A Chat With Dr. Linda Perry - Archaeobotanist (www.fossilfarm.org)

[DonRocks]

Starting next Monday, we are privileged to host Dr. Linda Perry, one of the world's leading experts in the incredibly important, yet arcane, field of Archaeobotany, e.g., what were Aztecs granted as their last meal before being offered up as a midnight snack to Huitzilopochtli? Did Nicolas Cage really enjoy a honeybun before his demise in "The Wicker Man?" No, seriously ...

Dr. Perry is a Fulbright Senior Specialist in Archaeobotany, the study of the relationships between plants and our ancestors. She is a former Smithsonian Fellow, Research Collaborator, and Research Associate, and has been working with archaeobotanical samples for more than fifteen years. She holds degrees in biology, botany, and anthropology (!), and has been teaching in the fields of biology, botany, environmental science, archaeology, and anthropology for more than twenty years.

Linda's work incorporates archaeobotanical analyses into ancient contexts to gain insight into the behavior, organization, and development of past societies. To study these subjects, she employs many methods including microfossil analyses of microscopic residual remains of plants extracted from both artifacts and sediments, macro botanical analysis of larger fragments of plant remains, and wood identification.

Apart from ongoing research projects in the U.S. and China, Linda's current focus is the Foundation for Archaeobotanical Research in Microfossils, a 501©(3) organization she founded with the long-term goal of creating a dedicated space where archaeobotanical researchers can access state-of-the-art equipment, engage in peer consultation, and seek formal training (www.fossilfarm.org).

Our first question will be coming from José Andrés.

Okay, I'm teasing, *but* I am very proud to say that Linda is one of the main cogs of donrockwell.com: she is our Calendar Girl, singlehandedly responsible for recording all of DC's important restaurant and food events into our outstanding calendar. Do you see now why the calendar is so good? We have a genius running the damned thing. (Members, while you're thinking about it, before you read any further, please take a moment to record your birthday in your profile so it, too, will be in our calendar - if you don't do it now, you never will.)

Our members are scary-smart, and Linda is one of the scariest and smartest. Please feel free to begin with any questions you'd like, no matter how crazy or obscure you think they are. I'll start by asking Linda a couple questions. First, a softball: does Archaeobotany have accents on syllables 1 and 4, or 2 and 4? I'm guessing the former, as in archaeological. Now, what, exactly, do you do during a typical day? Do you stare at microscope slides of fecal matter preserved in amber, trying to figure out the dietary habits of obscure hominids? (I tagged this thread as I did for a reason.) Feel free to mention something from your Research Interests on your CV (*), if that's where your passion fruits. I'm sorry.

Could you give us a couple real-life examples of things that you've recently been working on, so we laypeople can get a solid, mental grasp of this difficult-to-understand line of work?

And thank you in advance for being with us (and thank you endlessly for doing such an amazing job on the calendar).

I really think this is going to be one of our most valuable chats. I have no idea whether or not it will be immediately popular, but I couldn't care less - it's important, and it's going to have a permanent home here where it will be lovingly curated until the ends of time.

(*) PS - I once got hammered at Gatsby's at SIU-Carbondale.

[zoramargolis]

Cool!

Linda-- could you comment on the "Grain Brain" hypothesis that has become so popular in the fad diet world? My peripheral attention to this has led me to be somewhat vague on the particulars, but it seems to have something to do with the wheat that is being grown for most commercial applications being very different from the grain eaten by our ancestors, and it being harmful to the human brain, leading to an increase in dementias. I could be way off, but as i said, I haven't focused much attention on the subject, but I have noticed that the book's author is getting a lot of buzz.

[Tweaked]

Did beer really save the world? But seriously has your research examined early alcohol use?

[lperry]

Good morning, and thank you, Don, for this opportunity.  I hope I can live up to a fraction of that introduction.

 First, a softball: does Archaeobotany have accents on syllables 1 and 4, or 2 and 4? I'm guessing the former, as in archaeological. Now, what, exactly, do you do during a typical day? Do you stare at microscope slides of fecal matter preserved in amber, trying to figure out the dietary habits of obscure hominids?

1 and 4.

A typical day starts at home where I caffeinate myself, try to wake up, and answer emails until the traffic has cleared off my route.  Then I head in to the lab.  If I have samples to study, they are almost always residues that I extract from artifacts, groundstone and flaked tools or ceramic sherds, or sediment samples, bags of dirt collected from various contexts that may be related to plant use.  I try to make the most of lab time by scanning slides on the microscope while the next set of samples is processing on the bench top.  By its nature, microscope work is time-limited.  Eye fatigue can come on quickly while scanning in search of tiny objects, so I don't do more than six samples in any one sitting.  Missing something after spending all the time and effort to extract the data would be a terrible loss.  Right now I'm working on samples from an Archaic site in central Texas, and many of the artifacts are burned rocks from cooking hearths and discard features.

For the past few months we have been hosting a doctoral student who is finishing up her dissertation research, so the lab is running all day and sometimes into the night.  It's very rewarding to me to have the space and equipment available to help others complete their work.

Most of the sites I've worked in the past few years are yielding plant remains with which I am familiar, but there are a few unknowns that I am still trying to identify.  It is this problem-solving / puzzle aspect of the work that I find most rewarding, and if I'm not working on archaeobotanical samples, I'll study modern comparative materials.  I have visions of an online database in which researchers can plug in their data and images for everyone to share, but I have no idea if something like that is possible to create.    

I spend a fair amount of time compiling data and writing up findings for presentations or publications.  I am less disciplined with this part of the process than I would like to be, and I usually write when I am in the mood to do so rather than on a regular schedule as I should.  I also spend time reading journals and books, and also reviewing articles and grant proposals.  Peer-review is an important part of the process, and I put in time and effort with the hope that others will be as thoughtful with my manuscripts.

I serve on a couple of boards and committees, so I spend a few days a month in the District.  Today and tomorrow are such days, so I will try to anwer questions in the evenings when I am back home and significantly more awake.

Could you give us a couple real-life examples of things that you've recently been working on, so we laypeople can get a solid, mental grasp of this difficult-to-understand line of work?

Do you really think it is difficult to understand?  I hope not.  I think that it is more likely that the proliferation of misinformation in the media and the popularity of Indiana Jones movies have given people the wrong impression about what archaeologists do.  Archaeology is very detail-oriented and involves a great deal of careful and meticulous observation, note taking, measuring, comparing, cataloging, etc.  A friend of mine used to say that I spend my days washing dirty dishes and checking out what people left on their plates.  It just happens that the dishes are hundreds or thousands of years old, and the fragments of materials from the plates are so small that I need a microscope to understand what they are.  Sounds really glamorous, right? 

[lperry]

Cool!

Linda-- could you comment on the "Grain Brain" hypothesis that has become so popular in the fad diet world? My peripheral attention to this has led me to be somewhat vague on the particulars, but it seems to have something to do with the wheat that is being grown for most commercial applications being very different from the grain eaten by our ancestors, and it being harmful to the human brain, leading to an increase in dementias. I could be way off, but as i said, I haven't focused much attention on the subject, but I have noticed that the book's author is getting a lot of buzz.

I haven't heard of the "Grain Brain."  I have heard people claim that our modern crops are different from ancient ones, and selection has undoubtedly changed crops over the years, but we don't have nutritional analyses of archaeological specimens, so it is unclear to me how they can make a one-to-one comparison with any validity.

It is also worth noting that microevolutionary trends in human groups since the Neolithic revolution are well documented - adaptations like lactose digestion in adults in pastoralist societies or the ability to ingest cyanogenic compounds from manioc tubers without nerve damage in South American indigenous groups.  So people have changed along with the changes in diet.

When people ask me about living like our ancestors did, I tell them that there is only one thing that is common across the planet in all ancestral groups, and that is exercise.  If you want to live like our ancestors did, move more.

[lperry]

Did beer really save the world? But seriously has your research examined early alcohol use?

I don't know about saved, but it certainly changed the world.     The manipulation of yeast for fermentation purposes allowed humans to create a number of nutritionally superior foods including bread.

I studied breweries at Hierakonpolis, a pre-dynastic site in Upper Egypt, but the results are not yet published, so I can't go into detail (sorry.)  There is a group of archaeologists who focus on ancient alcohol production, and they hold regular meetings.  I'll see if I can remember their name or find a website for you.

[jayandstacey]

Cool - so many questions!

- What are the 2 or 3 most important unanswered questions in your field right now?  The questions who's answers would have the greatest impact on our understanding of the world?

- How is a perfect specimen delivered?  Via amber?  Glacial ice?  Ash?  Locked in arid sandstone?

- I imagine a kind of evolutionary tree of plants/foods.  It has thousands, maybe millions of branches, many of which died off at some point.  I assume we only know a small % of those branches, and that as we go back in time the picture gets cloudier, despite the diversity decreasing (going back down the evolutionary tree....)   So...

       - How do you identify a specimen back onto that tree?  Are you studying cell structure, or DNA, or something else?  - or aren't you going that far back in time (ie, maybe you're only working in the last 6000 years; an eye blink in the evolution of plants...(right?) )

       - Is a part of your work to identify new (to us) plants and foods?  Or does that not come up much?

       - Do you work with other scientists to extrapolate understanding, for instance, someone else working in a location was able to determine the time frame (say, 10,000 BC) and you then work from that info?

- And maybe the simplest question - I *think* you focus on plants that have intertwined with humans - as food or maybe building materials or tools.  How do you know that this has happened?  I mean, all humans have plants growing all around us - and if my house rolled under a Pompeii-ish ash dump tomorrow, you'd find garden plants, weeds, semi-wild plants, house plants, uncooked food plants, cooked food plants, etc.  Is part of your job essentially to sort through all those to provide deeper historical insight?

[jayandstacey]

Oh - and one more - the fourth grader in me wants to know what got you into this field. (well, so does the adult )

[DonRocks]

Do you really think it is difficult to understand?  I hope not.  I think that it is more likely that the proliferation of misinformation in the media and the popularity of Indiana Jones movies have given people the wrong impression about what archaeologists do.  Archaeology is very detail-oriented and involves a great deal of careful and meticulous observation, note taking, measuring, comparing, cataloging, etc.  A friend of mine used to say that I spend my days washing dirty dishes and checking out what people left on their plates.  It just happens that the dishes are hundreds or thousands of years old, and the fragments of materials from the plates are so small that I need a microscope to understand what they are.  Sounds really glamorous, right? 

No, it's not necessarily difficult to understand; it's just something whose methods people aren't aware of.

I once read a book on history, written from a paleontological viewpoint, at the precise level where people like me (the "PBS crowd," the "intelligent laymen," the "dilettantes") would get a lot out of. It's called "Life: A Natural History Of The First Four Billion Years Of Life On Earth" by Richard Fortey, who, along with being a senior paleontologist at London's Natural History Museum, is quite a character - sort of "Indiana Jones" old-school (readers can peak inside the book on Amazon and see if it would interest them - I remember enjoying it very much while being moderately challenged). The book ends where civilization starts, so it would be of no interest to you. Anyway, it has been a good ten years since I've read it (it's sitting next to me right now because books that I take weeks, months, or sometimes years to finish are never, ever discarded), and there are exactly three words that I still remember to this day because of their elegant simplicity: "Bones don't lie."

While that neat little phrase may be true, I also wonder in your case, if "bones" can ask more questions than they answer. I suppose that bones neither ask nor answer questions; they're merely data to be analyzed - pieces of the puzzle, so to speak.

[lion]

Do you have any thoughts on the recent discovery of tobacco ringspot virus jump from plants to honeybees?

Thanks for doing the chat!

[lperry]

Wow!  Please bear with me - it may take a while to answer all of these. 

- What are the 2 or 3 most important unanswered questions in your field right now?  The questions who's answers would have the greatest impact on our understanding of the world?

I'm going to try to answer this question with a story.  A few years ago, I was at an airport in a coach that was heading out to the plane, and someone noticed the book of abstracts I was reading and asked me about the archaeology convention I had just attended.  The gentleman got very animated, told me how he was fascinated by archaeology, and asked me "what was the one, amazing find everyone was talking about?"  He was looking at me with a combination of anticipation and glee.  I carefully explained that there had been more than 5000 archaeologists at the meetings, with hundreds of symposia covering different geographic areas, time periods, cultures, and categories of data.  We all have a general knowledge base, however, like people in most fields, we tend to stick to our areas of specialization, and different questions are important in different contexts.  What might be important to the person working on Neolithic landscape modification in Papua New Guinea may not resonate with someone who studies Archaic lithic technology in Idaho.  In short, it doesn't really work that way.  He looked taken aback, and really disappointed.  "Oh."  So there it is.  It doesn't really work that way, and I feel like I can never answer questions like this one without disappointing people, at least a little, and having them think, "oh."    

That said, what I do think is important in my field right now is a trend toward the combination of multiple lines of evidence, such as the study of macroremains, phytoliths, and starch grains from the same contexts, thus providing a more complete picture of plant use in a given site.  Different plants will occur in the record in different forms, so the best way to find everything we can is to look at the same contexts using a battery of methods.  The other issue that concerns me is the loss of lab space as people retire and are not replaced due to budgetary constraints.  An archaeobotanist used to be able to work with a compound dissecting microscope, a probe, and a desk.  Now some of us need fume hoods, ultrasonic cleaners, centrifuges, and compound light microscopes.  Lab space and equipment is not traditionally included in Anthropology or Archaeology departments, but the work is in great demand.  I am doing my best to address both of these issues in the work that I do.

[lperry]

- How is a perfect specimen delivered?  Via amber?  Glacial ice?  Ash?  Locked in arid sandstone?

If by "perfect" you mean most like what was originally deposited into the record by human activity, I would say it's a toss up between waterlogged and arid preservation.  Waterlogged sites, those flooded with water, allow for little to no microbial activity that might decompose the remains once the oxygen is depleted, and entire, intact specimens can be recovered.  In arid areas like coastal Peru, you can dig into a midden and pull out a corncob that looks pretty much like it did when someone discarded it a couple of thousand years ago.  The dry air desiccates specimens and, again, prevents microbial activity from degrading the remains.

The residue analyses I and others do are so useful because the conditions I described above are exceptionally rare.  Most sites are in the open, exposed to the elements, and microbes liked to eat what we threw away millennia ago just as much as they do today.  Think about what happens in your compost pile, then think about your compost pile after a few thousand years.

[lperry]

- I imagine a kind of evolutionary tree of plants/foods.  It has thousands, maybe millions of branches, many of which died off at some point.  I assume we only know a small % of those branches, and that as we go back in time the picture gets cloudier, despite the diversity decreasing (going back down the evolutionary tree....)   So...

       - How do you identify a specimen back onto that tree?  Are you studying cell structure, or DNA, or something else?  - or aren't you going that far back in time (ie, maybe you're only working in the last 6000 years; an eye blink in the evolution of plants...(right?) )

       - Is a part of your work to identify new (to us) plants and foods?  Or does that not come up much?

       - Do you work with other scientists to extrapolate understanding, for instance, someone else working in a location was able to determine the time frame (say, 10,000 BC) and you then work from that info?

The tree of plant use by humans, which is what I study, is more of an upside-down one, with lots of branches at the bottom that then fall away as we move to the present.  Humans and our ancestors around the world have exploited an estimated 30,000 plant species for food in the past, and about 30 feed us today.  So, yes, we frequently don't know what we might be looking for, because it isn't important to us today.  That doesn't mean, however, that it isn't still in the environment in a different form.  As an example, ancient indigenous people in the Mississippi River valley domesticated and grew crops called sumpweed, canarygrass, and goosefoot.  These plants still occur in the flora, but it's not like you find them in the grains aisle at Harris Teeter.  Goosefoot, interestingly, is Chenopodium berlandieri, a relative of Chenopodium quinoa, the "superfood" quinoa of the Andes.  We have our own, North American superfood domesticated by Native Americans.  Why isn't someone marketing this?

To identify plants, we use a one-to-one comparison with modern plant specimens.  Even 100,000 years is the blink of an eye in plant evolution, and when we look at domesticated plants that occurred more recently, we frequently know the wild progenitors, so we can study those as well.  If there are large fragments of plants or seeds, you can use gross morphology.  A quinoa seed from Costco looks pretty much like one from an ancient Andean context.  Microfossils are ultrastructural components of plant cells, so we can use light microscopy or SEM, for example, for comparative purposes.  Just like larger structures in plants like flowers or leaves are distinctive, tiny fragments can also be diagnostic of certain taxa.  So starch grains from those Costco quinoa seeds can be compared to starch grains extracted from a ceramic sherd from a cooking pot, for example.  There are people who work with ancient DNA, but I am not one of them.  There are also people who work with lipid and other chemical residues.    

New plant foods come up sometimes, but not frequently in my work, at least so far.

I'm not sure what you are asking in the last part of the question.  If you are asking how dating is completed, in some areas that are extremely well studied, the patterns on a ceramic sherd can tell the researcher how old the site is.  In other areas, we use radiocarbon dating of charred materials, and there are several laboratories that specialze in radiocarbon dating.  I am frequently asked to identify wood charcoal specimens prior to sending them to the lab for dating, as the process is destructive.  I adore wood identification.  You have to view the specimen in three different planes of view and puzzle out anatomical features of different cell types and configurations.  It's fairly easy in temperate regions, but tropical woods have tiny cells and thousands of variants.  (See?  You really don't want to be an archaeologist after all. )

[lperry]

I have to sign off for tonight, but will be back online tomorrow morning to finish up these posts.  Please keep the questions coming!

[DonRocks]

I have to sign off for tonight, but will be back online tomorrow morning to finish up these posts.  Please keep the questions coming!

Linda!

Pace yourself!

Nobody is expecting you to field every question in a day or for that matter even a week!

(Thank you for doing this so far.)

[lperry]

Linda!

Pace yourself!

Nobody is expecting you to field every question in a day or for that matter even a week!

(Thank you for doing this so far.)

Will do.

[jayandstacey]

I'm going to try to answer this question with a story.  A few years ago, I was at an airport in a coach that was heading out to the plane, and someone noticed the book of abstracts I was reading and asked me about the archaeology convention I had just attended.  The gentleman got very animated, told me how he was fascinated by archaeology, and asked me "what was the one, amazing find everyone was talking about?"  He was looking at me with a combination of anticipation and glee.  I carefully explained that there had been more than 5000 archaeologists at the meetings, with hundreds of symposia covering different geographic areas, time periods, cultures, and categories of data.  We all have a general knowledge base, however, like people in most fields, we tend to stick to our areas of specialization, and different questions are important in different contexts.  What might be important to the person working on Neolithic landscape modification in Papua New Guinea may not resonate with someone who studies Archaic lithic technology in Idaho.  In short, it doesn't really work that way.  He looked taken aback, and really disappointed.  "Oh."  So there it is.  It doesn't really work that way, and I feel like I can never answer questions like this one without disappointing people, at least a little, and having them think, "oh."

I remember that flight!

(just kidding)

Yeah, in this Olympics/Superbowl/Holy Grail world we tend to think of everything having a "peak" that everyone else strives for.

I keep talking to my 12 year old daughter about her path to the top ranks of the equestrian world. "Dad, I just want to ride and compete and have fun with my friends."  

That said, what I do think is important in my field right now is a trend toward the combination of multiple lines of evidence, such as the study of macroremains, phytoliths, and starch grains from the same contexts, thus providing a more complete picture of plant use in a given site.  Different plants will occur in the record in different forms, so the best way to find everything we can is to look at the same contexts using a battery of methods.  The other issue that concerns me is the loss of lab space as people retire and are not replaced due to budgetary constraints.  An archaeobotanist used to be able to work with a compound dissecting microscope, a probe, and a desk.  Now some of us need fume hoods, ultrasonic cleaners, centrifuges, and compound light microscopes.  Lab space and equipment is not traditionally included in Anthropology or Archaeology departments, but the work is in great demand.  I am doing my best to address both of these issues in the work that I do.

Interesting. The multiple lines of evidence thing is where I was going in my next question...

[jayandstacey]

The tree of plant use by humans, which is what I study, is more of an upside-down one, with lots of branches at the bottom that then fall away as we move to the present.  Humans and our ancestors around the world have exploited an estimated 30,000 plant species for food in the past, and about 30 feed us today.  So, yes, we frequently don't know what we might be looking for, because it isn't important to us today.  That doesn't mean, however, that it isn't still in the environment in a different form.  As an example, ancient indigenous people in the Mississippi River valley domesticated and grew crops called sumpweed, canarygrass, and goosefoot.  These plants still occur in the flora, but it's not like you find them in the grains aisle at Harris Teeter.  Goosefoot, interestingly, is Chenopodium berlandieri, a relative of Chenopodium quinoa, the "superfood" quinoa of the Andes.  We have our own, North American superfood domesticated by Native Americans.  Why isn't someone marketing this?

Interesting and contrary to my assumption.

I can imagine a SuperBowl ad where a guy is tailgating and tosses a frozen Goosefoot patty onto the grill. "Goosefoot?!?! I ate one by accident last time and we won. It's good luck! But it tastes like a dirty old tree branch..."

To identify plants, we use a one-to-one comparison with modern plant specimens.  Even 100,000 years is the blink of an eye in plant evolution, and when we look at domesticated plants that occurred more recently, we frequently know the wild progenitors, so we can study those as well.  If there are large fragments of plants or seeds, you can use gross morphology.  A quinoa seed from Costco looks pretty much like one from an ancient Andean context.  Microfossils are ultrastructural components of plant cells, so we can use light microscopy or SEM, for example, for comparative purposes.  Just like larger structures in plants like flowers or leaves are distinctive, tiny fragments can also be diagnostic of certain taxa.  So starch grains from those Costco quinoa seeds can be compared to starch grains extracted from a ceramic sherd from a cooking pot, for example.  There are people who work with ancient DNA, but I am not one of them.  There are also people who work with lipid and other chemical residues.    

New plant foods come up sometimes, but not frequently in my work, at least so far.

I'm not sure what you are asking in the last part of the question.  If you are asking how dating is completed, in some areas that are extremely well studied, the patterns on a ceramic sherd can tell the researcher how old the site is.  In other areas, we use radiocarbon dating of charred materials, and there are several laboratories that specialze in radiocarbon dating.  I am frequently asked to identify wood charcoal specimens prior to sending them to the lab for dating, as the process is destructive.  I adore wood identification.  You have to view the specimen in three different planes of view and puzzle out anatomical features of different cell types and configurations.  It's fairly easy in temperate regions, but tropical woods have tiny cells and thousands of variants.  (See?  You really don't want to be an archaeologist after all. )

I was actually more curious about the interaction/coordination between yourself and other scientists that might be working on a particular site, or project or toward a particular goal. I literally didn't know if you worked completely in a vacuum and only shared through publishing, or created a team of different disciplines to work in a coordinated way on a particular problem, or somewhere in between. By answering the question you thought I asked, you answered the question I meant to ask

Thanks for answering my novice questions! When I first entered the "real world" workforce, it struck me how many intelligent people were around me. I decided early on that if there was at least one person in the room smarter than me...shame on me if I don't leave that room knowing at least one new thing. It is the one collection/currency where I can accumulate vast amounts yet never spend a dime doing so.

Thank you - very interesting.

[lperry]

- And maybe the simplest question - I *think* you focus on plants that have intertwined with humans - as food or maybe building materials or tools.  How do you know that this has happened?  I mean, all humans have plants growing all around us - and if my house rolled under a Pompeii-ish ash dump tomorrow, you'd find garden plants, weeds, semi-wild plants, house plants, uncooked food plants, cooked food plants, etc.  Is part of your job essentially to sort through all those to provide deeper historical insight?

Yes.  For example, unless we find something in stomach contents, dental calculus, or in coprolites, there is inference involved in defining "food", and we try to interpret the best we can using modern analogues.  I tend to think we are more likely to dismiss a food plant as a meaningless weed rather than categorize something as food that was unimportant, simply because we have narrowed our plant food resources so much over the years.  I could, however, be wrong about that.

Interpretation is why context is so important in archaeology; where something is located in the site gives us important information about how it was used and what it meant to the person or people who came into contact with it.  That's why the community tries to educate people about looting sites and collecting artifacts out of context.  We hope that collectors around the world come to an understanding that owning an object that might be beautiful is not as important as understanding our cultural heritage.

[DonRocks]

Interpretation is why context is so important in archaeology; where something is located in the site gives us important information about how it was used and what it meant to the person or people who came into contact with it.  That's why the community tries to educate people about looting sites and collecting artifacts out of context.  We hope that collectors around the world come to an understanding that owning an object that might be beautiful is not as important as understanding our cultural heritage.

Are there any plants (edible or otherwise) that were considered sacred in the cultures you're studying? If so, could you cite some examples, and also tell us how you know? Or do you not really care about any religious context, and instead concentrate exclusively on the nutritional/diet aspect of things?

If you could list your three greatest areas of expertise, in order from greatest to third-greatest, what would they be? (Three is obviously a number I picked rather haphazardly.) With so many different areas in this field, I'm still trying to get a grasp on your subspecialties.

[ol_ironstomach]

This is absolutely fascinating, and thanks to jayandstacey for asking a number of questions I was curious about, and a bunch of even better ones.

Apologies for the open-ended question, but in broad strokes, how much can currently be determined about the early history of food preparation methods from the evidence?  Beyond raw ingredients, do recognizable details suggest how raw materials were processed?  Mechanically altered?  Heated?  Cooked in complex ways?

Similarly, besides assumptions about available Calories from changes like the lactose tolerance mutation, or the introduction of potatoes, what sorts of ancient dietary shifts (if any) should be of blockbuster interest, beyond the customary grade school handwaving of "hunter-gatherers settled down"?

Also, other than Otzi the Iceman and I imagine some Siberian mammoths, are there any other stomach contents of interest from *really* ancient remains?

And finally, tossing in a Weekly World News question: what do you make of the recent attempt to identify the flora depicted in the controversial Voynich manuscript?

[lperry]

Oh - and one more - the fourth grader in me wants to know what got you into this field. (well, so does the adult )

Someone who knew me better than I knew myself got me into this field.  When I was in grad school at UF in the Botany department, one of my professors was on the dissertation committee of an archaeobotanist.  I remember him showing me the dissertation and saying, "you should do this.  This is you."  I'm pretty sure I gave him a look like he was mental, and the conversation went back and forth for a few minutes in that vein.  Long story short, a year or so later, I figured out that he was right.  So a big thank you to Jack Ewel for showing me the way.

[lperry]

No, it's not necessarily difficult to understand; it's just something whose methods people aren't aware of.

I once read a book on history, written from a paleontological viewpoint, at the precise level where people like me (the "PBS crowd," the "intelligent laymen," the "dilettantes") would get a lot out of. It's called "Life: A Natural History Of The First Four Billion Years Of Life On Earth" by Richard Fortey, who, along with being a senior paleontologist at London's Natural History Museum, is quite a character - sort of "Indiana Jones" old-school (readers can peak inside the book on Amazon and see if it would interest them - I remember enjoying it very much while being moderately challenged). The book ends where civilization starts, so it would be of no interest to you. Anyway, it has been a good ten years since I've read it (it's sitting next to me right now because books that I take weeks, months, or sometimes years to finish are never, ever discarded), and there are exactly three words that I still remember to this day because of their elegant simplicity: "Bones don't lie."

While that neat little phrase may be true, I also wonder in your case, if "bones" can ask more questions than they answer. I suppose that bones neither ask nor answer questions; they're merely data to be analyzed - pieces of the puzzle, so to speak.

Always be wary of elegant simplicity.   Data exists in the form we find it, but it is humans who analyze and interpret the data, and humans are messy creatures who view everything through a cultural lens.  If you put a newly discovered skeleton of an ancient hominid on a table in front of ten different physical anthropologists who are competing for a limited pool of grant money, you will undoubtedly get a few different interpretations of where these particular fossils fit in our evolutionary history, and where we should next look for the greatest chance of gaining the most knowledge.  Throw a creationist into the mix, and all bets are off.  The story those bones tells also changes as our science advances and we find out, for example, that we need to calibrate radiocarbon dates, or we learn how to extract DNA from them.  So, yes, those bones are pieces of the puzzle, but the picture that puzzle shows is always changing, and that change is what drives so many scientists.  We love looking for that next piece of the puzzle and figuring out where it fits into the picture.

Lion, I'm going to do a little reading today before I answer your question.  My Grandfather kept bees, and my cousin has them in her backyard and has been dealing with the mites.  I haven't read anything outside the popular press, and that's usually not the best source, so thanks, and I'll get back to you later.

As an edit to that comment, I just read the phrase "transkingdom host alteration."  I'm going to try to work that phrase into my daily vocabulary.

[lion]

Lion, I'm going to do a little reading today before I answer your question.  My Grandfather kept bees, and my cousin has them in her backyard and has been dealing with the mites.  I haven't read anything outside the popular press, and that's usually not the best source, so thanks, and I'll get back to you later.

As an edit to that comment, I just read the phrase "transkingdom host alteration."  I'm going to try to work that phrase into my daily vocabulary.

Thanks for taking the time. It was on a few sites recently and coming across it, I mentally flagged it as a point of interest. My reading was limited to the Scientific American article- http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/artful-amoeba/2014/01/31/suspicious-virus-makes-rare-cross-kingdom-leap-from-plants-to-honeybees/.

[lperry]

Thanks for taking the time. It was on a few sites recently and coming across it, I mentally flagged it as a point of interest. My reading was limited to the Scientific American article- http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/artful-amoeba/2014/01/31/suspicious-virus-makes-rare-cross-kingdom-leap-from-plants-to-honeybees/. 

Happy to do it.  It was on my list as well.

Here's a link to the actual article as published in mBio, a microbiology journal.  They are open access (kudos - they all should be), so you can click on a PDF link to the right of the abstract and have a look at what the scientists wrote.  It's significantly less sensational and alarmist than the press it got, but that's not unusual.

The press take seems to be that this is a freakish and unusual turn for a virus, and it happened just now, and it could wipe out all the bees, and then there will be no crops, and life as we know it will end, etc.  The article indicates they found the virus recently (in Beltsville bees - go DC Metro area), but it is not necessarily a recent development in honeybee/virus coevolution.  It could have happened some time ago, it is just now that the scientists figured out it was there, and it is a particularly interesting virus because it crossed from plant to animal.  The researchers hope that the understanding of the virus/bee relationship will help in both controlling the spread of this type of disease in agriculture and maintaining the health of bee hives over winter, when they tend to decline.

I think I just made this story significantly more boring for you.  Sorry about that.

[lperry]

Thanks for answering my novice questions! When I first entered the "real world" workforce, it struck me how many intelligent people were around me. I decided early on that if there was at least one person in the room smarter than me...shame on me if I don't leave that room knowing at least one new thing. It is the one collection/currency where I can accumulate vast amounts yet never spend a dime doing so.

Thanks for asking some really good questions, and I'm pretty sure your strategy makes you the smartest person in the room.

[lion]

Happy to do it.  It was on my list as well.

Here's a link to the actual article as published in mBio, a microbiology journal.  They are open access (kudos - they all should be), so you can click on a PDF link to the right of the abstract and have a look at what the scientists wrote.  It's significantly less sensational and alarmist than the press it got, but that's not unusual.

The press take seems to be that this is a freakish and unusual turn for a virus, and it happened just now, and it could wipe out all the bees, and then there will be no crops, and life as we know it will end, etc.  The article indicates they found the virus recently (in Beltsville bees - go DC Metro area), but it is not necessarily a recent development in honeybee/virus coevolution.  It could have happened some time ago, it is just now that the scientists figured out it was there, and it is a particularly interesting virus because it crossed from plant to animal.  The researchers hope that the understanding of the virus/bee relationship will help in both controlling the spread of this type of disease in agriculture and maintaining the health of bee hives over winter, when they tend to decline.

I think I just made this story significantly more boring for you.  Sorry about that.

Not at all, I find the news very interesting especially in regards to Colony Collapse Disorder. A lot of science occurs by accumulation of bits and pieces of data that hopefully, develops into advancement and knowledge.

In college I worked measuring Organochlorine pesticides and PCBs levels in the Chesapeake Bay tributaries and it was an arduous task to get 50 L water samples. But each distillation resulted in another a data point.

The plant to animal virus jump is interesting and appears to be an another found puzzle piece in CCD research.

Thanks for the reply!

[DonRocks]

Not at all, I find the news very interesting especially in regards to Colony Collapse Disorder. A lot of science occurs by accumulation of bits and pieces of data that hopefully, develops into advancement and knowledge. 

I get the impression that Linda can't believe her mundane, piecemeal job could possibly interest anyone; I also get the impression that a lot of people are glued to the computer, hanging on her every word.

Substance ... it's a beautiful thing.

[johnb]

Linda -  fascinating discussion.  Here's something I've always wondered about, which may be a bit tangental to the discussion so far, but I'll ask anyway.  I've always wondered how early humans found and got focused on the things that turned out to be useful or desirable for food, drugs, whatever.  Somewhere above I think you mentioned there have been perhaps 30,000 plants used as foods; yet there must be many times that which aren't useful to humans for food.  So the good ones had to be sorted out from a lot of contenders.  Obviously there must have been lots of trial and error, but how did they go about this trial and error process?  How did the process unfold?  How many things had to be tried to find the few that turned out to be useful, and how did ancient peoples measure which ones those were?  Surely there was more to it than just random natural selection!  In particular, how were things discovered where non-obvious processing is needed, like adding lime to corn, or fermentation of soybeans to make sauce (I know it happens naturally, but still....).

I'm reminded of that old phrase about he being brave the first man to try an oyster.

[lperry]

Are there any plants (edible or otherwise) that were considered sacred in the cultures you're studying? If so, could you cite some examples, and also tell us how you know? Or do you not really care about any religious context, and instead concentrate exclusively on the nutritional/diet aspect of things?

Ceremonial or religious contexts are very important in understanding cultures, but many times it can be difficult to understand what might have been important in a symbolic way.  Ancient cultures were different from ours, and because we use inference filtered through our own cultural biases, interpretation can be difficult if there is not some very clear representation or context, like a painting that shows people or gods using the plant, or a building with an altar where the plant was clearly an offering, or the plants are part of a burial and were sent with the dead to the afterlife.  There are archaeologists who work their entire careers with cultures in which ceremonial plant use is well understood due to writings or other representations.  I usually work with cultures that we know from some burned rocks, grinding tools, flaked lithic implements, maybe a midden deposit, and, if we get really lucky, remnants of a house like post molds.

Getting back to your specific question, I have recovered tobacco seeds from sites, and tobacco was important in the ritual lives of many indigenous groups in the Americas.  It was also, however, used for other purposes such as staving off hunger during lean times.  It works, too, which is probably why cigarettes are so prevalent in the modeling industry.  So again, context and interpretation are key.

As an aside, one of the most interesting books on the ritual use of plants I've read is Johannes Wilbert's Tobacco and Shamanism in South America.  I have met the author, but have no other affiliation.  Just a fascinating read if you happen to be looking for one.

[lperry]

I appreciate everyone asking thoughtful questions, and I also appreciate your patience as I take a little time to give each one some thought.  When I last did an online chat, it was with some middle school students, and my best question was, "what's the grossest thing you've ever found?"

[Barbara]

I appreciate everyone asking thoughtful questions, and I also appreciate your patience as I take a little time to give each one some thought.  When I last did an online chat, it was with some middle school students, and my best question was, "what's the grossest thing you've ever found?"

And, the answer was  . . .?

[jayandstacey]

And, the answer was  . . .?

Don Rockwell

[jayandstacey]

Do you have a more bounded specialty within your field, like expertise based on

- a certain geography

- a certain time period

- a certain group of associated researchers

- the whims of your funding source?

- or other, or not at all? (I suppose Archeobotany is fairly specialized to begin with)

Sliced another way, why would someone in need of Archeobotanist call you vs. another Archeobotanist?

[lperry]

If you could list your three greatest areas of expertise, in order from greatest to third-greatest, what would they be? (Three is obviously a number I picked rather haphazardly.) With so many different areas in this field, I'm still trying to get a grasp on your subspecialties.

I've never been asked this question.  #1 is easy, starch grain analysis, as I have spent the most time both implementing and teaching this type of work.  #2 and #3 are more difficult to decide, but I'll put wood identification next, followed by phytolith work.  I put the wood ID first because, although researchers who can perform this analysis are easier to come by in Europe, it is unusual to find a plant anatomy course any more in the US, much less wood anatomy.  I think the skill is more rare than phytolith analysis.  I began my studies in the field with macrobotanical analysis, and I do enjoy that work looking at fragments of charred seeds and fruits, but I am rarely asked to do it.  There are fewer people working with the starches, and they have become powerful tools for making the previously invisible visible in the archaeological record.

Edit:  I assumed you were asking about skill sets relevant to the work, not things like teaching, mentoring, problem solving, etc.

[lperry]

Apologies for the open-ended question, but in broad strokes, how much can currently be determined about the early history of food preparation methods from the evidence?  Beyond raw ingredients, do recognizable details suggest how raw materials were processed?  Mechanically altered?  Heated?  Cooked in complex ways?

Thanks for the question, and thanks for knowing it could take a library to answer it.  Here goes in broad strokes.

Context is (again) important in this type of analysis.  If we recover plant remains from the used edge of a slicing blade, or from the worn surface of a grinding stone, it's not a leap to infer that the plant foods were processed with these tools.  Different categories of plant remains, starches, phytoliths, or larger, charred pieces, can give us different types of information about processing.

Because most plant remains decompose over time, the record is fragmentary and biased by what does preserve.  Macroremains, larger fragments of plants or seeds, typically occur as charred remains; black carbon isn't particularly palatable to decomposers.  Charred remains are usually various bits and pieces of foods that were accidentally burned when they were over-cooked or were dropped into a fire, so specific methods can be difficult to assess.  We may be lucky if someone burned a whole pot of something, or had a big pit fire that didn't completely consume the contents, but those contexts are unusual.

Phytoliths are silica microfossils, and they will char and distort when burned, so heating in a fire is recognizable in the record, and I have also seen phytoliths that have been cut cleanly by lithic tools used to process grain.  The best information we have right now, however, is from starch grains.

With starch remains, we can figure out how plant foods were processed based upon distinctive damage to the semi-crystalline nature of the grain when it is baked, boiled, ground with stone tools, dry-parched, freeze-dried, etc.  There must be an understanding of the native state of the starch grain, how it comes out of the plant raw, which is then compared with various changes that occur with different types of processing.  We have some nice comparative studies that have been completed by archaeobotanists performing modern experiments with the same types of foods that we find in ancient contexts.  Researchers also do experiments on the fly, as it were, if they happen across a pattern in the record that they think might be identifiable.  I've ground up, sliced, pounded, and cooked a lot of roots, tubers, and seeds trying to replicate the damaged remains I have found in different sites.

We also have a vast library of literature from the food and industrial sciences where starches are studied for changing properties under all sorts of different conditions.  Starch is the powder in powdered latex gloves (which we don't use in our labs), it is used as a dry lubricant in industrial machinery, and it is also an important source of calories for humans.  That's three off the top of my head, but I just plugged "starch industry" into Google Scholar and got over 700,000 hits.  That's a whole lot of people making detailed studies of vast numbers of plant starches under all sorts of conditions, and an amazing amount of information we can use.  I know I have just scratched the surface in my own studies of these literatures.

I think chemical residue analyses may be the way of the future.  Why is there never a tricorder around when you need one?

[DonRocks]

I think the skill is more rare than phytolith analysis.

Edit:  I assumed you were asking about skill sets relevant to the work, not things like teaching, mentoring, problem solving, etc.

Yes, and bulliform me for being rooted enough to ask such a silic question.

[DonRocks]

A typical day starts at home where I caffeinate myself, try to wake up, and answer emails until the traffic has cleared off my route.  Then I head in to the lab.  If I have samples to study, they are almost always residues that I extract from artifacts, groundstone and flaked tools or ceramic sherds, or sediment samples, bags of dirt collected from various contexts that may be related to plant use.  I try to make the most of lab time by scanning slides on the microscope while the next set of samples is processing on the bench top.  By its nature, microscope work is time-limited.  Eye fatigue can come on quickly while scanning in search of tiny objects, so I don't do more than six samples in any one sitting.  Missing something after spending all the time and effort to extract the data would be a terrible loss.  Right now I'm working on samples from an Archaic site in central Texas, and many of the artifacts are burned rocks from cooking hearths and discard features.

Tell me to stop whenever I go too deep, please.

These samples that you study ... do you collect them yourself? Or are they sent to you from field workers, much like an x-ray is sent to a radiologist for unbiased evaluation, "never having met the patient?"

Radiologists are well-paid, and also must carry boodles of malpractice insurance - are there any similarities, or do you ever get a chance to collect your own samples and do your own field work?

Assuming specimens are simply handed (or mailed) to you, what is the chance of them being tainted by the time you receive them? Do you often miss obvious things? Are your readings peer-evaluated by others in your field? There's so much that could go wrong, from simple human error, to malevolent manipulation of slides for grant-grabbing. This is all theoretical, of course, but it seems very much like a real possibility to me.

[lperry]

Similarly, besides assumptions about available Calories from changes like the lactose tolerance mutation, or the introduction of potatoes, what sorts of ancient dietary shifts (if any) should be of blockbuster interest, beyond the customary grade school handwaving of "hunter-gatherers settled down"?

With apologies to the raw food movement, one of the most important shifts in our food history was when hominids began cooking their foods.  Richard Wrangham and others out of Harvard University have suggested that cooking roots and tubers was key in the development of both modern human social structure and important physiological adaptations "“ you can read the article in Current Anthropology here.  The authors place cooking at about 1.8 million years ago, and it should be noted that this model is controversial.  It is widely agreed upon, however, that there was great significance in the increased availability of nutrients in cooked foods over raw.  Much less time and effort is spent for a higher gain.

[lperry]

Also, other than Otzi the Iceman and I imagine some Siberian mammoths, are there any other stomach contents of interest from *really* ancient remains?

Not to my knowledge, but I guess it also depends on what *really* ancient means to you.  I have a book on my shelf called "The Bog People" that documents the recovery of the bodies of executed people who were placed into the bogs of Denmark where they lay, perfectly preserved for more than 2000 years.  The pictures are kind of creepy, and the peat harvesters who discovered the first ones thought they were modern murder victims.  The Denmark stomach contents are full of seed and grain-based gruel, and the oldest bog remains yet found in Europe are 8000 years old.  Not terribly ancient, but some of the best preserved stomach contents out there.

And finally, tossing in a Weekly World News question: what do you make of the recent attempt to identify the flora depicted in the controversial Voynich manuscript?

I find it interesting that modern researchers rarely if ever consider the possibility that people in the past may have had a sense of humor.  Or were a little nutty, for that matter. 

[ol_ironstomach]

Thanks for the memory jog.  Back around high school, I had read a few articles about the mystery and eventual identification of the origins of the bog people, but nothing about their stomach contents.

With apologies to the raw food movement, one of the most important shifts in our food history was when hominids began cooking their foods.  Richard Wrangham and others out of Harvard University have suggested that cooking roots and tubers was key in the development of both modern human social structure and important physiological adaptations

As someone who has hosted a gently humorous tuber-themed dinner party for most of the past 17 years, I can't tell you how pleased I am to learn this!  Nor do I recall ever being so intrigued by starch grains in a non-photographic context...the sleuthing that you do is really, really cool.

[ATF]

Not sure if it is too late to post a question, and an answer might be readily available elsewhere. But just in case you are still responding:

Is there a consensus as to whether beer led to bread, or bread led to beer?

[lperry]

Linda -  fascinating discussion.  Here's something I've always wondered about, which may be a bit tangental to the discussion so far, but I'll ask anyway.  I've always wondered how early humans found and got focused on the things that turned out to be useful or desirable for food, drugs, whatever.  Somewhere above I think you mentioned there have been perhaps 30,000 plants used as foods; yet there must be many times that which aren't useful to humans for food.  So the good ones had to be sorted out from a lot of contenders.  Obviously there must have been lots of trial and error, but how did they go about this trial and error process?  How did the process unfold?  How many things had to be tried to find the few that turned out to be useful, and how did ancient peoples measure which ones those were?  Surely there was more to it than just random natural selection!  In particular, how were things discovered where non-obvious processing is needed, like adding lime to corn, or fermentation of soybeans to make sauce (I know it happens naturally, but still....).

I'm reminded of that old phrase about he being brave the first man to try an oyster.

Hi johnb, and thanks for taking part in the discussion.  The short answer to your question is, we can't really know unless there is a written history.  The long answer is, there are some logical possibilities as well as some mythologies to study, and it can be fun to think about how things may have happened.

My favorite story about people figuring out an interesting food is the one about the Ethiopian goats and coffee.  Who doesn't love dancing goats?  Even though it may not be true, it does represent a highly probable method for ancient humans seeking foods, and that is to watch what the animals are eating and follow their lead.  The first person to eat an oyster may have seen an oystercatcher bird eating them.

For the more esoteric processing, it's more difficult to know.  I was asked about the nixtamalization processing in my prelims (scary flashback) and have thought about it and other complex processes since.  Here's my hypothesis for that particular process: Modern people use cal to process maize, but anything really alkaline works, so wood ash was probably the original chemical.  Someone boiled maize in a vessel that happened to contain ash from a fire, and found that the hulls came off the corn kernels.  As someone who has spent time grinding seeds with stone tools, I know that making the process easier would be an excellent motivator for invention, and this maize was certainly easier to grind than maize with hulls.  So the accident turns into an invention, and the person tries drying and grinding the hulled maize.  Time passes, and a few people are grinding maize that has been treated with ash, and, in addition to the relative ease of processing, they find the breads they make hold together better, and further experimentation leads to thin, very tasty breads that can be wrapped around foods.  Some neighbors don't want this new bread, others do, and the process moves out a bit from the center of invention.  After a few weeks or months, it is noticeable that the families using this new method also have kids who are healthier than everyone else because, just as a side effect of the process, more nutrients are released.  Everyone wants healthy kids, so people learn about this new method, and it spreads farther via word of mouth and intermarriage.  And so on, and so on.

That's my take on it.  People worked hard for their food, they were just as smart as we are, and, arguably, more in touch with their environments.  Observation, experimentation, step by step changes in the process to make it better, and adoption of what made life a little easier, better tasting, or healthier are the drivers that I think were important in developing some of these processes.  Someone else may give you a different answer.

[zoramargolis]

To piggyback on the fascinating information you have provided above: I have been amazed by the process of nixtamalization, mostly because I have loved the flavor of nixtamal/masa since I was a young child growing up eating Mexican food in Los Angeles. But turns out that the process liberates niacin and prevents pellagra, which the early corn cultivators figured out. When corn spread around the world, that piece of knowledge and tradition was missing, and pellagra became a common disease in poor populations which derived most of their calories from eating corn, in Europe and the American South.

Another bit of culinary wisdom of the same population, albeit without the public health benefits of nixtamalization is tequesquite, a mineral salt gathered from the edges of alkaline lakes in Central Mexico, used to cook beans to soften their hulls, and to leaven tamales. Baking soda, in its natural form.

As smart as we are? Maybe smarter.

[johnb]

,,,,,, it does represent a highly probable method for ancient humans seeking foods, and that is to watch what the animals are eating and follow their lead.  

This inspires me to wonder how the fellow who discovered kopi luwak went about making his discovery.  Brings new meaning to "following their lead."

[lperry]

And, the answer was  . . .?

The answer started with a really boring, adult, learning-moment response about gross things usually being made of organic matter, and all the microorganisms in the soil decomposing them long before archaeologists can excavate them.  Then I told him about the summer in Texas when the most promising site found in our field school survey was in a field that had been overrun by feral pigs, and how the first foot or so of digging involved working through some rather thick, fragrant, organic matter.  If I had ever worked on a medieval cess pool, I would have had a better story.  Maybe.

[Barbara]

The answer started with a really boring, adult, learning-moment response about gross things usually being made of organic matter, and all the microorganisms in the soil decomposing them long before archaeologists can excavate them.  Then I told him about the summer in Texas when the most promising site found in our field school survey was in a field that had been overrun by feral pigs, and how the first foot or so of digging involved working through some rather thick, fragrant, organic matter.  If I had ever worked on a medieval cess pool, I would have had a better story.  Maybe.  

I actually wasn't expecting an answer, but thank you. This entire discussion is really fascinating for so many reasons. That you are trying to parse the actuality--as opposed to modern assumptions and prejudices--is far more interesting to this crowd than you might have imagined.

To pick your brain some more, have your read Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel?, and, if so, how can you expand on his theory that ancient people all across the globe figured out what was not only edible but cultivatible (not right word, but you get my drift) because of your research?

[lperry]

Do you have a more bounded specialty within your field, like expertise based on

- a certain geography

- a certain time period

- a certain group of associated researchers

- the whims of your funding source?

- or other, or not at all? (I suppose Archeobotany is fairly specialized to begin with)

Sliced another way, why would someone in need of Archeobotanist call you vs. another Archeobotanist?

You are correct in your assumption that archaeobotany is fairly specialized, and some researchers spend their careers in one area, or even on one, large site.  There is certainly enough work to occupy researchers for multiple lifetimes in any site.  For a variety of reasons, my career has run in many different directions, and, at this point, I have worked on six continents at sites that date from more than 11,000 years ago to about 100 years ago.  I feel incredibly lucky to have been invited to work on so many interesting projects.

People call me because they are interested in the methods I use, particularly the starch grain analysis which is very useful in recovering plant remains in contexts where other categories of plant remains either may not survive, or may be unusual.  The basic methods are pretty much the same in any site.  The differences lie in learning a new set of comparative materials - a new flora, if you will - for the purposes of making identifications and interpretations for the site.  That's one of the wonderful things about this work.  I spend all my time learning.

[lperry]

These samples that you study ... do you collect them yourself? Or are they sent to you from field workers, much like an x-ray is sent to a radiologist for unbiased evaluation, "never having met the patient?"

I have collected my own, but these days, they are sent to me.  I specifically ask that the excavator keep information from me until I have my results and have made my identifications.  There's a really bad joke: like all microscopists, I prefer to work blind.

Radiologists are well-paid, and also must carry boodles of malpractice insurance - are there any similarities, or do you ever get a chance to collect your own samples and do your own field work?

I don't understand the connection between the first part of the question and the second, so I'll say that I don't think I'm particularly like a radiologist, although I do find x-rays interesting.  I'm pretty sure most people think of me as "the lab specialist" and don't even consider the possibility that I might be interested in excavation anymore.  I enjoy fieldwork, and I should probably be more proactive about getting myself written into that part of the grant proposals that come my way.  Part of the issue over the past few years has been having elderly pets, and not being willing to leave them for long periods of time.  I lost my little orange cat at 17 last Thanksgiving, and his sister, my tortie, who is snoring softly here next to me, will be 18 in April.  It's not fair to caretakers or to the animals to leave them for so long, so I stay here and do labwork.  That may be changing soon, I fear.

Assuming specimens are simply handed (or mailed) to you, what is the chance of them being tainted by the time you receive them? Do you often miss obvious things? Are your readings peer-evaluated by others in your field? There's so much that could go wrong, from simple human error, to malevolent manipulation of slides for grant-grabbing. This is all theoretical, of course, but it seems very much like a real possibility to me.

I'm not sure what you mean by tainted.  Contaminated, maybe?  There are protocols in place to prevent contamination from occurring from the moment something is collected in the field until it gets to me or any other analyst.  Those following modern methodologies in the field are very careful because they want the information collected properly so they can have the best understanding of the context.  I am frequently asked about field methods for "clean" collection of samples, so I believe that most researchers are doing their best to keep the data intact.

I hope I don't miss obvious things, but if I did, I would be unaware of it, because I missed it, so I can't really know the answer to that question.  Everything I publish is peer-reviewed, usually by three reviewers, as is anything published in an academic journal, so there are people double checking my and everyone else's work, if that's what you mean (?)

I think that the malevolence of people, assuming there is any, comes out in the review process rather than in any manipulation of data.  Someone who doesn't care for you or your work may, for example, tell an editor to reject a paper, or a granting source that your proposal should not be funded.  A very wise advisor once told me that there are jerks in every profession, so you may as well do what you love to do.  It has been my experience that people who go looking for a fight are really good at finding one.  I go looking for peace, love, and excellent data.  What else can you really do?  

[lperry]

Not sure if it is too late to post a question, and an answer might be readily available elsewhere. But just in case you are still responding:

Is there a consensus as to whether beer led to bread, or bread led to beer?

Hi ATF.  It's not too late, and the answer is, no, there is no consensus.  There are people who believe the first beers were made using fragments of bread, and others argue that beer was first, and was not really what we think of as "beer" today.  It was, rather, a slightly fermented gruel that was more nutritious than the unfermented variety.  I'm not going to jump into the fray until we have more hard evidence.

[TedE]

This is all fascinating, thank you again!  And now for a pop-sci fad-busting question: the "Paleo Diet" - sorta kinda bullsh*t, or complete and utter bullsh*t?

[lperry]

To pick your brain some more, have your read Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel?, and, if so, how can you expand on his theory that ancient people all across the globe figured out what was not only edible but cultivatible (not right word, but you get my drift) because of your research?

I'm sorry, Barbara, I have not read the book.  If you ask something more specific, I'll do my best to answer.

[lperry]

And now for a pop-sci fad-busting question: the "Paleo Diet" - sorta kinda bullsh*t, or complete and utter bullsh*t?

Yes.

[johnb]

Linda:  What do we know about the early use of organics as fertilizers (i.e. manure, guano, etc.)?

Did the use of non-organic chemicals as fertilizers and insecticides/herbicides (e.g. mined nitrates?) begin in pre-industrial times?

[jayandstacey]

Where your studies focused on a food that was significantly different either in the content or preparation from what we eat today, have you ever tried preparing or eating those things? 

[lperry]

I want to take a moment to thank everyone who has asked questions thus far  They are some of the most interesting ones I've ever received, and I have spoken to quite a few groups over the years.

I've also been working on a presentation I'll be giving on Friday, and the discussion has helped me get my thoughts together.  I was given very little direction as to what I should address, and thinking through some of these answers helped me quite a bit.

I'll be back in the morning, so cheers for this evening.  Don't forget, it's National Drink Wine Day. 

[DonRocks]

I want to take a moment to thank everyone who has asked questions thus far  They are some of the most interesting ones I've ever received, and I have spoken to quite a few groups over the years.

This may be because you're dealing with an intelligent group of laymen, who are bringing a completely fresh outlook to the subject (read: somewhat uneducated, completely untainted, thus uncynical, and not worn down by the realities and rigors of your day-to-day job monotony) - for us, this is like watching a highlight reel. It's pretty awesome.

Consider us all a bunch of Serpicos.

[lperry]

Linda:  What do we know about the early use of organics as fertilizers (i.e. manure, guano, etc.)?

Did the use of non-organic chemicals as fertilizers and insecticides/herbicides (e.g. mined nitrates?) begin in pre-industrial times?

For the organic component of your question, I am aware of studies indicating that ancient groups in Western South America used guano for fertilizing crops.  There is also some interesting work out of Colombia where the inhabitants of the Amazonian forest were taking organics out of the sediments in a nearby river and amending the soils.  Brazilian black soils, organic deposits created by the activities of ancient inhabitants, are sought by modern farmers for their fertility, and this same behavior is likely to have occurred in the past.  I believe there has been a good deal of work completed in Europe on this subject, but that isn't really my area of expertise so I can't provide you any details.

For the inorganic portion of your question, I know of nitrate deposits in Chile, but I do not know if archaeologists there have evidence of ancient mining.  I wasn't able to find anything in an English language search.

[lperry]

Where your studies focused on a food that was significantly different either in the content or preparation from what we eat today, have you ever tried preparing or eating those things? 

I've tried the bitter cacao/vanilla/chile drink, , however, I usually find that the "staples" that are recovered are still available in local markets or in people's house gardens in the area where I am working.  The hard part, I think, is with those things that were important in the past, but we really can't get them now.  Arrowroot (Maranta arundinacea), for example, appears to have been an important pre-contact starchy food in the Americas, but today, the only place I can find it is in those little cookies they make for babies.  The starch is very easy to digest, apparently.  Things I've found labeled "arrowroot" at the markets turned out to be of different genera or species, and I haven't been able to find any to grow myself.  That's definitely one I'd like to try.

Just about every archaeobotanist or ethnobotanist I know has a garden, and we do tend to grow things that are probably considered esoteric by other gardeners.  I know of people who grow American groundnut (Apios tuberosa), yacon, and wild-type chiles.  I've also heard of groups of students who grew fields of grain then got together to harvest it all with stone sickles.  I have tried to get people interested in cooking a meal using stone tool technology, but I think the work to food ratio is off-putting.

[Barbara]

What is the most surprising discovery you have made? Anything that might invalidate your dissertation ??!!?? I'm always interested in discoveries that are so counter-intuitive that they take seemingly forever to be accepted--i.e., that a bacterium causes stomach ulcers.

[DonRocks]

What is the most surprising discovery you have made? Anything that might invalidate your dissertation ??!!?? I'm always interested in discoveries that are so counter-intuitive that they take seemingly forever to be accepted--i.e., that a bacterium causes stomach ulcers.

Helicobacter pylori! Who would have *ever* thought?

Linda, how much do you know about "The Devastator" - the plant louse Phylloxera vastatrix? (Is it correct to capitalize the first word, but not the second? How do you pronounce "vastatrix?") which wiped out between 65% and 90% of all vineyards in *Europe*?

If it's in your wheelhouse, how much of a threat do you see it being today, and what is being done about it that you know of? (If this isn't related to your field of interest, don't worry about it - I could research it and probably come up with something semi-intelligent in case anyone is curious).

A gentleman named Louis Pasteur came to the rescue, btw. This was, I believe, the single-biggest blow to oenology in the history of mankind.

[Barbara]

Helicobacter pylori! Who would have *ever* thought?

Well, that was my point. For those of you following along, this excerpt from Wikipedia more or less explains the controversy.  It took a solid ten years of effort to get the medical community to accept that this was the cause of most ulcers and not stress or diet or whatever.  I had a friend in college who had to have 2/3 of his stomach removed--unnecessarily as it turns out:

Helicobacter pylori was first discovered in the stomachs of patients with gastritis and stomach ulcers in 1982 by Dr. Barry Marshall and Dr. Robin Warren of Perth, Western Australia. At the time, the conventional thinking was that no bacterium can live in the human stomach, as the stomach produced extensive amounts of acid of a strength similar to the acid found in a car battery. Marshall and Warren rewrote the textbooks with reference to what causes gastritis and gastric ulcers. In recognition of their discovery, they were awarded the 2005 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.^[84]

This is why I ask the question of Linda if she's discovered anything that goes against conventional thinking. And, in my years at Science magazine, I found that many, many people spend their careers trying to defend their dissertations--even in the face of evidence that they were completely wrong.

[jayandstacey]

I've tried the bitter cacao/vanilla/chile drink, , however, I usually find that the "staples" that are recovered are still available in local markets or in people's house gardens in the area where I am working.  The hard part, I think, is with those things that were important in the past, but we really can't get them now.  Arrowroot (Maranta arundinacea), for example, appears to have been an important pre-contact starchy food in the Americas, but today, the only place I can find it is in those little cookies they make for babies.  The starch is very easy to digest, apparently.  Things I've found labeled "arrowroot" at the markets turned out to be of different genera or species, and I haven't been able to find any to grow myself.  That's definitely one I'd like to try.

Just about every archaeobotanist or ethnobotanist I know has a garden, and we do tend to grow things that are probably considered esoteric by other gardeners.  I know of people who grow American groundnut (Apios tuberosa), yacon, and wild-type chiles.  I've also heard of groups of students who grew fields of grain then got together to harvest it all with stone sickles.  I have tried to get people interested in cooking a meal using stone tool technology, but I think the work to food ratio is off-putting.

Cool!!! Thanks.

Somehow I think that 10000 years from now the Enlightened Ones will look back at our coca-cola fetish and think we were out of our minds. "Brown carbonated drinks? With a wicked acid masked by an ultra-sweet taste? Consumed with and between every meal? WTH were they thinking?"

[lperry]

What is the most surprising discovery you have made? Anything that might invalidate your dissertation ??!!?? I'm always interested in discoveries that are so counter-intuitive that they take seemingly forever to be accepted--i.e., that a bacterium causes stomach ulcers.

There is a long story in which my dissertation research invalidated the major paradigm of ancient diet in lowland South America. To be honest, I don't know how much I want to relate the details, simply because it made so many people angry, and angry people tend to do things that aren't particularly nice, especially if one is a relatively powerless student. In a nutshell, more than fifty years of gospel indicating that a certain suite of artifacts were used to process bitter manioc as a staple crop was undone by my data. I'll tell my favorite part - one of my advisors suggested I title my dissertation, "Everyone was wrong!" Another decade of work by myself and others has supported my initial findings, so I suppose I should feel redeemed, but it still makes me a little sad.

On a nicer front, I'm sitting in a hotel in Florida where I will be giving a presentation tomorrow. The weather is beautiful, and the audience is genuinely interested. Even if it was not always so, life is currently excellent.

[DonRocks]

There is a long story in which my dissertation research invalidated the major paradigm of ancient diet in lowland South America. To be honest, I don't know how much I want to relate the details, simply because it made so many people angry, and angry people tend to do things that aren't particularly nice, especially if one is a relatively powerless student. In a nutshell, more than fifty years of gospel indicating that a certain suite of artifacts were used to process bitter manioc as a staple crop was undone by my data. I'll tell my favorite part - one of my advisors suggested I title my dissertation, "Everyone was wrong!" Another decade of work by myself and others has supported my initial findings, so I suppose I should feel redeemed, but it still makes me a little sad.

On a nicer front, I'm sitting in a hotel in Florida where I will be giving a presentation tomorrow. The weather is beautiful, and the audience is genuinely interested. Even if it was not always so, life is currently excellent.

My initial thought: any scientists who are angry about the truth (or conflicting data) coming out ... aren't scientists; they're mercenaries.

[jayandstacey]

There is a long story in which my dissertation research invalidated the major paradigm of ancient diet in lowland South America. To be honest, I don't know how much I want to relate the details, simply because it made so many people angry, and angry people tend to do things that aren't particularly nice, especially if one is a relatively powerless student. In a nutshell, more than fifty years of gospel indicating that a certain suite of artifacts were used to process bitter manioc as a staple crop was undone by my data. I'll tell my favorite part - one of my advisors suggested I title my dissertation, "Everyone was wrong!" Another decade of work by myself and others has supported my initial findings, so I suppose I should feel redeemed, but it still makes me a little sad.

On a nicer front, I'm sitting in a hotel in Florida where I will be giving a presentation tomorrow. The weather is beautiful, and the audience is genuinely interested. Even if it was not always so, life is currently excellent.

99% of me is sad that paradigm shifts (the Thomas Kuhn kind) must be painful and involve some degree of selling. 1% of me is jealous. Bully on you! Enjoy Florida.

[jayandstacey]

My initial thought: any scientists who are angry about the truth (or conflicting data) coming out ... aren't scientists; they're mercenaries.

Nah..they're just human. If someone published a 5 page paper proving how Taco Bell is god's gift to fine dining...you'd fight it pretty hard given your invesment in the opposite. (assuming any of that was possible, it isn't, and yes of course that changes things. But that same forces that established an original scientific assumption baseline will be the same forces that make a new assumption very difficult to take hold and unseat the old. It isn't necessarily a bad thing - but it does mean that the change will have to be 100% RIGHT FOR EVERY POSSIBLE INSTANCE FOR MANY MANY YEARS before accepted....no?)

[DonRocks]

Nah..they're just human. If someone published a 5 page paper proving how Taco Bell is god's gift to fine dining...you'd fight it pretty hard given your invesment in the opposite. (assuming any of that was possible, it isn't, and yes of course that changes things. But that same forces that established an original scientific assumption baseline will be the same forces that make a new assumption very difficult to take hold and unseat the old. It isn't necessarily a bad thing - but it does mean that the change will have to be 100% RIGHT FOR EVERY POSSIBLE INSTANCE FOR MANY MANY YEARS before accepted....no?)

I'm going to let Linda answer this.

[jayandstacey]

It isn't necessarily a good thing - but Fact, Right,Truth and Science all have some small degree of relativity - they change with time. I believe that when scientists fight change - in the form of evidence contrary to accepted norms, or a new "truth" - it isn't so much that they're dogmatically attached to their current views - rather that they believe their truths are so fundamentally sound that the new stuff must be scientifically flawed, skewed or otherwise. Theirs is an appeal to the purity of the scientific process, not to a mercenary cause.

Why do I say this? Because every scientist believes their truth to be true. Scientists are tasked with finding new facts and continually building on the knowledgebase. But they all must have an underpinning of some known facts - the collection of facts on which they build. When faced with the notion that some brick below them in the pyramid of truth is just wrong...it is their job to ensure that brick is solid - and many times, the brick was just fine and the building can continue.

Yet, historically, every branch of science has had a number of revolutions that tore down the pyramid and caused them all to start over building a new pyramid. So the irony here is that despite their advances and how, thanks to science, we know so much today...ultimately, most scientists were just wrong, or at least not fully right. Today's truth, fact, science - is likely not to be tomorrow's.

Scientists are skilled builders. They stand on the prior bricks confidently and continue building higher - and all their own evidence points to the bricks below them being solid and true. So somebody points out that a brick in their foundation is bad - doesn't it make sense that they'd press really hard against that?

Thomas Kuhn argues that true advancement of science happens when these paradigm shifts (revolutions) happen in science since a new pyramid is started on a (presumably) better foundation. This is good - but it is also Science's job to ensure that if the old will be torn down and a new one begun - that this decision is absolutely, 100% right. Essentially, it is part of the process to doubt and resist in some measure.

That's my armchair diagnoses, worth only the electrons moved to convey it. I'm also interested in Dr. Perry's opinion, and will understand if she's not inclined to give it

[Barbara]

There is a long story in which my dissertation research invalidated the major paradigm of ancient diet in lowland South America. To be honest, I don't know how much I want to relate the details, simply because it made so many people angry, and angry people tend to do things that aren't particularly nice, especially if one is a relatively powerless student. In a nutshell, more than fifty years of gospel indicating that a certain suite of artifacts were used to process bitter manioc as a staple crop was undone by my data. I'll tell my favorite part - one of my advisors suggested I title my dissertation, "Everyone was wrong!" Another decade of work by myself and others has supported my initial findings, so I suppose I should feel redeemed, but it still makes me a little sad.

On a nicer front, I'm sitting in a hotel in Florida where I will be giving a presentation tomorrow. The weather is beautiful, and the audience is genuinely interested. Even if it was not always so, life is currently excellent.

OOOOOHHHH! This is exactly what I was asking. As you found out, the stakes are so high (tenure, grants, etc., etc.) and people feel their livelihoods are so precarious that this kind of stuff happens. That's when you can get "data fraud." "Follow the Science" sounds just perfect--until the dollars come into play. I've just been reading last week's New Yorker about the trials and tribulations of a scientist investigating the ill effects of a widely-used pesticide and running up against corporate interests who only care about the bottom line. Like the coal industry in West Virginia, for one.

I'm looking forward to a couple of days of getting my (patio) garden ready--before the Polar Vortex pays us another visit next week. Lotsa pots to paint and plants to repot.

[lperry]

I'm exhausted after a day of travel, and am heading to bed, but I wanted to quickly throw these few items into the fray: I have two degrees with "S" on them, however, the majority of archaeologists have liberal arts degrees. Something to consider.

[DonRocks]

I'm exhausted after a day of travel, and am heading to bed, but I wanted to quickly throw these few items into the fray: I have two degrees with "S" on them, however, the majority of archaeologists have liberal arts degrees. Something to consider.

Like I said earlier in the chat, nobody cares if you take your time and enjoy this. Take the weekend off and enjoy yourself! We can grill you next week.

[dcs]

I just read this in thee latest issue of the New York Review of Books.  It seemed somewhat relevant to this latest twist in the conversation.

The Case for Blunders, by Freeman Dyson.

[lperry]

Like I said earlier in the chat, nobody cares if you take your time and enjoy this. Take the weekend off and enjoy yourself! We can grill you next week.

Thanks - I'll be back Saturday night or Sunday.

I also wanted to clarify my own statement about science and liberal arts - it's not a judgement on the validity or utility of either, they are just two different ways of looking at the world.  One reifies data, the other ideas.  Working with the two together has been my challenge, as I see ideas as a starting point for collecting data that will either support, modify, or discount the idea, while many of my colleagues see ideas as static.  Two different cultures, as it were, the deductive and the inductive.

[lperry]

Helicobacter pylori! Who would have *ever* thought?

Linda, how much do you know about "The Devastator" - the plant louse Phylloxera vastatrix? (Is it correct to capitalize the first word, but not the second? How do you pronounce "vastatrix?") which wiped out between 65% and 90% of all vineyards in *Europe*?

If it's in your wheelhouse, how much of a threat do you see it being today, and what is being done about it that you know of? (If this isn't related to your field of interest, don't worry about it - I could research it and probably come up with something semi-intelligent in case anyone is curious).

A gentleman named Louis Pasteur came to the rescue, btw. This was, I believe, the single-biggest blow to oenology in the history of mankind.

I know little to nothing.  Your capitalization is correct, and I would say VAS-uh-trix, but that may not be how it is pronounced.

I don't know how much of a threat it is anymore. I know that it was an export from the States, and I have read about it as a cautionary tale of an exotic pest wreaking havoc in an agricultural system.

[johnb]

I know little to nothing.  Your capitalization is correct, and I would say VAS-uh-trix, but that may not be how it is pronounced.

I don't know how much of a threat it is anymore. I know that it was an export from the States, and I have read about it as a cautionary tale of an exotic pest wreaking havoc in an agricultural system.

There is an excellent and engrossing book on the subject written by George Ordish called "The Great Wine Blight."  It reads like a mystery novel.

Phylloxera is no longer a threat, but nearly all vinifera vines must be and are grafted on to American rootstocks which are resistant to the pest.  The only major exceptions are Chile, Washington State and parts of Australia which so far are free of the pest and can support ungrafted vinifera.  This of course makes for an interesting comparison, namely whether grafted vines produce wine equal to to pre-phylloxera, ungrafted vinifera.  Opinions run both ways and the subject has never been resolved.

[DaveO]

Just wanted to say thank you.   Fascinating thread.  Rich questions.  Interesting responses.

and the ying and yang of some of the tags are right on specifically:   Fulbright Senior Specialist/Former Smithsonian Fellow   and then the somewhat more pedestrian  Knows her shit   

[lperry]

Nah..they're just human. If someone published a 5 page paper proving how Taco Bell is god's gift to fine dining...you'd fight it pretty hard given your invesment in the opposite. (assuming any of that was possible, it isn't, and yes of course that changes things. But that same forces that established an original scientific assumption baseline will be the same forces that make a new assumption very difficult to take hold and unseat the old. It isn't necessarily a bad thing - but it does mean that the change will have to be 100% RIGHT FOR EVERY POSSIBLE INSTANCE FOR MANY MANY YEARS before accepted....no?)

There's a process, certainly, and I suppose the number of years necessary for consensus is directly proportional to the novelty of the finding.  Here comes another metaphor.

Think of a train getting ready to leave a station.  Some of us are engineers who are thrilled by the possibilities of where we might take that train (tracks, notwithstanding), and we run on board and take the wheel with little regard for risk.  There are also people who get on the train at the station as passengers, but they are a little more cautious.  A portion of those passengers sit quietly during the ride, evaluating, while others look ahead where it is going and make suggestions to the engineer.  Some people watch the train, observe carefully both where it is going and who is on it, and choose to board at a station down the line.  Eventually, if it stays on track, a single train going in one direction will have loads of engineers and cars full of passengers who all agree where it has been and where it is going, and that is consensus.  There will, however, still be some people who never board the train, as well as some people who don't even believe the train exists.

Consensus does not necessarily mean that every person in the field is in agreement, it means that the vast majority of people are persuaded by the evidence.  Those who disagree perform an important role by keeping everyone rigorous in their methods and interpretations.  If you conduct your research in the mindset of convincing your harshest critic, it can only be good for the field.

[DonRocks]

Linda, I'd like to ask you in more detail about fossilfarm.org - would you explain to us what this is, in laymen's terms? And in case there are any archaeobotanists out there reading, what the website is intended to do for them?

This chat will be up the remainder of this week, so please ask any questions you have soon. And thank you once again to Linda for doing this!

[jayandstacey]

There's a process, certainly, and I suppose the number of years necessary for consensus is directly proportional to the novelty of the finding.  Here comes another metaphor.

Think of a train getting ready to leave a station.  Some of us are engineers who are thrilled by the possibilities of where we might take that train (tracks, notwithstanding), and we run on board and take the wheel with little regard for risk.  There are also people who get on the train at the station as passengers, but they are a little more cautious.  A portion of those passengers sit quietly during the ride, evaluating, while others look ahead where it is going and make suggestions to the engineer.  Some people watch the train, observe carefully both where it is going and who is on it, and choose to board at a station down the line.  Eventually, if it stays on track, a single train going in one direction will have loads of engineers and cars full of passengers who all agree where it has been and where it is going, and that is consensus.  There will, however, still be some people who never board the train, as well as some people who don't even believe the train exists.

Consensus does not necessarily mean that every person in the field is in agreement, it means that the vast majority of people are persuaded by the evidence.  Those who disagree perform an important role by keeping everyone rigorous in their methods and interpretations.  If you conduct your research in the mindset of convincing your harshest critic, it can only be good for the field.

Thanks, this is what I had in mind. Is there a "right" time to board the train? Will the train ever leave the tracks? We can never really (really) know.

One of the compelling things I find about science is that it is more a statistical/odds game than a world of absolute truths. Newton's view of physics was right for 100s of years - until it was wrong. In some ways it becomes a popularity contest - where truth is what's accepted by the greatest majority. And this is neither good nor bad. We might point to some instances where a person or an idea were wrong...but the process seems to have held up despite this apparent flaw.

Thanks again Dr. Perry. I only get to pretend to be a scientist, thanks for humoring me

[DonRocks]

Thanks, this is what I had in mind. Is there a "right" time to board the train? Will the train ever leave the tracks? We can never really (really) know.

One of the compelling things I find about science is that it is more a statistical/odds game than a world of absolute truths. Newton's view of physics was right for 100s of years - until it was wrong. In some ways it becomes a popularity contest - where truth is what's accepted by the greatest majority. And this is neither good nor bad. We might point to some instances where a person or an idea were wrong...but the process seems to have held up despite this apparent flaw.

Thanks again Dr. Perry. I only get to pretend to be a scientist, thanks for humoring me

"If I am proved correct, the Germans will call me a German, the Swiss will call me a Swiss citizen, and the French will call me a great scientist. If relativity is proved wrong, the French will call me a Swiss, the Swiss will call me a German and the Germans will call me a Jew." 

-- Albert Einstein

Your comments make me bristle (although they are correct in a "school of hard knocks" sense). I think there *is* absolute truth in science; it's we humans who are imperfect enough not to be able to confirm it; on the other hand, I don't need a mathematical proof to know that the sun will rise tomorrow (or do I?)

[Toogs]

Fascinating stuff, I just wanted to say thanks.  I just discovered this thread today.

[jayandstacey]

Your comments make me bristle (although they are correct in a "school of hard knocks" sense). I think there *is* absolute truth in science; it's we humans who are imperfect enough not to be able to confirm it; on the other hand, I don't need a mathematical proof to know that the sun will rise tomorrow (or do I?)

Agreed, 100%. It is one of the more intersting things science reveals about itself. It does make one bristle. I kind of lump it in with watching a baby deer get caught and eaten by a cheetah - it is not the kind of thing I want to see, but in the bigger picture, circle of life and balance and all that. In the ugliness of a vicious kill, nature achieves harmony.

I also agree that there are some absolutes in science. There must be, as the things of science existed before us and will exist after us. Science is merely our attempt to understand our surroundings. Yet I also think that "truth" rarely exists in a vacuum, except maybe in some parts of math. Scientific Truth is a swirl of beliefs and assumptions... and is really more a measure of usefulness to us, today, in our world.

To your example - you know the sun will rise tomorrow. The experience is pretty truthful. But how can you explain *why* this is...without appeal to some tangental facts like the evidence the earth rotates? The sun has risen every day we've known and it is a very safe bet it will rise tomorrow - that part isn't very interesting. Science is about the "why" and the why in this particular case has changed significantly in just the last few 100 years. The processes that established, then destroyed, then rebuilt that specific truth are fascinating and (for folks like Galileo) life-altering.

So maybe we can be thankful there are people willing to risk their reputations, even their lives, for or against a theory, right or wrong. Each wrong step helps secure the balance of the system and the rigors that ensure no question is left unasked. Yes, money, cultures, tenures and such are on the line at times - all the more reason why a scientist will be hestitant to jump aboard the train until their last possible moment.

(BTW, I've never been a scientist but I majored in the philosophy of science. I could talk all night about this stuff, until the sun comes up [and it will]. At that point we'll be no further along but very entertained - and that's what philosophy does )

[lperry]

Linda, I'd like to ask you in more detail about fossilfarm.org - would you explain to us what this is, in laymen's terms? And in case there are any archaeobotanists out there reading, what the website is intended to do for them?

When I have traveled to other countries, I have been surprised by what is the true limiting factor in peoples' abilities to do research.  Often they have the space, the equipment, the people, the will, and internet access, but their libraries don't have journal subscriptions for their field, if they have any at all, so they can't get information on methodologies.  Apparently, subscriptions are very expensive.  The mission of the FARM is to advance the field of archaeobotany, so the board and I wanted to make basic information on how to set up a lab, conduct your research, and analyze your data freely available to everyone who has a computer to find it.  I was extremely happy this past week when a professor at Florida told me that he had been in two labs in different countries where they are using methods from our site to conduct their research.  All I can find are site hits - I never really know if anyone is using the information.

I have visions of an online comparative database with images of different microfossils, and of an identification form that allows people to score different features of microfossils using pull-down menus of the standard nomenclature we have also published onine.  Eventually, I would like to have the site be a portal for online courses as well.  I could go on and on, but the gist of it is that we are few in numbers, and we are separated by great distances, so an online hub seemed like the best way to connect everyone.  I hope it continues to grow.

[lperry]

Thanks, this is what I had in mind. Is there a "right" time to board the train? Will the train ever leave the tracks? We can never really (really) know.

One of the compelling things I find about science is that it is more a statistical/odds game than a world of absolute truths. Newton's view of physics was right for 100s of years - until it was wrong. In some ways it becomes a popularity contest - where truth is what's accepted by the greatest majority. And this is neither good nor bad. We might point to some instances where a person or an idea were wrong...but the process seems to have held up despite this apparent flaw.

Thanks again Dr. Perry. I only get to pretend to be a scientist, thanks for humoring me

Thank you for your questions, and I really don't think of it as humoring anyone.  I'm an educator, and if I miss an opportunity to teach something to someone who is curious, I'm missing the point of being an educator.

Continuing on your thoughts, scientists don't believe in "proving" anything.  Mathematicians work with proofs and absolutes, but scientists have hypotheses that are either supported or not by the observed data, and enough supporting data leads to a theory, like evolution or gravity.  Theories do get modified or even turned over from time to time, and that is all part of the process.  Scientists tend to enjoy the near-constant changes brought about by accumulating data sets, while others find change disconcerting, so they choose other fields of study, or other belief systems altogether.  A neuroscientist should study that phenomenon.  Then again, one probably already has.

[jayandstacey]

Continuing on your thoughts, scientists don't believe in "proving" anything.  Mathematicians work with proofs and absolutes, but scientists have hypotheses that are either supported or not by the observed data, and enough supporting data leads to a theory, like evolution or gravity.  Theories do get modified or even turned over from time to time, and that is all part of the process.  Scientists tend to enjoy the near-constant changes brought about by accumulating data sets, while others find change disconcerting, so they choose other fields of study, or other belief systems altogether.  A neuroscientist should study that phenomenon.  Then again, one probably already has.

Here's a practical (even fun) application of the idea. Most folks stick to their guns, unable to see another theory - while (I believe) most scientists would jump right to the notion of finding "no's" to be as valuable as staying in the box. On some level, science thrives on the doubter, the one not willing to jump aboard the train. Sure, they may seem mercenary or stuck in their ways - but maybe the overarching concept is to keep throwing ideas out there and seeing what sticks...knowing that a negative result is as informative as a positive:

BTW, I *think* Don's discomfort is with the "stick in the mud" scientist who stands by a theory that's been clearly undermined by new evidence or a better theory. To that point, I agree that's what they are doing, yet I also think it is an OK part of the process, as they will cast shadows on the validity of the new data/theory. And the bigger the change (this can be defined by money, tenure, etc), the bigger the shadows that are cast.

The beauty is that if the new data/theory is sound - it will survive in the shadows even if they never go away. In fact, the process of addressing the shadow only lends credence to the data/theory, assuming it survives.

[DonRocks]

BTW, I *think* Don's discomfort is with the "stick in the mud" scientist who stands by a theory that's been clearly undermined by new evidence or a better theory. 

That's right - again, I think these people care more about themselves than The Truth (and it's not just science; it's all areas of life including, believe it or not, restaurant writing), but I don't want to detour this thread away from Linda and Archaeobotany.

The video above is useful because it shows, in painfully simplistic terms, an important concept - now, if people would only act on it.

Linda, just how small is your field? Hashtag #Archaeobotany goes back to 2013 on page one (so you're secure there for awhile - readers, if you've enjoyed this chat and want to support Linda, please go to that link and retweet the tweet (is "tweet" capitalized these days?) so it gets some exposure in broader circles - we're not getting any local press coverage for this - none - and I'm not counting on it either, but since fossilfarm.org is inherently non-local, Twitter is of more use to Linda than any local coverage.)

[lperry]

Linda, just how small is your field?

Pretty small.  A couple of years ago when we were setting up the foundation, I distributed a survey that was designed to help us understand what the people in the field needed from us.  I distributed the link to the survey via our community email lists and professors I know.  We got 64 responses from a worldwide network and thought that was an excellent turnout.

The field is changing toward an increased reliance on specialized equipment and laboratory space, and this infrastructure is not traditionally found in departments of Anthropology.  Anyone familiar with the politics of space on university campuses will understand that the answers are unlikely to lie within this system.  While Europe, Asia, Africa, and South America are good places to train in archaeobotanical work and find a job, the US is not.  We are dwindling in numbers.  Two people who ran labs have retired in the past year, one person went back into contract archaeology where he will not be training anyone, and another is retiring this year.  Funding for Universities and other institutions has been cut again and again, so people are not getting hired as replacements.  I stopped encouraging people to enter the field several years ago for the simple fact that they will not be able to get a job.  I have been lucky enough to be in circumstances that allowed me to create my own job, as it were, but I am aware that my circumstances are quite unusual.

So that's the gloom and doom of it, but I am trying to alleviate the situation by working outside of the traditional academic box, and I am certain that the problem can be solved.  I believe we must solve it.  The work we do may seem esoteric, but understanding how ancient groups made a living off landscapes that now seem uninhabitable to us is important information in a world with an expanding population.  Understanding what failed, and why societies starved and collapsed, is equally so.  I have faith that we can figure out how to continue, but I do believe it will be in a different framework from that of the past.

[lperry]

I wanted to make a note that Don is asking these last questions out of his own kindness and generosity, and it was not something I expected from the chat.  It is a great honor, and a responsibility, I think, when given the opportunity to share one's field with the general public, to do so to the best of one's abilities.  I genuinely appreciate the input and attention of everyone who has participated, both actively asking questions and quietly reading.  I hope something resonated with each reader.

Edit:  That doesn't mean it's over if someone else has a question.  Please ask.

[ktmoomau]

Linda,

I just wanted to thank you.  I didn't have any questions that others didn't ask, but this has been enjoyable.

[jayandstacey]

What are thoughts on the public nature of scientists like Jane Goodall, Steven J Gould and Carl Sagan? (or Hawking, Feynman, Watson, etc) - are they doing overall more good or harm to their fields and to science overall? Is time spent on popularization spent well?

(Edit: I ask as my greatest inspirations besides my parents were probably Carl Sagan and Bruce Springsteen. But I wonder - what if Carl Sagan spent more time with his eye to the telescope lens vs. the camera lens? Then I think maybe he inspired lots of people into astronomy, such that their eventual collective additions to the field far outweigh the additional contributions he would have made himself with more time to his studies.

You mentioned your field is small and (seemingly) shrinking. Does your field lack a figurehead or the publicity that might garner attention and thus more funding? Or is that unfairly simple? )

[lperry]

What are thoughts on the public nature of scientists like Jane Goodall, Steven J Gould and Carl Sagan? (or Hawking, Feynman, Watson, etc) - are they doing overall more good or harm to their fields and to science overall? Is time spent on popularization spent well?

(Edit: I ask as my greatest inspirations besides my parents were probably Carl Sagan and Bruce Springsteen. But I wonder - what if Carl Sagan spent more time with his eye to the telescope lens vs. the camera lens? Then I think maybe he inspired lots of people into astronomy, such that their eventual collective additions to the field far outweigh the additional contributions he would have made himself with more time to his studies.

It's an interesting question, and I think Wikipedia answers it better than I can.  Carl Sagan, as an example, published more than 600 scientific papers and more than 20 books.  Many people I know have a goal or a job requirement of 2 papers per year, and they spend a great deal of time working.  I think it is not so much that these scientists chose public education over academic research, it is that they chose their science over everything else one can choose in life.

I do think popularization is time well spent for two major reasons.  First, I see no point in doing any kind of research if it cannot be shared with the public.  Second, I also believe that the lack of good science education in our country is an enormous liability to our economic future.  I know how lucky I am.  My parents believed education was the most important aspect of my childhood, and my father, a professor of Economics, worked nights and weekends on consulting jobs so that my sister and I could attend the best schools.  Not everyone has this kind of life, and we, as a society, need to find a way to bring those types of educational opportunities to all children in all schools.  If we combined solid education with the will and creativity of American culture, anything you can imagine would be possible.  

[johnb]

It's an interesting question, and I think Wikipedia answers it better than I can.  Carl Sagan, as an example, published more than 600 scientific papers and more than 20 books.  Many people I know have a goal or a job requirement of 2 papers per year, and they spend a great deal of time working.  I think it is not so much that these scientists chose public education over academic research, it is that they chose their science over everything else one can choose in life.

I do think popularization is time well spent for two major reasons.  First, I see no point in doing any kind of research if it cannot be shared with the public.  Second, I also believe that the lack of good science education in our country is an enormous liability to our economic future.  I know how lucky I am.  My parents believed education was the most important aspect of my childhood, and my father, a professor of Economics, worked nights and weekends on consulting jobs so that my sister and I could attend the best schools.  Not everyone has this kind of life, and we, as a society, need to find a way to bring those types of educational opportunities to all children in all schools.  If we combined solid education with the will and creativity of American culture, anything you can imagine would be possible.  

Here is a link to a NYT science section article this week about Alan Alda that very much goes to this issue.

[Barbara]

Here is a link to a NYT science section article this week about Alan Alda that very much goes to this issue.

Thanks for posting this link. Communicating scientifc principles to a lay public became a real sore point back in the 80s, when a few states wanted to teach Creationism instead of evolution in the public schools. The professional scientists sent to argue with various legislatures and public panels wound up behind the eight ball because they didn't know how to deliver their message effectively to laymen.

BTW: It seems that Carl Sagan was absolutely beloved by his astronomy students at Cornell, his public persona (and personal peccadilloes) notwithstanding.

[johnb]

Thanks for posting this link. Communicating scientifc principles to a lay public became a real sore point back in the 80s, when a few states wanted to teach Creationism instead of evolution in the public schools. The professional scientists sent to argue with various legislatures and public panels wound up behind the eight ball because they didn't know how to deliver their message effectively to laymen.

BTW: It seems that Carl Sagan was absolutely beloved by his astronomy students at Cornell, his public persona (and personal peccadilloes) notwithstanding.

It would appear that the problem did not end in the 80's, and is still very much with us.  Bill Nye tried to attack it in his recent debate with Ken Ham, but a cursory glance at the comments seen in the press shows that the science side still needs to work on its delivery.  Google "Bill Nye Ken Ham debate."  At least one comment strongly suggests science took a hit.  Here is a link that demonstrates what the scientific community is up against.  The confusion between "there" and "their" in a couple of the questions does perhaps reveal something about the intellectual ability of the creationists (yes, snarky comment).

[DonRocks]

This entire concept goes way beyond Archaeobotany, and extends into just about everything in life. I could spend the entire day rattling off examples, from Joe Piscopo being on the cover of Muscle & Fitness, to Arnold Schwarzanegger being voted Governor of California, to George Clooney speaking out about Sudan. It goes on, and on, and on, and you just have to hope that the celebrity layman (sorry, I hate "layperson") in question is either a spokesman for a message that you agree with, or, more rarely, is educated enough to discuss the issue with some intelligence and integrity.

I do not need Madonna lecturing me on much of anything.

[Barbara]

I do think popularization is time well spent for two major reasons.  First, I see no point in doing any kind of research if it cannot be shared with the public.  Second, I also believe that the lack of good science education in our country is an enormous liability to our economic future. 

This entire concept goes way beyond Archaeobotany, and extends into just about everything in life.

I've just been listening to an interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson on Fresh Air.  He was asked about his "talent" for explaining complex ideas to the public. He replied that this is something he actually works at. Too many academics don't do this and, therefore, are bad at explaining what they do in ways that laymen can understand.

JohnB's horrifying examples are a sample of the ignorati who are proud of their lack of education and their close-mindedness. They are preaching to the choir and have no affect on me--except to make me put my face in my hands and sigh.

As for celebrities testifying in front of Congress: the WaPo's Reliable Sources had an interesting piece on this just this week. These folks can bring attention to a problem/situation that non-celebs can't. While I also don't particularly care what Madonna thinks about anything, I give props to those who do their homework and give their time and money to trying to solve difficult problems.

[lperry]

Wow.  The conversation got really interesting while I spent my afternoon in laboratory safety training class.  I'm sure there's a really deep, meaningful, life-altering metaphor in there somewhere, and I could probably figure it out if I hadn't spent the afternoon in laboratory safety training class.  (Kidding - shout-out to OSHA and the hardworking people at GMU EHS.)

You mentioned your field is small and (seemingly) shrinking. Does your field lack a figurehead or the publicity that might garner attention and thus more funding? Or is that unfairly simple? )

I wish I knew the answer to this question.  I do what I can by accepting every speaking engagement offered to me, and I answer emails and questions in person as thoughtfully and carefully as I can.  I have been seeking funding from traditional academic sources, but when it became clear that wasn't going to work, I hit a wall of sorts.  In one of my meetings last week, I was discussing funding with a colleague who works in a museum, and he said that they had an entire staff that does nothing but look for money.  It occurred to me that I may have been asking the wrong question.  Instead of "where can I get funding," I should ask "who do you know who is good at fundraising and might be willing to talk with me."

[jayandstacey]

Wow.  The conversation got really interesting while I spent my afternoon in laboratory safety training class.  I'm sure there's a really deep, meaningful, life-altering metaphor in there somewhere, and I could probably figure it out if I hadn't spent the afternoon in laboratory safety training class.  (Kidding - shout-out to OSHA and the hardworking people at GMU EHS.)

Well that will teach you. 

I wish I knew the answer to this question.  I do what I can by accepting every speaking engagement offered to me, and I answer emails and questions in person as thoughtfully and carefully as I can.  I have been seeking funding from traditional academic sources, but when it became clear that wasn't going to work, I hit a wall of sorts.  In one of my meetings last week, I was discussing funding with a colleague who works in a museum, and he said that they had an entire staff that does nothing but look for money.  It occurred to me that I may have been asking the wrong question.  Instead of "where can I get funding," I should ask "who do you know who is good at fundraising and might be willing to talk with me."

Sorry, my question was a bit unfair.

I was thinking of programs like NASA, that receive huge influxes of money for decades, then wane (relative to their peak) as their popularity with the voting population gets a little bored.   I wonder to what degree the concerns you've voiced about funding and people leaving...are, at the macro level, driven by essentially a popularity contest and can raise and lower with the sentiments of those controlling such choices.

Part of me thinks - "well, NASA is a whole giant field, with sweeping goals and thousands of scientists"...then I think that's simply the popularity contest at work again.  At your root, you are both poking around for answers, knowledge and even new questions.  It just seems more popular to do so out in space vs. on 1000 year old plates and grains.  Maybe.

Which circles back to your comment about finding a good fundraiser.  Such a person is ultimately a salesperson and they have to have a product to sell.  Which is kind of gist of my original question - how is the Archeobotanist's "brand" in your opinion?  

As for celebrities as pitch-folk and some of the other comments above: One example stands out to me as a resounding success.  Not only did the (soon to be) celebrity make the case for funding, but literally change the landscape of their funding for many, many years based on this one presentation.  If you haven't seen it, it is worth a watch:

[lperry]

The confusion between "there" and "their" in a couple of the questions does perhaps reveal something about the intellectual ability of the creationists (yes, snarky comment).

JohnB's horrifying examples are a sample of the ignorati who are proud of their lack of education and their close-mindedness. They are preaching to the choir and have no affect on me--except to make me put my face in my hands and sigh.

I think in examples like this, it is important to remember that not everyone has the same educational opportunities that we have had.  When I was a grad student in Illinois, I taught a pretty large number of students from rural areas where high schools had no biology class.  When i asked them what science class they had taken, they responded that there hadn't been any at all, so I tried my best to show them how wonderful and exciting science can be.  The joy and amazement in their faces when they first looked through the microscope and saw another world - it is still with me today.  In a similar situation, I had a non-traditional student, a retired military gentleman, who wouldn't speak up in class because he was afraid the younger students would mock him.  He stayed after class on many occasions to ask me questions, and I did my best to treat him with kindness and respect.  I know there were and are so many others who never got past that fear to speak up, and the opportunity to teach them was lost.

Often, what we might perceive as a lack of willingness to learn is really a layer, or even an armor, of fear.  Each time I encounter a situation such as this, I do my best to smile, then gently say, "we have a lot of data that indicate otherwise, would you like me to explain it to you?"  I know it can be hard, and I'm still a work in progress, but it is the only method that I have found that really works: respect.  Sometimes it works the first time, sometimes it takes ten times, and I'm still waiting on some people, but unless we can get people engaged in real dialogue, we will continue to have problems.  Try to be understanding, then smother them with kindness and data.  It can't hurt.