269 episodes
The Dirt Podcast The Dirt Podcast
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4.5 • 20 Ratings
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Join Anna and Amber; friends, archaeologists, and big nerds, for an exploration of the lives of people in the past.
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Get to Work!
Greetings, fellow workers! In observance of May Day, which in many parts of the world is a day for celebrating and acknowledging the struggles of workers in the labor movement. In that spirit, we bring you an episode about work.
How do we define "jobs" in the archaeological record? What can skeletons tell us about what people did every day? What was it like to be a monument worker in ancient Egypt? Tune in for all this and more!
Show Notes
The Eloquent Bones of Abu Hureyra (Scientific American)
Neandertal Humeri May Reflect Adaptation to Scraping Tasks, but Not Spear Thrusting - PMC
https://phys.org/news/2012-07-unique-neandertal-arm-morphology-due.html
EA5634 ostracon (British Museum)
The Strikes in Ramses III's Twenty-Ninth Year (Journal of Near Eastern Studies)
A letter of complaint to the Vizier To (Journal of Near Eastern Studies)
Hard Work-Where Will It Get You? Labor Management in Ur III Mesopotamia (Journal of Near Eastern Studies)
The Forgotten History of New York’s Bagel Famines (Gastro Obscura)
SWCA Environmental Consultants in Salt Lake City Join Teamsters (International Brotherhood of Teamsters) -
Greetings from the Anthropocene (Part 2)!
It's time for part 2 of our exploration of the Anthropocene -- a period of time that has very wobbly boundaries and probably doesn't even exist? Can we define a chunk of geological time based on human impacts? People sure have tried!
To learn more about what we cover in both parts, check out:
Geologists Vote to Reject Anthropocene as an Official Epoch (Center for Field Sciences)
Anthropocene (Oxford English Dictionary)
GSA Geologic Time Scale v. 4.0
The “Anthropocene” (International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme Newsletter)
Anthropocene Curriculum
How Long Have We Been in the Anthropocene? (SAPIENS)
Archaeological assessment reveals Earth’s early transformation through land use (Science)
Humans versus Earth: the quest to define the Anthropocene (Nature)
Early onset of industrial-era warming across the oceans and continents (Nature)
The Industrial Revolution kick-started global warming much earlier than we realised (The Conversation)
The Oxford Handbook of Industrial Archaeology (via WorldCat)
Global human-made mass exceeds all living biomass (Nature)
An anthropogenic marker horizon in the future rock record (GSA Today)
The Technofossil Record: Where Archaeology and Paleontology Meet (Anthropocene Curriculum)
Defining the Anthropocene (Nature)
Davis, H., & Todd, Z. (2017). On the Importance of a Date, or, Decolonizing the Anthropocene. ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, 16(4), 761–780.
Whyte, Kyle. "Indigenous Climate Change Studies : Indigenizing Futures, Decolonizing the Anthropocene." English Language Notes, vol. 55 no. 1, 2017, p. 153-162.... -
Greetings From the Anthropocene!
Get ready for a two-part exploration of the proposed "Anthropocene" era. Can we define a chunk of geological time based on human impacts? When would that start--at the Industrial Revolution in the 1800s (CE)? Earlier? Later? More importantly...should we even try? Plus, we learn about industrial archaeology and get briefly derailed by a man named Frerb Hankbert. Make sure to stay tuned for the second installment!
To learn more about what we cover in both parts, check out:
Geologists Vote to Reject Anthropocene as an Official Epoch (Center for Field Sciences)
Anthropocene (Oxford English Dictionary)
GSA Geologic Time Scale v. 4.0
The “Anthropocene” (International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme Newsletter)
Anthropocene Curriculum
How Long Have We Been in the Anthropocene? (SAPIENS)
Archaeological assessment reveals Earth’s early transformation through land use (Science)
Humans versus Earth: the quest to define the Anthropocene (Nature)
Early onset of industrial-era warming across the oceans and continents (Nature)
The Industrial Revolution kick-started global warming much earlier than we realised (The Conversation)
The Oxford Handbook of Industrial Archaeology (via WorldCat)
Global human-made mass exceeds all living biomass (Nature)
An anthropogenic marker horizon in the future rock record (GSA Today)
The Technofossil Record: Where Archaeology and Paleontology Meet (Anthropocene Curriculum)
Defining the Anthropocene (Nature)
Davis, H., & Todd, Z. (2017). On the Importance of a Date, or, Decolonizing the Anthropocene. ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, 16(4), 761–780.
Whyte, Kyle. "a href="http://muse.jhu.edu/article/711473"... -
Total Eclipse of The Dirt
Turn around, bright eyes! In anticipation of the Great North American eclipse coming up on Monday, April 8, 2024, we're scooting in front of this topic like the moon in front of the sun. We're looking at some of the earliest record-keeping of solar eclipses, some eclipse history (eclipstory!) and some mythology and cosmology around the phenomenon. Plus...a truly delightful fact about the song Total Eclipse of the Heart.
Sources:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/what-folklore-tells-us-about-eclipses-180964488/
https://www.jstor.org/stable/15768
https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001276245
https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/how-did-the-ancients-predicted-eclipses-the-saros-cycle/
https://ctext.org/shang-shu/punitive-expedition-of-yin
https://www.jstor.org/stable/1006543
https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_11621/?st=gallery
https://www.jstor.org/stable/671227 -
Premium Feed TEASER! Tools and Fire: Not Just For Humans
A few select tidbits from the most recent episode on our premium feed.
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Extremely Specific Hats
We're back! Hi! Sorry for the unplanned hiatus--we missed you, too. This week, we've got a delightful sponsored episode featuring the most specific and niche topic we've ever covered. It's hats! 18th-century naval knit hats recovered from shipwrecks! See? Extremely specific. But FASCINATING! We get into the knitty gritty (HA) and also talk about fabric conservation, a smidge of underwater archaeology, and FOSSILIZED FABRIC! Tune in or miss out!
Audio note: Something funky happened with this recording, and there was a lot of unpleasant buzzing in a few spots. Anna fixed it as much as possible, but it does mean the audio quality is a little different on this one.
SHOW NOTES:
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/toboggan-tuque-knit-hat-regionalism
https://www.heddels.com/start-here/
https://www.curiousfrau.com/2009/08/16/knitted-mans-hat-from-the-ship-qgagianaq/
https://www.qaronline.org/blackbeard-sails-again-conservation-textiles-queen-annes-revenge-shipwreck/open
https://www.abc.se/~pa//mar/wrak32.htm
https://carnegiemnh.org/archaeological-textiles-eastern-us/
https://en.natmus.dk/historical-knowledge/denmark/prehistoric-period-until-1050-ad/what-did-they-wear/textile-preservation/
https://www.synchrotron-soleil.fr/en/news/what-mechanisms-are-responsible-preservation-archaeological-textiles-over-thousands-years
Customer Reviews
call me Al, I don’t mind
Anna and Amber. Amber and Anna. Anber? Amna? It doesn’t matter these two gals are fun, irreverent, knowledgable (sometimes (suspiciously) even on the go). They bring clarity to the arcane science of archeology, smooth out the rough edges of history, pre-history and paleo-mysteries you didn’t even know you could be transfixed by! And true to their investigatory skillsets they know where to point the fingers (ie where the bodies are buried and who put them there.)
Also they have this kinda warmth between they I’d just like to be at the kitchen table with them, just listening (well, maybe with a little glass of merlot).
Check out The Dirt cause these ladies are fab!
A delighttt
A mix of all nice science things and all nice friend things. A joy! A lesson! A delight!
Informative and puntastic!
Both Amber and Anna are incredibly knowledgeable and passionate about archaeology and anthropology. The topics they tackle range from poop (coprolites!) to the ethical treatment of human remains.