Archeology, Ancient Footprints, and Working Collaboratively with Daron Duke

Welcome back to Environmental Professionals Radio, Connecting the Environmental Professionals Community Through Conversation, with your hosts Laura Thorne and Nic Frederick! 

On today’s episode, we talk with Daron Duke, Principal Investigator archaeologist at Far Western Anthropological Research Group about Archeology, Ancient Footprints, and Working Collaboratively.  Read his full bio below.

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Showtimes:
3:44  Nic & Laura discuss their flawless sense of direction
9:25   Interview with Daron Duke starts
13:52   Archeology
23:31   Ancient Footprints
35:14   Working collaboratively

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This podcast is produced by the National Association of Environmental Professions (NAEP). Check out all the NAEP has to offer at NAEP.org.

Connect with Daron Duke at https://www.linkedin.com/in/daronduke/

Guest Full Bio:
Dr. Daron Duke is a Principal Investigator archaeologist at Far Western Anthropological Research Group, a California-based Cultural Resources Management (CRM) consulting firm. He serves as the company's Chief Operating Officer and the Director of its Desert Branch office in Henderson, Nevada. With 25 years of experience in the Desert West, His expertise spans a wide range of industry sectors and archaeological techniques. He works closely with Native American tribes on both archaeological and ethnographic projects. Dr. Duke is an active researcher, and clients benefit from his scientific expertise when faced with evolving standards in cultural resource evaluation. He actively disseminates scientific findings, including publications in American Antiquity, Journal of Archaeological Science, PaleoAmerica, and Nature Human Behavior.

Music Credits
Intro: Givin Me Eyes by Grace Mesa
Outro: Never Ending Soul Groove by Mattijs Muller

Transcript

Transcripts are auto-transcribed

[Intro]

Laura 
Hello and welcome to EPR with your favorite environmental nerds Nick and Laura. On today's episode, Nick and I discuss our flawless sense of direction. We talked to Darren Duke about archaeology, ancient footprints and working collaboratively and finally, per Reader's Digest. According to genetic evidence. More than 90% of modern humans descended from a small population of Homo sapiens that left Africa about 60,000 years ago, researchers thought that superior tools including fine stone blades that could be used on the hands of Spears was one of the main reasons for their success. But a site in Southern India was evidence that people there had advanced tools more than 200,000 years ago, whether that means that human ancestors left Africa in waves or that different hominids came up with similar innovations that really is unknown, but very interesting.

Nic 
I go archaeology one day we'll figure it out, maybe. Okay.

Laura 
I'm gonna get that time machine. Yeah. That means a.

Nic 
Great news everyone EPR is doing and ask me anything on Wednesday, April 12, at 8pm Eastern on our YouTube channel at EPR podcast. Lauren, I will be available for you to ask us about career advice. Our favorite toppings on pizza or anything else that crosses your mind. Movie founders see that? Can you say cool beans, movies, movies so late. It's so late so our East Coast friends can or West Coast friends can do cool. So ask us anything. Officer

Laura 
to add some FAQ in there. That would be good. How do I join?

Nic 
You just go to www dot YouTube slash at EPR podcast. That's how you join. Great questions. These are great questions. And I'll answer them this exact same way.

Laura 
Will I have to talk or can I type my questions?

Nic  
You can talk or type either way, I think. Yeah, for sure. I'll be there. Yeah, me too.

Laura 
We might even have some friends from past podcasts.

Nic 
That's true. But let's not give away everything. Promise like can't deliver.

Laura  
So yeah, just as we go. All right, cool. Cool means we have a sponsor today.

Nic  
No, you're not. Are you ready? I am as ready as I'm gonna be. We'll see how this goes. Okay, Laura, today's topic of the day is about why the internet right we know we all live it. We all love it. We all use it. And there's a new fascinating and wonderful way to enjoy that internet and that's what a company called Ebola. That's right. Ebola, that is an online platform that does stuff. And you might be wondering, what does it do? How do I use it? Great questions. I don't know those answers, but we do have at least eight foosball tables in our workstation. So that's all I'm saying is it's great. It's wonderful. It's a new startup. It's got all the flashy designs we've got you know, Tesla's for everybody that shows up. And yeah, in a business model, I don't know what it is. I have no idea but I'm sure it seems great. Our website is is it too far off camera? turned off, okay. I gotta keep going. Even better buzzer Yeah. I couldn't hear it. I just saw your phone. Perfect. Ebola. All right.

Laura 
That's gone. Well, though. I liked it.

Nic 
Well, let's get to our segment.

[Nic & Laura discuss their flawless sense of direction]

Nic
Every time I've ever done an appeal to go down to a dish, someone picks the wrong path and it's never mean whoever's in France like this will be safe and you get like thorns in every part of your body. This is the thickest brush. You couldn't find a simpler, easier way to get down here. And you get down there like you see that path right there. That one that we could have taken.

Laura  
I know what you're talking about. I feel like I have experienced that. I can't think of any specific examples.

Nic 
I was gonna say we actually had a guy like have surgery when I was doing my field work, or grad school and call the damn path because he always chose the worst doing to walk around the bush got through it. And he's like oh, yeah, that makes sense. I'm like, well, it's what's the goal? It's right there. I'm like, Yes, but there's like 18 feet of just thicket. We can't get through that we have to walk around so that we're not dead. I don't want to die from blood loss in the middle of the forest, you know?

Laura 
Yeah, I feel that but I think my most recent experiences are with my own boyfriend. Anytime we go anywhere. Even if it's just to the grocery store, he takes the longest route. Like why are we going like, Well, I'm not driving so whatever

Nic  
it is for that sense. I get lost actually really easily like it's just like a you know, we all have strengths and weaknesses. Laura, this has strengths and weaknesses. Mine is its direction. No idea. Like I can go like if I'm walking like to the grocery store. I'm like, Oh my god. So cool. All right. I was a bag I had to pull up my phone and look, I mean, it's bad.

Laura 
I'm usually pretty good. But this weekend, we went to go see my dad's band play, which was fun. But I met my brother there and I pull up I'm in the neighborhood. And the map took me past my dad's house and we've been there once and my brother goes by his and he's like, his house is back there. I'm like, Okay, well I'll just follow you. And then we had to like Park at his house and go to the clubhouse. And I have no idea where I am and my brother's like, Okay, turn here turn. They're like, how do you know where to go? It's like, it's just a grid. I'm like, Okay, it's not a grid. This one road goes curvy. And that throws the whole grid off.

Nic  
Yeah, I mean, that's the whole problem with the East Coast. Right? It's like, nothing's a grid. Absolutely. It's a grid. And so that's part of it. And there's some joy, there is joy and getting lost, you know, so they said, but that's what leads people to people who have great sense of direction, right? But now yeah, I'm not so bad about my neighborhood. I know. There's like a few pockets of places I know pretty well, which is like really super surprising. I'm like, oh, yeah, this is here, here and here and here. And then it's like, how do you know that? Um, I don't know. Honestly, God, don't question it. This is except that today. I know where I'm going. But yeah, otherwise now. I'm totally I think this is

Laura 
a problem we're all going to have the more we rely on like Google Maps and Apple Maps to tell us where we're going is like, you don't have to remember the street signs or any significant markings or anything to be like, Oh, it turned after them McDonald's.

Nic 
was funny because like you know, my dad was a police officer growing up so like, we were supposed to now you test as they are on the road, he would call off we answered, you know, big problem. But you know, if we pulled over to the side of the road, we had to tell him where we're where we are, what we're doing, you know, kind of thing and you know, just loving of course, but

Laura 
your dad just reminds me of Did you watch the show? Psych?

Nic 
Yeah, yeah. Yes.

Laura 
Reminds me of John's father. Yeah.

Nic  
Very, very much like many hats are in the room. Yeah, exactly. And I'm just like, I have I can't, I don't know. 700. And he's gonna be around like, I think. Yeah, yeah. Kinda. He was kind of like that. He always was like, you have to know what street you're on. If you drive on the highway, you know, mile markers. You have to pay attention to all this stuff. Because if you break down you get in an accident and you can't tell people where you are. You could die. And you know, he's right. But at the same time, it's like okay, that thanks. Never stuck. I wish it did. I wish I wish I had that imprinted for real.

Laura  
It'd be great. And so are you saying that you might be the guy in the field who takes the long route?

Nic 
I would definitely take the long route. Oh, yeah. Like the very okay. Oh my gosh, speaking of field stories, the very first time I went into the forest for when I was doing grad school, right work, right. Brand new forest never been there before. I had no idea where it was by myself. And I just walked like you know, an hour into the forest. That's not that's a long way. You know, and I'm like, their eyes kind of go back and I turn around look at the thing and I'm like, I legit walked in circles I had with

Laura  
the parking lot, often

Nic  
circle I worked in a full circle before I went back out and I'm like, Yeah, you should just keep that GPS unit up. And follow it. You know, it was pretty that was I was pretty embarrassed. I was like, Man, I'm so glad no one saw that. Yeah, so definitely, I would definitely get lost. Now either.

Laura 
I can definitely get lost. I think I don't think I'm inclined to get lost but I'm also very cautious about like, not getting lost. So I'm very always trying to like have my markers and be like, Okay, here's a trail of peanuts or something.

Nic  
Yeah, it's fine. It's just like I say strengths and weaknesses.

Laura 
All right, well, let's get to our interview. Sounds good.

[Interview with Daron Duke starts]

Nic 
Hello, and welcome back to EPR. Today we have Dr. Darren Duke, a principal and CEO at far western and neurological research group and he's also the director of their desert branch office in Henderson, Nevada. Welcome Darren.

Daron Duke  
Hi. How are you?

Nic 
Doing doing great. Tell us a little bit about what you do.

Daron Duke  
Well, I'm an archaeologist and a consulting archaeologist and private industry. So we follow federal law and state law in California that protects cultural resources. So lands like the Bureau of Land Management, the US Forest Service, I do a lot of work on military land. Those are the things you know we powerlines pipelines etc. The military obviously does a lot of testing and training. But we do cultural resources surveys to clear those areas for development.

Nic 
And so when you do the surveys when you're conducting those in the field, like what goes into that process, how do you how do you start? How do you end it?

Daron Duke 
Well, we get a job in a similar way any consultant we bid on it usually, sometimes things come to us or ways we know or existing contracts or clients or whatever. But once we get the job in hand, and I'll speak for myself in you know, the desert west where I usually work, you know, let's say it's the power line. Now we're gonna get an area of potential effect, some kind of corridor, probably the buffers out against the centerline of that thing, and then we would do a ground survey of it. And out west, everything's pretty much on the surface, not always the case. And that's one of the interesting wrinkles that we get to think about. But more or less, you're looking at the ground service and walking all that with people on crews, and you get done and you record sites as you find them. And you make evaluations of their significance relative to the National Register of Historic Places. It's process. It's a regulation called Section 106. We do that and then we help steer those clients the direction to avoid those things or if they have to go through them and affect them. Then we go to another phase where we might have to dig it or to enhance reporting or some other type of methods.

Nic 
Right, and I guess the typical things you find on a standard project would be what would those things be?

Daron Duke 
Well, they are. We say pre contact area, often called pre history, but we don't really use that term as much anymore. But I add historic era material. So the West obviously, it was part of American history and important growth in American history, and especially in the 19th century and early 20th century. So we did a lot of recording of that kind of thing. The law has us usually working around if it's 50 years old or older. We've all recorded so a lot of historic era sites, mining and ranching and things like that, but then the bulk of it probably is the pre contact area. So stone tools and pottery and things like that.

Nic 
And do you find like I know archaeology is a pretty regional field you've already alluded to like what you do at last would probably be a little different than what would be in the east. Do you find that there's even regional differences within the West certain areas where you find more of a certain type of artifacts?

Daron Duke 
The sorts of things we find are similar. The tides of history for America have are different on one side of the country versus the other in some ways, but we find much the same kinds of things, but certainly find them differently. I from Oklahoma, and I started out east of the Rockies where you know, you're going through Arkansas or Oklahoma or Texas and you're you don't see you know, there's been deposition where people were in the deeper paths and so usually you're going and the survey lines, you throw a shovel probe down every 30 meters or the other interval and see what's in it. And then if you find something in it, you're digging in cardinal directions to keep trying to dead reckoning. One thing I like about being out west is that you can see the whole thing laid out and gives you a different sensibility. And so that's a difference I think is meaningful and how archaeologists actually engage in the record.

[Archeology]

Nic  
Rounds really cool. Did you always want to be an archaeologist even as a kid

Daron Duke 
or is this what you've kind of felt? Yeah, I did. I mean, I looked at those National Geographic books in the 80s. I still have one that has, you know, King Tut's mask on the front of it from like, I don't know, the early 80s It was like, I couldn't get enough of that. Yeah. I got older I went to school. I went to the University of Oklahoma to do anthropology and that was a question I had when I was I started with like the I just like this cool stuff I saw you know and covers of National Geographic or do I really like it because, you know, you get into the war like what do you do here? You know, you don't look at Gold masks. You look at some flakes and all that. But I went to feel it did field school, we went to Arizona. I was hooked. I was hooked. I loved it. I mean, the Miss mystery is one way to put it but just the puzzle really is a better way. I think that I think it's engaging. You think of people doing what are basically very human and somewhat unsurprising things but the diversity with which they were done that you can kind of forensically document that no one would ever know. Is there if you have the wherewithal to work on it, and so that's what his compelling still about it

Nic 
for me. Yeah. And as your career is kind of going on, I mean, like, you know, we always have the we've talked a lot on the show, this is a transition from, you know, you're doing the field work and you become more of a managerial person, you do less field work. Do you still get to do a little of everything? Or is it isn't that I think you have to adjust to a less field experience.

Daron Duke 
Yeah, you know, I do less feel but I keep my own pet things going. And it is true, like you kind of aged out of on the ground all the time, kind of. It's kind of hard. To let that go to be honest on some level. But there's also as you know, one of my colleagues said, you know, Darren, you got to embrace the keyboard at some point. That's where the value of what you're doing is coming into play. Like even if it is archeology writing that archaeology up is part of the mental engagement, you know, it's fun to on a certain level, I mean, deadlines and whatnot being the worst part about it, but you know, it's the whole ball of wax, you know, you go out in the field and you find it, you go to the keyboard and you you document that's where you really learn. I take those ideas that came to you and you scrutinize them, turn them over, and if you can print them, you find you didn't even have it right you know, most of what you said in the first thought in the first place till you put it on paper. So the whole thing matters. And yeah, the transition has happened, but there are you know, I have this ongoing work in Utah, that's kind of my little pet area that I've developed for 20 plus years and that's the thing that I still that scratch is being where I am shown that I run it I do it I you know nobody else does kind of thing.

Nic 
Yeah, I gotcha. And I definitely will definitely dive into that in a minute. It's a really cool project and I want to hear a ton about it had like the like the idea of the things that you like the things you're interested in hunter gatherer ecology and lithic economy those are like your key areas of interest. What's your 32nd elevator speech for what those are like, what are those?

Daron Duke 
Okay, how do you go from some stone flakes and tools laying on the ground that are over you know, 10 12,000 years old, and say something about how people knew about the entire landscape what kind of groups they were in, what they emphasized in terms of what they were they moved and then even better, how their social society was, you know, I was like, maybe at least generally organized so you can understand what their life was like on some scale you can relate to that's what I think those two things come in and do for us to learn about

Nic 
and in overtime, and we could miss my insight into your your project in Utah. But how you've gone about solving the puzzle, so to speak. There's been a lot of advancements in technology that have been using archaeology and I would say there's even there's been a ton even in the last 10 years or so. So how has the use of technology helped you identify and solve these puzzles that you find?

Daron Duke 
Well, the things we've learned primarily have come by old methods they are there's no new technology that really takes over for walking around and looking and being on the ground. Right. But new technologies are a major enhancement to that on the back end, especially and they can be used to help the search as well. So for example, ground penetrating radar something we're doing going to be getting doing more than is key to like really resolving what we could not just with a shovel or trowel or observation, because we can see underground without peeling anything back

Nic 
and digging all those holes you need.

Daron Duke 
Well, we could talk a little bit more about it. We'll get into some of the details of the Utah stuff but new technologies will be their key to especially not so much as finding things as they are the preservation and protection of resources. Once you know what they are, you know how you put them in museums. You know, maybe you can't put the thing in the museum or you wouldn't take it out or Native American tribes in the region want them dealt with differently rather than you know, plucked out and moved around. In technologies allow us to gather information and extract that without having to affect the artifacts or the science or whatever.

Nic 
Well, yeah, so let's talk about your your project in Utah. It's really genuinely incredible. Utah test and training range is where it is. So what can you tell us about?

Daron Duke 
Well, I started working for the military and I think it was early 2001. And already there, it was known there was something going on out there and this this is a trading range for the same reason a lot of the training ranges out west Pyxis it's a big empty space that the military you know, wasn't taking anybody's farmland away or anything like that. This is the Great Salt Lake desert floor. This is what people would be familiar with looking at Bonneville Speedway, salt flats, not absolutely zero of anything. So why not test bombs on it? You know, that's what the military said 60 plus years ago. It turns out that there was a vast wetland out there at the end of the Pleistocene as a major ice age lake called Lake Bonneville receded. As things turned warm, we moved into the Holocene and that lake which covered half of Western Utah is now the kind of Great Salt Lake which is about a puddle to the original Lake. As great as it is. Has that receded a lot there was overflow of water coming in from all sides and you wouldn't have because it's such a big basin one of the biggest wetland areas in the entire desert west. It would have been like a Oasis, a huge Oasis, a wetland full of everything, you know, entire flyway of waterfowl would have been oriented on it. I mean, the animals everything so these people around, you know 12 to 13,000 years ago, can't say they're the first people around we don't know that looks like there were people around earlier in the desert west but it's the first material way that we can see that people had you know, this was probably a big draw it's sort of expanded about 13,000 years ago and probably brought a lot of people's attention there. And so they did that and then place dried up about 9000 years ago and people in the past really have avoided the central part of that desert flat since that time, by and large. I mean of course they know it was there. They lived and operated in areas around the basin because that was gone. So you have an archaeological record. That is a not common everywhere because it's so old but be not mixed with other stuff and from an archaeologist perspective you want to see things that aren't mixed, because you know that we know what a projectile point of some type is. goes to some time a lot of times but all the other things around that aren't diagnostic like that you don't always know but with this we can look at the entire sweep of their technology and and save things because we know that they're from this general timeframe

Nic 
is great. I mean, and it leads me to my next question, which is kind of like so basically an area like this also allows you to identify when a group of people were first using certain tools, not just the obvious ones, but you know, you know pottery and things like that is what you're saying?

Daron Duke 
Yes, first, evidently just the people on the ground really out there, there because they're using stone living technology. They're just leaving it everywhere. The patterns out you know, we get to look at an exam and that's what I've done most of the last 20 years doing is looking at the distribution of those things and timing of those things. And it's been the last few years, we found some newer wrinkles to give us a little more insight into their culture and society.

[Ancient Footprints]

Nic  
So what are those wrinkles? What have you found over this time?

Daron Duke 
Well, we started to focus on an area a few years ago that was really intriguing. But we found evidence of people using tobacco, which had not been demonstrated back to such a time that over 12,000 years, and then last year we found footprints are just being exposed. That look like we have we're going to work on that this summer. We know that they are they look like they're about 12,000 years. They can be a little bit later than that. But certainly in the Pleistocene Holocene transition time some nine to 13,000 years ago, is what these footprints and it looks like. But what I'm saying is I think they're based on all the data we have and we've been working on for two decades now about the stratigraphy and everything we have a very strong set of data that suggests they kind of go along with that general area, those certain kinds of points, the tobacco seeds at this one hearth at a site nearby and we think this is worse seeing these people living their lives in this general area when it was available, and it's just now kind of eroding out of the ground.

Nic 
Oh, wow. Yeah. So what? Actually first, I love the way the footprints were discovered. Is it true? You really just driving a lot? Is that what happened? Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Daron Duke 
Well, yes, but yeah, luck is the residue of design. Perhaps. I brought someone who's seen him before out, right. That's step one is right. No pun intended. The guy was with Tommy urban. He does ground penetrating radar. And he is the guy who is he was working in White Sands where you may be familiar. It was in the news, white footprints were found at White Sands. And that made a lot of news there purportedly over 22,000 years old. That's up for some debate, according to some but regardless, they are footprints and they're interlaced with footprints of megafauna, like mammoths and camels. And so they're very interesting and they're found out white sands in Mexico. Well, I just said that you know, that context looks like like our context and I have the kind of deposition what's happening out in the Great Salt Lake desert is the wind is just peeling grain by grain, the surface of the desert away. Yeah. And what maybe used to be a thick amount of sediment, it has been just peeling away and now it's gotten down to this 12,000 year layer. That's how is um, it sounds so weird. It would even be out there. That's how it's out there. What's interesting is it's kind of like mud out there. And so if you are below the surface, you have this like pristinely protected place. It's not. It's the opposite of looking like a peat bog, but chemically is sort of operating like one where there's no oxygen there's it's kind of damp and everything is just really secure. But the minute it's at the surface, man, the wind is going to destroy destroy, destroy. So that's a little backup on why you can even see this, but I thought, Well, I'm gonna call this guy up, you know, and we conceived a little kind of pilot study, like, I'll pay you to come out for a couple days. And what we found wasn't what I had in mind. We have this other site, we were working on, I thought maybe people walking around their own campfire would be a thing you'd see. But in fact, now I know that's not exactly the context you'd look for what we found is what you should look for, but he came out, and it's true, like day one. What I didn't know at the time is the people at White Sands are dying to have a second case so they don't look so lonely. You know, like nobody believes us. There's got to be if we have um, someone's got to have when they noticed the great solid desert is like a place to wheel around on Google Earth and wonder. Right? He got out there we drove out in the middle of the basin where this is and he started to get I could tell he was he was looking around, you know, man, this place just looks, this got to be potential. And I said, Well, what would they look like? You know, I mean, to somebody's footprint, I guess I mean, and he really just like said they look kind of like that. And like he wanted to jump out of the car before I stopped it. And sure enough, I mean, that's it.

Nic  
That is so funny. Yeah, well, I guess he was

Daron Duke 
funny. I thought for sure. Like, well, he doesn't know we've been serving out here. We've done all kinds of things and even working damp conditions where blueprints or whatever might endure. But in the end, that's, you know, these are bare footprints. And the real proof was in an excavating a few of them and seeing how they were formed.

Nic 
So how are they formed? How what goes into that when you excavate?

Daron Duke 
Well, I excavated it was the third one that I excavated that I knew I was gonna have. He only had a couple days in the military as they do. Sometimes it's telling you you can't go out one day just because whites or whatever and so he only really had a day. And we did his GPR over some of the one of the track ways we ultimately counted ADA footprints that we saw. And he laughed and I had some other people out doing other projects, but I kind of went to my hotel room and read up intensively like their articles that they had written on, on what this looks like, you know, subsurface Internet, and I kind of tried to follow the instructions. I went out there i i kind of tested like, Well, I found some animal prints and I just swept worked on those because I didn't want to get into the other stuff. Yeah, see if I knew what I was doing. And finally I decided I had to go try. I went to one footprint that was a little benign looking and I didn't see anything. And I thought this is gonna be hard. I don't know. Try another one. And I still couldn't, you know, it just wasn't making any sense. I was like, this is maybe not gonna work out. I don't know what's going on here. I thought
____________
Daron Duke 
I tried another one and I still couldn't you know, it just wasn't making any sense I was like this is maybe not gonna work out I don't know what's going on here. I thought well I think I just need to peel back a little layer centimeter and so I went to the third one I knew was a footprint I mean we measured a mountain could see that they were walked someone was walking when they were doing in the past or recently was the question, right? I had noticed I if I felt with the trail sand in the middle of those other little boxes I put around those that couldn't see anything. So the third way I did it a really nice way very smooth and clean like just little shoebox sized thing around the look like the prep and it felt sand in the middle again, but I was like and this is this is Holcomb i don't know i I'm gonna go I went back to my vehicle and ate an apple and sat there and kind of mumbled about it. I thought Yeah. And then I went back over to the pram 15 minutes to develop like a Polaroid I swear because the differential between the salt that's out there and you know, mud versus sand. All sudden this thing just looked like a flip there was a fair footprint. And that's when I knew the whole thing was legitimate. So we weren't for a few days digging some more than that the whole thing.

Nic 
That's really cool.

Daron Duke  
And maybe to answer your question a little more directly what they were doing what I know now from day one, the prints were full of sand, like pure sand. Like you could buy it at a Home Depot kind of place. Right? What it is is a sand that was from a stream that was in this wetland doesn't exist anymore. And people were walking and it looks like an ankle deep and that the substrate was mud and there's sand flowing through here and so the minute they pulled their foot out all the sand rushed in behind them and left a perfect casting of their footprint toes and everything. Yeah, and you can see there was another one I don't know had this kind of reveal it going into like you would know if you walked on the beach or whatever. Sometimes the sand rush, water rushes down and kind of scares you're praying immediately that kind of thing was happening. So there hadn't even been that kind of sand there for at least about 10,000 years. Wow. So there's no way to duplicate that process. That's later. Yeah. Wow. And so Okay, so

Nic 
you have the parents you know, their prints. And now you're you kind of using what the prints are doing and to inform about what the people at this time were doing. So what did you learn on that side of things, too. So what are the prints tell us basically about what they were doing?

Daron Duke 
Well, this is something we want to learn more about this year when we do a little more work, but even with what minimal we did we learned that we have more than just we have family. You know, I told you earlier like what do we learn from stone tools and their presence, you know but it could have been some guys hunting. You know, somebody we all know what one of these sites mean. And while we know that there were adults and children, we had at least and the size of footprints is pretty well understood within a range, you know, the age level, and it looked like we had at least some parents like five to seven year old, maybe some 10 to 13 year old and then adult. They're small foot the adult parents were small. Maybe that means they were female, or maybe everyone just had smaller footprints. We don't know that stuff yet, but the point is we have adults and children. And that's something we don't learn about the past, you know, under normal circumstances, so, right. may seem benign and normal, but it's

Nic  
just cool. Oh, yeah. 100% And so the people that are they're adults and children do you have do we have a sense of what they were doing is Is it like a resistor communal area where the lot that people were coming to or were they passing through?

Daron Duke 
Well, what we know about the stone tools, there's something we do called City and sourcing, like they used obsidian, this volcanic glass and related volcanic material. It's a little more grainy we usually call it failure and volcanic stone but it's like the salt or something. And we can chemically source those they have like a chemical fingerprint to the geologic source they come from. Now we know at the time that these people early in these times in the Great Basin they moved a lot and along way those stone tools show us people moving hundreds of miles so they were mobile is a small sites. They didn't stay on that long they moved on. And so that's why the question you know who exactly is does the whole family move that much? Or maybe just some people have it right but here we see what we think are people who would have been here for a short time before moving on up to Idaho on down to Southern Utah. Thus the sweep of what we understand that folks that time were doing but what they were doing at the time was walking perhaps they were collecting food. Perhaps they were just enjoying themselves for all I know. But they're walking in shallow water. If you're out in a wetland I mean the water sometimes is the best place to walk around, you know, pending on Yeah, yeah. But we know they were yeah out in this marshland in the water. And based on the way the prints are formed. Sometimes they're really deep. It looks like little more money. Maybe somebody went a little farther out or, but were you have an actual track way. You know, you can't be sloshing around too much kind of in the shallows.

[Working collaboratively]

Nic 
Right. Yeah. So it's like I said, this is on military installation. So how has the military kind of helped with the whole process you've gone you have going on here?

Daron Duke 
Well, military's been critical to all along the way. Like I said that I've been working there for over 20 years and they are excellent stewards of the cultural resources. You know, they have a job to do mission to accomplish about testing and training weapons, but they do that in certain areas. Those areas get cleared by people like me and other environmental professionals and they can do that work and they're very careful to not be destructive in this regard. And their stewardship of the archaeological record is excellent. And it's why the continued work to really work with the tribes and protect and preserve what's there have become highlight

Nic 
that and that's incredible. It's incredible stuff I'm really glad to hear. It's funny, you know, one of the things I've talked about on the show before is the military does a great job on natural resources to in lots of areas and lots of ways and some bases care more about other than others, but, you know, like, like the MacDill Air Force Base, right it's it's built in the absolute worst possible spot they could have picked they they're just like, well, it's gross here. No one cares, right? We'll build this in the 40s and then they you know, the like, you know, it sure does flood here all that's And now we know the whole thing is within the 100 year floodplain 90% of its wetland. There's 15 endangered species and, you know, including light in the water and in birds on land. So there's, they get it from both ends, they can't go into the water, they can't go out of the water, but they really appreciate everything that's there. And they're really they, you know, they care very much about manatees, they canceled projects that are going to affect them. They have done a whole lot of work in that area to support and maintain the things that they have, you know, and very, very neat. They've worked around it. They're like, Yeah, well, if we need to build instead of building new we demolish and then rebuild, so that we're not increasing our footprint in the floodplain. We know it's a bad it's bad for lots of reasons, but it's fairly cool to see I think that people don't don't get that.

Daron Duke  
Yeah, and I'll I'll pretend like you just asked me another question and say, you know, the military and our work with them and even in other environmental work, is a great example of how environmental laws work at their best, because, as you said, some of these bases are put in places that you know, just because you couldn't mined them or farm them. That's kind of why they put them where they are, they belong, but then you find out nature doesn't need to mine or farm anything. And many of these places are basically nature preserved. Now they're protected. The military can accomplish their mission and when we do the big pitfall being an environmental professional is getting in the way. Right? It's when you throw up hurdles, instead of means by which people can get things done because we live in this world. You need power and you feel you need things that come from the industrial world. How do you navigate somebody who has a shared interest in protecting if it's a reasonable you know, you have to go in there and you work with them to work with the laws and and when they do it in a way they feel they're able to accomplish their mission and do it efficiently. Everybody up the chain wants to go and it's good for everybody and it's good for the environment.

Nic 
Yeah, absolutely. And it's things like Eglin Air Force Base being having the largest population of replicated woodpeckers in the country, you know, and it's 1000 acres, it's never going to be touched that forest is there because they do forest training. And it's kind of an a really incredible thing. So I love when that all comes together. Really, really great point that you guys are going back out this year to do some more work again. And so it's whenever this stuff happens whenever we have a site like this on the military, you have basically the buyers from players coming together, right it's becomes a collaborative effort. So I know you're working with the military installation to determine more about the tracks themselves. Are you also working with any local tribes that are maybe interested in learning more about the tracks as

Daron Duke 
well? Well, yeah, I mean, the tribes are several of them, the military consults with and so it is totally collaborative effort. And we want the few tribal representatives came out to visit the site last year and we're looking for them to come out and participate even to the degree they want to this year. That's really fulfilling because seeing somebody see what they consider their direct ancestors and a place they still call home is a pretty cool thing.

Nic 
Yeah, absolutely. And so, yeah, that's very, very cool. I totally agree with you. Sorry, I'm like nerding out a little bit. So that's pretty great. So when you're doing stuff like this, you know, not every product of course is is as interesting and as unique as this one. But, you know, you mentioned your love for doing this work. And do you have advice for people who are maybe looking to come into this field? Like maybe younger people who are considering it? Well, like, is there something that you wish you had known when you were younger that you could tell them now?

Daron Duke 
Well, it's nothing you really want to do is ever easy, right? You know, there's fun stuff is why what we're talking about now, I mean, you just have to really want it, you know, being an archaeologist and perhaps being any other many other environmental professional sorts, isn't always you know, it's not the direct route to the pay level, the rivals Wall Street or anything, but so you gotta like really want it. Yeah. And I mean, to make a whole career out of and I think to have why, I mean, looking back on why do I have a career as an archaeologist almost seems silly, like cleaning that up. But really, it's just because my wanted to do it. I was naive enough when I was younger, just keep doing it. I didn't have anybody telling me I shouldn't be a lawyer or a banker or anything, and I'm dumb enough to just keep a job because I've got it. You know, like, I really don't have better advice than that.

Nic 
Yeah. No, that's perfect, though. I think a lot of times we overthink it. And sometimes it's great not to. I think that's fantastic advice, but so I appreciate it. Now, one thing we do love asking our guests is stuff they do outside of the field as well and kind of just fun facts about them. And one of the things you said was one of your entries is insects. So what does that mean? Do you what do you like about insects?

Daron Duke 
Let's say? He asked me so I said, Yeah, you know, I was like as a teenager I was in for age and, you know, got into bug collecting. I don't know like maybe it sounds cooler. Now. I have a whole other job. And you know, I'm an adult, but it didn't sound so cool when I was 15. Right. It was something that I liked a lot. Yeah, on the outside. I still you know, I still fascinated by it. I started to look into getting into entomology. I grew up in Stillwater, Oklahoma, which is where most state university that so they have a substantial agricultural program that entomology fits into but yeah, I kind of got into it and you know, whereas my naive youth was, you know, I don't know pith helmet and butterfly net row right out of South America or something. It's really like, can you make a pesticide? I know that time. Don't be mad at me other people in the environmental field who I'm just at the time I was young, I was like, This is what everything's kind of following me and I don't really want to do that. I mean, yeah, and I was interested in archaeology more interested. So it was a hobby. It was something that I'm still fascinated by I follow like all these kind of into into people on Twitter and and stuff like that because I just like it. I kind of, I know all the backyard patterns. of the bugs of my home. I do a little kind of fiddling with kind of macro photography and stuff with insects. I just find them interesting. I mean, they're like aliens.

Nic  
Yeah, no, they really, totally they totally are. It's kind of like, what if we're just our skeletons on the outside? You're like, what? No,

Daron Duke 
no, we're asked that question. That's pretty deep. Yeah. Or skin deep?

Nic 
Yeah, right. So do you have a favorite? Is it an unfair question to ask if you have any favorite genre even event sex? Oh, yeah,

Daron Duke 
I mean, monarch butterfly is my favorite insect. Yes for what right? Is bright man's.

Nic 
Oh, yeah. Both very interesting, man. Yeah, you can. Alien. That is probably the most you can be. Well, I guess I appreciate it. I know we're, we're getting close to the end of our time. Here. And I say it's been really fun talking with you and learning a lot more about what you do. And before we let you go, is there anything else you'd like to mention?

Daron Duke  
Well, let's see. We need more environmental professionals. So nothing I said didn't discourage anybody but there's a lot business looks good for the next five years or something. Take advantage. Become an environmental professional,

Nic  
man. Wow. Yeah, I totally agree. And like I say, I really appreciate your time. But before we let you go, where can people get in touch with you

Daron Duke 
on social media on LinkedIn? I have a Twitter account but really I have also a page on our company's website far western anthropological research group. Far western.com that there's a page as my email. I'm I'm easy to get all the

Nic 
perfect. Well, thank you, Darren so much for being here. We had a great, great time. All right. Thank you.

[Outro]

Laura  
That's our show. Thank you, Darren for joining us today. Please be sure to check us out each and every Friday. And don't forget to subscribe, rate and review. Bye.

Nic
See you everybody.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai