The Arch and Anth Podcast

Today, Stefan Milosavljevich (Stefan Milo on YouTube) talks to us about his inspiration and process of creating YouTube videos all about archaeology, anthropology and human evolution.

How did Stefan get started on YouTube and what first inspired him to start doing videos on his passion subjects of archaeology and anthropology? What does he believe are the keys to producing a quality video? What have been the most popular videos on the channel and how is his approach of using academic sources for his videos an important factor in designing the content?

As two science communicators using different media platforms, Stefan and Michael also discuss online public engagement work more broadly. What are the barriers to effective communication work being promoted within academic circles? How can aspiring content creators get started in the first instance, and what are Stefan's best tips for working with video and beginning a side-project/hobby/career on YouTube?

You can find more information in the show notes under the episode on our website.

If you have feedback or questions for Stefan, find him on his website, Twitter and Instagram. The full catalog of his videos is also available on the Stefan Milo YouTube channel.

You can find Michael on Twitter and Instagram.

The Arch and Anth Podcast is on Twitter and Instagram, and it has a Facebook page.

If you liked this episode and you want to help contribute to the show, please visit the Patreon page for details on how to do that.

Aqeel Ihsan (York University) is a history PhD candidate focusing on South Asian diaspora currently living in Canada. Topics of Aqeel's interest include South Asian diaspora's memories of the 1947 partition of India into two republics (now India and Pakistan), concepts of 'home' and 'belonging', and how grocery stores, restaurants and kitchens at home serve as spaces for ethno-national identities to be established and continually evolve.

What inspired Aqeel to move from working as a high school history teacher and return to university pursuing graduate studies? What happened in 1947 to the 12 million people displaced by the national borders drawn between communities living in what is now Pakistan and India? How were interviewees found and asked about 1947? In what ways do survivors of the partition remember this event and what has Aqeel's oral history research revealed that may contribute to current discourse and reconciliation among South Asians and members of the South Asian diaspora?

In addition to this Master's research, what does Aqeel's current PhD work look at in terms of the anthropology of food and South Asian diaspora identity and culture? How are the younger generations interacting with western food and culture in ways that differ and contradict those of their parents? What are the links between South Asian diaspora experiences and those of other groups such as East Asian diaspora, the Indigenous nations of Canada and Black communities in 2020's current sociopolitical climate?

You can find more information in the show notes under the episode on our website.

Aqeel can be found on his university page.

You can find Michael on Twitter and Instagram too.

The Arch and Anth Podcast is on Twitter and Instagram, and it has a Facebook page.

If you liked this episode and you want to help support the show, please leave us a review on iTunes or visit the Patreon page for details on how to give a little each month to this public anthropology and archaeology project!

In this episode, Dr. Katie Tucker (The Solomonic-Zagwe Encounters Project) takes us through her multitudes of osteoarchaeological research experiences, beginning with The SolZag Project that centers upon the interactions between the Zagwe Kingdom (900 - 1270) and the Solomonic Dynasty (1270 - 1974).

For Katie's work at the Gännätä Maryam Rock Church and the Washa Mikael Rock Hewn Church, near Lalibela, what interesting environmental and historical aspects characterize these medieval-period sites? What do we know so far about the human skeletons found at Gännätä Maryam, and what questions still remain to be answered regarding the human burials found there? What is the history of bioarchaeology as a field in Ethiopia? How does Katie hope to make her work activities more inclusive, and how does she acknowledge the contributions of Ethiopian archaeologists, particularly in a predominantly white discipline? In what ways will Katie and her colleagues be hoping to improve training provision in local bioarchaeology?

We also talk about her earlier education, and her PhD project about the osteology of human decapitation at the University of Winchester. Katie also has extensive experience teaching osteoarchaeology for the Transylvania Bioarchaeology as a site director, and as a researcher of skeletal lesions indicative of leprosy. What does she see as one of the biggest challenges facing researchers in bioarchaeology today?

You can find more information in the show notes under the episode on our website.

You may find Katie on Twitter or the SolZag Project if you have any questions or feedback. You can find a video about the project in Ethiopia after registering for the DigNation Festival, organized by DigVentures.

You can find Michael on Twitter and Instagram too.

The Arch and Anth Podcast is on Twitter and Instagram, and it has a Facebook page.

If you liked this episode and you want to help contribute to the show, please visit the Patreon page for details on how to do that.

For this episode, Dr. Abidemi Babatunde Babalola (University of Cambridge) was interviewed about his work on the history of early glass production in West Africa, as evidenced through excavations at the site of Igbo Olokun in the Yoruba city of Ile-Ife in southwestern Nigeria.

As a Smuts Research Fellow at Cambridge's Center of African Studies, Tunde teaches Master's students about African archaeology, organizing practical activities using his own research materials to complement his classes. When did the production of glass products begin in western Africa and how complex was the technology of glassmaking in this region? How challenging is it to find evidence of indigenous African technologies at Ile-Ife, a peripheral glass-working workshop site where some beads and side-products can be really tiny?

In addition to characterizing and quantifying these different types of beads, what compositional analyses does Tunde use to look at the chemical and physical properties of these archaeological materials? How may environmental circumstances, or the historical and political events of the past, have influenced the usage of different raw materials? How have chemical analyses of beads and crucibles proven evidence of secondary processing of imported glass? Have these unique beads been found in other contexts, indicating some evidence of trade or transport?

You can find more information in the show notes under the episode on our website.

If you have feedback or questions for Tunde or want to follow him online, you can find him on Twitter.

You can find Michael on Twitter and Instagram too.

The Arch and Anth Podcast is on Twitter and Instagram, and it has a Facebook page.

If you liked this episode and you want to help contribute to the show, please visit the Patreon page for details on how to do that.

For this edition of the podcast, Sofia Carrera (University of Michigan) is on the show to speak about her new research looking at how early life adversity affects health, hormones and development, with her newest paper out speaking on these themes in the study of gelada monkeys.

What is the landscape like in the Ethiopian Highlands, and how do gelada monkeys find food and interact with each other in this environment? How What are glucocorticoids and how do they give animals the ability to better respond to environmental or social stressors? What unique factors come into play when Sofia studied stress in pregnant mothers? Are maternal health and infant development affected by social dynamics within groups of geladas? Are there metabolic differences between mother geladas going through pregnancy for the first time and those who have been pregnant before? What are the different steps in this scientific process, from collecting fecal samples to analyzing the results in the lab?

On top of these questions, Sofia shares her opinions on the importance of collaborating closely with local Ethiopian conservationists. We speak about her fieldwork experiences both in and outside of Ethiopia, and how she finds the life of a researcher who repeatedly moves for months at a time to work in primatological data collection or conservation efforts. As you're listening, do check out the Simien Mountains National Park's webpage, which currently accepts donations that go towards conservation activities.

You can find more information in the show notes under the episode on our website.

If you have feedback or questions for Sofia, you can find her on Twitter and her latest paper can be found in the journal General and Comparative Endocrinology (reach out if you need a copy of the .pdf).

You can find Michael on Twitter and Instagram too.

The Arch and Anth Podcast is on Twitter and Instagram, and it has a Facebook page.

If you liked this episode and you want to help contribute to the show, please visit the Patreon page for details on how to do that.

Today, Dr. Noel Hidalgo Tan (SoutheastAsianArchaeology.com; Nalanda-Sriwijaya Centre; SEAMEO SPAFA) is on the show to talk about public outreach, rock art and building capacity in regional archaeology in Southeast Asia.

Noel currently works with the education and culture departments in Bangkok, Thailand, as part of the work done by the Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization Regional Centre for Archaeology and Fine Arts (SEAMEO SPAFA). We speak about the role of archaeology in different countries, and how they relate to different ministries and departments dependent on historical contexts. How did Noel manage to end up in this role, especially as archaeology is a bit of a second career for him?

Within Southeast Asia, where has Noel travelled to establish an archaeological record of rock art sites in locations like Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia and Thailand. How does he find out there are new sites, and what is his approach to documenting information about rock art occurrences? Is it easy to date the rock art, petroglyphs and megaliths? Or derive meaning from them through discerning what they depict? Why is it important for the greater archaeological community to pay attention to Southeast Asian prehistory and how are Noel and his colleagues building research capacity in the region?

You can find more information in the show notes under the episode on our website.

If you have feedback or questions for Noel, he can be found on Twitter, Academia.edu, Google Scholar and the Southeast Asian Archaeology site.

You can find Michael on Twitter and Instagram too.

The Arch and Anth Podcast is on Twitter and Instagram, and it has a Facebook page.

If you liked this episode and you want to help contribute to the show, please visit the Patreon page for details on how to do that.

In this episode, Dr. Sarah Son (University of Sheffield) introduces us to her work in Korean studies, performing human rights research and monitoring, and investigating news reporting and media, popular culture and social movements, as well as nation-building, identity, security and peace-building on the Korean Peninsula.

What career and personal life influences led to Sarah living in East Asia and now researching historical and sociopolitical relations between North Korea and South Korea, as well as nation-building projects and identities within each state? What were the main events that led to the separation of Korea in the 1940s? Can we trace this back to the great kingdoms of Korea even before the twentieth century? How did separation affect people and government in both North and South Korea, and how have they evolved in the last 10-20 years?in

Throughout the conversation, Sarah also describes how specialists gather information about North Korea using satellite images and defector interviews, how views compare between the younger and older generation of Koreans, and whether recent meetings between the two current state leaders indicate more chance of reconciliation to come.

And finally, mostly indulging Michael's hopping on board the Korean Wave (or 한류 / Hallyu), Sarah discusses her thoughts on TV shows Crash Landing on You and Itawon Class, as well as the Oscar Best Picture, Parasite. Some of her recent research interests include using pop culture as an avenue through which to examine important questions on Korean penal systems, as well as social movements.

You can find more information in the show notes under the episode on our website.

If you have feedback or questions for Sarah, you can find her on her department website. Her writing for popular audiences can be found on The Conversation, including an article about Crash Landing on You and another on two North Korean defectors being recently elected to South Korea's National Assembly.

You can find Michael on Twitter and Instagram.

The Arch and Anth Podcast is on Twitter and Instagram, and it has a Facebook page.

If you liked this episode and you want to help contribute to the show, please visit the Patreon page for details on how to do that.

On this episode of the Arch and Anth Podcast, Joshua Kumbani (Recentring AfroAsia; University of the Witwatersrand) talks about his work in music archaeology, ethnomusicology and experimental archaeology, studying the evidence of Later Stone Age artefacts used for music-making from the southern Cape of South Africa.

How long ago does the study of music-making and musical instruments in archaeology date back to? How did Josh and his colleagues establish a working group to map and investigate the history and prehistory of musical activities within Africa, incorporating ethnographic and ethnomusicological perspectives? What factors make it difficult to study sound production in the Later Stone Age, and what contexts do we find these implements in when we do discover them?

Additionally, Josh and his colleagues recreated spinning disc replicas out of bone based on ones found at a Klasies River site, in order to see what these perforated bone pieces might have sounded like 5,000 to 10,000 years ago. What would instruments like the disc-shaped "woer woer" (or "whirr whirr" in Afrikaans) have sounded like when they were played in the past, especially in cave settings where the noise could've been amplified? For what recreational or sociocultural reasons do archaeologists suppose these artefacts were played?

You can find more information in the show notes under the episode on our website.

If you have feedback or questions, you can find Josh on Twitter and read his paper with his colleagues about the reconstruction of Stone Age instruments.

You can find Michael on Twitter and Instagram.

The Arch and Anth Podcast is on Twitter and Instagram, and it has a Facebook page.

If you liked this episode and you want to help contribute to the show, please visit the Patreon page for details on how to do that.

For this episode, Dr. Krishna Balasubramaniam (UC Davis) takes us through his research on behavioral ecology, human-wildlife interactions, primate health and disease and primate social evolution, studying both wild species living in urban and peri-urban settings, as well as captive monkeys.

What is behavioral ecology and why are behavioral ecological questions interesting to consider for biological anthropologists? What are the ecological and anthropogenic factors that may influence group-living and social network structures in animals like macaques? How could aspects of group living and relatedness between individuals predict whether macaques share infectious pathogens and gut microbes inside them? How do primatologists collect and analyze this data, to understand the relationships between sociality and disease risk?

We also consider the human-wildlife interfacts so common in the urban and peri-urban environments of Malaysia and India. In these overlaps and interactions between humans and rhesus macaques, long-tailed macaques and bonnet macaques, how have Krishna assessed the impact of human attitudes, beliefs and experiences towards animal conservation and policy-making? What are the main challenges in Krishna's work, studying macaques both in captivity and in urban settings? Where is Krishna hoping to take his research going forward?

You can find more information in the show notes under the episode on our website.

Krishna can be found on Twitter and his website if you have any questions or feedback.

You can find Michael on Twitter and Instagram.

The Arch and Anth Podcast is on Twitter and Instagram, and it has a Facebook page.

If you liked this episode and you want to help contribute to the show, please visit the Patreon page for details on how to do that.

In this episode, Dr. Cara Ocobock (University of Notre Dame) talks to us about her investigations in human biology, anatomy, physiology, evolution, energetics and environmental adaptation. One the main projects she is involved in assesses cold adaptations among reindeer herders in Finland.

What are the daily and seasonal activities of reindeer herders living around the Arctic Circle in the north of Finland? How does Cara collect ethnographic and biological data that will give clues as to how these indigenous communities are adapted to the cold behaviorally and physiologically? What is brown adipose tissue, and how does this type of fat help cold populations live in such extreme conditions? How might Cara's insights be expanded to study global climate change's effects on human populations living in these high-latitude locales?

Besides her work with the reindeer herding cooperatives, Cara also shares some of her thoughts on how COVID-19 is affecting her research community and new research she would like to do studying the physical and emotional impacts of the current pandemic on athletes and weightlifters. Together with Dr. Christopher Lynn (he guested on Episode 54), Cara is also the co-host of Sausage of Science, another fantastic interview-based podcast about human biology and evolution. You can find Cara's and Chris' podcast, The Sausage of Science, on iTunes, Stitcher or the Human Biology Association webpage.

You can find more information in the show notes under the episode on our website.

If you have feedback or questions for Cara, you can find her on Twitter and on her website.

She has a new American Anthropologist paper that just came out over the weekend entitled, "Human energy expenditure in anthropology and beyond" - you can read Cara's thoughts on the paper in her latest blog post.

You can find Michael on Twitter and Instagram too.

The Arch and Anth Podcast is on Twitter and Instagram, and it has a Facebook page.

If you liked this episode and you want to help contribute to the show, please visit the Patreon page for details on how to do that.