This Week in the Ancient Near East

Listening to Ancient Greek Sanctuaries, Or, The Past Was a Noisy Country

Psychoacoustic search at the Sanctuary of Zeus on Mount Lycaion shows that the builders constructed an entire site around sound. You could hear everything from the cheap seats, but was the experience really social rather than acoustic? With special shoutouts to The Who, Emerson, Lake and Palmer, and Boston area favorite, Human Sexual Response!

The Neolithic Canoes of Capri, Or, Have Obsidian, Will Travel?

Like most people, the find of an obsidian core on the seafloor off Capri has us asking, how did a chunk of the Neolithic period’s favorite shiny stone get to the bottom of the Mediterranean and, was a sunken canoe involved? After answering “who knows,” our (non-sailing) contestants are left to ponder the bravery of those who sailed in the Neolithic and ask, was it such a big deal?

Iron Age Gezer gets Radiocarbonated, or, From Archaeology to Text, to Text, and Back Again to, Wait, What?

In our triumphant return we’re laser focused on new radiocarbon dates from destructions at Late Bronze Age and Iron Age Gezer in Israel. These destructions might be the doing of better dated Egyptian kings like Merneptah, and could link back to events described in the Bible. So not really like a laser, more bouncing around like a ping pong ball.

A Note to Our Listener

This Week in the Ancient Near East is taking a short break while one member of our plucky band recovers from a nasty illness. We’ll be back soon with all new episodes and the same old schtick!

The Prehistoric Spanish Cave of Drugs, Death and Fun! Or, the Clan of the Cave Hair?

A burial cave on the Western Mediterranean island of Minorca dating to 1000 BCE contained 200 individuals and wooden boxes of dyed human hairs. The hairs were full of drugs, which leads our contestants to ask just what kind of parties were going on down there and why we weren’t invited. A few flashbacks to the 1970s result.

The Toilets of Iron Age Jerusalem, A View from Below, or, Dysentery and the Bible?

Excavation of Iron Age cesspits in Jerusalem has us thinking many things. These include 1) wow, they actually recovered protozoa that caused dysentery, how’d they do that, and, 2) umm, Jerusalem elites were really unhealthy. Our contestants try to keep the juvenile humor to a minimum.

The Copper Age Princess of Iberia? Or, I Want to Live With A Cinnabar Girl

A new article suggests that an elite Copper Age burial in southern Spain belonged to a young woman, not a man, and that society was a matriarchy. Our contestants are a little conflicted about reconstructing society starting with a single tooth, but it sounds a bit like Barbie Land, which is cool with us.

A Late Roman Cave of Necromancy and Intrigue, or, A Backdoor to the Underworld in Beth Shemesh?

A cave near Beth Shemesh in Israel seems to have been a Late Roman portal to the underworld. How do we know? Did the detached skulls tell us? Our contestants take pro and anti-necromancy stances, but in a good way.