Did I tell you the breakdown of like the countries that we've had listens from?
No.
Canada, the US, Romania, Russia, the UK, Austria, Belgium, Italy, and Honduras.
I think this is telling us more about people's VPNs.
The New Front of Archeology podcast featuring Gabe Reiner and Ken Holley.
Welcome back to the New Brunswick Archeology podcast.
I'm Gabe Reiner and I'm joined as always by Ken Holley Oak in Left Bridge, Alberta.
How are you Ken?
Not too bad.
Broadcasting live overlooking the Cooley here in Beautiful Left Bridge.
Fantastic.
Yeah, it's something like 30 below here.
Fahrenheit Celsius.
It really doesn't matter.
It's the kind of nose hair freezing thing that makes a man really glad he works in this part of the world.
Yeah.
It'll be 10 degrees here tomorrow with the wind.
Yeah.
And I also should apologize to the listener.
My voice is a little off.
I don't have COVID if you're worried.
But the optimistic spin I've tried to put on this is that the first archaeology that we're going to talk about in New Brunswick took place in 1797.
And if it was back there, I'd be really worried because life expectancy was 38.
So but I think I'm probably not on death door now quite yet.
We've got a couple of housekeeping notes.
The first is that we've got great response and some friends have provided some music for our intro and for our hit pieces.
So Justin Hankey, who you can find his work at JustinTheLibraryIn.com, will be providing the intro outro music.
And Shane Dahl will be providing the music for the hit pieces.
And in addition to that, we have our first sponsor.
And that is the Association of Professional Archaeologists of New Brunswick, an organization of which Ken and I are both members.
They can be contacted at APANB.ca.
And one of the things that we should highlight is an APANB membership gets you 35% off of a register of professional archaeologists membership.
So you really can't afford not to join.
Is there anything else that the listener should know about the APANB, Ken?
We do we play a role in public education and we do have a mandate to do some lobbying with government.
We've done that in the past, but we also sponsor a speaker series each year.
And we have upcoming speakers probably later this spring and lots more to announce in the coming months.
Fantastic. So stay tuned to that website.
And we will also try to remind you about events on this podcast.
So Ken, walk us through.
We've got some some exciting news about the podcast.
Could you could you catch us up on developments?
I want to extend a thanks to the hundreds of listeners that we have.
We we crested over 120 listens, I think, 122 at last glance from from seven countries.
I think at least seven countries or as you indicated, maybe six countries and a couple of VPNs.
But well represented throughout the Northeast, the United States all across Canada.
Many listeners from Frederickton, New Brunswick.
So we've got a we've got a base of operations in Toronto, Lethbridge and Frederickton, it looks like.
And a few other spate spots around, around New Brunswick and parts of the Northeast.
So we want to thank you all for listening in and hope you enjoy episode two.
For the Frederickton readership.
That's very convenient because we have not yet received a winning entrance for the opportunity to rename our podcast.
So continue to send those in this.
This this if you're the lucky winner this week, you get to spend Valentine's Day at the Bola drum on the north side with Ken and me enjoying a nice evening of beer and bowling and and I think they they've gotten rid of that thing that hopped up all the cigarette smoke and and cleared it away.
I think there's been a there's been a reform but really not to be missed. So send in those entries as you as you are able and Ken what's the email address that they should use for that unless they've decided to write the lucky entry on the outside.
I believe I believe we reached at New Brunswick archaeology at gmail.com.
Amazing that that wasn't taken.
That is actually pretty amazing.
What we're going to talk about today is summarizing the history of archaeological research in New Brunswick.
And part of the reason that it's important to think about this is that this is a David Black line that I always like archaeology as an inventory science that this is something that's accumulating information through time and so we want to think about the kinds of archaeological research that's going before us.
And in particular we want to think about the context of that archaeological research because it affects what kind of questions people ask.
It affects what kind of interpretations people make about what they're finding in the archaeological record.
And it affects the sort of attitudes that people have about the people they're researching.
And so archaeology speaks to these broader interdisciplinary theoretical trends that will unpack a little bit here and so so Ken one of the things that that you work on which we talked about at length last episode is you work on the wash them off late church source and church type of stone material that people use to make tools.
And there's an important historic component to that research.
Yeah, yeah. So the church source itself was discovered by geologists in the in the mid 19th century kind of described from a geological perspective by Lauren Bailey and
Abraham Gessner. And later on in the 18, I think it was 1888 or 1890. George Matthew who was a geologist with the Geological Survey of Canada rediscovered the outcrop location.
And there's a place called the L. A. S. Cove at unwashed milk lake and, and not just describe the geology but offered an archaeological description of it in fact the article I think is called the stone age stone age site in in southern New Brunswick or I don't have the title up the top of my
name here but he described what he believed was a workshop a lithic workshop basically so place where people were breaking down stone tools and importantly he actually associated the the geological context with indigenous people of the region and and suspected that the
stone tools he was finding were ones that they had made some time in the past, and and fairly deep in the past too.
And that's one of the themes we discussed last week is this great substantial time depth of indigenous people here in New Brunswick.
And the connection to my work in the sort of history of archaeology is also through gf Matthew. I work on drawing features and in 1883 gf Matthew, along with the natural history society of New Brunswick, took a field trip to Bokeback and
excavated what he called the stone age village of Bokeback and what's important about that is that Bruce trigger who's the.
He's the probably the most important Canadian archaeologist ever I think that's that I think that's pretty fair to say yeah yeah there's very few people actually you could probably see history of archaeological thought on the shelf behind me and probably somewhere behind you
Yes, yeah yeah you can. And Bruce trigger described Matthew's work at Bokeback, which he published in 1884 in the bulletin of natural history society of New Brunswick as the best archaeological research from the coast that have been published in North America up to that point.
So we're already I hope kind of just spelling one of the myths that I think sometimes people have about this region which is that it's kind of always been a backwater, which is just not true in the intellectual history of the region.
So let's start though at the at the kind of beginning of North American archaeology and so in 1784, Thomas Jefferson, who's sometimes probably kind of generously described as the father American archaeology.
And Dave's lewd a burial mound in Virginia in that's in 1784, but archaeology in New Brunswick starts really only about a decade or a little bit more after that.
In 1797.
It turned out that in the Treaty of Paris, the folks who were making the maps weren't very good at it.
And so as a result, the international border onto what was then between the United States. So Massachusetts and Nova Scotia. It wasn't exactly clear what river the Treaty of Paris referred to.
But it was clear that the St. Croix River had had Champlain's very ill fated habitation in the early 1600s there so that meant that if someone could find the archaeological remains of Champlain's habitation there, that they would know which
river was referred to to create the international boundary.
And that was undertaken by fellow name Thomas right and Robert pagan.
And much to I think probably pagans relief since he was a loyalist he discovered that St. Andrews was in fact in Canada I imagine.
I imagine that was a bit of a relief. Yeah, out there maybe sprinkling St. Ange pottery you know around the mega David's River.
Yeah.
So, so we've got this really early beginning in New Brunswick archaeology, and that fits into what william Savlov, called the speculative period. So william Savlov have divided broad intellectual trends in the archaeology of North America, that
sometimes new Brunswick archaeology works with. And sometimes it's really been distinct from. Yeah. And so, can you want to sort of summarize the speculative period.
So these are mostly people who are not trained in archaeology antiquarians. People kind of fascinated with the past but with no real formal training in archaeology, you know within the discipline more broadly, hadn't really sorted out ways to sort of
systematically excavate archaeological sites so people were finding things and we're interested in them. But really, there wasn't any kind of focused research or questions being asked about archaeology just kind of a fascination with the past.
And, and you know it coincides with sort of this growing national identity with within both within the United States in particular.
After their independence from from the United Kingdom and then, and really sort of the early days of British North America as well so.
So, luckily we might think of this as the naturalist period or the natural history period, because these guys are as you say, engaged in really a wide range of intellectual endeavors so you mentioned Abraham Gessner, am I right that Abraham
Gessner also invented kerosene.
Really, you know, actually that probably does make sense.
I think I feel like there, you know, there's probably a few claim to see I don't know out of the top of my head though. I mean it would make sense he worked in like the coal, coal fields of sort of central south center in New Brunswick and would have been involved in that.
Could be wrong about this I would encourage the listener not to fact check that too closely but the, but I think you have the kerosene and and in archaeology actually composed a fairly small amount of GF Matthews research and important amount but he's very interested in
and geology and really all these guys were.
And one of the largest, one of the largest trilobite fossils in like North America on the shores of St. John and the St. John harbour.
That's right yeah and most of the writing about Matthew deals with the famous trial of ice. Yeah. Yeah, cool.
And so, in addition to that, you've got a kind of interesting dynamic where these guys aren't doing archaeology, or even really intellectual pursuits as their day job so Matthews the customs inspector at St. John harbour.
And what that does again speaking to this lack of insularity I think that is was present in the 1800s in your brother archaeological research. One of the things that appears that Matthew really use that position to do was to make sure that there were plenty of books and specimens and
letters and these kinds of things coming over from Europe so that the folks at the natural history society were staying in touch with the latest the latest continental trends.
So, we've got these, these kind of developments. And this is overlapping then by about 1850 with what william sabloff called the classificatory descriptive period, which they say goes from about 1840 to 1914.
Ken, some of your this starts to overlap with a kind of the end of what correct me if I'm wrong but I would say it would be fair to say that the early 1900s are kind of the end of the golden years of early New Brunswick archaeology.
Yeah, and kind of that first wave of, you have sort of Matthew you've got William ganong w of ganong and the famous ganong map, writing the first sort of like comprehensive monograph on new Brunswick history.
And there's historic historic sites in the province of New Brunswick I believe this title 1899. And, and there's basically on the back end of this, a real pause for almost a decade and a half really until the mid 60s when things start to pick up again.
And what had happened during this period though too is that new Brunswick became integrated into a much broader archaeology in North America and kind of was was being like you said there were letters being exchanged with people in England but also these bulletins of like the
history of society were being read very widely like this wasn't just an insular group. These sort of narratives about archaeology we're getting out more broadly like, and bringing people like WK more head up into the region to.
Yeah, so there's two things you brought up that I was just flipping through the, the new Brunswick podcast their handbook before we went on and apparently I'm obligated if you mentioned the gun on map to ask you about the gun on map.
It's actually hanging my office here.
A fairly famous sort of cartographic depiction of people's places, particularly focused on the indigenous occupation of New Brunswick that uses a number of toponymical.
And it has various names in will ask to go a grub big ma to describe the various rivers throughout the province. It shows major river systems that indigenous groups would have moved along canoe and port canoe routes.
And the map itself is actually called Aboriginal canoe and portage routes. And along with these canoe routes. Gnome had done a bunch of research about traditional travel routes so overland travel routes between some of these river systems, which he describes in some
detail in the book itself. And he notes in a number of places on the map, where particular archaeological sites or campsites might have been located.
And it and it became important for documenting a lot of these portage routes that would have probably been lost to a certain degree, or that that required somebody to document and kind of push forward.
But it also he makes a point of sort of describing indigenous spaces as well and so he sort of casts broadly where Pesco, Makati or pass Makati groups Malaseed or will ask the good groups and McMack or big model groups were in the province, at least at the time of writing and
it's become a bit controversial in some ways to. Yes, I was going to ask you so that the listeners should be to be careful about projecting that understanding of territoriality into the past.
Yeah. And, and in particular because in some, and I think in the original depiction he actually draws a line between these territories whereas some of the reproductions have have cleverly removed those lines, and probably for the best.
Yeah, that was my understanding as well and I suspect probably later in this season will talk more about the ways in which archaeologists try to study territoriality contact period understanding of territoriality.
It's one of the.
You know, I always think of that as there can be things that are exciting, and they're exciting because they're fun. And then there can be things that are exciting because they're not fun. And they're also really complicated.
And I would say territoriality falls into the latter category, territoriality and population dynamics are not things that cheer me up.
No, and, and, and our politically have a political political weight to them in today's today's world.
Precisely yeah. So, we've brought the listener up you mentioned then Warren King more head. And this is an important. It's a great name for one. And the I have
an amazing experience and that I regularly do do archival research at the Robert s P bitty Institute in Andover, Massachusetts, that Phil Sandover Academy, and that museum is closely associated with Warren more head, who's described often as the dean of American
archaeology. Morehead's connection though in Maine, and he authored the archaeology of Maine in 1922, which includes some of the archaeology of New Brunswick, thereby I think starting a long trend of that sort of thing.
And they all just duck over the border and they got, you know, but he didn't find much in New Brunswick trial trial wasn't big enough. Yeah, exactly. And more heads a complicated guy and and more head is contemporary politics of you can call them that we're actually fairly
in the regard to concern about indigenous people, but his actual archaeological research was not consistent with what we would do now he basically ran around Maine digging up what he called red paint we would now call maritime archaic
burials of indigenous people. And along with this he did this in there's some you know unsavory parts of this to his group was called the force. He had this huge trial that at least in the pictures is like the size of an iPad.
You know, he basically just, you know ripping apart sites to get to these very elaborate burials. And I should say as a result actually the Robert Peabody Institute became a real leader in NAGPRO, which is the Native American Graves production
repatriation act down in the States to deal with this so this is the kind of scale of the problem but during this period. Morehead also ducks across the border into Brunswick.
I believe he follows the rustic river to about Woodstock says I've had enough heads back to Maine and continues arguably what I think is one of the most interesting aspects of him and this is an argument not original me I think it's hard to be that he in some ways is the
kind of father of cultural resource management to he's basically designing predictive models to find sites. And he's also very interested in site density and site priority you know he'll decide not enough red paint burials in this area we're going to move on so he's interested in
in rather than on the objects themselves and site density. So that's, that's more head and coming out of 1922 and more head publishes that. I think it stopped me kind of fight if I miss something important here.
It makes sense to think globally for a minute and talk about 1949 which is where will it Libby events, radio carbon dating, and you're teaching intro right now. Would you like to explain radio carbon dating to the listener.
It's a basically this is a process where we can. We have determined that you can measure the amount of a carbon isotope called C 14 in the atmosphere and in the world in general through time and various dating techniques had been developed in the
1800s one of them in particular dendro chronology which is using tree rings to date sites. Libby figured out that as organisms decay, they release.
There is a change from carbon 14 to carbon 13 am I am I still on the right track here. That's not as far as I know I don't. I always have to look this up.
And you can, you can actually measure the amount of carbon 14 in this decayed organism, because when it passes on.
It's sort of a stable amount and you can compare it to the amount of carbon 14 in the atmosphere now, you can figure out basically how old that organic matter is.
And if it's a bone or a piece of charcoal from an archaeological site, what you're dating is essentially the moment of death of that organism. This is great if you have somebody building a fire out of what they just chopped down.
It's really problematic in places like Labrador where you're using wood driftwood that's been floating or like sat up on the shoreline for a couple thousand years, and then burning it because what you're dating is the day, or the time that that tree died as opposed to when
the fire was made. And I think that's the gist of it. There's a MS dating is like a new version of radio carbon dating. Yeah, but but what it allowed us to do was date archaeological contexts in a way that didn't rely on particular artifacts found in particular
archaeological context that was still important, but it was a lot it allowed us to put a calendar date, or a specific absolute date associated with a particular archaeological context which was a major shift in the way we understood archaeological time, a lot more precision.
Yeah, so prior to 49. There's big advancements in in figuring out time by comparing artifact typologies, stratigraphic layers. And in particular, one of the things that people were doing, we're finding fluted points which are the oldest kinds of projectile points in
the United States of America in association with Pleistocene megafauna, you know so like in the in the battle days you've been driving a you know Volkswagen around the Southwest or something. And you know it wouldn't be enough to wrap your Volkswagen around a bison it would be a bison antiquest which is like, you know, the
you can imagine and so people found these associations and could say yeah people have been here since the last Ice Age, but actually pinning down that date was facilitated by radio carbon dating and we should say that it wasn't like this was overnight it wasn't
like 1949. All of a sudden, this technique worked really really well. This technique's gotten better in our careers. Yep, both in terms of the small amount of material you can date and the sophistication to which you can model those dates to get better answers about
the age because one thing we should note is that what it's actually producing the model, and we don't need to get in the weeds on this but it's producing a statistical estimate. Yeah. And that introduces some real challenges to this.
And that radio carbon ages are different than calendar ages as well. So, you know, there's a, there's another statistical calculation that you do over and above this radio carbon date to get how what the calendar date is and so radio carbon dates and calendar dates are roughly
around the same to up to about 2000 to 3000 years ago, and then they start to diverge from one another to the point that like 10,000 radio carbon years is actually around 12,500 calendar years ago.
So the Piliu Indian period if you see a date that says 10,000 years ago, it's probably in radio carbon years, because Piliu Indian is probably more likely 12,500 calendar years.
But the real tricky thing is sometimes authors don't don't make it clear when they're using radio carbon dates and whether they're using calendar dates or how they calibrated those dates.
And we should say that New Brunswick, Maine, Nova Scotia are actually probably the worst places for this in which people are very unclear about whether you're looking at calibrated dates, uncalibrated dates.
And a dearth of dates, is it Adrian Burke that talks about progressively fewer radio carbon dates as you head east. Yes. Yeah. It's, it's, I mean, it's really, really interesting.
And so now, you know, I just like people ask me about this sometimes so I'm going to just say this here and so they, one of the innovations now about dates is that they actually are not very expensive by the standards of highfalutin scientific research.
And so the, the, the, I would say it's the kind of gourmet radio carbon lab which is in Florida called beta, if they'd love to sponsor that'd be great.
They'll run a kind of high end date with also it's a modeling for about 600 American dollars or you know 8000 Canadian dollars.
And so, the results of that is you can explain to your granting agency that you know, I don't know how many dates you built into like your winter grand but something like 10.
I think it was like three or four. Yeah. Okay, yeah, three or four with that was a hopeful three or four.
Yeah, you're on the interiors is less to date. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Ken and I, you know, as just since we're airing the trouble we've had we've we've we've certainly run radio carbon dates and thought we'd screwed something up and now that we've revisited them with a little bit more savvy have
thought that what we actually screwed up was thinking string screwing them up.
And so the act of what we submitted that was was probably not worth. We flushed some money down the toilet on just maybe not doing the detailed research on, and that's a lesson to you all if you're going to run a radio carbon date and spend the money to make sure you're dating the right thing.
Yeah, it's an incredibly powerful tool and you know with great power comes great responsibility and the misuses of absolute dates are our myriad, and you should always be be checking yourself against this.
So, are we do you think we're at George for the Clark now is that is that where we are.
Yeah, like, we've sort of jumped a little bit from like 1900 up into the 1960s but I think what's important to kind of take away is that a lot of what was going on in that early period and was, you know, it was a lot of these natural history societies.
And there were a lot of field trips going on that the, the New Brunswick natural history society, for example, sponsored. So they basically take like bus loads of people out to dig up archaeological sites, and would publish on, you know, with with sort of you know, great
story about how excited everyone was and how everyone went home with artifacts in their pockets and. And this is particularly problematic because there's a significant portion of the archaeological record that was sort of subject to ad hoc excavation during that time period that
we've lost information on, because you know these were these these activities weren't viewed as problematic.
And so there was research enterprise going along with them so they're representatives from the museums that were going out to do research work, but the public participated in them.
And, although it was an opportunity to teach people about the past in the province.
The retention of those artifacts and the treatment of them and, you know, the lack of curation with some of them has resulted in a real significant loss of information I mean there's this fantastic panoramic photo of actually have a collection at the New Brunswick
probably in the early like 19 like 1920s or whatever, this sort of panoramic image of a display case of artifacts, which to my knowledge have sort of disappeared, sometime in the in the intervening years.
And so a lot of that has occurred at various places that that artifacts have disappeared and that's problematic because we want to think about this as when you dig an archaeological site and this is you know why there are opportunities if you're interested in
the best way to get involved is to join a field school you know and and and these kinds of things are opportunities to be involved in professional archaeology, which we would encourage you all to pursue if you're interested in that.
But is that when you remove artifacts, it's not really the artifacts that tell you the whole story there's small part of the story.
It's the context of those artifacts so just like we were talking about finding these particular kinds of projectile points in the ribs of a particular kind of bison.
And they found old bison and they found old projectile points before it's the association of those two that permits you to say oh wow you know people have been here for a really long time.
Oh, amid and Clark said interesting character who we could probably do a whole episode on. Yeah, yeah, I would imagine. Yeah, yeah.
I would. We have an affinity for for Clark because his collection is curated here at the University of New Brunswick.
And so as a result, you and be has had kind of a long relationship facilitated by Dave black with the family with the collection and a lot of master's thesis work has involved that collection.
So, Clark is a dentist, and also before that he was a hypnotist.
Yes, this is how he paid his way through dental school is my understanding. Interesting. Yeah.
And, but he's primarily really known I think in New Brunswick as a writer would you say that's.
Children stories and stories about fishing and some histories that the book and the Acadians is pretty interesting and and his archaeological writing of course.
And this archaeological writing culminates in a book called someone before us in 1968.
And at at that moment right at 1968 I think you would probably say that Clark's work was the most exhaustive treatment of a region in the province do you think that's fair.
And it's, it remains really one of the more more most comprehensive sort of assessments of the middle of the last dog so that the middle reaches of the St John River particularly between where the present day McQuack dam is located and sort of grand falls basically that's where he, he did most of his
collecting and the archaeology that he knew most well and that in the Southwest Mersey I suppose like in around the Mersey River districts.
And the dam is part of why there ain't going to be any more archaeology in a large part of where he was working so he's really the last remnant, the last opportunity to do any archaeological work in that area.
And so, are particularly tapped into New Brunswick, I guess you sort of say ethno history or kind of New Brunswick conna these kinds of things will also know might know the name tap and add me, who is almost impossible to describe actually
a talker of squirrels, a lawyer, a naturalist writer journalist. Yeah.
A lunatic, he seems like, and, but, but also sort of brilliant, I would say, and, and is often at loggerheads with Clark, they have a, I think, I think one of the MA students once described them as frenemies, right. They, they are simultaneously impressed by one another, and condescending to one another and convinced the
one another and going about things in the wrong way, you know, with, with ad knees really linguistic and historical focus. Clark's archaeological focus, these do not always merge very well and it's an interesting chapter in New Brunswick archaeology.
So, 68 is an interesting time in archaeology in North America, because in 1966 we get the first.
It was it's not I guess the first but we get, perhaps the most important piece of heritage legislation out of the United States which is National Historic Preservation Act.
And this is stuff you understand much better than I do can particularly as it relates to New Brunswick. Yeah. And so the National Historic Preservation Act, basically, introduced and prescribed a process for documenting and describing and
nominating for sort of describing as significant archaeological sites in the United States particularly focused on projects that received funding from the federal government or were taking place on federal lands.
And this is taking place, you know, in the context of sort of a North American trend towards sort of environmental concerns.
And post world war development was going on. And rightly so, archaeologists and heritage professionals in the United States sort of raised, although they had existing legislation they raised concerns about the influx of industrial expansion and
as as threatening to archaeological resources and the NHPA sort of codified under its section 106 a process for how you document and nominate archaeological sites or historic places more generally for register on the I think it's the National
Historic Preservation Act. And so this is a very important issue that we're going to be talking about in the future.
Yeah, and really launched the modern day CRM industry in North America as a result. And Canada was a bit of a laggard in this regard. And while the same levels of development were going on there wasn't as much of a push towards legislation at that time.
And I'll give you right at the, the first inaugural meeting of the Canadian Archaeological Association in 1969 has this really fantastic presidential address that is kind of like a rallying cry for for archaeology to all, you know, what is it that the, that the, all of the archaeologists
and in Canada could fit in a car.
At that time and usually they were traveling together something is this is a line like that something like that yeah.
But, but so this is going on in the states that they're codifying that when development is happening archaeological work needs to happen to basically document and prevent destruction of the archaeological sites in the path of maybe a new highway or hydroelectric dam for example,
and, and flashing back to New Brunswick. We also have at that time, the motivation of the provincial government to essentially build a number of hydroelectric dams in the province and, and, and Clark sort of at the crosshairs of that.
And there's a key difference in how regular, I guess we'll call it regulatory or cultural resource management legislation evolves here in New Brunswick right and that is that in Canada which is that it's at the provincial level rather than primarily in
the federal mandate. Yeah. So, we've now kind of moved into this professional, this professional era of archaeology in the region and so we can, we can kind of gloss this in a couple of, of, I guess key events, right, or key institutions
maybe so David Sanger gets hired at what's now the Canadian Museum of History, and also Richard Pearson begins doing archaeological research in the area and they focus on passive aquatic Bay.
Yeah, and, and for context to a JV rights rallying cry precipitated what became the archaeological survey of Canada, and Sanger and Pearson were both hired as we're like, among the people that were sent out from the ASC across Canada to
document a significant indigenous archaeological sites or survey significant regions prior to sort of they call it salvage archaeology basically to salvage sites and to identify sites, potentially under threat of being bulldozed.
Yeah, or eroded as well eroded yeah. Yeah.
And in, is it 1971 that Chris Turnbull is hired as the first provincial archaeologist here in New Brunswick. Yeah, I think so. And, and what does that role in tail.
So he's basically hired as a kind of a manager of archaeological resources he's meant to promote education and develop a process for salvage archaeology or impact assessment archaeology I guess, before it was called that, but also to collaborate with researchers, and to sort of
build the profile of New Brunswick archaeology alongside how you regulate New Brunswick archaeology basically. So kind of a hub of everything because we didn't have a, we don't have a research museum that had an archaeological branch.
So, people went on to be an important, I would say intellectual presence in the development of cultural resource management in Canada, and probably wasn't listened to as much as he should have been. Yeah, and wrote this very prescient paper in 1977 called a Bactur bureaucracy, where he sort of,
he's recognized a few years into his job and he's recognized that these government offices the provincial branches that are sprung up across Canada in each of the provinces and I think, at least the Northwest Territories by then.
And what he realized was that as, as government archaeologists and working in the capacity that they were. They were, he raised concerns about the increasing bureaucratization of that of that position.
And the Dutch Dent more recently has has come up with a very eloquent term called the archaeo bureaucrat. And basically that these positions were at risk of becoming highly politicized, because of the interaction of the government branch and government, you know,
projects or even you know, projects that would be benefit of the province, and then you know having a government employee that may or may not have the ability to critique government actions or weigh in on a project particularly.
So they had become involved in a political process in some ways.
This is all coming out of a broader theoretical interest in archaeology and anthropological archaeology in general to which is that there's a newfound focus facilitated in large part by radio carbon dates on what somewhat preciously people like Lou Binford call explanation
right.
They say oh we're not going to put things in order. We're going to tell you about human behavior.
The thing that's interesting is this region, Maine and the Maritimes essentially ops out of that theoretical movement until about the 1980s and then I think the version of it applied by David black in the quality region is much more complicated.
I don't think you'd call that kind of straight process.
No, you're radically unique. Yeah, and I mean he Dave almost kind of is a precursor to historic for sexualism in many ways right like he's, you know he's he's contextualizing things with a history, beyond just sort of a cultural ecological model.
Yeah, I think that's right.
But, but in a different way than and binford envisioned it I think. Yeah, and in many ways drawing on the, I think, approach of the natural historians right I think you can see a lot of that in some of his work and on kind of allied sciences right geologists, that kind of thing.
Yeah, but the current remains certainly. I mean arguably to today on on cultural history and putting things in order in the region.
Um, we're not quite to the half empty bottle of cool bossy a yet. But I think we're sort of at the at the tie things together and get into our hit pieces right.
Yeah, yeah I think so I think we've got up to sort of the mid 1980s we've sort of introduced Dave black.
And, and I think it's important to understand that sort of the changes that have gone on since the early to mid 80s. And we've talked about cultural resource management a little bit and how that had it sort of nascent see in the 1960s and the in the United States, and
it was formalized to a certain degree in New Brunswick in the 1970s with the hiring Chris Turnbull, but really became an industry in the late 80s with the government of New Brunswick passing the Clean Environment Act, which basically spelled out the environmental
management process in New Brunswick. And throughout the 1990s what we saw is the real formalization of the cultural resource management industry in New Brunswick and that you had companies, multi service environmental consulting
companies, hiring archaeologists for big projects. I think probably the biggest profile CRM program in the 90s was the Gem say crossing archaeological project, and very highly visible project, some big successes, and also, you know, not without
its own controversies and, and I think it really sort of put to the forefront, the challenges that CRM was going to have, and still has today in negotiating political and development concerns, indigenous concerns about archaeology, and the
relationship between academic government and private sector archaeologists and, you know, some of the approaches to sort of working together that have have some of which has been carried forward and some of which has not and, and, and then through the 90s and
early 2000s I think you really see this shift in the way that people are doing archaeology in New Brunswick toward toward that CRM enterprise or taking over the bulk of the work.
And that's what we're going to really even even today. And this is characteristic of most of North America now.
And I think we're sort of foreshadowing a little bit talking about gemstick which was a gigantic collaborative archaeology project you know one of the, the first really of its kind that included indigenous people in a in a serious collaborative
project. Again, as you mentioned not without not without controversy and challenge but and also produce two volumes about the work which yeah yeah and pushed out publication was co management with indigenous community members, a huge education component.
You know, and I think you're right that it truly collaborative is what what it was and, and, and I think even today we're still trying to figure out how to make that sort of model work in CRM and I think it's kind of one of the big challenges and CRM today.
I think it's possible to certainly to imagine a very different archaeology emerging out of gemstick. Yeah.
Well, I think we are on to our hit pieces Ken. Yeah, okay.
Is was there anything else with any take home points you wanted to add here.
I will tell the listener that if they're looking for a very detailed account. A very new count. Matthew bets and and gay brineck, our co host here have a great chapter in the introduction of the archaeology of the Atlantic northeast that highlights the history of archaeology
and we can sort of kind of pulls out some of the stuff that we hinted on throughout this and if we've got space in the show notes will will throw a few of the items that we talked about, and maybe we'll, we'll prepare a more detailed page for people to visit for some of the stuff we can't fit in the show notes
we're we're hampered by a character count that I guess on your cell phone you can't read three or four pages of show notes.
Yeah, well, thank you can I appreciate that but yeah, Ken's alluding to the housekeeping problem where we were off by one zero and how long we thought the
stuff could be so we urgently were were arranging them. And many of these topics, we hope to revisit in future episodes.
So why don't you take the first hit note Ken, hit piece right. So, we've got the first one here is basically talking about
Gabe alluded to the fact that in Canada we don't have this overarching federal legislation, like they do in the United States.
We have provincial each province and each territory have their own heritage acts in New Brunswick it's called the Heritage Conservation Act it was introduced in 2010.
And I think what was called the Historic Places Act before that much more detailed, more, and there's sort of definitions of an archaeological object are what an archaeological object is rather what archaeological sites are what what comprises
an archaeological site how permitting is handled.
Whereas, we don't have this sort of overarching blanket of federal legislation we've got various pieces of federal legislation that enact, you know protect archaeological sites at national historic sites for example, to a certain
degree within national parks.
We have legislation that it's not, there's a policy called the archaeological heritage policy framework that the federal government operates under, but there's no sort of.
There's no top down prescription from the federal government about how archaeology and heritage things are protected, however, in the House of Commons right now is Bill C 23, an act respecting places persons and events of national historic
significance or national interest archaeological resources and cultural and natural heritage, which shorthand is the historic places of Canada act.
And the bill has gone through second reading is my understanding just before the holidays, and is in the process of probably going out to committee where it will be a number of heritage sector groups so you know the Canadian archaeological
association, I come oh some various other entities that are engaged in heritage more broadly not just archaeology so we're talking about historic places and other things have weighed in on the legislation and provided the government with recommendations.
And it sounds like the government will now take those recommendations into consideration.
And as they work through committee which is just an internal government process. My understanding is that they will tweak the legislation again, and then it will be presented to the House on a third reading and if it passes third reading, it goes to the Senate.
And then we may sometime in 2023 actually before the house rises we may actually see the first comprehensive federal heritage legislation and it's not the same as the NHPA but it's a, it's a huge first step for for Canada.
And that's the last of the, I think G 20 nations to have federal heritage legislation adopted. That's remarkable I didn't know that about the G 20. Yeah.
For, for publications we've got to this week. The first is a little bit late. And that is that there's a new volume of the handbook of North American Indians.
And that's not a term we would use today. But the reason for this term in the publication is that the series started out of the Smithsonian institution in the 70s and remains unfinished.
And it is an invaluable resource. And as a part of this resource what it is that it's multiple volumes mostly sorted by region, some sorted by topic that is a complete compendium of now somewhat dated but still extremely useful information about the indigenous people of North America
I suspect I certainly turn to it frequently can you as well.
Yeah, I mean I can see it just over your right shoulder here. Yes, at least a couple of at least a couple of the volumes. So I have actually a whole set due to the my mother in law being a librarian and helping, helping me acquire something that were that were headed for a dumpster in in
Pennsylvania.
And I think that's a nice, tell her to keep an eye out for me to mention it. Yeah. And then the other publication from some colleagues of ours, Dave Leslie, Zach singer, G Logan Miller, Katie Reinhart, Brian Jones and the reason I bring this one up is it's an article for about a site in Massachusetts.
And this period that was largely discovered described for the far northeast. And that is the Gulf of Maine architect traditions which will talk about more in later episodes. The article is in archaeology of Eastern North America issue 50 pages one to 30.
And it's called the Gulf main architecture and occupations at the Edgewood apartment site in Plainville, Massachusetts. I also just want to emphasize that the kind of work that that many of the guys on this, or the people on this paper have been doing really speaks to the kinds of
interesting and important research that CRM companies are doing, and how important it is that groups like this are continuously publishing some of their best CRM stuff so all the guys involved in this, all the people involved in this have been just really terrific as far as a track record with that
regard always publishing interesting stuff.
I look forward to reading it when I get my, my a&a from Toronto.
That's excellent yeah.
And the Green Tel gave starting to fade a little bit here so I think we're we're actually we are looking at the half bottle of half empty bottle of corbusier now and and we want to thank everybody for listening to episode two, and for participating in the the
New Brunswick archaeology podcast I actually had somebody asked me today, we were talking, I said we started recording a podcast and they said what's it called and I said, it's the New Brunswick archaeology podcast and they started laughing and and and I said oh no you know it's a great title it describes exactly
what's going on but you the listener could be the one to, to give us a new name so.
Yeah, so from less bridge to Romania, Italy, Honduras, Austria, United Kingdom Russian Federation, all across the United States and Canada we want to thank you for listening.
You can subscribe to our podcast or follow us on itunes on Spotify, Apple podcasts.
Any others. Not sure.
Wherever fine podcasts are available I think the podcast index Samsung podcast podcast I actually didn't even know there are Samsung podcasts I guess you can play those through your refrigerator something.
That must be it it's it's got ice crushed ice cold water and podcast.
And so you might need to pour yourself a new one. Yeah, it's also probably been tapped into by enemy agents who are listening to your every word though so goes right through tick tock.
I think this is where we put the outro music in.
Thanks.
We'll see you next fortnight everybody.
Thank you.