TCNJ

33 BILL: I think one of the things Doug and I do for our students, whether in the mountains or in a classroom, is build these virtual time machines. Whether it's for an hour or week, they step back in time. How do you balance this with the need to stay connected in the modern world? DOUG: To me, it's a spectrum. My personal preference is for simpler things, but I produce some of my own video work, and I don't shy away from that. I don't watch television, but I live in a normal suburban house, and I wear normal clothes. I don't run around half naked in buckskin all the time—except when I'm lucky enough to have an excuse (laughs). BILL: For me, this was the start of an entire journey. I had this desire to get to the most basic level of everything I did. So if I learned to hunt, I had to learn to bow hunt. If I was going to bow hunt, I had to learn how to make the bow, and the arrows and the stone points. When I think of modern technologies, I certainly engage in them. I can't do my job without some of them. However, I still try to maintain my basic approach to everything I do—I don't want to do anything unless I've learned how to do it first from scratch. That way I can better understand the process and also how it impacts me, my family, and the world around me in a larger context. Was there any pivotal experience or no-going-back moment on your path to really embracing this? DOUG: I had an experience early on in my studies. We were out trying to live as hunter-gatherers for a week, and one night, we'd waited too long to start a fire. We're staring down nighttime, it's raining, everything is a bit wet, and we're struggling to get any friction for a spark. Fortunately, I lived to tell about it. I don't wait until dark to get my fires going anymore. BILL: For my dissertation, I spent several years recreating a 2,000-year- old fishing station on an island in the Tinder Unplugged Start your prehistoric journey by learning to make a fire without matches. Hill recommends reading Earth Knack: Stone Age Skills for the 21st Century by Bart and Robin Blankenship for more detail. In the meantime, here are some basic tips: step 3: Rub your hands in long back-and-forth strokes to twist the spindle. Over time, dust will build up. step 1: For the fire board, locate a dry piece of wood with two flat sides. For the drill, find a straight, dry stick about 18" tall to use as a spindle. step 2: Cut a circular hole to cradle the spindle and a v-shaped notch that extends to the edge. step 4: Shape dried grasses and shredded tree bark into a bird's nest. Place next to or under fire board. step 5: Accelerate the spindle until smoke and ultimately, a chunk of burning coal (borne of the dust) is ready to meet the tinder. middle of the Delaware River. I took students and volunteers out for several weeks to test a lot of archaeological questions and, in order to do it properly, made it an immersive experience— what we call "living archaeology." It's one thing to wake up in the hotel every morning, have breakfast, then go out and run these experiments. It's another thing to live in the context of the experiment day and night. So we go out on this island, and I'm a nervous wreck; my grad school degree is hinging on this. We'd been out there a week, we'd made a wigwam, we were fishing in the river. And one night, sitting around this fire, I was just watching everybody laugh and joke. That was the moment we became a group and started to figure it out. We weren't eating a lot, we weren't comfortable, but we were OK. The way we were laughing around this fire was the way they might've been laughing around a fire in this exact same spot 2,000 years ago. We throw around this word "survival" all the time. It's not survival. Our ancestors weren't surviving; they were subsisting and doing well—really well. In fact, I think we can learn a lot about how to better live our modern lives from our ancestors. DOUG: I like the term "thrival." BILL: "Thrival." That's great! DOUG: Thanks! One of the distinctions I try to make with my students is really that goal, the end result. Survival is whatever it takes to get home—you chop down every tree in the forest and set it on fire if you need to. With primitive skills, it's just the opposite. It's about sustaining. Ryan Jones is a freelance writer based in State College, Pennsylvania, and a deputy editor at The Penn Stater. Interviewing TCNJ alumni pairs is becoming a cottage industry for Jones: he spoke with minor league baseball managers George Coleman and Will Smith in the Summer 2015 issue.

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