*Note: This post includes content from an online interview between Dr. Russell Adams and UWaterloo AnthSoc VP Events, Camila Font Pescod. The full video interview can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jD9iGVMfXAo
"Russell Adams is an anthropological archaeologist with primary research interests in the emergence of complex societies and early states and the interface between the development of social complexity and the adoption and development of industrial processes and technology during prehistory. His current SSHRC funded research focuses upon early metal producing communities in southern Jordan and understanding how the growth and spread of metal production impacted upon social organization, regional interaction and the environment.
He has directed archaeological projects in Jordan since 1989, and specializes in archaeological method and theory, ancient technology and the archaeometric study of ceramics and metals. He received his BA and MA (Near Eastern Archaeology) from Wilfrid Laurier University, and his PhD in Archaeology and Prehistory from Sheffield University. He has been a SSHRC post-doctoral fellow at McMaster University and has taught at universities in the UK, Canada and the United States. Among his recent publications is Jordan: An Archaeological Reader (Equinox, 2008), the definitive introduction to the subject."
Biography:
"People Profiles: Russell Adams.” University of Waterloo Anthropology Department website. https://uwaterloo.ca/anthropology/people-profiles/russell-adams
[INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT]
Emma Marcanio (President UW AnthSoc)
Hi everyone. I'm Emma. I'm the current president of the UW Anthropology Society. And I am so excited to introduce to you our brand-new event series called Live Life Stories. This is an interview series where we're going to interview people from the department, whether it's faculty, students, or even some alumni about their journeys and their stories all underneath the banner of anthropology. Our first guest is going to be Dr. Russell Adams. He is an adjunct professor with the university and has spent most of his academic career studying in southern Jordan, specifically at Feynan on working on the impacts of metallurgy in the early Bronze Age. As always, our interviewer will be Camilla Font, she's a third-year anthropology major and she is super smart. So, she's going to ask some wicked questions, which I hope everybody's excited to hear the answers to. I think that Dr. Adams is an amazing storyteller, and I'm so excited to hear what stories he has to tell for us today.
Camila Font Pescod (VP Events UW AnthSoc)
Okay, thank you so much, Emma for that introduction, and thank you Dr. Adams for being here. I'm glad that it all worked out. He had to work out through some audio issues, but we're here so that's good.
Dr. Russell Adams (Guest Speaker)
Well, I guess not too bad considering I'm sitting here beside the Dead Sea, as you can see with my background, but so far so good. Just had to replace the headphones. Something's not quite right with my computer. I have a feeling I know what it is. There is a disturbance in the in the universe, because Liverpool just lost a football match after becoming the premier league champions. So obviously, there's something strange going on to the cosmos, but this might be part of it.
CFP
It must be mercury in retrograde. That's my only explanation. But so, tell me, how have you been holding up this summer since you're now Canada bound? How have your Research plans shifted?
RA
Oh, research? Well, Hmm, interesting question. Well, for the most part, it's all good here. Although, you know, we've more or less been in lockdown since the last the third week of March. Of course, I'd rather be digging in Jordan that in my vegetable garden. Having said that, it's made life easier because the most complex decisions I've had to make are, am I watering my tomato plants too much or too little? It's a very strange situation, to be sure. I mean, we're living through a difficult period. And many people are finding isolation, extremely difficult. But for academics, it can also be a nice break, to be alone with your thoughts for an extended period. No other demands on your time and your energy, and so it's not so bad as it could be. But speaking from a human perspective, it's been really interesting to see how different countries have with the COVID-19 situation. While some of it has been challenging due to politics, I think you all know what I'm talking about here. It's clear that different cultures have clearly managed better than others. And for that reason, it's really been a gigantic anthropological experiment.
CFP
Of course, I've been in Costa Rica since the pandemic started. I am Costa Rican; I haven't been able to go back to Canada. But up until these past couple of weeks, the government has been handling it very well. And all in all, I'm just lucky to be here. Although I would rather be in Waterloo but talking about your research. You've previously described Feynan as the Silicon Valley of the Bronze Age. Can you expand on that? Tell me why that is?
RA
Sure. That's a fairly easy place to begin. Yes, I often say that it really is the Silicon Valley of the Bronze Age. And here we're talking about a period from about three and a half thousand BC down to 1900 BC for the earliest phase of the Bronze Age. It's important because this is where transitions are taking place at Feynan with what becomes an industrial phase of metal production, which are really is truly the earliest phases of large scale metallic that ever took place on here. And it's as revolutionary, at that time, as modern developments in computing and in information technology are today. Think about it just for a second. Where would human societies be without the introduction and the use of metal on a large scale in human societies? The Bronze Age, at least the earliest phases of it, it's really the beginning of what we could describe as the modern world because it's at this point, the technology comes to the fore and technology really is something that humans have excelled at over the millennia. And so, in a sense, it's such a significant transformation from human life before the use of metal, when, of course, you had humans using stone and bone and wooden tools. And they've been using these items for literally hundreds of thousands of years as emerging human populations. So, it really is a wonderful technological advancement taking place in the earliest phases of the Bronze Age in Feynan. And that's really what draws us in to have a look at what these changes meant in terms of technology, but also in terms of human societies. And of course, one other thing that we've been building on because I've been doing this for 30 years, of course, is now we're looking at the long-term impacts of what this metallurgy meant for the environment. So, we're doing lots of environmental pollution analysis, initially and looking at the landscapes and the geography and mapping out the pollution there from all this large-scale metallurgy. But now with Dr. Dolphin, my colleague in anthropology, we're now looking at the human impacts by looking at the humans themselves. And analyzing the bones of the burials from the early Bronze Age.
CFP
It would be interesting to see how this type of research will look for archaeologists in the future like when they're studying us. And it's also interesting to draw these types of parallels between cribs of technological development as like the Silicon Valley in California is versus Feynan on and to think about the repercussions that had on the population at the time and then further down the line. Like for example, I wouldn't be able to imagine my life without my smartphone. So, I was just wondering, what are some examples of technological advances that emerged as a result of early metallurgy in Feynan that we might still use today.
RA
Well, of course, all technologies that human societies have developed, have been highly dependent upon metals of various kinds throughout human history. From a simple metal evolutionary perspective, it's evolved. You know, from the copper age, to the Bronze Age, the Iron Age. Eventually humans learn how to make steel. Then, of course, aluminum becomes quite common in later societies. But try to think of any age since the Bronze Age. When humans did not rely upon technologies that use metals. I can I can confidently say you can't think of a period where humans have not been so highly reliant on metals. Metals are still central to human societies today. The only difference for many of them is that it's very much easier to access them due to advances in mining and processing. But just for the sake of argument, let's keep the conversation about modern computer and phone technology. It's important to realize that most of these rely in some part upon something called rare earth elements. And these are sometimes rare, but also just very difficult to process from other minerals. And these metallic minerals, mostly, a group of elements called lanthanides have special electronic and magnetic properties, which is what makes your smartphone actually work. So, the bottom line is that well, the importance of specific metals has changed over time, human reliance upon metals has only increased in every period of human activity.
CFP
Of course, it's amazing to think that had it not been for the discovery of how to work with metal in a Feynan, technology in life as we know it would be so different than what it is right? And maybe humans would have discovered how to work with metal elsewhere or maybe not would have found a replacement for metal, but almost nothing that we know today would be the same, right?
RA
Yes, absolutely humans, humans really are metal based creatures we, we do adapt very well technologically but we have made metal central to the human story.
CFP
Of course. And that's in part what amazes me so much about your research because it draws such a direct line from a period in time it's so far away from us, the Bronze Age, and it shows us like the direct repercussions today which is astonishing if you think about it, but what I want to know is why do you find your research interesting, and what is it that originally drew you to research in the area?
RA
Well, you know, if you corner, any academic, they can bore you to tears with their research, you know, I could 'bore' for Canada if there was an Olympic medal for 'boring' about my research interests. But the whole story really is a very, very long one. And in some in some respects, my college experience after high school led to an interest in what we usually call the ancient Near East. And just by chance, I was reading a journal, and I saw a picture of a guy called Larry Toombs, Professor Lawrence Edward Toombs, who taught at Wilfrid Laurier University and the picture showed him on his excavations at Tallalhesse in southern Israel. So, of course, I looked up WLU, and they had at that time and interdepartmental major in archaeology, which at that time included courses in anthropology and classics, and then to the Department called religion and culture. That's where we're at Toombs taught something called Syril-Palestinian archaeology. I couldn't resist. During my undergraduate degree, I spent every summer on excavations in Israel and Jordan, Greece and Cyprus. And it was great, because during the academic year, of course, I'm taking archaeology classes mostly at Laurier. And in the summers, it was like an open-air classroom, on these excavations, and getting all that practical experience. Now with going to Feynan in particular, it's kind of an odd story in a lot of ways, because it just shows you how much chance can play in outcomes within any person's life. While I was working on my master's degree, and Laurier, I spent my first summer working on a site which was new to me it projects in southern Israel. And after that project, I had a few weeks to sort of hang out and do some reading in the library at the Albright Institute in Jerusalem. It's a very old institution run by the American schools of research. They have a fabulous library better than Anything we could even hope to have here in Canada for the subject area. And one afternoon while I was having a cup of tea in the garden as one did on a hot summer afternoon, a Canadian archaeologist by the name of Burton MacDonald dropped by and over a cup of tea. He was moaning endlessly about how one of the members of his survey team had just dropped out of his forthcoming fieldwork. And the survey, as he told me was going to be in a place called the southern gore region of Jordan. Now, I'd been to Jordan previously in 1982, working on another project, so I was kind of interested. The survey was in a previously largely unexplored part of Southern Jordan, because it was extremely hard to get to. At that time, there were no direct roads, which connected the southern gore with other parts of Jordan except through Aqaba, which is the extreme south of the country. And so, it was really just by chance that I got to go to Jordan to work with Burton on his Southern gore survey. And one of the interesting things is the very last group of sites that we looked at, because we were working from north to south, was in a place called Feynan. And nobody had done any research there at all. There are a group of German archaeo-metallurgists who are poking around to the ancient mines. But there really hadn't been any, what we could call normative types of archaeology taking place there. And so, it was really just by chance that I ended up seeing Feynan on in 1986. When I completed my master's degree in '87, I moved to the UK. Really, it was just a bit of an adventure. I had a visa through my family history. After working there for nine months in what was a very interesting but rather routine kind of employment. I decided maybe it was time to check out the PhD programs in the UK and So, I knew some people who had actually done their PhDs at Sheffield University. And I found out that at that time, it actually had the best department of archaeology in Europe, believe me, much better than Cambridge or Oxford. Sheffield. And when they asked me when I went for my interview there, they said, "What do you want to work on? What do you want to research on for your PhD?" Because of course, in the UK, PhDs have no coursework. It’s entirely research driven by the student and the student supervisor. And so, the answer to their question was really easy. I said "Feynan. I want to look at the emergence of large-scale metallurgy." And this is really what led to my pioneering research there beginning in 1989, and which has occupied my entire academic career since then. 1989 seems a very long time ago, 31 years. So, it really has taken up my entire archaeological career.
CFP
Of course, and something that I've always admired about your research in your trajectory is how ground-breaking it is, and it was. Before you came into the scene to do what you're doing, no one else was doing that. And that's something that I respect very much. But speaking about influential people in your career, can you tell me about a person that has acted as a mentor for you? How did they help you shape your focus of study?
RA
Oh, well, of course, we all have these long academic histories that draw us in and my initial interest in the ancient Near East was sparked by a lecturer who taught a course that I took in Hebrew Bible. And in his course, he also covered other ancient Near Eastern literature as part of that process. So, you know, studying ancient, Sumerian and Babylonian and the like. And so that was my first introduction to the Ancient Near East, and I have to say I was absolutely taken by it from the very beginning. So, in terms of archaeological education, my primary mentor is Larry Toombs, who taught many of the key undergraduate courses in archaeology at Laurier and who supervise my master's thesis as well. Larry was a very well known, well famous really, archaeologist who had, if I can use the phrase 'cut his teeth' working with the Great's of Syril-Palestinian archaeology, he worked with a guy called G. Ernest Wright at Harvard, on the Drew-McCormick Archaeological Expedition to ancient Shechem, which is in the central part of the Palestinian territories. That project which went from '56 to '74. And this was a really important early project by the American Schools of Oriental Research. But Larry had also worked with another of the great icons of archaeology in the region because he had worked with Dame Kathleen Kenyon on her excavations at Jericho. And in academia, you know, we often say we stand on the shoulders of giants who pass down their knowledge and expertise to their students. And I was very fortunate to have had such a good grounding my field of study from Larry, because he, of course, had learned from the other greats in the field of study. Now, of course, no one professor is unique in an education of so other people who were very inspirational. At Laurier there was a guy called Dr. Robert Fisher, we call him Bob Fisher. And he taught Near Eastern languages and culture and history. He was a really engaging lecturer. He really knew his stuff and he knew how to make it live for his students. And I have to say, just as a little aside here, I never tired of his pronunciation of Pharaoh. Because every time Bob talked about the Pharaoh of Egypt, he'd say the Phay-rowh of Egypt, betraying his very southern American roots. Of course, we're all getting to that age now. People in my generation, both Bob and Larry are gone, but they're very fondly remembered by myself and many, many of my colleagues who've studied with them. Of course, I can't not talk about my PhD supervisors who contributed to my education including professors from Sheffield, like Professor Keith Branigan, one of the great early experts in early metallurgy in the Minoan world. He's a Minoan archaeologist primarily, and Barbara Ottaway, an expert in early metallurgy in Europe. They both supervised my PhD research, but one of the standout people also outside of my direct supervisors was a guy called David Gilbertson, Professor David Gilbertson who wrote literally endless letters of support for fieldwork grants during my PhD research. I would knock on his door with an outline of a research application for a grant and he go "another one? Okay, put it on the table." And it's great because Dave had a magic touch. I got all sorts of research money for my early PhD research. Now, Dave is now oddly enough retired. But he's also now one of my research colleagues on my current work in Jordan. He had done some work in Jordan in the late '80s, early 2000s on another project, and Dave was really what we could call the one of the fathers of geo-archaeology. He would hate me saying that, by the way, because it will make him sound old. But every day working with Dave over the last several years in Feynan on has been like a master class in how to look at and understand a very complex landscape. And so, all of these people contributed to my education at various periods in my education and let me say the education really never ends. As Dave has shown through his mentoring us in our current field work. That was a long answer, I'm sorry.
CFP
But it's okay. I mean, I only hope as an undergraduate student at what is the beginning of my career that I'm fortunate enough to surround myself with mentors as fabulous as yours. And I will, I have a pretty wonderful place to start being a UW student. I mean, I get to interact with you on a frequent basis. But. let's see, you told me about your experiences as a student and as a researcher, but I want to know, um, can you tell me about some of your experiences as a mentor, and what advice would you give to a student such as me, for example, that seeking to find a mentor?
RA
Well, you know, as I'm getting towards the end of my academic career, my general feeling is that academia has changed a lot over the last 20 years, it seems harder and harder for students intending to pursue a postgraduate degree to find a mentor or a supervisor. And part of the reason for this is not really the lack of qualified people to do it. The primary reason behind a lot of this is because there are fewer and fewer full-time positions available for qualified individuals who get graduate degrees. So, most scholars know the hardship ahead for these students if they take them under their tutelage. For that reason, many of us are often reluctant to encourage students down that very long and uncertain road. It's a long road, and there's no pot of gold at the end, maybe, maybe not. It's really very much chance. And there's so many other factors, of course that play into it. But I have to say I've had students seek advice over the years about postgraduate studies and all conversations I have with students tend to start with a reality check. Are you, the student, ready for the hardship to pursue your dreams, because the level of commitment that's required is significant? And as I said, there are no guarantees at the end of a very long road of study and sacrifice, no matter how brilliant you are in your research. Now, you mentioned mentorship and mentorship, in an undergraduate context is very much different, since it largely focuses upon skill building, and independent work, to allow students to develop their broader understanding of a subject. My advice to students seeking an academic mentor is to look for someone who will take an interest in your proposed study and be willing to work with you to help you achieve your goals. One of the things that's quite common really is that often students fail to understand that much of the success of mentorship relies upon the hard work that students themselves must put in to make it succeed. The mentor is simply the guide to help you through the process of learning. We're not pouring knowledge in your ear and, and you know, all of a sudden, you're doing, it's all self-generated, and we're just there as the guide to help you along that path.
CFP
Of course, I feel like a popular misconception is that a mentor will feed you all this information and then it just gets, cruised along like being a mentor. But it really is a two-way street like your mentor will help you like hone, like your path or your learning and then you're the one that has to produce all the information or topics of study. But do you have any advice for students as to how to best reach out to a professor or regarding mentoring opportunities, or just seeking to build a relationship?
RA
Well, I think in my experience, and I've taught in a number of places, but I think that most, but I have to say, but sadly, not all academics. But most University academics take the approach that they're always willing to offer advice and assistance, the real issue becomes whether they have time to take on a mentoring role or not. Because, of course, this is very time-consuming exercise. And remember that academics have teaching regular courses and administrative responsibilities, as well as you know, they're all trying to do their own research and sometimes multiple research projects. So, this means that their timetable can be rather full. Now, of course, one of the things students often forget is that most academics are in a point in their lives, where they also have family commitments, spouses, partners, children, and so with all of these demands on their time, you can begin to see the limitations for multiple mentoring opportunities. But always I think the best approach is usually a direct one. Ask. If they can help, most academics generally will help along help you along your career path.
CFP
I feel like people in my position like sometimes we get scared of reaching out to professor's because we admire you so much. But you're really just people. You love to talk about what you do and you're always there to help. So that is really that's very pointed advice. But switching gears a little bit, you have an interesting academic trajectory in the sense that you completed your B.A. and M.A. at Laurier in Canada, and then you went to the UK to pursue your PhD at Sheffield University. So, what were the circumstances that drove you to continue your education overseas? Would you have any advice for students seeking to pursue their studies in the UK?
RA
Well, that's a fairly simple question to answer on some levels. First of all, the UK really has had and continues to have the most developed an advanced department of archaeology in the world. It really, there is nothing to compare with it in North America at all. And to some degree, really, to a large degree, this is due to the way that archaeology has historically developed in the USA and Canada versus in Europe. Archaeology and anthropology are distinct in different disciplines in the UK and archaeology has its own method and theory and really is not embedded in the fourfold discipline of anthropology, as it exists in North America. So, for that reason, it really stands out as a specific discipline of study, quite separate from other parts of what we know in North America is anthropology. Of course, one of the things that I would say about this is that because I was trained in old world archaeology, there was, for me finishing my master's degree, the frustration that most of the archaeology in North American universities is dominated by North American archaeology. So, it made me seek further training elsewhere. I always think of North American university departments of archaeology, within anthropology department, it's really dominated by the North American archaeology mafia, okay. There's very little old-world archeology taking place. And many of the old-world archaeologists are actually in other departments, history departments, religion departments, and not really in departments of anthropology. And there's a great example of that at the University of Toronto where most of the people who are working in the Middle East are actually not in anthropology. So, it's, it's really kind of interesting to see but for me, it was it was actually quite an easy transition to make. Because I was able due to this family circumstance of ancestry, I was able to actually get a work visa to live and work in the UK without any restrictions in my passport. The UK have smartened up since then they've closed that that loophole, which allows people to go backwards in the immigration process, but it allowed me to live there. For me, as a newly minted master's student, I really didn't have a lot of money. But I was actually able to register as a part time student at Sheffield. And I wouldn't have been able to do that with a normal student visa, you would have to be registered for full time study. So, I began part time and started to do my field work and got various research grants. And then I applied for and got a very prestigious British Academy doctoral scholar to support my studies, and the research grants kept flowing in. And so, I was very successful in that respect, but it was kind of an odd way to move into the system. It's not the normal path to do it. Of course, it's now very much more difficult for Canadian students to afford UK student fees. And even worse, the UK visa rules require you to have all your fees for all the years you intend to study, as well as your funds for your living expenses in the bank and verify before they issue your student visa. Now clearly, this makes it impractical except for very well-off students to consider a UK postgraduate degree. And this has hurt not only foreign students who want to study in the UK, but it's also hurt university departments in the UK, who were eager to train foreign students. When I was there. 20 years ago, one of the real growth areas was multiple master's degrees. programs, which was catering not just for the British student, but for foreign students. And of course, those programs are very undersubscribed now because very few people can afford to go, you have to be very well off to be able to do that. And to give you an example, I had a student at UW a few years back, who really wanted to go and do a master's degree in GIS. And then she explored all the possibilities and worked out that there was no way that she could do it, except if she robbed a bank. You know, it was it was that that and she would have actually been able to live with relatives close by the university, but she still would have had to have all these funds in the bank ready to support her endeavours in the university. So, she couldn't do a master's degree in archaeology, GIS, and so she went to Ryerson and just did a master's degree in GIS. And you know, it's one of those things that when you when one path is blocked you look for another. If you're serious about your goals, you'll always find a way through.
CFP
I'm just in shock because I had no idea you had to have all of your tuition money and your living expenses money ready in the bank if you want to be able to study as an international student, but really it only speaks to the type of immigrant that they deem as acceptable and welcome into their country. And so, it ends up just being a manifestation of classism and racism through immigration policies. Because really, you can't talk about having about access to wealth without talking about racial disparities within the system, right, which is one of the reasons why the Black Lives Matter movement is so pertinent right now, but besides wealth accumulation or lack thereof, What's another structural roadblock that might impede a person of gaining access to academia? How could we work towards a more inclusive future in academia?
RA
Well, strictly speaking about the UK, I mean, one of the oddities about the UK, you forget to dwell on that for a little longer, is that when I taught there, believe it or not, there were no tuition fees for undergraduate students. I know this may sound very peculiar. But in fact, if you came from a lower middle class background or poor background, you would not only receive free education, but you would receive a living grant which allowed you to, you know, rent your flat, pay for your food, and what have you. And imagine free education and financial support to survive. I mean, that was really what the UK had. But of course, it had one small issue and that is that only a certain number of people were allowed per course. And when I taught at Bristol University in the archaeology department there, we had an intake of 30 students per year for our department. So over three years, we had 90 students enrolled, studying just archaeology. And that's, that's one of the other odd things about the UK is undergraduate degrees are very, very focused. It's not a potpourri pick a course here, pick a course there. It's very focused on the discipline you're studying because they want you to come out to be a junior professional in your field. And, of course, we had to personally interview those who, who made the first cut by their grades to get down to our enrolment allotment of 30 individuals. So, every, every year, we had to personally interview probably as many as 60-65 students to decide which of these we're going to be able to give a place. And of course, one of the upsides of all this is once you got through that selection process, you were a very dedicated student because it's a very long road and lots of hurdles to get through. But I have to say, even at that time in the UK, I had some extremely good students from all kinds of different backgrounds, from mature students looking for a career change, to graduates of some of the most expensive private schools in the UK. And oddly enough, my mature students always did much better than the private public school, people that I taught, but many of them have gone on to PhDs and are also now teaching in UK universities. But sadly, this idea about education being available to all regardless of wealth. This was really a manifestation of post-World War Two Labour government, the same government that brought in universal health care for the British population after the Second World War. And the role of higher education was seen as pivotal for the rising social classes in the UK by the Labour Party. Now, sadly, all this started to be undermined by someone who you may have heard of. That's Mrs. Thatcher. Mrs. Thatcher was a British Conservative Prime Minister in the 1980s and '90s. And she really did undermine an awful lot of things that allowed people from lower classes to rise up. And it's quite remarkable because she came from a very middle-class background herself. But even more remarkable for me is that once the British were able to vote Mrs. Thatcher out of office, the labour governments which followed her under consecutive labour Prime Ministers like Tony Blair, and Gordon Brown, continued the decline in higher education. They turned technical colleges get into universities and open up universities to larger groups of students. But, of course, they removed the enrolment structure. But of course, the big catch in this is they introduced tuition fees. So, all of a sudden student couldn't get living grants. And they had to find their fees for tuition. And of course, in the UK, for people from a lower-middle class background, that's a lot of money. And it really wasn't possible. So, you know, in a way, it's been really from that point, it's been a commercialization of higher education and education in general in the UK. And it basically has turned students in and everyone else into individual consumers and their consumers, whether they're buying a white goods, a washing machine, a house or buying an education. In that sense, it's very much in the North American model. And it shouldn't be a surprise because of course, Mrs. Thatcher's Conservative government, in the 80s was very much enamored with the American model on lots of different levels. I think we all know the shortfalls of the American model today. But this idea of this individual consumer was really central to the change that took place. Now, Mrs. Thatcher once famously said, and I won't, I won't do her accent, although I can actually do it. She wants set and this is a direct quote, "there's no such thing as society. There are only individual men, women and their families. And no government can do anything except through people. And people must look after themselves". So, she was basically abdicating all governmental responsibility for the society as a whole. Now, no one could say there's no such thing as society. It and have you have had studied anthropology or sociology, right? So, she was I think she was a chemist. But let's not disparage chemists. But it's really, it's really important because education plays such a pivotal role in our broader society. And it's really this in the UK and also in many other places around the world, which has led to this great crisis of disparity between the haves and the have-nots. It's as severe in the UK now, as it is in the UK and other Western countries. And you're correct, it does disproportionately affect people of color, but also it affects immigrants, refugees, and many other groups in society. There are there are populations in Britain, who because of lack of education and chances to better themselves are really, you know, very much as poor as they were in the 50s and 60s. So, it really does take a society to focus on bringing everybody up, not just a few, to get rid of these disparities. You can certainly see my you can see my left-wing leanings, right? Are they showing?
CFP
Of course, of course. I mean, we both have our issues with Miss Maggie, but let's squirt her out of the picture for a second. And we're going to take a moment to brag a little bit about my country, Costa Rica. I think it was in 1948. I might be off by a couple years. But that's when the government at the time decided to abolish the army and instead invest that money into education and health care. So, as a Costa Rican, you are guaranteed health care, it's free for everyone and you are guaranteed that you will have a possibility to have an accessible higher education. And I feel that as a country that has really set us apart and I'm very proud of this. So really, it's wonderful to be Costa Rican.
RA
Yeah, I know, I know very little about Costa Rica, I have to say. But that does sound like a very progressive country living.
CFP
It has its upsides and downsides, but that I'm very proud of, but back to you. Can you tell me more about how university life was different in a Canadian versus in a British context?
RA
Sure, I'll try and spin this in a really sort of a positive way, because there's a couple of different ways to look at this. I left my permanent teaching post at Bristol 20 years ago now. And my wife and I both returned here to look after a parent who had dementia. And that respects then I fear my views on the UK are a little bit more historic than contemporary. But because I have lots of close friends still in the university system in the UK, I've really kept up with the developments really second, and perhaps the most striking differences the significant focus on the business of the Business of the University. And in the UK, let's call the core business of the university is really teaching and research. A number of years ago now, but guess what, four years ago, almost five maybe, a good friend of mine, who was the pro Vice Chancellor of his university was faced with a 25% cut to the university, which went across the board for all higher education. All of a sudden universities had to find ways to just work on 75% of their funding. And so, he said, "Well, the core business of a university is teaching and research". And so, what did he do? Well, he got rid of the Department of Career Development, and he got rid of all of these little ancillary things that had built up over time, which were not really part of the core business, the university. You know, job placement didn't have to come through a university because of course, Britain has very adequate job placement through the government itself. Both through the UK government, but also through regional governments. So, by stripping down the university to its core business, he was able to make the university succeed and became the most successful undergraduate University in the UK. The place where everybody wanted to go. Now, I'm going to take UW just as an example. Now, if you take UW as an example, the administrators within the UW vastly outnumber the tenured faculty on a really remarkable scale. In fact, now if you're really a curious person, and you want to do a little bit of research on this, you can go to the website and troll through the various personnel lists for all the different departments and faculties and you can count up the tenured faculty and you can count up the administrators and you can actually see what the disparity is and of course, this is extraordinary, because it sucks up huge amounts of the university budget. It goes to support non-teaching, non-research activities, which of course, while it does provide jobs for other kinds of people outside of academia, it does shortchange students and the education process. Now, to be fair, this is not unique to UW because this is all really throughout many Canadian universities I've had experiences with. Now the other thing that I would say, that is really quite different from the UK, and Europe as well, is it's really a striking difference is that in North America, generally, adjunct professors and lecturers do a significant amount of the teaching and research. So, that's great, we're happy to teach, I love to teach, but we don't reap the same rewards of salary and pension that full time tenured and tenure track faculty get. So, just so you know, this isn't a personal moan, because I'm an old guy, I'm retired, I don't care. But in our department that includes, not only me, but Dr. Hayes, Dr. Dolson, Dr. Bolt, and a few other people who've taught adjunct courses. Anthropology could not survive without its adjunct teaching staff. And the university as a whole would be... well it would just simply suck, if it couldn't rely upon these sorts of people. Now, if any of you are readers, I suggest you can have a look at something was recently published. It was actually shown to me by Dr. Hayes. There's an article in the New York review books by Charles Peterson. And it explores this problem and his title of his article is called the "Serfs of Academe", and he outlines about all this problem of course, it's a problem in Canada, but it's even a larger problem in United States. There are people who are extremely well qualified professionals teaching in universities who will never get a tenured job, and who are living literally on the cusp of poverty for their whole career and having no pension. And if so, we really want to talk about disparities? It's not really just within students and accessibility for students to education, but it's really about how this is affecting many different population groups, including some of the people who may be teaching it.
CFP
Of course, yes, given my background and where I'm coming from as Costa Rican, and it's really, I don't want to say shocking, but like 'shocking' to see how in North America, universities run more as businesses that cater more towards maybe turning a profit and not as much... and there has been like a negative trend towards investing in tenure for professors.
RA
Yeah. Well, if I could just expand on that. Just one more point here. Of course, I've been talking about, you know, this disparity. But I forgot to point out of course, in case people don't know, that universities in the UK do not have adjunct or sessional lecturers, there is no such thing as a non-full-time university lecturer or professor except maybe somebody came in to do sort of a one off little lecture or what have you. But it's really because the UK, which even still, even though, even because of Brexit, even up till now, they have to follow European Union employment law. And European Union employment law says, if you ask someone to do the same job, three years in a row, it's not a temporary job. It's a permanent job and you have to be hired as a permanent employee. Okay, if we had that here, of course, many of the people who've been teaching anthropology, like myself and Dr. Hayes, we will be full time and probably tenured academics. But we have really, really poor employment law in Canada. And it's all slanted for the business to take advantage of cheap employment in the same way that, you know, manufacturing jobs have disappeared to take advantage of cheap labor in other parts of the world. So, it's really a much bigger problem than just a university setting. It really does rely very much so on universities being taken seriously as centres of learning and research. When you have a "business model" University, I'm not entirely sure that that's the case. Because let's face it, it's not a real business, because it gets so much of its funding from the government. So, if it didn't get that, could it survive without that base funding from the government? It's not a real business. Even though they like to talk about "business model" of the university.
CFP
Of course, and then just switching gears a little bit...
RA
Yes, because this is getting to depress now so let's, let's go somewhere else.
CFP
Do I go somewhere fun? Okay, I was gonna ask you about the difficulties of getting jobs in academia. But we can move along, we can move along. But just reminiscing, walking down memory lane, and knowing what you know now, okay, what advice would you give to a younger self?
RA
Oh, wow. That's a that's a that's a good one. Let me look at my notes here. Well, what do they say about this? hindsight is 2020. Like everyone, I guess I could look back and see where a different choice might have led to a very different today. One example of this could have been in my final year of my PhD at Sheffield, because at that time, for those who were just about to finish their PhD, Sheffield was offering an expedited law degree, one more full year of study to get a law degree. Imagine that! This, this might have opened up many other opportunities when the academic route was sold in my return to Canada. So, you know, there's always possibilities looking backwards. But I have to say, I had a very interesting academic career. I've taught lots of great students. I had and still have many superb academic colleagues. And this along with my research has brought a lot of joy. So, I'm probably way beyond any of your timeframe to think about this, but I'm going to channel Edith Piaf here. A famous French singer and say, "Non je ne regrette rien". Yeah, I have no regrets at all about my academic career. And so it's been an interesting experience. And I have a couple of more years left on the clock before I finish. And during that time, we hope to finish in this current phase of research in Jordan.
CFP
And that just flipping the question around a little bit, looking towards the future instead, what would your number one advice be for a person in my position as an undergraduate student with aspirations of remaining in academia?
RA
Yeah, well, that's always a very difficult question, since every individual's individual circumstances vary so much. In general, as you can probably tell from some of the tone of my other answers, I'm a little bit worried about the state of higher education in general. Not least the disparity in opportunities to those trying to get into university teaching. If someone as experienced as I am with a solid teaching research background, with multiple publications can't get a tenure track job, it seems the system is a little bit broken in some respects. So do not take this in the wrong way. This is not a "poor me" moan. But there are so many academics like me with a UW position, even more so in US. That I'm not very hopeful about academia or university teaching as a career choice. And I always suggest for people who want to go on to do a graduate degree thinking about perhaps doing teaching in the future. I want them to think that they need to have what I could call, or I like to call some bankable skills. In case that doesn't transpire. If someone is determined they can succeed, but it'll be a struggle, so it's always good to have as many useful skills in case your end plan doesn't work out.
CFP
Yes, and just switching topics again, going back to your research, um, what has been your favorite artifact that you've ever found? And he told me the story behind its discovery and a little bit of its history.
RA
Sure, that's, that's, that's an easy one. My favorite artifact of all time is the cupcake. That's our nickname. I call it the cupcake.
CFP
I have a picture over here, I'm gonna show.
RA
Yeah, that's the cupcake right there. And you can see it's in a case, which has lots of artifacts from my excavations at a place called Khirbet Hamra Ifdan and if any of you have taken my 201 class, you heard me wax lyrical about KHI many times, because KHI produced some really remarkable finds. But the cupcake is perhaps the most interesting it's essentially the contents of an only partially melted amalgamation of roughly smelted copper, and several tiny little ingots which were put on top of that smelt, which were going to be re-melted down for liquid copper to form more objects. Now, although the crucible made out of ceramics was disintegrated, the cupcake in its welded form is beautifully preserved. It serves as the earliest known example of recycling of metal artifacts, ever. There is nothing earlier than this archaeologically speaking, which shows the idea about recycling. And so, if you think about it, the ingots from KHI date to about 2400 BC, there abouts 24-23. So even as early as 2400 BC, people were recycling. So that's a really interesting thought. Now, of course, you saw the case of artifacts that you have up there in your picture you put up. And you can actually go in like I did. And you can take a virtual tour of the museum in Amman and it's called the Jordan museum. And we can we can post the website. And it's fabulous. You can literally walk through the galleries and look at the artifacts and so even though you can't go to Jordan at the moment, you can still visit the Jordan museum.
CFP
And that's one of the wonders of modern technology I actually logged into, we will be posting the link later in case anyone's interested. But yeah, I checked out the museum and it's, it's just really cool. And another thing that I think is very funny is that when like a common person asks an archaeologist, like what their favorite artifact is, they often expect them to say "Oh, that's very shiny, beautiful thing that doesn't indicate anything of value to me" and I feel like people are usually surprised when you come up with things such as the cupcake, which, from an optical perspective, an aesthetic perspective it's just like a bunch of metal, but it's really just like the history and culture and like activities attached to it
RA
Yeah, I mean with the cupcake, it was really a unique find. I mean, we'll probably never find another object like that. But it really is because at KHI it really is the first industrial factory for producing metal objects. And so when it was destroyed by an earthquake, we were very lucky that everything was preserved absolutely as it was at the time of the earthquake, all the mud brick walls fell flat on top of it, and the site was really never utilized again, for whatever reason, and we knew we didn't find any bodies in the earthquake, mind you. All the artifacts were beautifully preserved. So that's one of the one of the joys of archaeology that you know, it's sometimes really surprising.
CFP
Just for a little storytime was ever a time where you or someone that worked a site with, ever messed up with proper digging protocol, what happened there? Tell me.
RA
Ah, well not, not on any of my sites. One of the things I say, you know, I've been I've been digging in Jordan for 30 years. And in that time, my initial research it was just me it was like a one-man band just me and a bunch of students and working. And but over time, you know, larger projects and more academics became involved in the research, but always when we take students into the field, one of the really main foci of what we're doing, aside from the research, of course, is that we really want to make sure that we train students correctly. And we have always done that on our fieldwork projects. To give you an example, we make sure that everyone learns the basics. And what I mean by that is you can take modern digital technology. And you can learn to lay out an excavation square. And you can do measurements with all the modern technology. But we start at the beginning, we start the old-fashioned way. We start with things like tape measures, and plumb bobs and line levels. And we teach people how to do it without technology and still get good solid results. So, when you train people up from the basics, it really gives you an opportunity to develop their archaeological skill sets in a way that if the technology goes down, they have something to fall back on. And so, we've always had a very big focus on the fundamentals of archaeology. Having said that, I have seen some pretty terrible archaeology in my time. A German archaeologist, now deceased so I'm not going to name any names. He was trained as a biblical archaeologist and I once went to look at his excavation, because he excavated a structure, not a very large one, but he managed to excavate the structure, but to compete completely cut it off from all of the surrounding context, because he basically dug a trench around the walls of the site. And he dug it down to bedrock. And so, we had no way of actually joining up the archaeology of the structure with the archaeology that surrounded it. And it's really fundamental mistakes like that, which really drive you crazy when you see them, because of course, he probably didn't even realize what the problem was. Now, having said that, one more thing I'll say, my major pet peeve is with archeologists that do not care for their sites after they complete their excavations, because everyone knows, at least everyone who's ever taken one of my classes knows, when you finish excavating, you take all the soil you took out of the site, and you put it back in the hole. You backfill. That's what we call it. This preserves the site and curtails erosion. It stops curious people from digging in the sides of the trenches looking for artifacts, it basically preserves the site in the best way you possibly can. And this is really an ethical issue. And I feel sometimes many departments, many archaeologists don't feel or give enough attention to teaching ethics in archaeology. It's something I try to address in my ANTH 201 teaching and although, you know, it's really in the last couple of lectures, I get around to talking about it. It sort of pops its head up from time to time all the way through the course. So, it's important ethics in archaeology, like every professional discipline is absolutely critical.
CFP
Of course, and I actually took a look or read through my notes from when I took your 201 class, which was in 2017. So a couple years back when preparing these interview questions, and I was really amazed to the level of detail that you transmit when teaching archaeological technique even though we are in a classroom setting and have no like real opportunity to go out into the field and apply what we learnt. Considering this. What do you have any advice for courses that were previously taught in a more hands-on method such as Human Osteology, for example, that due to these circumstances now have to be translated to an online modality?
RA
Well, of course, archaeology and anthropology, physical anthropology as well they're very much hands on disciplines, really need to be able to handle artifacts or human remains in order to understand them correctly. Some courses will lend themselves to online teaching better than others. Sadly, that's not really the case with osteology, the course you're talking about, or really with materials-based teaching in archaeology. Now, of course, University of Waterloo anthropology doesn't really have much in the way of hands on courses, looking at artifacts. I have done some directed studies with students over the years, various kinds, looking at metallurgy or looking at ceramics, and the like, there's really no substitute for accessing and handling that data. But, you know, every university next term, except for some crazy ones in the United States, are all in the same boat. It's gonna be a lot of virtual learning. And to be honest, I really don't have the tools yet to be able to do that effectively in terms of teaching archaeology. Just one last thing about teaching and I have to say that one of the things I've always enjoyed about teaching archaeology is really teaching students in the lab, looking at materials. Every place I've taught, whether it be at Bristol, or in Ithaca College in New York, or teaching in Southern Illinois University Carbondale in all of those departments, I taught students technology courses, you know, we looked at ceramics or we looked at a variety of technology. I had a course at Ithaca College where we looked at a really wide range of technology, which was great fun. And students learned a tremendous amount from those kinds of courses. And it's one of the things, if I'm going to moan a little bit, is really missing from teaching archaeology at UW. There's really no formal materials-based analysis of teaching at UW and so in that sense, you're going to miss out on the osteology hands on but you're not missing out on anything you would have missed out on anyways, in terms of archaeology hands-on. But that's, you know, it's unusual not to have that kind of training in a department of archaeology. And it's important for an all-round development in order to understand that discipline.
CFP
Someone is asking if I can show the cupcake again. So, I'll just do that one second. So, this is the cupcake right here, right?
RA
And if you if you look at the other, back to this, like, if you look at the other things in that picture, what you can actually see are a bunch of ingots, all those crescentic shaped pieces of metal those are all ingots. And behind them, you can see an ingot inside an ingot bald. If you go down a bit and back towards the back of the screen. Yeah, all those casting molds are made of ceramics, a very specialized kind of ceramic and they would pour molten copper, copper which is above 1200 degrees Celsius, into these molds to form ingots or axes or chisels and that sort of thing. And this particular site is unique because we have actually chiseled molds from this site, which are very much the same as chisels from Old Kingdom, Egypt, that were used to carve those beautiful hard stone statues of the pharaohs. So, it's really by looking at the artifacts, you can really pull the idea of what's going on in the site together, and there's no substitute for handling artifacts. Anyone who's been on an excavation, who's held an artifact in their hands for the first time, literally by a human hands and thousands of years. It's a very special feeling.
CFP
Absolutely. And then, speaking of very special fields, archaeology has a pop culture reputation for adventure, passionate romance, etc. Indiana Jones has really done a number on the culture of archaeology and as a student, I know that that's usually not reality. And the digging is not as glamorous as Hollywood portrays it. But in my first year, you told my 201 class of a story, where two of your students build an epic romance of their own after meeting on a site. Do you think you could delight us with that story again?
RA
Sure. I guess that's easy enough to do. Well, of course, it's not like in the movies but I do think there's a certain amount of romance to archaeology. Although modern archaeology as much as science is a humanity, the experience of digging up the past really hasn't changed in the last 25 years. Yes, we have lots of technology which has made life easier for us like GIS and digital methodologies, but the basics are still the same. You go out there and you dig the site by hand. As I said, there's nothing more exciting scene and holding an artifact freshly unearthed from an archaeological site. It gives you a connection to the past, which is really very unique. Of course, I've been spoiled in my archaeological life digging in some very beautiful and some very interesting places. And of course, Jordan is very special. And you can probably see that from the background behind me of the Dead Sea. Anybody who goes to Jordan finds it the most captivating place they've ever been. It's really quite special. But of course, I've never taken a student to work in Jordan, who's not said it has been one of their most exciting and sometimes even a life changing experience. Now this brings it back to the romance, right? Because you want to know about the romance. Well, on my projects in Jordan, over the last 30 years, we've had many real romances not just romance of, but of archaeology, but real romances, and then evolved during our seasons, and several of them have led to marriages and children. I think perhaps the main reason for this is that when you're on an archeological project, you meet people outside your normal world experience. On a field project like ours, we have people from all different countries and backgrounds, professionals, different levels of training in different disciplines. And because of this, it's called sort of a melting pot of different kinds of people. Sometimes you meet people who would not have normally met in your usual course of life. Now, I can give you a few examples. We have a lot of examples of this, of the romances that have blossomed on a site. But I'm not going to give any names but I'm going to basically describe a few. We had a Russian PhD student who was doing his work at Harvard. He was a son of a Russian nuclear physicist, and on the project, he met, and then married a former US Army Captain. Now she was unique in her own special way. She was up at 4:30 every morning doing calisthenics and putting on her makeup before going off to dig on site. She didn't mind early mornings her entire military career had been about early mornings. out. Now they're still together. He teaches in Germany. They're settled there. I think they have a family. I don't really... I haven't followed up the details recently. Another example: we had a former US Navy sailor who fell in love with archaeology. He loved working on our project. And the second time he came out to work with us. He also fell in love with a Czech Egyptologist who was working with us, and they now live in the Czech Republic where she teaches at a university. We had an American undergraduate who met and married a Swedish archaeologist who was one of our junior staff members, and they live in Stockholm with their two sons, and I'm in contact with her still fairly regularly. Even though it's been, oh gosh, almost 20 years since she was in the field with us. And the last one I'll mention just because of a Canadian connection. We had a British undergraduate on our project, who claimed to be an expert in martial arts. And he bragged and he bragged, and he bragged, and finally, one of our female students from my colleague, Jim Anderson's college on Vancouver Island, said, okay, I've heard enough. She said, I'm challenging you to a fight. And so, they had a match. And he got his butt kicked. Not she took him apart. He lost, but oddly enough, he won because they fell in love and they now live in BC. So, you never know what's going to happen, even from a rocky start, sort of a cage match fight, to romance into the future. So, it's always is interesting to see how these things develop. But there are there are lots of other examples. Those are just a few. But archaeology has romance on lots of levels. And I encourage anyone studying archaeology to go on a dig, at some point in your academic career, it will change your life.
CFP
And then I actually have another story for you to add to your list. Because the class that inaugurated my career as an undergraduate at Waterloo was your intro to archaeology course. And at the beginning of the first class, you went around, you read everyone's names, and you asked us to say "present". And since I was a first year, I was new to Canada, I was looking to make friends that also spoke Spanish. So, when you read from the list Enrique, which is a very Latin American name, my ears pricked up and then when I heard present coming from right behind me. I turned around, and I was like "Oh, do you speak Spanish?" He was like "yeah" and then I was like "Oh, me too. Let's chat after class". So, we chatted after class. And we've been together for three years now. So, if we do get married, I will, let you know, and it will be all thanks to you.
RA
Well, it's nice to hear you found a nice relationship out of that. You really enhanced my reputation as a matchmaker. It's a... I've never had an experience with a class that I know about, but it's usually on excavations. But congratulations sounds like... sounds like three years. You're through the hard part now.
CFP
Haha, I'm hoping he's watching so he can stop by and say hello... confirm like, going through the hard parts. Yeah.
RA
If I could just add one little thing here. I actually met my wife at Laurier when I was doing my master's degree, those as graduate students. We both were TAs for courses. And we had offices in the building at Bricker and King Street. And I met her on the staircase, which apparently is a very common place to meet your future spouse. Staircases apparently are quite notorious. I've had several colleagues who met their spouses on staircases as well. So, I don't know what it is about staircases. They're kind of magical. Like, you just never know where you're going to meet that special person.
CFP
Yeah, well, and on that sweet, note. Um, how about we shift over to audience questions. So, there's been a couple that have been posted. Wow, there's been a bunch that have been posted over on the side. So, I'm just going to read them to you and if you can answer them. Let's do this. So, someone asks, is there a historical archaeological dig or discovery that you wish you could have experienced personally?
RA
A historic archaeological that I could have... Well, I mean, there's lots of historical archaeological things that are absolutely fascinating. I would have loved to have seen them firsthand. Sadly, that's just not the way it works. There are some aspects of sites which are really quite interesting. I've focused much of my career on the Middle East in Near East. There. There are sites in Iran, for instance, that I have always wanted to see. There's a site which is very similar to Khirbet Hamra Ifdan in Iran. So, I'll never get to see it in my lifetime, because it's too close to the nuclear processing plant. So much so that the German excavators didn't have their permit renewed. So, there's lots of sites I would love to have seen in excavation. But I think I've been pretty lucky in my travels. I've seen huge number of sites and a lot of different places. As I said before, you know, as an undergraduate, I worked in Jordan and in Israel, I worked in Cyprus, I worked in Greece. And then all of these places, I always took the opportunity to travel around and look at a lot of historical excavations. Nothing quite as fascinating to standing underneath the Lions Gate at Mycenae and seeing it up close. Of course, tourism now is much more developed than it used to be in my day as a student. And so, you would have to beat back the crowds on many of these sites in order to enjoy them. And that's true of places in Jordan as well. When the last time I saw Jordan in 1990, my wife and I were there. There was no one at Petra.
CFP
Wow
RA
It was empty. It was one lonely CNN cameraman shooting background location footage, but otherwise the site was empty. It's never been like that since, it'll never be like that again. So, you know, oftentimes you find these unique opportunities. That was just one of them? I'm not sure if that answered the question or not.
CFP
I think it did. And let's see what else? If you would have to choose a different continent to do archaeological research, where would it be?
RA
A different continent? That's a very difficult one. I think one of the most interesting places outside of the Middle East for me, would have to be Mesoamerica. The level of complexity there is really quite astounding. Of course, one of the oddities for Mesoamerican archaeology is that many of these highly complex cultures never developed the metallurgy. So, it would be really outside of my experience. But I've done a little bit of teaching in the other areas. I've taught a lot of Peruvian archaeology and South American archaeology over the years. I would love to see the sites. Of course, no one should work in a culture unless you have a solid understanding of the culture and the language. And my Spanish is nada? is that right?
CFP
Haha, nada. No hablas nada de español!
RA
Yeah. So, yeah, I think I've been very happy working in the Middle East. I've had lots of great experiences there. One of the one of the areas where, sadly, no one will be working for a very long time is Syria, which very sadly has been absolutely devastated. Not only the population, but of course, all the archaeological sites are just in ruins, intentionally in ruins, because many of them are blown up. So, it's, it's really one of those things that you know, you wish you'd had the chance to see it 20 years ago, when it was all intact.
CFP
And then let's do one more question from the Q&A. So, this is an easy one. What's your favourite archaeological movie?
RA
My favourite archaeological movie? Oh, gosh. That's a hard one. I mean, of course, there's, there's not really a lot in way archaeological movies outside of Indiana Jones is there. But if I can change the tack here ever so slightly. Let me say that many of my favourite things which evolve around that part of the world are Agatha Christie. Not only the books, but the films that were made of them. Of course, her books are very famous. She wrote several books, which were about archaeology or archaeologists in the Middle East. You know, if anybody doesn't know about her writings she wrote "Death on the Nile". It takes place in Egypt, on a river cruise. "Appointment with Death", 1938, takes place in Jerusalem. "Murder in Mesopotamia", one of my favourites. It's fascinating, because Agatha Christie wrote a lot of her background for these stories, which comes out in many of the movies, because she based it on real people. She was married to Max Mallowan, who is an archaeologist who worked in the Near East, mostly in Iraq. She accompanied him on his excavations there. Many of the characters she portrays in her writing are made up from the people she saw on the excavations. And in fact, it's rumoured and this is a rumour and I've never been able to find any evidence for this, but it's rumoured that the female victim in "Murder Mesopotamia" was in fact another archaeologist who her husband Max had had an affair with. Shocking! an affair on an archeological dig! Oh, what's next? So, Christie wrote "Death Comes as the End" as well which actually is her only novel which takes place in in a non-modern setting and it's a murder mystery which takes place in ancient Egypt, where the death of a priest's concubine sets up a whole series of murders. And it's rumoured that's about to become a BBC film for TV. So, I'm looking forward to that one. I guess finally, since I'm talking about Agatha Christie, I should actually mention my wife's favourite Agatha Christie quote here. Agatha Christie once wrote very famously, quote, "an archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have. The older she gets, the more interested in her he becomes
CFP
Haha well, I mean, it's not a lie. So, I'm switching gears to our final segment of rapid fire this or that questions. So, I'm going to ask you, two or three things that could be considered opposites or like on different ends of a spectrum. And then you have to tell me what your favourite is. Or if you could only choose one, what would it be? Okay, are you ready?
RA
Yeah, I think so. I'll just do it stream of consciousness.
CFP
Okay so, teaching [ANTH] 201 or teaching [ANTH] 321?
RA
Oh, [ANTH] 201 for sure!
CFP
Okay, flintknapping or cuneiform scribing?
RA
Oh, cuneiform.
CFP
Artifact, ecofact, or feature?
RA
Ah, feature! And I'll follow up with a short explanation. Feature, because all archaeologists are more interested in dirt than they are in artifacts. It's the context that matters! Most archaeologists learn a lot about looking at the context of the archaeology. So, always "feature" is big for me.
CFP
Okay so, grid squares or Harris matrix?
RA
Oh, Harris matrix because it's more like a puzzle, right. You are puzzling out how everything is connected.
CFP
Okay, Petrie or Pitt Rivers?
RA
Oh, Petrie of course. Could it be because I, like him, think that I'm a genius? Haha, I am joking.
CFP
Alright, Laurier or Sheffield?
RA
Oh, that’s a very hard choice. I think that I am going to have to say Sheffield simply because as much as I love Laurier, Sheffield was a unique experience. You know, I didn't really talk much about Sheffield, but Sheffield's department of archaeology had approximately 90 undergraduates in its program, but it had 140 post-graduates in that program. So, the interaction on a peer to peer level between all the people studying to become professionals was really one of the unique experiences one could ever hope for.
CFP
Alright, let's see. An easy one, winter or summer?
RA
I'm a winter guy.
CFP
Really?
RA
Preferably with as little snow as possible.
CFP
Ah, let's see. The Byzantine Empire or Mesopotamia?
RA
Mesopotamia, of course. I see enough of Byzantine at UWaterloo. Haha sorry UW that wasn't funny, but it was meant in a fun way.
CFP
Bioanthropology or linguistic anthropology?
RA
Oh, bio. Absolutely. But, you know, one of the interesting things is that in all my experience of departments of anthropology in North America, I've never actually been in a department that has had more than one linguistic anthropologist and most of them don't have any. So, it's really... I wouldn't like to say it's a dying discipline, but it's an underrepresented discipline.
CFP
Well, that's the discipline that I am hoping to go into. So, I am here to represent.
RA
Well there you go. And there are some great places to study it. When I taught at the University of Southern Illinois Carbondale, there were four linguistic anthropologists in that department. I have never seen anything like it before or since. It was really quite special.
CFP
Yes, that's a lot for a department. So, let's see, our last rapid-fire question. Post-processual, cognitive, or cognitive-processual archaeology?
RA
Well, I'm not really a post-processualist. So... and cognitive archaeology to me is a little bit of sleight of hand. Right, you're trying to infer from all these things. It's a fairly new period of study. I would say I'm your basic processual archaeologist. I g o out and I dig up sites and I try to make sense of them, and I try to tell a story by connecting all the dots. So, for me processual archaeology is the vast majority of archaeology and that’s what most field archaeologists would probably gravitate towards. Now, having said that, one last comment. A lot of modern archaeologists prefer post-processual archaeology because they can do it from their armchair, and they don't even have to go into the field.
CFP
Hahaha, and to finish I will inaugurate a segment called "quizzing your professors on what they quiz you", okay?
RA
So, am I going to take the [ANTH] 201 exam here?
CFP
More or less, more or less. I did take the question from one of your [ANTH] 201 exams. So, if there is anyone who hasn't taken the class, this will be an answer. So, finish your own quote, ready?: "all efforts will be wasted unless you do this".
RA
That doesn't sound like a quote from me.
CFP
Efforts of your research and your site and your dig will be wasted unless you...
RA
Oh, okay I see where you're going with this. Of course, you have to publish it.
CFP
Haha, yes exactly.
RA
Excavation without publication is futile. It's pointless.
CFP
Of course, and on that same note, thank you so much for your time Dr. Adams. I know that I enjoyed interviewing you and from what I saw on the AnthSoc executive chat that was going on like crazy simultaneously, they were enjoying it.
RA
Well, I hope it's been informative as well at entertaining.
*Note: it was at this point that the feed experienced an interruption and host Camila was kicked out. Dr. Adams left promptly thereafter.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai and edited by H. Clark