Episode 39

Made For Walkin': A Very Brief History of Footwear

Anna and Amber rummage around on the floor of history's closet to bring you a brief history of shoes from around the world! Learn why caves in the southwestern USA are full of shoes. Find a shoe museum near you for some sole-searching. Enjoy a description of Anna's favorite goofy historical fashion statement. All this and more!

To learn more about this week’s topic, check out:

First Shoes Worn 40,000 Years Ago (LiveScience)

Why Are Some Caves Full of Shoes? (Sapiens)

King Den's sandal label (Google Arts & Culture)

Taking a Closer Look at an Odd Pair of Very, Very Old Socks (Smithsonian.com)

All About Shoes (Bata Shoe Museum)

A boot from Tønsberg (Museum of Cultural History)

Shoes and Pattens. Medieval Finds from Excavations in London: 2 (via Google Books)

Feet and Footwear: A Cultural Encyclopedia (via Google Books)

The Chopine (Helibrunn Timeline of Art History)

Tour These Nine Top Shoe Museums (Footwear News)

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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.