The Dirt Podcast

Meet your hosts, Anna and Amber, talk a little bit about archaeology, anthropology, and how we definitely do not study dinosaurs. Also, we air some hot takes on some of pop culture's most important "archaeologists."

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

Why Archaeologists Hate Indiana Jones

Stepping Through The Stargate: Science, Archaeology And The Military In Stargate SG1

Archaeologists love Space and Aliens: The Stargate Series 

The Librarian Franchise (Wikipedia)

Anna and Amber rummage in the history fridge and pile up a Dagwood sandwich of tasty leftover Viking morsels. Learn about Viking games and sports, Norse trade systems, mythology and more!

To learn more, check out:

Games and Sports in the Viking Age (Hurstwic)

Towns and Trading in the Viking Age (Hurstwic)

And get your hnefatafl on with this printable board!

This week, Anna and Amber are in the holiday spirit and ready to celebrate Chrono-kah! A holiday that we just made up where we try to fathom the immensity of time! What's the difference between the Stone Age and the Paleolithic? When is North America finally going to enter the Bronze Age? Why do we call this year 2018? Were the early Middle Ages faked? Some of these questions are easier to answer than others.

To learn more about what we discuss this week, check out these readings:

It’s about time: historical periodization and Linked Ancient World Data. (Institute for the Study of the Ancient World)

Human Origins: Early Stone Age Tools (Smithsonian Museum of Natural History)

Human Origins: Middle Stone Age Tools (Smithsonian Museum of Natural History)

Human Origins: Later Stone Age Tools (Smithsonian Museum of Natural History)

Oceania, 8000–2000 B.C. (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Time Computations and Dionysius Exiguus (SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System)

High and Low Chronologies of the Mediterranean Bronze Age (ThoughtCo)

Bibliography: Absolute Chronology of the Early and Middle Bronze Age in the Aegean

Statute of Westminster, The First (1275) (UK National Archives)

Phantom time hypothesis (Wikipedia)

Anna and Amber can’t help you with your real medical complaints, but they’re here with a whole batch of knowledge* about what people used to do for their sniffles (and worse). So grab your tea, lozenges, and a mouthful of miscellaneous herbs and shuffle along with us as we explore ways in which diseases have been diagnosed and treated over the millennia.

*Not medical knowledge! Go see a doctor!

To learn even more, check out:

Neanderthal healthcare practices crucial to survival (AAAS)

Prehistoric 'Aspirin' Found in Sick Neanderthal's Teeth (National Geographic)

Neandertal birth canal shape and the evolution of human childbirth (PNAS)

Watching Ancient Hominins Giving Birth (written by Anna for Sapiens)

Neanderthal behaviour, diet, and disease inferred from ancient DNA in dental calculus (Nature)

I am Ashurbanipal: king of the world, king of Assyria (British Museum)

Medicine and Doctoring in Ancient Mesopotamia (Grand Valley Journal of History)

Ugarit (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

The Clay Models Used to Analyze Entrails in the Ancient World (Atlas Obscura)

Origin and Development of Ayurveda (A Brief History) (Ancient Science of Life)

A glimpse of Ayurveda – The forgotten history and principles of Indian traditional medicine (Journal of Traditional and Complementary Medicine)

25 Ancient, Proven Home Remedies With Science Behind Them (Nursing Assistant Guides)

Weapon salve, tooth hangers and other ‘sympathetic’ cures (Marieke Hendriksen)

Never heard of anthropodermic bibliopegy? That's about to change, friends! This week, Anna and Amber look at some unexpected objects made out of people, and discuss the effect of such objects on the living. Content note: We discuss modification of human remains, so please exercise discretion in listening.

Our content warning goes double for this week’s show notes! As your editor (Amber) realized herself, discussing these places and objects is one thing, but looking at images of them is another entirely. We’ve noted where images of the materials in question are unavoidable, and we encourage you to remain mindful of the people involved in their production and exercise discretion.  

For the brave and curious among you, learn more by checking out:

A Book by Its Cover (Lapham’s Quarterly)

Digitized version of Narrative of the life of James Allen : alias George Walton, alias Jonas Pierce, alias James H. York, alias Burley Grove, the highwayman : being his death-bed confession, to the warden of the Massachusetts State Prison (Boston Athenaeum, CW: images of modified human remains)

Anthropodermic book, 1789 (Mütter Museum, CW: images of modified human remains)

Analyzing Alleged Human Skin Books Via Peptide Mass Fingerprinting (Anthropodermicbooks.org)

Here Are the 8 Creepiest Churches Made of Bones (Ecophiles, CW: images of modified human remains)

The Gruesome History of Eating Corpses as Medicine (Smithsonian Magazine)

Mummy as a Drug (Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine)

Ancient Human-Bone Sculptors Turned Relatives Into Tools? (National Geographic News)

The Gruesome History of Making Human Skeletons (Atlas Obscura)

The Secret Lives of Cadavers (National Geographic, CW: anonymized images of human cadavers)

Body Worlds: Philosophy (Body World Exhibition)

Body Worlds: Plastination Technique (Body Worlds Exhibition)

Grab a cup of cocoa (or something stronger) and join Anna and Amber as they don their coziest jammies and tell the story of Mithras, the lesser-known Reason For The Season from the ancient world. Learn how religions shift through time and place, and why you might want to feast on bull meat in a cave with some Romans this holiday season.

To learn more, check out:

The Roman Cult of Mithras (The Tertullian Project)

Is Jesus Simply a Retelling of the Mithras Mythology? (Cold Case Christianity)

Jerome: The Principal Works of St. Jerome (PDF)

Clauss, Manfred (2001) The Roman Cult of Mithras: The God and his Mysteries

Were Pagan Temples All Smashed Or Just Converted Into Christian Ones? (Forbes)

Mithraism (Encyclopedia Iranica)

On Mithra's Part in Zoroastrianism (Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London)

Mithra iii. In Manicheism (Encyclopedia Iranica)

Religious syncretism (Encyclopedia Britannica)

Foltz, Richard (2010) Religions of the Silk Road: Premodern Patterns of Globalization

Anna and Amber are keeping the festive mood alive this week with a wine and cheese platter for your ears, and boy howdy, is it a silly one... and we weren't even drinking! Learn about the world's oldest wine gunk and the many (many!) sizes of wine bottles, and then we'll discuss the difference between wine and "wine," and nibble on some stories about very, very aged cheese.

Old Wine: An ancient timeline for great old wine (Snooth)

Guide to Wine Bottle Sizes (Wine Folly)

You Can (Probably) Still Drink the World’s Oldest Bottle of Wine (Gastro Obscura)

Columella’s De Re Rustica

Drinks in Ancient Rome (Facts and Details [no, really])

The Wild Ancient Greek Drinking Game That Required Throwing Wine (Gastro Obscura)

A History of Wine in America (UC Press eBooks)

World's Earliest Wine (Archaeology)

Early Neolithic wine of Georgia in the South Caucasus (PNAS)

The Wonders That Were Jiahu: The World’s Earliest Fermented Beverage (Penn Museum)

Chateau Jiahu (Dogfish Head Brewery)

Chemical and nutritional properties of 'tej', an indigenous Ethiopian honey wine: variations within and between production units (The Journal of Food Technology in Africa)

The Origin of Wine (Scientific American)

2,200-Year-Old ‘Rice Wine’ Found in China (SciNews)

Ancient wine discovered in Chinese tomb (CBC)

Ancient wine found in China (BBC)

Sake Isn't a Rice Wine, and Four Other Myths Dispelled (Eater)

Since 1700, Wine Glasses Have Gotten 7 Times Bigger (Gastro Obscura)

Proteomic Analyses on an Ancient Egyptian Cheese and Biomolecular Evidence of Brucellosis (Analytical Chemistry)

The new ‘world’s oldest cheese’ is more than 7,000 years old (National Post)

Fatty acid specific δ13C values reveal earliest Mediterranean cheese production 7,200 years ago (PLOSOne)

Breast Milk Ice Cream A Hit At London Store (NPR)

In a very special mid-week release, Anna and Amber take a look at the handful of rad archaeological discoveries that happened in 2018 that they're resolving to learn more about in 2019. From that juicy sarcophagus in Alexandria, to the bajillion newly detected Maya structures in Guatemala, to the itty bitty bones of the newest addition to our hominin family tree, there's so much research coming our way!

To learn more about what we want to learn more about, check out:

The 10 Biggest Archaeology Stories of 2018 (LiveScience)

Mysterious sarcophagus opened in Alexandria (CNN)

Ancient Infant's DNA Reveals New Clues to How the Americas Were Peopled (The Atlantic)

Fermented beverage and food storage in 13,000 y-old stone mortars at Raqefet Cave, Israel: Investigating Natufian ritual feasting (Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports)

Scientists Stunned by a Neanderthal Hybrid Discovered in a Siberian Cave (The Atlantic)

Terminal Pleistocene Alaskan genome reveals first founding population of Native Americans (Nature)

Adam Rutherford’s A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived on Amazon, available at your local independent bookstore!

Ancient lowland Maya complexity as revealed by airborne laser scanning of northern Guatemala (Science)

Iron Age Teenagers (Archaeology)

The Dare Stones (Brenau University)

Is This Inscribed Stone a Notorious Forgery—or the Answer to America’s Oldest Mystery? (National Geographic)

Etzanoa Conservancy

'Miracle' Excavation of 'Little Foot' Skeleton Reveals Mysterious Human Relative (LiveScience)

A multiscale stratigraphic investigation of the context of StW 573 Little Foot and Member 2, Sterkfontein Caves, South Africa (bioRXiv)

A multispectral imaging approach integrated into the study of Late Antique textiles from Egypt (PLOSOne)

Anna and Amber work their way up the trunk of our shared evolutionary tree, tackling the thorny issues of identifying our earliest mammal, primate, and hominin ancestors. We learn about the early development of bipedal walking, and really struggle (as usual) with the question of deep time, but this week it escalates to wondering how anybody knows anything. All we know is, we didn’t come from no monkey.

To learn more about what we discuss this week, check out:

These Rodent-Like Creatures Are the Earliest Known Ancestor of Humans, Whales and Shrews (LiveScience)

Human Evolution Timeline Interactive (Smithsonian Institution)

New faces of Aegyptopithecus from the Oligocene of Egypt (Journal of Human Evolution)

Sahelanthropus: "The femur of Toumaï?" (John Hawks Weblog)

Femur findings remain a secret (Nature)

Geology and Paleontology of the Late Miocene Middle Awash Valley, Afar Rift, Ethiopia (Nature, via ResearchGate)

The life history of Ardipithecus ramidus: A heterochronic model of sexual and social maturation (Anthropological Review, via ResearchGate)

Ardipithecus ramidus and the evolution of language and singing: An early origin for hominin vocal capability (HOMO)

Evolution: The First Four Billion Years

Fetal load and the evolution of lumbar lordosis in bipedal hominins (Nature)

Why Pregnant Women Don’t Tip Over (New York Times)

Anna heads further up the family tree (as Amber lags behind, gasping), and introduces us to our Australopith and Paranthropus relatives. You can always rely on us for our australo-pithiness: Anna gives us the scoop on Lucy's new neighbor Selam and tells us about why babies have such grabby little hands, while Amber grapples with the prospect of a world before people and realizes she might have met an extinct hominin at a party once.

To learn (and see!) more, check out:

Human Evolution Timeline Interactive (Smithsonian Institution)

Human Fossils (Smithsonian Institution)

Australopithecus africanus (Smithsonian Institution)

Paranthropus aethiopicus (Smithsonian Institution)

Paranthropus boisei (Smithsonian Institution)

Paranthropus robustus (Smithsonian Institution)

Who is Lucy the Australopithecus? Five facts you probably didn't know about oldest hominin ever discovered (The Independent)

Newborn Reflexes (University of Rochester Medical Center)

Palmar grasp reflex experiment from 1932 (YouTube)

Darwinism in the Nursery (Southland Times)

Infantile Atavism: Being Some Further Notes on Darwinism in the Nursery (British Medical Journal)