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Wonder Plus subscribers can listen to Tides of

0:02

History early and ad free right now Joined

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Wonder He Plus in the Wonder He or

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Apple podcasts. Hi

0:15

everybody from Wonder Eat Welcome to another episode of

0:17

Tides of History. I'm Patrick Women Thanks so much

0:19

for be in here with me today! As

0:22

a field, archaeology is that a fascinating

0:24

point in it's development. New. Tools

0:27

of all kinds from remote sensing to

0:29

Paleo climate analysis to ancient Dna are

0:31

dramatically reshaping the possibilities of what we

0:33

can go about the past. Old.

0:35

Questions are getting answers and new questions that

0:37

we could hardly imagine being able to answer

0:40

a decade or two ago are coming to

0:42

the for. A. Few parts

0:44

of the Ancient world are being better

0:46

served by those new techniques than Iran,

0:48

South Asia and the Indus Valley Civilization.

0:51

Today's. Guest is leading and participating in

0:53

some of the most innovative and wide

0:55

ranging work on not just the Indus

0:57

Valley Civilization, but a whole variety of

0:59

topics. Camera and Petri is professor in

1:01

South Asian and Iranian Archaeology, fellow of

1:03

Trinity College and Director of studies for

1:06

Trinity College at the University of Cambridge.

1:08

He. Has worked extensively on the archaeology

1:10

of Ancient Iran and South Asia, editing

1:12

a book entitled Ancient Iran and it's

1:15

neighbors local developments and long range interactions

1:17

in the fourth millennium Bc, and collaborating

1:19

on several other volumes. The. List

1:21

of articles that he's authored and coauthored is

1:23

staggering in it's length and breadth, and I

1:26

have drawn on them extensively for my episodes

1:28

on this region. Professor Patriot, thank you so

1:30

much for joining me. Thank.

1:32

You very much for having me. It's been really nice to. Be.

1:35

Given the opportunity, To

1:37

so what initially drew you to archaeology

1:39

and to the study of Iran and

1:41

South Asia in particular, I'm

1:44

in terms of my vintage it it may set

1:46

a little bit of a cliche but I I

1:48

basically grew up. Watching. Indiana Jones,

1:50

films, reading fantasy novels, and all

1:53

those other things that kids date

1:55

and do. But I also studied

1:57

ancient history at school and. Oliver.

2:00

Having this realization as I was coming

2:02

to the other by secondary schooling that

2:04

all these books that I enjoyed reading

2:06

often were heavily influenced by ancient societies

2:08

that actually existed in The Pass and.

2:12

My. Brain caught up with the fact that it was

2:14

actually far more interesting to study the originals than

2:16

this sort of. Fabrication.

2:18

So. Funny. That

2:20

was sort of that the inspiration and I

2:22

realized I was just curious had lots of

2:24

questions and really you know what did understand

2:27

little bit about. Myself.

2:29

Societies didn't really tightened up to university

2:31

and I was quite some. I

2:34

guess. Amorphous. Not really sold on anything in

2:36

particular that I wanted to study, but. Healthily,

2:39

I was taught by range of

2:41

really inspiring people so. You

2:43

know, and and. They. Gave me

2:46

lots of opportunities in senses. Any

2:48

dates with seal work and gun or Five

2:50

Seasons growing up in Australia. With your the

2:52

study, the archaeology have a friend you are.

2:54

You go off and do stuff guilty about

2:56

the countries and I got lots of opportunities

2:58

to do little bit of buys and when

3:00

often worked in places like Jordan and Syria

3:02

and things like that. But.

3:05

I'm one of my professors. Daniel

3:07

Pots was a specialist on Iran,

3:09

and this is a period when

3:12

Iran wasn't particularly accessible for archaeological

3:14

research, so. In. The early

3:16

two thousand so given the opportunity to go off

3:18

and conduct still they can Iran and that really

3:21

was sort of. Completely. Inspirational

3:23

in many ways the I Killed

3:25

Zebra on is completely spectacular. very

3:27

very interesting as familiar but de

3:29

France and all of a sauce

3:31

things and only running archaeologists will

3:33

working with were really fabulous and

3:35

very exciting and excited. And

3:38

that's not a dreamy and in a way.

3:40

And we were lucky we were working on

3:42

certain types of ecological sites that were occupied

3:45

for long periods and. Said. We

3:47

couldn't It assesses tone up and say all i want to

3:49

look at. The. Bronze age or something. We

3:51

had to sit as. Think. About the

3:53

neolithic and historical periods and all of these different

3:55

types of archaeology with air and that all of

3:57

a sudden his son is. in the

3:59

ring of it all was just right

4:02

in front of us and we had to sort of learn about it in

4:06

in order to understand it. If

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slash wondery. So

5:39

working in Iran what is it like

5:42

working there? I mean because I feel like

5:44

there's an incredible amount of archaeology there but

5:46

because of political developments over the last four-ish

5:48

decades and you know kind of everything that

5:50

was happening before that the archaeology of that

5:52

region is not especially well known in comparison

5:54

to the neighboring regions. I mean I feel

5:57

like we know we Have

5:59

like a granular. The understanding of the archaeology

6:01

of Iraq, the archaeologists South Asia not pretty

6:03

reasonably well understood when the Caucasus pretty well

6:05

understood, but Iran it feels like they're huge

6:07

areas that are just kind of a blank

6:09

spot and huge periods that are black spot.

6:12

Yeah, I'm a day he rascal

6:15

quality seen history of ecological research.

6:17

and like many other countries and

6:19

eighty westernizers, there's a lot of

6:21

colonial period activity where. I

6:23

feel just for different countries were interacting

6:25

with Iranian authorities and getting permission to

6:27

do things and settling in the early

6:29

twentieth century. Middleton he said she there

6:31

was a lot of work that was

6:33

happening, a right archaeologists getting increasingly involved

6:35

and then. I guess a

6:38

lot of that change with the Iranian Revolution and.

6:40

The. Way that archaeology was organized

6:43

Scientists access so far not

6:45

the oldest. Start. But.

6:48

Iranian. I killed his, kept working and

6:50

then said it was a lot of

6:52

new discoveries and new new areas of

6:54

research that were opening up in Iran

6:57

and then in the early Elsa even

6:59

probably the late Ninety Nineties, nearly two

7:01

thousand so is opportunities for. Foreign.

7:04

Archaeologists to start going back to Iran

7:06

and and being evolve with collaborative research.

7:08

and that was really exciting because. In.

7:11

Some ways a lot of these people that

7:13

had been working in Iran and this is

7:15

the seventy say. Had. Had a whole lot

7:17

of time to think about. The worked

7:19

at they'd done earlier in Encino in

7:21

a sense identify you questions and things

7:23

and then know where to position without

7:25

working with Iranian archaeologist at all sorts

7:27

of new ideas as well. And when

7:29

you bring those sorts of. Conjunctions,

7:32

Together you ended up in the situation with there

7:34

was a lot of new. News.

7:36

Sites being discovered all decides been

7:39

reinvestigate It. New areas

7:41

that are not really even survey before.

7:43

Will is his people were also doing

7:45

things like going back to areas that

7:48

had probably been surveyed in the nineteen

7:50

thirties. And. Sort of

7:52

read rediscovering. Archaeology.

7:55

that was sitting there staring people in the fight so all

7:58

of a sudden lady sings of sort of it happen at

8:00

the same time. I

8:02

guess what's really interesting for me

8:04

is Iran is extremely large. It's

8:06

a vast landscape. It's also quite

8:09

different to Mesopotamia and

8:11

South Asia. So it's sitting up, a lot

8:13

of it is the Iranian plateau. There's big

8:15

areas of desert. The way people live in

8:18

that environment is all a bit different. So

8:21

there's just sort of lots of things about

8:23

it. And for me, especially being somebody that

8:25

had been taught about ancient

8:27

Mesopotamia and the Levant and

8:29

South Asia, Iran was just

8:31

very, very different and

8:34

intellectually challenging and really culturally interesting.

8:36

So all of those things left

8:39

me with a fabulous, rich impression. It's

8:41

almost irresistible, really. Well, this

8:43

is one of the things that's really striking

8:45

about your work, aside from how much of

8:48

it there is. I mean, like you do

8:50

a search for your work in Google Scholar.

8:52

It's just dozens and dozens and dozens and

8:54

dozens and dozens of articles. But like you

8:56

seem to be interested in so many different

8:59

things. I mean, like you've done stuff on

9:01

hydrology of ancient rivers. You've done pottery residues.

9:03

You've done paleo climate. So what has pulled

9:05

you to working on so many different things

9:08

in so many different parts of the world?

9:11

I'm hoping it's not some sort of sign

9:13

of attention deficit disorder or something where I

9:15

get totally distracted by all of these different

9:17

kinds of things. But I find I

9:20

do think about this a lot. And I think I'm actually

9:22

really curious about how things work

9:24

or how did things work. And I

9:27

think I'm also in

9:29

some ways, I'm really quite lucky in terms of

9:31

where I studied, the types of people

9:33

that I'm around, where I am at the minute. I've

9:35

got lots of really interesting colleagues with

9:38

specialities in archaeological theory or

9:41

specialities in archaeological

9:43

science. And that's an environment

9:45

where in many ways I'm sort of encouraged

9:48

to ask good questions or at least to

9:50

pose questions and then work out how to

9:52

answer them. So for

9:54

me, that's sort of where

9:57

the curiosity comes from. you

10:00

know, starting with the work in Iran, but also

10:02

some of the work I've done in Pakistan and

10:04

India. It's often

10:06

quite difficult to just focus on one period when

10:08

you're looking at archaeology because sometimes you go to

10:10

work on an archaeological site and you

10:13

think that the site's going to do what you want it

10:15

to do, you know, you've gone there for a specific several

10:17

reasons. And then while you're

10:19

digging away, you find something that you don't expect, you know,

10:21

and sometimes that could be like two metres of archaeological

10:24

deposit of a period that you're not

10:26

particularly interested in. But so

10:28

then you need to understand that to understand the

10:30

bit that you are interested in. And you can

10:32

sort of see how all of these things end

10:34

up being quite interconnected. And so

10:37

for me, I think what it's taken

10:39

me a very long time to realise this, but

10:41

I think at the core, I'm actually effectively

10:43

a landscape archaeologist. So I like understanding

10:46

landscapes, I've always liked environment,

10:49

moving around how people do things, where

10:51

they go, thinking about the routes

10:54

people take to go from A to B and how

10:56

they work with water and all of those sorts

10:58

of things. And when you

11:01

start to ask questions about landscapes and think

11:03

about how people live in landscapes, and how

11:05

that changes over time, then all of a

11:07

sudden you realise, oh, I need to think

11:09

about, you know, where

11:12

the water is coming from, you know, where does it

11:14

raining and how much rain is there? And, you

11:17

know, where people manipulating the environment or adapting to

11:19

it. And so these things all sort of

11:22

slip into each other. And weirdly

11:24

enough, I mean, you mentioned the pottery

11:26

analysis and things, you know, I actually

11:28

started looking at pottery a lot. That

11:30

was one of the things I was really interested in. It was like,

11:33

how do people make this pottery? And what are

11:35

they using it for? And why

11:37

is it variable or not variable? You know, in

11:39

some periods, people make use of a lot of

11:41

different types of pottery, and some periods they make

11:44

have very limited choices. So

11:47

all of a sudden, just by describing it in that

11:49

way, it opens up all of these possibilities and questions.

11:51

So why are these things changing? Why are these people

11:53

different to each other? And so

11:56

those sorts of curiosities, I think,

11:59

run in the back. So

12:02

for me, I think there's so many different

12:05

sorts of topics

12:07

and questions out there. And in a way, you're sort

12:09

of, I think in the

12:11

end, you need to incorporate lots of different bits and

12:14

pieces of information to really answer them. Of

12:17

course, I can't do it all by myself. I mean, that's a whole other. That's

12:20

one of the really cool things about the work

12:22

that you do and about archaeology as a field.

12:25

I mean, it strikes me that your work is

12:27

a really good example of that is that you

12:29

do collaborate with tons of different people, doing tons

12:31

of different kinds of projects with different specialties in

12:33

different areas. And that's how you

12:35

answer big questions. That's how you find really

12:38

interesting things is because no one person can

12:40

know everything. And so you got to ask

12:42

people, you got to work with people. I

12:46

totally agree. And weirdly enough, I

12:48

really enjoy collaboration. You know, like

12:50

you said, there's a limit to what one person can do.

12:53

And in many respects, I

12:55

found good success through finding

12:58

interesting, smart, eloquent

13:01

FFS and people to work with. And

13:04

this is colleagues in Iran and

13:06

Pakistan and India, postdoctoral researchers that

13:08

I've worked with, students, colleagues, etc.

13:12

And everyone's got different strengths. Some people

13:14

are really, really excellent at their specific

13:16

research method, their application. Some

13:18

people are amazing at writing. And you know, I have

13:21

some really good academic colleagues and friends

13:23

who I really enjoy writing things with because

13:25

an actual facts. I

13:27

quite like that Frisian that

13:30

comes when you you write something down and you show

13:32

someone they say, Oh, what are you talking about? Why

13:34

are you saying that? You know, I don't agree with you. And

13:36

then you you're sort of forced, forced

13:39

into debating with yourself and with your

13:41

friend about why and you and

13:43

in the end, you end up with a stronger argument

13:45

or a stronger idea because you've been challenged a little

13:47

bit. And I really like that. I

13:49

guess I'm partly used to maybe

13:53

maybe it's not right the right way of describing it,

13:55

almost like coming up with an idea and then actually

13:57

needing to prove to myself that idea is. In

14:00

the right ballpark or

14:03

is it actually just wrong and you know, sometimes

14:05

your ideas are wrong and that's okay As

14:08

I was you know, go too far with those ideas.

14:10

It's usually fine. And I think that's really the

14:13

path that I enjoy is is finding

14:16

those people that you like that have similar interests

14:18

and and that you want to work with and

14:21

it makes the work more enjoyable and This

14:25

is this is my outsider's perspective because I

14:27

was trained as a historian and History

14:30

is a really lonely field there's a

14:32

lot of being by yourself and spending

14:34

time with your materials or in an

14:36

archive or Sitting down

14:38

writing by yourself like it's it is

14:40

a really solitary field not always but

14:42

quite often there isn't that much collaboration

14:45

It's one of the things I've really enjoyed about

14:47

getting to know archaeology as a field over the

14:49

last five ish years is Just

14:51

how collaborative it is and how social it

14:53

is and you're excavating a site and you're

14:55

with people you're Collaborating on putting

14:57

your work together like sure you're doing some work

14:59

You're doing work by yourself, but like at the

15:02

end of the day, it feels like a much

15:04

more collective endeavor That then history

15:06

does and that's a huge Cultural

15:08

difference in how the fields are set up and

15:10

it's something I've really enjoyed getting to know It's

15:12

like I talked to archaeologists and like oh, yeah

15:14

My buddy who works on this and we talk

15:17

about this stuff all the time And it's like

15:19

as a historian you have to try really hard

15:21

to make opportunities like that happen Like you have

15:23

to set regular dates to get together with your

15:25

friends and talk about stuff that interests you It's

15:27

not built into the structure of the field Yeah,

15:31

I think to me that's also one of the things I've

15:34

always really loved about Kill it exactly

15:36

like you described where you we know the

15:38

very first time I ever went overseas I

15:40

ended up on an archaeological project in

15:43

the field in Jordan and we were sitting it We were working

15:45

in it as part of a dig

15:47

team in a dig house and you're surrounded by all

15:49

these other people that are really interested In what's happening,

15:52

but everyone's got a slightly different set of interests and

15:54

then you can have all these really Sort

15:57

of invigorating conversations and then you know you

15:59

gradually get used to contributing to

16:01

that conversation. And then you can start asking your

16:03

own questions and pushing it in different directions. And

16:05

it's, it's a really neat process

16:08

I find, because I think there's always possibilities

16:10

to make a contribution. In

16:12

the end, you know, making, making

16:14

a contribution to the knowledge in inverted commerce

16:16

is really a part of it. It's the

16:18

recognition that there's lots of work that's been

16:20

done and lots of people that are

16:22

involved in this research. And when you're writing it, you

16:24

think, Oh, I've got this right. I've got this thing

16:27

solved. But then actually, it's

16:29

part of the process, you come to the realization that

16:31

probably the person that wrote the paper 50 years ago

16:33

thought the same thing as well. And

16:35

then at some point, you know, I'm, what was

16:37

a really sobering experience for me was setting

16:40

one of my own papers to students

16:42

to read. And

16:45

then say, Oh, look, you know, read this paper, come

16:47

back, you know, all you have a conversation about it,

16:49

come back to me with any questions. And then they

16:51

started pulling the paper apart. It's like, Oh, you know,

16:53

I thought I got it right. And they're like, No,

16:55

no, no, we disagree with this. And as like, Oh,

16:57

okay. And then you know, in time, you know, all

16:59

of those clever things that I thought I was doing

17:01

when I was a student, say, Oh, I'm challenging academic

17:03

X with a clever ideas. And all of

17:05

a sudden, someone's got to do that

17:07

to me, you know, I know it's coming or it's already

17:09

happening, you know, those sorts of things. So you sort of

17:11

realize that you're part of this ongoing

17:14

process. And I quite like that. It's like,

17:16

Oh, you know, I have this shirt, which

17:20

is a slightly inspirational shirt that

17:22

I wear on occasion. It's got a little, a little

17:24

thing on the middle. I says you're not building a

17:26

wall, you're making a brick. And

17:28

I like the fact making a brick. I quite like that.

17:31

I'm happy to make a bridge. That's a

17:33

fun way of thinking about it because it's

17:35

all aggregates, right? Like that it's all the

17:38

summation of these tiny little bits of work

17:40

that you do in an hour or a

17:42

day. And that's part of the

17:44

overall project of putting that wall together. I that's

17:46

that's I like that way of thinking about it.

17:48

I really do. So I want to ask you

17:51

about a specific example of this. So I was

17:53

fascinated by this paper that you just put out

17:56

about animal movement in the

17:58

Indus Valley civilization. So, first

18:00

of all, how in the world can

18:02

you tell how much animals are moving around 4,000

18:05

years ago? And why is that a good

18:07

thing to know? What does that tell us? This

18:10

paper was really quite a

18:12

surprise in many ways. It was also

18:15

quite fun. I started a project now,

18:19

gosh, almost 10 years ago, and we

18:22

were really... It's a project called

18:24

the Two Rains Project, which is about the

18:26

Indus region. We know that they

18:28

get winter rain and they get summer rain, and

18:30

we're trying to understand what's

18:33

happening for the Indus civilization, how it changed, etc.,

18:35

etc. And as a part of

18:37

that project, we really wanted to understand how people

18:39

interact with plants and animals, and

18:41

what food are they eating, how are

18:44

they managing animals, are they eating different

18:46

types of crops, are they eating

18:48

different types of animals, and

18:50

are animals just about food, for example. So one

18:52

of the pieces of research

18:54

that we decided to do, and this is

18:57

working with one of the postdocs on the

18:59

project, Emma Lightfoot, was

19:01

to get some samples of different types

19:03

of animals from different sites, and

19:06

to really understand what this... I guess what

19:08

you could call the animal economy was. Were

19:11

the animals all being reared

19:13

locally, fed locally, and

19:16

consumed locally, or was something more

19:19

interesting happening? That

19:21

was the basis of the question. Let's just throw

19:23

it out there. People have done some of this

19:25

analysis before. Usually

19:27

what people try and do

19:30

is to study animals in

19:32

relation to humans directly. And

19:34

it's like, okay, well, let's say humans move

19:36

more, animals move less. So if

19:38

we can study the animals, that might give

19:40

us some local signatures, and the humans might

19:43

be more dynamic. So I guess

19:45

I should also explain that the type of analysis

19:47

that we're using is using stable

19:49

isotopes, and strontium isotopes

19:51

are really quite good at

19:54

helping differentiate the

19:57

chemical signature that's in all of us.

19:59

that tells us about where

20:02

we live in a sense. And this certainly works

20:04

very well in the ancient world where people would

20:06

be growing food locally and they

20:09

would be drinking water locally. And the food and

20:11

the water that was grown in a specific area

20:13

would have an isotopic signature that would end up

20:15

going into their bodies. Then

20:17

when you study the teeth and the bones

20:19

later on, those signatures are revealed. So

20:22

that's the sort of basic principle explained in

20:24

a very, very coarse

20:27

way that basically

20:30

what we eat is left in input in our bodies.

20:32

And that can tell us lots of things. And one

20:34

of the things is whether you move. So I grew

20:36

up in Australia, I now live in the UK. My

20:39

chemistry changes based on where you're getting the

20:41

food from and things like that. What

20:43

we know about a lot of animals is that they

20:45

usually don't live for very long and their teeth

20:47

and bones form at a certain period. And then

20:51

often they're consumed by humans at some

20:53

point or

20:56

they happen to die and they end up in

20:58

the archeological record. So we

21:00

studied teeth from a

21:03

series of different animals from different archeological sites.

21:05

We're really trying to work out whether the

21:08

animals were moving. So generally

21:10

in the Indus context, everyone's interested

21:12

in cattle, bovines, because they're very

21:15

prominent in the iconography. There's

21:17

lots of cattle bones in the archeological

21:19

record. So they're obviously very important

21:21

and prominent. And people

21:24

say, okay, well, so then that's

21:26

significant. Are cattle moving around? Are

21:28

they moving long distances? And

21:31

the stable isotopes are a little bit

21:33

coarse in the sense that they only

21:35

tell us when the geology changes. So

21:38

if you've got a very, very large

21:40

flat alluvial plane, that's the geology is

21:42

not necessarily gonna change. But if

21:44

you move from one river system

21:46

to another or a different part

21:48

of a river system over say many hundreds

21:51

of kilometers, then the geology

21:53

changes. So you can detect slightly

21:56

longer distance movement. And

21:59

in a sense, we were hoping, okay, we might see

22:01

the cattle move. We also

22:03

analyzed some sheep because the sheep and goat

22:05

probably move a bit. And then

22:07

we analyzed some pigs because people assume that

22:10

pigs don't move, because pigs only

22:12

walk around really short distances. What

22:14

was really fascinating is that in actual fact, what

22:16

we found was almost like the complete upside down

22:18

version of what we expected. We found the sheep

22:20

and goat were moving a bit, but not very

22:22

far. Most of the cattle

22:24

were not moving very far at all. And

22:27

we actually found one or two examples where they'd

22:29

moved probably like 300, 400

22:31

kilometers. But the really interesting

22:33

finding was that we found multiple examples

22:35

of pigs that had been moved 300,

22:37

400, 500 kilometers. And

22:40

that all of a sudden was sort of like

22:42

a brain explosion at the time. It's like, okay,

22:44

so how do we explain this? What is actually

22:46

happening? And so all of a sudden, our little

22:48

story about, oh, well, animals moved around, which was

22:50

sort of like a little question in some ways,

22:52

became a much bigger question. Okay, are

22:54

we looking at animals exchange? And are

22:57

they shipping pigs from A to B or from

22:59

B to A? And we actually

23:01

found there were pigs going in two directions

23:03

between different cities. There's pigs going from rural

23:06

areas into cities. There was all sorts of

23:08

different little dynamics going on. And

23:10

so our little story ended up talking

23:12

a lot about exchange systems. Like I

23:15

said, why are the cattle not moving

23:17

long distances? And why are the pigs

23:19

moving longer distances? And

23:21

perhaps it's because the pigs have become a commodity,

23:23

maybe they're moving from one location to the other.

23:26

Maybe there's a whole cultural system that we just

23:28

don't understand about why those pigs

23:30

are important. And so in a

23:32

sense, the paper in the end left some of those bigger

23:35

questions unanswered, because we can't answer

23:37

them yet. But we can

23:39

throw them out there, you know, so there's some

23:41

reason why these pigs are moving really long distances.

23:44

And also, we had to think a little bit, well,

23:46

maybe are they doing something to the pigs in

23:49

advance? Are they just moving meat, salted

23:51

meat, for example? But we're

23:53

talking about pig teeth. So

23:56

they're not so they would have to be moving

23:58

an entire salted carcass, right? have to be

24:00

moving an entire salted carcass or a pig's

24:02

head, which would be slightly strange. So then

24:05

maybe we've got live pig export. So what

24:07

does that mean? You know, on all of

24:09

these little things came up that were really

24:11

interesting. And the fun part about this is

24:13

that at the moment, I haven't yet talked

24:16

to a lot of my broader, in this

24:18

case out there, to see what they

24:20

think, because I know there might be all sorts of ideas

24:22

that will come up when we actually have the conversation, they

24:24

must say, Oh, you're crazy, why are you saying that? But

24:26

you know, I think the isotopes are

24:28

not lying, which is the great part, you

24:30

know, we've done this certain type of analysis.

24:32

It's really revealed something that we were

24:35

just not expecting whatsoever. If

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out Mint mobile.com. People

25:46

usually think of cattle as being mobile cattle,

25:49

goats and sheep, they're like not that hard

25:51

to move and herd right? So so you

25:53

expect like if you're going to have long

25:55

distance animal movement, those are the ones that

25:57

are going to move because you can just

26:00

move them on the hoof like it's pretty

26:02

straight forward to do it. That's anthropologically well

26:04

documented in a variety of different societies and

26:06

contexts. Like you, you can move cattle. That's

26:09

a whole thing. Like the American cattle drive

26:11

in the West is not like a unique

26:13

cultural phenomenon. But pigs, yeah, people think

26:15

of pigs as being domestic layabouts. And

26:18

there's, you know, even in the places

26:20

where you have an enormous market in

26:22

pork, they're not moving that far, at

26:25

least without railroads, right? Like massive movement

26:27

of pigs is like a 19th century

26:29

railroad phenomenon. Like I'm thinking of like

26:32

the meat packing plants of Chicago as

26:34

a, as kind of a, like a

26:36

clearing house for all of these Midwestern

26:38

American farmers processing huge amounts

26:41

of pig. But that's, that's a pretty

26:43

recent thing. But like the reason why

26:45

this is so fascinating to me is, you

26:47

know, we say these are agrarian civilizations, right?

26:50

Like we say these are all based on

26:52

agriculture. Agriculture is fundamental to how they work.

26:54

The economy is fundamentally agricultural. And yet in

26:56

practice, we often don't understand what that means

26:59

in terms of how goods and people are

27:01

moving around the spaces of them. Like, so

27:03

we can say this and we have this

27:06

kind of vague idea that yeah, it's agrarian,

27:08

there's probably some trade in agricultural goods, but

27:10

like, that can be hard for us to

27:12

track. But you've got what looks

27:15

to be pretty direct evidence of a

27:18

fundamental agrarian commodity moving around

27:20

in some particular way. Absolutely.

27:23

And that was sort of almost like the

27:25

bonus of the finding was we

27:28

had it set out to find that specific

27:30

thing, but we actually found something that was

27:32

in the agricultural market of what we were

27:34

looking for. And there's been a lot of

27:36

discussion, for example, about the, you know, the

27:39

possibility of moving staple crops. So if

27:41

you've got wheat surplus, do you

27:43

move it? If so, how far do you move it? And

27:45

all of those sorts of things. And there's a lot of

27:47

discussion about how that

27:49

sort of economy works in places like Asia

27:51

and Egypt and Mesopotamia where they've got records

27:53

and things like that. But

27:55

in the subcontinent, we don't really have, we

27:57

don't have the textual records that would reveal that. sort

28:00

of information. So there's been

28:02

speculation, you know, maybe cities

28:05

were providing surpluses

28:07

to each other in times of need and those sorts of

28:09

things. And in

28:11

many ways, a lot of that's just very speculative. But

28:14

using something like strontium isotopes, for

28:16

example, in theory, could provide an

28:18

opportunity to really explore that sort of dynamic. And

28:21

that really becomes interesting. I mean, you've got to

28:23

get the right samples and you've got to have

28:25

enough funding and enough people

28:27

to do the analysis and everything else.

28:29

So it's not always an easy answer.

28:32

And often you end up, you know,

28:34

as someone wants it to be, you end up

28:36

kissing a lot of frogs before you end up, you know,

28:39

finding the finding the prince or the princess. But

28:41

in the end, that's sort of what we're doing

28:44

is really asking a lot of questions and trying

28:47

things out. And I think that's where it

28:49

comes back around to one of the things I mentioned

28:51

earlier, it's almost like getting to

28:54

the position where you're asking an

28:56

interesting question, and then you sort of think, okay,

28:58

well, how do I actually answer that question? And

29:00

sometimes answering those slightly

29:03

complex questions, you know, sometimes you need to

29:05

go out and dig things up and find

29:07

things. But what's becoming increasingly common,

29:09

certainly in the archaeology that I'm involved

29:11

with is going back to older excavations,

29:13

and you know, even even our own

29:15

excavation, we go back and look again,

29:17

you know, pottery

29:19

that we looked at before, we've already looked at it,

29:22

what else can we see, you know, if we count

29:24

things in a different way, we measure things in a

29:26

different way, or, you know, look

29:28

at the bones again, and those sorts of things,

29:30

what can we bring to bear? And hopefully

29:33

things like a DNA is

29:35

becoming very, very prominent in archaeological research

29:37

generally, not just about humans, but things

29:39

about animals, domestication, all these sorts of

29:42

questions. And we can put

29:44

a spin on these older questions

29:46

by making use of these older

29:48

samples that come from good archaeological

29:50

sites. So in the

29:52

end, you end up simultaneously going back around

29:54

again in a feedback loop to re

29:57

look at what you've already studied before and then add

30:01

some new ideas and new information in and

30:03

then you hopefully incrementally move forward. One

30:06

of the things that really fascinates me about

30:09

the Indus Valley Civilization is it seems to

30:11

be not homogenous but there seems to be

30:13

a lot shared in common over a large

30:16

area and so you know what

30:18

are the questions that archaeologists have been

30:20

asking pretty much since the first

30:22

excavations of these sites is what is it

30:24

that binds this area together. It

30:27

would be incredibly fitting

30:29

if it were

30:31

something as kind of

30:33

straightforward as long distance commodity exchange

30:35

just like bulk commodities like pigs

30:38

and you know some ceramics and agricultural staple

30:40

crops and it's like oh it's just the

30:42

because it's the Indus and you can move

30:44

stuff pretty easily up and down river and

30:46

it's pretty flat plain and you can have

30:48

roads and you know it's just it's easy

30:50

to get stuff from one place to another

30:52

that would be a hilarious answer

30:55

to me if all of that other

30:57

cultural stuff was piggybacking off this basic

30:59

ease of movement and transportation of

31:01

vast quantities of pigs and weeds. Like I

31:04

would I would get such a kick out

31:06

of that that would that that would feel

31:08

like such a vindication of a materialist worldview.

31:12

Inevitably I mean it's not gonna be that

31:14

simple and and but it is I think

31:16

it is funny when you sort of start

31:18

to look at the components of the economy

31:20

because you know that some of the obvious

31:22

things that we know are moving in the

31:24

Indus world you know we know that there's stamp

31:27

seals we know that there are lots

31:29

of quite carefully constructed beads and other

31:32

sorts of products and jewelry and things

31:35

and those are very visible and prominent

31:37

but actually in terms of scale

31:40

they're often quite small objects

31:42

they're not particularly large so we

31:45

are talking about quite

31:47

small things in many examples

31:49

pigs are usually quite big but we do

31:52

have a lot of these connectivities that are

31:54

taking place and what's really fascinating to me

31:57

was being in a situation where I sort

31:59

of learned about the

32:01

level of uniformity, the similarities of practice

32:03

across the unit of civilisation. And

32:06

then when you poke at that a little bit,

32:08

you see that there's variation in the similarity. And

32:11

so then that it's

32:13

almost like a

32:15

situation where you start challenging the

32:17

assumption or challenging

32:19

the question and you go, okay, well, how

32:21

similar is it? And you think, okay, well, yes, it

32:23

is similar, but there's variation. And that

32:26

sort of, it's not really a cognitive dissonance. It's

32:28

just that those two things can actually exist at

32:30

the same time. And then

32:32

it's like, well, what does it mean? And so

32:35

I think there's no doubt that there's a

32:37

lot of exchange and interaction and there's a

32:39

lot of sharing of cultural

32:42

practices and cultural norms. But

32:45

in some ways, I think we shouldn't assume that

32:47

it's a uniformity as well. And I think there's

32:49

a lot of variation,

32:51

I think, probably in language and language

32:53

use across the region. And there's

32:56

probably a lot of variation in terms of the

32:58

iconography that's being used as well, even

33:01

though there's a similarity as well. So

33:03

I think that's where if you start

33:06

to sort of accept that the

33:08

ability for those two things to exist at the

33:10

same time, that sort of unpacks a little bit

33:12

the complexity of it all. And then you can

33:14

go down all sorts of roads, whether or not

33:16

you want to say it, you describe it as

33:18

a civilisation and then what that means. I mean,

33:20

that creates all sorts of challenges

33:22

and complexities. I think it's

33:24

not really a matter of, I

33:27

guess, criticising or critiquing, it's more a matter

33:29

of just being willing to pose

33:31

the question and then actually thinking about the assumptions

33:33

that you're making. So that's, you know, your pig

33:35

driven economy is a really interesting thing. So think,

33:37

oh, it was the economy driven by pigs. And

33:39

then it's like, well, actually, there's not that many,

33:41

but there's probably some and all of a sudden

33:43

you can sort of unpack it and it becomes

33:46

really interesting. The other thing that I

33:48

really like thinking about for

33:50

the inter-civilisation is, you know, I mentioned before

33:52

that this sort of two different weather systems

33:54

and what we've got evidence

33:57

for is lots of different crops. We've got winter crops

33:59

and summer crops. And

34:01

for a long time, there was a tendency

34:03

to compile this list of crops into like

34:05

an uber unified list

34:08

of crops. These are all the Indus crops and

34:10

there's dozens of them. And it's fascinating.

34:12

They are using a whole range of different

34:14

summer and winter crops. And

34:16

this is evidence at lots of different archaeological

34:19

sites. And that's really super interesting. And

34:21

then you look at some of the details, hang

34:23

on, in actual fact, a lot of that's driven

34:26

by the staples. So, you know, you got wheat

34:28

and barley in the winter and you have millets

34:30

and rice, which has been grown in the summer.

34:32

And so then you think, okay, well,

34:35

there's variety, but there's also consistency. And then

34:37

you start to look at the distribution of

34:39

those crops that we at least know about

34:41

based on the sites that we've worked on.

34:43

And you can see there's some patterning in

34:45

the data. So there is a level of

34:47

uniformity. But at the same

34:49

time, you have this variation in diversity. And

34:51

for me, that's sort of really, yeah,

34:55

that's an interesting conundrum. All of a sudden, how

34:57

do you explain this? Where are we going with

34:59

all of this? How do we talk about it?

35:01

And that's where you get into these interesting, complex

35:03

questions. I'm fascinated by

35:05

this because I'm a resident of American

35:07

suburbia. Right. And so there is a

35:10

lot of uniformity in American suburbia. You

35:12

go to a suburb of, I live

35:14

in Phoenix, you go to a suburb

35:17

of Dallas or Chicago or Washington, DC,

35:19

or Atlanta. There's a lot of similarities,

35:21

right? In terms of urban forms, in

35:24

terms of the basic level of density,

35:26

in terms of the kinds of businesses

35:28

and amenities that are available to you.

35:31

These are really, really similar places. And

35:33

yet the cultural outlook in them can

35:35

be dramatically different, depending on where you are.

35:38

The kind of baseline assumptions about how

35:41

things are supposed to work about what

35:43

public services are important and how to

35:45

fund them about politics, religion. Does everybody

35:47

attend church or are there almost no

35:49

churches? You can find suburbs where both

35:51

of those things are the case. I

35:53

find it fascinating that we've built these

35:55

incredibly materially homogenous looking suburban Forms all over

35:57

the place. And You can see it's a very, very interesting place.

36:00

Yet within those there can be a tremendous

36:02

amount of difference. Like you go to the

36:04

suburbs of Seattle, Washington, for example, and people

36:06

there, I can guarantee you are not thinking

36:09

about the world in the same way that

36:11

residents of your average Dallas suburb are. or

36:13

a these are tremendously different things, even if

36:15

materially. You. Can drive down the street

36:18

and aside from the presence or absence of

36:20

enormous evergreen trees you're not can be able

36:22

to tell. right? Like you could literally plop

36:24

one neighborhood and put it down and the other place

36:26

So. That's always a useful

36:28

parallel for me to think in those terms

36:30

because it's like you compare the voting patterns

36:32

see patterns of religious belief and they're gonna

36:34

look tremendously different. And yet materially a people

36:37

are lit electors Almost a difference in the

36:39

way the people living their lives. Yeah.

36:42

I mean, that's it. That's actually

36:44

a really compelling demonstration of. The

36:47

toxic things that archaeology can do and also the

36:49

types of things were Akio, the suit d to

36:51

sink or actually in A Are we seeing what

36:53

we think we're saying and I think that's. When.

36:56

It comes back around says the interpretation

36:59

of. Archaeological. Evidence and

37:01

those sorts of things, I think. In

37:03

a way, we need to sort of challenge

37:06

ourselves all the time. Exactly like you're describing.

37:08

We've got an urban phone. We got a

37:10

specific pattern that we see. But.

37:12

What's the sort of contrasting patents running

37:15

in the background that we not necessarily

37:17

paying attention to? And this something that.

37:19

We've. Been. Thinking about a mod

37:22

and sounds of the way that archaeologists.

37:24

The almost investigate and publish the material that

37:26

they find subtly in the area where we're

37:29

working. If we just really narrow down and

37:31

not be too general with everyone somebody purposes

37:33

not political science at her we want this

37:35

site. We would demonstrate this site is an

37:37

industry i can tickle site so. There's.

37:39

A focus on. The. Indus

37:42

Things. You know, the seal that

37:44

looks very recognizable. The tops of beads that

37:46

a very very familiar. And those

37:48

are the things that we tend to give prominence to.

37:51

and then what was often under sold

37:53

or under presenter it is the we

37:56

it's that's happening in the background the

37:58

unusual things and I really quite like,

38:00

almost like the discovery for myself, oh,

38:03

there's all this other stuff that actually

38:05

doesn't quite fit that pattern. And

38:08

so this is something

38:10

that I've been trying to remind myself

38:12

about constantly is the need to consider

38:16

all the bits and pieces, not just the bits

38:18

that are familiar and not just the bits that

38:20

you understand immediately. And hopefully

38:23

my memory is not going to, you know, it's not

38:25

deteriorating too quickly as I'm going all the bit often

38:27

I can remember things that we excavated back as, oh,

38:29

I've seen this sort of this thing before and then

38:31

you got to go back and find, hopefully you took

38:34

a photograph of it all, you know where it is

38:36

in which drawer and then, oh,

38:38

actually, and you know, I was, I was away

38:40

in India in November and I was pulling

38:43

out all drawers of material. And

38:45

there was something from a site that we excavated in 2008.

38:50

And there was this big pottery shirt and I

38:52

was like, okay, I haven't, I don't remember that. And

38:55

this, I think it was excavated by my Indian

38:58

colleagues after I'd left

39:00

to come back home. And

39:02

I've pulled out this shirt and I was like, oh, okay,

39:05

that looks like this other thing that's

39:07

on the other side of the room. And there was a big jar.

39:10

And what was really interesting for me was, okay, we've, so

39:12

we've got one of these big

39:14

storage jars from two different sites. And

39:17

then I sort of picked it up, but it, so my

39:19

mind had immediately sort of made this connection to sites that

39:22

we'd excavated sort of eight years apart. One I think I

39:24

don't even think I'd seen this other shirt, but I looked

39:26

at it and there was a hole in it, but

39:28

it wasn't a hole that had been made

39:31

by an archaeologist. It was like a hole

39:33

through the pottery vessel. So

39:35

it wasn't a container. It

39:38

was something else. And then so all of

39:40

a sudden, okay, now I need to explain this. And

39:42

so all of a sudden, you know, these different bits

39:44

and pieces were coming together. So immediately you could see

39:46

similarity and variation at the same time. And

39:49

luckily we've still got all the material lying around.

39:51

So we can put the story together a little

39:53

bit piece by piece, quite literally. Say.

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41:02

This is what's so fascinating to me about

41:04

archaeological material is you have the material reality

41:06

of a storage store that has a hole

41:08

in it. Or you have a what seems

41:10

to be a material reality of pigs move

41:13

in one direction. The really hung up on

41:15

the pigs. So forgive me for the business

41:17

of bootlegs, but vote what is it about

41:19

This is. That. The really fascinating thing

41:21

as you take it a step further near. like

41:23

what is it about the idea of a pig.

41:26

That these people are sharing over large distances

41:28

that allows it to serve as a medium

41:30

of exchange. Or if that is indeed what's

41:32

happening would say hypothetically it is what is

41:34

it that is shared. In terms of the

41:36

way these people are understanding the world and

41:39

understanding these things that are, it is that

41:41

allows them to make that exchanges this I

41:43

mean we might assume that's being carried out

41:45

on a O like the that they're exchanging.

41:48

Money. were that these are somehow modified

41:50

but with that we don't know that's

41:52

the case great lakes this could be

41:54

as some sort of large scale redistribution

41:56

are connected to institutions who's function we

41:58

barely understand it but even if, let's

42:00

say, they do share this basic standard

42:04

that allows them to make these exchanges, that

42:06

doesn't mean they like each other, right? Or

42:08

that they share everything in common. Like, because

42:10

I always think about the LBK culture in

42:13

Europe, the linear pottery culture, this Neolithic culture.

42:15

One of the most materially homogenous cultures

42:17

that was spread over this huge, huge area,

42:20

they all live on the same kinds of

42:22

soil. They prefer this very limited range of

42:24

soils. They use the same

42:27

types of pottery that are decorated in

42:29

the same way as they use the

42:32

same really restricted range of crops and

42:34

domesticated animals. Like, it's this really restricted

42:36

list. Culturally, they all build the same

42:38

kinds of timber long houses. And

42:41

yet, when the LBK culture falls apart,

42:44

it's almost certainly different LBK groups that

42:46

are engaging in like genocidal

42:48

warfare with one another. So like, clearly, despite

42:50

the fact that these people share, they share,

42:52

they're genetically homogenous, they share almost the same

42:54

ancestry. And like, so despite all of these

42:56

things that they share in common, clearly these

42:58

people don't get along with one another. And

43:00

so I'm fascinated that you can have these

43:02

material similarities. And yet on some level, whether

43:04

it's like a kind of a schismogenesis thing

43:06

that they see their neighbors and they're like,

43:09

we're not like that. We don't do the

43:11

things that they do. Like, that you can

43:13

have all of these things happening buried

43:16

beneath the surface of a material

43:18

similarity. And this is what

43:20

makes the Indus Valley Civilization so fascinating is

43:22

the getting at those kinds

43:24

of questions is a whole

43:28

layer of work and thought

43:30

and kind of processing beyond

43:32

the material. Yeah. And

43:35

what I think really opens

43:37

up the Indus in a way is

43:39

that the LBK comparison, or at

43:41

least the making reference to it is not that

43:43

far away. This is that both of these are

43:45

sort of prehistoric entities,

43:47

we don't have a textual resource

43:49

that's explaining, you know,

43:52

city A over here and city B over there. We're actually

43:54

in conflict with each other like we do in media to

43:56

miss a person where you've got direct

43:58

evidence, they're saying these two places. of fighting

44:00

each other or whatever. And

44:02

in the Indus context, we don't have that.

44:05

So there's been

44:07

a lot of discussion over the decades

44:09

of whether or not they were a peaceful realm

44:11

and not engaging in

44:13

warfare and conflict. And

44:16

what I think is really fascinating

44:18

about the Indus context is that

44:20

we have clear evidence for the

44:23

development of cities and urban form. And

44:26

there's often, okay, Indus civilization is an

44:28

urbanized phenomenon. Which

44:30

to some respect is true. But in actual

44:33

fact, there's actually not that very many cities

44:35

across this very vast area.

44:38

So therefore, I've never

44:40

actually done the numbers, per se.

44:42

But if you were

44:45

to add up the number of people that were living

44:47

in villages and the number of people that were living

44:49

in urban centers, it's very, very likely,

44:51

I say almost certain, that

44:53

the villages is the dominant settlement

44:55

form. And what's

44:58

interesting is that actually is

45:00

still true in India

45:02

and Pakistan today, those countries have some

45:05

of the lower proportions of urbanization

45:08

in the world. So this

45:10

is an area where living

45:12

in a village is a

45:14

standard thing. So what's really interesting is

45:16

that we not only have a situation

45:18

where we've got people living across a

45:20

very, very extensive area, sharing

45:22

categories of material culture, but we're not

45:25

talking about urban people sharing material culture,

45:27

you're talking about lots of

45:29

different types of people, also rural people. And

45:32

so, in some instances with

45:34

excavated sites, and we found beads

45:37

that are coming from northern Afghanistan, that

45:39

are ending up at a very, very

45:41

small village site. And you've got

45:43

other beads. So this is looking at an

45:46

archaeological site in northern India, we're finding beads

45:48

that have made of steatite that's coming from

45:51

northwest Pakistan. So there's

45:53

material moving around within

45:56

a broader economy. And that

45:58

material is ending up at a little tiny village

46:00

that's probably got a population of 100, 150

46:02

people. And

46:05

so that tells us something really quite compelling

46:07

about what's happening with the economy. And

46:09

you made reference to whether or not there

46:11

was institutions involved and all of these sorts

46:13

of things. And my colleagues have

46:15

different opinions about this. There's a

46:18

debate about the degree to which things

46:20

were driven by mercantile activity. And

46:22

maybe there's merchants

46:25

that are in charge of production houses

46:27

that are generating products and goods and

46:29

those goods are then moving around. Maybe

46:32

that's an over development of what's actually

46:34

happening. And it's far more sort of

46:37

idiosyncratic and less organized.

46:40

And in a way, that's where getting back to

46:42

the pigs and talking about the cattle, you know,

46:45

you need to move things around over these distances

46:47

and pigs, at least some of the

46:49

pigs are a commodity. Cattle

46:52

are a part of the transportation system. Boats

46:55

are also a very, very important part of the

46:57

transportation system. But it's not an all cattle system

47:00

or an all boat system. So

47:02

how is that all being managed? You know, how is how

47:04

are the products moving 400 kilometres across

47:08

multiple rivers and different parts of the plane? So

47:11

it is difficult. Sorry, you, you

47:14

made reference to the how easy it is to move around, which

47:16

I think is true. But

47:18

what's interesting is that it doesn't all happen.

47:20

You can't just jump

47:22

in the car and zip across 400 kilometres, which is

47:24

not very difficult for us. But

47:26

then we're talking about days and weeks

47:29

of travel to move those distances. And

47:32

when you think about that in specifics, you

47:34

know, you're going to feed the animals,

47:36

you got to feed the person doing the things, you

47:38

got to maintain the carts that are hauling the hauling

47:40

the things, you know, maybe you load

47:43

up one team of cattle here and

47:45

the cart moves 25, 50 kilometres in

47:47

one or two days, and

47:49

then you stop and you send those cattle back

47:51

to where they came from, then you get another team

47:54

and they move on. How does

47:56

all that work? You know, and then all of a sudden

47:58

you realise that. There's

48:00

lots of logistics that you need to think about

48:03

to try and understand how these systems and how

48:05

these patterns go. And you

48:07

know, amongst all of that, then you've got people

48:09

moving probably between an

48:11

area where one dialect is being spoken

48:14

into an area where a different dialect is being

48:16

spoken. Can people talk to each

48:18

other? Like you said, do they like each other?

48:20

Maybe, maybe not. This

48:23

was the thing that's occurring to me is like,

48:25

it's not just the kind of baseline logistics of

48:27

moving the stuff. It's also the logistics of social

48:29

relationships. And what is it

48:31

that allows people to move a herd

48:33

of cattle through fields that

48:35

belong to someone else, right?

48:38

Or that are being farmed by someone else.

48:40

That's a whole other set of potential

48:43

frictions that you have to navigate. Or

48:46

is it the same people that's moving

48:48

the commodities that whole distance?

48:50

Or is it being passed from hand

48:52

to hand as you go along? Those

48:54

are two very different kinds of institutional

48:56

arrangements to move the stuff around. But

48:59

this is what makes it so fascinating. This

49:01

is why it's so cool. Because that's way different

49:03

than the Roman world where everything is very

49:05

point to point. You

49:08

can model it explicitly as point to

49:10

point transportation. And so you can have

49:12

this broadly shared, highly

49:14

urban material culture that doesn't vary

49:17

that much. How

49:19

every coffee shop in London and

49:21

Berlin and Los Angeles looks exactly

49:23

the same, that's the Roman world. The

49:25

Roman world is Ikea. But it's

49:28

Ikea that doesn't extend into the countryside

49:30

quite often, where these things are moving

49:32

from one urban area to the next,

49:34

and they are leapfrogging over all of

49:36

the intervening rural areas. And that

49:38

doesn't seem to be what's happening in the Indus

49:40

Valley civilization to nearly the same extent, which is

49:43

fascinating. That's so cool. Yeah,

49:47

I mean, this is where, for

49:49

me, that you can make a discovery, it opens

49:51

up a new set of questions, and all of a sudden, when

49:54

you think you're working towards resolving

49:56

one puzzle, you realize you've

50:00

actually just started another five different things that you've

50:02

got to go off and explore. And it sort

50:04

of reveals a little bit more

50:06

about the way that the economic system works. So

50:09

the way that the

50:11

structures that we've perhaps built some

50:13

assumptions about are a little bit

50:15

more complex. So all of a sudden you've got to start

50:17

asking a different set of questions and push it in a

50:19

different direction. And you've got to think

50:21

a little bit about those commodities that are moving around

50:23

and exactly what those social relations

50:26

are that are allowing the movement of material

50:28

from A to B. Are we talking about

50:30

an organized road system or is it very,

50:32

very informal tracks that people are making use

50:35

of? How much negotiation

50:37

has to happen with local

50:39

populations? Is there an

50:41

agreement that exists as sort of almost

50:43

like a social contract where there's

50:46

a two way interaction with these wagons moving

50:48

by and that's a part of the agreement.

50:51

That's what happens. All of

50:53

these things have to be revealed and you can

50:55

build models or build arguments about it. And that's

50:57

sort of what makes it really interesting in the

50:59

sense is that we incrementally are

51:01

getting closer to answering

51:04

some of these questions. But at the same

51:06

time, we're learning more about how complex it

51:08

is. And I think that's

51:10

really something that's for

51:13

me was really revealing as a student and it's

51:15

just become more emphasized the older I get or

51:17

the more experienced I get, whichever way I ran

51:19

to what a phrase that. But

51:22

that whole thing of the past is

51:24

probably as complicated as the present in terms

51:26

of all the sorts of things we're

51:29

talking about generally, what the

51:31

politics is like, what the social structures are like, how

51:33

the economy works. And if you

51:35

don't have money, how does this work? And

51:37

what is the mechanism of exchange? What's the

51:39

driver and all of those sorts of things.

51:41

And as soon as you start

51:43

challenging yourself and asking those sorts of questions,

51:46

you realize how exciting these are. And the

51:48

industry was just really to stand out in

51:50

being unusual and not being the same as

51:52

what's happening in Asia, Mesopotamia, Egypt. But it

51:55

is weirdly enough and Iran as well, it's

51:57

part of a, I guess, what's happening

51:59

in the. millennium BC, there's what

52:01

you might call the globalized economy. There's

52:03

lots of interaction between people in different

52:06

areas. And the

52:08

Indus is an entity within

52:10

that that has got a

52:12

lot of interaction going on within

52:15

itself. But then you've also

52:17

got interaction with Mesopotamia and you've got

52:19

interaction with other parts of what's called

52:21

the middle Asian interaction sphere. There's lots

52:24

of connectivity that's happening in

52:26

this third millennium period. It's

52:28

really quite fascinating. So there's obviously a level

52:30

of familiarity across these

52:33

different regions or an awareness.

52:36

But then you do wonder, what level is

52:38

that awareness percolating through? I mean, are

52:40

rural people in the Indus civilization remotely

52:42

aware of the existence of

52:44

Mesopotamia with whatever name they would be

52:46

referring to as? And

52:48

if they weren't, who actually had this

52:50

awareness? How is all this working?

52:53

Or are these just unusual products just appearing?

52:55

And people go, Oh, yeah, I've

52:57

got these great things. It's almost like the mystical

53:01

snake oil sales that turns up with their

53:03

set of unusual sets of

53:05

products that they've obtained from distant lands.

53:07

I mean, you can say this is

53:09

almost like some sort of mystical tale,

53:11

but there must be some processes and

53:13

mechanisms and certain types of awarenesses

53:16

that exist that

53:18

are strong in certain periods. And then there

53:20

are obviously periods where it changes and people

53:22

lack awareness about distant people

53:25

and distant lands because the

53:27

parameters change and they have to change the way they behave.

53:30

That's one of the things that

53:33

makes studying the past through connectivity

53:35

and mobility so fascinating

53:37

is that there's always going to

53:39

be connectivity, but the patterns that

53:42

those kind of lie

53:44

down in the way that those patterns

53:46

come into existence and how any one

53:48

person or place or group ties into

53:51

those broader patterns, there can be so

53:53

much variation. I

53:55

remember 15, 20 years ago when I was

53:57

first starting to study this stuff and it was like The

54:00

revelation that people were moving was a revelation. It's

54:02

like, oh my God, people are moving around so

54:04

much. But over the years, as

54:06

we've been able to study these things better with

54:08

things like isotope analysis, ancient

54:11

DNA, it's like, well, but how are they

54:13

moving? In what numbers are they moving? Where

54:15

are they moving? Are these permanent jumps or

54:17

temporary jumps? These are the kinds of questions

54:19

that allow us to move from that, oh

54:21

yeah, people are moving, there's stuff happening, to,

54:24

okay, but in what ways? How can we

54:26

classify that? How can we qualify it? Those

54:28

are much more interesting questions. Absolutely. And

54:31

that's a really interesting point in the sense

54:33

of, I guess, almost

54:35

like the trajectory of DNA

54:37

research. So a lot of

54:39

it is where you say, oh, we found the earliest

54:42

this, or we found that, and there's a

54:44

lot of discoveries, point discoveries, and those are

54:46

really important because they sort of transform what

54:48

we know. But then there's a

54:50

phase where you go into that deeper level of questioning

54:52

where you're trying to talk about process

54:55

and mechanisms and really trying to

54:57

understand some of these patterns. One

55:01

of the things that was always really fascinating for me, and

55:03

this is making a jump to

55:05

Iran and thinking about things like the Neolithic

55:07

period. So in the Neolithic, there's a lot

55:09

of connectivity. And some of that

55:11

connectivity is revealed by the fact that we know that

55:13

lapis lazuli is going from

55:16

somewhere in Northern Afghanistan and moving its way across.

55:18

So there's obviously a little thing that's being moved.

55:21

But then some of the connectivity is about

55:23

innovation or similarities of technology

55:25

or the sorts of animals

55:28

that were being reared and things like that.

55:32

And you can talk about that in a very materialist

55:34

way or specific

55:37

way. Okay, yes, we can see these

55:39

connections. But then when you actually start

55:42

to poke at it a little bit, you say, well, how

55:44

are people moving? How

55:46

far can they move in a day? How

55:48

many people need to move to

55:51

make a sustainable, a viable population? And

55:55

how then do they settle that landscape? Are they

55:57

moving and they're getting up and going from? the

56:00

western side of Iran all the way across to

56:02

the eastern side of Iran, is that one big

56:04

trip? Unlikely. So,

56:07

how does the mechanism work? And so, some of

56:09

those things you can sort of comprehend

56:12

and speculate about in archaeological

56:14

terms. But sometimes you need

56:16

to sort of, in a sense, model

56:18

it and try to understand, okay, well, how

56:21

many people? And you can actually build computational

56:23

models now where you can make

56:26

people agents and you can run

56:28

a little experiment. As this population remains sustainable as

56:30

it moves across, how many people do we need?

56:33

How much cultural area do they need

56:36

to generate enough food to keep themselves alive?

56:38

And so, all of a sudden when you

56:40

start to think about those aspects of the

56:42

mechanics, and then you try and

56:44

work at how to resolve that question, then

56:47

all of a sudden you've got another few

56:49

papers to write. And so, those sorts of

56:51

things, going back to one of the questions you asked

56:54

the Bini, why do you end up with all these

56:56

interests? There's a curiosity

56:58

there. And it's like, well, how do we

57:00

solve this? And so, some of the

57:02

fun is finding the people that are also interested in that and then

57:04

you get them going, okay, let's, how do we build a model? Tell

57:06

me how to build a model. And I don't

57:08

have to build a model. I just have to know how to ask the

57:10

good questions. And I've got some really

57:12

fabulous colleagues that I've been working with. And

57:15

this is where things like Iran and South

57:17

Asia all link together because I started out

57:19

being an archaeologist that was interested in Mesopotamia

57:22

and the Love of Ant and places. And

57:25

then I found these other areas and what

57:27

was really interesting is that some

57:29

of the things like trying to understand the

57:31

Neolithic in Iran fit together

57:33

with trying to understand the Neolithic in

57:35

Syria and Jordan. There's connections and it's

57:37

like, oh, okay, how does

57:39

that all work? So the curiosity is

57:42

always bubbling away in the background. And

57:45

I guess that's why I've been

57:47

doing this for quite a while and it's still fun. I

57:50

really like sort of trying to

57:53

work out how to answer some of these questions. And

57:57

talking to people about it. comes

58:00

through really clearly and it comes through really

58:02

clearly in your work that you are excited

58:04

to be asking these questions and trying to

58:06

find ways to answer them. It makes your

58:08

work really fun to read. I've really enjoyed

58:10

reading it over the past couple

58:12

of years as I've been working on this stuff.

58:14

Yeah, I'm thinking about the Neolithic stuff. I could

58:16

literally keep going on about this forever because I

58:19

wrote a chapter in my book that I'm working

58:21

on right now about Mehargar and

58:23

the Neolithic and what is the connection

58:25

between the earliest Neolithic and that part

58:27

of South Asia and what's happening in

58:29

the Zagros. And so I

58:31

read all that stuff. I've got takes on

58:33

it. The hooks are in.

58:35

Yeah, they are. Oh my God, I could

58:37

go on forever. But I have taken up

58:40

so much of your time, Professor. Thank you

58:42

so much for your time. This has just

58:44

been an absolute pleasure chatting with you about

58:46

this. And again, your work is

58:48

awesome and I really appreciate it. Well, thank you very

58:50

much. It's nice to be talking to someone who

58:52

knows so much about what I've been

58:55

working on. And yeah, I'm sure we could

58:57

have another conversation about a whole different set

58:59

of things. But now it's been really, really

59:01

great. There could be a mini. All right.

59:03

Well, thank you again. I sincerely hope we

59:05

get to have another conversation because this was

59:07

fantastic. Hey,

59:10

Prime Members, you can listen to Tides of

59:12

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59:19

you go, tell us about yourself by

59:21

completing a short survey at wondery.com/survey. Thanks

59:30

so much for joining me today. Be sure

59:32

and hit me up if you'd like to

59:34

chat about anything we've talked about on Tides

59:36

or something you'd like to see. You can

59:38

find me on Twitter at Patrick underscore Wyman

59:40

or on Facebook at Patrick Wyman MMA or

59:42

on Instagram at Wyman underscore Patrick. I write

59:44

on other topics at Patrick Wyman dot sub

59:46

stack dot com. Tides of History is written

59:48

and narrated by me, Patrick Wyman. The

59:51

sound engineer is Sergio Enriquez. Tides of

59:53

History is produced by Morgan Jaffee. From

59:56

Wondery, the executive producers are Jenny Lower

59:58

Beckman and Mulce Louie. The

1:00:11

weight is over. So far

1:00:13

you're not losing. The only thing you're losing

1:00:15

is my patience. Quickly, I see that. The

1:00:19

queen of the court world is

1:00:21

back. I didn't do anything. You

1:00:24

wouldn't know the truth if it came up and slapped you in

1:00:26

the face. I see he's not intimidated

1:00:28

by anything. I can fix this. You're

1:00:31

Jesus. She wanted to

1:00:33

fight me? Leave her. A

1:00:36

law. Okay. So, uh... Matt,

1:00:38

this is not a soul. This is a period. Classic

1:00:40

duty. Did you sleep with her?

1:00:42

Yes, Your Honor. You marry his cousin. His

1:00:45

brother. That's not him. Yes, ma'am.

1:00:48

I would

1:00:50

make a beeline for the door. The

1:00:53

Emmy Award-winning series returns. How

1:00:56

did I know that I have crystal ball

1:00:58

in my head? It's an all-new season. It's

1:01:00

dreaming. You can say anything. Judy

1:01:04

Justice. Only on Freebie.