Episode 3

The Back of History's Fridge

It's...maybe the most infamous episode of The Dirt! Strap on the barf bags, folks, because today we're talking about bog butter, ancient beekeeping, and where Classical poets thought baby bees come from. Plus, Amber shares a cautionary tale about licking things on an excavation. And hey--never put archaeology in your mouth.

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

Carson, Rachel D. (2015). The Honey Bee and Apian Imagery in Classical Literature

Poole, Federico. (2001). 'Cumin, Set Milk, Honey': An Ancient Egyptian Medicine Container (Naples 828). The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, 87: 175-180.

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3822380

Honeybees Sweetened Life for Stone Age Humans (LiveScience)

Honey in the Pyramids (National Geographic)

Itinerant Etruscan Beekeepers (Archaeology Magazine)

And on a final note: Seriously, folks, don’t eat archaeological material. Even if it wouldn’t kill you.

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.