Video transcript

Fun of Science: Time Travel

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On screen title: Time Travel
Men in a power boat, heading out to sea, wave.

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Muffled sound of outboard engine.

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Second group of men at dock.

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NARRATOR:
Multiple choice question: How can you tell that these men are scientists?

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On screen list of multiple choice answers:
A) IT'S SUNNY AND ONLY ONE IS WEARING SUN GLASSES
B) THEY'RE CARRYING CONCEALED EQUIPMENT
C) THEY LOOK LIKE THEY'RE OFF FOR A DAY OF FUN
D) ALL OF THE ABOVE

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If you answered “D) all of the above,” you’re right! The concealed equipment that these scientists carry from shore out to Netarts Spit includes some very modern surveying gear.

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Prow of boat zips through water, toward sandy beach. Gear in field at what’s apparently a surveying site. Survey crew uses a device with an antennae to set the coordinates of the site. A with backpack, keyboard, then student assistant holding two handled transmitter device.

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But the coolest tool is a portable setup known as "GPR" -- Ground Penetrating Radar. There's a receiver in a backpack, a computer to analyze the data, and a transmitter to shoot the radar pulses.

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Views of GPR equipment in use.

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“Ground penetrating radar" pretty much tells what the tool does – though it may not be immediately obvious why one would want to shoot radar into the ground.

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Broken shards

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The answer has to do with these broken pieces of crockery found at the Netarts Spit in the 1950s.

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Close-up of pottery

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Turns out they are part of an Indian village that was here in the 1600s. This is known because the crockery includes Chinese porcelain from that period.

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Photographs of the 1950s excavation.

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The site was excavated by University of Oregon researchers in the 1950s and more recently has become of interest because of what the village might reveal about earlier coastal environments and climate.

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Scientist standing outdoors, identified on screen as
Curt Peterson, Portland State University

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PETERSON:
We’re using ground penetrating radar to answer specific questions about what the site was like when the Indians first used this village – specifically what the landscape was like -- whether the sands dunes which they had built upon were vegetated or still active. We just figured that out five minutes ago, so that’s pretty exciting.

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Field workers continue with GPR studies.

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NARRATOR:
The behavior of dune environments is of particular interest to Dr. Peterson, who is a geologist. But archaeologists are impressed by how the radar revealed subsurface features.

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Scientist identified on screen as Robert Losey, University of Oregon

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ROBERT LOSEY:
It has fairly good resolution through things that in archaeology we wouldn’t pick up. Features like the inner stratigraphy of a dune, for example, that would tell us which way sand is moving across a site. Stuff we wouldn’t normally access at all.

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Curt Peterson

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PETERSON:
We’re talking about a centimeter or two here, and that just opens up the fine interpretation of these Quaternary deposits like nothing I’ve ever seen before.

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NARRATOR:
One of the key puzzles about the village was where did the indians get water for the village.

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An assistant takes measurements.

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Harry Jol, University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire

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HARRY JOL:
The idea is that we’re out here with salt water all the way around us; where’s the fresh water? What we’ve found is that there’s a fresh water aquifer that does come up almost within a half-meter within the bottom of the homes. There was freshwater locally that they didn’t need to bring over from the mainland which they could have drawn quite easily at this site.

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Peterson

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NARRATOR:
Peterson experiences a kind of time travel through his geological investigations.

CURT PETERSON:
It’s kind of fun to come out to a site like this, and as a geologist go back 500 or a thousand years, and be able to say what it was like. When we walk around we don’t see just the present. We see the past, what led up. It’s a way to visualize people living in these prehistoric landscapes.

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Peterson stands in a wooded area, taking notes and measurements.

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PETERSON:
And not just the general aspects, quite detailed, like. . .

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Peterson

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. . . here was a creek there, they must have gone there for water; here was a house pit just above the water table, boy, during the winter that must have flooded. They would have gotten their feet wet. And we can see all those settings as a geologist, and then to see how people lived on them and dealt with them during their lives, where they built, where their paths were, where artifacts are, is very fun.