Episode 7

The Paleo Diet: Low-Carb No More

Sink your teeth into this nutrient-dense episode, in which we discuss the recent discovery of bread(-like substances) in the Eastern Mediterranean from more than 14,000 years ago, and learn more about what one might actually have eaten in the Paleolithic. Plus, Anna tells us what we can learn from stuff stuck in your teeth, and we speculate wildly about Iberian vegan Neanderthals.

For a deeper dive into this week's topic, check out:

Arranz-Otaegui, Amaia, et al. "Archaeobotanical evidence reveals the origins of bread 14,400 years ago in northeastern Jordan." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2018): 201801071. http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/07/10/1801071115

Boyadjian, C.H.C., Eggers, S., Reinhard, K., 2007. Dental wash: a problematic method for extracting microfossils from teeth. Journal of Archaeological Science. 34, 1622–1628.

http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/natrespapers/68/

Weyrich, L.S., Duchene, S., Soubrier, J., Arriola, L., Llamas, B., Breen, J., Morris, A.G., Alt, K.W., Caramelli, D., Dresely, V., Farrell, M., Farrer, A.G., Francken, M., Gully, N., Haak, W., Hardy, K., Harvati, K., Held, P., Holmes, E.C., Kaidonis, J., Lalueza-Fox, C., de la Rasilla, M., Rosas, A., Semal, P., Soltysiak, A., Townsend, G., Usai, D., Wahl, J., Huson, D.H., Dobney, K., Cooper, A., 2017. Neanderthal behaviour, diet, and disease inferred from ancient DNA in dental calculus. Nature Letters. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature21674

Arlene M. Rosen and Isabel Rivera-Collazo, Climate change, adaptive cycles, and the persistence of foraging economies during the late Pleistocene/Holocene transition in the Levant. PNAS March 6, 2012. 109 (10) 3640-3645; https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1113931109

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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.