Ellora Caves - Ep 115

This week, Anna and Amber engage in some light speleology to give you a glimpse of the Ellora Caves--a shared Hindu, Buddhist and Jain sacred site in India. What makes a place feel sacred and special, and why are so many caves viewed as sacred places around the world and throughout time? Plus, Amber's review of Werner Herzog's opus In the Cave of Forgotten Dreams. We are all crocodiles looking back into the abyss of time, friends.

Links

• Ellora Caves (UNESCO World Heritage Sites)

• Vignettes of Ajanta & Ellora (Google Arts and Culture)

• Ellora Cave Temples

• Ellora Caves (Atlas Obscura)

• Hinduism Primer

• Buddhist Caves - Ellora (Lonely Planet)

• Hindu Caves (Lonely Planet)

• Jaina Caves at Ellora (Sahapedia)

• Jain Caves (Lonely Planet)

• The Sacred Cave (Sweet Briar College)

• Sacred Caves of the World: Illuminating the Darkness (The Changing World Religion Map)

• Mayan Caves: Places of Sacred Rituals (National Geographic)

• Virtual Visit - La Grotte Chauvet

• Visit the Cave - Lascaux

• 10 sacred caves around the world (National Geographic)

• The Art and Architecture of the Indian Subcontinent (via WorldCat)

• Royal Patronage and Religious Tolerance: The Formative Period of Gupta—Vākāṭaka Culture (Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society)

Contact

• Email the Dirt Podcast

Affiliates

• Wildnote

• TeePublic

• Timeular

Find this show on the educational podcast app, Lyceum.fm!

We Bet You'll Enjoy This Episode - Ep 114

This week, Anna and Amber have dealt you an excellent hand of examples of gambling, and the archaeology and anthropology thereof! Listeners, we hope you'll bear with us on this episode. We recorded on day three of the 2020 electoral vote counts, and we've both lost our minds. Come along on this ride with us as we explore what evidence we have for gambling in the archaeological record, and what we can learn from the types of games people play.

Links

• Gambling (Cambridge Encyclopedia of Anthropology)

• There’s no such thing as a natural-born gambler (The Conversation)

• Gambling Across Cultures: Mapping Worldwide Occurrence and Learning from Ethnographic Comparison (International Gambling Studies)

• Per Binde - On Gambling

• Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight (The Interpretation of Cultures)

• When The Gambler Came To Chaco (American Archaeology)

• Sociopolitical, Ceremonial, and Economic Aspects of Gambling in Ancient North America: A Case Study of Chaco Canyon (American Antiquity)

• Visitors to Northern Australia: Debating the History of Indigenous Gambling (International Gambling Studies, via ResearchGate)

• Macassan History and Heritage (Australian National University)

• Where to gamble on the medieval Adriatic? (Medievalists.net)

• Queen Elizabeth I Held England’s First Official Lottery 450 Years Ago (Smithsonian)

• Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” (New Yorker)

• Gaming among Enslaved Africans in the Caribbean and its uses in Navigating Social Interactions (W&M ScholarWorks)

Contact

• Email the Dirt Podcast

Affiliates

• Wildnote

• TeePublic

• Timeular

Find this show on the educational podcast app, Lyceum.fm!

Neanderthalk with "Kindred" Author Dr. Rebecca Wragg Sykes - Ep 113

Anna and Amber sit down with Dr. Rebecca Wragg Sykes, Paleolithic archaeologist and author of the book "Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death, and Art." We talk about Rebecca's education and her love for all things ancient, and she resolves some common misconceptions about our Neanderthal cousins. "Kindred" just came out in the States, so pick up a copy of your very own for an amazing synthesis of current Neanderthal knowledge.

Links

• Neanderthals Among Mammoths: Excavations at Lynford Quarry, Norfolk (via Archaeology Data Service)

• Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (European Commission)

• Trowelblazers

• Rebecca Wragg Sykes

Contact

• Email the Dirt Podcast

Affiliates

• Wildnote

• TeePublic

• Timeular

Find this show on the educational podcast app, Lyceum.fm!

Spooktober: Buried Alive?!?!?! - Ep 112

For the final spooky episode of 2020, Amber and Anna take on the extremely frightening topic of live burials. We discuss the forensic evidence that indicates that a person might have been buried alive, talk about some archaeological contexts for live burials, and cover some real and probably-not-so-real accounts from history. This one's got some real ups and downs, so buckle up.

Links

• The Live Burial: A multidisciplinary approach to the identification and exploration of live burials (via Academia.edu) (CN: graphic images of human remains)

• The Bride escaping live burial in Kill Bill Vol 2 (YouTube)

• Casts of Pompeii (Archaeology)

• Plaster Citizens of Pompeii (Atlas Obscura)

• Volcanic Ash (National Geographic)

• EarthWord – Nuée Ardente (USGS)

• Mount Vesuvius Boiled Its Victims’ Blood and Caused Their Skulls to Explode (Smithsonian) (CN: images of human remains)

• Frozen Mummies from Andean Mountaintop Shrines:Bioarchaeology and Ethnohistory of Inca Human Sacrifice (BioMed Research International, via ResearchGate) (CN: images of human remains)

• Violence in pre-Columbian Panama exaggerated, new study shows (Phys.org) (CN: images of human remains)

• The History of Ancient Nubia (Oriental Institute)

• Retainer Sacrifice in Egypt and in Nubia (The Strange World of Human Sacrifice)

• Buried but Alive? Interpreting Post-depositional Bone Movement, Anxieties over Death and Premature Burial (Lund Archaeological Review)

• Four People Who Were Buried Alive and How They Got Out (MentalFloss)

• PICS: Remember the Mansfield man buried alive for five months (Chad.co.uk)

• Esmeralda Lundius Staff Bio (Durham University)

• The 'Pompeii' of the Western Front: Archaeologists find the bodies of 21 tragic World War One German soldiers in perfectly preserved trenches where they were buried alive by an Allied shell (Daily Mail)

Contact

• Email the Dirt Podcast: thedirtpodcast@gmail.com

Affiliates

• Wildnote

• TeePublic

• Timeular

Find this show on the educational podcast app, Lyceum.fm!

Spooktober: It's A Whole Ordeal - Ep 111

Sure, maybe you've heard of the River Ordeal, or trial by fire, but have you heard of Trial by Bean? How about the Ordeal of the Turf? In this Spooktober installment, Amber walks Anna through the ways that those accused of crimes have proven their innocence (or not!) throughout history and all over the world.

Links

• Why the trial by ordeal was actually an effective test of guilt (Aeon.com)

• The Laws of King Athelstan 924-939 A.D. (Internet History Sourcebooks)

• Trial by ordeal: When fire and water determined guilt (BBC News)

• River Ordeal—Trial by Water—Swimming of Witches: Procedures of Ordeal in Witch Trials (Witchcraft Mythologies and Persecutions, via Academia.edu)

• The Law of Hammurabi and Its Audience (Yale Journal of Law & The Humanities)

• The Code of Hammurabi (Yale University Avalon Project)

• Poisonous plants: Calabar beans were used to determine guilt in prehistoric trials. (Slate.com)

• The State and Pre-Colonial Demographic History: The Case of Nineteenth-Century Madagascar (The Journal of African History)

• Cerbera manghas (Wikipedia)

• Ātash (Encyclopedia Iranica)

• Ordeal in Iceland (Scandinavian Studies)

• Common superstition, swearing of oath and ordeal of Koren (The Sangai Express)

• Sassywood (Journal of Comparative Economics)

• Historical Techniques of Lie Detection (European Journal of Psychology)

• Bisha’a (Wikipedia)

• Ordeal of the bitter water (Wikipedia)

Contact

• Email the Dirt Podcast: thedirtpodcast@gmail.com

Affiliates

• Wildnote

• TeePublic

• Timeular

Find this show on the educational podcast app, Lyceum.fm!