Host, Roger Topp spent a day in June visiting the closest 2023 museum archaeology site to Fairbanks, a nine-year-old dig of an 8,000-year-old archaeological feature on the Hollembaek farm near Delta, Alaska, and one where the field crew had already spent several weeks that summer, with as many as ten staff, students, and volunteers rotating through the camp at one time. Seven archaeologists were on location at the time, including Blue, the camp dog, and excavating what might be the second oldest house feature in Interior Alaska.
The More You Look is a production of the UA Museum of the North, on the campus of the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the ancestral lands of the Dena people of the lower Tanana River. UAMN illuminates the natural history and cultural heritage of Alaska and the North through collections, research, education, and partnerships, and by creating a singular museum experience that honors diverse knowledge and respect for the land and its peoples.
Host, Roger Topp spent a day in June visiting the closest 2023 museum archaeology site to Fairbanks, a nine-year-old dig of an 8,000-year-old archaeological feature on the Hollembaek farm near Delta, Alaska, and one where the field crew had already spent several weeks that summer, with as many as ten staff, students, and volunteers rotating through the camp at one time. Seven archaeologists were on location at the time, including Blue, the camp dog, and excavating what might be the second oldest house feature in Interior Alaska.
The More You Look is a production of the UA Museum of the North, on the campus of the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the ancestral lands of the Dena people of the lower Tanana River. UAMN illuminates the natural history and cultural heritage of Alaska and the North through collections, research, education, and partnerships, and by creating a singular museum experience that honors diverse knowledge and respect for the land and its peoples.
Hello, and welcome to The More You Look, your behind the scenes journey into museum collections, research, exhibition, and public programming from Fairbanks, Alaska. I'm Roger Topp, Director of exhibits, design, and digital media at the UA Museum of the North, and host for today's episode. On the 2023 summer map of UA Museum collections fieldwork, there are 29 pinned sites illustrating the reach of museum research. And no fewer than five of these were active archaeological field sites throughout Alaska. I spent a day in June visiting the closest site to Fairbanks, a nine year old dig of an 8,000 year old archeological feature on the Hollembaek farm near Delta, Alaska, and one where the field crew had already spent several weeks this summer with as many as 10 staff, students, and volunteers rotating through the camp at one time. When I visited, seven archaeologists were on location, including Blue, the camp dog, and excavating what might be the second oldest house feature and interior Alaska.
Josh Reuther:You needed money?
Lauren Bridgeman:Yea h. I mean, if we're going to get to the root of it.
Audra Darcy:Baseline.
Lauren Bridgeman:We're graduate students and we're broke
Audra Darcy:And I'm the breadwinner right now.
Roger Topp:It's a job.
Lauren Bridgeman:No, I got here because my boss, my colleague has worked in Alaska for like 10, 12 years? 14 years? I don't know. And he told me he had work for the summer and I said, 'Yes, please.'
Roger Topp:Lauren Bridgman, UAMN staff archeologist and PhD student at University of Arizona.
Lauren Bridgeman:That's how I'm here, yeah. I've never dug in interior Alaska. So it's all new for me. I'm not an Alaskan archaeologist by any means.
Audra Darcy:I just wanted to come back. And I reached out to Sam and Josh. And I was like,"Can I come back?"
Roger Topp:What's different about archaeology here in Alaska versus somewhere else?
Josh Reuther:You good Korovin?
Korovin Ellis:Yeah.
Lauren Bridgeman:Everything. Yeah, I mean, I've dug in the Southeast and on the plains and the Southwest. So I've gone from like, stone rings to adobe buildings to White Mountain sites and Civil War stuff. So it's all very different styles of digging, different approaches. Yeah.
Roger Topp:I know nothing about these different approaches. It's a big hole, small hole?
Lauren Bridgeman:I mean, right. Yeah, different holes, different tools, different methods. Like here, it's super precise. And not only are you digging, like, only five centimeter levels, you're, like, blocking them off in smaller quads where it's like in the southeast, you know, it's just clay for 50 centimeters. So you're digging with shovels. And--
Roger Topp:Because of the matrix allows you to dig carefully?
Lauren Bridgeman:Well, from what I understand too, it's like, the way it was deposited is very, very unusual and exciting, because the deposition is so intact here, unlike a lot of other places. So yeah, you can learn a lot more by taking our time. Yeah, it's also academic, so you have to take your time too. It's not a big contract where we have deadlines and scary deliverables
Roger Topp:The bulldozer isn't waiting down the road for you to get on with it?
Lauren Bridgeman:Yeah, literally, they're revving their engines.
Roger Topp:Joshua reuther, UAMN Curator of Archaeology.
Josh Reuther:The preservation is awesome for like animal remains. And so we've been able to get fish remains: burbot and salmon and whitefish in here through, like, back to like, you know, 13,000 years ago. And then we've been able to get elk remains from 13,000 years ago to like, you know, 8,000, which is pretty incredible.
Roger Topp:And that's how you know that elk and bison were down here?
Josh Reuther:One of the sites, yeah. And then we've been able to get--this is probably the site that has the most canid remains, so like wolf, maybe dog remains, which we're trying to figure out, and so we actually have potential wolf remains going back to 13,000 years ago. And then we've actually got potentially wolf or dog remains at 8,000 years ago,
Roger Topp:I think we've talked before about how difficult that is to tell will from dog.
Josh Reuther:Yeah, and what we're trying to do is actually look at diet change. So wolves may have a concentration on terrestrial resources, whereas dogs orsimilar things that were
Gerad Smith:Done, Katie. canid sort of, start to get a relationship or kind of a co-relationship, hanging around human camps, and things like
Katherine Antal:Well, now I'm over here. And now I'm giving that, that their diet may change a little bit toward what humans are throwing out or what humans may be feeding them. And a lot of times in interior Alaska, that might be fish. And so you can see that sort of as it changes in stable isotopes, you can actually work that out a bit. And that's what we're actually trying to do. We're looking at DNA too, but again, DNA can be difficult because you may not have DNA preserved, you know, and it may not necessarily tell you that it's either dog or wolf that could be just different but because DNA changes a lot slower than diet. So that's why we're kind of targeting diet. But so that's, that's a very unique feature of this site. And it's great because you know, all of the time periods here, other than the really upper ones that are in the forest soils. All the lower ones have really nice faunal preservation, so we can track changes of what people are throwing away as far as animal remains, or depositing. The upper ones they just the faunal remains don't preserve because of the acidity in the soils. So that's a problem that we-- your bucket to Lauren.
Lauren Bridgeman:Seems like all the buckets come at once.
Audra Darcy:They do. They really do.
Gerad Smith:Check this out. ... Series of birds and an innominate.
Josh Reuther:On the outside part of it?
Gerad Smith:Right on the--well, inside or outside? Yeah, it's outside of this feature. So this could be a burrow thing.
Lauren Bridgeman:I would take this with a grain of salt, because I mean,did find the nicest bone like the day Francoise leaves, two scrapes under where he was working, so--. Yeah, yeah. Looks very nice. I think maybe somebody's got a rotisserie chicken this weekened.
Josh Reuther:Oh, yeah.
Lauren Bridgeman:I mean.
Audra Darcy:Look, yeah.
Lauren Bridgeman:I mena, how can you trust it? This is fresh.
Josh Reuther:Yeah
Gerad Smith:But I--
Josh Reuther:It's makes sense if that's a burrow.
Gerad Smith:Yeah, I suspect it's associated with this bone. And then I found another one somewhere over here--
Josh Reuther:So we had a lot of burrows cross-cutting these
Lauren Bridgeman:There's no skull is there? features because, well, we thought, one it's easy. Easy digging, but there's also a lot of ... So makes sense. Cool. Well, that kind of clears that apart. Yes, that's good.
Gerad Smith:No cranial elements, yes. I've already found my though.
Roger Topp:So, you've dated this site to about 8,000 years ago?
Josh Reuther:So this has several, what we call
Audra Darcy:What brought me into archaeology was definitely, occupations. So we're right we're Gerad's feet is, that's about near bedrock. That's about 13,000, 13,500. And then it keeps going up. And so, we have occupations going from 13,000 to about 12,000, and then 8,000. So that that's what this feature is this big feature is about 8,000, which again, is unique. Because we don't have that many sites, even small sites dating to that time period. We don't really know why, like, why do we not have many of those sites? Is it low population of people? Are we just not getting the preservation of the sites? So we're not able to date them because the preservation of organics so that's part of the question, and then there's, you know, some unique things going on maybe with the climate and the ecology around 8,000 That could key us into that, and why you have sort of unique things going on--not many sites, but also a structural feature like this. And again, this being you know, a structural feature, whether it's a house or something that gives us a time period, it gives us kind of that middle ground between the oldest structural feature that we have around 11,000 at Upward Sun just across the river, then this, this one at 8,000 at Hollembaek. And then the other one's in Tangle lakes at 4,000 5,000 and Gerad's work at you know, 2,000 So we have sort of a time window of these structures-- I saw Jurassic Park and wanted to dig in the dirt forever.
Roger Topp:Audra Darcy UAMN staff archaeologist and PhD student at University of Connecticut.
Lauren Bridgeman:That's dinosaurs!
Audra Darcy:I know. It started out with dinosaurs, I'll admit that.
Lauren Bridgeman:Embarrasing! It's not embarrasing. What a betrayal to our field.
Audra Darcy:Just subjects I explored.
Lauren Bridgeman:Dinosaurs. Plants!
Audra Darcy:And I got to explore more climate research at University of Maine and that really set the stage for me to come to more Arctic, subarctic environments. I really enjoyed that and I really enjoy remote work. I like being out in the woods, and this is kind of the best place to do that. And I like the mountains.
Roger Topp:It's a good way to travel. It's a great way to travel.
Gerad Smith:I think for sure, like, you feel and hear the artifacts before you see them, as you're going through, and you adopt a technique eventually that you get really fast at getting through things but still catching most stuff.
Roger Topp:It's definitely, sense of touch?
Gerad Smith:Right, Blue! Hey! Back. Go back.
Lauren Bridgeman:I say you should be able to, like, hear a positive shovel test or yeah, you should hear it.
Gerad Smith:But we've all definitely been on jobs where nobody was having fun anymore, and everybody just-- finding an artifact would have ruined everybody's day.
Roger Topp:You can yell, 'stop for a second, or--'
Lauren Bridgeman:Well, it's always the worst too, it's like the very last shovel test on the worst transaction you guys had a hike the furthest to get to, and you find on your last 10-day so you know the start of the next ten days, you're gonna be hiking all the way back there to delineate that one, positive-ish shovel test. Oh!
Roger Topp:Goes back to it just being a job.
Lauren Bridgeman:Yeah, which sucks because like what we do is so cool. And I hate it when it feels like a job. I'm really fortunate to work and do something I love to do and that's like really exciting but sucks you do feel like you're at a job.
Gerad Smith:Definitely got moving a lot slower today than I will be in two days time.
Lauren Bridgeman:Why is that?
Gerad Smith:Just be--just getting like I always feel the first day back here. It's more like getting back into the swing
Lauren Bridgeman:Oh, that first time walking back up the hill of things. after, like, four days off and like, 'what did I do to myslef?'
Katherine Antal:Well, here you go.
Gerad Smith:Toss it.
Katherine Antal:Oh yeah. No, I like I like life, thank you.
Gerad Smith:Good. I was wondering where that had gone.
Katherine Antal:What, you found that before?
Gerad Smith:Yeah, it was like one of those where you like, you scrape it up and then you see it and you can't find it. And that was like, well--
Katherine Antal:No. Detracting from my excitement.
Josh Reuther:So was it in the fill?
Gerad Smith:oshYeah, it was inside the grey. It was pretty close to the bones.
Josh Reuther:Inside the ______.
Gerad Smith:Yeah.
Josh Reuther:Yeah. Gotcha. It's a jasper type of stuff. Looks like.
Gerad Smith:Yeah. Korovin's thesis will obviously hinge on its proper interpretation.
Lauren Bridgeman:Remember, Korovin, 30 is all you need.
Roger Topp:So, I'm talking to Sam [Coffman] last year about his modeling and predicting where occupations would have been and where to look for, for material. So in a case like this, it seems like there was occupation. So there will be continued occupation in this particular place for over time. And so you find occupation at 13,000 years, you find it at, say, 4,000 years, you kind of expect there to be occupation in between those periods.
Josh Reuther:Itreally depends on the landform, and, kind of, the ecology around it. Because if the ecology changes, you know, are people doing the same things? Are they able to change with that ecological change, or that environmental change. Really, people here are very adaptable to those changes. Like, there's a heavy reliance on bison and elk and other things, but bison and elk are really targeted as a resource, you know, from 13,000, to around 10,000, maybe 9,000. And then you have a shift in ecology. And what we think it is, is actually, a lot of the, the grazing feed that they rely on: bison and elk, that habitat is getting reduced, and it's getting reduced to like sand dunes that are active or the floodplains that are active. And if they're not active, then you have what you see out here you have basically, the moss is coming in, in what we call paludification, so the peat develop development. And that's not really good for bison and elk. Partly, some of the plants are toxic, but it also it's, it's just not great feed. And so you have things like moose coming in, which are more solitary animals and a little bit harder to hunt. But at that time, we actually have folks orienting themselves more into getting caribou, whether it's like herds coming down into here, because herds actually range in here historically, but also in the uplands, like Tangle Lakes and things like that. So you have this shift, kind of in caribou hunting, and just seasonal shifts around there, shifting across the landscape more, there may be more of a reliance on fishing at certain times--
Roger Topp:All of this changes where you want to live.where
Josh Reuther:Where you want to be.
Roger Topp:Where you want to stay for short or long periods of time.
Josh Reuther:Exactly. Yep. And so that's really what we have to look through time and the ecology, and then figure out The migratory birds? modeling-wise, okay, Where would people be given a certain reliance on a resource, whether that be plants or animals? So, and luckily here because of that long persistence of like bison and elk, and then caribou ranging in. You have moose, and then you have fish resources, and lakes, things like that, that people are able to use this valley for, you know, going back to 14,000 years. One of the oldest sites in northern North America is just down the road, Swan Point, And it's got a mammoth, horse, maybe elk represented, you know at 14,000 years and then right after that, it's got, you know, elk and bison and things like that. And Swan, you know, it's called Swan point for a reason. And that's one of the unique things in this valley, too, is that 14,000, 13,500, we've got people relying a lot on birds, the larger birds Yeah, so. you know, that's, that's a pretty neat thing to see and come upon, you know, when you're excavating is like, there's a huge Swan bone. And so, and there's a lot of them--.
Gerad Smith:I grew up in a family of seven people in a three room cabin in Montana. I'm really good at tuning out chaos.
Roger Topp:Gared Smith, UAA anthropology faculty.
Gerad Smith:I don't know, I kind of liked all things anthropology growing up, reading that, but I didn't know that anthropology or archeology was a--was an option that anybody could do as a job. And I was in my early 20s, working in the gas fields in Wyoming and I saw--we had archaeologists always coming on site, you know, on the on our gas sites and doing surveys and stuff like that. And that was when I kind of clued in that it could be a career, but it was still like--college wasn't-- was still-- felt out of--was something that I couldn't do, couldn't afford. But then I broke my thumb in kind of a nasty little accident. And I decided that if I was going to save my body, I should go to college and get a different career. So, I finally applied, went to college. And then it was the Gen Ed requirements of taking Anthro 101 was what saved me. And I realized that all my interests were actually in anthropology and that seemed like people were able to do it as a career. So I was like, Well, I don't know if I can do this as a career. But I'm going to, like, see where this rabbit hole leads. And so I did that and graduated right in time for the economic crash of 2009. And was like, there's no jobs anymore. So, but Alaska looked really good.
Roger Topp:What makes it fun field experience? Is it the environment, the weather, the people, you're with?
Audra Darcy:All of the above.
Roger Topp:All of the above, yes!
Audra Darcy:I would say the people are probably the most important.
Lauren Bridgeman:Yeah, I'd say good people really are the essential key--they're the key component, but when you're finding good stuff, that always helps.
Audra Darcy:It always helps, yeah.
Lauren Bridgeman:And good weather.
Audra Darcy:Yeah.
Gerad Smith:But even if you have bad weather, but really fun people that--
Lauren Bridgeman:Because then you can just laugh about the miery together. I already had a week alone with Gerad andFrancoise.
Gerad Smith:You have to repeat the stories.
Lauren Bridgeman:You repeat them as new people come in. They get taller and better. Embellished. Yeah.
Roger Topp:You get called on them sometimes? Hang-on! That's not what you told me last time.
Lauren Bridgeman:Oh, that's not good ettiquette, no, especially if that person's part of the story. Good people make crew, fun projects, I had a same group of like nine techs, and we worked together for like two years straight, and that was really fun. Same projects. I thought you were going blast all these buckets apart this weekend?
Gerad Smith:They were all--we'd all gotten them apart by the end of the weeks, so I didn't have to take any home. I know.
Lauren Bridgeman:You want to pull on the end of this?
Josh Reuther:But I mean, you can see right here, just the viewshed too, because you can look all the way over from Donnally Dome in the southwest all the way over the Gerstle River. You know, and if you get rid of these trees, you could probably see up to--close to Healy Lake. So it's a pretty unique landform in the middle of the valley, so. And you're surrounded by sand dunes down there. And sand dunes have a really interesting ecology because if they're mobile, they kind of keep these these first successional plant species going, right? If they become immobile, and they're basically stable, then you start getting those secondary plants, you know, these, these other later successional species that elk and bison don't really care for. You know, and so as long as you have that particular ecology in that active environment, that's good for those animals. So that's why you kind of see, you know, the activity out here and keeping these pastures the way they are. And then also, you know, the Delta herd' s just down there and they do like fire, you know, they burn basically to get some of the shrubs out, the first trees and stuff like that. And so--
Roger Topp:Driving in you can see the piles of young trees.
Josh Reuther:Yeah.Yeah, So, but naturally, if they're active, if those dunes are active, they'll do that themselves. So, it's a unique environment, but--
Roger Topp:So when you have 10 people out here, is that mayhem or just did a lot more work?
Lauren Bridgeman:It's just chaotic. It's a lot of bodies on top of each other and not a lot of space. Yeah. Just like tools everywhere, not enough bucket.
Audra Darcy:Always shuffling, how to fit in the unit.
Lauren Bridgeman:Not even pretending to work--
Gerad Smith:No, it's like what the heck? Getting eaten alive. Do we have a day bag?
Lauren Bridgeman:No!
Gerad Smith:You're on day bag duty.
Lauren Bridgeman:There's not any bags big enough to make a good day bag.
Gerad Smith:Sad.
Lauren Bridgeman:It's falling apart without Francoise. Oh, you made one.
Korovin Ellis:Yeah.
Lauren Bridgeman:No! This week and next week. Yeah. I'm pretty bummed. I'm not really ready to go back.
Roger Topp:So what's next after this field site? Is it more field sites while the summer is good, or?
Lauren Bridgeman:I'm going back to Tucson to do some, just like analysis for a field site I worked on last summer. Yeah. Back indoors for me, unfortunately.
Gerad Smith:I'm in the Aleutians for five weeks. So I'll be monitoring.
Roger Topp:What does monitoring mean?
Gerad Smith:Making sure that historic and prehistoric sites aren't disturbed any more than necessary in the course of cleaning up these things. And if human remains or inadvertently disturbed or found during that time, I'm I have to make sure that they're taken care of and re-buried in a culturally appropriate manner. And all the interested parties have been notified. And part of that, being consulted as part of that process. Those are the two big things that I've done. Or, but as I keep finding out, the archaeologists on these sites are usually--they're so well versed in what everybody's supposed to do and where everyone is supposed to be in relation to all the sites that they're oftentimes the only one who really knows what's going on.
Roger Topp:Yeah?
Gerad Smith:And everybody just starts coming to us like, for questions? Like, I don't know, I'm not in charge. But you are, kind of.
Roger Topp:I'm always intrigued with the various sciences--know where to look, you know. Oceanographers look at certain depths for certain features. Or, you know, look for the thermocline or the break on the shelf.
Josh Reuther:Yeah.
Roger Topp:Right. And the paleo guys look for certain outcrop sticking out of a cliff. Right, that's the right kind of rock. We should look there. But for archaeology to kind of go with--think back to where--what this was like at different points in time.
Josh Reuther:Yeah, and some of it is just like, you know, people are going to a camp where it's a good camping spot through time anyway. So, and some of it is just dumb luck. I mean, that's, I gotta say, we could say that we're highly educated, but sometimes it's just, you know, you stumble across something that you can't necessarily predict in your models, right?
Roger Topp:looks like a great camping site.
Josh Reuther:Yeah, yeah. Oh yeah. This is a no-brainer, but you know, if
Roger Topp:The view. you, if you just sample this repetitively, then you get the same record, right, over and over again. You get the same thing. But if you're kind of out there looking. That's one good thing about cultural resource management is you have people out there doing stuff for roads, or pipelines and stuff. And they're finding unique sites, because they have to go where their job is. And that can be through areas where we didn't really think about a site being there, but they're there for some reason. And that's sort of what the dunes were like here is that they aren't actually labeled dunes on the geologic maps. But when we got to him, we were like, okay, these are these are dunes. And then we started finding archaeology and we're kind of figuring out why. But some of it's just, I mean, it's just dumb luck. I mean, you're hiking and then in an area where you probably wouldn't camp but there's archaeology exposed there and, you're like, Why is this here? You know? So, yeah. And also like, you know, students bring up a lot of good questions and and then you say, Well, I don't know why we don't have archaeology there but maybe we should figure it out. Where else have you all worked within the state. or out of the state? Archaeology-wise?
Audra Darcy:Tangle Lakes. Worked with Sam [Coffman] a few polaces. Lake Clark. 40-mile. I don't really consider myself an archaeologist anymore.
Roger Topp:She says, standing in a hole in the ground.
Audra Darcy:I'm doing more paleoecology though. This is the first time I've excavated, like really excavated in like four years.
Josh Reuther:Well, you havent been in the state in--
Audra Darcy:I know. Well, I hope you had me back.
Josh Reuther:I don't know about that.
Audra Darcy:I was gonna send you my proposal next week.
Josh Reuther:We'll see how your proposal is.
Roger Topp:Is it mostly analysis after you leave here, or?
Korovin Ellis:Yeah, mostly I'm doing lithic analysis in the lab, because they have basically all the materials in the museum. So I'm going to be going over all the lithic depotage for the top layers, about 6,000 years forward.
Roger Topp:Korovin Ellis, UAF anthropology graduate student.
Korovin Ellis:And I'm just going to be putting together all the data, looking at what it says, seeing if there's any clear like delineations in the occupations. And if it kind of matches what we'd expect for this, if it gives any clues as to what kind of sites it was during those periods.
Roger Topp:So the-- aquestion I've asked people before, you know, in terms of you spend time in the field, you spend time in the lab? Where's, where's--a bit of both is probably good--but where's where's your favorite spot to be? I know where your favorite spot to be is.
Audra Darcy:100% the field.field?
Roger Topp:Yeah?
Lauren Bridgeman:Yeah, every day is different. In the lab, it's all the same. Yeah, it's no fun.
Korovin Ellis:Field's more--I guess, it feels more like what being an archaeologist is, I guess, because it's kind of just like the actual exploring, figuring things out, basically. But the lab is where you actually start looking at what you found and saying, Okay, this is what this means.
Josh Reuther:So, I was looking at some photos with Upward Sun again. And I remember sitting with Ben and talking about this, how he had this thin layer, which--above fill, and then you had the floors ... maybe a soil grow better ... And I'm wondering if that's what this is.
Gerad Smith:So we had this layer coming across here? Interesting because it's very gritty full of like, broken small pieces of bedrock.
Josh Reuther:Yeah.
Gerad Smith:So, it's not like that below or above. It's just kind of thin. And that's--
Josh Reuther:That would probably be fill
Gerad Smith:That would have been fill.
Josh Reuther:But why would they fill it?
Gerad Smith:I interpreted that from Swan point, as it was sod pieces being cut down off the hill and brought up as insulation on the house, for a winter house, and then as the house is abandoned, it just collapses on the inside. Because there it was only inside. It wasn't--there was a little bit here and there that would be outside if maybe something fell. But that was the thing that made most sense there. This I mean, I obviously don't really have a handle on what's going on through the whole site. So, I don't know how far this this gravel extends so, but when you're coming down, and we are assuming this as a house--
Josh Reuther:Yeah, this is seven years. A total, if you count the other archaeologists, you know, eight or nine years. And, you know, we usually work with small crews anywhere from--we've had two people here to, I guess 10. What was it last week? That was probably our largest--is 10 maybe last week?
Lauren Bridgeman:Yeah.
Josh Reuther:That was probably the largest amount of people we ever had digging out here for a week. So, you know, this taken us a while because we work with smaller crews, whereas like, you know, the UAF field schools of the past, they were like 20 to 35 people, and so they could do a lot. And so, it just depends on time and labor, like anything else, you know. And, you know, we're--this isn't a field school, this is, you know, through the museum. And it's, you know, a job, whereas a field school, you know, you're training people. So that takes a little time too. So, it depends on what the intent is. So--
Roger Topp:The speed at which you go.
Josh Reuther:Yeah, of course with this, like what Gerad and Lauren and Audra are in, we're gonna go really slow, because we don't know what what this is, we don't know. You know, it's a complex sort of feature. And so, we've got to go slow and document things. And, if this feature wasn't here, we could basically just go through pretty quickly, and we know where the occupations are. We start, you know, we stop, go slow, right there, and then barrel through go. But this is, this is a new thing. So that's why we're, we're taking it slow. And why are we taking it slow for seven years, I guess is because it's a new, unique thing.
Roger Topp:You'll know more about what it is after everything's removed.
Josh Reuther:Or we won't. Well, just--like we spent 10, 20 years here, and we really haven't figured anything out. But it was really fun for 10 years.
Gerad Smith:Your dog's not very good at getting buckets.
Lauren Bridgeman:Tell me about it.
Gerad Smith:Blue.
Josh Reuther:Taught him the wrong thing to fetch.
Lauren Bridgeman:Awful.
Gerad Smith:He's--he's-- It doesn't really fall under supervisory responsibilities.
Josh Reuther:Yeah? I could pay him more.
Lauren Bridgeman:I heard somebody wouldn't let him be a author on this report.
Josh Reuther:Who? You! Which report?
Lauren Bridgeman:Oh, the Hollembaek report.
Gerad Smith:The Hollembaek paper that--
Josh Reuther:Oh, the paper that we're still writing?
Gerad Smith:Yeah. The one and only.
Lauren Bridgeman:His voice is present.
Josh Reuther:He got acknowledged on it, right?
Gerad Smith:Yeah.
Korovin Ellis:Yeah.
Gerad Smith:But that's not enough to get it on his CV.
Josh Reuther:Choose your references wisely dog.
Roger Topp:Thank you to Josh Reuther, Korovin Ellis, Gerad And thank you to Nancy L. Eliason for her support of UAMN Smith, Katherine Antal, Audra Darcy, Lauren Bridgeman, and a dog named Blue for all their stories and patient work on the bluff.