Episode 217

The Dirt Gets Fired

Sick burn, breh--This week, Anna and Amber tackle the origins of fire use in the hominin archaeological record. We've taken a journalistic approach, so we've got What Fire, Where and When Fire, Why Fire, Who Fire, and How Fire. Plus, how do archaeologists look for evidence of fires that happened up to a million years ago? Amber also shares some Big Life Updates!

To learn more:

Microstratigraphic evidence of in situ fire in the Acheulean strata of Wonderwerk Cave, Northern Cape province, South Africa (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)

When Did Early Humans Start Using Fire? To Find Answers, Scientists Enlist Artificial Intelligence (Smithsonian)

Hidden signatures of early fire at Evron Quarry (1.0 to 0.8 Mya) (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)

Fire Use (Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Anthropology)

The Earliest Example of Hominid Fire (Smithsonian)

Sparking controversy, or putting out the fire? (Nature Ecology & Evolution Community)

Arsonist falcons suggest birds discovered fire before humans did (New Scientist)

Phylogenetic rate shifts in feeding time during the evolution of Homo (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)

Experimental Approaches to Archaeological Fire Features and Their Behavioral Relevance (Current Anthropology)

Selection and Use of Manganese Dioxide by Neanderthals (Nature Scientific Reports)

Fire Plow: Tips and Tricks (Fire and Fungi on YouTube)

Bow Drill Friction Fire (Donny Dust on YouTube)

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.