Episode 34

A Dating Show

Valentine's Day is upon us, and love is in the air-- love for relative and absolute dating methods, that is! Anna brings the science with C14 dating and its gang of radiometric friends, boggles minds with flipped magnetic poles and the last time archaeological material saw the sun, and finds some hot tree-ring takes in California. Meanwhile, Amber goes on a bit of a jag about ancient imperialism, makes a lot of jokes that even she hates, embraces the nihilism of climate change, and attempts to explain the law of superposition via cake. So, the usual— but that’s why you love us!

Dating in Archaeology (The Canadian Encyclopedia)

10 Chronometric Methods in Paleoanthropology (Handbook of Paleoanthropology, downloaded via ResearchGate)

Everything Worth Knowing About ... Scientific Dating Methods (Discover)

Redwood Cross-Section of Time (Roadside America) more like RUDE-side America, amirite?

Explainer: what is radiocarbon dating and how does it work? (The Conversation)

What is OSL? (Utah State University)

K-12 Resources about Radiocarbon Dating (C14Dating.com)

Research illuminates inaccuracies in radiocarbon dating (Phys.org)

Radiocarbon, The Calibration Curve and Scythian Chronology (Impact of the Environment on Human Migration in Eurasia, downloaded via Wayback Machine)

Correlating the Ancient Maya and Modern European Calendars with High-Precision AMS 14C Dating (Scientific Reports)

The bible and radiocarbon dating: Archaeology, text and science (via ResearchGate)

The Iron Age Architecture at Hasanlu: An Essay (Expedition)

East of Assyria? Hasanlu and the problem of Assyrianization, in Imperial Peripheries in the Neo-Assyrian Period (via Academia.edu)

Global Warming Could Make Carbon Dating Impossible (The Atlantic)

Dating Methods in Historical Archaeology (Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology)

A Comparison and Review of Window Glass Analysis Approaches in Historical Archaeology (Technical Briefs in Historical Archaeology)

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The Dirt Podcast
Archaeology, Anthropology, and our shared human past.

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The Dirt Podcast

As science communicators in anthropology and archaeology, we hosts of The Dirt acknowledge that we hold a position of considerable privilege and opportunity, and commit ourselves to continuous learning, unlearning and reflection. We recognize that our disciplines, as well as our own lives, are rooted in and propped up by settler colonialism, white supremacy, and dispossession.

We now reside on the stolen ancestral territory of the Shawnee and Haudenosaunee and on the lands of the Muscogee and Cherokee Nations, but over its lifetime, The Dirt has also been produced on the unceded traditional territory of the Piscataway Conoy and Cedarville Band of Piscataway Indians, as well as that of the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation, Patwin and Miwok peoples and all those dispossessed by Cession 296. We offer our show as a platform for Indigenous scholarship, history, and cultural expression, through citation and conversation, and we welcome the opportunity to host and compensate Indigenous scholars of archaeology and anthropology as interview guests.

Likewise, we encourage all listeners who reside in settler-colonial states to learn about on whose land they reside, their place in the ongoing process of colonization, and how to contribute materially to reparations and Indigenous sovereignty.