The Dirt Podcast

Here at The Dirt, we talk a lot about the things that people leave behind, but we’ve not spent much time talking about what’s left behind of the people themselves. That changes this week, when Anna and Amber discuss excavating, storing, studying, and selling archaeological human remains, and take a look at some of the legal and ethical challenges involved. Content note: this episode contains descr...

Kick off Women's History Month with a show all about some of the earliest representations of women in art! Anna introduces us to the Venus of Willendorf and her curvy comrades, and shares a research study with very modern take on ancient art. Meanwhile Amber bursts our bubble about the matriarchy and goddess religions in Old Europe, and discusses goddess worshippers of past and present at Çatalhöy...

It's almost officially springtime in the Northern Hemisphere, and the vernal equinox brings with it another reason to celebrate: Nowruz! Commonly known as Persian New Year, Nowruz has its roots in a millennia-old religion founded by a man named Zartosht whose ideas had a profound impact on the world. Anna introduces fire temples and what ancient writers had to say about Zoroastrianism, while Amber...

Anna and Amber rummage around on the floor of history's closet to bring you a brief history of shoes from around the world! Learn why caves in the southwestern USA are full of shoes. Find a shoe museum near you for some sole-searching. Enjoy a description of Anna's favorite goofy historical fashion statement. All this and more! To learn more about this week’s topic, check out: First Shoes Worn 40,...

Join Anna and Amber on a tour of third millennium BCE Mesopotamia, where they explore the Royal Tombs of Ur. It has everything: musical instruments, very extra jewelry looks, a Great Death Pit (!), a famous excavator with a flair for the dramatic, even a surprise find nearly a century later in a museum basement. Who was buried there? What makes these tombs so special? What did Sumerian music sound...

This week's episode was inspired by news coverage of Revolutionary War hero Casimir Pulaski, who, according to his skeleton, may have been intersex. But what does it mean to be intersex, and how do we incorporate this very real form of existence into our understanding of the archaeological record? Learn along with Anna and Amber from forensic archaeology, American history, Indigenous American cult...

We’re moving! The Dirt is changing hosts and leaving the APN. However, you shouldn’t experience an interruption in your shows when they return. The feed should update automatically. From Chris Webster: I’ve really appreciated having the quality content from Anna and Amber on the APN! You’re a class act and put on an interesting and informative show. We’ll miss you for sure! Contact Email the Dirt...

Truly we are talking ancient history, since “Cladh Hallan: A Story in Several Parts” was episode 18, way back in 2018 when we still had no idea what we were doing and long before the content that was migrated to the APN feed. This may be the first time some longtime listeners (including you?) have heard this story, and we’ll round it out with some additional context for the subject matter. Find ou...

Theater as public entertainment has taken many forms throughout time and among different cultural groups. We’ll hop through various times and places to look at the places where performances were held, the types of pieces performed, and the role of theater as an emotional pocket dimension. Links History of Theatre (Wikipedia) Tragedy (Wikipedia) Theater in Ancient Greece (Metropolitan Museum of Art...

Candace is an anthropologist and ethnographer whose research focuses on the intersections of transnational migration, religion, race, and empire. We learned so much in this episode! It's always such a treat to have a guest with a perspective from one of the anthropological fields other than archaeology. We hope you enjoy it and we hope it gives you all lots to think about! Links https://www.candac...

There have been an awful lot of news stories lately featuring “lost” sites or structures “revealed” by the effects of drought and climate change. Way to look on the positive side, I guess! We’ll take a look at some of these sites and more broadly, the effects of climate change on current archaeology. Both of your tired hosts were a bit punchy during recording, so this episode is ever so slightly g...

We meant to tackle this question before, but we can’t wait any longer! The Benin Bronzes have received media attention lately in a series of newsworthy announcements to repatriate them from various museums in North America and Europe to Nigeria. What are these alliterative artifacts, and how did thousands of them disappear from the Kingdom of Benin only to appear by the hundreds in museums oversea...

Anna saddles up to lead Amber on a faunal adventure! We’ll discuss the changes that happen when humans start influencing animal breeding. We’ll also cover the origin stories of a few of the most prevalent domesticated species. But don't worry, we cover some examples of "non-typical" domestication too, plus a case of animal coworkers. We’ll even tackle the question… have we humans domesticated OURS...

For the first half of the first millennium CE, Himyar was based in what is today Yemen and flourished thanks to its role in inter-regional trade. We’ll discuss the political landscape of ancient southern Arabia, the conversion of the Himyarite dynasty from polytheism to Judaism, and recently published research on environmental factors that contributed to the Himyarite state’s decline and eventual...

Anna is sick this week, so we've been unable to record new episodes. But rather than leave you hanging, we're releasing a lightly trimmed version of the latest episode of Old News. We've got human bone jewelry, the first Black Baptist church in colonial America, alleged art crimes, some seriously inclement weather, and more! Old News is one of our monthly bonus episodes that comes with the Absolut...

This week, Anna and Amber debut a new (occasional) series: Site-Seeing! There are so many archaeological sites out there, and some of them tend to overshadow others. In order to learn about and showcase some lesser-known sites, your hosts will each present a brief exploration of a site previously unknown to either of them. This time, we feature Djenné, an ancient city in what is today Mali, and Ba...

We've asked this on the show before, but..what did the past smell like? In this episode, we talk about some of the ways that researchers are finding and recreating some ancient aromas. We also get speculative about smellscapes and honk the Clown Horn of Orientalism at some perfumes. Get your sniffers ready, this one's fun! Interested in sponsoring this show or podcast ads for your business? Zencas...

To wrap up our inaugural Summer Blockbuster series, Amber leads us on a mission to Pandora with Avatar (2009). Rather than exploration of the culture of the indigenous Na’vi population (or maybe in addition to), we’ll examine some of the philosophical underpinnings of the franchise and discuss the book that completely changed Amber's intellectual trajectory. Interested in sponsoring this show or p...

Amber guides Anna through the jungle of the 2006 film Apocalypto...but hopefully a little less racistly than director Mel Gibson did! We’ll talk about human sacrifice, what was (and was not) going on in Maya culture in the 15th century CE, and the movie’s ending that couldn’t be more on the nose if it went “boop!” Interested in sponsoring this show or podcast ads for your business? Zencastr makes...

Welcome to a month of Summer Blockbusters, where we talk about the archaeology in movies that aren't Indiana Jones! This week, it's the 2021 film The Dig, starring Ralph Fiennes and Carey Mulligan. We'll talk a bit about the film, but mostly about the real site portrayed in it--the Anglo Saxon burial at Sutton Hoo. This site was key to rewriting the understanding of post-Roman Britain, and was esp...

“The Sea Peoples” is a term that refers to a seafaring culture of unclear origin that bopped around the eastern Mediterranean and adjoining areas around 1200-900 BCE. There are ancient Egyptian murals and reliefs that depict battles against these unnamed adversaries, but no definitive labels or helpful texts. So who were the Sea Peoples? We’ll discuss some theories, and probably not reach any conc...

Y'all, it has been a TOUGH WEEK. You can tell because Anna somehow manages to get the episode intro WRONG after doing it correctly nearly 200 times. But we're just gonna keep swimming! We couldn’t do a month-at-sea theme without talking about shipwrecks. And it’s not just pirate ships and the Titanic, either. We’ll discuss all kinds of underwater assemblages and the ways in which shipwreck archaeo...

Ahoy! We’re still at sea, the ocean is still None of Our Business, and yet we’re learning so much about it! This week, we’ve got a special guest to guide us. Christine Bassett is currently a program coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Weather Program Office (NOAA). Christine collects data from ancient Arctic shell middens to reconstruct climate and sea ice levels...

Terra nullius is a Latin phrase meaning “nobody’s land,” but historically it has tended to mean something closer to *grabby hands.* What does it mean when a place is considered no one’s? Are there still places where people aren’t? Are there places where we've never been? The answers may surprise you. Members, check out an extended edition of this episode here . Interested in learning about how to...

Welcome to episode one of our themed month: The Dirt at Sea! The oceans (and seas and lagoons and fjords and so on) have provided people with food and other resources for hundreds of thousands of years. We’ll be discussing some examples of this from the archaeological record. We’ll also investigate how archaeology can get at the relationship between people and the big blue – and it’s much more tha...