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Dirt After Dark: Homicide at Harvard Square

This month, DAD focuses on a different kind of haunting, as Amber tells Anna about a fifty-year-old murder case that involves major players in Near Eastern Archaeology. On the morning of her general exams, Jane Britton was found dead in her apartment. What followed in the media teaches us about who Jane was, the world of Near Eastern archaeology, the unfortunate journalistic standards of mid-century America, and whether a secret murderer stalked the halls of the Peabody Museum for decades. 

Listeners, please note that this story and its sources make reference to sexual assault. 

P.S. We're trying a light touch with editing on this episode-- perhaps a peek behind the curtain might lighten the mood?

Grad Student Killed (Harvard Crimson)

Girl Grad Student Slaying A Mystery (Sarasota Herald Tribune)

Cambridge Murder Victim Is Recalled as Intelligent and Witty (New York Times)

Tepe Yahya (Encyclopedia Britannica)

The Early Bronze Age of Iran as Seen from Tepe Yahya (Expedition)

Cambridge Police Declare Black-out On Britton Case (Harvard Crimson)

Murder at Harvard (West Hunter)

Half-century later, murder evidence still under wraps (Boston Globe)

For nearly 50 years, Harvard was haunted by an unsolved murder. DNA now points to a serial rapist (Washington Post)

The 50-Year Journey to Solve the Murder of Harvard Student Jane Britton (Mental Floss)

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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.