PODCAST · education
The Dirt Podcast
by The Dirt Podcast
Join Anna and Amber; friends, archaeologists, and big nerds, for an exploration of the lives of people in the past.
Episodes
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It Didn't Come From No Monkey: The Taung Child
After a curious coincidence in 1924, the world's weirdest paperweight was revealed to be the fossilized remains of one of our earliest ancestors. To learn more about today's topic, check out: Lee R. Berger, & Ronald J. Clarke. (1996). The load of the Taung child. Nature, 379(6568), 778-779.…
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Welcome to The Dirt!
In our first episode, we introduce ourselves and talk a little bit about archaeology, anthropology, and how we definitely do not study dinosaurs. Also, hot takes on some of pop culture's most important "archaeologists."
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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...
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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:...
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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...
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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...
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Premium Feed TEASER! Tools and Fire: Not Just For Humans
A few select tidbits from the most recent episode on our premium feed. Support The Dirt and help us continue to make episodes! Subscribe to our back catalog of bonus content (fresh helpings coming January 2024) for $5 a month after a one-week free trial at:...
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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…
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New Olds : 5 Recent Archaeological Discoveries
Anna walks Amber through a sampler platter of recent archaeological news stories. We talk about inner ears and gibbon arms, chromosomes galore, Medieval dogs, the Ishtar gate of Babylon, ancient hunter-gatherer poop, and more! We need your support!! Help us keep the show going by subscribing to…
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Human Evolution 101 (Part 1)
We probably should have done this about 200 episodes ago, but it's time to lay down the (very very) basics of the evolution of the genus Homo. First of all, how does evolution work? Who were our ancestors, where did they live and when, and how did these populations adapt and branch into different...
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I Hope This Tablet Finds You Well: It's a Hittite Episode!
This week we venture off to Bronze Age Anatolia to pay a visit to the Land of Hatti, and snoop through the royal mailbags. Want to support the show? SUBSCRIBE to our back catalog of bonus content for $5 a month after a one-week free trial at: https://the-dirt-podcast.captivate.fm/support Show...
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The Dirt Sings the Blues
It's another sponsored episode! Anna takes Amber through a short history of the blues, specifically as one of the many musical genres to come out of the African diaspora. We start by learning about the clave, which is both an instrument and a rhythm. Then, we wander through a little history…
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Skara Brae and Orkneyology
It's a listener-sponsored episode! (That's right, that's still a thing that we do). Anna whisks Amber along on a tour of Neolithic sites in the Orkney Isles, an archipelago off the coast of Scotland. Around 5,000 years ago, this place was a hub for new ideas. Come with us as we visit the houses…
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The Dirt on Myths, Glyphs, and Grifts
This week, Amber is in Toronto giving a paper and running the podcast library booth at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association! But don't worry, we won't leave your ears hanging. That came out weird, sorry. Anyway! Here is a release of a fun bonus episode from November…
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The Dirt Lays Down the 'Lore
Spooktober 2023 reaches its climax with a special Halloween treat. Amber shares a series of spooky stories from her own childhood back in Appalachia, but not without exploring the many roles of folklore in societies-- all of 'em! Four Functions of Folklore (The Journal of American Folklore) Why...
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The Dirt Digs Deep. Like, Really Deep
Hellhole, and welcome to The Dirt! Spooktober continues with an exploration of portals to the underworld. We're bringing you some unexpected sounds from Siberia, a couple of incredible caves, and the science behind sacrificial bulls dropping dead in ancient Rome. Plus, the Medieval European…
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The Dirt Gets Witchy
Get your eye of newt and toe of frog ready, because something witchy this way comes! Amber is traveling once more for work, and Anna is dealing with some health issues, so we are releasing this Deep Cuts episode from 2020 where Anna tells Amber some witchy stories around the Spooktober campfire....
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Spooktember: Nothin' Fancy, Just Necromancy!
Welcome to SPOOKTEMBER! In previous years, Amber has treated Anna to a month of stories and studies from the ghoulish side of archaeology and anthropology. This year, since we moved to biweekly episodes, we're extending the season! This week, it's first of four lightly haunted topics with (!!!!)...
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The Dirt Digs The Big City
This week, we're talking about urban archaeology! Archaeology in, around, and under cities. Humans have been building their living spaces on top of previous occupations for basically forever. When you translate that to a modern city environment, with every big construction project, you’ve got the...
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Wendell Phillips: Pawn or Player?
This week: A brief catch-up sesh with Anna and Amber, who are both recovering from Covid (hence the late episode, sorry y'all!). Then, Amber guides us through her months of archival research, uncovering the real life and expeditions of her special boy, Wendell Phillips. Wendell Phillips was a...
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New episode coming soon!
Hi friends, We've got a real banger of an episode recorded and ready to edit, but ...Amber and Anna are both recovering from Covid. So things are moving a little more slowly than usual. Keep your ears ready, though, because this week's episode will be out soon, and it's a TREAT. Stay safe! We…
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Let's Gö to Neolithic Anatolia
The Neolithic period in Anatolia (modern-day Turkey) saw lots of changes happening. Hunter-gatherers gradually adopted a less schleppy lifestyle, embracing agriculture. This happened over thousands of years, and wasn't quite the dramatic "rise of cities and civilization" that often describes the...
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Mariner's Myths
To celebrate our brand-new coming-soon sponsorship platform, Ghost, it's a release from the vaults of Patreon bonus episodes! Recorded around this time last year, when Anna was too hot and sweaty and dreaming of the ocean, this is a goofy look at some miscellaneous mariners' myths! Learn who…
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The Dirt Plays Pretend
TRY THIS ONE WEIRD TRICK TO LEARN ABOUT THE PAST, FAST! We're talking scams, frauds, fakers, and pretenders this week. Anna just hauled a whole household halfway across the country and is still recovering. So Amber has stepped up with a super fun episode about some of the trickiest pretenders…
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The Dirt Rocks Out
If you don't like this episode, well, you can go kick rocks! Just... not these rocks, they're culturally significant. That's right, it's an episode about megaliths, monoliths, and other kinds of -liths that were placed on the landscape by humans. Y'all. There are so many big rocks. We spend some...
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RE-RELEASE: Show and Tell Abraq
Hiya, friends! Amber is currently traveling in Saudi Arabia for work so we're re-releasing this extremely relevant episode on Arabian archaeology! We'll be back in your ears with new content soon. Amber takes Anna on a guided tour of her beloved Arabia. Learn about the varied mountains, deserts,...
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Drug Ethnographies with Danielle Kabella
Hooray! It's the first of our episodes highlighting the work of our 2022 Pass The Mic travel grant recipients! Danielle Kabella works with communities in New Mexico that have historically had a complex relationship with substance use, recovery, and the legal system. Danielle's work focuses on...
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The Dirt Gets Fired
Sick burn, breh--This week, Anna and Amber tackle the origins of fire use in the hominin archaeological record. We've taken a journalistic approach, so we've got What Fire, Where and When Fire, Why Fire, Who Fire, and How Fire. Plus, how do archaeologists look for evidence of fires that happened…
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MINISODE - Pseudo-archaeology and Pop Culture
It was Anna's turn to get sick, so this week we bring you a portion of the most recent episode of our bonus series Dirt After Dark. Most of that episode is about Ashayana Deane, a purveyor of pseudoscience and ancient aliens accounts, and a very complicated lady. However, in the first part, Anna...
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What's in a Name?
We're naming names this week! An aspect of studying the past that might surprise you, names can add some fascinating nuance to our understanding of people and places. What did ancient people call themselves and everything around them? What kinds of meanings can names hold? Hold onto your butts,...
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MINISODE: A Nugget of Old News
You know that cold that made Amber's voice all froggy? Turns out it was COVID. And the flu. But she's on the mend! And to give her time to fully recuperate, we're releasing a portion of the most recent episode of Old News, one of our premium content shows! This batch of news stories includes some...
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What Is Going on With Those Denisovans?!?
Anna and Amber sit down to chat about the Denisovans, the human ancestors we didn't know we had until recently. Learn about what evidence we have for Denisovans, the traits for which we can thank them, and some of the mysteries that remain. Come for big reveals about what's in human DNA, stay for...
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Achoo, and Welcome to The Dirt
This week, Amber is recovering from a nasty cold that has left her normally dulcet tones extremely froggy. So we've made lemons out of that germy lemonade (ew, sorry). It's an episode about the archaeology, prehistory, and history of the common cold! Learn how to tell if a skeleton had the...
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MINISODE 2: It's Just Archaeology
We're doing something different this week while Amber is on a whirlwind tour of life admin stuff. In response to some of the conflict over Graham Hancock's Ancient Apocalypse show on Netflix, Anna has been writing about the double-edged sword of creating archaeology content online. Social media…
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MINISODE - The World's Oldest Story
This week, Anna has some big questions about the Pleiades, a group of bright, beautiful stars also known as the Seven Sisters. The myth of seven sisters that were turned into stars is remarkably consistent across multiple cultures. Also, it's always seven sisters, even though you can really only...
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Gimme (Rock)Shelter: Neanderthals at Home
We've discussed Neanderthals quite a bit on The Dirt (it's a whole section of Anna's contract). But while we've talked about their diet, their bodies, and their genes, we haven't spent much time thinking about their daily life, their living spaces, and the idea of "home." How did Neanderthals...
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Episode 213 - The Dirt Wines a Bit
Join us for a tasting session along the timewine (TM) of human history! Is the human capacity to digest alcohol an evolutionary advantage? Are drunk apes chill apes? When did the first deliberate grape fermentation occur? How did a Greek wine cauldron end up in a Celtic burial in France? What's…
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Episode 212 - Sport, Kinship, and Black Football with Dr. Tracie Canada
Anna and Amber chat with Dr. Tracie Canada a socio-cultural anthropologist whose ethnographic research uses sport to theorize race, kinship and care, gender, and the performing body. We talk about the lived experiences of Black athletes, the role of sports in human society, the many health...
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Welcome (Back) to The Dirt!
Hello, and welcome to the new and improving Dirt Podcast! If you’re a longtime listener, welcome back and thank you so much for sticking with us. If you’re new to The Dirt, welcome! On normal episodes, we explore stories from archaeology and anthropology in a way that is hopefully accessible and...
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Happy ThanksViking!
This week, Anna and Amber have a Thing*: it’s an episode all about the Viking Age! Sail with us through an exploration of life during the Viking Age. We talk about the ships they sailed, the food they ate, and the helmets they DIDN'T wear. Plus, some very experimental archaeology, and Amber…
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View to a Kilwa: The Medieval Swahili Coast
This week, while Anna and Amber's actual selves will be on the West Coast, the show heads for the East Coast-- of Africa, that is! Take a whirlwind tour of the Swahili coast and the economic and cultural exchanges over land and sea it has enjoyed for more than a thousand years, before zooming in…
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Oh, Curses!
Halloween may be over, but Anna and Amber are keeping it spooky as they discuss curses and their consequences this week. Anna shares some tactics for recovering stolen tunics at Aquae Sulis (Bath, England), and what perils awaited medieval Javanese wrongdoers. Meanwhile, Amber looks at a ritual...
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Beware the Boogeypeople!
This week, Anna and Amber hunker down around the campfire to talk about things that go bump in the night, and encounter some common themes from around the world. Amber fangirls over a baby-snatching Mesopotamian demon and stumbles upon a familiar monster in Native American myth, while Anna offers...
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Cladh Hallan: An Episode in...Several Parts!
This week, Anna introduces us to Bronze Age Britain and Amber tells us about the very, very unexpected discoveries at Cladh Hallan, Scotland. For maximum spookiness, don't read ahead: it's a real rollercoaster of a story about Bronze Age life, and death, and... after-death? Get ready, everyone....
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Forensic Anthropology with Dr. Jonathan Bethard
We talk to REAL LIVE FORENSIC ANTHROPOLOGIST Dr. Jon Bethard (University of South Florida) about his career path from bassoons to bioarchaeology, the many duties of a coroner, life in Transylvanian villages, vampires (maybe), and his important work helping to identify victims of political…
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Welcome to Cliff Palace: Ancestral Puebloans
This week we round out this month's coverage of indigenous Latin America with a look at the Ancestral Puebloans of the American Southwest. We couldn't fit 10,000 years of human experience and complexity into a single episode, so instead we highlight some architectural and engineering…
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The Tarahumara (Rarámuri) Runners
This week Anna and Amber run through the history of the Rarámuri of Chihuahua, Mexico. It's more than just sandals and beer, folks! Plus, a rundown of some of the biomechanics of ultramarathon running, and a theory for how Homo sapiens successfully overran Europe. If you’d like to learn more…
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Aztecs are not Inca are not Maya
It’s Latinx and Hispanic Heritage Month here in the United States! This week, we attempt to help you (and ourselves) be less wrong about the most famous early Latin American cultures. Amber provides a crash course on Aztec, Inca, and Maya history and the thorny issues of contemporary indigenous...
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Meow and Then: Cats Through the Ages
It wouldn't be the internet if there weren't cats, so this week is the purr-fect op-paw-tunity to talk about Felis catus. Apologies (a-paw-logies? No? Ok, we'll stop) in advance, there's an odd crackling in the final minutes, but don't let that stop you from learning all about the history of...
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Barkaeology: A Brief History of Dogs
What better time to discuss the domestication and use of Canis familiaris than here in the dog days of summer? Anna and Amber discuss recent research tracing how wolves evolved into the pups we know and love, the earliest dogs known in the archaeological record, the evolution of our relationship...
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does The Dirt Podcast have?
The Dirt Podcast currently has 271 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is The Dirt Podcast about?
Join Anna and Amber; friends, archaeologists, and big nerds, for an exploration of the lives of people in the past.
How often does The Dirt Podcast release new episodes?
The Dirt Podcast publishes regularly with 271 episodes available. Check the episode list for the typical release schedule.
Where can I listen to The Dirt Podcast?
You can listen to The Dirt Podcast on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts The Dirt Podcast?
The Dirt Podcast is created and hosted by The Dirt Podcast.
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