Archaeologist Reviews Minecraft Archaeology | Minecraft 1.20 Snapshot | Bite-Size Archaeology (Ep 8)

Hello everyone and welcome back to my  channel! I don’t know if you’ve noticed,   but archaeology is coming to Minecraft!  Actually, it’s not only coming to Minecraft,   it’s already in the snapshots! And because  you all are archaeology-minded these days,  

I’m guessing that you might want to know what  an actual archaeologist thinks about it all.  Here’s a quick break-down of the archaeology  mechanics as they stand in snapshot 23w12a.   I know this isn’t the latest snapshot, but it’s  the latest snapshot where archaeology was really  

Affected, so that’s what I’m gonna talk about  today. To do archaeology in Minecraft, you need   two things: a brush and either some suspicious  sand or some suspicious gravel. A brush can   be created with a stick, a feather and a copper  ingot, which makes it fairly simple to get a hold  

Of and gives us a new use for copper! Suspicious  sand and suspicious gravel look like regular sand   and gravel, but with some slight differences. At the moment, you can find suspicious sand   inside desert pyramids, at the bottom of desert  wells and in ocean ruins in warm oceans, and you  

Can find suspicious gravel in ocean ruins in cold  oceans and in a new structure called trails ruins,   which you can find in taiga, jungles or  birch forests and usually near rivers or   other waterways. When you find suspicious sand  or gravel, you can brush it with your brush  

To get artefacts. A lot of these are things we  already know about, like diamonds or emeralds,   but there are also 20 different pottery shards  that are spread across these five site types.  If you try to dig suspicious sand or gravel,  they don’t just give you sand or gravel,  

They just break, making either a shattered glass  noise or a broken pottery noise or something   like that. You also can’t user Silk Touch on  these blocks, and you can’t place a torch under   them either. Sus sand and sus gravel are also  gravity blocks, so if you mine underneath them,  

They are gonna fall! But if they fall at  all, they break and drop absolutely nothing.  Most of the objects we find in suspicious sand  or gravel have a use to the player already,   but the pottery shards are new. You  can use them to build a large pot,  

Either by combining four shards, four bricks, or  a combination of the two. And you can also mix   and match shard designs to create a little bit  of a story around the large pot that you make!  So how does this stack up to actual  archaeology, and what do I think about it? 

I gotta be honest, I’m generally rather impressed  with these mechanics, and so are a lot of the   archaeologists I know! I do have some things I  would change and some things I’d like to see in   the future, but generally, I’m very impressed. Let’s start with what I really love. I love that  

You can’t pick up suspicious sand or gravel,  even with Silk Touch. I think that’s one of   the best decisions they could possibly have made.  Archaeologists can’t easily pick up dirt without   disturbing what’s inside of it. Technically we  can, and we often do for more fragile finds,  

But it’s really difficult to do and takes  a lot of people, a lot of equipment,   and a lot of skill to pull off well. It’s  also something that we do very carefully,   like I was saying, and often we do it with a  lot of reverence, particularly because a lot  

Of what we take out of the ground with the ground  still around it are things like funerary remains   or fragile objects that are sacred to a lot  of people. It’s not something we do casually,   and I feel like taking the option away for  the player to pick up suspicious sand makes  

It so that it’s obvious this is a block that  needs to be treated carefully and respectfully.  I also love that suspicious sand and suspicious  gravel as they currently exist aren’t something   you can place yourself outside of creative  mode. Now, I will get into this, because  

There are some things about this that I would  love to see tweaked. I’m not opposed to players   using suspicious sand! I just have thoughts on  how we should do it. Archaeological contexts,   archaeological material, aren’t decorations,  and while I do agree with anyone saying that  

It would be really cool to create our own  archaeological sites, I feel like it needs   to be more complex than picking up sus sand  or sus gravel and placing it somewhere else.  I also really love the sound that sus sand and  sus gravel make when you break them [sounds of  

Gravel or sand breaking combined with sounds of  breaking glass or pottery]. It’s just a fantastic   reminder that there was archaeology in there,  but now it’s gone and you can’t get it back.  I’ve said before that archaeology is inherently  destructive. You can never dig a site twice;  

Once it’s dug, that’s it. Archaeology is  systematic and careful for a lot of reasons,   but one of the biggest ones is because we only  get one chance to collect the information we   need from whatever we’re digging. In fact,  we often will only excavate parts of a site,  

So that future archaeological techniques  can still be applied to the parts of   the sites that we haven’t excavated yet. Now, you can’t put everything into a game,   and you probably shouldn’t anyway, but I think  the fact that you can’t move the suspicious sand,  

You can’t pick it up, and the noise that it makes  as it breaks are all really fantastic mechanical   choices that may seem small, but that communicate  major tenets of archaeology as a field.  Speaking of teaching major tenets of archaeology  through game mechanics, Minecraft now teaches you  

One of the biggest things in archaeology,  and that is stratigraphy. Stratigraphy is   actually a geological and ecological concept  that looks at layers of rock or soil. So if   I have a layer of dirt here, a layer of gravel  on top of it and a layer of sand on top of that,  

These layers together and how they got there are  what we call stratigraphy. Within stratigraphy,   we have something called the Law of Superposition,  which states that because gravity exists,   generally speaking, a layer that occurs above  other layers generally formed after the layers  

Below it did. So with this example here, the  dirt formed first and then the gravel and   then the sand. If I take out the dirt, then the  gravel and the sand fall down. You usually can’t  

Create a hole here after the gravel and sand have  formed and try to put dirt underneath it. There   are definitely exceptions to this, like caves,  for example, and Minecraft actually has very few   gravity blocks, so this law kinda goes out the  window, but hopefully you get the general point. 

Even though a lot of Minecraft blocks aren’t  gravity blocks, we can still see stratigraphy with   sus sand and sus gravel, and we can see it at all  five of the current archaeological sites. Because   these blocks are affected by gravity and because  they disappear when they fall, we know that any  

Blocks underneath suspicious sand or suspicious  gravel were there before the sus sand or sus   gravel formed. So in the case of the ocean ruins,  for example, we know that the building was here   before the suspicious sand formed, and therefore  the building is older than the suspicious sand. 

In many of these sites, we actually get even more  to work with! In the desert pyramid, for example,   because suspicious sand has formed in a chamber,  suspicious sand appears at different Y levels in   that chamber. So not only do we know that the  chamber was made before the sand filled it in,  

We also know that suspicious sand at the bottom of  the chamber was placed there before any suspicious   sand that we find at the top of the chamber. I also like that you don’t always find things   that are inherently valuable to the player!  Sometimes you get a stick or a wooden hoe.

Also, you guys! You can find glass panes  in the trail ruins! AHHHH! [Laughs]   My glass specialist self is so happy about this!  It’s one of those things where, like, every time   I find a glass pane here, I’m like a kid at  Christmas. It makes me so ridiculously happy. 

I’ve seen a lot of posts on social media  saying there needs to be more treasure,   or the treasure you find needs to be more  useful to the player, and I gotta be honest,   I disagree. The past does not exist to be useful  to the present, and the things people in the  

Past found valuable aren’t going to be the same  things that we find valuable today. I do think   some of the things players find in sus sand or  sus gravel need to have value to the player,   because otherwise a lot of players are never gonna  do archaeology and that would be a real shame.  

I just also don’t think that every item we find  needs to be inherently useful to us as a player.  Besides, in excavating this particular  trail ruin, I found 67 sus sand and gravel.   Sixty seven! I only got 66 artefacts because one  of them generated with an empty block underneath  

It, so when I unknowingly mined the stone above  it, it fell and broke, but look at the amount of   stuff that was in this site! I mean, I guess  if you’re only looking for armour trims and  

Pottery shards, you might be disappointed with  how much digging you need to do to get to those,   but if that’s the only reason you’re doing  archaeology, then… you’re kinda missing   the point of archaeology. Which isn’t your  fault! Popular media has made archaeology into  

This high-stakes big adventure where you find  valuable things around every corner every day,   and that’s just not what archaeology actually is.  There are so many stories that we can tell and   details and lore we can decode about the Minecraft  world from each and every one of these artefacts  

And where we found them. Archaeology isn’t about  loot, it’s about uncovering the stories of people   in the past and understanding how those  stories relate to our own in the present.  Archaeologists also do a lot of digging  and finding absolutely nothing. I once  

Dug a trench that had nothing in it aside from  63 wild onions, and we couldn’t even eat the   onions because they were a variety poisonous  to humans! It took me three days. Three days!  Also, just to be clear, I am not advocating for  Minecraft to have ‘nothing’ as a possibility  

When brushing sus sand or sus gravel. When I  was chatting with Joel Duggan and Pixlriffs   on The Spawn Chunks, which, I’ve linked to  that episode in the description down below,   Joel made a really good point that games need  to strike a balance between reality and fun. It  

May be accurate for archaeology to almost always  produce nothing or relatively little that feels   tangible, but if everybody enjoyed digging  for hours on end only to find almost nothing,   then archaeology would be a much more popular job! But we also don’t want to go so far in the  

Direction of fun that we lose the main tenets  of archaeology. I mentioned on The Spawn Chunks   that we don’t want to engage in game design that  encourages archaeological looting, for example,   because that can have real-world effects. People learn things from video games. I  

Worked in museum education for about 20 years,  and when I did, kids ages 6 and up generally know,   for example, that to get wool off of sheep  you need to use shears because that’s how you   do it in Minecraft. Here’s another story, in part  because kids are hilarious and in part because it  

Demonstrates the point really well: Whenever  I talked about making candles in the past,   I would ask the kids what candles are made out of.  They would say ‘Wax,’ and I would say ‘Excellent,   yes! Where do you think we get the wax  from?’ And inevitably, without fail,  

The first answer was always ‘Earwax!’ Which was great, because I could praise   where their brain was going, but then I could  also just walk them through the process of making   a candle out of earwax. And that’s fun and all,  but here’s the point: after Minecraft added bees,  

Beeswax and candles in 1.15, whenever I asked  the kids where wax came from, instead of the   first answer always inevitably being earwax,  the first answer was always, inevitably beeswax.  So kids learn things from Minecraft, and so  do us adults. I did not know that a mangrove  

Propagule was called a propagule before it  happened in Minecraft. I don’t think that   everything in Minecraft needs to be realistic,  but when it comes to how we as people treat   the real heritage of real people in the real  world, it’s important that the things people  

Are learning from video games are relatively  accurate in their respect for and treatment   of that heritage. I’m really glad that so far,  Minecraft is striking a good balance between   what is fun and what archaeology actually is. Another critique I’ve seen floating around is  

That the trail ruins don’t look archaeological,  they just look like a jumble of blocks thrown   together. As an archaeologist who digs things  in the ground and looks at site reports on a   regular basis and as someone who has done a  lot of building a site up and then making it  

Fall into disrepair in Minecraft, the trail ruins  look exactly like an archaeological site to me. It   nails it, hands down. And again, people saying  it’s not archaeological – they are incorrect,   but it’s also not their fault! Popular media and  also tourist attractions have made archaeological  

Sites seem like these visible, tangible  things that have a certain aesthetic to them,   and while there are many sites are like that,  there are many, many sites that aren’t. But here,   I can see how the ceiling blocks have fallen down  in these ruins, how floor blocks have decayed,  

How staircases have broken or disintegrated.  I can see how each and every block got to   where it is now. These ruins are ruins, and  they’re absolutely archaeologically accurate.  I’ve also seen some players saying that the  blocks for the trail ruins are too garish,  

And once again, popular media (and the way that  sites are presented to the public) has given a   bit of a false idea of what the past looked  like. For example, did you know that many   of the marble statues the Romans and Greeks  made used to be painted? I have a friend who  

Actually studies the pigments that are still  present on Roman era ruins here in Scotland.   Here’s a recreation of some of the pigments  used on the Bridgeness Distance Sculpture,   which formed part of the Antonine Wall during the  Roman occupation of what is now southern Scotland. 

Reds and yellows are the main colours that  she’s found on these stones, and blues,   browns and pinks have been found on Roman  sculpture in continental Europe. There are   also these examples from ancient Greek sculpture,  which have been reconstructed and re-coloured by  

Vincenz Brinkmann and Ulrike Koch-Brinkmann.  And I can hear some of you thinking, ‘Yea,   but that’s just the sculpture!’ But the Romans  and the Greeks had painted sculpture everywhere!   They were colourful places! The main reason  that we see so much of their architecture  

As such pristine white marble today is because  people in the past thought that the remnants of   pigments that were on their surface was actually  dirt and grime, so they scrubbed all of it off!  And these archaeologists have even looked  into the specific pigments that were used,  

So we can make a colour palette for these  pieces! Here’s the palette that the Romans used,   here’s the palette of the Greek statues that I  just showed you, and here’s the palette used in   the trail ruins. Look at how similar these  are! So are those colours something that I  

Personally would put together in a building?  Probably not! But that doesn’t remotely mean   that nobody ever has or that nobody ever will. And a final critique that I’ve seen is that   the materials used in the trail ruins aren’t  from the biomes that these ruins often spawn  

In and they look out of place. That’s  a valid thing to note, and I agree that   they are non-local materials! But rather than  thinking that the developers did a poor job,   let’s assume that that choice was intentional.  Trail ruins are supposed to have those materials,  

Regardless of what biome they’re in. That alone  tells us that these sites, in their heyday,   had a lot of power and a lot of connections!  In order to get terracotta from a mesa to the   taiga that this site is in, powerful people in the  past must have had impressive long-distance trade  

Routes out to groups living in the mesa, or they  even had enough resources themselves to maintain   a quarry that far away and ship the materials all  the way back here. So, rather than seeing it as  

A mistake, I see it as some pretty big evidence  that this site was either a major power centre,   or a major trade hub, or, honestly, probably both! Now, I do have a few things that I would change,  

But before we get into that, if you’re enjoying  the video, could you maybe hit the like button?   Or consider subscribing? It lets me know  what content you all enjoy, and it helps   a lot more people find these videos! Thanks! Okay, so, I know I just praised a whole bunch of  

The archaeology mechanics and such, but I do have  some things that I hope we see in future updates   or iterations. Let’s start with the things that  I would change first. And these are relatively   minor, but they’re important to archaeologists.  The first thing is the pottery shards. I know  

It’s a- like, the smallest of changes, and  probably a bit nit-picky, but I’m really sorry   to say that ‘pottery shard’ is not a term that  archaeologists use. We call pieces of pottery   ‘potsherds,’ ‘sherds,’ or ‘pottery sherds,’ all  with an ‘e.’ Shards, in archaeology, are pieces  

Of glass vessels or glass windows. It’s a really  minor thing, but again, if people are learning   this term as associated with archaeology, for the  difference of a single letter, it’d be great to   use the actual term that archaeologists use. I’m also kind of sad that the main tool we use  

To do archaeology in Minecraft is a brush!  Brushes may feel iconic to the public,   but for archaeologists, our main tool is a trowel,  and we tend to be rather sentimental about them.  But ArchaeoPlays, if a brush is still something  archaeologists use, then it’s fine, right? 

Well, yes and no… The reason that we don’t use brushes   that often is because if there is any moisture in  the soil or dirt that you are brushing, then the   dirt or soil will actually clump onto the brush  and it will everything on the ground, which means  

That we won’t be able to see what’s actually going  on. So it’s not just that a brush takes longer,   it’s that using a brush in most soils actively  hurts our ability to figure out what’s going on! 

‘But what if you need to be super delicate?’ I  hear you asking, and I promise you – you would   be surprised how delicate you can be with a  trowel, especially if you use one like this,   which we often refer to as leaf trowels. We  also use a whole lot of spoons (don’t worry,  

They’re not for eating) and we also use  a lot of lollipop sticks or craft sticks.  I’ve used a lot more leaf trowels than I’ve  used brushes, and I’d love to see the trowel   be the main tool we use in Minecraft. Maybe  change the recipe to a stick, a copper ingot  

And an iron ingot or something. Trowels could  also get added later and maybe have more speed   and less dexterity than a brush, but from a  player perspective, adding two new tools just   to do archaeology feels like a lot of inventory  space. So I don’t think that that’s gonna happen. 

These two things, calling the ‘pottery shards’  pottery sherds and using a trowel instead of a   brush, are honestly fairly minor. I LOVE this  update!! These are just some really minor   changes that I would really love to see. So what about the future of archaeology  

In Minecraft? Where can they go from here? I would love to see a suspicious sand and   suspicious gravel crafting recipe in the future.  I love that we have five archaeological sites in   Minecraft now, but it would also be wonderful  if players could craft and build their own  

Archaeological sites with their own artefacts  to find. I don’t think we should be able to just   craft suspicious sand and have it have the same  loot table as naturally generated suspicious sand,   but I do think that a crafting recipe that  would let us bury an object into sand to  

Create suspicious sand would be really cool. The  recipe would need the soil type and an object   to go inside, for example, so maybe an object  surrounded by sand, or an object with four gravel   in some kind of pattern around it, maybe like  the large pots. But that is a lot of resources,  

And sand currently isn’t renewable in Minecraft,  so that would probably need to happen before this   type of crafting recipe could really work. I’m also really hoping that since archaeology   has started appearing in different  biomes, that it also appears in   different dimensions. Suspicious netherrack  or suspicious endstone would be really cool,  

And the opportunity to give the Piglins their own  archaeological past by putting suspicious gravel   in bastions is just so interesting and wonderful  and enticing, I… I just really want it to happen.  The other thing I’d love to see in the future is  the ability to copy the patterns that are on the  

Pottery shards, similar to how you can copy  the patterns for armour trims. At the moment,   players are encouraged to take the archaeology  they find in the ground and turn it into something   useful or decorative for themselves. I don’t  think that should go away entirely – again,  

I am in favour of balancing fun and reality!  But I do wish that there were an option for   players who might not want to use the stuff they  find in the ground as household decorations,   particularly for players who are from communities  where looting of archaeological sites,  

Antiquities dealing, and the effects of colonial  archaeology are commonplace and still felt.  I also wish we could dye our decorative  pots, or that the sherds came in different   colours! I suspect that that’s something the  team are aware of and making decisions on,  

Because it seems like a logical step forward.  So really, I’m just adding my voice to the   chorus of people saying ‘Yes, please do this!’ As for the pots themselves, I do love that you  

Can craft a blank one with bricks, and I love  that it has a neck that merges with a flower pot,   so you can put flowers and saplings on it! I also  love that its hitbox is only one block high even  

Though the neck goes further, so you can stack  your pots or you can put things like trapdoors   or carpets or pressure plates on them to make  them look like a little bin with a lid instead.  So all in all, I think archaeology in Minecraft  is pretty great! I’m really excited to see  

What happens with this and how it grows in the  future. I would change a couple of minor things,   but overall, I think the team has made  some really fantastic decisions with the   core mechanics of archaeology. The requirement  to treat sus sand and sus gravel carefully and  

The audio reminder when it breaks that you’ve  lost something is beautifully done, and that’s   honestly probably the hardest thing to navigate  when bringing archaeology to a video game.  I’ve talked a lot about archaeology in  Minecraft now, but I’m curious what you  

All think. Are there things you love about  archaeology in Minecraft? Is there anything   that you would change or anything you’d like  to add? Let everybody know in the comments!  Also, if you’re curious about how  archaeologists find sites like desert   pyramids even when they’re buried in  the sand, check out this video here. 

That’s all from me for today – thank you all  for tuning in and I hope you have a great rest   of your day. Bye!