00:00.00 connor Welcome to episode 93 of a life in ruins podcast where we investigate the careers of those living a life in ruins I am your host Connor John and I am currently joined by my co-host Carlton Gover david'll trickle in as he normally does at some point during the interview. In this episode. We are lucky to be joined by Dr Richard Adams Dr. Dr. Adams personally spoon-fed the archaeology coolaid to to me at Colorado State University and he knows both Carlton and David. Wanted to have him on to discuss his work in Wyoming his work with Dr George Frisin and his outlook on teaching Dr Adams how are you doing on this lovely monday. 00:40.60 Rich Adams Hey Connor it's great to be with you I want to? thank you guys for the invitation. This is cool. 00:45.33 archpodnet I yeah man of course it's a pleasure pleasure having you I think the last time I saw you I was moving to boulder and I was dropping off my u-haul and Laramie and I stopped at a gas station off of I 25 and you were walking out of the bathroom as I was walking in because you were had to do the airport to fly somewhere. 00:51.23 Rich Adams L Yep yep yep, that's right, That's right that would that was a while ago. 01:05.80 archpodnet Yeah man at like 4 years at this point. So um, just kind of starting starting off this episode. What were your first experiences in anthropology growing up like were you. You know as we say like a dinosaur kid a history buff or a nature nerd like what was that initial draw that kind of ah inspired that passion for archeology and. 01:25.52 Rich Adams There were a couple things I was a nature nerd. My mother self-tatters self how to hunt for mushrooms so we spent all summer hunting mushrooms in Wyoming and experimenting with ones and that taught me to look at the ground and then in the. Fall and in the winter I was living in Chicago and my dad and I would go to Maxwell Street which is a world famous flea market where all the wares were spread out on blankets on the ground and we had specific targets. We were looking for brass doorknobs. And striker plates and hardware and things like that. So we move it on fast clip and he was looking for these specific things so you'd scan an area and find that and I realized long a while ago that that's where I got my eye for looking at things was looking at the ground. For either for mushrooms or for bargains and then apparently I was an anthropology nerd at a young age I do not remember it. But. 1 teacher and 1 neighbor both predicted that I would become an anthropologist and they were right? My high school social studies teacher said I'd be an anthropologist and my next door neighbor who was a psychologist predicted that I would become an archaeologist. They were both right? So it was. It was destined but then in 1971 if you guys remember that right? 191978 1971 I was I was in eighth grade and my mom. 03:06.76 archpodnet I Of course. 03:14.93 Rich Adams Was trying to get rid of me because I was an unruly teen I wasn't an unruly teenager I was just I was a young young boy you know we're all assholes and she was trying to get rid of me and she found this archeological excavation run by a high school social studies teacher down in. Central illinois near Dixon Mounds and she sent me on that and I had a wonderful time being you know scum labor that that we were as volunteers The first thing we had to do is move the back dirt pile because the features were under. It. You know standard archeology. And I remember doing that and I remember being with a bunch of city kids and one of the city kids peed on electric fence which caused quite a bit of hilarity for all of us who knew better than that and what I really remember about that particular. 04:01.79 connor Um. 04:11.30 Rich Adams Summer early summer in 1971 was there was ditch weed growing in in the ditches in central illinois it was escaped it. It was hemp but I didn't care. It was 71 and there was also a blonde named Bonnie. 04:19.45 archpodnet And as ditchwiach does. 04:29.75 Rich Adams And and I was after her so you know that that set the stage for it and then the big defining moment came in 1974 on a Sierra Club Forest service trail maintenance project. In the the wilderness in the amsorca mountains near Brooks Lake Wyoming and the togadee toga dee pass area and again my mom was trying to get rid of me at this time I was seventeen and I was a real pain in the but and she was trying to get rid of me. And I went on this Sierra Club Trail maintenance project and we were rerouting a trail and during that project I was grubbing out a new section of trail when I whacked a soapstone bowl that was upside down in the dirt. And it flipped up and there's this soapstone bowl. It's Truncated. It's sliced in half not by me but it broke in the pass and I looked at that and I looked at it and I was pretty sure it wasn't pottery because my mom had taken me all over the southwest and I'd been to Mesa Verity and Chaco and all that. But I didn't know that rock was so soft you could carve it and the the day after I found that bull happened to be the day that Richard M Nixon resigned as president. So the ranger rode in eighteen miles on his horse. With two Gallon jugs of Kribari Red wine which was the absolutely cheapest wine that you could get and we celebrated like that and I asked him so I found this thingy here and he goes go ahead. Kid keep it. You know we were all at the whole country was in a good mood. We thought. We thought that sanity had returned to the the United States how wrong we were but we we really thought that things would improve and so he let me take that bowl back and I packed it out those eighteen miles and it sat on the mantelpiece until I failed college. Ah, couple of times flyn buoyantly and and then I got to the University Of Wyoming at the tender age of about 27 or so and I walked into the anthro department and saw soapstone bowls in the museum and then there was a flash and I knew what I was going to do. That. 07:05.18 connor So so so that definitely shaped at least and we'll and we'll we'll talk about that I think um, either in the second segment or later in this one that shaped your future research and what ultimately brought you to the University Of Wyoming 07:08.64 Rich Adams Oh yeah. 07:24.93 connor Um, I know you had you obviously had ties there in the past what like what brought you to that department right. 07:30.20 Rich Adams Ah, it was nearby I I had gone to Colorado college where I failed miserably and it was a great education but I wasn't going to go back there and finish and I happened to be. Living in Evanston wyoming at the other end of the state in the southwest corner and I was making really good money as an engineering technician and I just got tired of talking to construction guys about how messed up they were going to get that night or or what their wife did to them on Fridays. Or how big their boat was and I wanted to have an intellectual conversation I grew up in an intellectual household and I realized I better go back and to school and finish up and uw was the logical choice. George Frisn's reputation had. Had proceeded at New W was getting favorable press and I was in state. So it was it was the option I also have the family cabin in centennial. So if nothing else I knew I could live there and and. Go to school if need be but turns out I got a place. 08:48.56 connor Yeah, that's that's that's awesome. Um, what was your first experience with George Frisn 08:57.93 Rich Adams I I don't remember first experience I suspect it was in a classroom I took every class that I could from doc and he would walk in with a carousel full of slides. These are. Film slides of course because this was back in the 80 s and a pocket full of change and he would stare at the clock on the wall at the back of the classroom jingle his change and and talk about his slides and for those that weren't listening. He was a terrible teacher. But for those that were listening. It was absolutely riveting and I sat in the front row along with pj gimberling who's a native american rights lawyer or was in in casper and the 2 of us competed. Head to head for every single point there was and I just found doc riveting I eventually worked for him at the looking bill site up in Northwest Wyoming outside of dubois and that's that's where I got to know him. 10:17.26 Rich Adams Doc and I well we we shared some times I was the field school wrangler 1 year and this was back in the early days of wyoming archeology going digital in this case, it was a. toshiba t 100 laptop computer. 1 of the first laptops and when you turned it on you got a dos prompt. You got the cthec prompt and you had to run. You know you had to type run blah blah blah and run the program. It was interfaced. With a theotle light with a total station and we were we were the the first in Wyoming to use that it was Marcell and era king bar and doc and Mary Littlearson that did that and it was bulky of course because interfaces weren't any good and there was a dos prompt and. Was not a rugged laptop and Marcel and ingbar had rigged up ah a system that that sort of worked but it crashed every couple of hours or so and during the middle of a 10 day everybody in charge went away for a couple of days frisn went to visit a site Marcel had to attend a conference Eric went to a wedding or something like that and they left me in charge with the field school and so 20 minutes after they left the computer crashed and I was not computer literate and. All of us tried in the field school all 14 of us and none of us were particularly computer literate at that time but we could not get it booted up and talking to the theotaite so we had to switch back and kick it old school and use line levels and tape measures and maintain straight side walls. And we dug like that for I don't 6 or eight days and then we dug like that for several days and then frisin came back and I remember him looming over me and frisin was an enormous presence just enormous. He was looming over me and I was. Down in the pit digging away and he goes move some dirt that was that it's like I was so proud I nearly died I thought that was the greatest compliment you could get and. 12:31.87 connor I. 12:39.80 connor Ah. 12:46.89 Rich Adams Later on ah we traveled to South Africa together I spent 2 three weeks with him and his wife and my dad and John Albany's the late geoareologist in Wyoming traveling around looking at rock art sites and seeing early man sites. That was a lot of fun. Got to know George Socially and then he became a frequent dinner guest he and Mary Beth Galvan who was like m a student number 2 or 3 at uw they were best buddies they would come over for dinner. And we never rip her are in good time. You'd get get a bottle of of cabernetsovignon into doc and he'd loosen up and tell you what he really thought was it's a lot of fun to be with him. 10:51.63 David Ahead. When was this this is like mid 80 s or is this early 90 s okay, um, let me ask you this back in the day there in the eighty s. 13:40.94 Rich Adams I met him in the mid eighty mid to late eighty s and in the 90 s is when we went to South Africa 13:55.51 Rich Adams Yeah, ah as David Hirst Thomas put it the cowboys of science. You know everybody was wearing a straw hat a Levis jacket and surveying in cowboy boots and there was. 11:13.80 David What was archaeology like. 11:21.31 David I right. 14:12.79 Rich Adams Was probably a bottle nearby or stashed in the pickup truck and there were a lot of field judgments and a whole lot of walking and a whole lot of partying and I got in on the tail end of that. That's. 11:43.88 David Okay, um I guess we can't go into too much detail with the partying but I've just always wondered what Dad's archeology was like because going through you know, site reports and curation and artifact. You know forms from back then. 14:32.13 Rich Adams Um. 14:43.24 Rich Adams Um, first. 14:43.36 connor Yeah, all all I envision is like tube tops and Cowboy boots. 12:02.22 David What was going on. But I. 14:49.15 Rich Adams Ah, you're not far off but you are not far off, um, you know things really haven't changed that much you, you'll still see some of that today. There was a different attitude. There were actually a lot of cowboys in archeology many of the contract archeologists that I learned with when I was just starting out were river guides and ski instructors and did archeology to pay the bills when there wasn't. Something so 1 guy just lived out of his truck and he'd he'd go to steamboat and teach skiing in the winter and do archaeology all summer long. So there's a lot of lot of freeform. Their graduate students were. Further and farther between at the time and of course there was the the big push towards science. You know the benford. The new mexico mafia Eric King Bart Dave Rapson and all the people influenced by lu inford down at New Mexico came up here and made us much more explicit and scientific. 16:09.53 connor So you kind of you worked through that transition where you were where I mean obviously you were using technology early on but you know it had to be very interesting to be part of that as that wave goes through of Lou being. 16:17.10 Rich Adams Yeah. 16:28.59 connor Lu Binford you know, loud pissing everyone off but also writing these really good articles about how things should be more scientific and etc was that was it was it really interesting to watch that happen or. 16:38.44 Rich Adams Oh it was it was there were adherents here. Everybody was an adherent with the exception of the older professors like frisn saw the benefit of it. Chuck Rare was an early adapter because he went to New Mexico ah but some of the older archaeologists were still seated the pants cultural historians like that. But for the most part wyoming embraced it wholeheartedly. Unfortunately at the same time. 17:09.45 archpodnet I Haven't let it go since. 17:15.72 Rich Adams You said it not me haven't let it go since Um, yeah, they it kind of alienated the public at the time because they were really explicit about hypotheses and hypothesis testing and the public wanted to see cool stuff and know what was happening on their land. And that hasn't changed at all so it was it was a fun time. Ah post precesualism was never my thing I never drank that kool-aid much I sipped it a little bit but post perceptualism was even worse. I never understood that and that was the first question in my oral exams with ah becoming a masters candidate is what's postpercesualism I don't have a clue. 18:05.73 archpodnet Well, that's a good segue. We'll be right back with um episode 93 with Dr Rich Adams and we'll continue on talking about his master's thesis work.