00:00.00 connor Welcome back to so 93 of a life in ruins podcast we are talking with Dr Richard Adams David is currently with us and joined halfway through the last little bit what up. Um, so we mentioned in the intro rich that you. 00:10.25 David Hey. 00:19.80 connor I think I said spoon fed me the kool-aid at at at Csu um, could you talk about? Ah how we met each other and so so ultimately I would oh my god. 00:22.55 Rich Adams That's correct. 00:32.88 archpodnet I want embarrassing stories of Connor like I've had some of my professors on here and I've been roasted and so I'm I'm willing to see some Connor stories from undergraduate. 00:40.69 David Let's hear it. Okay. 00:41.86 Rich Adams Okay, happy to oblige Connor's one of my favorites. So the first time I met Connor he was in a class I believe it was north american archeology and this was a really cramped classroom. Kind of hot at times it was in the afternoon people were dropping like flies and and I assigned something where you had to you had to pick a time period and a site and discuss that in a 5 page paper and I made it very step wise and. Connor was still dressing pretty much soccer style those days and was was kind of a punk sat in the back and the room was filled with cute girls I think you'll agree and he might have been somewhat distracted but I never. 01:35.66 connor Never. 01:37.83 archpodnet Ah, ah. 01:38.61 David I conner. No. 01:39.30 Rich Adams I Remember I remember he wrote his paper on Danger cave and might have been your second anthropology class. It was a thick. Yeah and I was really impressed. 01:49.33 connor Yeah, yeah, it was Dr Creekmore was my first one. Yeah. 01:58.59 Rich Adams With his paper because he took on a really tough topic. You know 11000 years of prehistory at danger cave and did a pretty credible job for not knowing a damn thing about archeology and I thought that was pretty cool and there were there were a lot of other students in that class who also stepped up and did good work. But. I was particularly impressed with Connor and I believe I was flogging the field school pretty hard because the usual field school instructor. Dr. Jason Labelle was on sabbatical and they csu had asked me to. Teach the field school was like yeah finally and I was flogging it pretty hard and a couple students came out of that field school who have since gone on and Connor being one of them Hallie Meeker who's archaeologist in her own right? Okay, couple of others probably so Lisa yes, yep, ah I had 14 of the okay 12 of the the best. 02:58.67 connor Ah, listsa Lissa Lissa still does kind of from a from ah from afar. Yeah. 03:12.69 Rich Adams Students a person could ask for in that 2011 Csu field school that was just fantastic and several have gone on that I'm particularly proud of Connor and Hallie and Lissa and William William is is doing public outreach stuff. It's it's been fantastic. And boy did they have fun in the field school I camped a long way from where the the action occurred so I would have plausible deniability but there were raves. there was loud music ah there was inebriation there was tep creeping. There were breakn ups. There were get-togethers I'm not name and names there. There was a lot of flaming testosterone and estrogen and also. 03:53.42 archpodnet Ah. 03:53.87 David Um, what's up. 04:03.97 David Oh. 04:08.35 Rich Adams Students that just could not get enough archeology. Oh My God You guys were tremendous. You just all the time asking questions wanting to do more. It was It was Fantastic. It was kind of a throwback to the old days of field schools because everybody was just. So into it now much more so than people are now with Covid and and wokeness some veganism and glutardedness and yeah and having cars nobody had a car.. There were a few people had a car that helped too. 04:31.47 David Yeah. 04:36.47 archpodnet I. 04:36.27 connor Me. 04:41.87 David What? what. 04:43.23 connor Yeah, it was. It was great I mean we spent a lot of time in northwestern wyoming? Um I think one of the quotes was I didn't know this was mountain climbing school which is because rich but rich put us through the ringer I mean he he was really focused on. 04:53.98 Rich Adams To. 05:02.66 connor He wanted to show us cool stuff but he also wanted us to hike and be aware that this is going to be your life. You're going to be a field tech at some point and you're going to have to put the work in and be able to hike over mountains whatever train ah was occurring. So I think that was that was super important. Um. Also Dr Brian Schroeder was part of that who was on a couple episodes of ours. But yeah, so that's you got me addicted to it I mean it was I think it was the the culture there. It was ah you your excitement your. 05:29.67 Rich Adams Um, yeah. 05:40.26 connor And Brian's excitement Matt's excitement I think that all kind of like really got me interested. 05:42.12 Rich Adams Yeah, and I also I told everyone that this was not going to be your average field school. Anybody can learn how to become a field technician this was going to be crew chief school. You're going to learn what it takes to be in charge. I just recently graduated from being a crew chief the state archeologist's office in Wyoming and I was telling all the students about the expectations what they needed to do what the next step would be how to interpret a site how to how to determine national register eligibility. All these things and it took with some of the students not all but it took with some and Connor is an example of that was with a lot of fun. But. 06:30.36 David And he's all right. 06:29.71 connor Yeah, it was a lot of fun. Yeah I turned out. Okay I don't know about what these guys would say um but we did visit High-rise Village which is mixed in eventually with your dissertation work. But. 06:35.19 Rich Adams Um. 06:46.96 Rich Adams Dep. 06:48.54 connor Your master's work was specifically on soapstone use and it prevalence throughout Wyoming right. 06:55.49 Rich Adams That's correct, um, back in those days a master's thesis was expected at Wyoming was expected to be 200 pages long and I was a little I was a little worried because mine clocked in at like 97 and I thought oh god frisn's gonna come after me because you are writing master's thesis at the University Of Wyoming or immense. They were big, maybe not equivalent to a ph d somewhere else but they were more than what most people asked for in a master's thesis. So i. Lived and breathed soapstone for a couple of years and wrote everything there was to know about soapstone in in Wyoming and and part of the rest of the us and and the world and worried that I didn't have enough data. And I did replicative archaeology I made soapstone pots and bowls and beads I tried to incorporate all 4 fields because uw is a four field school and I worked long and hard to. Find a shoshone word so I could say I did a little bit of token linguistics in there. The the biological anthropology was much harder but you know I wanted to know everything since I found that pot. The things are just so fascinating. No soapstone bowl. Had ever been dated when I started and I got a a grant and got a date that was was protoistor basically but because of the radiocarbon dating calibration curve. It could be It could be anything from sixteen fifty to 1950 which didn't help a whole lot with with 1 sample now they're 6 or 8 bowls that have been dated but it was a step in the right direction I tried replicating the manufacturing marks that you could see on soapstone bowls using. Hatchets and knives and saws and stone tools and bifaces and it it turns out that you can actually analyze some of the most recent history of a soapstone pot by looking at the manufacturing marks and a good third of them have metal tool marks on them. Suggesting that they were made during the protohistoric or historic periods. So I had fun I'm I'm sure 2 other people have read it. You know every time there's a soapstone art artifact found in Wyoming I get called to look at it. 09:41.54 Rich Adams Still fascinating because the residue on the inside of a soapstone bowl should preserve the last few meals that were cooked in there and there's some fascinating stuff that Matt Stern has done with residue analysis on soapstone bowls. And they actually found the ingredients of a traditional ah northern not northern. Yeah maybe northern shoshone meal of pine nuts, fish and onions in a soup that those are the. The fatty acids that they identified using. 10:25.61 Rich Adams Something like that and so it's cool. It's ah it's a lot like what you can do with analyzing the interior of our clay pot and also final thing don't get me started on soapstone soapstone bowls. Were seen as the possessions of women dick washake who is chief washikee's grandson said that soapstone pots were the possession of women and they were handed down from mother to daughter and never traded which if that's true. It's one of the few durable. Archaeological artifacts that we can in Wyoming that we can associate exclusively with women so we should so be studying the heck out of them just because of that it's they were also made for trade. But oh well, it was a good story when Dick Washiki said it. 11:18.43 David Um, if you don't mind me asking what I guess in hindsight in your opinion. What would be the purpose of a 200 page thesis versus like why do you think we mean there's obvious reasons why we turn that condense that but. 11:32.78 Rich Adams Ah, yeah, ah to prove to George You could do it to prove. You had the right stuff I mean ah, um, there are some damn good ones. Kim Smiley's thesis on running bison is still. 11:38.56 David Ah, okay, okay. 11:52.10 Rich Adams Cited like Wilson's thesis is still cited I mean there are some theses from the seventy s that are still the best literature there is because frisn insisted on a big huge thesis that was comprehensive. And was also a contribution of original research nowadays they don't make less sense. But yeah I did read yours. 12:15.40 connor Yeah, you read mine So mine doesn't make. Yeah. 12:16.57 David But. I Mean the guys in the academy of Sciences. So I guess like he knows what he's doing but also that was like back in the day So I don't know. But. 12:31.47 Rich Adams Well nowadays the the 30 page thesis makes a lot of sense because you know a big 200 page thing. It's it's too short to be a book and it's way too long to get published. So what are you gonna do with that. It's it's your basic. 12:46.21 David Am. 12:49.31 connor So Carlton was yours very long your thesis. 12:51.48 archpodnet No, it was I think it came out to yeah 30 pages I mean I think also since rich you were there. They got a ph d program and I think the focus is more on the ph d students and master students are there for tuition money you got to you got to get them through the gauntlet two years and out. 13:06.48 Rich Adams And yeah, there's some of that there's UW still produces very good m a students they but then well you're good in other ways you know. 13:16.42 archpodnet Not us three though we're're the exception. 13:24.10 Rich Adams Leading leading the charge down at the buck or or encouraging people to get more interested in archeology look at this, you got the leading podcast in in anthropology. But. 13:28.20 connor Ah. 13:33.77 archpodnet Yeah. 13:35.70 David That's true because that we can't do the actual math. M. 13:42.90 Rich Adams Yeah, it was. It was an ordeal to write a 200 page thesis. It was the 12 chapters long or something like that it was it was 3 times locker than my dissertation. 13:46.74 David Yeah up. Yeah. 13:54.24 archpodnet Yeah I was about to say I think like my dissertation is is five thirty page chapters to be made into articles. So your your thesis is longer than my death. 13:55.41 David Whoa. 14:04.44 Rich Adams Yeah, and that was common at the time the dissertations that were coming out were immense. They were the phone book of a major Metropolitan area you there was no way you would print one out. 14:21.60 archpodnet I yeah because I use Mike Page's thesis a lot and that was back in like 2008 I think is when he'd done his and that's like 300 pages 400 with all the figures and tables just like dude I don't have time. 14:29.42 Rich Adams And. 14:37.29 David Um, yeah. 14:36.76 Rich Adams Yeah, but well all that's page. Yeah, these very intense and very focused on pottery. The dude les pottery. Yes, there's lot of pottery being found in Wyoming. 14:38.62 archpodnet I Just don't have time to read this whole thing and. 14:46.84 David The dude likes Pottery I I will say that. Yeah. 14:56.42 Rich Adams When I started there was a ah shoe box in curation that held almost all of the pottery in Wyoming and now their cabinet's full of it. It's just all over the place. 15:06.50 David Do you think that's. 15:05.39 connor Well and they're They're even classifying it other than like what grayware browner. Whatever they called it. They're actually like dividing it up into something that's meaningful categories now. 15:11.36 Rich Adams That. 15:16.70 archpodnet Yeah, was cha with spencerre planes and he's like so ah yeah, it looks like we're ah we're we found some ah pottery and it it's It's not Ah, we're trying to figure it out. You should come check it out sometime and so. 15:16.90 Rich Adams Um, and. 15:23.85 Rich Adams Yes. My Spencer ah. 15:31.99 David Do you think that increase in pottery in the repository is ah is a collection bias thing back when there wasn't much and now there is more or was it just straight up. They weren't finding it until now. Okay. 15:45.15 Rich Adams They weren't finding it until now. Nobody nobody knew what they were looking for because they they were all rancher archeologists who'd never seen pottery in the southwest or in the east and so just didn't have an eye for it and. 15:57.80 David A. 16:02.70 Rich Adams It turns out that it is all over the place in Wyoming but in little teeny tiny pieces for the most part you know Spencer the field school this summer got a piece of pottery that was seven centimeters by fourteen centimeters which is. You know, basically a boon and crockett sized piece of pottery for Wyoming. it's it's huge 16:31.66 archpodnet I Yeah yeah. 16:31.45 connor Um, so I have a biased question to ask Why is mountain archeology The best. 16:36.38 Rich Adams Sure sure. 16:43.17 Rich Adams Um, ah in field school when I was in field school. There was an older guy that was in field school with me his name is John Lund and he was an architectural engineer but grew up a. Ah, pot hunter all throughout Wyoming and he put it best he said every day spent above ten thousand feet doesn't count for your threescore and 10 it's a free day and that's 1 reason why mountain archeology is the best. Is because days spent above treeline are unbelievably precious and they are so wonderful and it was it was all mountain archeology wasn't exactly brand new but we were going into places where no archaeology had. Really been done and what we're finding was just truly extraordinary. You know will Houston was probably the first mountain archeology that was his master's thesis at Boulder in like 67 or 65 and then. James Benedict with the front range did amazing Mountain Archeology George Frisn did a whole bunch there. He went on a pack trip in the pineale side of the winds and recorded a bunch of sites just you know dots on a map and 1 sentence description. There but his dots were accurate and there really wasn't much done. That's his name. Hayden felt the guy who you did your your thesis on he was real cutting edge never did anything with it but boy he was way ahead of his time. 18:36.89 connor Left. 18:39.61 Rich Adams It's you know, part of it is the Sierra Club and the wilderness act their definition of wilderness as an area untraveled by man where man is just a visitor despite the sexist language that still persists today. You think of wilderness areas. Oh no humans were there well thell they weren't you know they were all over the site density up above treeline and parts of the wind rivers is as high as the site density in major oil and gas fields in Southwest Wyoming I mean they're just sites. Everywhere and we we were just ignoring it and I asked my field school instructor Eric inbar who set up the shipboat database and was a real cutting edge archeologist ask him so what's the definition of a site. And he gave the greatest answer ever something George Frisn can drive a backho to and that was so true in those days if Doc couldn't drive a Backo to it. It wasn't a pleasant sight. 19:43.89 archpodnet Ah, excellent. Well. 19:43.22 connor Um. 19:50.38 archpodnet Fair enough and with that we'll go ahead. We'll be right back with ah Dr Adams on episode 93 a life from his podcast stay tuned.