CLASSIC: Dogtectives! - Ep 178

Amber's traveling for work this week, so we bring you a perfectly dry-aged episode from years past. We bring you a fascinating, poignant, and thoroughly delightful interview with Very Special Guest Lynne Engelbert, a handler with the Institute for Canine Forensics. Learn what the talented pups at the ICF do for a living and prepare to be amazed!

Interested in learning about how to use X-Rays and similar technology in archaeology? Check out the linked PaleoImaging course from James Elliot!

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Links

• Institute for Canine Forensics

Contact

• Email the Dirt Podcast: thedirtpodcast@gmail.com

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You Are What You Eat (LIVE!) - Ep 177

How do we know what people ate in the past? How did they make their food? How did food fit into the social aspect of life in the past? We discuss old old recipes, spicy Sichuanese history, an herbal mystery, how food changed our faces, and more!

Interested in learning about how to use X-Rays and similar technology in archaeology? Check out the linked PaleoImaging course from James Elliot!

Start your own podcast with Zencastr and get 30% off your first three months with code DIRT. Click this message for more information.

Links

• Stone Age spices (NPR)

• Garlic Mustard Phytoliths (PLOS One)

• Oldest Noodles Found in China (BBC)

• Decoding Ancient Recipes (BBC)

• Roman food blogger Apicius (Wikipedia)

• History of Spice in Sichuan (University of Illinois)

• Why Revolutionaries Love Spicy Food (Nautilus)

• Cooking Before Ceramics (The Atlantic)

• Monte Testaccio (Archaeology Magazine)

• Oyster Middens (Atlas Obscura)

• Oyster Midden Exhibit (University of Maine)

• Silphium, an Herbal Mystery (BBC)

• What is Silphium?

• Early Dilmun Diet (Journal of Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy)

• Facial Changes due to Diet (PLOS One)

• Changes in Skull Features (PNAS)

• How Forks Gave us Overbites (The Atlantic)

• Lynne Olver’s Food Timeline (Eater.com)

• Virginia Tech Saves the Food Timeline (Eater.com)

Contact

• Email the Dirt Podcast: thedirtpodcast@gmail.com

ArchPodNet

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Studying Salvage Anthropology w/ Samuel Redman - Ep 176

We dive into Dr. Samuel Redman’s latest book, Prophets and Ghosts: The Story of Salvage Anthropology. Amber and Anna (mostly Amber) have lots of questions about the seemingly paradoxical 19th- and 20th- century urge by American scholars to “rescue” objects and even human remains from “disappearing” Indigenous groups. It’s a fascinating window into anthropology viewed as a moral and academic obligation, and the social underpinnings of the development of the discipline in the US. And! You can enter to win your very own copy of Ghosts and Prophets! Harvard University Press generously hooked us up with three copies to give away. The promotion is running via Twitter and Instagram, so keep an eye out for those posts for the extremely low-effort rules for entering.

Interested in learning about how to use X-Rays and similar technology in archaeology? Check out the linked PaleoImaging course from James Elliot!

Start your own podcast with Zencastr and get 30% off your first three months with code DIRT. Click this message for more information.

Links

• Prophets and Ghosts (via WorldCat)

• Samuel J. Redman (UMass Amherst)

• Wendy Red Star’s 1880 Crow Peace Delegation (Birmingham Museum of Art)

• Wendy Red Star’s Children of the Large-Beaked Bird (MASS MoCA)

• Blanket Stories: Transportation Object, Generous Ones, Trek (Marie Watt Studio)

• Publications of the Bureau of American Ethnology (Smithsonian Institution)

Contact

• Email the Dirt Podcast: thedirtpodcast@gmail.com

ArchPodNet

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Sanxingdui and the Shu State - Ep 175

This week, we explore yet another place that’s not a backwater or influenced by aliens! In 1986, two pits were excavated at the site of Sanxingdui (Three Stars Mound) in what is today China’s Sichuan province. These two pits, and six more uncovered in 2021, were full of bronze, jade, gold, and ivory objects that appear to have been “sacrificed” (burned or broken) before burial. The artifacts were made in a style never before seen in Chinese material culture. What was going on at Sanxingdui, and why was the site abruptly abandoned thousands of years ago? We can tell you right off the bat that it wasn’t aliens, but you’ll have to listen to the episode to find out more!

• Interested in learning about how to use X-Rays and similar technology in archaeology? Check out the linked PaleoImaging course from James Elliot!

• Start your own podcast with Zencastr and get 30% off your first three months with code DIRT. Click this message for more information.

Links and Sources

• Seismic Shift (Archaeology)

• Large Standing Figure, Sanxingdui Museum (Art and Archaeology dot com)

• A Preliminary Report on the Standing Bronze Figure from Sacrificial Pit Number Two, Sanxingdui (Early China, via JSTOR)

• New finds at Sanxingdui Ruins show creative power in ancient China (Xinhua Net)

• Sanxingdui relics: What is the secret of the bronze heavenly tree? (CGTN)

• Mysterious Sanxingdui Ruins reveal more stunning relics (Global News)

• Mystery of Ancient Chinese Civilization's Disappearance Explained (LiveScience)

• Sanxingdui: researchers say newly found sites in China date back as far as 3,200 years (South China Morning Post)

• Historical discovery revives wild theories of an alien civilisation in ancient China, but experts say no way (South China Morning Post)

Contact

• Email the Dirt Podcast: thedirtpodcast@gmail.com

ArchPodNet

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JANUARY HIATUS CLASSIC - Where Do Babies Come From? - Ep 174

This week, we bring you the MIRACLE OF BIRTH. Join Amber and Anna for a brief frolic through some ancient birthing wisdom and evidence of pregnancy and childbirth in the archaeological record. We're also joined by the brilliant Dr. Natalie Laudicina, who takes us on a fascinating and slightly terrifying journey through the surprisingly complicated landscape of the primate birth canal. Content warning: some of the subject material in this episode may be upsetting, but we try to give listeners a heads up.

Start your own podcast with Zencastr and get 30% off your first three months with code DIRT. Click this message for more information.

Contact

• Email the Dirt Podcast: thedirtpodcast@gmail.com

ArchPodNet

• APN Website: https://www.archpodnet.com

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