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Deep Cuts Double Feature: DNA Dirt & Knot a Big Deal

This month we're shaking it up a little bit with not one, but TWO stories for you, our beloved listeners. First we get down and dirty and DNA-y with a follow up on our human evolution update, and then we add another volume to our library episode. Let us know what you think of the format!

Quick content note, we make reference to sexual harassment and assault in this episode. No details, but if this is a difficult subject for you, please tread lightly through the first couple minutes of Amber's story. Solidarity with survivors and those working to make the field safer <3

Pleistocene sediment DNA from Denisova Cave (Science Daily)

Dirty secrets: sediment DNA reveals a 300,000-year timeline of ancient and modern humans living in Siberia (The Conversation)

Dead or alive: sediment DNA archives as tools for tracking aquatic evolution and adaptation (Nature)

Anthropology Prof. Urton Stripped of Emeritus Status, Barred From Campus Following Sexual Misconduct Investigation (The Harvard Crimson)

What Do We Know About Khipus? (Google Arts and Culture)

The Role of Color (Dumbarton Oaks)

Wari Civilization (World History Encyclopedia)

Wari Khipus (600–1000 CE) (Dumbarton Oaks)

Inka Khipus (1450–1534 CE) (Dumbarton Oaks)

Post-Inka Khipus (1534 CE–Present) (Dumbarton Oaks)

The College Student Who Decoded the Data Hidden in Inca Knots (Atlas Obscura)

The khipu code: the knotty mystery of the Inkas’ 3D records (Aeon)

We thought the Incas couldn't write. These knots change everything (New Scientist)

Writing with Twisted Cords: The Inscriptive Capacity of Andean Khipus (Current Anthropology)

Stringing Together an Ancient Empire’s Stories (Sapiens)

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About the Podcast

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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.