Things We Threw Away Podcast

In this episode of Things We Threw Away, we raise a virtual glass and follow alcoholic beverages through the objects, residues, and stories that make them visible in the archaeological record. After staying with rabbits and hares in the previous episodes, we now turn to beer, wine, rice wine, pulque, and fermented cacao. The journey begins with 13,000-year-old beer residues from Raqefet Cave near...

In this episode of Things We Threw Away , we stay with rabbits and hares, but this time we follow them through objects. After looking at the long relationship between humans, rabbits, hares, and the Easter bunny in the last episode, we now turn to twelve objects that carry these animals into very different places, materials, and stories. Some are small and intimate, like a hare-shaped Greek oil fl...

In this episode of Things We Threw Away , we follow rabbits and hares - and somehow also the bunny - through archaeology, history, and folklore to uncover how these animals became familiar with humans and thereby also loaded with meaning. At the beginning we start with a presumable simple question: what is a rabbit, a bunny and a hare? Followed by what is the difference between a rabbit and a hare...

Inspired by our visit to the special exhibition “Ancient Glass” at the Allard Pierson Museum in Amsterdam, we decided that for our 11th episode, we wanted to learn more about glass. Naturally occurring glass, such as volcanic glass or obsidian, was used as early as the Stone Age. But what about man-made glass? One question that came up was: What is glass, and how is it made? Making Glass: from San...

For our tenth episode, we celebrate by visiting the Allard Pierson Museum in Amsterdam together after over six weeks apart. We explore the temporary exhibition “Van Glas Gemaakt in de Oudheid” (Glass Made in Antiquity), discuss what we see, and each pick objects to sketch as part of our archaeological journaling practice. The exhibition features over 200 glass objects, mostly from the museum’s own...

In this episode of Things We Threw Away , Jona and Stefanie trace the history of plaster cast collections from ancient workshops to contemporary museums. Our discussion moves between technical production, educational purpose, and shifting cultural values across two centuries. We open with a personal plaster cast story: a medical one from when Jona broke her finger ( Image 1 ). It looks, as she not...

This episode of Things We Threw Away focusses on the plaster cast in the Allard Pierson museum of the Lion’s Horoscope relief from the Mount Nemrut (Turkey), see FIg. 1. The relief once formed part of the hierothesion, the tomb sanctuary of King Antiochus I of Commagene. The episode moves between the original landscape of the monument and the copy in a museum setting. Fig. 1: Showing the location...

In this episode of Things We Threw Away, we’re talking about the Chios Kore in the Allard Pierson Museum in Amsterdam. The Chios Kore or Kore from Chios in the museum is a plaster cast. This means the original object is not in the museum. But when talking about plaster casts of originals, it is important to look at the history of the cast and the history of the original statue. Image 1: Map of Gre...

In this episode of Things We Threw Away, we will be looking into wooden objects. The last episode featured the wooden cradle in Herculaneum, so it seemed only logical to examine other wooden objects that seemingly survived against all odds. With the help of two examples from two opposite regions in the former Roman Empire, Jona and Stefanie dive into wooden objects that survived for thousands of y...

In this episode of Things We Threw Away we discussed a Roman cradle from Herculaneum, how the object survived against all odds and what we can learn from it about the previous owners. Image 1: Map of Italy, showing the location of Herculaneum, and a map of the archaeological excavation. Herculaneum, an ancient Roman coastal settlement, was among the sites destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius in 7...

This episode of Things We Threw Away examines how objects can outlast their original meanings and acquire new identities over time. Jona and Stefanie discuss anachronistic objects, artefacts reinterpreted long after their creation, through the example of the Hammer of Saint Martin, a medieval Christian relic made around a prehistoric axehead. The conversation follows the axe’s journey from a Bronz...

In this episode, Stefanie and Jona are visiting the Museum Catharijneconvent in Utrecht (Netherlands), where an object stands right at the entrance, which Jona picked to take a closer look at: a medieval (ceremonial?) hammer built up based on an axehead from around 1000 BCE. Image 1: Defining what a hammer is and that there are different hammer types. While talking and observing the hammer from ev...

In this episode of Things We Threw Away , we (Jona and Stefanie) look at provenance and provenance research with the help of three examples. We will explore why it is important for objects, artefacts and even archaeological sites to know where an object comes from. Provenance research tells us “by whom, when and where an artwork/object was created and who has possessed it during its history, inclu...

In this episode of Things We Threw Away , we (Jona and Stefanie) look at the the definition of archaeology and explore the role of amateur archaeologists in advancing our understanding of the past. The question “When is an archaeologist made?” is put into the room, and based on personal experiences we conclude that curiosity, a good observation skill, systematic enquiry and a dash of luck are impo...

We are Jona, a landscape archaeologist and visual science communicator, and Stefanie, a classical archaeologist and ancient historian. Together, we get to explore archaeological objects and tell their stories, in the past and the present. We use research and drawing, including archaeology journaling, to engage with the objects, rethink how we interpret them and raise questions. We'll take a look a...