What have Anna and Amber been up to? - Ep 188

BONUS

Hello, friends! We’re moving our episode schedule slightly—episodes will now be coming out on Wednesdays!! But in the meantime—This is a shortened version of a much longer chat that's available to our Patreon members (link below to join and support the show)! Anna and Amber chat about some changes in their personal lives, plus some updates to The Dirt. We also FINALLY answer our own interview questions:

1. What's the best thing about anthropology?

2. What moment from human history/prehistory or the history of anthropology would you want to go back in time to see?

This is a departure from our usual episodes, so if you're not a big fan of parts of the show where we get chatty...this one might not be for you!

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

Connect with James on Twitter: @paleoimaging

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Links

• Support The Dirt on Patreon

Contact

• Email the Dirt Podcast: thedirtpodcast@gmail.com

ArchPodNet

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

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The Neo-Assyrians - Ep 187

Settle in for a HEFTY episode, folks! This week, Amber and Anna examine the world of the Neo-Assyrian empire. This means some substantial time spent context-setting, thanks to the complex nature of early Mesopotamian politics, religion, warfare, and state propaganda. Then we look further at that carefully crafted state propaganda and its influence on Assyriology. THEN we get into a bit of archaeology, and finally, discuss the Neo-Assyrian legacy and descendant communities. What a ride!

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

Connect with James on Twitter: @paleoimaging

Interested in sponsoring this show or podcast ads for your business? Zencastr makes it really easy! Click this message for more info.

*LISTENER NOTE* We discuss some pretty graphically violent art in this episode, starting around time stamp 35:00. Content warning for war crimes and sexual assault--skip ahead about 25 minutes.

Links

• Cultural Atlas of Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East (via WorldCat)

• Ideology and Propaganda in Assyrian Art (Power and Propaganda: A Symposium on Ancient Empires)

• The Assyrians — The Appalling Lords of Torture (Medium, cn illustrations of graphic violence)

• Assurnasirpal II, king of Assyria (r. 883-859 BC) (Nimrud: Materialities of Assyrian Knowledge Production)

• Object: The Banquet Scene (The British Museum)

• Assyria: Lion hunts, Siege of Lachish and Khorsabad (The British Museum)

• Ancient salmu and the (Post-) Modern Scholar (JAGNES, via Academia.edu)

• Early Excavations in Assyria (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

• A History of the Ancient Near East (via WorldCat)

• Cuneiform Texts and the Writing of History (via WorldCat)

• Marxist Historiography and the Ancient Near East (What’s Left of Marxism: Historiography and the Possibilities of Thinking with Marxian Themes and Concepts, via Google Books)

• Ancient near Eastern History from eurocentrism to an Open World (ISIMU: Revista sobre Oriente Próximo y Egipto en la antigüedad 2)

• Approaching ancient Assyria through archaeology leads to new insights (Universiteit Leiden)

• Archaeologists Find 2,700-Year-Old Assyrian-Style Leather Armor in China (Sci-News)

• (Re)Animating The Oikos: Tell Billa’s Domestic Space In 3D (UPenn)

• Excavations at Nineveh: The Halzi Gate (IRAQ)

• The sack of Nineveh in 612 (Nineveh. The Great City. Symbol of Beauty and Power, via Academia.edu)

• Assyrians (UNPO)

• Assyrian Aramaic Dialects | Similarities & Differences (via YouTube)

• Assyrians Celebrate Akitu In Northern Syria (North Press Agency Syria)

Contact

• Email the Dirt Podcast: thedirtpodcast@gmail.com

ArchPodNet

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

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Maroon Communities - Ep 186

On a listener-sponsored episode, Anna and Amber tackle the archaeology and historical context of maroon communities. These are societies formed by self-liberated Africans during the period when the slave trade was a huge part of the world economy. We discuss some archaeological case studies, and then really think long and hard about what it means to reconstruct these lives, and who has historically done so.

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

Connect with James on Twitter: @paleoimaging

Interested in sponsoring this show or podcast ads for your business? Zencastr makes it really easy! Click this message for more info.

Links

• Maroon Communities in the Americas (Slavery and Remembrance)

• Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge (US Fish and Wildlife Service)

• Landscape of Power: Freedom and Slavery in the Great Dismal Swamp Region (via Vimeo)

• Deep in the Swamps, Archaeologists Are Finding How Fugitive Slaves Kept Their Freedom (Smithsonian)

• Archaeology of Marronage in the Caribbean Antilles (Revista do Museu de Arqueologia e Etnologia, link to PDF download)

• Maroons under Assault In Suriname And French Guiana (Cultural Survival)

• Marronage Perspective for Historical Archaeology in the United States (Historical Archaeology)

• Desolate Place for a Defiant People : the Archaeology of Maroons, Indigenous Americans, and Enslaved Laborers in the Great Dismal Swamp] (via WorldCat)

• Music of the Maroons (Smithsonian Folkways, via Youtube)

• Meet the legendary community that fought for its freedom in Jamaica (National Geographic)

• Maroons: Rebel Slaves in the Americas (Smithsonian Folklife)

• Maroon Archaeology beyond the Americas: A View from Kenya (Historical Archaeology)

• And follow Prof. Ignacio Gallup-Diaz on Twitter!

Contact

• Email the Dirt Podcast: thedirtpodcast@gmail.com

ArchPodNet

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

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Anthropology and Science Fiction - Ep 185

In a SURPRISE THIRD INSTALLMENT of our discussion of sci fi and archaeology, we talk about two giants of world building, Octavia E Butler and Ursula K LeGuin. We also talk about a few fictional anthropologists of TV and cinema.

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

Connect with James on Twitter: @paleoimaging

Links

• Speculative Fiction (Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature)

• Fractured Fairy Tales (Rocky and Bullwinkle Wiki)

• Indian Epic Poetry & SF Origins (SciFi Fantasy Network)

• Read Mahabharata as science fiction: C Radhakrishnan (Deccan Chronicle)

• Vimana Aircraft of India: More Sloppy Scholarship from David Childress (Jason Colavito)

• Separating fact from ancient Indian science fiction (Live Mint)

• The Story of Urashima Taro, the Fisher Lad (Japanese Fairy Tales, via Lit2Go)

• Hafele–Keating experiment (Wikipedia)

• The Lucian of Samosata Project

• Abdallah the Fisherman and Abdallah the Merman (Wikisource)

• The Left Hand of Darkness (Ursula K. LeGuin)

• The Dispossessed (Ursula K. LeGuin)

• Ursula Le Guin’s Speculative Anthropology: Thick Description, Historicity and Science Fiction (Theory, Culture & Society)

• How Ursula Le Guin’s Writing Was Shaped by Anthropology (Sapiens)

• Introduction: Speculative Anthropologies (Society for Cultural Anthropology)

• The Parable Series (Octavia E. Butler)

• Thinking Parabolically: Time Matters in Octavia Butler’s Parables (Society for Cultural Anthropology)

• Why So Many Readers Are Turning to Octavia Butler’s Apocalypse Fiction Right Now (Slate)

• Octavia Butler (Society for Cultural Anthropology)

• Mothership: Voyage Into Afrofuturism (Oakland Museum of California)

• Afrofuturism: From the Past to the Living Present (UCLA Newsroom)

• When is Wakanda: Imagining Afrofutures (The Long Now Foundation)

• Radical Reproduction: Octavia E. Butler’s HistoFuturist Archiving as Speculative Theory (Women’s Studies)

• The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (via WorldCat)

• Anthropology in Outerspace (The Geek Anthropologist)

• Forensic TV Post-Mortem: The 5 Most And Least Accurate Episodes Of 'Bones' (Forbes)

Contact

• Email the Dirt Podcast: thedirtpodcast@gmail.com

ArchPodNet

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

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Science Fiction and Anthropology: Part 2! - Ep 184

We're back! And we're continuing our exploration of science fiction in archaeology AND anthropology in science fiction. Last time, we talked to author Pat Edwards about world-building and storytelling--this time, we tell the stories. Amber gets speculative, Anna spins some yarns, and we investigate the Thousand and One Nights.

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

Connect with James on Twitter: @paleoimaging

Contact

• Email the Dirt Podcast: thedirtpodcast@gmail.com

ArchPodNet

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

• APN on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/archpodnet

• APN on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/archpodnet

• APN on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/archpodnet

• Tee Public Store

Affiliates

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• Timeular