This week, Anna and Amber are in the holiday spirit and ready to celebrate Chrono-kah! A holiday that we just made up where we try to fathom the immensity of time! What's the difference between the Stone Age and the Paleolithic? When is North America finally going to enter the Bronze Age? Why do we call this year 2018? Were the early Middle Ages faked? Some of these questions are easier to answer than others.
Anna and Amber rummage in the history fridge and pile up a Dagwood sandwich of tasty leftover Viking morsels. Learn about Viking games and sports, Norse trade systems, mythology and more!
This week, Anna and Amber have a Thing*: it’s an episode all about the Viking Age. Sail with us through an exploration of life during the Viking Age. We talk about the ships they sailed, the food they ate, and the helmets they DIDN'T wear.
Take a whirlwind tour of the Swahili coast and the economic and cultural exchanges over land and sea it has enjoyed for more than a thousand years, before zooming in on the very powerful, and very cool, medieval sultanate of Kilwa Kisawani.
Halloween may be over, but Anna and Amber are keeping it spooky as they discuss curses and their consequences this week, with some tactics for recovering stolen tunics at Aquae Sulis (Bath, England), what perils awaited medieval Javanese wrongdoers, and a ritual executioner from Australia.
This week, Anna and Amber hunker down around the campfire to talk about things that go bump in the night, and encounter some common themes from around the world.
Over on Dirt After Dark this month, we sunk our teeth into the sufficiently spooky topic of cannibalism, and we're sharing some of it with the main feed! What makes a person eat a person? How can archaeologists tell whether a person was cannibalized? Where has evidence of cannibalism been found? Why does Amber sound suspiciously enthusiastic about this topic? All this and more!
On this Very Special Episode in honor of International Archaeology Day, let’s look at what can happen to an object, animal, or person as it decays, preserves, and transforms, becoming a part of the archaeological record.
This week, Anna introduces us to Bronze Age Britain and Amber tells us about the very, very unexpected discoveries at Cladh Hallan, Scotland in a story about Bronze Age life, and death, and... after-death?
Brand new from The Dirt: For a $25 donation, YOU can choose an episode topic for Anna and Amber to cover! (Terms and conditions apply: we won’t do it if it’s fake or terrible, but we’ll work with you to come up with something you’ll enjoy!) You can dedicate the episode to your favorite nerd, special someone, or hey—to yourself! Give a completely unique gift, and support The Dirt at the same time!
Available on Patreon: Our roundup of the newest oldest stuff this month includes visualizing colonization around the world, some current PR challenges at the British Museum, the anthropology of heavy metal, and the discovery of a mummified body FULL OF BEES.
Available on Patreon: Turn down the lights, pour a glass of wine, put on some music, and join Anna and Amber as we... discuss the diagnosis and treatment of STIs throughout history.
Available on Patreon: Our roundup of the newest oldest stuff this week includes a frozen baby horse, a Maya funeral mask, intrepid robots, Neanderthal sailors (maybe?) and Anna's worst fake accent yet!
Available on Patreon: We return to Flores to visit our old friends homo floresiensis, this time with a Very Special Guest in tow!
Full episode available on Patreon: This month, Anna and Amber decided to share their bumper crop of Old News with the main feed and drop a bonus mini episode of the first few stories.
Available on Patreon: Turn down the lights, pour a glass of wine, put on some music, and join Anna and Amber as we... discuss the diagnosis and treatment of STIs throughout history.
Available on Patreon: This month's Deep Cut takes you on a pub crawl of the earliest fermented beverages found in the archaeological record, contemporary attempts (and successes!) in recreating ancient beer recipes, and we ask the possibly unnecessary question of Did Man Once Live On Beer Alone? Cheers!
Available on Patreon: In the first issue of Old News, Anna and Amber discuss some recently unearthed finds, long-unearthed finds that no one has quite figured out yet, and some game-changing news for the study of early hominins in Asia and the latest inductees to the Stone Age Club.
Anna and Amber can’t help you with your real medical complaints, but they’re here with a whole batch of knowledge about what people used to do for their sniffles (and worse), as well as ways in which diseases have been diagnosed and treated over the millennia.