Experimental Archaeology

What do we know about the early peopling of our continent and our region? What was the landscape and the climate like then? What can we learn from this natural history about interacting with the land and water today, and moving forward as good stewards? Featuring Amy Covell-Murthy, Archaeology Collection Manager and Head of the Section of Anthropology at Carnegie Museum of Natural History, and Kristina Gaugler, Anthropology Collection Manager at Carnegie Museum of Natural History.

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Episode Transcript

Michael Pisano (00:09):
You're listening to the Anthropocene Archives, a
presentation of We Are Nature.
In this special series ofstories, we're delving deep into
Carnegie Museum of NaturalHistory's 22 million collection
items, raiding cabinets andcases, sifting through objects
and organisms in search ofstories of stewardship,
solutions, and scientificwonder.
On today's episode,experimental archaeology,

(00:35):
collaborative decolonization,and foraging the feral remnants
of the eastern agriculturalcomplex.
Grab your acorns and your shagbark seeds.
It's gonna get nuts.
Welcome to We Are Nature, a showabout natural histories and

(00:56):
livable futures, presented byCarnegie Museum of Natural
History.
I'm your host, amateurcontemporary human Michael
Pisano, and today I'm joined bytwo professional human experts.
Would you please introduceyourselves, friends?

Kristina Gaugler (01:06):
Sure.
My name is Kristina Gaugler.
I'm the Anthropology CollectionManager here at the museum.
And my research interests focusaround food studies and
culinary history.

Michael Pisano (01:17):
Awesome, excellent.

Amy Covell-Murthy (01:18):
My name's Amy Covell-Murthy.
I am Archaeology CollectionManager here at the Carnegie
Museum of Natural History andthe Head of the Section of
Anthropology.
And I primarily study how wecare for human remains in museum
collections and museum ethics.

Michael Pisano (01:31):
Awesome.
We are going to talk about bothof those things at length, I
hope.
Thank you both so much forjoining me today and bringing us
behind the scenes of the humanculture collection here at the
Carnegie.
To kick us off, I guess I waswondering if one or both of you
could tell me a little bit aboutthe scope of these collections,
the archaeological, theanthropological collections.

Amy Covell-Murthy (01:48):
So here at the Carnegie Museum of Natural
History, we have in theanthropology collection total
approximately 1.4 millionobjects.
Yes, and they span the globe.
We have stuff from everycontinent except Antarctica.

Michael Pisano (02:02):
And over what kind of time?
Yeah, so far.
What kind of time period are wetalking about collecting these?

Amy Covell-Murthy (02:07):
Um, the actual collection started about
125 years ago when AndrewCarnegie founded the museum.
Accession number one is theChantress of Amun coffin.

Michael Pisano (02:16):
Do we have a sense of how old the oldest
object in that collection is?
Kristina and I were talkingabout this recently.

Kristina Gaugler (02:21):
And I think I figured out an answer to it.
The most accurately datedobject that we have that we can
pretty for sure say.
We have stone tools from Egyptthat are way predate dynastic
Egypt.
And so those are anywhere from15,000 to 18,000 BCE.
So those are probably some ofthe oldest objects that we have

(02:42):
in the collection.

Michael Pisano (02:43):
And what about locally?
Do we have a kind of time rangefor that?
We're going to talk a littlebit, I think, today, about local
uh eastern woodlands kind ofcollection items.
Oh, what's the kind of oldestobject we have there?

Kristina Gaugler (02:54):
So oldest, we do have Clovis points, so that's
upwards of 11,000 to 10,000years old.
So that's probably the oldest.
And there are that time periodof projectile points in
Pennsylvania.

Michael Pisano (03:06):
Awesome.
Human history, natural historyare often kind of siloed, at
least in many uh visitors'minds, but possibly also
academically.
Can you speak to kind ofresearching these disciplines,
anthropology, archaeology, inthe context of natural history?

Kristina Gaugler (03:25):
I think that as humans, we are a part of
natural history and a part ofthe natural world.
So we are affected by theenvironment as much as we affect
the environment.
So I think there's definitely arole for cultural history in
the natural history museum.
But what you're saying about itbeing siloed, you know,
hopefully in the future we canlook for exhibitions that show

(03:45):
humans with geology and theplants and the animals and sort
of everything together insteadof it just being like this is a
human culture exhibit and thisis a natural history exhibit.

Michael Pisano (03:54):
I sure hope so.
That sounds really exciting.
And I know you're bothinvolved, it feels related in
work around ethics andethnographic collections.
And I am curious about thisidea of decolonizing a museum,
which I know is part of yourwork.

Amy Covell-Murthy (04:05):
I've been lucky enough to be uh chairing
our decolonization working groupin hopes to create a
decolonization council.
We're putting in a lot of hardwork slowly to figure out what
that's gonna look like here.
Ultimately, you know, theCarnegie Museum of Natural
History, just like othermuseums, have directly benefited
from colonialism in the past.
We have appropriated nativecultures to keep telling a white

(04:27):
narrative, and so that's wherewe need to break down our
history as a collectinginstitution and make restitution
with the cultures that we havemonopolized for our own benefit
over the years.
I think one of the best ways todo that is through
collaboration.
I think that's the only way tomove forward.
Give the people who we formerlywere exploiting the chance to
tell the story themselves.

(04:48):
And the only way we can do thatis through transparency and
restitution and repatriation,and going above and beyond the
laws of repatriation to makegood relationships and to
provide a platform formarginalized communities to tell
the stories they want to tell.

Michael Pisano (05:02):
That's a great answer, and I'm really glad that
you're doing that work.
You mentioned repatriation,which also I know you're
involved in NAGPRA.
Can you explain what that is,just for someone who isn't
familiar?

Amy Covell-Murthy (05:12):
Sure.
That's the Native AmericanGraves Protection Repatriation
Act.
It was signed into existence in1991, and it governs the return
of indigenous material tofederally recognized tribes.
I'm very lucky that mypredecessors here at the museum
really put a lot of effort intoreporting of collections that we
had.
And now I'm working onaffiliating everyone else that

(05:33):
we have in the collection forreturn.
I last year completed arepatriation with the Quapaw
Nation in Quapaw, Oklahoma.
We've had human remains forabout 30 years that someone who
lived in Pittsburgh picked upoff of a site in Arkansas and
brought back to Pittsburgh withit, and somehow they ended up in
our collection.
A small amount of human bones,but human bones nonetheless.

(05:56):
We started the process of thisrepatriation at this point
almost 15 years ago.
But because of changes intribal leadership and the
pandemic and a bunch of otherfactors and full consultation,
it took us about 10 years tofinally circle around and be
able to return this individual.
So I flew them to Arkansaswhere I met Carrie Wilson, who's

(06:19):
the NAGPRA coordinator for theQuapaw Nation, and Quapaw.
And talking with her about thetransfer of the human remains to
the Quapaw Nation, we decidedthat it would be great if I
could coordinate the return withthe Quapaw Fall Gathering last
year.
So I volunteered at the QuapawFall Gathering with Carrie, and
we sold 50-50 raffle tickets andran an auction and I ate fry

(06:42):
bread and chili and it waswonderful.
Um, but most importantly, Imade a lot of friends, and in
particular, I made friendswith a Quapaw artist Betty
Gaedtke.
She has been reviving atraditional Quapaw style of
pottery, but putting a moderntwist on it.
And so the museum was able topurchase two of Betty Gaedtke's
vessels.
So now we have a better storyof friendship and collaboration,

(07:06):
and we can tell people aboutthe Quapaw Nation and their
vibrant cultural traditions, andwe can work with them hopefully
forever because of this reallyfor me fun and but also humbling
experience.

Michael Pisano (07:18):
That's one of the best kinds of experience,
isn't it?
Moving us back towards thenatural history side, those are
very intersectional,intermingled sides, but uh, what
do we stand to conserveecologically by conserving
culture, by engaging withcurrent representatives from the
cultures that are collectedhere in the museum?

Kristina Gaugler (07:34):
I think that conserving cultural traditions
and materials and things likethat provide us guidance to
local and traditional knowledge,the ways to best take care of
the planet and to interact withthe land around us.
In terms of, didd you say,conserving ecologically.

Michael Pisano (07:52):
Yeah.

Kristina Gaugler (07:53):
Well, one of the things that's interesting
that's going on now inarchaeology is with technology
getting better, we're betterable to analyze really tiny
seeds and fragments and thingslike that.
And we can do residue analysisto look at plant lipids and
animal fats and things likethat.
We're able to learn about thesetypes of plants and things that

(08:13):
people were domesticating andusing that are maybe extinct or
have gone back to being weedyplants.
And so a lot of the people havebeen domesticating plants for
thousands of years, and there'sthousands of domesticates, and
some of them have sort ofundomesticated and gone back to
being weedy plants.
So we can conserve and have anidea of these types of plants
that people used.
It can help us.

(08:34):
There's plants that are betterable to survive in not very
habitable, habitableenvironments and things like
that.
Yeah, disturbed.
So you can can kind of conservethose plants for the future and
we can maybe bring them back orstudy the ways that people
farmed them.

Michael Pisano (08:50):
There's so much to learn.
And it seems like it fills inthis picture of what life was
like, which I think gets kind oftwo-dimensionalized, you know,
in at least the education that Igot.
But obviously, it was way morecomplex than anything that fits
in an outdated textbook in thiscountry.

Amy Covell-Murthy (09:06):
And I think in speaking about decolonization
on this, too, it's reallyimportant to include indigenous
ways of knowing on top of ourscientific information that we
find.

Michael Pisano (09:14):
Yes.
Talk about that and the waythat those things can work
together because that is verymuch a part of the discourse in
your field now, I imagine.

Amy Covell-Murthy (09:20):
It is, yes.

Michael Pisano (09:21):
Yeah.
And in all science, hopefully.

Amy Covell-Murthy (09:23):
Well, I mean, we we do have the American
Anthropological Association didwrite an apology to the world
for being such a colonialinstitution.

Michael Pisano (09:30):
Oh, that's a nice start. That's something.

Amy Covell-Murthy (09:32):
I think as anthropologists, we've been, you
know, rethinking our disciplinefor a while now.
But it's important to includeindigenous ways of knowing and
how we care for the collections,which Kristina can talk about a
little bit more.

Kristina Gaugler (09:44):
Yeah, in terms of decolonizing the collection,
there's you know, thedecolonization touches on all
different aspects of the museum.
But within the collection thatI'm working at, one of the
things that I've been trying todo is keep this idea that we
have a living collection alivethat's still connected to living
communities.
And this past year we had tworeally awesome opportunities to

(10:04):
explore that.
One was when the ApsáalookeNation, also known as the Crow
the Crow people, they live inMontana, they came to visit the
collection, and so we showedthem the objects that we have in
the collection, and they weresharing ideas, and they're like,
oh, my grandma had this, andeveryone was talking, and it was
really a moving experience.
And also, I think for both Ilearned a lot.
But they also gave really goodideas for storing objects in the

(10:27):
collection that maybe we hadn'tthought about.
So things are in the cabinet,you know, numerically, but they
were saying they opened acabinet and there was a
children's object next to a clubthat was used for war, and they
weren't in love with those twoitems being next to each other,
and so it really made us startthinking about using indigenous
protocols for storage andmaterial culture of where we

(10:50):
store things.
So we're taking into accounttheir preferences for how things
are stored.
And then in late February, wehad the Kuikuro visit.
They're a group that livesalong the Xingu River in
northern Brazil, and their chiefAfukaka and his son and
grandson came and they were alsolooking around at the
collection, and um, it wasreally inspiring.

(11:12):
They were like, oh, this palmleaf is a little bit brittle.
We could come back up andrepair it for you.
And I think that really fitswell in with this idea of a
living collection that'sevolving and in service to the
communities.
So that's just one aspect ofdecolonization that we're
working on within the collectionspace itself.

Amy Covell-Murthy (11:29):
And like Kristina pointed out, like we
had for multiple decades thoughtone object was something, and
then when the Aspsaalooke camein, they were like, oh no, no,
no, this is something totallydifferent.
Not at all what you thought itwas, which is really important.

Michael Pisano (11:43):
Yeah, like you said, opening up, yep, opening
up the spaces and the dialogueis uh just incredibly valuable.
I'm so glad to hear about thatwork happening here.
Uh, not to cut that short, butlet's start talking about what's
on the table in front of us.
My understanding is that theytell a story together kind of as
a group, but I would like tostart with them kind of one at a
time.

Mackenzie Kimmel (12:06):
Collection item one is a roughly
rectangular stone measuring fourinches long by four inches wide
by one inch tall.
The rock's warm tan surface ismottled with brown and orange.
It appears to be sedimentarywith visible tiny grains that

(12:32):
create a gently abrasivetexture.
You might be tempted tooverlook collection item one as
nothing more than a pleasant butunremarkable stone, if not for
the following distinguishingfeature.
At the approximate center ofthe stone's top face, notice a

(12:54):
bowl-like depression measuringone inch diameter, one half inch
deep.
Can you identify collectionitem one?

Kristina Gaugler (13:10):
Sure.
This is a little piece ofsandstone.
That's a common stone inwestern Pennsylvania.
A lot of the bedrock and thingsare sandstone.
So this is a stone that has alittle cup or a little hole in
it.
Nuts would have been placedthere and then hit with a rock
or a piece of wood as like ahammer stone to crack the nut.
And over time, that's how thatgroove developed from use of for

(13:33):
uh cracking nuts.

Michael Pisano (13:34):
And when and where is this from?

Kristina Gaugler (13:36):
So this is part of our teaching collection,
so it doesn't have quite asgood of provenance as some of
the other items, but this isfrom western Pennsylvania dating
from 900 to a few thousandyears old.

Michael Pisano (13:47):
Uh, this nutting stone, is that what we're
calling it, right?
A nutting stone.
What kind of nuts wereavailable in this area that
might have been smushed in thisrock?

Kristina Gaugler (13:56):
In the earlier time, the Paleo-Indian time,
much of northern Pennsylvaniawould have been covered in
glaciers.
So um there wouldn't have beenas many nuts available.
So that's when you start seeingthese around the archaic
period.
And that would have been umevery single nut that exists
just went out of my head.
Uh beech nuts.
Um there's one, acorn, um,hickory, hickory was a big one,

(14:19):
and chestnuts was a big one.

Michael Pisano (14:22):
Yes, and those nuts all have stories.
Chestnut I know is one thatmany people around here know,
the story of chestnut blight.
Let's talk a little bit aboutthe importance of nuts in the
human diet.
What would have been important,especially at this back, you
know, this time in history?

Kristina Gaugler (14:35):
Obviously, people would have had a pretty
large type of diet that wasinvolved lots of things.
So nuts have a lot of good fatsand a lot of fiber and protein,
and so they would have reallyfilled out the diet in that way.
And they would have been eatinganimals also, but um, nuts are
great.
You can pound them into apowder, you can add them to
soups and stews, you can storethem for long, longer periods of

(14:59):
time.
So they would have been apretty valuable food resource
for people.

Michael Pisano (15:03):
Absolutely.
And do we think that peoplealso would have planted and
cultivated nut trees, or is thatsomething that they were
foraging more?
Is that something we just don'tknow?

Kristina Gaugler (15:11):
I don't know if people were for or
cultivating nut trees.
That's a good question.
I haven't read anythingspecifically about that, but I
know that there are accounts ofanimals seasonally when nuts
come, they would they know wherethe best producing nut trees
are, and they can go there notonly to gather at the season,
but also they know which animalsare hanging out around those

(15:32):
trees at that time to hunt forthem.
So there was a lot of differentuses for the nuts, nut trees.

Michael Pisano (15:39):
Can you tell me about some of the biodiversity,
the non-humans that were alsoenjoying the nuts?

Kristina Gaugler (15:44):
One of the ones that first comes to my
mind, because a friend of minedid research on this, but the
passenger pigeon, which wentextinct after uh colonization
and for uh habitat loss, butsome of the people that study
the archaeology of passengerpigeons look for these historic
like nut groves because theythey love to eat them, but also
forest animals, raccoons andsquirrels.

Amy Covell-Murthy (16:03):
Small mammals, small mammals like
chipmunks, the animals you mightimagine today running around.

Michael Pisano (16:09):
In my experience in the woods, which I try to
get out as often as I can aroundPittsburgh, I don't really see
many nut trees.
I see black walnut trees prettyoften, but besides that, it's a
little bit of a rare find, atleast around the city proper.
I guess I wonder what factorsmight account for less locally
available fresh nuts in our areatoday.

Kristina Gaugler (16:28):
I think probably one of the things that
has to do with that was that inthe late 1800s PA was almost
completely clear-cut.
And so there's there's very fewold growth forests, there's a
few little stands.
And also, like you mentioned,the blight, the American
chestnut blight, and things likethat.
But I still see nuts.
My grandparents have propertyup north, and there's shag bark

(16:49):
hickory and also oak trees.
We don't really eat acorn verymuch anymore.
It takes a lot of processing,but acorn flour is really good.
Let's see, I see hickory.
I do, you don't you seechestnut, but not American
chestnut as much.
So I think some of those thingscontributed to not seeing as
many nut trees around.

Michael Pisano (17:06):
So part of it you're saying is just knowledge
and vision and what we're ableto actually interpret in the
landscape.
Yeah.
That knowledge has passed awaymore than maybe some of the
species, though.
Also, clearly, you know, it's acombination.

Kristina Gaugler (17:17):
And then also what's served in the stores.
There's a lot more nuts thatare out in the world that we
don't you don't eat because it'snot in a store, but you can eat
them.
And so, yeah, what you'resaying about indigenous
knowledge or traditionalknowledge of what to eat.
There's some of them are stillout there.

Amy Covell-Murthy (17:32):
Right.
So we should use acorns a wholelot more, is what we're saying.

Kristina Gaugler (17:35):
I try I've tried it, it is tough.

Michael Pisano (17:37):
It is tough.
It's a lot of work.
Can one of you just brieflydescribe that process?
Because I've I've also tried itand it's quite a bit.

Kristina Gaugler (17:44):
My big experience was I was out
gathering acorns on a collegecampus, so I looked like a crazy
person.
And uh I laid them all out inmy backyard to dry them.
And the next day when I cameback, they were almost all gone
because squirrels came and tookall of them.
Um, so that was hilarious thatthey had like this big feast

(18:04):
that I provided for them.
Yeah, you can dry them out inyour oven too, and not try to
dry them out in the sun like Idid, because animals will steal
them.
But dry them out in their ovenand pound them, and you can put
the meal in cheesecloths and tryand run it through water a lot
until it's clear.

Michael Pisano (18:20):
It's got a lot of tannins in it, is that right?
That makes it really bitter.

Kristina Gaugler (18:23):
Yeah, it has lots of tannins and it can upset
your stomach a little bit andthings like that.
But there are some really greataccounts from the Northwest
Coast of acorn harvesting andthe way that traditional acorn
making the flour and the breadand things like that.
So, and there's even YouTubevideos.
So, those are things you can gocheck out if you want to try
and make your own acorn flour.

Michael Pisano (18:42):
I think that the effort of doing it is well
worth it.
I think that there's somethingto be gained from kind of
working for your food, trying tofind your food in the
landscape, connecting it to theecology.
I wonder what your experienceswith that are, and then maybe
we'll move on to the next objecthere.

Amy Covell-Murthy (18:56):
Kristina and I both love cooking.
So we're, I mean, I know I'mspeaking for both of us right
now, but we love YouTube videosthat tell you how to do stuff,
and we've tried to makeeverything.
Personally, right now, I'mtrying to find a good recipe for
dandelion wine.

Michael Pisano (19:12):
Nice.

Amy Covell-Murthy (19:12):
And my grandfather, my
great-grandfather made it and itwas delightful, but he didn't
teach anyone how he did it.
So I've been for years tryingto perfect it with things I find
in my backyard.

Michael Pisano (19:23):
It's a quest, which I feel like you know, is
that gets at kind of what Ienjoy about it is that there is
a little bit of effort, andthrough that effort you connect
to a story, right?
A family member, uh a cherishedmemory, right?
There's there's reallysomething there.
And then there's also theconnection you make to nature
and the ecology of the placewhere you take the food from, or

(19:43):
you, you know, try to hopefullyrespectfully take the food
from.
Do you you just talked aboutacorn flour?
Do you have another kind ofstory about connecting to your
food like that?

Kristina Gaugler (19:53):
Well, I like to, like I mentioned, my
grandparents have a little bitof land north of here.
And so there's lots of berrieson the property, so we were
always picking berries.
There were a few pawpaw trees,which um they're not there
anymore, so I want to replantthose.
But I love the thrill offinding a pawpaw tree or
mayapples if you're familiarwith those along the ground.

Michael Pisano (20:15):
I am, but you know, I think people I talk to
don't know what pawpaws or mayapples are.
So could you just describe bothof those really quickly?

Kristina Gaugler (20:22):
Yeah, pawpaw is a tree that this is about as
north as you can find them inPittsburgh.
And they some people call themcustard bananas, but they have a
really tropical flavor andthey're really creamy inside and
they have these big, big, darkseeds inside.
They're delicious.
They almost are like eatinglike a tropical creme brulee.
Once you pick them, they ripensuper fast.

(20:43):
And so they really you can'tfind them in the grocery stores
and things like that.
Sometimes farmers markets willhave them, but you really have
to eat them right when you pickthem.
Eating them as you're sittingunderneath the tree is really
the best, the best thing to do.
Yeah.

Michael Pisano (20:55):
Yes, a trail side nibble is uh they call it.
Okay, and then a maypop ifyou're looking a little lower in
the forest.

Kristina Gaugler (21:01):
Yeah, these were all over the ground when I
was growing up, and it was notuntil very long.

Michael Pisano (21:05):
Maypop, I'm sorry.

Kristina Gaugler (21:06):
Mayapple.

Michael Pisano (21:06):
Mayapple.
Maypop is another local fruit.
I thought that was like a slang.
Maypop is our local passionfruit variety, the Appalachian
passion fruit, which is anotherinsane tropical native fruit.
Oh my gosh.
Well, check it out.
Maypops, um, it's in thepassiflora zone.
And yeah, they taste like sour,and uh they have this very
showy, huge white or purpleflower with kind of like an

(21:28):
architectural spiral ystructure.
They're wild, they're so tasty.
U

Kristina Gaugler (21:32):
I want to try one.

Michael Pisano (21:32):
Yeah.

Kristina Gaugler (21:33):
Well, mayapples, yeah, they're on the
ground, and you can sometimesfind this little fruit
underneath of the leaves if youlook, if you lift it up.
And I actually haven't madeanything with it, but I've heard
that you can make, you don'twant to eat them raw, but you
can make jam or things like thatout of it.
And so that's something I'mexcited to to try.

Michael Pisano (21:49):
They're wonderful.
Um, it probably is important tosay that every part of the
plant, besides the very ripefruit, is not good to eat in the
toxic kind of way.
So anyway, but check them out.
There's plenty, like you said,of beautiful stuff on YouTube,
online, resources for foragingwherever you live.
We are moving on, in fact, tothis other object we've got.

Mackenzie Kimmel (22:13):
Collection item two is also a rock.
It is heftier than collectionitem one, comparable in size to
a generous potato.
Like collection item one, it isalso sandstone from
Pennsylvania, but something hashappened to change it.

(22:38):
The tan surface is darker anddeeper.
The orange mottling appearsricher and more pronounced.
You might hypothesize that thesediments that agglomerated to
make this piece of sandstonewere simply different colors
than collection item one.
However, note that along therock's side there is a

(23:03):
conspicuously flat circularsection ringed by an orange
outline.
This appears to be a cutaway tothe interior of the stone,
revealed by a section that hascracked and sheared off.
The color within looks lighter,almost identical to collection

(23:24):
item one.
What happened here?
What is collection item two?

Kristina Gaugler (23:34):
This is a piece of burnt rock that
archaeologists call FCR, whichstands for firecracked rock.
And this is something that youfind everywhere because if you
have been camping and you builda fire pit and you put rocks
around it and they get burnt,you have created firecracked
rock and it stays there forever.
And so the remnants ofcampfires and hearths and

(23:57):
cooking stick around for a longtime.
And the reason that I wasinterested in studying this,
because it's really common atarchaeological sites to sort of
note that this is present andthen they sort of discard it or
leave it there.
And I was trying to make thecase for the fact that these
have a lot more interpretivepotential for understanding.
So what I was looking at wasspecifically how were people

(24:19):
using heated stone in theeastern woodlands to cook their
food.
There's accounts in other partsof the country and the world
for stone boiling, so heatingrounded stones and submerging
them in water or mush to bringit to a boil to cook your food.
But there's not as muchevidence for that here.
And so I did some experimentalarchaeology, so cooking with
stone, and I was trying to lookat the way that rocks fractured

(24:42):
to see if if they fracturedifferently if you take a hot
rock and submerge it intoliquid, it rapidly cools.
Does it fracture differently ifit's sort of a hearthstone?

Michael Pisano (24:51):
So you actually tried different methods of
cooking to see how they shook upor how the rocks would crack
and things like that.

Kristina Gaugler (24:58):
So I all the rocks that we created
experimentally, I compared toburned firecracked rock from
archaeological sites, and it'sthe early stages of the
research.
It did seem like there was someevidence for stone boiling,
which was really exciting.
So yeah, more experiments tocome.
And I want to cook acorn mushwith doing stone boiling.

(25:19):
That would be really fun.

Michael Pisano (25:20):
Uh well, what might humans have cooked over a
fire that you know featured thisrock or with this rock
submerged in it, helping itboil?

Kristina Gaugler (25:28):
In this part of the world, stone boiling is
more common, as far as we know,before the introduction of
pottery.
And so it does seem like somepeople in some parts of the
world still will put heatedrocks into pottery, but it's a
little more fragile.
In other places, you would umlike the rocks might crack the
pottery.
In other places you could dig apit or you could use the lining

(25:48):
of an animal's stomach or hideand you can stone boil in that.

Michael Pisano (25:52):
I wonder what kind of foods people were eating
that you know would have uhthey would have cooked over a
fire or with stone boiling.
What what kind of you knowdiversity of diet are we talking
about?

Kristina Gaugler (26:01):
Sometimes at archaeological sites you find
these big piles like middens ofburned stone.
And one of the things thatpeople think are that maybe
these are seasonal examples ofcatching fish and laying the
fish all across the top androasting them or steaming them,
and then also parching nuts, soyou have these big burned piles
of firecracked rock that maybethey were during nut harvest

(26:23):
putting all the nuts on there topre-prepare them for cooking
and things like that.
So that's one thing.
Also, just generally, you know,you're cooking pretty much
everything over stones andthings like that.
And also, people use stones innon-cooking applications, like
in sweat lodges and type ofthings like that, too.
Um, I've heard accounts ofpeople heating stones and just
putting them under theirblankets for warmth at night.

(26:45):
So there's lots of things thatpeople used those for.

Michael Pisano (26:48):
I mean, a rock is a very good friend, I think.
We've got two examples righthere.
Yeah, and I guess aside fromcooking, not just rocks, but
what can you tell me about therelationship between humans and
fire at this period?
Because I think in other partsof the world, right, we have
either direct evidence orongoing tradition of fire used
in land management andindigenous traditions.
What do we know about thepeoples here, which I know it's

(27:11):
it's a little bit more scantmaybe?

Kristina Gaugler (27:13):
I think that people think in this area that
there was slash and burn type ofagriculture happening.
So fire in that regard isobviously used for cooking.
But in terms of landmanagement, I I think it's it's
known that in this area peoplewere practicing slash and burn,
at least in later times.

Michael Pisano (27:28):
And so that's where you're clearing an area of
woodland to then cultivatesomething else in?

Kristina Gaugler (27:34):
Yeah, grow gardens or you know, later on in
time when corn and beans andsquash came in, when you were
farming that type of plant, youknow, you would have used it for
that.
And also there's a term thatarchaeologists use called the
Eastern Agricultural Complex.
Thousands of years before cornand things were introduced, we
have evidence for plantdomestication in this area.
And I think that people kind ofassume that early agriculture,

(27:58):
like domestication, began insort of the fertile crescent.
But now it seems like theremight have been independent
centers for domestication aroundthe world.
And so a lot of there's a lotof weedy plants like
quinopodium, which is related toquinoa, it's called goose foot,
um, marsh elder, sunflower,this type of local native
squash.
There's lots of little plantsI'm forgetting.

(28:20):
So there's a plant that'scalled little barley.
You see a lot now, they're justsort of weedy plants, but
paleoethnoethnobotanists thatstudies seeds, you can tell the
difference between a wildvariety and a variety that's
domesticated or becomingdomesticated.
And so archaeology is reallyimproving our techniques.
We can analyze much smallersamples than we ever could.

(28:41):
You can look at phytolys, theselittle silica pieces within
plant cell walls, and you can dostarch analysis, and like she
was saying, residue.
You can scrape a little pieceoff and see plant uh fats
essentially.
So it'd be really neat to learnmore about these uh types of
plants and how we can use themto help uh increase the
diversity of our of our foodtoday.

Michael Pisano (29:03):
Yeah, that's exactly where I would love to go
next.
Talk to me a little bit aboutthat kind of relationship to
food today and what you think wecan learn from the nuances that
are now coming to light fromthese advances in technology.

Kristina Gaugler (29:16):
Yeah, I think archaeology, specifically
paleoethnobotany, has a lot tooffer us with extinct species
and also just giving us an ideaof what types of plants can be
domesticated.
I would love to start growinglike goosefoot and myself
picking the best or see if I canstart to just domesticate it or
something like that.
But well, the foods that we eattoday, the diversity of them

(29:38):
has gotten really low.
And uh, I think bananas arelike the big case everyone talks
about.
It's one type of banana.
It's you can get the samebanana everywhere.
And if there's any sort of cropfailure or blight that hits a
monocrop, yeah.
So I think just increasing thediversity of the plants that we
eat is beneficial to the localenvironment that the plants
grow, but also to us, andthey're healthful.

Michael Pisano (29:59):
Yeah, absolutely.
It's like there's a microbiomein the soil that needs a
diversity of life.
There's a microbiome in us thatneeds a diversity of inputs.
And then climate-wise, like youmentioned, the monoculture
problem, it's not onlysusceptible to things like
blight, it's also kind ofterrible in the industrial scale
practices that we haveinstituted for maintaining that
sort of system.

(30:20):
It doesn't help the diversityof other living things.
I could go on about that, I'msure.
Yeah, I think it's prettyuncontroversial to say, right,
that the food system is a littlebit busted and in need of
reform, I would say, towardsfood sovereignty as much as
towards ecological concerns.
I know food justice is part ofyour scholarship.

(30:41):
I'd love to hear from both ofyou, but I imagine starting with
you, Kristina, kind of about, Imean, what is food justice and
how does it then connect to yourwork here?

Kristina Gaugler (30:50):
For me, food justice is such a large topic.
I think that my part in it, Ihave a just the small part that
I kind of contribute to thistopic has to do with studying
the ways that people cooked inthe past and also in the
present, like looking attraditional knowledge around the
world.
That's sort of a small part.
But in general, you know, foodjustice is a social justice

(31:12):
topic, looking at social justicethrough food and access to food
and things like that.
And then also food sovereignty,you mentioned that.
That's not only that everybodyhas a basic human right to
healthy food, but that alsopeople have a right to eat what
they want and how they want.
And so having access to yourcultural or communities or your

(31:33):
religions traditional foods,that you also have a right to
have access to culturallyappropriate food.
Learning about the ways thatpeople are cooking around the
world and things like that.
And in the past, it's just sortof one part of that sort of
bigger discussion.

Michael Pisano (31:51):
Okay, so these objects are still here.
We can still talk about them,but let's let's get into this
third collection item thatyou've brought and then kind of
put this together as a picture.

Mackenzie Kimmel (32:03):
Collection item three is not a rock.
It is, however, rich inminerals and sediments.
The collection item includessix discreet pieces, which are
all housed within a single9-inch by 12-inch case shaped
like a picture frame.

(32:24):
This collection of items issandwiched between a clear pane
and soft white felt.
The surface of each piece iscovered in faint uniform bands.
Some feature lightly engravedpatterns in addition to the

(32:46):
banding.
They range in color from pinkto ochre to charcoal gray.
Looking closely, you can seemany tiny, smooth, light gray
flecks embedded throughout.
Can you identify collectionitem three?

Amy Covell-Murthy (33:07):
So we brought a couple of pretty decorated
rims from uh ceramic vesselsthat were all found at a site
called the McJunkin site, whichis an archaeological site that's
located in Allegheny County.
The site number is 36 AL17,meaning it was the 17th site to
be reported to the state.
And at that time it would havebeen reported to us because it

(33:28):
would have been when we were therepository for the state
museum.
Most of the ceramics that youfind in this area were meant to
be used.
We don't find anything purelyfor aesthetics, really.
But as you can see on these,well, people at home can't see.
Um, there's a lot of heavilyincised decoration on the rims,
which is where most of thedecoration would be.

(33:49):
These are shell-temperedceramics, meaning that crushed
up shell was mixed with thelocally dug clay to keep the
pots from exploding when beingfired because they expand and
contract.
That was because at this timethere were, as you know, lots of
freshwater mussels that wedon't see as often now, but

(34:09):
happily are making a resurgencein a lot of places.

Michael Pisano (34:11):
Very excitingly.
We just talked about that withTim Pearce.

Amy Covell-Murthy (34:14):
Oh, did you?
That's amazing.
Um, I grew up closer to EriePA, but near Franklin,
Pennsylvania.

Michael Pisano (34:19):
Sure.

Amy Covell-Murthy (34:19):
Along French Creek.
And French Creek is filled withfreshwater mussels.
So I've seen them my wholelife, but didn't realize that
they didn't exist in the lowerAllegheny River or other places.

Michael Pisano (34:29):
Yes, they have needed some assistance to come
back to these systems, butthankfully, like you said, it's
a little bit of a success storyin the making.

Amy Covell-Murthy (34:35):
So I fell in love with Eastern Woodland
ceramics when I was an undergradat Clarion University and wrote
an undergraduate research grantto create them myself.
So we're talking about somemore experimental archaeology.

Kristina Gaugler (34:48):
I love it.

Michael Pisano (34:50):
Please tell me more.

Amy Covell-Murthy (34:51):
So I went and dug my own clay at a stream
bank in Clarion County, closerto the National Forest, because
I had been working on somearchaeological sites along the
Allegheny River near TyneestaPA.
And I wanted to recreate a potthat we had found at a site that
I had dug that summer.
And the pot itself was in about800 pieces.
So, you know, first thing wasto put it back together.

Michael Pisano (35:13):
The most infernal Lego available.
Very cool.

Amy Covell-Murthy (35:17):
I mean, in order to even do this
experiment, I had to actuallytake ceramics classes at the
university and ended up almostgetting a minor in ceramics from
taking so many ceramicsclasses.
So I dug my own clay on out ofa stream bank and I camped out
with my husky and a few friendsand fired it overnight in a in a

(35:39):
pit.
You have to kind of bake thepottery in like a makeshift
oven.
So what I used to sealeverything in, first you burn
the fire as hot as you possiblycan for a really long time, and
then you let it go outnaturally.
And when the embers are reallyhot and covering your pots, it's
really awful because you haveno idea what's going on with

(36:01):
them.
So they could all be broken.
Um so uh what I did was I Itook a bucket and filled it with
leaves and water and then usedwet leaves to seal in the top of
the oven and then slept.
And in the morning got to digout my pots, and none of them
were broken when I pulled themout.

(36:21):
But um, most of them broke alittle bit later because I had
made them too thick.

Michael Pisano (36:26):
Gotcha.
Okay.

Amy Covell-Murthy (36:27):
But it was really a fun experiment figuring
out what the shape of the potwas.

Michael Pisano (36:32):
Yeah, can you describe a little bit about what
it might have looked like?

Amy Covell-Murthy (36:35):
Most of the Eastern Woodlands pots are are
bag, we call it bag-shaped.
It's they have rounded bottomsand rims on the top, and they
were mostly cord impaddled,meaning they wrapped a cord
around a stick and hit theoutside of it.
It makes a little pattern, butscientifically speaking, it like
strengthens the molecules onthe outside of the vessel and so
it'll last longer.

Michael Pisano (36:54):
I had a um ceramics teacher in college.
I I am an art student uh bytraining.

Kristina Gaugler (37:00):
Nice.

Michael Pisano (37:00):
Uh and on the first day of ceramics class, he
had a um a wooden paddle thatwas much more kind of like
fraternity aesthetic, not greatlooking, pretty terrifying
object, actually.
And he uh said, you just haveto really connect with your
clay.
And he uh had a huge, you know,maybe 10-pound mound of clay,
and he ran around it justslapping it, slapping it.

(37:22):
And he explained that actuallythis would have some sort of
structural integrity impact onthe lump that he was uh
demonstrating on.
But anyway, that just broughtthat back, and I felt like I had
to say it out loud.
Thank you.

Amy Covell-Murthy (37:34):
Um it's true.

Michael Pisano (37:36):
Yes.

Amy Covell-Murthy (37:37):
You have to really want to work with your
hands to make clay pots.

Michael Pisano (37:45):
Similarly to this kind of question about you
know connecting to your food bydoing it maybe the hard way or
the scenic, you know, kind ofroute.
We I think consume a lot ofobjects, we get a lot of objects
just with a click at thispoint, or um there's many ways
to procure, but I think it'smuch less common to make your
own.
I wonder what you kind of tookaway from that experience.

(38:07):
It sounded like a potent nightof camping with your husky next
to the embers of your fire,right?

Amy Covell-Murthy (38:12):
Like I mean, the terror of not knowing if
they had cracked or not wasreally the big it was so
exciting to open up because theychanged color completely.
Like the clay I had dug wasgray and my pots were pinkish
red um with fire clouds on them.

Kristina Gaugler (38:27):
Yeah, the fire clouds all over the place.

Amy Covell-Murthy (38:29):
Yeah, you never know what they're gonna
look like when they come out.
Where the ash falls on it willchange the colors on the outside
of it.

Michael Pisano (38:35):
Um collaborative with the fire.

Amy Covell-Murthy (38:37):
It's kind of and then the I mean, once
they're when they're used forcooking, that that changes them
too.
Yeah.
Um we don't find a lot of wholepottery in Pennsylvania, mostly
because, as Kristina said,everything was cut and most
thing most every archaeologicalsite is under what was farmland.
So we find them in plow zonesspread across really long

(38:58):
distances in lots and lots ofpieces.
It's it's not very often thatwe find fully intact vessels
here.

Michael Pisano (39:04):
And you said that there's cooking that's
going on in these pots, or arethese vessels used for anything
else that you speculated?

Amy Covell-Murthy (39:09):
Storage mostly, especially the big ones.
The big ones were probablystorage.

Michael Pisano (39:13):
And that's storing what kinds of objects?

Amy Covell-Murthy (39:15):
Like the nuts that we talked about earlier.

Kristina Gaugler (39:18):
And in later times, corn.

Amy Covell-Murthy (39:19):
Yeah.

Michael Pisano (39:20):
Yeah, awesome.
Okay, so we've kind of gonethrough these things one at a
time, but I do want to kind ofimagine together, leaning on
your kind of maybe back andforth, build build me a little
picture of the kind of likescene of life suggested by these
this collection of objects.

Kristina Gaugler (39:38):
So you're walking in the woods, no
, I'm just kidding.

Michael Pisano (39:40):
No, come on, let's do it.

Kristina Gaugler (39:42):
And you gather a nut.

Michael Pisano (39:44):
I play Dungeons and Dragons.
We can do this.

Kristina Gaugler (39:47):
So do I.

Michael Pisano (39:47):
Well.

Kristina Gaugler (39:48):
But um, yeah, gathering some nuts, you can
crack them with a nutting stoneand then potentially parch them
over firecracked rock.
And there's still recipes todayof different types of acorn
soups and and mushes and thingsthat you can create at home, but
some of these may have beencooked in in the smaller
vessels.
Or I know sometimes you addnut, ground nut to thicken soups

(40:11):
and stews.
That kind of also is timedependent.
So if people were traveling,especially earlier, the closer
you get to, you know, thePleistocene time period, the
Paleo indian period and theArchaic, so people were
traveling seasonally to get, youknow, there was nuts at this
time, there was berries at thistime, and fish and shellfish and

(40:32):
and things like that.
And so those would have beensmaller bands like mom, dad,
grandparents, kids, things likethat.
And then the closer you get tonow, and especially with the
introduction of crops like corn,beans, and squash again, the
three sisters, people werebecoming a little bit more
sedentary, still leaving to huntand things like that, but
staying closer to one place, sohaving gardens and that type of

(40:54):
horticulture.
And yeah, so that's sort ofgenerally people are becoming
traveling less, traveling lessand shorter distances through
time.

Michael Pisano (41:03):
And let's say you're walking through the woods
and you arrive and there's aclearing and you see some
structures, maybe.
What might the architecturehave looked like?
What might this kind of areawhere people settled have looked
like?

Amy Covell-Murthy (41:16):
Oh, that's also dependent on time periods.
But if we're if we're stickingaround the woodland period, the
culture that we refer to as theMonongahela cultural tradition,
we don't know what they callthemselves.
They were more sedentary andthey started building palisades,
fences around their villages.
Um, they built roundhousesinstead of long houses.

Kristina Gaugler (41:33):
They the Monongahela have a really
interesting structure that seemsto be unique to them that we
sometimes call petal houses.
You would have a palisade, afortified village, and then
you'd have the roundhousesaround the outside, and then
sometimes in the middle you'dhave this larger, what we are
thinking it might be a communalstructure, called a petal house,
so it's a roundhouse, but thenit has these little structures

(41:55):
going around the outside thatresemble the petals of a flower.
And we think that those mighthave been used for storage.
You sometimes find like cachesof seeds or charred nuts or even
FCR or pottery.
So the I the thought now isthat maybe it was a storage
structure.
So that's sort of what youwould see in that type of type
of village.

Michael Pisano (42:15):
Like what would you want people to know about
the people living in ourlandscape at that time?
Like what do you think wouldmaybe surprise them?
What gets you excited aboutimagining and reconstructing
some of the details of thesetimes?

Kristina Gaugler (42:29):
As a native Pittsburger, I remember in
school, you don't really learnvery you learn a little bit
about some of the generalitiesof Native American culture and
things in history, but I don'tthink people realize the time
depth that people have beenliving in this part of the
world, in Pittsburgh.
For example, the Monongahelagroup, but there are many older,
older groups that lived in thisarea.
Just some of the history ofthis area.

(42:51):
People have been living insouthwestern Pennsylvania as
long as almost anywhere else inthe country.
There's really old sites aroundhere, so...

Michael Pisano (42:58):
That brings us to a question of how long people
have been living in thiscountry, in this land.

Kristina Gaug (43:05):
Archaeologically, and now, especially with
advancements in DNA, we are weknow that people came across the
Bering Land Bridge, that thecurrent Native American
population is ancestrallyconnected to Asia.
Let's see, they came across theBering Land Bridge, probably in
multiple migrations.
There's some evidence that theycame, people maybe walked

(43:26):
across, but also maybe came downthe coast by boat.
It's interesting because paleosites, there's not really an
epicenter.
They're sort of spread allacross the United States in
Central and South America.
There's not really a line ofarchaeological sites that we can
sort of follow.
And one of the oldest sites ofhuman habitation in the entire
country is in Pennsylvania atMeadowcroft.

(43:46):
And that's very far from theBering Land Bridge.
So that's sort of interesting.
So in Pennsylvania, there'sevidence between 16 even to
19,000 years ago, evidence forpeople living in southwestern
Pennsylvania.

Michael Pisano (44:00):
What about the movement of so you mentioned
Three Sisters before, andthere's some story of
domestication in like Centraland South America of corn, for
example, and then you see someof that moving across.
Is that what story does thattell?

Kristina Gaugler (44:13):
As far as I know, there is a type of squash
that's native to the easternwoodlands.
But corn and beans did sort ofdevelop in Mesoamerica and make
its way up here.
I think the earliest evidencefor corn in Pennsylvania is
about 2300 years ago.
And then for domesticatedbeans, I think like the 13th
century or around that time inPennsylvania.

(44:34):
So, but you see squash a littlebit before that.

Amy Covell-Murthy (44:38):
We haven't mentioned this yet, but the soil
in Pennsylvania is prettyacidic.
So archaeologically speaking,organics don't preserve here
very well.
So we don't see people'sclothing or their footwear, any
of those types of things.
So it's really hard to try tofigure out a lot of stuff when
those things are gonecompletely.

Michael Pisano (44:59):
How do you go about filling in those gaps?
I mean, is this like somethingthat you're very careful to not
do?
Is this something that you arelooking at other parts of the
country for?

Amy Covell-Murthy (45:08):
Yeah, a lot of both.
I think one of the bestexamples for me is the first
time I saw what it looked liketo excavate a longhouse or
structure.
Yeah.
Because the you know poles thatheld the walls up aren't don't
really exist anymore, whatyou're excavating is a different
colored cylinder of dirt.

Michael Pisano (45:25):
Yes.

Amy Covell-Murthy (45:25):
Like 12 feet below the ground.
So archaeology is very tediousand very time consuming.
And because we don't havebeautiful aesthetic pots like
they do in the southwest, wedon't have as many people
studying in this area.
So I think just for me, gettingmore people interested in
pursuing graduate degrees andworking in southwestern or
western Pennsylvania would bereally exciting.

Michael Pisano (45:47):
Absolutely.
Yeah.

Amy Covell-Murthy (45:54):
I also want to add too that like
archaeologically speaking,sometimes we perpetuate the myth
that Indigenous people are onlyin the past.
Um and that's really damaging.
And it's important to remindeveryone that that even though
we might not have any federallyrecognized habitable tribal land
in Pennsylvania, that doesn'tmean that indigenous communities

(46:15):
aren't thriving and survivingand alive, and there are lots of
Indigenous people who live inPittsburgh and around.
I always want to make thatabundantly clear.
And that's something that Ithink is pervasive in discourse
in local public schoolcurriculum, maybe that we only
talk about indigenous people ofthe past and not what's

(46:36):
happening now.

Michael Pisano (46:37):
I'm curious about more broadly in terms of
policy, culture, conservation,science, right?
These things you engage with,what we can learn from this
natural history that you'vebrought today about interacting
with the non-human world, withfood, the land, the water, you
know, the whole thing.
What do you think about movingforward as good stewards and how
that's informed by this sort ofscholarship?

Amy Covell-Murthy (46:58):
I think it all comes back to collaboration
and including Indigenous voice.
That's the only way to knowwhat you have in your backyard
and to be able to use yourresources.
But also, we need to maintain aplatform for giving Indigenous
communities sovereignty overtheir land and things.
I think there's a lot of goodprojects going on.

(47:18):
There's a rematriation projectat the University of Michigan
where they're sharing uh theirseed collection with Indigenous
communities and they're they'regrowing uh native gardens.
In some native cultures, seedsare relatives, and the fact that
they weren't doing what theywere supposed to be doing was
extremely offensive and bad.
So I think there's a lot ofstuff, and and like I said,

(47:38):
starting with collaboration andeducation, I guess we can all
work better.

Kristina Gaugler (47:42):
Yeah, I think trying to take guidance from
local knowledge, indigenousknowledge, and traditional
knowledge can help us think ofnew ways to increase plant
diversity and to learn aboutdifferent methods for farming
and agriculture, and just try toincorporate some of those
lessons into the into the waythat we we eat and do our and

(48:05):
our food systems locally.
There are people who and booksthat I would recommend.
I love Braiding Sweetgrass byRobin Wall Kimmerer.
That's a great book.
And also there's a culinaryhistorian named Michael Twiddy
who wrote this book called TheCooking Gene.
That's a really great book.

Michael Pisano (48:20):
Both of those are fantastic recommendations
that I second heartily.
Is there any last thoughts thatyou you hope people would, you
know, when the next time theycome into the museum and look at
artifacts from the pastcultures that inhabited this
land?

Amy Covell-Murthy (48:34):
Remember that most of those cultures are not
in the past, although they stillexist.

Michael Pisano (48:48):
Approximately 1.4 million thanks to Amy and
Kristina for inviting us intothe Carnegie's Human Culture
Collections, and to the amazingitems therein for inspiring
better understanding andcollaborations towards better
futures.
We Are Nature is produced byNicole Heller and Sloan MacRae.
It's recorded at CarnegieMuseum of Natural History by

(49:10):
Matt Unger and Garrick Schmidt.
DJ Thermos makes the music,Mackenzie Kimmel describes the
collection items, and GarrickSchmidt and Michael Pisano,
that's me, edit the podcast.
Thanks for listening.