PODCAST

This Week in the Ancient Near East

thisweekintheancientneareast

The podcast that takes archaeology exactly as seriously as it deserves.

history

All Episodes

00:41

A Note to Our Listener

This Week in the Ancient Near East ·

2023/10/04

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!

43:16

The Prehistoric Spanish Cave of Drugs, Death and Fun!...

This Week in the Ancient Near East ·

2023/09/13

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.

45:31

The Toilets of Iron Age Jerusalem, A View from Below,...

This Week in the Ancient Near East ·

2023/08/30

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.

41:57

The Copper Age Princess of Iberia? Or, I Want to Live...

This Week in the Ancient Near East ·

2023/08/16

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.

42:13

A Late Roman Cave of Necromancy and Intrigue, or, A...

This Week in the Ancient Near East ·

2023/08/02

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.

54:14

The Bird Calls of Prehistory, or the Squeaky Flutes...

This Week in the Ancient Near East ·

2023/07/19

A new report on Natufian aerophones from Eynan-Mallaha has us wondering, what’s an aerophone? It’s a bone with holes, sort of like a flute or a bird call. So are humans replicating bird sounds to catch birds or to make music? Is all this ritual or is it just hunting? All the same, really, isn't it?

52:29

The Stone Receipts of Early Roman Jerusalem, or,...

This Week in the Ancient Near East ·

2023/07/04

A new inscription from Jerusalem’s Pilgrim’s Road looks like a receipt from the Early Roman period. It’s also on a piece of stone, which seems difficult to file. We’ve got Emily Dickinson and emojis, religious observance, and the suspicious relationship between writing and literacy. With a special shoutout to Major Deegan and his expressway!

56:07

The Dismembered Hands of Avaris, or How Do You Say...

This Week in the Ancient Near East ·

2023/06/20

Pits with dismembered hands at the Hyksos site of Tell el Dab’a/Avaris have us asking, what is it with ancient Egypt and dismemberment? Sure the king wants to permanently defeat his enemies – really, who doesn’t want that - but isn’t all this hand chopping business just, well, performance art? It’s our most hands on episode yet!

55:08

What Pairs Well with Extreme Desert Conditions? or...

This Week in the Ancient Near East ·

2023/06/06

The discovery of grapes pips at Late Antique Avdat in the northern Negev has us asking questions, like who makes wine in the desert anyway, and how do you get the wine from the desert to the people? Is this a story of wine fancying monks or Breaking Bad style middlemen? Pour a glass and settle in with our contestants!

53:12

Iron Age Religion East of the Jordan, Or, Ammon,...

This Week in the Ancient Near East ·

2023/05/23

A new report on Iron Age temples in Jordan has us puzzled. How different are the cults to national gods and their shrines on both sides of the Jordan River, you know, really? And if a Moabite walked into a Judean bar, would you know? Watch us go from a very small building to huge questions about world religions!

47:09

The Little Tavern at Lagash, or, The Real Craft [and...

This Week in the Ancient Near East ·

2023/05/09

The discovery of a tavern at Early Dynastic Lagash has us asking questions. Who drank there, who ran the joint, and how did you pay come to mind, along with the obvious problems of drunks and pickled eggs. With a special shoutout to wise bartenders everywhere from Siduri to Sam Malone!

52:24

New Jerusalem Inscription Points to (Previously...

This Week in the Ancient Near East ·

2023/04/25

The discovery of an Iron Age pot in Jerusalem with an inscription in a South Arabian language has us flustered. We knew there was an ancient spice trade between the Levant and Yemen, but does this mean that Solomon and Sheba were real? It’s a spicy discussion with breathless notes of labdanum. Come for the world systems theory, stay for all the aunts in a cloud of Shalimar!

49:05

The Book of the Dead Club, Or, If a...

This Week in the Ancient Near East ·

2023/04/11

A 52 foot long Book of the Dead sounds like a super deluxe edition, but if you’re traveling from death to judgment and into the afterlife you can’t be too careful. But did anyone in ancient Egypt actually believe this stuff? What about the non-believers? Where did they fit in? Our contestants slide effortlessly into Spinoza mode, but still worry a little about Ammit, devoureress of the dead.

55:36

It’s This Week in the Ancient Near East at the...

This Week in the Ancient Near East ·

2023/03/28

In 1923 Cecil B. De Mille made The Ten Commandments on a huge Egyptian set in the California dunes, which archaeologists have excavated. So obviously we’re asking, what’s the deal with Biblical movies? Ripping yarns or morality tales with Nazi punching? And would a picture about the backbreaking scientific tedium of real archaeology be a crowdpleaser? With a special shoutout to our friends Donny Osmond and Walter Benjamin!

40:19

The Archaeology of Ancient Fingerprints, or Profiling...

This Week in the Ancient Near East ·

2023/03/14

Fingerprints on ancient pottery? Like from the potters? Ok, we’re not cops but we are a little curious. Who are these potters at Byzantine Moza, Tell Leilan, Tell en Nasbeh, Tell es Safi, and other Bronze and Iron Age sites around the Near East? Who's producing what and why are they using child labor to decorate pottery? Maybe we really should call the cops.

57:55

A Mediterranean Metal Mystery, or, Those Tin Ingots...

This Week in the Ancient Near East ·

2023/02/28

Central Asian tin in a Late Bronze Age shipwreck at the bottom of Mediterranean raises questions like, “who brought the tin thousands of kilometers west from what’s now Uzbekistan,” and “who’s tin was it when the boat sank.” Ok, they’re not questions like, “what is best in life” or “are you going to eat that sandwich” but they’re what we’ve got.

54:29

How I Made Your Mummy, Or, A Special Blend of Herbs...

This Week in the Ancient Near East ·

2023/02/14

The discovery of a 26th Dynasty mummification workshop has shown that exotic ingredients came from as far as India and Africa. Is this just an early version of Goop, rich people getting sold on weird ingredients just because the poors were catching up? But then how do we explain the sun dried crocodiles? Go ahead, we’ll wait.

47:19

Crime Grips Uruk, Sheep and Tunic Stolen!, Or, Law...

This Week in the Ancient Near East ·

2023/01/31

This is the city, Uruk. I was working the day shift out of the Eanna Temple when the call came in about a missing sheep and tunic. We picked up the perp pretty quickly and he started to sing, so we rolled up 39 of his pals. But word came down that the great and the good were putting up bail. That’s when the king got involved and things got interesting.

53:46

What’s Cooking in the Middle Paleolithic and Is It...

This Week in the Ancient Near East ·

2023/01/17

In the Middle Paleolithic dinner included plants like bitter vetch and mustard. The problem is these plants are toxic. So who figured out that you had to soak, pound and char them before eating? More importantly, what happened to the folks who didn’t figure it out? Come for the helpful cooking hints, stay for the incisive comments on wraps!

01:03:25

New Inscriptions from Hezekiah’s Chunnel? Or, If An...

This Week in the Ancient Near East ·

2023/01/03

New Biblical era inscriptions allegedly by Hezekiah are making waves in the newspapers. They raise many questions like, where’s the full scholarly publication, and, how about a decent picture at least? Is that how we do it now, just talk about stuff in the papers before producing the goods? How do we know if something is real and spectacular if it isn’t reviewed by a jury of one’s peers? Our contestant are washing the delicates in public!

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