welcome back we're back with with our guest joel group joel and we're talking about archaeology as a part of the human condition is very important we've been talking in the past program with him about a lot of the background to his own growing up and so forth and we're back to continue with that and welcome back it's good think you know with you on the nd program here and we were talking we got up talking about the human condition and so forth and what we didn't get a detour if you could share as an archaeologist present to him you know i was very fortunate because early on i got a chance to direct projects yes and then some of those projects were large scale projects ok professor named chris dunn and u c l a ok he took me as a field assistant ok and we worked in the north desert of peru ok right and we recorded archaeological sites that were being disturbed by looters was it was it was just there just in desert along the ocean and we went and it was just wind blowing and the whole thing was shown with these absolutely gorgeous then the rains varied then coming you know at any time it was in the union but i'm we found in a series five cultures superimposed on top of each write what you did absolutely it doesn't matter what your theory is or your theory doesn't matter what matters is that the quality of your information the quality of your data yeah is so good that it's in so recorded so precisely that somebody down the road can say i don't agree with you i'm going to test it but i don't agree with you but your data is so good i can prove you wrong yeah ok on and off in the s the war the scenario red army more there is a war in the highlands and that knocked all of us out of working in peru yet believe yeah until two thousand and five died early my dad he was a lawyer and he was buried but he was d he was buried on his forty eight birthday and that was the average age for a male and states and it was a bowl i'll be doing a stone bowl and inside the bottom one yeah we're an anvil shaped like a mushroom hard marble right and then three cylindrical hammers i'll standard deviations yeah oh right right right and the statistical variation you make is here with that and then makes a range the entire period that you're studying ok doesn't give you a specific time period yeah the thirty's but yeah but it's being refined yeah but it was better advancing in our ability that it's cheaper and easier it's a good combo cheaper and easier and where you used to use science and then you'd get one solution here another solution here another solution here and then borrow from engineering and now they're developing systems that are all integrated ok so all those things  and systems engineering right so this was a project in the amazon where we were in the bahamas and we knew we mapped with advanced mapping systems some of the more exciting work  work i mean if there was a law that then i sent from the private public sector when i was in the people d and from public sector not from the private sector and the public sector gives you the ability to get some work done yes indeed interest in something other than the bottom line smart guys know and gals know that if you do it right you know you get wonderful public relations and sure there is that's worth a lot you get credit for a major discovery right and you look good right where it is very clear that if you do it right and if you do it upfront and you don't delay but start early and do it before the machines are ready to roll this i will work in the winter time under a blizzard conditions under shelters to get it done before a scheduled start date ok so a lot of my project and when you get it done then do they very seldom do they listen and that i wonder about human well very seldom now carol do archaeological discoveries in urban settings like in london or in new york stop excavate we have to know what the footprint of that project's going to be fair enough yeah so anyway in lower manhattan i went to mr amoruso was one of our big contractors in new york and he had in a couple of weeks and it's got ten to twelve feet the rubble in the city book can you cruise clean that out down the basement floor of the you gave that mind yeah yeah yeah he says you know some boy i like you and he was a tough guy again and he brought out the most site yeah in the shelters and then went underground in the winter time and excavated throughout the winter to where you were getting at where are you getting doing getting understanding of that situation from the past in the interest of what being bothered by you being up all this nonsense about what happened no i'll tell you a story or how do you deal with that tension of them wanting to get the project going to make a lot of money yeah and they don't care about what happened to some  know that things that are preserving things in a way that has some conscience if that's the right expression or some steady you know thing is is growing to the benefit of the people who have an archeological  what they are you know what i'm saying and yeah i'm hoping that yeah because of the planning i get discoveries in london yeah when the london yeah after the war they would dig down deep to get the unexploded ordinance yeah it was horrible and they went down and they started finding roman tiles yeah mosaic yeah well that told us that even under a densely rebuilt urban environment you know we can find preserved then bill no you can't no can't we can and there's a building we can ever take a need to know if you are buildings underground yeah you know so we cleared out what i did question can we have our history and eat it too yeah make archaeology faster and more precise ok and everything else that's what i do is i bring in technology that makes things work faster and record easier is that true of the whole process the whole process you're festing good become characteristic of the overall you saw us by which the capital formation and the capital development and everything yeah but it's out of my hands i know but i just say you but you're you're encouraging it to go in a certain kind of way and i say what i'm doing is you're arguing that we can do yeah a job before you think is dry yeah we can do the highest standards assigned the highest quality of science in restricted timeframes under adverse conditions and come out with a jewel of a finding ok for this site down in or manhattan is very important yeah right because it made it very clear the landmarks that there's stuff preserved so what i did was i tracked sea level rise and i said by the time they built the th century buildings with the basements the sea level had ribs and above the th century layers all right yeah because i did i know that because the basements had four layers of brick on them and drains built into the basement oh i see they had a water table problem  so i use that as a clue the saying all right i think that the th century is preserved below the th century basement and you were able to prove that i was able to prove so what i did is they would have to do it when they constructed the building anyway and so it so they sort of they're in their interest to do that yeah just it was under archaeological supervision so my theory about the water table coming up yeah and stopping yeah above the basement floor yeah proved to be true and i took the rubble out and i took the basements out and then we started hitting yellow brick walls yellow brick  well they were the delaware and we the problem is we can't we can't identify the prehistoric people from the modern language groups the europeans think i think there's a lot of d karma there and treatment of it mary and you know yeah that's a whole that's a huge problem that's the problem of the whole historical development yeah well that that's really something that you found all that yeah well that would that prove that there was pretty story can historic under modern men and that right right so in the future means that every time they want to build the bage you're building yeah in this area where the anybody who wants to do anything down there would want to repair and have an airport for understanding your work that would be referred to yeah yeah there would be something they could learn here would refer to yeah right yeah that's called the congratulations you can relate to as friends and fellow travelers and fellow whatever you call it see things archaeologically in terms of our society so here's someone who is there or is there a coterie of them are there some archaeologists who are just totally in the the big money people or other people who have some of these other values that motivate them to understand other than just the bottom line i would say people are in the pocket of the developer as i know there are some are yeah some are i guess but what i see and you can't generalize on the i guess i'm trying to hear you trying to generalize for archaeology and there are small numbers of people for example who have worked with native americans yeah and adopt instead of forcing the native american to adopt to the science except the science we're going to dig your bones up and we're going to take them to the museum and keep them there for ten years and then we may or may not give them back to you because there are scientific specimens right well one of they do that to your mom or your dad your remains of your parents you would feel very very sensitive about it i think we're talking and different terms and try to get a good word in for the good archaeologist being on the side of the good guys yeah we're trying to bring a more ethical society one that's more i do there are understanding that something other than the bottom line much money yeah there are about the built environment yes and there are people of vision did have something to say other than just strictly economic criteria of profit margin right that motivates so much bother to try and do that anymore what is the overarching reality within which the human condition is evolving they don't begin to have an idea of what the overall context is because they're all specialized oh yeah i can't address and i don't  yeah maybe i'm over yeah yeah i mean there are there are individuals who are on record for doing things in favor of the developer saying that there's no working elegy or saying that the site is not important mouthpieces for that well that's not what we're talking about we're talking about evidence and finding the data necessary to me make the case to make the evidence wrong so but don't bring in competition with some people who got a project they want done by tomorrow or there may come a lot of money from me they don't want to hear about anything else i writing like a bunch of old indeed that's true but you know in my case i don't mostly with the federal government ok and that's where we have some response and we have some control and so i keep saying the private one we had up until now now what's happening now we have what is happening in new red ministration is going after those regulations happening well that's the owner writing interest in terms of what's motivated the human condition so for those two or a large degree i do know there's other things in everything but the return on investment and the making of money into it intellectually or otherwise through it seem to be drying up at least in the modern immediate success three political context in which we are operating you know i assume that there are good guys out there all right and  the even in the development community ok even in agencies that are building roads and have very clear mandates to build highways or whatever and so there is the understanding that if they or what animals live in the area right or what endangered species you're getting towards systems thinking yes yes just i'm saying it think it's called for more than it is now it's divide and conquer is the way the old guys used to run things well though now things are very serious because they're going after the protectors yeah the new administration is going after anybody that believes in global warming you know oh yeah that's really something they've been fired or they've been  motivated or they've been and they can't they've destroyed a one thousand websites that the government had and i think i'm underestimating it you know over a one thousand websites that had passing a lot of damage is being done yeah i know that i realize that a lot of the damage to our ability to protect our own resources to even study our own resources because if these laws are done away with they're thanks colleagues so mine yeah it's affecting scientists yeah on a day to day basis you know who are not getting funds who are being denied i have i work with scientists there are connected with nasa yeah they are being told not to do environmental studies yeah or our greenhouse studies or climate change studies you know imagine the main people in our country yeah or specialized in that yeah i'm being muscled well i think i think there's a reaction coming you know i see now i saw mr gore you know well there's a reaction there i did really strong you know yeah you hope it is yeah yeah you hope but yeah yeah meantime the people that they put in place to destroy the e p a yeah and and all the other things and the other agencies are being very effective yeah pruitt at the p f a was a guy who the most efficient way to enclose space yeah and all those things could be recorded and that great thing they did up in montral where they had the dome and some of the sick or the principles understanding the  the environment from up from a comprehensive construction i think is something that we need to have we don't have a real good understanding of comprehensive systems understanding of what the planet needs it would seem we need to have something coming from another that is the wrong or that you know it or you know that's one of the jobs of archaeology and environmental so archaeology is part of a broader coterie of intellectual criticism of some of the principles that seem to be driving us into wars and what kind of stuff the negative things that we can see in the world hopefully we need an operating manual for spaceship earth that we don't have an elective understanding would come from the intellectual community like archaeologists and others and i think it's something that's bobby dylan murderous on blowing in the wind something blowing in the wind and it was a time of qualitative promise and i think that's i work now with native american yes by all means but they were yeah i work with them and one group i won't name who they were contacting me recently and they have their own preservation office  and they're preservation officer so that they can protect their own cultural heritage and the burial ground to an orca logical sites and they contacted me and said positive development you know that people are taking it on themselves instead of depending on the academic or the outside scientist they're trying to control and protect their own resources yeah well i'm very in favor of ok you know you think you know i'm notorious for using advanced technology applied technology understand the troops well did discover actually discover it by doing so it's others in a systems way there are other people who good conscience are thinking you get systems thinking of people that are on the side very hard to make sense unleashing of the weapons of mass destruction even as we have the ability to take care of the planet in a way that has incredible capability for improving the human condition within an ecological order which is the promise of the moment in which we in certain sense but it's also very challenging very challenging to worry about our grandchildren and our children and i worry about their bony to rectify some of the mistakes we've made no the only mistakes must draw upon some of the sources of understanding that would include a lot of your work if i may suggest to your colleagues in other fields and seeing it is because it's like you're invoking a lot of things with an archaeology in the system plate then archaeology is part of understanding environmentally and other kinds of understanding still high who had an operating manual for spaceship earth that makes sense when trying rather than those all his story found out dated its maximal engaged community that's what we've got to get on the planet earth so that we'll have a a new relationship in the universe perhaps because we're coming to a major part period of qualitative transformation you know oh great you know i think the architect a great hand in helping to put that together yeah so i work with our contents all the time you know you work with architects and also fellow people of the middle similar mentality yeah i don't have to be drawn upon yeah there's a wonderful network to coexist but you do in different sciences and in archaeology you know and what i do is a team effort ok what i do it requires a group of fifteen or twenty people working together from different disciplines so ok and i'd like to be part of that part out here a group i'd like to be in touch with you don't mind that i mean you're i thank you very much for such a very well read like that continues and i thank you for viewing your pleasure at the perception of a major archaeologist and one that would have been happy to talk with and joel rose thank you very very much for all that good work and sorry we're running out of time but thank you very much for coming in my