Speech Story

Claudette Casile admits she’s no Lara Croft or Indiana Jones.

Her experiences as an archeologist, which she shared with an anthropology 101 class on Wednesday, do not include escaping from bad guys or discovering ancient relics.

The WSU graduate student simply studies pollen.

“I try to figure out what I can learn from the past by looking at pollen,” Casile said.

A person who studies the fossils and non-fossils of pollen, such as Casile, is a palynologist. For her thesis, Casile studies fossilized pollen on the southeastern Caribbean islands of Marie Galante, Guadeloupe, Dominica, Martinique and Saint Lucia.

The main part of Casile’s field work is extracting core samples from sites on each island. The process is time consuming and difficult work.

“It’s like giving birth,” Casile said.

First Casile’s team of archeologists hoists a tube of about ten feet over the site. Then the tube is pounded into the ground. The tube is eventually pulled out from the earth and a core sample is produced.

The smooth, golden sample is cut into smaller pieces, sealed and put under a microscope to be examined. Each sample should contain 200 or more grains of pollen.

“Usually when you think about an archeologist’s work you don’t think about the tough work that goes into collecting the samples that are analyzed,” junior communication major, Ben Krein said.

The samples collected by Casile provide several clues to the history of the each island. The sample is translated to a graph that shows the different kinds of pollen, the radio carbon date, and the types of substances that were contained in the pollen.

Casile showed one of her sample graphs, Core VF08-1, to the anthropology class. She dissected the graph, telling the class how a spike in the graph signified information about how charcoal was found in the sample at one point in history. Charcoal is a sign of human colonization.

The charcoal in the sample became entangled in the pollen between 2,500 years ago and 3,000 years ago. Upon further analysis, Casile was able to hypothesize that humans settled in the area around 1,000 B.C.

“It’s like you’re getting a picture of what happened thousands of years ago,” she said. “It’s awesome to think about what the ancestors of the Caribbean really experienced back then.”

In order to arrive at her field site in Guadeloupe, Casile had to trudge through an uninviting swamp in a desolate rainforest.

“Who knows what is swimming in your boots? There are several different kinds of crabs and snakes (in the swamp),” she said. “Who knows what you can catch?”
Casile refers to this rough environment as her playground. She points out that her work in the Caribbean is not as glamorous as one would think but she finds ways enjoy her surroundings.

“You have kind of a repetition in the environment and food (of each island),” Casile said. “But the flavors are different. Each island had a different colony. They each had a different road to revolution.”

She discussed with the anthropology class her difficulties of being the only woman on her team, trying to navigate around the Caribbean on a “100 word French vocabulary,” and always wearing dirty clothes. Despite these difficulties her team made the best out of their circumstances.

In a picture of Casile and her team during their off-time, Casile’s colleague holds a large conch shell to his ear. The team referred to this as his iPod.

“Archeology is not all fun,” Casile said. “The Caribbean is not all fun. But you can make it fun. You have to use your imagination.”

Palynology is not just about finding clues to human history, Casile reminded the class. The study of pollen also holds several uses that solve contemporary problems.

For example, petroleum companies analyze pollen samples to find geological deposits, farmers employ pollen to create stronger crops and forensic scientists study pollen samples to find clues in criminal cases, she said.

“I never knew pollen could be so useful. You can apply it to a lot of things. I don’t know if I would want to study it, but it really has a lot of purpose,” said Garrett Brown, senior construction management major.

Casile’s overall lesson to the anthropology class was included in the Italian saying she wrote on the white board:

“Il Mondo e bello perche e vario,” which means, “the world is beautiful because (it has variation) it is varied.”

Casile told the class this is the key to anthropology. Even something as simple as pollen can provide answers to the world’s beauty.