An irreverent, geeky, and occasionally gory History podcast where we discuss the past and the stuff that made it. Mixing material culture, microhistory, and storytelling, we find new angles from which to examine world history through strange and interesting objects. We are two history professors from different cultures and a generation apart in age. Join us as we laugh and learn together.
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An irreverent, geeky, and occasionally gory History podcast where we discuss the past and the stuff that made it. Mixing material culture, microhistory, and storytelling, we find new angles from which to examine world history through strange and interesting objects. We are two history professors from different cultures and a generation apart in age. Join us as we laugh and learn together.
S1 Ep14: Episode 14: African Halloween - A Spider Staff and a Significant Skull
The Past and Stuff
1 hour 54 minutes
2 years ago
S1 Ep14: Episode 14: African Halloween - A Spider Staff and a Significant Skull
In this episode Ashley’s traditionally disturbing Stuff in the News concerns the billion-dollar international trade in monkey skulls and other bits of dead animals you can buy on ebay. Tracey’s traditionally earnest Stuff in the News focuses on a paradigm changing archaeological find from Africa - a nearly half-a-million-year-old, pre-homo sapien, wooden structure that has been unearthed in Zambia. Sticking with African artifacts, Ashley’s Piece of Stuff this week is a linguist’s staff of office from Ghana that prominently features a large spider - the trickster Anansi. Tracey, meanwhile, continues her story of the Piltdown Man Hoax by interweaving the story of the discovery of a real skull from Africa, that of the Taung Child. While this was one of the most significant archaeological and scientific discoveries of the twentieth century, and could potentially have challenged a lot of scientific racism, it was dismissed for decades because of the Piltdown Hoax.
The Past and Stuff
An irreverent, geeky, and occasionally gory History podcast where we discuss the past and the stuff that made it. Mixing material culture, microhistory, and storytelling, we find new angles from which to examine world history through strange and interesting objects. We are two history professors from different cultures and a generation apart in age. Join us as we laugh and learn together.
