to buy a genuine American antiquity, you can go shop here.

This episode of Caraheard contains an interview about Bill’s new book (to minute 56), and some particularly brilliant discussion of archaeologists and our perverse relationship with the media (minute 56 and after).  If you are super pressed for time, buy the book and listen to the media portion (says Richard – Bill may disagree).

Richard interviews Bill about the new book: W. Caraher, R.S. Moore, and D.K. Pettegrew, with contributions from M. Andrioti, P.N. Kardulias, D. Nakassis, and B. Olson.,  Pyla-Koutsopetria I: Archaeological Survey of an Ancient Coastal Town, American Schools of Oriental Research Archaeological Reports 21, Boston, MA, 2015. This part of Caraheard will also appear as part of the American Schools of Oriental Research Podcast.

Pyla-Koutsopetria I presents the results of an intensive pedestrian survey documenting the diachronic history of a 100 ha microregion along the southern coast of Cyprus. Located around 10 km from the ancient city of Kition, the ancient coastal settlements of the Koutsopetria mircoregion featured an Iron Age sanctuary, a Classical settlement, a Hellenistic fortification, a Late Roman town, and a Venetian-Ottoman coastal battery situated adjacent to a now infilled, natural harbor on Larnaka Bay. This publication integrates a comprehensive treatment of methods with a discussion of artifact distribution, a thorough catalogue of finds, and a diachronic history to shed light on one of the few undeveloped stretches of the Cypriot coast.

During our discussion, Bill exaggerates the excruciating boredom of the first few chapters, while Richard points out that there are pictures and even the names of the cannon-fodder field walkers.

Richard also manages to mispronounce almost everyone’s name, including, shockingly, P. Nick Kardulias‘ name.  P. Nick Kardulias, the man who took a soft, weak, ignorant, and insufferably Richard under his wing and taught him to be the ultimate field archaeologist.  The man who taught Richard that if you want to stack you coins by size, ignore the mockers and do it. Well, done Richard.

Bill answers some questions that are the heart of the ASOR interview:

1. What got you interested in becoming an archaeologist?
2. Of all the places you could have worked, why Cyprus? And why Pyla-Koutsopetria?
3. How did you choose the area to survey, and how large is the area you’re surveying?
4. Who works/worked on the survey?
5. What kind of technology did you use to aid you in this survey?
6. How long does surveying a square take? How many squares did you survey?
7. What kinds of remains are you finding/did you find at PKAP?
8. How long does it take to analyze artifacts you find?
9. What is the significance of these remains? (And more crudely) Why should people care about your finds?
10. What can one look forward to when reading this book, and are there any special features?
11. If the area was such an active trade spot, why is it no longer?

After the book interview, Richard and Bill talk for awhile about archaeology and the media.  We discuss how we love to complain about simple errors, how archaeology benefits from coverage, the media’s love of archaeological hype, and how the weird reactions reveal the insecurities of archaeologists.

Some Links!

We talk a bit about the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project and also the Eastern Korinthia Archaeological Survey.  And also the Rough Cilicia Archaeological Survey.

The ManCamp Dialogues (Killdeer, ND) Frenzy:

• Bill and Tom Isern on Prairie Public
• KFYR and again on KFYR
• KXNET
• Bismarck Tribune
• Dickinson Press.
• Billings Gazette
• Richard gets the lead on the Sunday best quote page at Bismarck Tribune – Figure it out, future generations, figure it out!

Josh Wheeler’s The Glitch in the Video-Game Graveyard in Harpers.  Josh claims Bill got “spooled up.”

Emily Guerin’s Meet The Men Who Study Man Camps in InsideEnergy.

We never get through a podcast without referencing The Ohio State University Excavations at Isthmia.

David Pettesherd Pettegrew has a most-respectable blog: Corinthian Matters.

Courtesy of the Wayback Machine, and with great embarrassment, here is Richard’s webpage for the aborted Ciudad Blanca project:  The Rio Platano Cultural Landscape Project.  Short version:  If children with sawed-off shotguns guard the used clothing stores, it’s not a good place to take students on a project.

Take a look at this article on Mayan sacrifices, that also discusses media hype and looters. New Evidence of Ancient Child Trafficking Network.

Richard Rothaus and I once again ventured into the uncertain waters of podcasting. Content enough with our efforts to discuss academia, our research, and our shared history, we decided to turn our banter to more controversial topics.

So, this week, we discuss ISIS’s highly-publicized video showing their destruction of objects in the Mosul museum. There has been some debate concerning the authenticity of these events and the extent of the destruction, but they have nevertheless captured the attention of archaeologists and antiquity lovers the world over.

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Of particular interest to us was how these videos pushed archaeologists to break out of our scientistical mode of inquiry and actually express genuine emotional concern for these objects. The ISIS destruction of these statues suggests that they saw these objects as potentially competing source for authority, and this understanding of statues extends back at least to Late Antiquity where more fanatical members of Christian communities defaced pagan statues (see below). Modern archaeology, however, has tended to privilege a more dispassionate attitude toward objects. In fact, it is only with the discovery and destruction of objects that archaeologists “allowed” to express genuine compassion for the material evidence for the past. Outside of these circumstances, we typically accept that even the most spectacular find is merely an arbitrary sample of an unknown total number of objects, monuments, and sites. The ritualized destruction of objects by ISIS evoked emotion (both the triumphant celebration of the destroyers and the anguished cries of the western world) that trumped the scientific rituals associated with archaeological practice which work to suppress emotional commitments to destructive practices of archaeology in much the same way that the ritualized interaction between doctor and patient reinforces a kind of scientific objectivity.

 What’s interesting to me (and not to speak for Richard here) is that recent work in archaeological theory has made efforts to consider more critically the role of artifacts in the archaeological process. Some scholars have advanced complex arguments arguing that objects have agency, require ethical treatment, and provide the foundation for a more symmetrical archaeology. Witnessing ISIS destruction of antiquities has provided an opportunity for even more conservative members of the profession to humanize their objects of study as they abandoned their staunchly defended place among the post-Enlightenment sciences and indulge in Romantic sentimentality. At the end of the podcast Richard pushed me to consider the ultimate implications of an emotional investment in these objects as he recounts the story of a young soldier from Minnesota who lost his life guarding a museum in Iraq and the podcast concludes with Richard’s rather abrupt assessment of this. For him, the agency of objects and their ethical treatment has very clear limits. Our hope is that our discussion offers an provocative perspective to critically engage recent events!

Here’s a link to the impressive joint statement by the AIA/ASOR/AAA/SAA/AAMD on ISIS and here’s a link to Wayne Sayles blog (for the post he took down, I can only provide a dramatic reading).

I won’t link to the video of ISIS destroying antiquities. 

Here’s a link to the Life of Porphyry of Gaza and Marinos’s Life of Proclus.

Here’s a link to the Atlantic Monthly story: “What ISIS Wants”, and here’s a thoughtful response.

Here’s a link to the The Egyptian martyrs of Libya added to the Coptic Synaxarium.

Here are some images from Richard’s book Corinth: First City of Greece (Brill 2000) which you can purchase for the low, low price of $177.72.

Here are some resources regarding Pfc. Edward Herrgot.

Your Enthusiasm for Protecting Antiquities Cost Army Pfc. Edward J. Herrgott His Life

The full tale of Pfc. Herrgott, the first Minnesotan to die in the Iraq war (3 July 2003), is little known. The news reports all read “Herrgott, 20, of Shakopee, Minn., died July 3 when a sniper shot him in the neck outside the National Museum in Baghdad.” But here is a fuller account from our fellow The Ohio State University Alum, Colonel Peter Mansoor:

“Two days into my command, the Ready First Combat Team lost its third soldier since its arrival in Baghdad and the first of my tenure. Private First Class Edward J. Herrgott was guarding the Baghdad Museum when he was shot and killed by armed gunmen. I visited the location shortly after his death and was shocked by what I discovered. The museum was not the one that contained the ancient treasures of Iraq but was rather more akin to a wax museum for the enjoyment of locals and tourists. The curator had removed all of the exhibits to a safe location to prevent their theft in the aftermath of the war, but nevertheless CJTF-7 had ordered us to guard the place. The media frenzy over the looting of the National Museum of Antiquities had provoked a knee-jerk reaction to guard every place that could possibly be construed to have cultural value. The end result was that we were guarding an empty structure, one made indefensible by the cavernous buildings that engulfed it on both sides and parking garage several stories high across the street. The gunmen who killed Herrgott had sneaked up a side alley and engaged him from the flank as he manned his position in the hatch of a Bradley fighting vehicle.

I was determined to get my soldiers out of that death trap. . . . “

Peter Mansoor, Baghdad at Sunrise: A Brigade Commander’s War in Iraq. Yale University Press, 2008.

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Note 1: Herrgott’s Aunt is worth quoting: “President Bush made a comment a week ago, and he said, ‘bring it on.’ They brought it on and now my nephew is dead.“

Note 2: I didn’t meet Col. Mansoor when we overlapped at the massive OSU. I met him while working on a battlefield study of New Ulm, MN, his home town. If you don’t think the world is ruled by serendipity and The Ohio State University, you are mistaken. And we are fine with that.

Note 3: It looks like the Washington Post ran the Wax Museum Story on 8 July 2003, but I’m not 100% sure.