The Dirt Podcast

After a curious coincidence in 1924, the world's weirdest paperweight was revealed to be the fossilized remains of one of our earliest ancestors.

To learn more about today's topic, check out:

Lee R. Berger, & Ronald J. Clarke. (1996). The load of the Taung child. Nature, 379(6568), 778-779.

Berger, L.R., Clarke, R.J., 1995. Eagle involvement of the Taung child fauna. Journal of Human Evolution 29, 275-299.

Dart, Raymond A. (1925), "Australopithecus africanus: The Man-Ape of South Africa", Nature, 115: 195–199, doi:10.1038/115195a0.

——— (1929), Australopithecus africanus: And His Place in Human Nature, Unpublished manuscript in the University of Witwatersrand archives.

SA fossil murder mystery solved (BBC)

Taung Child (Smithsonian) 

Australopithecus africanus (Smithsonian)

In our first episode, we introduce ourselves and talk a little bit about archaeology, anthropology, and how we definitely do not study dinosaurs. Also, hot takes on some of pop culture's most important "archaeologists."

Greetings, fellow workers! In observance of May Day, which in many parts of the world is a day for celebrating and acknowledging the struggles of workers in the labor movement. In that spirit, we bring you an episode about work.

How do we define "jobs" in the archaeological record? What can skeletons tell us about what people did every day? What was it like to be a monument worker in ancient Egypt? Tune in for all this and more!

Show Notes

The Eloquent Bones of Abu Hureyra (Scientific American)

Neandertal Humeri May Reflect Adaptation to Scraping Tasks, but Not Spear Thrusting - PMC

https://phys.org/news/2012-07-unique-neandertal-arm-morphology-due.html

EA5634 ostracon (British Museum)

The Strikes in Ramses III's Twenty-Ninth Year (Journal of Near Eastern Studies) 

A letter of complaint to the Vizier To (Journal of Near Eastern Studies) 

Hard Work-Where Will It Get You? Labor Management in Ur III Mesopotamia (Journal of Near Eastern Studies) 

The Forgotten History of New York’s Bagel Famines (Gastro Obscura)

SWCA Environmental Consultants in Salt Lake City Join Teamsters (International Brotherhood of Teamsters)

It's time for part 2 of our exploration of the Anthropocene -- a period of time that has very wobbly boundaries and probably doesn't even exist? Can we define a chunk of geological time based on human impacts? People sure have tried!

To learn more about what we cover in both parts, check out:

Geologists Vote to Reject Anthropocene as an Official Epoch (Center for Field Sciences)

Anthropocene (Oxford English Dictionary)

GSA Geologic Time Scale v. 4.0

The “Anthropocene” (International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme Newsletter)

Anthropocene Curriculum

How Long Have We Been in the Anthropocene? (SAPIENS)

Archaeological assessment reveals Earth’s early transformation through land use (Science)

Humans versus Earth: the quest to define the Anthropocene (Nature)

Early onset of industrial-era warming across the oceans and continents (Nature)

The Industrial Revolution kick-started global warming much earlier than we realised (The Conversation)

The Oxford Handbook of Industrial Archaeology (via WorldCat)

Global human-made mass exceeds all living biomass (Nature)

An anthropogenic marker horizon in the future rock record (GSA Today)

The Technofossil Record: Where Archaeology and Paleontology Meet (Anthropocene Curriculum)

Defining the Anthropocene (Nature)

Davis, H., & Todd, Z. (2017). On the Importance of a Date, or, Decolonizing the Anthropocene. ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, 16(4), 761–780. 

Whyte, Kyle. "Indigenous Climate Change Studies : Indigenizing Futures, Decolonizing the Anthropocene." English Language Notes, vol. 55 no. 1, 2017, p. 153-162. Project MUSE.

Mass Deaths in Americas Start New CO2 Epoch (Scientific American)

The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change (Science)

Capitalocene (Progress in Political Economy)

Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene: Making Kin (Environmental Humanities)

Get ready for a two-part exploration of the proposed "Anthropocene" era. Can we define a chunk of geological time based on human impacts? When would that start--at the Industrial Revolution in the 1800s (CE)? Earlier? Later? More importantly...should we even try? Plus, we learn about industrial archaeology and get briefly derailed by a man named Frerb Hankbert. Make sure to stay tuned for the second installment!

To learn more about what we cover in both parts, check out:

Geologists Vote to Reject Anthropocene as an Official Epoch (Center for Field Sciences)

Anthropocene (Oxford English Dictionary)

GSA Geologic Time Scale v. 4.0

The “Anthropocene” (International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme Newsletter)

Anthropocene Curriculum

How Long Have We Been in the Anthropocene? (SAPIENS)

Archaeological assessment reveals Earth’s early transformation through land use (Science)

Humans versus Earth: the quest to define the Anthropocene (Nature)

Early onset of industrial-era warming across the oceans and continents (Nature)

The Industrial Revolution kick-started global warming much earlier than we realised (The Conversation)

The Oxford Handbook of Industrial Archaeology (via WorldCat)

Global human-made mass exceeds all living biomass (Nature)

An anthropogenic marker horizon in the future rock record (GSA Today)

The Technofossil Record: Where Archaeology and Paleontology Meet (Anthropocene Curriculum)

Defining the Anthropocene (Nature)

Davis, H., & Todd, Z. (2017). On the Importance of a Date, or, Decolonizing the Anthropocene. ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, 16(4), 761–780. 

Whyte, Kyle. "Indigenous Climate Change Studies : Indigenizing Futures, Decolonizing the Anthropocene." English Language Notes, vol. 55 no. 1, 2017, p. 153-162. Project MUSE.

Mass Deaths in Americas Start New CO2 Epoch (Scientific American)

The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change (Science)

Capitalocene (Progress in Political Economy)

Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene: Making Kin (Environmental Humanities)

Turn around, bright eyes! In anticipation of the Great North American eclipse coming up on Monday, April 8, 2024, we're scooting in front of this topic like the moon in front of the sun. We're looking at some of the earliest record-keeping of solar eclipses, some eclipse history (eclipstory!) and some mythology and cosmology around the phenomenon. Plus...a truly delightful fact about the song Total Eclipse of the Heart.

Sources:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/what-folklore-tells-us-about-eclipses-180964488/

https://www.jstor.org/stable/15768

https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001276245

https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/how-did-the-ancients-predicted-eclipses-the-saros-cycle/

https://ctext.org/shang-shu/punitive-expedition-of-yin

https://www.jstor.org/stable/1006543

https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_11621/?st=gallery

https://www.jstor.org/stable/671227

A few select tidbits from the most recent episode on our premium feed.

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We're back! Hi! Sorry for the unplanned hiatus--we missed you, too. This week, we've got a delightful sponsored episode featuring the most specific and niche topic we've ever covered. It's hats! 18th-century naval knit hats recovered from shipwrecks! See? Extremely specific. But FASCINATING! We get into the knitty gritty (HA) and also talk about fabric conservation, a smidge of underwater archaeology, and FOSSILIZED FABRIC! Tune in or miss out!

Audio note: Something funky happened with this recording, and there was a lot of unpleasant buzzing in a few spots. Anna fixed it as much as possible, but it does mean the audio quality is a little different on this one.

SHOW NOTES:

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/toboggan-tuque-knit-hat-regionalism

https://www.heddels.com/start-here/

https://www.curiousfrau.com/2009/08/16/knitted-mans-hat-from-the-ship-qgagianaq/

https://www.qaronline.org/blackbeard-sails-again-conservation-textiles-queen-annes-revenge-shipwreck/open

https://www.abc.se/~pa//mar/wrak32.htm

https://carnegiemnh.org/archaeological-textiles-eastern-us/

https://en.natmus.dk/historical-knowledge/denmark/prehistoric-period-until-1050-ad/what-did-they-wear/textile-preservation/

https://www.synchrotron-soleil.fr/en/news/what-mechanisms-are-responsible-preservation-archaeological-textiles-over-thousands-years

Anna walks Amber through a sampler platter of recent archaeological news stories. We talk about inner ears and gibbon arms, chromosomes galore, Medieval dogs, the Ishtar gate of Babylon, ancient hunter-gatherer poop, and more!

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To learn more:

How did humans learn to walk? New evolutionary study offers an earful | ScienceDaily

To see some gibbons bopping around in the trees:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rdn26Hpdwo&ab_channel=SmithsonianChannel

Prehistoric person with Turner syndrome identified from ancient DNA | ScienceDaily

Dogs in the middle ages: What medieval writing tells us about our ancestors' pets

The Devonshire Hunting Tapestries | Unknown | V&A Explore The Collections

Archaeomagnetism Dates Construction of Babylon’s Ishtar Gate - Archaeology Magazine

Babylon's Ishtar Gate may have a totally different purpose than we thought, magnetic field measurements suggest | Live Science

DNA from preserved feces reveals ancient Japanese gut environment

Metagenomic analyses of 7000 to 5500 years old coprolites excavated from the Torihama shell-mound site in the Japanese archipelago | PLOS ONE

We probably should have done this about 200 episodes ago, but it's time to lay down the (very very) basics of the evolution of the genus Homo. First of all, how does evolution work? Who were our ancestors, where did they live and when, and how did these populations adapt and branch into different species over time? This is part one of Anna's crash course on early humans, with a second installment coming to the premium feed soon! In that second half, we'll talk specifically about tool use as a "hallmark of human-ness" and cover some surprising examples of non-human tool users.

Subscribe to the Dirtbags Only premium feed at https://the-dirt-podcast.captivate.fm/support for a 7-day free trial of ALL our bonus content, and support the show for just $5/month after that!

To learn more:

https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/who-were-the-neanderthals.html#:~:text=Some%20genetic%20calibrations%20place%20their,Homo%20antecessor%20or%20another%20species.

https://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-evolution-interactive-timeline

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0047248416301361?via%3Dihub

BOOK RECOMMENDATION:

Rutherford, Adam

The Book of Humans: A brief history of culture, sex, war, and the evolution of us