00:00.24 alifeinruins Welcome back to episode one fifty three of a life and ruins podcast. We're here with Jessica Jasmine and unfortunately David um I I wanted to um, start out and ask if you guys ever did a public archaeology course field. 00:08.99 David Howe That's right. 00:09.37 Jessica Ericson Um. 00:18.71 alifeinruins Program or if that was even emphasized kind of in your undergraduate degree. 00:25.56 Jessica Ericson For myself. Yeah I went to Colorado State University my professor was yeah yeah, that's where I met Connor um, and I definitely I took a ah public archeology class and that just lit I just. 00:26.80 alifeinruins Go rams. 00:42.26 Jessica Ericson I actually I took that public archeology class and tried to get more involved with the the archaeology in my hometown of Pueblo Colorado the l pubvo history museum is down there and I used to volunteer and dress up in 1840 s gear I had to wear bloomers and all the things and and yeah and I had a. 00:57.50 David Howe Wow. 01:01.83 Jessica Ericson Show kids around and what chores were like back in the day. But anyways when I took that public archeology class that kind of started everything to get for myself to get to where we are now. Um, because yeah like I got into the tourism industry because I I figured I wanted to start doing like. Maybe archaeological tours are just figuring out how to get people involved with archeology and I didn't know exactly what that looked like but that class that single class definitely like launched everything for me. But I think. 01:31.54 alifeinruins Do we take that together I feel like we were in the same class for that. 01:36.20 Jessica Ericson Yeah I always sat in the front right? But I feel like you were around. Ok yeah, undergrads. Yeah. 01:38.71 alifeinruins I was in the back because I was not not a great student. yeah yeah I mean I think Jason our doctor and lebel taught that class super well and I'm glad that that what we even got the opportunity to take something like that cause I think it's important. 01:40.77 David Howe Were you guys undergrads together were you a grad student. Okay, cool. 01:50.89 Jessica Ericson Like yes yeah. 01:57.84 alifeinruins Um, and not something that I don't as a part of all curriculums but it should be yeah. 01:58.38 Jessica Ericson Um, or yeah who it's of I agree. 02:02.72 David Howe Yeah I didn't have to take it. 02:09.60 Jasmine Saxon Yeah I didn't have anything like that in my undergrad although I did I I was a little special case I specialized in near Eastern Archeology and my undergrad um I was pretty set on like being a israeli archeologist and like being out of here. But. You know life is interesting and that obviously did not have it. But um, my seat little like 18 year old self thought it was a great idea. Um, but yeah in my grad school. Absolutely definitely took some really cool classes on. Um I think one of them. That I really impacted me too was like digital anthropology so talking about um anthropology in online spaces and thinking about how we interact in that space and how that overflows into real life and that was really interesting. Um, but I also. 1 of my mentors and professors was Dr Bonnie Clark at University Of Denver and she does um, she's the director of the amache internment camp project down south in Coronado Colorado and um, so every other year she's out there doing field work with her students and community members. Has amazing relationships with um, some of the descendant community members down there so that was really impactful to I didn't actually get to go out there and excavate or anything but just I had a bunch of classes with her where we would use some of those artifacts that they um. 03:39.40 Jasmine Saxon Excavated and do data analysis and things like that on them. So um, lots of talk about involving the public and you know how you do like a proper ethnography and stuff like that which was I think really great for any archaeologist to have um some of those skills because. Even though we study you know what's in the past a lot of times. Um, what is in the present informs some of those stories in the past and so I think it's really important to pick up some of those skills. Um, but I think the most impactful thing was I did my thesis workout in Connecticut and I got to work with the former state archeologist. 04:06.27 Jessica Ericson Um, me. 04:16.13 Jasmine Saxon Who is now passed um but he was so influential in thinking about archeology and public ways he just invited like every single community member to our excavation like boy boy scouts girl scouts historical societies neighbors down the road like everyone and it was just an amazing. To see him sit and like talk to the public and teach them about archeology and it was really something quite special. Um, and it really just it hit me deep deep down like I'm getting emotional talking about it. Um, but. I think too I've always kind of held on to that as Justin I continue to build this because there was this this amazing sense of belonging and identity in those moments where he would share this history with the communities so that was super inspiring. 05:04.52 David Howe That's really cool I've always found like not the older generation of archaeologists but just archaeologists in general when you like had the community involved and you're discussing like people always listen like archaeologists are always respected in that sense because. You just know a lot of stuff. It's where people lived and yeah I wish more it could be like the indigenous you know people telling about it but can always happen morere at an archaeological site but like yeah, it's just always cool that the community is always very involved and like really pays attention when when we're talking about that kind of stuff. Yeah. 05:25.62 Jessica Ericson And. 05:38.80 David Howe So I'm glad you had the experience. Yeah. 05:39.29 Jasmine Saxon Yeah, that's good. 05:39.40 Jessica Ericson Definitely. 05:41.92 alifeinruins Yeah, and it's it seems like local communities have are obviously invested in these areas too. So if you can and I think bringing in and talking to them is usually always beneficial I mean just to have that conversation. But and it's Cool. You got. You were taught that digital stuff because I think a lot of folks in our field don't ever get that kind of things way I mean we're we're kind of just making this up podcast and digital thing you know making it up as we go because it's not something that's taught in school to us. Yeah. 06:07.10 Jessica Ericson Or. 06:10.90 David Howe Right. 06:18.26 Jasmine Saxon Yeah, do they even teach podcasting in school I Guess maybe now they do like it not when I went but. 06:18.39 Jessica Ericson Um, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. 06:20.59 alifeinruins Ah. 06:20.62 David Howe Yeah, no, oh yeah, sure they do not yeah um. 06:22.12 Jessica Ericson Um, yeah, yeah, no. 06:23.88 alifeinruins I Think they have to be like everyone on their sister has one. So. 06:33.66 David Howe Um, don't know what kind of stuff Did you guys learn in your your public archeology class if you don't mind me asking. 06:37.42 Jessica Ericson I think I mean okay I just remember there was so much it was like a flood of information coming in but I remember learning like how to set up my resume to like be able to present it to a Crm company connor do you remember that. 06:48.46 David Howe A lot. 06:54.61 Jessica Ericson Your face suggests. Yeah, yeah, yeah, there was books and articles I remember reading the the Golden Troel that was a very and it was such a cool article. 06:55.46 alifeinruins Yeah, yeah, yeah, no you yeah I definitely remember that. Um, yeah, um, we there was a huge book I feel like Jesus like Lebel had us like ever read a huge book. 07:13.10 David Howe Other Golden Marshall town. Yeah. 07:14.33 Jessica Ericson Um, because he had us acted out. Yeah, the golden marshall town. That's it anyways, yeah stuff like that. But the the our main um projects like that each one of us had to do that's the thing that I was trying to do in El Puvo history museum um I think I remember him asking me. He's like. Do you want to do something like fun or do you want to do a project. That's gonna change things and gonna be like meaningful and it was like oh shits. Um, that is a great question I guess I'm go to go for the meaningful answer. So yeah I just it wasn't necessarily the content that. I learned so much it was the the I don't know the essence of it all of like why are you doing this more or less. Yeah, but yeah. 07:57.84 David Howe Um, yeah, how that's good. 08:02.74 alifeinruins Yeah I remember I remember getting like a specific examples of public archeology which was super helpful because then you can kind of see how it actually helped people actually use the past um to to talk to people I think that was. 08:08.78 Jessica Ericson Um, yeah. 08:16.48 alifeinruins Super useful and I yeah I think they're actually doing the project too was helpful at that time because you're like I didn't feel like I was a professional or like I just I just got out of field school and now I'm going to try to like change the world or something. Yeah, yeah, um. 08:20.37 Jessica Ericson Um, yeah, no yeah, do this? Yeah, it's gonna work. 08:35.70 alifeinruins Jasmine how how about what about you anything you remember specifically or. 08:39.85 Jasmine Saxon I Think yeah I think I remember just a lot of examples of just like how to talk to the community. How to involve the kind of like those nitty gritty details of Outreach. Um, and I think. 1 of the things that struck me is like it's a really,. It's a lot of work and I think a lot of times in Archeology. It's easier to just kind of like me you know, just like kind of put something nice over it and call it. 09:01.00 David Howe Ah. 09:08.80 Jessica Ericson A. 09:14.42 Jasmine Saxon Community engagement you know, um because I think a lot of times you know it. It can be. It can be scary to interact with the public because you just don't know how they're going to respond and some people can be really mean like really really rude and mean um. 09:16.23 Jessica Ericson Um, okay. 09:27.40 David Howe Um, yeah, but. 09:29.34 Jessica Ericson Um, a. 09:33.84 Jasmine Saxon But I think that's like part of why we need to embrace it so much more is because I think there has been this kind of time where we all have kind of just ran away from from these responsibilities and um. 09:44.97 Jessica Ericson Um. 09:49.19 Jasmine Saxon As an archeologist if we're not involving the community or somehow like giving back with our projects then like what the are we doing like why are we doing this like why are we? It's just like archeology for Archeology's sake. It's like in a vacuum it doesn't impact or do anything for anyone. 09:57.17 Jessica Ericson Um, beautiful. 10:03.41 Jessica Ericson Um, yeah. 10:06.55 alifeinruins Yeah, we're like contribut contributing to the gray literature. Essentially I feel like it likes the airm like and it's hard to find I will say yet. It's hard to find ways to do that in cra in ways and outreach. But it seems like you guys have found found that niche um, are there any projects that. 10:07.95 Jasmine Saxon Exactly. 10:20.52 Jessica Ericson Are. 10:23.83 alifeinruins You all are really proud of or um I besides all of them because you you know, um, any any ones that you are really proud of what you kind of accomplish through that process. 10:28.46 Jessica Ericson Yeah. 10:38.36 Jessica Ericson Definitely we've got a few I like I don't know Jasmine had some great connections and got us like so many random things happened for us to get into to be able to survey red rocks. Um, so that happened. 10:51.65 David Howe Oh. 10:56.24 Jessica Ericson And that's an ongoing thing so that that I'd say is one of them. But um. 10:56.64 Jasmine Saxon Ah, yeah, that that is our pride and joy our baby are like claim to fame if you will Um, yeah so. 11:05.11 David Howe Um, we can. 11:11.92 Jessica Ericson Um. 11:12.70 Jasmine Saxon Just and I have like the honor and the privilege to be surveying red rocks and we had our first season last year so we're still like on the ongoing process of getting all of the information together and writing reports and all that stuff. But um, really. The end goal of this project is to all set. Well, it's kind of a multicomponent project like part of it is we absolutely need to survey the park because it's never been surveyed archeologically in its entirety which is just mind blowing to me I'd still like. I have surveyed out there and I still cannot understand why that says have been done anyway. Um, so that is one component is like we need to do an inventory for like responsibility sake like we can't protect something we don't know about. 11:44.45 David Howe Man. 11:44.84 Jessica Ericson At. 11:55.11 Jessica Ericson Yeah. 11:56.99 Jasmine Saxon Um, but the other part of that is using all of this information as a community engagement tool. So we're working with the education coordinator and the wildlife program director in addition to the director of Denver Mountain Parks to create educational content for Denver public schools. So that we can give that out to teachers teachers can use it in their classrooms as kind of a foundational tool for learning archeology. Um, and when you learn archeology you learn a lot of other cool skills like critical thinking and math and like science all kind of you know, like there's so many cool things that you can learn just by doing archeology. It's not just like 1 thing. 12:26.64 Jessica Ericson Um, who. 12:35.61 Jasmine Saxon Um, so we're really going to highlight some of those things and then use that as a base so that when students are able to. They can come out to red rocks and Justin I have identified a teaching site actually um out there. That's easily accessible. It's just. Ah, massive historic like picnic area. So. It's nothing significant but it has like every single color of glass basically out there. Um, so just that in itself is a cool tool to talk about like. 12:54.30 Jessica Ericson What. 13:05.70 Jasmine Saxon Why are why are glass different colors like why does that happen. What is the science behind that and then how does that help us date things in time. Um, so having kids out there to actually use pen flags and like go mark stuff and talk about artifacts and things like that. So we're also be doing some drone footage and creating. 13:08.58 Jessica Ericson Um, one. 13:24.46 Jasmine Saxon Dems um, to also talk about sites and like why like how we map them and what that looks like and what you can tell from a Dm and all those things so we're not just doing archeology for archeology's sake like we talked about like we're actually taking all of this information and making it an accessible. Little snippets of things here and there that the public and especially our public schools can latch on to and use. 13:50.40 Jessica Ericson Yeah, yeah. 13:51.20 alifeinruins But that's super cool. Have you guys I Assume you guys have found some weird shit at Red rocks. 13:58.18 Jessica Ericson Um, ah yeah, yeah, there's there's plenty of that. There's there's some. There's some other things too. So we found a drone actually. 13:58.47 David Howe Um, I'd imagine. It's a lot of like white claw and like craft beer cans or something. But. 14:08.16 Jasmine Saxon Some that? yeah that was weird. It was like also you could tell it was like hands soldered and like put together. So I don't know what kind of weird stuff they were doing but we found it just still has it I think don't you because I don't think Shannon wanted it the director she was like I don't. 14:08.31 David Howe Oh. 14:10.25 alifeinruins You found a drone. Okay. 14:18.76 David Howe Oh. 14:20.64 Jessica Ericson Um, yeah, it was interesting. Yeah, she didn't want it. She's like just throw it away. It's It's just the footage is just some dude like obviously yeah has footage. 14:20.82 alifeinruins Ah move. 14:26.75 Jasmine Saxon Which is like i' ah. 14:30.98 David Howe Oh with footage. 14:33.58 Jasmine Saxon Um, yeah. 14:35.74 Jessica Ericson And he flew it straight up into the there's a tower like a cell tower up there and that's like the worst thing to do with a drone is so it just it completely interfered with the the drone. Um, ah yeah, the signal and everything and the drone you just watch it just like you can you just get dizzy watching it as it just. 14:38.54 David Howe Our. 14:45.58 Jasmine Saxon Signal. 14:54.87 Jessica Ericson Tumbles down from the sky into this rock face. So that's where we found it. But yeah, good stuff. 14:58.68 David Howe Ah, no, ah. 15:00.19 Jasmine Saxon Yeah, yeah, it's I think one of the craziest things is like noticing how like the extent of how much people have been around red rocks like. Like we wait like we have full roam of the park right? So we're out there like in places that we think that Oh for sure People have not been here in a long time like there's like a cores can you know so it's kind of crazy like yeah, how. 15:25.21 Jessica Ericson Um, yeah, nobody's been here. Yeah New Belgium 15:33.90 Jasmine Saxon Like much people have been all over this place for such a long time. Um, we did find some amethyst glass like up on this hillside after climbing these like crazy like ninety degree angle rocks which was awesome just was like ah. 15:50.58 Jessica Ericson Um, yeah. 15:53.18 Jasmine Saxon Has just has gets a little vertigo so we kind of just helping her. 15:55.47 Jessica Ericson I I can't be up high and then look up and that's exactly what it made me I needed to do to get to the next spot. But I was just like I'm gonna fall backwards I'm gonna die here. This is how it all it. So anyways. 16:08.80 David Howe Ah. 16:09.58 Jasmine Saxon Yeah, so we found like 2 little amethyst um like neck and finishings that like probably cork tops like just yeah, but like other than that that's why the oldest historic stuff that we found. And then there's a distinct lack of pre-contact just like it's just absent and yeah. 16:25.69 Jessica Ericson Yeah, you could tell people just like walk right in like oh I'm taking everything So there's almost nothing there that we're finding so far. It's really unfortunate, but. 16:36.70 Jasmine Saxon It is really unfortunate and like that's why what we do at community connections is so freaking important is because if people are educated and they understand that picking up artifacts and taking them home and putting them in a shoebox isn't helpful even though it's cool to see them. It. Like completely rips apart a piece of our historic story and so like Jess and I are out there trying to figure out more of what the cultural story of red rocks is and we can already tell you that there's a huge chunk of it that's going to be missing. Um, we actually got to go to Csu and look at a comparison collection that was. Um, excavated just north of like red rocks like like you could walk there from the park. Um, and just like freaking the out because it was just beautiful material like absolutely gorgeous points and all kinds of like beautiful lithics. 17:16.11 Jessica Ericson No. 17:27.30 Jessica Ericson Um, just really going to this. 17:31.45 Jasmine Saxon Um, so we know you know obviously historically we know anyway, but like we know also just from this one single site that there should be beautiful things here and they're missing which just like really breaks your heart and like as an archeologist you can just feel the void and it's sort of. 17:38.46 Jessica Ericson There's so much open. 17:47.28 Jessica Ericson It was yeah it was super weird. 17:48.12 Jasmine Saxon Creepy. It's like not right. It's weird. 17:52.42 alifeinruins Yeah, well I think um, we're gonna take a break and we'll come right back if you are missing a drone though feel free to reach out to the community connections people. Um and we can. We can also give you some ah informative material saying that you should not. 17:53.19 David Howe Um, yeah. 18:00.26 David Howe Good to see. 18:01.89 Jessica Ericson Um, yeah, real We got it. 18:09.18 alifeinruins Fly close to ah things that'll interfere with your connection. 18:12.96 Jasmine Saxon Also illegal in the park just stuff why I So you know ah contact us on your own like you know? Yeah, anonymously. 18:13.20 Jessica Ericson Um, yeah, it's it's super illegal. So yeah, he warned you've been warned, but. 18:15.22 alifeinruins Yeah, under a suit says Pseudo name or whatever, whatever you want to do? Yeah, yeah there you go? yeah and we'll be right back. 18:16.20 David Howe Ah, good to know.