The Dirt Podcast

The Dirt Podcast

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The Dirt Podcast episodes

  • A Day at the Museum with Dr. Briana Pobiner - Ep 82

    Anna and Amber chat with Dr. Briana Pobiner, a researcher and educator at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History's Human Origins Program. We talk favorite hominins, meat science, evolutionary education, how to get the most out of a frolic through the museum, and some of the zillion other things Dr. Pobiner does.

    Links

    • Briana Pobiner (Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History)
    • Briana Pobiner (Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History)
    • Acknowledging students’ concerns about evolution: a proactive teaching strategy (Evolution: Education and Outreach)
    • Accepting, understanding, teaching, and learning (human) evolution: Obstacles and opportunities (American Journal of Physical Anthropology)
    • Dietary Detective: Smithsonian Scientist Briana Pobiner (Smithsonian Institution Youtube)

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        • 48 min
      • Mark My Words: Linguistics! - Ep 81

        In this episode, Amber and Anna talk about talking. It’s finally an episode on linguistics! We think about Neanderthal speech, wrestle with syntax and semantics, and have a whole language family reunion.

        Links

        • What is Speech? What is Language? (American Speech-Language-Hearing Association)
        • The Neanderthal Throat—Did Neanderthals Speak? (Sapiens)
        • Introduction to Linguistics (UCLA Linguistics)
        • Glottolog
        • Map of Indo-European Languages (Wikimedia)
        • The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World (via Google Books)
        • The Origins of Proto-Indo-European: The Caucasian Substrate Hypothesis (Journal of Indo European Studies)
        • Massive migration from the steppe was a source for Indo-European languages in Europe (Nature)
        • Mysterious Indo-European homeland may have been in the steppes of Ukraine and Russia (Science)
        • Telling Tales in Proto-Indo-European (Archaeology Magazine)
        • Language Isolates and Their History, or, What’s Weird, Anyway?

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            • 53 min
          • Eat Locally: The Archaeology of Indigenous American Food - Ep 80

            This week, Anna and Amber take a look at foodways in the archaeological record of North America. What does archaeological evidence say about what was cooked, who was cooking, and what vessels were used to prepare and store food? What evidence is there for recreating ancient and pre-contact diets? How does this fit in with contemporary food sovereignty movements among Indigenous people? How great are potatoes? All this and more!

            Links
            • Archaeological Studies of Cooking and Food Preparation (Journal of Archaeological Research)
            • Reconstructing sexual divisions of labor from fingerprints on Ancestral Puebloan pottery (PNAS)
            • Traditional Foods in Native America (CDC)
            • Countryman: Foraging California's Wild Side
            • What is mak-’amham? (Cafe Ohlone)
            • Investigating the function of prehistoric stone bowls and griddle stones in the Aleutian Islands by lipid residue analysis (Quaternary Research)
            • One of the Oldest Spuds In the World Is Poised For a Comeback (Heated by Medium)
            • North American Indian Recipes – Acorn Recipes & Facts! (The People’s Paths)
            • Native American Food (Arkansas Archaeological Survey)
            • The Mitsitam Cafe Cookbook: Recipes from the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian (via WorldCat)

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                • 47 min
              • Not All Heroes Wear Capes: Countering Human Remains Trafficking - Ep 79

                This week, Anna and Amber are joined by Dr. Damien Huffer, a bioarchaeologist and crime fighter. Dr. Huffer’s work was featured way, way back in Episode 36, “The Unsettling Business of Curating Human Remains,” and Anna and Amber are keen to learn more. How does one get into this line of work? What makes people want to own parts of other people? What’s being done to stop trafficking, and what lies ahead?

                Links

                • The Bonetrade Project
                • Alliance to Counter Crime Online
                • Bringing Them Home: The Repatriation of Priceless Human Remains and Artifacts to Cambodia (SAFE: Saving Antiquities for Everyone)
                • Fighting trade in human remains antiquities (Saturday Paper)
                • This Archaeologist Uses Instagram To Track The Human Skeleton Trade (Forbes)
                • The Insta-Dead: The rhetoric of the human remains trade on Instagram (Internet Archaeology)
                • The Dirt Episode 36: The Unsettling Business of Curating Human Remains

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                    • 1 hr 10 min
                  • Hasanlu: An Iron Age Whodunnit - Ep 78

                    In the early first millennium BCE, the city of Hasanlu was destroyed in a single, terrible day. Excavations reveal murdered civilians and a citadel engulfed in fire, but who was responsible for destroying this town on the road to everywhere in Iron Age Western Asia? This week, Anna and Amber tell Hasanlu's story, and of the academic drama that followed its excavation (and continues to this day).

                    Links

                    • Ḥasanlu Teppe (Encyclopedia Iranica)
                    • Tell (mound) (Encyclopedia Britannica)
                    • Hasanlu Publication Project
                    • Hasanlu in the Iron Age (Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History)
                    • Rediscovering Hasanlu (Expedition)
                    • Special Issue: East of Assyria--The Highland Settlement of Hasanlu (Expedition)
                    • The Excavation of Hasanlu: An Archaeological Evaluation (Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research)
                    • Last Day at Hasanlu (Expedition)
                    • Iran's Pompeii: Astounding story of a massacre buried for millennia (New Scientist)
                    • The Hasanlu Lovers (Penn Museum)
                    • Lovers, Friends, or Strangers? New Thoughts on a Museum Icon (Penn Museum)
                    • East of Assyria? Hasanlu and the Problem of Assyrianization (in Imperial Peripheries in the Neo-Assyrian Period)
                    • Warfare at Hasanlu in the Late 9th Century B.C. (Expedition)
                    • Urartu (Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History)
                    • Who Destroyed Hasanlu IV? (Iran)

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                        • 53 min
                      • The Dirt Travel Club: Bulgaria Edition - Ep 77

                        This week, Anna gets out her box of slides from her recent trip to Bulgaria. We discuss some of the deep history (and prehistory) of Bulgaria, as well as some mythology and folk traditions. Then, we have a chat about some of our favorite ways to experience different communities and cultures when we travel. (Hot tip: EAT EVERYTHING)

                        Links

                        • Late Neandertals and Early Modern Humans in Western Europe (Max Planck Gesellschaft)
                        • Levallois Technique - Middle Paleolithic Stone Tool Working (ThoughtCo)
                        • Zagreus (GreekMythology.com)
                        • Wine Traditions (BulWine)
                        • Kukeri, Bulgaria's Bizarre Festival of Monsters (Culture Trip)
                        • Surreal Pictures Show Bulgaria’s Masked Dancers Warding Off Evil Spirits (National Geographic)
                        • Kukeri – An old and scary Bulgarian tradition (Free Sofia Tour)

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                            • 1 hr 16 min
                          • Special Guest Kimberlee Moran and the Arch Street Project - Ep 76

                            Anna and Amber are joined by forensic archaeologist Kimberlee Moran to talk about the unique story of the First Baptist Church cemetery in Philadelphia, PA. Our story this week has twists, turns, and more information about preserved brains than you might think possible!

                            Links

                            • Kimberlee Moran (Rutgers University - Camden)
                            • Arch Street Project
                            • Old bones found - and nobody's in charge (Philadelphia Inquirer) (cn images of human skeletal remains)
                            • A Colonial-Era Cemetery Resurfaces in Philadelphia (The New York Times) (cn images of human skeletal remains)
                            • Dr. Moran discussing forensic archaeology on NPR’s You’re the Expert Contact
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                                • 1 hr 15 min
                              • This Is Your Brain on Drums - Ep 75

                                We're back! Anna and Amber are marching to a very special beat this week, as we talk about sound-induced trances and other ways in which people achieved altered states in the past. Tune in, turn on, and join us!

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                                  • 51 min
                                • Fieldwork Stories - Ep 74

                                  This week is a little different! As we head into a brief holiday break, we want to show our fellow archaeologists some love. We took to Twitter, and in this episode we share some fieldwork stories from you, our listeners! Amber and Anna also share their own field experiences. 

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                                    • 46 min
                                  • Our Most Metal Episode of All Time - Ep 73

                                    Time to throw the devil horns and apply superfluous umlauts to vöwëls, because this week The Dirt is totally metal! Metallurgy, that is. How and when did humans first use metals, and what can we learn about them? Some come straight from the ground, others from far, far away, some from a combination of raw materials, and some? Some come FROM OUTER SPACE.

                                    Links

                                    • King Tut’s Dagger Was Made From a Meteorite (Smithsonian)
                                    • The meteoritic origin of Tutankhamun's iron dagger blade (Meteoritics and Planetary Science)
                                    • Greenland's Iron Age came from space (Science Nordic)
                                    • New Respect for Metal's Role in Ancient Arctic Cultures (Science)
                                    • Robert E. Peary and the Cape York Meteorites (Polar Geography)
                                    • The Dollop Episode 240: North Pole Madness
                                    • On the origins of extractive metallurgy: new evidence from Europe (Journal of Archaeological Science)
                                    • Prehistoric Balkans Were 'Faking' Gold 6,500 Years Ago (Ha’aretz)
                                    • Theorizing Bronze-Age Intercultural trade : the evidence of the weights (Paléorient)
                                    • Exchange Systems and Trade Networks in Anthropology and Archaeology (ThoughtCo)
                                    • Antikythera Shipwreck Yields New Cache of Treasures, Hints More May Be Buried at Site (Smithsonian)
                                    • High spatial dynamics-photoluminescence imaging reveals the metallurgy of the earliest lost-wax cast object (Nature Communications)
                                    • Lost Wax Casting Process (National Sculpture Society)
                                    • How Was Iron Smelted in Ancient Israel? Researchers Build Kilns to Find Out (Ha’aretz)

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                                        • 56 min

                                      About The Dirt Podcast

                                      From the publisher's feed

                                      Join Anna and Amber; friends, archaeologists, and big nerds, for an exploration of the lives of people in the past.