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Dirt After Dark: Butts

This month, baby got back. Anna brings some real butt-science to the table and explains why we’ve got that junk in the trunk to begin with, while Amber backs that thing up right into the third millennium BCE and a story of a thirst-trap stele and the art historian that cannot get enough of it. We talk about Classical Butt Stuff, and ponder the enduring, universal truth of humanity that the human butt and butt-adjacent (abutting?) material has always been funny. 

Why Do Some Men Have Such Big Butts? (Vice)

The morphology of the gluteus maximus during human evolution: Prerequisite or consequence of the upright bipedal posture? (Human Evolution)

The human gluteus maximus and its role in running (Journal of Experimental Biology)

Neanderthal Legs and Feet—Suited to Sprinting (SAPIENS)

Activity and functions of the human gluteal muscles in walking, running, sprinting, and climbing. (American Journal of Physical Anthropology)

Sex, Rhetoric, And The Public Monument: The Alluring Body Of Naram-Sîn Of Agade (On the Art of the Ancient Near East Volume II)

Victory Stele of Naram-Sin (unf.)

The evolution and functions of laughter and humor: a synthetic approach. (The Quarterly Review of Biology)

World's oldest joke traced back to 1900 BC (Reuters)

The Warren Cup (The British Museum)

Episode 36: The Warren Cup (BBC’s History of the World)

The Warren Cup: Highlighting Hidden Histories (International Journal of Art & Design Education)

Caveat Emptor: The Warren Cup, a piece of mimetic craftsmanship around 1900? (Portable Antiquity Collecting and Heritage Issues)

Ancient Pleasures, Modern Spice (Erenow)

The Dark Side of Aphrodite: The Getty’s New Aphrodite Show Features Collection of Famous Pederast (Chasing Aphrodite)

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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.