Archaeologist Dr Diana Pickworth. She is presently a Visiting Scholar in the UC Berkeley Near Eastern Studies Department. Formerly Assoc Prof of Mesopotamian Art and Archaeology and Museum Studies at the University of ‘Aden in the Republic of Yemen.

Transcript

Speaker 1:        Spectrum's next. 

Speaker 2:        Okay. [inaudible]. 

Speaker 1:        Welcome to spectrum the science and technology show on k [00:00:30 ] a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program bringing you interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists as well as a calendar of local events and news. 

Speaker 3:        Hey, good afternoon. My name is Brad Swift. I'm the host of today's show this week on spectrum. Our guest is archaeologist Dr Diana. Pick worth. She is presently a visiting scholar in the UC Berkeley Near Eastern studies department. Dr Pick worth is completing the work related to the publication of two volumes [00:01:00 ] on excavations carried out by a university of California team at the site of Nineveh in northern Iraq. Formerly she was an associate professor of Mesopotamian art and archeology and museum studies at the University of a sudden in the Republic of Yemen. Diana pick worth is an elected fellow of the explorers club and a member of the American School of Oriental Research. Here is that interview. Hi, this is Brad Swift. In today's spectrum interview, Rick Karnofsky [00:01:30 ] joins me, Rick [inaudible] and today's guest is Diana. Pick worth Diana, welcome to spectrum. 

Speaker 1:        I'm honored and delighted to be here. 

Speaker 3:        Diana would you begin by talking about archeology and how it got started and how it's blossomed into its multifaceted current state. 

Speaker 1:        There's no doubt that the enlightenment in the 19th century sparked a huge interest [00:02:00 ] in the eastern part of the Ottoman Empire. And so during this period, the European countries, England, France, Germany, Austria, and Italy, we're sending consoles and ambassadors to visit the Parshah and Istanbul. What happened was these countries became competitive in their desire, both the land and knowledge. And this was fueled somewhat by [00:02:30 ] Darwin's research and in 1830 his work on the Beagle and subsequently his publication of origin of species spoked enormous questions about the Bible. And it was this desire to understand the truth about the Bible. It had been viewed up until that point is a given that it was correct [00:03:00 ] and it challenged the world view at the time. And avast and I think changing Manoj and so layered from England, Botha from foams moved east of Istanbul into northern Iraq. And what we see is these two men really pitching at each other to stake a claim for that country to excavate in there tells that they [00:03:30 ] both discovered in the appetite risk space on and is that how the Fertile Crescent got started? 

Speaker 1:        That whole idea of Fertile Crescent, that was a little later, but the Fertile Crescent represents an area where settlement could first begin and so the ice Asya hat is really a points on a map. It's a way of looking at how [00:04:00 ] geography, rainfall, and natural geographic circumstances create a circumstance where humankind can prosper and it can farm in what is called dry farming. And so what we find, it's an all running up from about the middle of their Dead Sea on the Palestinian literal all the way up in a circle across the top of what [00:04:30 ] is today, northern Syria and northern Iraq. Those sites date from as early as 9,000 BC and there's no doubt that's where we are. We all finding humankind's first farming and settlement currently. Then what's notable about the transition from the 19th or the 20th century in terms of archeology? I think on the one hand a tremendous continuity so [00:05:00 ] that those sites that would claimed in the 19th century tend to still be excavated by the same country. 

Speaker 1:        There's an unspoken but still I think quite rigorous concept that a site is handed on. The perspective has become much more global so that we have people excavating in the Middle East, from South Africa, [00:05:30 ] from South America, from the United States, and these teams in most we would call the new world are essentially funded or sponsored by their universities. That still remains in the European countries. A tradition of sponsorship by the government and this makes a huge difference. They are able to continue with a very shore knowledge of funding [00:06:00 ] year after year. You talked a little bit about the Fertile Crescent. What are other examples of old settlements? What's the oldest settlement? I think in photo Cresson, certainly one of the most remarkable sites is Choteau here. And this was excavated by the University of California by Ruth Traynham and has some of the earliest illustrative material and [00:06:30 ] war paintings in that area. And representative, uh, no doubt of the earliest farming settlements. And it's a dense occupation. Surprisingly, there are dense a little later we see sites that we defined by this ceramic heritage, so at this point we have new written documentation but how suna and hello laugh of these very early pottery sites that are named [00:07:00 ] essentially from the first site, but we find a spread of occupation across the area. Further east, I'm a hindered Daro 2,900 BC is in what is modern day Pakistan and without doubt one of the earliest settlements 

Speaker 4:        [inaudible]

Speaker 5:        you were listening to spectrum on k a l experts like archaeologist, [00:07:30 ] Diana [inaudible] is our guest. 

Speaker 1:        How closely does archaeological training in universities track with the real world application of archeology? I think in many cases very well. One of the requirements of an archeologist above all others I think is flexibility and sturdy resilience, but there are three aspects we're trained theoretically [00:08:00 ] and this I think is where to refer back to your earlier question. There is a change from 19th century archeology today. We're trained to pose a theoretical question to come up with a hypothesis that we will try to test on the ground. I think an area background knowledge is essential training varies in this regard. For example, [00:08:30 ] in Germany, archeologists are expected to work all over the world whereas we tend to direct our training two area studies say that my area Mesopotamia and Arabian studies really requires a basis of language study under knowledge of the history of the area and so one becomes a specialist in a particular area. 

Speaker 1:        The practical training [00:09:00 ] is fairly consistent. I think we begin in in the states, the students are sent in the summers to excavations and throughout their graduate career it's hope they'll have an opportunity to really work in different types of sites and all of us begin or hope to with a semester in a field archeology school so that ones practicing perhaps in a situation where one can't cause too much [00:09:30 ] damage within the United States field of study, how much might one drift from their graduate area into another area of the world as they start their career? That's an interesting question. In my experience, people do really tend to stay within their area of specialization. We're talking about as much as maybe six to eight years of a language study. The geography and the history of an area [00:10:00 ] becomes embedded in one's training and in one's doctoral dissertation, so I personally don't think there is such a broad shift. 

Speaker 1:        I think theoretically once capable, there's absolutely no doubt and we find also that students who find themselves not to have strong language studies tend to move into pre history. If you're working in pre history, then really one can go anywhere. It doesn't matter. [00:10:30 ] There are loopholes in the system, some of the technical methods that are being applied to dating things. Does that mess up the history of it all, the timing, the dating, a lot of the earlier work, does it get overturned in terms of how old is this settlement? I think DNA has made an enormous, perhaps the most significant difference and whole groups of people have been shown to not be native to where [00:11:00 ] they have claimed in their own written literature that they've always left that spin. I think a delightful surprise, very interesting surprise. Certainly high and duel found that everyone going to the Polynesian islands was going in 150 degrees opposite direction from what he had anticipated. 

Speaker 1:        So we do find that as time passes, the studies can be refined, but I would say it's rather a question [00:11:30 ] of refinement than are there just totally wrong assumptions. Can I call it it all about what proportion of work is done on newly found settlements, settlements that might've been found in the past couple years versus settlements that we've known about for some time? I think the introduction of Google and satellite imagery has made a vast difference to what we can do most recently in [00:12:00 ] a northeast Iraq in what is now the Kurdish settlement. Recent work by Harvard has discovered an enormous number of settlements and all of the previous research before they went into the field was done using satellite imagery and so that was unavailable until quite recently. It saves money. There's no doubt with satellite imagery. We can sit in an office in Berkeley and look at the satellite [00:12:30 ] sites su