Deep Space Station

We are suspended in thin space between this luminescent bowl and a universe pressing down from above.

 
After a week on the job—and a dare—our crew chief decides it must be climbed. She’s cautious at first, slowed by the Danger Keep Out sign at the base of the gantry tower supporting the decommissioned radio telescope’s massive reflector. The gantry is a dark warren of rusted girders, catwalks, and stairwells. But it’s that idle time after dinner with just enough twilight left to get into trouble. She continues to probe and with each chained-off stairwell and locked gate she surmounts, shouts of encouragement rain down to the rest of us. We finally catch up, wondering the entire time where the alarms, hidden cameras, and military security are. They must surely be on to us.

Together, we sidle up a final ladder, throw open a hatch, and cautiously emerge from the confines of the gantry onto the expanse of the dish set at a welcoming horizontal angle some 70 feet above the surrounding Mojave Desert. Reassured after testing our footing on the thin white sheet metal—it’s on.

A spontaneous chorus of whoops and shouts break out accompanied by random dance moves and jigs. Our crew chief is triumphant.  The rest of the team arrive, and we gradually coalesce into a staggered flight line—arms outstretched as if wings—and begin to swoop up and down the 85-foot parabolic reflector of Pioneer Deep Space Station. A small sub-reflector protrudes from the center of the dish. The gyre of dish runners continues to surge, pause, then gather again well into the evening—ecstatic, primal, as if circling a sacred monolith. We are infidels and have stormed this abandoned outpost of high civilization with no controlling authority seeming to care.

In the coming days, however, these night revelries would prove unsustainable for our work crew and would eventually give way to our preferred activity on the dish, quietly lying flat near its edge. All that is visible is the night sky above and the glowing white horizon line of the dish. We are suspended in thin space between this luminescent bowl and a universe pressing down from above. It is this reverie I remember most clearly from my time on the dish.

At first light, our archaeological team emerges from the nooks and alcoves we’ve commandeered as our field camp that in earlier times were the control rooms and offices of Pioneer Station. Old metal desks, gray office chairs on wheels, and 1960s-era electronic equipment are still present. We must have caught a brief interregnum after the station’s closure and before anyone at NASA or the military had fully appreciated its scientific and historic importance. As archaeological contractors doing official work at the U.S. Army’s National Training Center at Fort Irwin, we were simply green-lighted to occupy the abandoned Pioneer Station, apparently without much thought or consideration.

After coffee and before sunrise, our crew heads out in a small convoy of pickup trucks to Goldstone Dry Lake, a barren playa located just south of Pioneer Station. We are a 12-person ensemble of newly minted college grads, itinerate dig bums, seekers, and anthropology students, along with a 30-something project lead and our indomitable crew chief. Our youth and easy mix of both sexes—most unusual for military contractors working at Fort Irwin in the late 1980s—clearly animates the young soldiers manning the security checkpoint along our route, eliciting more than a few nods of envy.

As the sun takes hold, the playa produces a daytime counterpoint to our nights on the dish. The cosmos is replaced by an unrelenting blue dome. The arc of white metal becomes the shimmering silts and sands of the playa itself. The effect however is brutal—the heat approaching uninhabitable, the light a totality.  Still, I find myself glimpsing thin space again, an ancient Celtic term that speaks to those places where the distance between heaven and Earth narrows, even collapses for an instant. I try to hold this moment, as I will try to hold it many more times in the coming years, but it vanishes into the heat and workday. I watch our crew line up in survey formation in the far distance, mere motes separating playa and sky.

The playa is also a story of abandonment, in this case more than 10,000 years ago during the Pleistocene-Holocene transition when Goldstone Dry Lake was still Goldstone Lake, a remnant body of water of the last Ice Age. Our survey team concentrates their efforts on the shorelines of this extinct lake hoping to locate the archaeological residues of PaleoIindigenous settlements. Our task is made easier by the fact that 10,000 years ago, both the lake and people who foraged along its shores had vanished, such that much of the archaeology on this shoreline is old, essentially dating itself by dint of its shear presence.

The PaleoIndigenous lifeway, rather than supercharged by the hunt and the exploits of big-game hunters, invariably assumed to be males, is now understood to have been broader based and perhaps more egalitarian.

Old archaeology has a completely different feel than recent archaeology. The latter is often comprised of hearths, house floors, and burial interments; buildups of organic deposits or middens; assortments of milling tools and flaked stone implements; animal bone and charred plant remains. By contrast, old archaeology of the kind found on the fringes of Goldstone Dry Lake has been stripped of all organic deposits by millennia of wind-blown erosion after the lake dried. All that usually remains are a few roughly made projectile points and scraping tools, and the ubiquitous waste flakes left over from tool manufacture, all encrusted on the surface of the playa. Occasionally, there is a concentration of fist-sized, fire-stained rock—the remains of a cooking hearth—its contents long since scattered in the wind.

The archaeology on the playa is thus two-dimensional, artifacts cemented in a thin layer of silt, sand, and salt. Our job is to excavate a sample of this material at sites we have identified during our survey of the playa margin. A routine settles in: we arrive in the cool of dawn and leave in the early afternoon as the heat finally overwhelms. Our crew chief has a particular routine she follows—when her metal clip board gets too hot to grip, she points to the vehicles and declares, That’s a wrap, we’re out.

The square pits usually associated with archaeological digs are not necessary here. Instead, we excavate a series of large surface scrapes, enough to capture all the archaeological material that remains on the deflated playa surface. We work in three-person teams: one excavator with a shovel—no need for trowels and paint brushes here—and two screeners, all excavated deposit then passed through 1/8-inch mesh. The pace ebbs and flows depending on the number of small items in the deposit—usually pressure flakes resulting from stone tool finishing and sharpening—that need to be individually plucked from the screens.

The popular notion of PaleoIndigenous peoples at the end of the last Ice Age is a story of big-game hunters in pursuit of the last of the Pleistocene megafauna, such as mammoth and giant ground sloth. There is, however, no direct archaeological evidence in either California or the Great Basin that such hunting occurred. In those rare instances where bone assemblages are found, they are comprised mostly of waterfowl, rabbits, and other small mammals. Plant foods included a variety of softer roots and tubers found near water’s edge that didn’t require much milling or processing. Missing in these old assemblages are the familiar millingstones, handstones, mortars, and pestles used to grind and reduce hard seeds and nuts; this development would occur later on the archaeological timeline.

The PaleoIndigenous lifeway, rather than supercharged by the hunt and the exploits of big-game hunters, invariably assumed to be males, is now understood to have been broader based and perhaps more egalitarian. Small extended families of men, women, and children all worked together to forage a range of more modest but readily obtainable plant and animal foods.

Back on the dish, some of the crew have begun to piece together the history of this place and try to juxtapose the nightly stillness with what must have been the bustle, energy, and high-minded purpose of the hundreds of people who manned this outpost between 1958 and 1978. Our crew chief, however, isn’t having it—she laughs and recounts for all to hear her vision of men in white shirtsleeves with black skinny ties gazing at their consoles through black horn-rimmed glasses.

Still, I remember the incredible missions developed and tracked by this antenna. They read like the covers of the LIFE magazines of my youth: Pioneer, Ranger, Apollo, Mariner, Viking, and Voyager. Distant memories to be sure, but with a palpable thrall and immediacy out on the dish. As of July 2022, Voyager 1 was 14.528 billion miles from Earth, the most distant human artifact in outer space and still operational, sending home the faintest of signals.

 

Several quintessential artifacts that distinguish PaleoIndigenous assemblages appear repeatedly in the oldest sites across western North America. These include the Western Stemmed projectile point, and a series of scraping implements collectively referred to as formed flake tools. The Western Stemmed point is characterized by a long, rounded stem or base, and a shorter blade or tip. The blade is generally wider than the stem creating an indentation or shoulder along each edge. Despite their bland moniker, formed flake tools can take on a variety of shapes and sizes, including triangular, turtle-backed or domed, oval, and beaked. Often unifacial (flake removals on only one side or surface of a stone tool), they are hand-held scraping and chopping implements usually with a finer, more delicately flaked working edge.

With a tool kit mostly limited to these kinds of stone piercing and scraping implements, seemingly hunting gear, it’s easy to see why this notion of big-game hunters took hold among many archaeologists and within popular culture. More recent studies, however, indicate that Western stemmed projectile points may have been a multipurpose tool, a kind of Swiss Army knife used for a variety of cutting, digging, and other informal tasks, in addition to their more conventional role of killing large animals. Similarly, use wear on the working edges of formed flake tools often displays damage characteristic of woodworking, not hide-scraping. One explanation is that these tools were used to both carve and sharpen digging sticks for the purpose of harvesting roots, tubers, and other geophytes found below ground. As more recent research has accumulated, the old consensus of women as strictly plant gatherers, and men as hunters and the exclusive makers of flaked stone tools, has begun to break down. Here, the paleo-gender door is open a bit further with the possibility that these stone scraping tools, rather than being associated with men and the hunt, may have been manufactured and used by women.

The improbable silence gives way to a very faint, almost imperceptible hum. Is there a sound in thin space that I can only hear on the quiet of the dish?

Our days turn to weeks on the playa, and there are changes back on the dish. Evening gatherings have all but ceased and some on the crew tire of the novelty. Still others start climbing the gantry alone with little notice, almost surreptitiously. When they reach the dish, they do not seek out others but separate themselves. I discover that I am one of these climbers, content to find no one. The Milky Way arcs across the entire horizon line of the dish; stars and planets hang like flat discs unaffected by the desert atmosphere. The improbable silence gives way to a very faint, almost imperceptible hum. Is there a sound in thin space that I can only hear on the quiet of the dish?

At the edge of interstellar space, both the Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft provide clear testament to humanity’s advance and scientific prowess. But we don’t leave it at that—also included are renderings of our naked bodies, male and female, hands famously outstretched in greeting, etched on gold plaques attached to the spacecraft. On Voyager there is a “golden record,” a disc also etched in gold to survive in perpetuity that contains a compendium of sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth. The images of humanity depict a broad range of ethnicities and cultures that show food, architecture, technology, and art. There are audio clips of Beethoven, Mozart, Chuck Berry, and humpback whales, as well as images of us going about our day-to-day lives.

Like many archaeologists, I identify with this notion that our daily lives matter and give a brief nod to the gatekeepers at NASA who also thought this was an important idea. But in the end, this entire exercise seems to have no real audience except us, along with a side bet on the near impossible odds that an alien intelligence chances upon these artifacts in the distant reaches of time and space. We await a response.

The playa also sends a faint signal of humanity but from the past in the form of these scatters of simple stone tools found on lake shores that no longer exist. It’s not much and I suspect that if the ancients knew such a possibility might occur, they, too, would want to be known for more than just their artifacts. These were fathers, mothers, siblings, and grandparents, as commensurately human as any of us climbing the gantry at night or manning tracking consoles at Mission Control, but wholly alone on a newly occupied continent. No gold plaques here, but a signal thus heard.

My nights at Pioneer Deep Space Station are long over—I still strain to listen.

Three decades after my time on the dish I find myself on the playa again, this time near Great Salt Lake. Our crew is working on an ancient land surface that was once a river delta. The river vanished 9,500 years ago. Wind and erosion have subsequently reduced the surrounding expanse to an immense white flatness. We are miles from anything that might be construed as topographic relief.

Again, we are at a secret military installation, the Utah Test and Training Range at Hill Air Force Base. The range is so inaccessible and empty that it is the preferred landing spot in 2033 for rock samples currently being collected by the Perseverance rover on the surface of Mars. There is high anticipation of important discoveries, given the results of previous studies in the area, and the crew fits the moment. This time it’s all seasoned archaeological professionals, consulting scientists from various universities, advanced graduate students, and even a filmmaker. No dish here; our evening bivouac is the Super 8 in Wendover on the Nevada-Utah border, 60 miles down the interstate. I’m not sure how archaeology, outer space, and secret military installations continue to elide in my life, but here I am.

The immediate ground surface in our work area is a 30-centimeter veneer of silty sand that overlays a very distinct “black mat” stratigraphic layer—the organic residues of a large marsh that was part of the river delta. This layer is all that is left of a much thicker deposit that has eroded away since the river stopped flowing. A time capsule of sorts, the veneer is a geological museum of PaleoIndigenous archaeology, but this time not completely eroded away by wind and containing an intact hearth radiocarbon dated to 12,300 years ago.

We excavate the hearth in a similar manner as our playa work at Goldstone Dry Lake years ago, using thin surface scrapes. But there the similarity ends. The excavation units are now small, one-meter squares that provide more precise spatial control of the materials recovered. No shovels here, it is trowels, paint brushes, and dental tools for this close work. I’m on my haunches leaning over a unit, steadying my trowel with both hands, as I attempt to take no more than a few millimeters of the sand-silt deposit with each pass. My trowel suddenly tugs and emits a soft metal-on-rock scraping sound. I’m mindful to pause and investigate each resistant stone artifact or bone fragment, and so quickly replace my trowel with a dental probe and small paint brush. I pick and scrape at the deposit encasing the object with the probe then carefully sweep away the loose spoil with the paint brush. The work slows to a crawl and my concentration starts to flag, but I rally as the emerging outline of a large basalt stone tool comes into view. It’s a Haskett point! One of the oldest variants of the Western Stemmed projectile point tradition, revealed once again to living eyes.

The excavation exposure slowly expands as artifacts and animal bone continue to be found away from the hearth, and new units are added. In the end, it takes on a checkerboard appearance, a sprawling but orderly accretion of lines, right angles, and multi-shaded boxes.  I find this tableau of created geometry on the desert surface gratifying, if only momentarily­­—a testament of sorts to our training and skill, to Science itself. It will all vanish with the winds and rains of the pending winter.

As finally revealed, the hearth has a bullseye look with black charcoal and oxidized sand at its core, and lighter stained soils radiating out several meters. Along with Haskett points and formed flake tools, we find animal bone—mostly geese and other waterfowl—and charred plant seeds, including, remarkably, tobacco. This marks the oldest documented human use of this psychoactive plant. It’s hard to overstate the ritual importance of tobacco among Native cultures—both past and present—as it is used as a sacred and purifying invocation for almost every form of gathering, prayer, and ceremony. At least for now, it all started here on this playa—bookended 12 millennia later by the 1.1 billion tobacco users among us. The ancients remind us again that a familiar humanity resides behind these stone tools and long extinguished campfires.

 

Several hundred meters from the hearth the playa yields an even more astounding find: the preserved footprints of people. Eighty-eight prints to be exact, leading off in a series of tracks. The actual prints are subtle with only a slightly darker discoloration from the surrounding silt surface, the impressions mere shadows. Their humanity is made by their unmistakable left-right, left-right bipedal strides. There are individual track lines, as well as groupings of prints. People were walking, then gathering for a moment to talk, inspect, assist, and share—as familiar as the footprints on any modern-day beach walk. Some prints are much larger than others. Parents and children walking through ankle-deep water some 12,000 years ago.

The prints prove difficult to excavate, but we are in luck since the original impressions in the mud silt were quickly backfilled by a sandy material. On our hands, knees, and bellies, we scrape at the footprints with small wooden tools not much bigger than popsicle sticks. The sand gives way slightly easier than the mud-silt; the latter tending to stick and resist. Even the sound is different: the sand grinds and crunches, the mud silt muffles. I quickly realize that texture and sound are better guideposts for this excavation than my own eyes. ­­A lifetime of archaeology never thinking that I would both feel and hear the past walk by.

The slow subtraction of the sands begins to reveal very human footprints with heels, arches, and toes. One print is particularly confounding until it miraculously reveals a child’s print inside that of an adult. I hear my own daughter’s laughs and chatter as she struggles to follow in my tracks after a fresh snowfall on a winter’s morning long ago. I again try to hold the moment, but her voice fades.

Heat and fatigue eventually take hold and I need to get off my elbows and belly. Finally on my feet, I absently start following a track line of footprints leading away from the excavation until they disappear into the silt. I continue walking, now with more purpose, hoping to pick up the line again.  But I find myself only wandering further out, searching for what must be a beginning, a point of origin. I find none, and all that is familiar—the crew, the equipment and vehicles, the world—are once again mere specks on the horizon separating playa and sky.

 

I only dream of the dish now; it is pointed skyward, tracking the faintest of signals. The signals bend, flow, and merge. A family strolls through shallow waters, a child follows her father. A spacecraft wanders the outer solar system. A marsh turns to dust. A tribe circles a monolith. Martian rocks set down near footprints. I lay flat on the dish deep into the night, listening.