Brothers of the Serpent Podcast

Conversation with the girlfriend last night... Girlfriend "I thought you said things would slow down after harvest??" "I'm not complaining, just trying to figure things out.." Me "ahh, yeah... I did say that... That's really just a lie, us farmers we tell ourselves to keep ourselves going..."

Tallwife tells me it's customary to do an intro post when you hit 100K followers. I thought this was kinda stupid. "Look at me, I have delusions of importance because people hit the 'this is vaguely interesting' button!" But she pointed out that not everyone who hit the button, especially recent ones, knows who you are and what you do. Okay. Fair enough. I'm an internet loudmouth, and compulsive explainer. I say things that aren't nice, but need to be said, about the world we live in, things that might not have occurred to people. People seem to like them, which surprises me, because it's just me talking, the sort of rants I used to subject my girlfriends to. I also write novels. Pretty new at that part, so there's only one out so far, but people seem to like it, and the next one's coming pretty soon. I like Western Civilization, and I don't like communists. I want to spend money on going to space, not babysitting infinity retards on earth. I'm definitely not a cat. Today, I am tired and happy, because the audiobook of my first novel is finally done, published, and available. Full cast, directed it myself, etc, etc.

Part 2: Planning for the Unknown Our objective was to collect samples from below the large megalith walls of Sacsayhuaman for dating. This could be our one chance to do so, and we wanted to be prepared for a range of possibilities and challenges. Over the last few years I have been working on a strategy to use Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) to date megalithic structures, especially those with contested ages. While this method is commonly used in Quaternary Geology and Archeology, it is less frequently used to date large stone structures. More often it is used to date sediment associated with a geological event (deposition of sand dunes or loess), or sediment deposited at the same time as human activity (sand deposited in the same sedimentary layer as a human artifact). I won’t go into all the requirements of OSL, but generally you want well traveled, recycled, distal, quartz, with full exposure to the sun before burial. Quartz grains you might find in wind blown sand dunes sourced from sediment deposited by a long traveled river would be ideal. The further you get from this ideal scenario, the more challenging it becomes to date the burial event. OSL is measuring the length of time the quartz grain has been buried after being fully exposed to sunlight. When buried, the quartz grain is exposed to ionizing radiation from radioactive isotopes in the soil. Over time this causes an accumulation of electrons in the crystal lattice of the quartz grain, which can later be measured in a specialized lab. I’ll post a screen shot of an excellent concise explanation by Nelson et al., 2015, User Guide for Luminescence Sampling in Archaeological and Geological Contexts. This brings us to our first question about the megalithic walls of Sacsayhuaman: What are they sitting on? The initial method I considered to date megalithic structures was to dig a deep pit next to the stone block we would like to date, then hammer a rectangular steel tube along the bottom of it, collecting sediment in contact with its base. As it turned out there have been similar attempts made using round tubes on large stone jars in Laos (Shewan et al. 2021) and by collecting sediment from below stone walls in New England (Mahan et al., 2015). . No matter the sampling method, the starting assumption (and hope) is that the sediment collected has quartz that has been fully reset by solar exposure just prior to stone placement, then buried without disturbance until time of collection. Before the pits were dug it was unknown how valid this assumption would be. We did not know what the stones were sitting on. Were they placed on carved and flattened bedrock? Were they placed on a prepared foundation? Were simply placed on unprepared soil? Was there adequate well transported quartz?