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Old News, March 2023

This month, we've got news about Swahili heritage, nifty inscriptions, cosmic particles and pyramids, bronze bracelets, and more! Plus, Amber's argument for sending April Fools' pranksters to the Hague.

This month's stories:

Met Gala Announces 2023 “Looting and Plunder” Theme (Hyperallergic)

DNA Confirms Oral History of Swahili People (New York Times)

The OI Gets Rebranded, Drops ‘Oriental’ From Name (WTTW)

Cosmic-Ray Muons Reveal Hidden Structure in Khufu’s Pyramid (Sci-News)

Sabaean Inscription Points to Connections between King Solomon’s Israel and Kingdom of Sheba (Sci-News)

Shipwrecks reveal origins of metal used to cast the Benin Bronzes (Heritage Daily)

German brass for Benin Bronzes: Geochemical analysis insights into the early Atlantic trade (PLOS One)

Tripping in the Bronze Age (New York Times)

Yellowstone’s Obsidian Cliff: Humanity’s Tool Shed for the Last 11,500 Years (New York Times)

Archaeologists Find the Persian Gulf’s First Known Pearling Town (Smithsonian)

At Long Last, a Donkey Family Tree (New York Times)

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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.