Hello everyone and welcome back to Seeker+!
I’m your host, Julian Huguet.
And this week I’m talking about archaeology.
If you missed the first episode, we got into how the field of archaeology is structured
and how scientists figure out the ages of the discoveries that they make using a technique
made possible by the Manhattan project.
It’s fascinating, so definitely go check that out if you haven’t already.
But now I want to get into what makes archaeology so sweet in the first place—and that’s
the discoveries!
The shipwrecks, mummies, unopened tombs, lost cities in the jungle, and buried treasure.
This also feels like a good time to talk about, whether in all of this, we should be digging
up ancient people and the objects that once supported their livelihoods in the first place?
I mean, archaeological digs haven’t always gone down in the most ethical ways.
That might be because archaeology really came into its own as an academic discipline in
the nineteenth century, right around the same time that modern nation states were emerging.
Bound up in colonial ideologies from the beginning, the field was made up largely of European
men who were fine with disrupting ancient sites, disregarding local customs, and basically
just taking whatever they pleased.
It’s a great tragedy how so many incredible artifacts and remains have been stolen, mistreated
and lost around the world.
So I think we can all agree that the whole “finders-keepers” approach to archeology
isn’t the move.
This has led to calls for many museums to return artifacts to the places and countries
they were taken from.
For example — in the late 19th century, invading British troops looted thousands of
objects from the Benin kingdom, now present-day Nigeria.
Nigeria has been asking for their return since the country gained independence in 1960 from
the British, yet many museums have yet to fulfill their request.
There's no denying that it’s a complicated and divided issue.
There are people who think disturbing any human burial site is wrong, even if it’s
done respectfully for scientific reasons.
Some think it depends on the beliefs or cultures of the group in question.
And there are groups actively working to approach archaeology from a decolonial lens acknowledging
how colonial domination was a huge piece of early archaeology.
And at the same time, some believe that archaeology will teach modern humans lessons that could
really help inform our decisions about the future.
One example I found was a National Geographic article about archaeologists that study how
diseases affected people in the past.
Dr. Sharon DeWitte, a professor at the University of South Carolina, was looking into the Black
Death and through analysis of the teeth on skeletons, she was able to debunk the notion
that the disease affected people indiscriminately.
She found that it actually affected older people more than those who were younger.
This is something that might help in future encounters with the plague.
Yes, it’s still aroun cd.
DeWitte also said something about whether we should dig up historic humans that I found
interesting.
She says, and I quote, that “Written records are mostly biased towards wealthy individuals
and men, especially if we’re talking about the medieval period…
If we want to know anything about the experience of women, children, and poor people, very
often the only way we can get at that is by looking at skeletal data.”
So in a way, studying these populations that were excluded from those historical texts
can be a way to restore their stories in the present.
Even stories from the very recent past that have been hidden.
One notable example of this was the 2021 discovery of the remains of hundreds of Indigenous children
in various residential school sites in Canada.
I’m going to link to some more in-depth reporting on this in the show notes.
One of these sites was found in an investigation by Cowessess First Nation in the Saskatchewan
province, according to the leader of the Nation, Chief Cadmus Delorme.
And it was done using ground-penetrating radar.
This discovery not only functions as evidence of this tragic part of Canada’s past, but
it also brings international attention to something that First Nation people have been
denied for too long.
The last of these schools shut down in 1997 and there are many people alive today still
living with the trauma who are finally being heard because of this discovery.
Archaeologist Larry Zimmerman put it this way in the earlier National Geographic article
I mentioned: “We’ve come to a point in American society that we recognize we do science
for people.
Their concerns sometimes have to come first, even if it’s a matter of sacrifice from
the scientific community’s side.”
Which leads me to some of the greatest recent discoveries in archaeology.
When I started researching this topic, I thought that all the great finds had already been
found.
But no less than 10 minutes into my search, I realized that we’re finding new things
all the time and unraveling the mysteries of those findings.
Here’s one example I’m pretty into.
There have been hundreds of mummies found in the Tarim Basin in western China.
I know.
I say mummies and you think Egypt, right?
So when these mummies were first discovered in the early 20th century, archaeologists
couldn’t figure out who these people were.
These mummies have puzzled experts for a few other reasons.
First, they had a sort of Western appearance to them with felt and wool clothing, and agriculture
that included cattle, sheep, and goats.
Second, at this site, the mummies were buried in boat coffins… in the middle of the desert.
See?
This is where archaeology gets really fun.
When you’re looking at the archaeological record in China, where — or rather, “when”—
would you place these mummified remains?
Some scholars thought that they were the descendants of Bronze Age herders.
Others thought maybe early farmers from Central Asia.
To solve the mystery, a group of researchers from five different institutions got together
and analyzed the genomes of thirteen of the earliest known Tarim Basin mummies, dating
to about 2,100 to 1,700 BCE.
It was the first genomic study of this kind in the region and includes some of the earliest
human remains in the area.
What they found didn’t line up with any of the theories of who these humans were.
It turned out that the people weren’t visitors to the region from elsewhere.
They actually appeared to be direct descendants of a local group of people known as Ancient
North Eurasasians who disappeared by the end of the last Ice Age.
This means that human settlement in the area goes back 11,000 years.
And their gene pool was completely isolated.
Meaning that even though this group incorporated cultural elements like cattle and clothing
from other people, they never mingled with them.
As one of the lead researchers put it, this group was “remarkably cosmopolitan”.
Which is what I hope people say about me when they dig me up in 11,000 years after looking
at my teeth and my wardrobe.
But this isn’t the only timeline-shattering discovery that has been made in the last couple
of years.
Not by a long shot.
And some of the headlines lately have been downright badass.
Like this massive bone circle found in Russia that contains the skeletons of at least 60
different wooly mammoths.
Plus the bones of Ice Age reindeer, wolves, foxes, and bears.
Like okay, what was going on there.
Were you people living in the mammoth bone house?
Because that is hard core and I have like a thousand follow-up questions.
Oh, or how about a discovery in the Andes Mountains of a 9,000-year-old female hunter
that suggests women in the Americas hunted big game just like the men?
I mean, upsetting the whole me-man, me-hunt, you-woman, you-gather trope, even just for
one group of people, is huge news.
And analysis of other hunter burial sites in Peru is kind of saying you-wrong.
I think sometimes we have this tendency to think of early humans as uncivilized, uncultured,
or just not advanced.
But archaeology constantly proves otherwise—early humans shared a lot and they got around.
What’s amazing is just how much genetics and new technologies are letting us get more
and more precise with our analysis.
And the tech just keeps getting better.
In the last episode, I touched on how radioactivity changed the way that we date archaeological
finds, but now I want to get into how lasers, photogrammetry, and 3D modeling are completely
changing the game today.
We’re getting more accurate while also being less invasive and destructive with our techniques.
So you’re definitely not going to want to miss that in the next episode.
Until then, I’m Julian Huguet and thank you so much for watching Seeker+.
Let me know if you had a favorite archaeological discovery from this episode, or if you’re
in the camp of leaving things alone.
I’d love to hear from you.
See you next time.