00:00.00 archpodnet Welcome back to the serm archeology podcast episode two fifty eight and we are talking to Ian Lexi and Matthew from the Utah Cultural site stewardship program. So and I'm not sure which one of you guys is best to answer this. Maybe I'll start with you ean and then you can throw it to who you think is best to answer this but what is. 00:01.60 Heather Um. 00:19.90 archpodnet The value of using the public to monitor these archeological sites where did this idea even come from we we think of archaeologists doing this job and you know I'm sure there's not enough archaeologists to actually do this job and probably no money for it either to be honest with you. So what's the what's the value of of setting this up and engaging the public to do it. 00:36.60 Ian Wright Yeah, you know this is this is kind of one of our passion areas because for for years and years it seems like there was a gatekeeping mentality within archeology and then about seventeen years this ago it seems like that started to change because the you know realization. Not only are archaeologists recreationalists. But so much of the public out there are too and the majority of these people are good folks. They care about these resources. They they have a lot more knowledge in many cases than the archaeologists do because they're from the areas they grew up around. It may be. They're descendants of it. So the idea was hey. Let's enlist. Those people let's get them involved on a kind of more regulated format of helping to monitor these sites and we might as well capitalize on the fact that they're already out there in listum and help ah correct maybe to to put in some education that they maybe haven't been able to have. 01:31.42 archpodnet Um. 01:32.20 Ian Wright And it's been.. It's been super awesome for that regards and and you know, really the dirty little secret about stewarding monitoring and and the stewardship programs is that public education is a big part of it because once the public realizes that hey these places aren't abandoned people do care about them. They're monitoring and. They're they're significant and they're being watched it starts to spread within the communities and it you know it starts to increase the the protection that happens out there in the fill. 02:00.42 archpodnet And that makes sense and I'm I'm wondering how you find the volunteers for this and then how you vet the volunteers for this How do you keep those? you know Youtube arrowhead hunters from becoming monitors and just lining their pockets. You know what? I mean how do you How do you find? How do you? recruit? The people who do this and then like I said. Like suss out whether or not they're actually going to do the right thing. 02:21.63 Ian Wright Well maybe I can just give a little background real quick and then I'll kick it over to lexi. But one of the neat things about this program is we have the opportunity to work with people who have maybe never had training or been able to learn from an archeologist now a lot of archaeologists are part of this program but we were out at a site the other day. And just given an educational presentation for a different thing and a guy came up to me and he goes hey you know what? Ian I've been out here my whole life bottle hunting and and digging in metal detecting this site and after hearing about the stewardship program and why these places are important I you know I realized that this isn't something that I should have been doing. And oftentimes those make some of our best stewards people that just kind of they they never had had that opportunity. They love the history and then when they learned like wow okay I see the value here and and you know I'll kick it over to lexi to tell us just a little bit more about how we go out and and find. 03:00.87 archpodnet Um. 03:18.90 Ian Wright Stewards and our recruitment and why events events are so important. 03:20.52 archpodnet Awesome. 03:23.85 Lexi Carson Sweet. Yeah thanks Ian. Um, so like he said it is a big just it's all about public education. It's just about getting out there and maybe making people more aware of what these. How significant these sites are and why they need to be protected. Um and that's where a lot of our events and presentations come in handy. Ah, we will go to different recreation clubs and present to them. We recently did that with. A o hv group that's very prominent here in Utah and we gained some stewards just from that one presentation. Um, we've gone and tabled at climbing events and we have plans this year to just expand more into. You know the outdoor recreation side of things and just getting those people that are out there and using the land and are so close to these sites. It's really It's pretty easy to get them connected to these areas through the um through the sites. So that's where we use. The events and tabling and just getting out there and just connecting with the public I mean we can find stewards anywhere is the thing especially when you can be at those events where everyone kind of shares a common ground. 04:51.50 Lexi Carson Um, cultural and archeological sites surprisingly play into a lot of different things that people like to do here in Utah. 04:52.37 archpodnet Okay. 04:58.53 archpodnet Yeah, would imagine I imagine finding people locally that are at least near the sites and kind of grew up in the area gives them a little more skin in the game too right? They they they may have a little more you know quote ownership over the area and and want to protect that. But also it sounds like they probably need. I mean knowing what I do of Utah I imagine not a lot of the sites are are right next to a road so you probably need ah a decent vehicle to to at least get close to the site if not all the way there in some cases and then the ability to hike out to those sites as well. In some cases I'd imagine. 05:24.28 Lexi Carson Sufficient. 05:33.50 Lexi Carson Yeah, so this kind of goes into our training process that we have for our volunteers. Um, which is another way that we kind of we have a way to like vet the volunteers screen them kind of figure out if. There's anything sketchy they might do on a site and decide where they will best fit in but we do have an ability section. Um on an application that we send after the training. We also discuss this in the training but we find sites that best. 05:50.67 archpodnet Oh. 06:06.82 Lexi Carson The people that want to steward them because obviously ah, there are hundreds of thousands of sites that need to be monitored. But if someone's not enjoying the site that they're going to or the process that it takes to get there. They're not going to go out there. Um, so some people don't want to hike and there are sites for them. There are people that only want to do backpacking trips and there are sites for them. We've even started to expand into finding. Other modes of transportation recreational transportation that people have um to get them out there. There are sites down by Lake Powell and Glen Canyon that can only be accessed by a motorized watercraft so we need to find stewards that have that. 06:45.44 archpodnet Um. 06:57.39 Lexi Carson That can go check on those so it yeah it's it's amazing What we need to actually get to all those sites that um are still unmonitored and so again, that's why expanding who we're reaching out to is. 07:01.16 archpodnet Um, the. 07:09.67 archpodnet Um, yeah. 07:16.23 Lexi Carson Um, so valuable. 07:18.98 archpodnet Sounds like you may be able to walk to some of those sites in Lake Powell that were underwater before unfortunately it's ah yeah, it's and another good case where it's good to have locals around there too because I'm sure they're all very concerned about the water situation down there and then the cultural resources popping up as a result. 07:24.20 Lexi Carson Ah, yeah. 07:35.40 Lexi Carson Yeah, for sure. 07:35.86 archpodnet Undoubtedly, yeah. 07:36.35 Ian Wright Hey Chris you ask a little bit too about our our vetting process and I think Matt would be in a real good position to tell you a little bit about how we play stewards and kind of determine where they go and and watch him for a little while. 07:44.75 archpodnet Sure. Okay, yeah. 07:50.40 Matthew Podolinsky Yeah, yeah, thanks Ian. Um, yeah, so our vetting process. You know we get ah a whole range of people who you know they'll even take the training and the training gives them a good background on you know, archaeological etiquette and visitation and what to and what to do and what not to do and whatnot. But ah. If. We don't know somebody you know we we do a little bit of vetting on the backend where we try to look them up. We try to look at their Facebook make sure that they're not someone that's posting a lot of you know, sensitive locations on their social media but 1 of the things that we typically do is if we we don't know them if they're not you know? ah. 08:22.46 archpodnet Sure. 08:29.29 Matthew Podolinsky An archeologist or trained archeologist with the past profession or whatnot. Um, we we typically place them on well-known sites. Ah Buckhorn Wash Rochester Panel Newspaper Rock those kind of things and being like hey like you know this is a very popular site. We see a lot of visitation and those are the sites that typically are getting. Maybe the most impact whether it's vandalism or depreciative behavior and um the three of us we all get to go out and meet the stewards and introduce them to sites I primarily do that for my job and it's kind of you know as you're out during the day with these. These stewards you get to understand who they are their background and that's kind of the vetting process in and of itself as well. You kind of understand you you hear what they're saying what they're asking and yeah, sometimes there's a steward where're like ooh like that's a little bit of a red flag right? there like maybe we'll just keep you on newspaper rock and maybe. 09:15.22 archpodnet Well. 09:23.74 Matthew Podolinsky Not these sensitive sites that are in the back country or stuff like that. So you really get to know these stewards and it's so good that they're on these popular sites. But you really can be like okay like you know, maybe we don't like continue this you know, um, professional relationship and stewarding in you know a more complex way and whatnot. 09:25.27 archpodnet Sure. 09:41.28 archpodnet And are the resources available through your ass program to I don't know how to phrase this other than to say to double check every once in a while I mean you can't you can't be going to every single site because that's why you have stewards and and you can't go there all the time either but does somebody who's not the site steward. 09:42.36 Matthew Podolinsky So. 09:59.66 archpodnet Just go out to these sites and I don't know just take a put a second set of eyes on it every once in a while. 10:06.49 Matthew Podolinsky Um, I'll just speak to that. So like um, either the 3 of us if they're like if we're in the area. Um, and you know we place another steward at another location and we're like you know near a site that is known or popular. We might go out and do our own monitoring report. Um, you know we have that capability and so that that's one way to do that kind of stuff. We also have a um, a series of regional coordinators throughout the state of Utah Utah's a large state it you know takes us 6 hours to get down to. 10:23.80 archpodnet Ah. 10:39.55 Matthew Podolinsky Bears ears 5 hours to Kanab and that can make it difficult to meet stewards and see certain sites and those are like and so we have these regional coordinators that are in the San Juan area or Kanab and they are really able to help us out placing stewards. But. We can always reach out to them and be like hey we have a site that the land manager wants to have checked out and you know we're busy. We can't get down there. We have something planned and they have been a tremendous help and pretty much integral for the the system to be like hey go check out a site, get some other eyes. You know it, you've introduced people to it before go and. Please take a monitoring report or see if there's recent vandalism because you notice a steward hasn't been going out or the steward has retired from the program and we just need to get more eyes on the ground. So ah, do you want to say anything more about that Ian with the regional coordinators. 11:26.12 archpodnet Sure. Okay. 11:31.86 Ian Wright Just the only thing is to you know we do involve law enforcement in all of our trainings and also when we place the stewards for the first time we always try to have the local archeologist with us so we can build that relationship between them and the stewards and we don't place any stewards without the permission. 11:38.33 archpodnet Okay. 11:51.65 Ian Wright Of the archaeologist and also all of our stewards sign confidentiality forms codes of conduct assumption of risk so you know there there are there are precautions there as well. 11:53.92 archpodnet Um. 12:02.71 archpodnet Okay, awesome And how is this I mean you've mentioned a number of people involved with this. How is this program funded. 12:12.71 Ian Wright You know it's such a cool way. We've got it funded in Utah I'm glad you asked and what's so neat in our state is we ah to have a centralized program meaning that we do the whole state is really unique because a lot of states. They only have maybe 1 monument has some stewards or 1 filled office has some stewards. This way. Ah in in Utah the state legislature passed House bill 1 62 that effectively created this position and houses it within the shippo and the reason it's in the shipo is because we have to work with communities. Anyways, we work within all the communities of Utah with all the land managing agencies and we're in a really good position. To manage this program and work with the folks that need to be involved to make it successful and so our 3 positions are funded by the state of Utah that being said, our land managing partners contribute funds into the program as well. 13:04.24 archpodnet Um, ah. 13:04.34 Ian Wright And then that is then reallocated back into events and whatnot for stewards. 13:07.90 archpodnet Okay, awesome and do you formally engage any like your local C or M firms or anything like that are they involved in this at all aside from maybe inviting people out on new sites and things like that but are they involved in any sort of I don't know management or or you know funds or. 13:25.34 Ian Wright Yeah, our our local cm our local archeology companies have been amazing to work with. In fact, some of them have made it so that their employees can take time off to be stewards for so many hours a month. 13:25.40 archpodnet Volunteering time or anything like that. 13:37.83 archpodnet Ah, that's cool. 13:39.40 Ian Wright And and they've donated their expertise. So some of our you know like Matt had mentioned some of our sites that have specific. Um, you know they may be being monitored by law enforcement or they may be need kind of an expert on them or they may be some sensitivity level there. We will oftentimes engage our stewards who work for the the archeology companies around the state to monitor those and and then also a lot of times we'll go give. Presentations to those groups so that they are aware of what we're doing out on the land. So that if they take on a project. They can let us know and then we can oftentimes involve our stewards which is really awesome. 14:15.60 archpodnet Awesome! All right? Well I think we're going to take a break just a little bit early because we've got some questions from our hosts who who I've I haven't intentionally kept silent but you guys have just been so great answering questions I want to give them a chance to ask some questions of you guys and get what's on their mind. Ah, out into the open so we'll do that on the other side of the break back in a minute.