Grab a cup of cocoa (or something stronger) and join Anna and Amber as they don their coziest jammies and tell the story of Mithras, the lesser-known Reason For The Season from the ancient world. Learn how religions shift through time and place, and why you might want to feast on bull meat in a cave with some Romans this holiday season.
Read MoreNever heard of anthropodermic bibliopegy? That's about to change, friends! This week, Anna and Amber look at some unexpected objects made out of people, and discuss some effects of such objects on the living.
Read MoreAnna 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.
Read MoreThis 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.
Read MoreAnna 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!
Read MoreThis 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.
Read MoreTake 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.
Read MoreHalloween 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.
Read MoreThis 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.
Read MoreOver 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!
Read MoreOn 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.
Read MoreThis 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?
Read MoreWe talk to Dr. Jonathan Bethard about his career path from bassoons to bioarchaeology, the many duties of a coroner, life in Transylvanian villages, vampires (maybe), and his important work helping to identify victims of political conflicts and natural disasters all over the world.
Read MoreIn recognition of Indigenous Peoples’ Day, let's talk about the Taíno population of the Caribbean islands who first encountered Christopher Columbus in the fifteenth century, and the metamorphosis of Taíno identity from contact with Europeans through today.
Read MoreThis week we round out this month's coverage of indigenous Latin America with a look at the Ancestral Puebloans of the American Southwest.
Read MoreThis week Anna and Amber run through the history of the Rarámuri of Chihuahua, Mexico. It's more than just sandals and beer, folks! Plus, a rundown of some of the biomechanics of ultramarathon running, and a theory for how Homo sapiens successfully overran Europe.
Read MoreTo kick off Latinx and Hispanic Heritage Month, we attempt to help you (and ourselves) be less wrong about the most famous early Mesoamerican cultures. This week, it’s a crash course on Aztec, Inca, and Maya history, the thorny issues of contemporary indigenous cultural identity, and some Very Cool Things, ancient and modern!
Read MoreIt wouldn't be the internet if there weren't cats, so this week is the purr-fect op-paw-tunity to talk about felis catus.
Read MoreAnna and Amber discuss recent research tracing how wolves evolved into the pups we know and love, the earliest dogs known in the archaeological record, the evolution of our relationship with them, and some Very Good Boys and Girls throughout history.
Read MoreIn this excerpt from our Patreon episode, Grace Veatch (Emory University) walks us through her research at Liang Bua, and introduces us to the many, many things rat bones can tell us.
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