history

The Queen of Sheba - Dirt 172

Touring Baja California with Ryan Gerstner - Rock Art 65

Ryan Gerstner is an archaeologist, rock art aficionado, and board member of the California Rock Art Foundation. He's participated in a number of the tours put on by CA Rock Art and Saddling South in Baja California. Ryan talks about his passion for rock art research and gives an intimate portrait of the tours to some of the most remote areas of Baja California.

Start your own podcast with Zencastr and get 30% off your first three months with code ROCKART. Click this message for more information.

Links

Contact

ArchPodNet

Affiliates

Race and Biological Anthropology with Dr. Rachel Watkins (131) - Dirt 171

Recently, Anna and Amber sat down with Rachel Watkins, a biological anthropologist and scholar-activist whose research centers on social and biological histories of Black Americans in the 19th and 20th centuries. Learn about the social history of biological anthropology, the exemplary case studies with which Dr. Watkins has worked, why you shouldn't discount the creepy things small children sometimes do, and so much more!

Start your own podcast with Zencastr and get 30% off your first three months with code DIRT. Click this message for more information.

Links

Contact

ArchPodNet

Affiliates

New methods for dating rock art with Kirk Astroth (ARCHIVE) - Rock Art 64

In this week's episode, Dr. Alan Garfinkel interviews Kirk Astroth about new and innovative methods he used to date rock art for his masters thesis. Kirk used a combination of established methods and new technology to date panels containing prehistoric, historic, as well as modern rock art. He came to several interesting conclusions, as well as identified ways to continue developing this new direction in rock art dating.

Start your own podcast with Zencastr and get 30% off your first three months with code ROCKART. Click this message for more information.

Links

Contact

ArchPodNet

Affiliates

Neanderthalk with "Kindred" Author Dr. Rebecca Wragg Sykes (113) - Dirt 170

We hope you enjoy this great interview from the archives. If you're doing cool research, and want to talk about it on the show, drop us a note at thedirtpodcast@gmail.com!

Anna and Amber sit down with Dr. Rebecca Wragg Sykes, Paleolithic archaeologist and author of the book "Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death, and Art." We talk about Rebecca's education and her love for all things ancient, and she resolves some common misconceptions about our Neanderthal cousins. "Kindred" just came out in the States, so pick up a copy of your very own for an amazing synthesis of current Neanderthal knowledge.

Start your own podcast with 30% off Zencastr for the first 3 months with The Dirt! Click anywhere on this paragraph.

Links

Contact

ArchPodNet

Affiliates

Serpent Imagery in Rock Art - Rock Art 63

There are a lot of images in rock art around the world. Some, though, keep coming back no matter where you are. One of those things is SNAKES. That’s right. Snakes or serpents have been depicted in numerous ways in rock art. On today’s episode, Dr. Garfinkel tells us his experience with these images and what they could mean.

Start your own podcast and get 30% off your first three months with Zencastr! Click here!

Links

Contact

ArchPodNet

Affiliates

Oh, Nice - Dirt 169

We're closing out the year with a cozy episode about heartwarming things in the archaeological record. That’s right, we’re just going to find examples of nice things that people did and made in the past and tell you all about them. It’s a little year’s-end treat for us all. There's some discussion of Dads Being Dads, some loud opinions from Anna's neighbor's dog, and an all around good time.

Start your own podcast with 30% off Zencastr for the first 3 months with The Dirt! Click anywhere on this paragraph.

Links

Contact

ArchPodNet

Affiliates

ENCORE Rock Art, Science, and Religion with Dr. Tirtha Mukhopadhyay - Rock Art 62

ENCORE: On this episode we talk to Dr. Tirtha Mukhopadhyay about his career in rock art. From his homeland of Calcutta, India, to continued graduate studies in Texas, and his current research working out of Guanajuato University in Mexico. They take a deep dive into the mysteries surrounding the relationships of science and religion. Our guest scholar provides up to date thinking on how our minds process images and create emotions relating to our understanding of deities. We delve into just what rock art images mean and how they affect the emotional states of its viewers. Finally, we provide some working hypotheses on what those animal-human figures depicted in prehistoric rock art communicate in terms of their compound metaphors as shamans, ancestors, and deities.

Links

Contact

ArchPodNet

Affiliates

95th Anniversary, Agatha Christie Disappears For 11 Days - Flipside 7

Episode 7 - 95th Anniversary, Agatha Christie Disappears For 11 Days. (3rd December 1926)

It is quite common for mystery to be associated with the festive season, in particular, adaptions of Agatha Christie's famous work have had a place as Christmas reading or nowadays watching since they were first published. This is a tradition which holds today with my own family and in honor of the season we want to share it with you! This episode is luckily then inspired by the 95th Anniversary of the most mysterious event in Christie's own life, her disappearance for 11 days whereupon she reappeared with apparent amnesia, on 3rd December 1926. But how is archaeology involved... well, in quite a few ways actually, Christie was a pretty brilliant archaeologist-in-training, was married to a professional archaeologist, was a fixture at many Middle and Near Eastern sites, and wrote quite a bit of insightful narrative surrounding archaeology in her fiction novels. Joining me this episode is Dr. Rebecca Mills a lecturer in Communications and English at the University of Bournemouth, also Agatha Christie aficionado. From my family to yours, Merry Christmas, Yule, or simply Happy Holiday Season, may next year be utterly brilliant for all of you!

Dr. Mills has rather brilliantly also provided a further reading list below:

Graphic biography: The Real Life of Agatha Christie, by Anne Martinetti and Guillaume Lebeau, illustrated by Alexandre Franc, translated by Edward Gauvin (SelfMadeHero, 2016)

J.C. Bernthal, Queering Agatha Christie: Revisiting the Golden Age of Detective Fiction (Palgrave 2016)

Christopher Prior, 'An Empire Gone Bad: Agatha Christie, Anglocentrism and Decolonization' in Cultural and Social History: The Journal of the Social History Society Volume 15:2 (2018)

More about Christie's young women: Merja Makinen, Agatha Christie: Investigating Femininity (Palgrave 2006)

Rebecca Mills and J.C. Bernthal, editors, Agatha Christie Goes to War (Routledge 2021)

More about Death on the Nile and Appointment with Death: Brittain Bright and Rebecca Mills, 'The Revelations of the Corpse: Interpreting the Body in the Golden Age Detective Novel' in New Perspectives on Detective Fiction

Mystery Magnified, edited by Casey Cothran and Mercy Cannon (Routledge 2015)

Brittain Bright, Beyond the scene of the crime : investigating place in Golden Age detective fiction (Doctoral Dissertation, Goldsmiths University 2015) https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.650408

Nadia Atia has a forthcoming chapter on Orientalism in Christie's work in the forthcoming Bloomsbury Handbook to Agatha Christie (November 2022)

Music

Intro/Outro Music - Creative Commons - "Fantasia Fantasia" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

ArchPodNet

Affiliates

How Long Ago Was the Past? - Dirt 168

When does “The Past” start, and how far back does it go? How long did it take people to get places in the past? How do we attempt to hold the vastness of time and geography in our minds? Not well, especially in an audio medium, but we’re excited to blow your minds.

Links

Contact

ArchPodNet

Affiliates

A People's History of Sheffield from the French Revolution to Chartism with Matthew Roberts - Ep 43

Archaeology & Ale is a monthly series of talks presented by Archaeology in the City, part of the University of Sheffield Archaeology Department’s outreach programme. This month we are proud to host Matthew Roberts from Sheffield Hallam University speaking on "A People's History of Sheffield from the French Revolution to Chartism". This talk took place on Tuesday, November 23rd, 2021, online via Google Meets.

Sheffield has a rich tradition of ‘history from below’, in the sense of a long established assertive and proud group of working people who created a rich occupational, social and political culture. From the time of the French Revolution in the 1790s through to the 1850s and beyond, working people increasingly fought for recognition, dignity, protection in the workplace and their rights of citizens. At the centre of these struggles were Sheffield’s metal workers, the cutlers and ‘little mesters’, as well as women and not just as wives but in their own right. What was life like for the working classes of Sheffield during this period? What changes and continuities marked their lives? Why did Sheffield become a centre of radical politics? These are some of the questions we’ll explore in this talk.

Matthew Roberts from Sheffield Hallam University

Matthew Roberts is Associate Professor in Modern British History at Sheffield Hallam University in the UK. He is an historian of nineteenth-century Britain and the Anglophone Atlantic World, and works mainly on the history of popular politics and protest, the visual and material culture of politics, and more recently the history of emotions. His book Chartism, Commemoration and the Cult of the Radical Hero was published by Routledge in 2020, and is now available in paperback.

For more information about Archaeology in the City’s events and opportunities to get involved, please email archaeologyinthecity@sheffield.ac.uk or visit our website at archinthecity.wordpress.com. You can also find us on Twitter (@archinthecity), Instagram (@archaeointhecity), or Facebook (@archinthecity)

ArchPodNet

ArchPodNet

Affiliates

From The Vault: Portrait of a Podcaster on Fire - Dirt 167

This week, we bring you another episode from behind the Patreon paywall. Sure, the title is a stretch, but it's hard coming up with a topical joke about portraiture! This month we dive into some early examples of representing individuals in ancient art from several times and places. Amber inexplicably takes umbrage with the entirety of Byzantine art, and both hosts question what is a face and what is a couple of lines that sorta look like a face.

Links

Contact

ArchPodNet

Affiliates

Religious Significance with Virginia Gonzales - Rock Art 61

Virginia Gonzales is the President of the Legion of Mary in Bakersfield, CA. She joins Dr. Garfinkel to talk about the Virgin of Guadalupe and the creation or replacement of religious elements in native society. They discuss the significance of those elements to the people that practice religion world wide.

Links

Contact

ArchPodNet

Affiliates

How Do We Know What We Know? - Dirt 166

There are a lot of misconceptions in archaeology that are often perpetuated simply because people don’t think about how the information they take for granted came to be. How do archaeologists know what people were doing in the past? Actually, how do we know anything at all? How do we know what didn’t happen? Tune in and find out!

Links

Contact

ArchPodNet

Affiliates

Preserving and Protecting Rock Art with Joe Williams - Rock Art 60

Joe Williams joins the podcast today. He directs a non-profit organization that is interested in preservation, protection, and public outreach regarding rock art.

Links

Contact

ArchPodNet

Affiliates

From the Vault: "Ancient" "Astronomy" - Dirt 165

This week, Amber is finishing grad school applications and Anna had some vaccine booster side effects, so we bring you an excerpt from an episode of Dirt After Dark! Amber brings Anna (kicking and screaming) along on an exploration of some space weirdos who interpreted various bits and pieces of archaeology and ethnography to show that there's another mystery planet out there, and it's out to get us. And also bring us civilization? Anyway, it gets really weird, and we hope you enjoy the ride.

Contact

ArchPodNet

Affiliates

Southeast Asian Archaeology with Dr. Noel Hidalgo Tan - RockArt 59

Dr. Noel Hidalgo Tan is a southeast Asian archaeologist, and apparently, there aren't that many. He's almost single-handedly telling the world about SE archaeology through his publications, Instagram, and his website. Tune in and learn about rock art and southeast Asia.

Links

Contact

ArchPodNet

Affiliates

Thanksglyphing - Ep 164

We’re shaking things up this year, and instead of doing a ThanksViking episode, we’re peeking into the world of Maya and Aztec art and writing. The Maya wrote using a system of around 800 glyphs--the Aztecs used as many as 2,000. We won’t get to ALL of these, but we’ll talk about how these writing systems developed, how they were used, and the role they played in the lives of the Aztec and Maya people.

Contact

ArchPodNet

Affiliates

162nd Anniversary, Charles Darwin Publishes Origin Of Species. (24th November 1859) Prof. Stephen Shennan - FlipSide 6

This episode is extremely scientific, and inspired by the 162nd Anniversary of the publishing of Charles Darwin's epic tome 'On The Origin Of Species', which hit the public on the 24th November 1859 and caused quite a stir. Everyone of you has probably already heard of this book, but what relevance does this research have on archaeology, well, it impacted how we see the developmental processes of societies, material culture and archaeological environments. So it's a pretty big deal! Everything from human niche construction, developments in pottery, a new exciting interdisciplinary project, population thinking vs typological thinking and so much more! Joining me this episode is Prof. S. Shennan a lecturer in Theoretical Archaeology at University College London.

Music

Intro/Outro Music - Creative Commons - "Fantasia Fantasia" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

ArchPodNet

Affiliates

Sheffield Troublemakers: Rebels and Radicals in Sheffield History with David Price - Arch and Ale 42

Archaeology & Ale is a monthly series of talks presented by Archaeology in the City, part of the University of Sheffield Archaeology Department’s outreach programme. This month we are proud to host David Price from the University of Sheffield speaking on "Sheffield Troublemakers: Rebels and Radicals in Sheffield History ". This talk took place on Thursday, October 28th, 2021, online via Google Meets.

David Price

David Price studied history at Cambridge. He then went into the civil service. He was private secretary to Willie Whitelaw who later became Deputy Prime Minister. For some years, he worked on the transformation of old employment exchanges into modern Job Centres. In 1980, he moved with the Manpower Services Commission from London to Sheffield. On his retirement he took up history again. His first book was called Office of Hope and was the history of the Job Centres in the UK - originally founded by Winston Churchill and William Beveridge in 1910. Recently, he has been interested in helping asylum seekers in the city which has led him to write a book about migration to Sheffield called 'Welcome to Sheffield: A Migration History'. However, his best known book is about the radical tradition in Sheffield and is called 'Sheffield Troublemakers'. This is the subject of today's talk. In his talk, David will trace Sheffield's long history of radicalism and the important role that Sheffield has played on the national stage. This is a story of dissenting middle classes, independent minded artisans, champions of the weak and an unwillingness to be pushed around.

Links

For more information about Archaeology in the City’s events and opportunities to get involved, please email archaeologyinthecity@sheffield.ac.uk or visit our website at archinthecity.wordpress.com. You can also find us on Twitter (@archinthecity), Instagram (@archaeointhecity), or Facebook (@archinthecity)

ArchPodNet

Affiliates