00:00.00 alifeinruins Welcome to episode one seventy of the life ruins podcast wherein investigatste the careers of those living your life in ruins I'm your host Carlton Gober joined by my co-host David in Howe Connor cannot be with us today. He is not dead. 00:15.49 David He's unzipped. 00:18.31 alifeinruins Yep yep, but for this week we are joined by Dr Devin Pettigrew who is actually realized like 1 of ah the leading guests on the show and actually debuted on episode 18.2 as like a as a guest host. 00:20.87 David Like. 00:35.37 alifeinruins Not even as a guest proper we he came in interviewed. Ah I think that's eighteen point two all we are is Donny dust in the wind I had him back on immediately after episode 19 episode 75 and also episode one 12 so like Devin appears in very pivotal points of this podcast. He's been evenly spaced. 00:40.98 Devin Yeah. 00:54.76 alifeinruins And we have him on now um to talk about. He just had 3 articles dropped this year um recently all on weapons ballistics regarding the archeological record and he is ah also. An incoming professor to what university devin. 01:15.33 Devin Sewell Ross it's a alpine in West Texas 01:20.25 alifeinruins That's going to be a fun time I'm really happy for you. 01:21.79 Devin Yeah I'm excited. They have a really strong wildlife management program and so a lot of what I do is hunting focused and they have really incredible archeology down there and they want to open up the experimental archeology Lab Potentially so. Gonna be cool I think. 01:40.91 David Um, that sounds awesome and pretty suited for you. 01:44.83 Devin Yeah, surprisingly well suited. 01:45.80 alifeinruins Yeah, and I I hope you definitely argue for these 3 papers to be on your tenure packet because your first year is golden if you have these 3 like you're definitely on track so the titles of these articles and we're going to put these in the episode description. 01:47.48 David Yeah, yeah. 01:58.26 Devin I don't. 02:03.29 alifeinruins We have um, reassessing the terminal ballistic performance of trial it by and crod crodgelope bait arrow points in the iron age battlefield that's by Devin and Dr William Taylor's been on the podcast terminal ballistics of stone tipped adoole darts and arrows results from exploratory naturalist experiments and in that one you can see a very great picture of me. 02:21.42 Devin 7 02:22.86 alifeinruins With my belly hanging out through a cannon ah through a camera not a cannon and then the last one is um on the non-salability of Target Media for evaluating the performance of ancient projectile weapons and like so and that's what Devin and um Dr Douglas band forth from see boulder. Um. 02:24.12 David A a. 02:41.48 alifeinruins Was really fun for me just to look through your illustrations Devin because I recognize a lot of these things I recognize your old office space where you had a crossbow set up in the lab. Um and and and you've been talking about this on the podcast since you've been on. We kind of watched the beginning like your research. 02:49.21 Devin Earlier. 02:59.10 alifeinruins Back in 2019 as you defended? Um, and now we're we're looking at like these published peer reviewed results outside of the dissertation defense media. So. 03:06.54 Devin Um, yeah, right. 03:13.90 alifeinruins I mean just kind of walk us through so one of the big ones we'll kind of wait for the iron age stuff last but when we're talking about how prior to your work on Weapon Ballistics How were archaeologists studying the effects of. Ah, projectiles on past human populations but also in hunting practices. So. 03:36.66 Devin Yeah, sure So there's a couple different ways and I think on the last episode I was on. We talked about the differences between a controlled style experiment and a naturalistic experiment the control one being where you're like in a lab kind of setting. 03:47.56 David Yeah. 03:56.27 Devin You're trying to isolate some variable or variables of interest and and so it's very kind of artificial. You know like it's imagine a bunch of guys staying around in the lab coats. That's not the past. Naturalistic style experiment where you're you can imagine being out of doors. You have actually human users launching weapons. It's really hard to to control for variables in that setting. So they both kind of have their strengths and weaknesses prior to. To my work archaeologists have been doing both for some time and I would say it seemed like as I looked through the literature that controlled experiments we were becoming more and more popular and so a big issue I ran into. Is that in a control type experiment where you're in a lab kind of environment. 1 of the ways that you control variables of interest is through the targets that you're using and so people tend to try and use these artificial. Target Media like ballistics gelatin is probably the best known and and so I discovered more or less that those target media aren't working that well for for studying the type of projectile that we're studying that they're really quite different from bullets and so. 05:29.47 Devin You Just can't assume that the same target media is going to work the same way and in fact, you get pretty astoundingly different results shooting an arrow into ballistic shelter than you do into actual flesh. So That's really the big. The big difference and then the. Naturalistic types of experiments I carried out are carcasses. Um, the big difference. There is that the way I employed high speed Cameras allows you to track the projectiles. It's coming in track its velocity and then track how it decell rates. As it penetrates through the carcass and then you get like a force tree back so that was pretty pretty interesting. 06:10.39 David Yeah, so I mean it just kind of seems like I mean I use Ballistics Jell my experiment just because it seemed like Ballistics Gll is the medium you use to test penetration. So I assume archeologists before us just kind of assumed the same. 06:22.93 Devin Right? Sit and so did I Yeah for my I usage as well For my master's research. It's just it's supposedly a flesh simula I mean. 06:28.41 David But. 06:34.16 David Okay, yeah is ah yeah, no makes sense. Um I think I might have mentioned this last time you were around but frisin like chewed me out for using Ballistics y'all and not like and it. 06:46.50 Devin Her. 06:51.35 David Ah, practical experiment and I was like presenting to the board I was like well I mean if you want to pay for me to get an elephant to shoot at like I'd love to but it's like all I could really say but yeah, you got a bisons that's the next best thing. 06:59.42 Devin Right? Yeah, yeah, it took a lot lot of work. But we've done 3 different bison experiments now still hoping for an elephant some time in the future. But. Things are gonna have to play out just right for that and somehow first they will pull it off. Yeah. 07:19.15 David Yeah, you got to be ready. Yeah. 07:25.70 alifeinruins The 70 s were definitely a different time and. 07:27.95 Devin Yeah, there were. 07:29.10 David Well, the logistics alone like you have to 1 be on a list for the what the Denver zoo or the Bronx zoo and then San Diego zoo and then a day later be able to fly out fully stocked with atlattles ready to be experimented with or else that things going to start to rot. 07:48.57 Devin Yeah, everything's got to be ready exactly there was a paper I read um it was never published but it was one of the most useful outletal Elephant carcass experiments I read about because the guy said I threw together my kit the day before. 07:48.99 David Yeah. 08:06.30 Devin And it was like sharpened wood points and stuff and got pretty lousy results and the takeup messages be ready in case, an elephant drops dead at your doorstep I was like okay so now I have like 40 close points on standby. 08:19.64 David It's good advice. 08:25.10 Devin Just in case. But but you know the way frisen did it. He went to Africa during a coaling operation and he actually wasn't that well prepared he had he kind of threw together his kid a little bit. And then in the field he had to break it down to get it onto the plane and then the field he had to reconstruct it and had he ran into a bunch of issues with that and I think he had 7 total close points with him and he made a few shots that convinced him that the weapon would work. 08:52.98 David Here. 09:01.31 Devin Um, but his results aren't that well documented. So so you know it couldn't be done again. But it's important to get the all the ethical issues lined out and you know find a. 09:04.10 David Yeah. 09:17.52 Devin Ah, good source for a fresh carcass. 09:20.79 alifeinruins Absolutely you know what ah what I really like about these 3 articles is how they're they really kind of come as a package deal like they came out close enough together and like you can tell there's different aspects of your dissertation. And each 1 right? So like 1 is basically like the most recent one or I don't know if it's the most recent but it was accepted in May of 2023 the target media so you're basically just like here's a whole article on and what you've discussed on this podcast. Why balllissistics gel and and these other variables we need more control over these things. Why they're not necessarily adequate then you move into. Um you know with your terminal ballistics of stone tipped ad lot darkts and arrows like your actual experiments. The Target velocity is and introducing more methodology. And like how do you do this in ah in a non like in a very naturalist experiment and then the third is you know, kind of a case study of doing this on iron age battlefields like that 1 kind of threw me for a loop because um I don't I don't think what I think of you I don't necessarily think of mongols and ah. 10:21.44 Devin Yep. 10:27.53 Devin Right? The ends and yeah. 10:30.30 alifeinruins And like iron age points. Yes, its I was like wow okay, and then when I saw Dr Taylor as a coauthor I was like oh I wonder where the data is is is coming from here on this one. You know so that I mean I just think it's just absolutely fantastic. But um, yeah, so. 10:33.18 David I. 10:38.75 Devin Death. 10:48.25 alifeinruins Since these before we kind of like dive while into these. What's what has the reception been to your articles if if any. 11:01.74 Devin Um, so far I'm not hearing a lot. Um, so hopefully people will get out there and read them. They're they're all open access the first to the one about Target media and the what about car's naturalistic experiments are in open archeology. And then the third one on iron age errorpoints is in plus one but um, so far I'm not seeing ah direct responses ah too much. So hopefully that'll change. 11:34.95 David And I mean could you say that some of the ones you were doing were in response to the I Forget the author of came out last year about the where they were shooting into pottery saying Clovis points were in effect Metarin That's right? um. 11:45.38 alifeinruins Met an Aaron. 11:50.80 Devin Yeah, there have been several experiments at Ken State University in Ohio shooting into Pottery Clay is a a flesh simulant so I did tests on Pottery Clay um as well as ballistics gelaton I used ah a synthetic ballistics gelatin that you can melt and recast and then I tested a variety of different skin stimulants because skin simulants. Although in firearms terminal ballistics there. They're mainly focused on flesh stimululants flesh being like muscle tissue mixed with you know, blood vessels and little bits of fat stuff. But it's mainly muscle skin simulants are used primarily in studies of knife stabbings. 12:32.89 David Man. 12:43.12 Devin And which is a whole body literature I got into and I think most of the work is done in England but they they're researching the efficacy of different knives thrust into to people as a way to. Have you know and another line of evidence if you're evaluating a crime scene or if you're trying to protect your police force with body armor staff protective body armor and that sort of thing. So um, they use skin stimuls because skin is the most resistive soft tissue on the body. And so the first thing that the knife has to do aside from clothing or body armor is it has to defeat the skin and once it gets through skin. It can penetrate into less resistive flesh and then especially the the internal organs tend to be a lot less resistive. So. So I tried evaluating dart scenarios in those 3 different categories of media. The 2 flesh Seances Clay let ultimate that skin. So yeah, the testing all those was in direct response to a number of papers that have come out that have used those types of media. 13:56.50 David Yeah, okay, um, and I guess to follow up with that I didn't get a chance to read the iron age paper. Um would you be able to tell just like like a quick synopsis of of what that paper was. 14:12.41 Devin Sure yeah, there was a a prior experiment that shot trilobate and bilobate that simply bilobate is 2 blades and trilo but trilobate is 3 blades bronze arrow points that were collected from. 14:12.92 David Before we dive in. 14:31.29 Devin Neoassyrian sites so around 7 to 600 bc shot them into pottery clay and discovered that the bilobate points the tube bladed points penetrated better into clay and so it was confusing because. 14:36.31 David A. 14:50.76 Devin Around 700 bc trilobate points enter into the near eastern record they're coming down from the north because they were invented in the north on the eurasian stepspes by presumably precursors to the to the ski to the setthians with. Scynthians themselves but in any any event they entered into the near east um, and then they spread throughout the ancient world. So it's confusing as to why you know what would cause them to spread or become popular. So um I essentially rerign that test in clay and then I did ah I did a. An additional test in a really thick heavy stiff tooling leather because people were wearing body armor and body armor soft body armor specially made of leather primarily but also fabrics like linen that was very popular in the ancient world and. People continue to wear it into the medieval period. So ah so on a battlefield event a lot of times the arrows are probably going to be having to defeat body armor before they can enter into the body of a combatant. So the leather was just an analog for body armor and I got. Pretty much the opposite results shooting into leather rather than clay. 16:12.74 David And those results being that it was tougher to shoot into the leather. 16:19.48 Devin Yeah, so stiff leather is unsurprisingly.. It's very resistive. Um, and it's resistive when the broadhead penetrates it and then it continues to be resistive as the the arrow passes through it. So. When we shot into clay and when the previous experimenter shot ah in a clay you're capturing more friction on larger surface areas. So if you had attached additional blades. You're just attaching more surface area to your arrow and it. Creates more drag and it penetrates less in the leather. You do get a little bit extra resistance when a broadhead with an additional blade goes through the leather but it dramatically reduces the drag on the trailing shaft of the arrow so you get. 17:07.46 David Okay. 17:11.88 Devin Significantly better penetration after that initial you know, defeating of the weather. So so the idea is like when these points enter into the near East from the north We can't just assume that they are. 17:19.80 David Um, okay. 17:31.30 Devin Representative of an ethnic group that's been done archeologists were doing that I think mostly earlier on. But apparently this has been a continual problem if you're on looking at a battlefield doing battlefield archeology. You can't just assume that 1 arrow point represents one ethnicity. Right? There's all sorts of problems with that first off, how do we even identify an ethnicity in their ecological record when we have enough trouble doing so today I mean you know which the 2 people belong to it's a ah tricky problem. But this just adds another line of evidence that. 17:59.24 David Right here. 18:09.87 Devin Hey, this is a techno functional. It's a technological innovation on the battlefield and it's not necessarily just that you're going to want 3 blades at three bladeed arrowpoints from now on because if you shoot in a different target media. You get different results. So if you're defeating you attacking. Opponents with shields or different kinds of body armor maybe in different cases. 2 blades will be better than 3 but certainly 3 blades became really popular and were just completely adopted by the roman military and a lot of other lot of other folks. 18:47.55 David Ah, well we got to wrap this segment up I have plenty of questions regarding that stuff into the next segment. But yeah Carlton got anything. 18:52.30 alifeinruins Yeah, we'll be right back with tevin petigre after these messages we're gonna get into more of the math and have him explain a couple of these very colorful tables So we'll be right back. 19:03.35 David Yeah.