Episode 229

The Dirt on Myths, Glyphs, and Grifts

This week, Amber is in Toronto giving a paper and running the podcast library booth at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association! But don't worry, we won't leave your ears hanging. That came out weird, sorry. Anyway! Here is a release of a fun bonus episode from November 2021!

Anna takes Amber on a short but eventful journey into an investigation of Egyptian hieroglyphs located in eastern Australia. How did they get there? Did Egyptians reach Australia thousands of years ago? ARE THE CHICKENS A CLUE?? Plus, a detour into mummy drugs. 

For more information, check out:

Bulgandry Aboriginal Art Site - This Place (Indigenous.gov.au)

Hair Raising Cases in Hair Testing: Are ‘cocaine Mummies’ Real or Fake? (Cotsford Lab)

New World Tobacco in Old World Mummies (Skeptoid)

Rameses II and the Tobacco Beetle (Antiquity, via ResearchGate)

Translated: This Is What The 5,000-Year-Old Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs In Australia Say (Humans Are Free)

Egyptologist debunks new claims about 'Gosford glyphs' (ABC)

Gosford Glyphs, Walking Track to Secret Treasures! (Kombi Lifestyle, with pics)

Gosford Glyphs (Atlas Obscura)

The Gosford glyphs, debunked (Australian Geographic)

First rock art (National Museum of Australia)

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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.