Episode 224

The Dirt Digs The Big City

This week, we're talking about urban archaeology! Archaeology in, around, and under cities. Humans have been building their living spaces on top of previous occupations for basically forever. When you translate that to a modern city environment, with every big construction project, you’ve got the possibility of encountering evidence of those previous occupations. In this episode, we cover a few examples of ways that urban archaeology adds richness to our understanding of how people in cities lived. What is a city? And importantly, is "city" the goal? Tune in to learn more!

For further reading:

Archaeology - African Burial Ground National Monument (U.S. National Park Service)

African Burial Ground | NYPAP

Big Dig - Wikipedia

The Big Dig: project background | Mass.gov

Highway to the Past: The Archaeology of Boston's Big Dig

Secrets of the Three Cranes Tavern | BU Today | Boston University

Conversations: Digging Under Beantown - Archaeology Magazine Archive

“The Basis of Civilization – Water Science?” Rodda, J. C., and Ubertini, Lucio (2004). p. 161. International Association of Hydrological Sciences (International Association of Hydrological Sciences Press 2004).

4,000-Year-Old Ceramic Drainage System Discovered in China | Sci.News

Research sheds new light on York's thriving medieval Jewish Community

http://www.historyofyork.org.uk/themes/norman/the-1190-massacre

Archeologists discover array of Aztec artefacts under Mexico City | History News | Al Jazeera

Camp Century - Nuclear Museum



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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.