The podcast that takes archaeology exactly as seriously as it deserves.
Two real professors of archaeology and one guy from a fake institution discuss cutting edge archaeological discoveries at a high professional level using technical knowledge and stuff. A scholarly podcast for the discerning listener, it’s handmade, artisanal, and bespoke!
Critics say, “A cheeky and irreverent take,” and “the good kind of shenanigans.” Other critics say, “damaging to archaeology,” and “deeply discreditable.”
High-level discourse informed by neo-Brechtian, Deleuzian, or post-post processual theory, or just more BS from a couple of bored, middle aged hacks? You be the judge!
The Panelists
JP Dessel is the Steinfeld Associate Professor of Ancient Near Eastern Archaeology and History at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. He is the author of Lahav I. Pottery and Politics The Halif Terrace Site 101 and Egypt in the Fourth Millennium B.C.E. (2009).
Rachel Hallote is Professor of History at Purchase College, SUNY. She is a co-author of Photographs of the American Palestine Exploration Society (2012) and author of Bible, Map and Spade (2006).
Alex Joffe is Director of the Bob and Ray Institute of Archaeology at the University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople. This is fake institution. But he is the author of several real books, most recently Operation Crusader and the Desert War in British History and Memory: ‘What Is Failure? What Is Loyalty?’ (2020).
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What happens when a temple, say, Hatshepsut’s New Kingdom temple at Deir el Bahari, throws out offerings? Are there good and bad types of garbage? Let’s face it, archaeologists will take what they can get. But isn’t “precious rubble” the name of one of Barney and Betty’s kids?
Neo-Assyrian leather armor? In a Western Chinese tomb? It’s a classic, what’s up with that situation. Is it really Neo-Assyrian? How do we know? If so, how did it get there? What can we make of a sample of one? Why are we talking about Ricardo Montalban? It’s an episode so filled with questions that we’re literally bubbling over.
A slightly lopsided Iron Age cult site just outside Jerusalem? Little human figurines, big silos, and now the stone legs of a cult statue? What’s going on beneath the highway overpass at Motza? But why is anyone surprised about another temple in Judah? Wouldn’t surprise be an indictment of our entire educational system?
A new study uses DNA from Egyptian mummies to literally reconstruct their faces. Oddly enough, they look like Egyptians. Is this accurate? Is it ethical? One way or another, they’re pretty good-looking. And isn’t that the main thing? Anyway, what’s with all the mummified cats?
Yes, we’re still here at ASOR, but now we’re interrogating an entirely new crowd about the question of conferences, namely Dr. Margaret Cohen, Professor Alexandra Ratzlaff and Professor Andrea Berlin. The questions are mostly the same, but the answers from these three leading female scholars are quite different.
What happens when a bunch of archaeologists start drinking bourbon and let their graying hair down? It’s an after hours edition with the one and only Professor James Hardin, who rather charmingly, can’t stay on script. He takes us to some surprising places, including some related to archaeological storytelling.
A conference you say? That’s right, we’re here in Chicago at the ASOR meeting with a host of guests, luminary scholars with names like Professor Eric Cline, Dr. Matthew Adams (the one with a J.), Dr. Yorke Rowan, and Professor Morag Kersel. The topic - conferences and conference experiences. There are some important lessons here.
Making a floor isn’t rocket science, but style and execution count for a lot. The terrazzo floor at the 15th century Hittite sanctuary at Uşaklı Höyük might be the earliest mosaic floor, or does that honor belongs to the Minoans? What is the relationship between power and taste? Why are the triangles blue and what does the god Teshub really think about ‘oatmeal’ as a color?
Where does religion come from? How did hunter-gatherers build early Neolithic Göbekli Tepe in southeastern Turkey? What’s with the gigantic carved stone pillars and the defleshed human skulls anyway? What is religion, really? Why am I asking you? It’s an episode as profound as it is, well, mystifying.
Was a Middle Bronze Age site near the Dead Sea pulverized by a cosmic air burst at 1650 BCE? Say what? The science is compelling, from the shocked quartz to the melted iridium. But was all this remembered, maybe in a Biblical story about a site in the Jordan Valley pulverized by fire from the sky? That’s the tricky part.
